“So I’ll go,” said Pan Volodyovski.
But after a while another thought entered his head: if she says, “Go to war, noble soldier, and after the war you will visit me during one year and look at me like a nearsighted man, for I will not give in a moment my soul and my body to one whom I know not!”
Then all will be lost! That it would be lost Pan Volodyovski felt perfectly; for leaving aside the lady whom in the interval some other man might marry, Volodyovski was not sure of his own constancy. Conscience declared that in him love was kindled like straw, but quenched as quickly.
Then all will be lost! And then wander on farther, thou soldier, a vagrant from one camp to another, from battle to battle, with no roof in the world, with no living soul of thy kindred! Search the four corners of earth when the war will be over, not knowing a place for thy heart save the barracks!
At last Volodyovski knew not what to do. It had become in a certain fashion narrow and stifling for him in the Patsuneli house; he took his cap therefore to go out on the road and enjoy the May sun. On the threshold he came upon one of Kmita’s men taken prisoner, who in the division of spoils had come to old Pakosh. The Cossack was warming himself in the sun and playing on a bandura.
“What art thou doing here?” asked Volodyovski.
“I am playing,” answered the Cossack, raising his thin face,
“Whence art thou?” asked Volodyovski, glad to have some interruption to his thoughts.
“From afar, from the Viahla.”
“Why not run away like the rest of thy comrades? Oh, such kind of sons! The nobles spared your lives in Lyubich so as to have laborers, and your comrades all ran away as soon as the ropes were removed.”