‘Does all this mean,’ said I, ‘that Mazeppa has renewed his suit of late, and with no more success than of old?’
‘What, I?’ he exclaimed, flushing nevertheless, in spite of his bravado. ‘No, Chelminsky; I have had sterner work to do in Moscow than love-making, though indeed there was good reason to believe that if I had raised a finger a certain bird would have sung!’
‘What, both for Mazeppa and for Peter?’ cried I, affecting to be vastly amused. ‘By the saints, a pretty warbler is this that I have fed in my bosom, that sings to all comers! Which was the favoured, Mazeppa, thou or Tsar Peter?’
‘I will tell thee truth,’ said Mazeppa: ‘the Tsar Peter being seriously in love, and I, as thou knowest, no more than toying with passion, he desired to have the way clear for himself; therefore I acted the dutiful vassal and left his Highness a straight course.’
‘So that I, for my part, have lost both patron and mistress?’ said I, still affecting indifference, though actually I was near boiling over with rage; ‘for it seems you would have me understand that whether Peter wooed or Mazeppa, at any rate there was no remembrance of me.’
‘Chelminsky, the new-found philosopher, will not weep, I wager, even though so it be!’ he said; ‘nor yet will he blame the fair Vera, who takes her wooing where she finds it.’
‘Then, I say,’ cried I, firing up at last, ‘that Mazeppa is a liar, Hetman or no Hetman—as great a liar as Hetman as he has been from the beginning and will be to the end. Shall I beat thee with a stick now, Hetman Mazeppa, or spit thee with a sword presently before witnesses? Thou owest me a drubbing for the wedding I gave thee with Olga, and another for spoiling thy villainy with Vera. Come, I am ready for it now, and at the same time thou shalt answer to me for many lies, and for a certain knouting which I did not get—no thanks to thee!’
‘Oh, if thou must have it so, meet me in the Krasinsky Wood at noon to-morrow,’ he said, keeping cool while I raved. ‘Go cautiously and with thy second only, for understand, as Hetman I must not be seen duelling with my inferior. I meet thee as a favour, Chelminsky.’
‘Well, do not play the coward and stay away,’ I raved, ‘for Hetman or no Hetman, and favour or no favour, I will make thee eat thy lies, fox Mazeppa, and that I swear!’
‘If you will fight, fight you shall,’ he replied, ‘and let the best man win!’