"Then we shall see!" interrupted Pan Serafin. "But let him only try! That is something quite different!"
And he shook his sabre, threateningly, while the Bukoyemskis began to grit their teeth straightway.
"Let him try! let him try!" said they.
"But, gentlemen," said Vilchopolski, "you are going to the war."
"We will arrange then in another way," replied Father Voynovski.
Further conversation was interrupted by the arrival of the butler. He had brought trunks filled with the wardrobe of Panna Sieninski which, as he said, he did only with difficulty. The Krepetski sisters tried to prevent him, and even wished to wake Martsian, and keep the trunks in the mansion, but they could not wake him; and the butler persuaded them that they should not act thus, both in view of their own good and that of their brother, otherwise an action would be brought against them for robbery, and they would be summoned for damages before a tribunal. As women who do not know law they were frightened and yielded. The butler thought that Martsian would try surely to get back the young lady, but he did not think that the man would use violence immediately.
"He will be restrained from that," said the butler, "by his father, who understands well the significance of raptus puellae. He knows nothing yet of what has happened, but from here I will go to him directly and explain the whole matter, for two reasons. First, so that he may restrain Martsian, and second, because I do not wish to be in Belchantska to-morrow when Martsian wakes and learns that I have helped the young lady in fleeing. He would rush on me surely, and then to one of us something ugly might happen."
Pan Serafin and Father Voynovski praised the man's prudence and, finding that he was a well-wishing person, and experienced, a man who had eaten bread from more than one oven, and to whom law itself was no novelty, begged him to aid in examining the question. There were two councils then, one of these being formed of the four Bukoyemskis.
Pan Serafin, knowing how to restrain them most easily from murderous intentions, and detain them at home, sent a large demijohn of good mead to the brothers; this they were glad to besiege at the moment, and began to drink one to another. Their hearts were moved, and they remembered involuntarily the night when Panna Anulka crossed for the first time the threshold of that house there in Yedlinka. They recalled how they had fallen in love with her straightway, how through her they had quarrelled, and then in one voice adjudged her to Stanislav, and thus made an offering of their passion to friendship.
At last Mateush drank his mead, put his head on his palm, sighed, and continued,--