"I will meet you anywhere, even here, this minute."
"Will you challenge me?" asked Volodyovski, half closing his eyes.
"You have touched my fame, tried to cast shame on me, I need your blood."
"No dispute on those points," said Volodyovski.
"No harm to the consenting party," added Zagloba. "But who will deliver the letter to the prince?"
"Give yourself no headache over that; it is my affair."
"Fight, then, if it cannot be otherwise," said Zagloba. "But if fortune favors you against this cavalier, remember that you will have to meet me. And now, Pan Michael, come out to the front of the house; I have something important to say."
The two friends went out and called Kushel from under the window of the room.
"Gentlemen, our affair is a bad one. He has really a letter to the prince; if we kill him, it is a capital crime. Remember that the chapter 'propter securitatem loci' has jurisdiction ten miles from the field of election, and he is the same as an envoy. A weighty question! We must either hide somewhere afterward, or perhaps the prince will protect us; otherwise it may go hard with us. And to let him go free again is still worse. This is the only way to liberate our poor young lady. For when he is no longer in the world we shall find her more easily. The Lord himself evidently wishes to aid her and Skshetuski; that's clear. Let us help."
"Will you invent some stratagem?" asked Kushel.