Useless is armor;
Shields give no service;
Cupid’s keen arrows,
Through steel and iron,
Go to all hearts.”
“I do not indeed know how to thank you,” said Zagloba, sitting at a distance with Pan Michael’s sister, and kissing her hands, “for coming yourself and bringing with you such elegant maidens that the Graces themselves might heat stoves for them. Especially does that little haiduk please my heart, for such a rogue drives away sorrow in such fashion that a weasel could not hunt mice better. In truth, what is grief unless mice gnawing the grains of joyousness placed in our hearts? You, my benefactress, should know that our late king, Yan Kazimir, was so fond of my comparisons that he could not live a day without them. I had to arrange for him proverbs and wise maxims. He used to have these repeated to him before bed-time, and by them it was that he directed his policy. But that is another matter. I hope too that our Michael, in company with these delightful girls, will forget altogether his unhappy misfortune. You do not know that it is only a week since I dragged him out of the cloister, where he wished to make vows; but I won the intervention of the nuncio himself, who declared to the prior that he would make a dragoon of every monk in the cloister if he did not let Michael out straightway. There was no reason for him to be there. Praise be to God! Praise be to God! If not to-day, to-morrow some one of those two will strike such sparks out of him that his heart will be burning like punk.”
Meanwhile Krysia sang on:—
“If shields cannot save
From darts a strong hero,
How can a fair head