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Indeed I cannot hold out longer, and to-day I shall lay down arms and accept such conditions of agreement as the court may offer me.” My boy, young master, you are jesting, aren’t you? The castle, the abode of the Horeszkos, pass into the hands of the Soplicas! Only deign to dismount from the steed; let us go into the castle; just look it over a bit!
Ah, brother, if you have one drop of the Soplicas’ blood in your veins, just consider: the French are striking from in front—what if we stir up a rising of the people from the rear? What do you think?
His name was Soplica; all the Soplicas, as is well known, are large, strong, powerful men, apt at the soldier’s trade, but less diligent over their books. Thaddeus had not degenerated from his forebears; he rode well on horseback and walked well; he was not dull, but he had made little progress in his studies, though his uncle had spared nothing on his education.
And yet I was not a traitor to my country. “The Muscovites showed by acts of violence that they regarded me as one of their partisans: they gave the Soplicas a considerable part of the dead man’s estates; later the Targowica confederates wished to bestow an office upon me.176 If I had then consented to turn Muscovite!—Satan counselled it—I was already influential and rich; but if I had become a Muscovite?—The foremost magnates would have sought my favour; even my brother gentlemen—even the mob, which is so ready to disparage those of its own number, is prone to forgive those happier men who serve the Muscovites!
Pray understand that the Soplicas are not wont to be reconciled; when they summon a man to court they must win their case. Sometimes a suit has continued in their name until they won it in the sixth generation. I committed folly enough by your advice when I convoked for the third time the Chamberlain’s court. “But, Judge, what will happen if Jacek learns of this? He will certainly die of despair!
A Warden is no owl; whoever comes by night into another man’s loft is an owl, and I will scare him hence.” “Put him out!” shouted the Chamberlain. “Count, you see what is being done,” called the Warden. “Is Your Honour not yet sufficiently tainted by eating and drinking with these Soplicas?
“My boy, young master—pardon me, that I speak thus to Your Excellency the Count; such is merely my custom, and it betokens no lack of respect. All the Horeszkos used to say ‘My boy’; the last Pantler, my lord, was fond of the phrase. Is it true, my boy, that you grudge a penny for a lawsuit, and are yielding this castle to the Soplicas?
So of what had been done in the Soplicas’ camp the news could not spread abroad on that day—and it was precisely upon secrecy that the fate of the gentry depended. In the Judge’s room an important consultation was in progress. The Bernardine lay on the bed, exhausted, pale, and blood-stained, but wholly sound in his mind; he issued orders and the Judge carried them out to the letter.
But we must not look for them in the peasant villages, but through the hamlets of the gentry, in Dobrzyn, in Rzezikow, in Cientycze, in Rombanki;99 the gentry of ancient lineage, in whom flows knightly blood, are all well disposed to the family of the Horeszkos, and are all mortal enemies of the Soplicas! Thence I will collect some three hundred mustachioed gentlemen; that is my affair.
He awoke from his musings, and remembered where he was and whose guest; he, the heir of the Horeszkos, was a guest within his own threshold, was feasting with the Soplicas, his immemorial foes! And moreover the jealousy that he felt for Thaddeus incensed the Count all the more powerfully against the Soplicas. So he said with a bitter laugh:—
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