Pan Michael looked still more severely. “Memento mori.”
But Zagloba was not easily disconcerted. “Michael, if you love me, do this for me, and kiss a dog on the snout with your ‘memento.’ I repeat, you will do as you please, but I think in this way: Let each man serve God with that for which he was created; and God created you for the sword: in this His will is evident, since He has permitted you to attain such perfection in the use of it. In case He wished you to be a priest, He would have adorned you with a wit altogether different, and inclined your heart more to books and to Latin. Consider, too, that soldier saints enjoy no less respect in heaven than saints with vows, and they go campaigning against the legions of hell, and receive rewards from God’s hands when they return with captured banners. All this is true; you will not deny it?”
“I do not deny it, and I know that it is hard to skirmish against your reasoning; but you also will not deny that for grief life is better in the cloister than in the world.”
“If it is better, bah! then all the more should cloisters be shunned. Dull is the man who feeds mourning instead of keeping it hungry, so that the beast may die of famine as quickly as possible.”
Pan Michael found no ready argument; therefore he was silent, and only after a while answered with a sad voice, “Do not mention marriage, for such mention only rouses fresh grief in me. My old desire will not revive, for it has passed away with tears; and my years are not suitable. My hair is beginning to whiten. Forty-two years, and twenty-five of them spent in military toil, are no jest, no jest!”
“O God, do not punish him for blasphemy! Forty-two years! Tfu! I have more than twice as many on my shoulders, and still at times I must discipline myself to shake the heat out of my blood, as dust is shaken from clothing. Respect the memory of that dear dead one. You were good enough for her, I suppose? But for others are you too cheap, too old?”
“Give me peace! give me peace!” said Pan Michael, with a voice of pain; and the tears began to flow to his mustaches.
“I will not say another syllable,” added Zagloba; “only give me the word of a cavalier that no matter what happens to Ketling you will stay a month with us. You must see Yan. If you wish afterward to return to the cloister, no one will raise an impediment.”
“I give my word,” said Pan Michael.
And they fell to talking of something else. Zagloba began to tell of the Diet, and how he had raised the question of excluding Prince Boguslav, and of the adventure with Ketling. Occasionally, however, he interrupted the narrative and buried himself in thoughts; they must have been cheerful, for from time to time he struck his knees with his palms, and repeated,—