“What violence?” said the Warden. “There is no assault here. Why, I am asking you politely; if it is too dark for you, then I will kindle a fire with my penknife so that it will be as bright in your peepers as in seven churches.”
“My dear Gerwazy,” said the Apparitor, “why be so huffy? I am an apparitor; it is not my business to discuss the case. Everybody knows that a party to a suit summons an apparitor and dictates to him whatever he chooses, and the apparitor proclaims it. The apparitor is the ambassador of the law, and ambassadors are not subject to punishment, so that I do not know why you keep me under guard. I will immediately write an act if some one will only bring me a lantern, but meanwhile I proclaim: Brothers, come to order!”
And in order to make his voice carry better, he stepped up on a great heap of beams (near the garden fence beams were drying); he climbed on them, and at once, as if the wind had blown him away, he vanished from sight; they heard how he plumped into the cabbage patch, they saw how his white hat flitted like a dove over the dark hemp. Bucket shot at the hat, but missed his aim; then there was a crackling of poles—Protazy was already in the hop patch. “I protest,” he shouted; he was sure of escape, for behind him he had swamps and the bed of the stream.
After this protest, which resounded like the last cannon shot on conquered ramparts, all resistance subsided in the mansion of the Soplicas. The hungry gentry pillaged and seized upon whatever they could find. Sprinkler, taking his stand in the cow-shed, sprinkled an ox and two calves on the brows, and Razor plunged his sabre in their throats. Awl with equal diligence employed his sword, sticking hogs and sucking pigs beneath the shoulder blades. And now slaughter threatened the poultry—a watchful flock of those geese that once saved Rome from the treachery of the Gauls, in vain cackled for aid; in place of Manlius, Bucket attacked the coop, strangled some of the birds, and tied [pg 221] others alive to the girdle of his kontusz. In vain the geese called out hoarsely, winding their necks about; in vain the ganders hissed and nipped their assailant. He ran; besprinkled with the glittering down, borne forward as if on wheels by the motion of the close-packed wings, he seemed to be Chochlik, the winged evil spirit.[159]
But the most terrible slaughter, though the least uproar, was among the hens. Young Buzzard assaulted the hencoop, and, catching them with a cord, he pulled down from the roosts the cocks and the rough-feathered and crested hens; one after another he strangled them and laid them in a heap; lovely birds, fed upon pearl barley. Heedless Buzzard, what fervour carried thee away! Never after this wilt thou win thy pardon from the angry Zosia!
Gerwazy called to mind the days of old, and bade them give him the belts from their kontuszes, and with them he drew from the Soplicas' cellar casks of old brandy, mead, and beer. Some they broached at once; others the gentry, thick as ants, seized with a will and rolled to the castle. There the whole throng gathered for the night encampment; there were established the Count's headquarters.
They laid a hundred fires, boiled, broiled, and roasted; the tables bent beneath the meat, and drink flowed in a river. The gentry were minded to eat, drink, and sing the whole night through, but slowly they began to doze and yawn; eye after eye was extinguished, and the whole company nodded their heads; each fell where he sat, one with a platter, one over a tankard, one by a quarter of beef. Thus the victors were conquered at last by Sleep, the brother of Death.