“Woe!” muttered Pan Adam.
“But the other lady our murza himself had in his tent. We did not see her so often; but we heard more than once how she screamed, for the murza, though he kept her for his pleasure, beat her with rods, and kicked her.”
Pan Adam’s lips began to quiver.
Eliashevich barely heard the question.
“Where are they now?”
“Sold in Stambul.”
“To whom?”
“The murza himself does not know certainly. A command came from the Padishah to keep no women in camp. All sold their women in the bazaar; the murza sold his.”
The explanation was finished, and at the fire silence set in; but for some time a sultry afternoon wind shook the limbs of the trees, which sounded more and more deeply. The air became stifling; on the edge of the horizon, black clouds appeared, dark in the centre, and shining with a copper-color on the edges.
Pan Adam walked away from the fire, and moved like one demented, without giving an account to himself of where he was going. At last he dropped with his face to the ground, and began to tear the earth with his nails, then to gnaw his own hands, and then to gasp as if dying. A convulsion twisted his gigantic body, and he lay thus for hours. The dragoons looked at him from a distance; but even Lusnia dared not approach him.