"Great, mighty court! But that pig ear has given me no peace this long time. I came home, like any good man, to supper, and she made at me. 'Thou chestnut dog,' says she, 'the master is in the field yet, and thou come now to the house! Thou wilt put thyself behind the stove, and blink at me.' I never scolded her; but when she saw me with Yagna of the mansion, as I helped the girl to draw water out of the well, from that moment she was raging at me. She threw my plate on the table so the food almost flew from it, and then she wouldn't let me eat it; she gave out her mind at me in this way, 'Thou son of a pagan, thou traitor, thou geometer, thou suffragan!' When she said suffragan, and only then, I gave it to her on the snout, and only so from temper; but she at me then with a pot-ladle on the forehead."
Here the ideal Juliet could not restrain herself; but, clinching her fist and shoving it under Romeo's nose, she cried, with shrieking voice,—
"Not true! not true! not true! Thou liest like a dog!"
Then she burst into weeping with her whole overflowing heart, and, turning to the court, cried,—
"Great, mighty court! I am an unfortunate orphan. Oh, help me, for God's sake! It was not at the well I saw him with Yagna; may they be blind! 'Libertine!' says I, 'are the times few that thou didst say that thy love for me was such that thou didst wish to put a fist under my rib?' May he melt; may his tongue become a stake! Not a pot-ladle should he get on the head, but a maple club. The sun was still high, but he comes from the field and calls for something to put in his stomach. I talk to him as if to some good man, politely, 'Thou scoundrel's picture,' says I, 'the master is in the field yet, and thou art at the house!' But I didn't call him a suffragan; as the Lord God is good to me, I did not! But may he—"
At this point the mayor called the defendant to order, making a remark to her in the form of a question,—
"Thou plague, wilt thou shut that snout of thine?"
A moment of silence followed; the judges began to meditate over the sentence; and what a delicate feeling of the situation! They did not adjudge five zlotys to either side; but, to preserve their own dignity merely, and for a warning to every loving couple in all Barania-Glova, they condemned the two to sit twenty-four hours longer in prison, and to pay a ruble each to the chancery.
"From Vah Rehnio and Baska Jabianka, fifty copecks each for the chancery," noted down Pan Zolzik.
Then the sitting of the court was ended. Pan Zolzik rose; he drew his sand-colored trousers up, and his violet-colored vest down. The councillors, with the intention of separating, had already taken their caps and whips, when all at once the door, which had been closed after the invasion of the pigs, opened half-way, and in it appeared Repa, gloomy as night, and after him his wife, and the dog Kruchek.