So saying, the young officer raised to the eyes of Zagloba the hilt of a heavy dragoon sabre, and repeated, “I don’t want any other.”
“Proper!” said Zagloba. “Roh, son of Roh, you are greatly pleasing to me. A soldier is best accommodated when he has no wife save such a one, and I will say more,—she will be a widow before you will be a widower. The only pity is that you cannot have young Rohs by her, for I see that you are a keen cavalier, and it would be a sin were such a stock to die out.”
“Oh, no fear of that!” said Kovalski; “there are six brothers of us.”
“And all Rohs?”
“Does Uncle know that if not the first, then the second, has to be Roh?—for Roh is our special patron.”
“Let us drink again.”
“Very well.”
Zagloba raised the bottle; he did not drink all, however, but gave it to the officer and said, “To the bottom, to the bottom! It is a pity that I cannot see you,” continued he. “The night is so dark that you might hit a man in the face, you would not know your own fingers by sight. But hear me, Roh, where was that army going from Kyedani when we drove out?”
“Against the insurgents.”
“The Most High God knows who is insurgent,—you or they.”