"Because my lip is worse than my heart. But don't make it bleed, Pan Michael, with remembrances, for as matters are I reproach myself; and God forbid that anything should happen to Pan Longin! I should have no peace till my death."
"Don't grieve so much. He never had any ill feeling against you, and I have heard him say himself, 'An evil mouth, but a golden heart.'"
"God give him health, the worthy friend! He never knew how to talk in human fashion, but he made up for a hundred such deficiencies by great virtue. What do you think, Pan Michael, did he pass through?"
"The night was dark, and the peasants after the defeat were terribly tired. We had not a good watch; what must it have been with them?"
"Praise God for that! I told Pan Longin to inquire carefully whether our poor princess had been seen anywhere, for I think Jendzian must have taken her to the king's headquarters. Pan Longin will be sure not to rest; he will not come back without the king. In that case we shall have news again soon."
"I have faith in the wit of that lad Jendzian, and think that he saved her somehow. I should know no peace if harm met her. I did not know her intimately, and I believe if I had a sister she would not have been dearer to me."
"She was a sister to you, but to me a daughter. From these troubles my beard will grow white altogether, and my heart break from sorrow. When you love some one,--one, two, three, and that one is gone; then you sit, console yourself, worry, grieve, meditate,--having besides an empty stomach, and holes in your cap through which the water is falling on your bald head like rain through a broken thatch. Dogs have at present a pleasanter life in the Commonwealth than the nobles, and we four are the worst off of all. It is time to go to a better world, Pan Michael, what do you think?"
"I have thought more than once whether it would not be better to tell Skshetuski all; but this restrains me, that he himself never speaks of her, and when any one utters a word he just quivers as if something pierced his heart."
"Tell him, open the wounds dried up in the fire of this war, while now some Tartar maybe is leading her by the hair through Perekop! Flaming fires stand in my eyes when I think of such a thing. It is time to die, it cannot be otherwise; for there is torture alone in this world, nothing more. If only Pan Longin gets through!"
"He must have more favor in heaven than others, for he is virtuous. But look! what are the rabble doing?"