“The czar has promised good employment and wages to everyone of you Swedes who will become his subject and be converted to the true faith.”
“You are out of your wits. But if I could get off and take her home with me on horseback, I would do it.”
Next morning, when I had played my psalm, I learned that today it was my turn to go out under the open heavens.
I became warm and restless. I combed and fixed myself up even more carefully than at other times, and changed to the Zaporogean’s ensign coat so as not to wear my torn one. Meanwhile I deliberated with myself. Should I go up to her? What should I say then? Perhaps, though, that would be the only time in my life when I could get to speak with her, and how should I not repent thereafter even to my gray old age, if out of awkwardness I had missed that one chance! My heart beat more violently than at any affair with the enemy, when I stood with my bandages among the bullets and the fallen. I stuck the flute into my pocket and went out.
When I came down on the street she sat at the window without seeing me. I would not go to her without first asking leave, and I did not know rightly how I should conduct myself. Pondering, I took a couple of steps forward.
Then she heard me and looked out.
I lifted my hand to my hat, but with a long ringing burst of laughter she sprang up and cried, “Haha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!”
I stood with my hand raised, and stared and stared, and I had neither thought nor feeling. It was as if my heart had swelled out and filled all my breast, so that it was near to bursting. I believe I stammered something. I only remember that I did not know whither I should turn, that I heard her still laughing, that everything in the world was indifferent to me, that freedom would have frightened me as much as my captivity and my wretchedness, that of a sudden I had become a broken man.
I remember vaguely a long and steep lane without stone pavement, where I was accosted by other Swedish prisoners. Perhaps, even, I answered them, asked after their health, and took some puffs out of the tobacco pipes they lent me.
I believe I disturbed myself over the fact that it was so long till night, so that I had to return the same way and pass her window in brightest daylight. By every means I prolonged the time, speaking now to one man, now to another, but shortly the Russian dragoons came and ordered me to turn about to my place.