"Milena would have been the girl your mother and I might have chosen for your bride; and, indeed, we have learnt to love her as a daughter; but fate has decreed otherwise."
They now came up to the foremost man of the band.
"Who is wounded?" asked Bellacic of him.
"Radonic," answered he.
"Is the wound a bad one?"
"He is dying!" replied the Montenegrin, in a whisper.
CHAPTER XVI
THE VAMPIRE
Vranic, having found out that the Austrian law could do nothing for him, except punish him for his crime in cutting down the vines of a man who had done him no harm, shut himself up at home to nurse his wounded head, to brood over his revenge, and pity himself for all the mishaps that had befallen him. The more he pitied himself, the more irritable he grew, and the more he considered himself a poor persecuted wretch. He durst not go out for fear of being laughed at; and, in fact, when he did go, the children in the streets began to call him names, to ask him what he had done with his ears, and whether he liked cutting people's vines down.
With his bickering and peevish temper, not only his fast friends grew weary of him, but his own family forsook him; his very brother, at last, could not abide his saturnine humour, and left him. He then began to drink to try and drown his troubles; still, he only took enough to muddle his brains, and, moreover, the greater quantity of spirits he consumed the more sullen he grew.