"And why is Pan Jendzian sorry?" asked the princess.
"Because money is buried there, of which Bogun told me; but you gentlemen were so urgent that I had no time to dig it up, though I know well where it is, near the mill. My heart was cut also at having to leave so much property of every kind in that room where you, my lady, lived."
"Just see what a servant you are going to have!" said Zagloba to the princess. "With the exception of his master, there is no one, not the devil himself, from whom he would not strip skin to make a coat-collar for himself."
"With God's help, Jendzian will not complain of my ingratitude," answered Helena.
"I thank you humbly," said he, kissing her hand.
During this time Volodyovski sat with a sullen look, drinking wine quietly from the skin, till his unusual silence attracted Zagloba's attention.
"Ah, Pan Michael," said he, "you have given us scarcely a word." Here the old man turned to Helena. "I have not told you that your beauty has deprived him of reason and speech."
"You would better take a nap before daylight," was the little knight's reply; and he began to move his mustaches like a rabbit trying to gain courage.
But the old noble was right. The beauty of the princess had kept the little knight in a sort of continual ecstasy. He looked at her, looked again, and in his mind he asked: "Can it be that such a woman moves upon the earth?"
He had seen much beauty in his day. Beautiful were the Princesses Anna and Barbara Zbaraska, and Anusia Borzobogata, charming beyond expression. Panna Jukovkna, to whom Roztvorovski was paying court, had many a charm, and so had Vershulovna and Skoropadska and Bohovitnianka; but none of these could compare with that marvellous flower of the steppe. In presence of the others Volodyovski was vivacious, full of speech; but now, when he looked on those velvet eyes, sweet and languishing, on the silken lashes, the shade of which fell on the pupils, on the arrowy form, on the bosom lightly moved by the breath, on the bloom of the lips,--when Volodyovski looked at all this, he simply forgot the tongue in his mouth; and what was worse, he seemed awkward, stupid, and above all diminutive,--so small as to be ridiculous. "She is a princess, and I am a little boy," thought he, in bitterness; and he would have rejoiced could some giant have issued from the darkness by chance, for then poor Pan Michael would have shown that he was not so small as he seemed. He was irritated also because Zagloba, evidently glad that his daughter was so attractive, coughed every little while, quizzed, and winked fearfully. And each instant she was more beautiful, as calm and sweet she sat before the fire, shone on by the rosy flame and the white moon.