"That's why I treat him so well. A fine youth! I have no more faithful servant than he. The peasantry fear him like the very devil. He is my right hand."
"Then I can guess how many floggings he has already administered to them."
"I will give them their wedding. Then I mean to make Schinko my house-steward and Diabolka my confidential maid."
"I will provide the wedding presents."
Diabolka continued reading her psalm without interruption. Any other girl at least would have simpered when she heard talk of her wedding in presence of her bridegroom.
"Now we'll finish up supper with a little singing and dancing," said the mistress of the house, signing to Schinko.
"Ah! Can Diabolka not only sing sacred songs, but dance too?"
"She neither sings nor dances; she has another calling. There is some one else to do that."
Hereupon twelve pretty young peasant girls entered from a side-door, each with a lute in her hand, their faces expressing more repressed fear than pleasurable expectation. Behind them slid Schinko, a long whip in one hand, the other leading a small, humpbacked dwarf on a chain, like a bear, with a bagpipe under his arm. He was hideously ugly, with a hump behind and before, his large bald head sunk between his high shoulders. His face was the caricature of a man's face, and so distorted with small-pox that it seemed as if the lineaments, being so grotesque, the fell disease had tried to wipe them out; here and there remained a tuft of beard and whisker; he had but one eye. He was revolting to look upon; but when his cheeks distended with the bagpipe he was a perfect monster. A worthier performer on the bleating goat-skin could scarcely be imagined.
"That's classical music," said the master; "but what about the dancing?"