"And you are not mistaken, my woman," answered Father Chyzik, mildly. "But I have only one advice, and it is this: Offer to God all your sufferings. God tries His faithful. He tries them as severely as Job, whose wounds were licked by his own dogs, or Azarias, on whom God sent blindness. But God knows what He does, and He will reward those who are faithful. Consider the misfortune which has happened to your husband as a punishment for his grievous sin of drunkenness, and thank God that punishing him during life He may pardon him after death."
The woman looked at the priest with her dark eyes, rose up and went out in silence, without saying one word. But along the road she felt as though something were choking her. She wanted to cry, but she could not.
CHAPTER VII.
ABOUT five o'clock in the afternoon, on the main road between the cottages, gleamed in the distance a blue parasol, a yellow straw hat with blue ribbons, and an almond-colored dress trimmed with blue; that was Panna Yadviga, who had gone out to walk after dinner; at her side was her cousin, Pan Victor.
Panna Yadviga was what is called a pretty young lady; she had black hair, blue eyes, a complexion like milk, and besides wore a dress made with wonderful care, neat and exquisite; light came from it and added to her beauty. Her maiden form was outlined charmingly, as if floating along in the air. In one hand she held a parasol, in the other her dress, from under which was visible the edge of her white petticoat and her shapely, small feet, enclosed in Hungarian boots.
Pan Victor, who walked at her side, though he had an immense curling forelock of light color, and a beard which he was just letting out, looked also like a picture.
This couple were radiant with youth, health, gladness, happiness; and besides there was evident in both that higher, holiday life, a life of winged flights, not only in the external world, but in the world of thought, the world of broader desires, as well as broader ideas, and at times in the golden and shining paths of imagination.
Among those cabins, and compared with children of the village peasants, and all that common surrounding, they seemed like beings from another planet. It was even pleasant to think that there was no bond, at least no spiritual bond, between that splendid, that developed and poetical couple, and the prosaic life of the village, full of gray reality, and half animal.
They passed on, side by side, and conversed of poetry and literature as ordinarily a polite cavalier and a polite lady do. Those people in homespun, those peasants, those women, did not understand even their words and their language. It was dear to think of it!—confess that to me, O ye petty nobility!