Guard her own weakness?
Where can she hide!”
“The fair heads have as much fear of those shafts as a dog has of meat,” whispered Zagloba to Pan Michael’s sister. “But confess, my benefactress, that you did not bring these titmice here without secret designs. They are maidens in a hundred!—especially that little haiduk. Would that I were as blooming as she! Ah, Michael has a cunning sister.”
Pani Makovetski put on a very artful look, which did not, however, become her honest, simple face in the least, and said, “I thought of this and that, as is usual with us; shrewdness is not wanting to women. My husband had to come here to the election; and I brought the maidens beforehand, for with us there is no one to see unless Tartars. If anything lucky should happen to Michael from this, I would make a pilgrimage on foot to some wonder-working image.”
“It will come; it will come!” said Zagloba.
“Both maidens are from great houses, and both have property; that, too, means something in these grievous times.”
“There is no need to repeat that to me. The war has consumed Michael’s fortune, though I know that he has some money laid up with great lords. We took famous booty more than once, gracious lady; and though that was placed at the hetman’s discretion, still, a part went to be divided ‘according to sabres,’ as the saying is in our soldier speech. So much came to Michael’s share more than once that if he had saved all his own, he would have to-day a nice fortune. But a soldier has no thought for to-morrow; he only frolics to-day. And Michael would have frolicked away all he had, were it not that I restrained him on every occasion. You say, then, gracious lady, that these maidens are of high blood?”
“Krysia is of senatorial blood. It is true that our castellans on the border are not castellans of Cracow, and there are some of whom few in the Commonwealth have heard; but still, whoso has sat once in a senator’s chair bequeaths to posterity his splendor. As to relationship, Basia almost surpasses Krysia.”
“Indeed, indeed! I myself am descended from a certain king of the Massagetes, therefore I like to hear genealogies.”
“Basia does not come from such a lofty nest as that; but if you wish to listen,—for in our parts we can recount the relationship of every house on our fingers,—she is, in fact, related to the Pototskis and the Yazlovyetskis and the Lashches. You see, it was this way.” Here Pan Michael’s sister gathered in the folds of her dress and took a more convenient position, so that there might be no hindrance to any part of her favorite narrative; she spread out the fingers of one hand, and straightening the index finger of the other, made ready to enumerate the grandfathers and grandmothers. “The daughter of Pan Yakob Pototski, Elizabeth, from his second wife, a Yazlovyetski, married Pan Yan Smyotanko, banneret of Podolia.”