"Mikolai! A good day to Mikolai. Will Mikolai clean pistols to-day?"
"What does Henryk want here? I'll get ready a dish-cloth, that is all."
Then he would mock me, saying,—
"'Mikolai! Mikolai!' When gun caps are wanted, Mikolai is good, and when not, let the wolves eat him. Thou wouldst do better to study; thou'lt never gain wit from shooting."
"I have finished my lessons," said I, half crying.
"Finished his lessons! Hum! finished. He is studying and studying, but his head is like an empty canister. I won't give caps, and that's the end of it." (While talking, he searched through his pockets.) "But if the cap goes into his eye, Mikolai will catch it. Who is to blame? Mikolai. Who let the boy shoot? Mikolai."
Scolding in this fashion, he went to my father's room, took down the pistols, blew the dust off them, declared a hundred times more that all this was not worth a deuce; then he lighted a candle, put a cap on the nipple of the pistol, and let me aim. Meanwhile I had often to bear heavy crosses.
"How the boy holds the pistol!" said he. "Hum! like a barber. How couldst thou quench a candle, unless as an old man quenches it in church? Thou shouldst be a priest to repeat Hail Marys, and not be a soldier."
In his own way he taught us his military art of other days. Often after dinner I and my brother learned to march under his eye, and with us marched Father Ludvik, who marched very ridiculously.
Then Mikolai looked at him with a frown, and, though he feared the priest more than any one, he could not restrain himself.