"In what am I to bethink myself? I am free, I have my will, and I say before your eyes: Never!"
He approached her, so nearly that his face pushed up to hers, and he continued,--
"Then perhaps instead of being mistress, thou dost choose to carry wood to the kitchen? Or dost thou not wish it? How will it be, O noble lady! To which of thy estates wilt thou go from this mansion? And if thou stay, whose bread wilt thou eat here; on whose kindness wilt thou live? In whose power wilt thou find thyself? Whose bed, whose chamber is that in which thou art sleeping? What will happen if I command to remove the door fastenings? And dost thou ask in what thou art to bethink thyself? In this: which thou art to choose!--marriage, or no marriage!"
"Ruffian!" screamed Panna Anulka.
But now happened something unheard of. Seized with sudden fury, Krepetski bellowed with a voice that was not human, and seizing the girl by the hair he began with a certain wild and beastly relish to beat her without mercy or memory. The longer he had mastered himself up to that time, the more did his madness seem wild then, and terrible; at that moment beyond doubt he would have killed the young lady had it not been that to her cries for assistance servants burst into the chamber. First that man cutting wood at the kitchen broke in with an axe through the window, after him came kitchen servants, the two sisters, the butler, and two of Pan Gideon's old servitors.
The butler was a noble from a distant village in Mazovia, moreover, a man of rare strength, though rather aged; he caught Martsian's arms from behind, and drew them so mightily that the elbows almost met at his shoulders.
"This is not permitted, your grace!" exclaimed he. "It is infamous!"
"Let me go!" roared Krepetski.
But the iron hands held him as in vices, and a serious, low voice was heard near his ear,--
"I will break your bones unless you restrain yourself!"