"On the snow field, lit up by the moonlight, the scene of the hideous struggle was plain to the newcomers. The long lines of blood, fragments of torn garments, a foot sticking out of a boot in the snow—Ugh! May I never see such a sight again!
"The horsemen galloped quickly up over the crackling snow.
"The violoncellist had to dismount from his ass.
"The good creature howled and groaned from the bottom of his throat, bewailing his comrades in the gipsy tongue, and cursing the monsters who had devoured them.
"The leader of the patrol was a sergeant. He ordered the gipsy about in Croatian, and the gipsy has the peculiar virtue of understanding what is said to him in a language of which he is perfectly ignorant. He replied in Hungarian.
"'Oh, woe, woe! Those accursed wolves have devoured our leader! There's his boot! They've only left his boot. I recognise it well. He bought it only last week at Czegled. He gave six florins for it. A brand-new boot! And this is his foot.'
"It was plain to me that the gipsy had guessed that I was hidden somewhere, and there was enough of the gipsy in him, even amidst the greatest horrors, to induce him to make fools of my pursuers. He betrayed me first of all because he couldn't help it; he saved me finally because he could. He knew very well that I had given my new boots to the contra-bass. My boots were of Russian leather.
"'Look there!' cried the sergeant, and he pointed with his finger. 'Jeden, dwa! Jak sza tri?'[81]
[81] Croatian—"One, two! Where's the third?"
"The gipsy swore by all that was holy that that was the third.