While saying that he pointed to the cradle where the "tormented lobster," a sturdy boy a year old, was kicking and screaming to make a man's ears split.

The woman wiped her eyes with her apron, and said,--

"What does this all mean, then? Or does he know of the papers which thou wert carrying from forest to forest?"

Repa began now to scratch his head. "He does indeed!" After a while he added, "I will go and talk with him. Maybe it is nothing terrible."

"Go, go!" said Marysia, "and take a ruble with thee. Don't go near him without a ruble."

Repa took a ruble out of the box, and went to the secretary.

The secretary was a single man, so he had no separate housekeeping, but lived in the house of four tenements standing at the dam,--the so-called "brick house." There he had two rooms, with a separate entrance. In the first room there was nothing but some straw and a pair of gaiters; the second was both a reception and a sleeping room. There was a bed in it, almost never made up; on the bed two pillows without cases, from these pillows feathers were dropping continually; near by was a table, on it an inkstand, pens, chancery books, a few numbers of "Isabella of Spain,"

published by Pan Breslauer, two dirty collars of English make, a bottle of pomade, paper for cigarettes, and finally a candle in a tin candlestick, with a reddish wick and a fly drowned in the tallow close to the wick.

By the window hung a large looking-glass; opposite the window stood a bureau on which were the very exquisite toilet articles of the secretary,--jackets, vests of fabulous colors, cravats, gloves, patent-leather shoes, and even a cylinder hat which the lord secretary wore whenever he had to visit the district capital of Oslovitsi.

Besides this, at the moment of which we are writing, in an armchair near the bed rested the nankeen trousers of the lord secretary; the lord secretary himself was lying on the bed and reading a number of "Isabella of Spain," published by Pan Breslauer.

His position, not the position of Pan Breslauer, but the secretary, was dreadful, so dreadful, indeed, that one would need the style of Victor Hugo to describe it.

First of all, he feels a raging pain in his wound. That reading of "Isabella," which for him had been always the dearest pleasure and recreation, now increases, not only the pain, but the bitterness which torments him after that adventure with Kruchek. He has a slight fever, and is barely able to collect his thoughts. At times terrible visions come to him. He has just read how young Serrano arrived at the palace of the Escurial covered with wounds after a brilliant victory over the Carlists.

The youthful Isabella, pale with emotion, receives him. The muslin rises in waves above her bosom.

"General, thou art wounded!" says she with trembling voice to Serrano.

Here it seems to the unhappy Zolzik that he is really Serrano.

"Oi! oi! I am wounded!" repeated he, in a stifled voice. "Oh, queen, pardon! But may the most serene--"

"Rest, general! Be seated. Be seated. Relate thy heroic deeds to me."

"Relate them I can, but as to sitting I cannot in any way," cries Serrano, in desperation. "Oi!--Pardon, O queen! That cursed Kruchek! I wish to say Don Jose--Ai, ai! ai!"

Here pain drives away dreaming. Serrano looks around; the candle is burning on the table and spluttering, for just then it begins to burn the fly which had dropped into the tallow; other flies are crawling along the wall Oh! this is the house of four tenements, not the palace of the Escurial! There is no Queen Isabella here. Pan Zolzik recovers presence of mind. He rises in the bed, moistens a cloth in a dish of water standing near the bed, and changes the application on his wound.

Then he turns to the wall, dozes, or rather dreams half asleep, half awake, and is going again evidently by extra post to the Escurial.

"Dear Serrano! my love! I will dress thy wounds myself," whispers Queen Isabella.

Then the hair stands on Serrano's head. He feels the whole horror of his position. How is he to refuse obedience to the queen, and how is he in this case to yield himself to the dressing of his wound? Cold sweat is coming out on his forehead, when suddenly--the queen vanishes, the door opens with a rattle, and before him stands neither more nor less than Don Jose, Serrano's sworn enemy.

"What dost thou wish? Who art thou?" shouts Serrano.

"I am Repa!" answers Don Jose, gloomily.

Zolzik wakes a second time; the Escurial becomes the brick house again, the candle is burning, the fly is crackling in the wick, and blue drops are scattered; in the door stands Repa, and behind him--but the pen drops from my hand--through the half-open door are thrust in the head and shoulders of Kruchek. The monster holds his eyes fixed on Pan Zolzik, and seems to laugh.

Cold sweat in very truth is coming out on the temples of Pan Zolzik, and through his head flies the thought, "Repa has come to break my bones, and Kruchek to help him."

"What do ye both want here?" cries he, in a terrified voice.

Repa puts the ruble on the table, and answers,--

"Great, mighty lord secretary! I have come about the conscription."

"Out! out! out!" cries Zolzik, into whom courage enters in one instant.

And falling into a rage he rises to spring at Repa; but at that moment his wound, received in the Carlist war, pains him so acutely that he drops again on the pillow, giving forth smothered groans.

"Oi! ye!"

CHAPTER III.

MEDITATIONS AND EUREKA.

The wound became inflamed.

I see how my fair readers will begin to drop tears over my hero, and hence, before any of them faint, I will hasten to add, that my hero did not die of the wound. Long life was predestined to him. For that matter, if he had died, I should have broken my pen and stopped this story; but as he did not die I continue.

In truth, then, the wound grew inflamed, but unexpectedly it turned to profit for the lord secretary of the chancery of Barania-Glova, and turned in this very simple way: The wound drew the humors from Pan Zolzik's head, therefore he began to think more clearly, and saw at once that, up to that time, he had been committing pure folly. For just listen: The secretary had a design, as they say in Warsaw, on Repa's wife, and that is not to be wondered at, for she was a woman whose equal was not to be found in the whole district of Oslovitsi, therefore he wanted to get rid of Repa. If once they took Repa into the army, Pan Zolzik might say to himself, "Now frolic, my soul, with thy coat off."

But it was not so easy to substitute Repa for the mayor's son. A secretary is a power. Zolzik was a power among secretaries; there was this misfortune, however, that he was not the last resort in recruiting.

In this case, one had to do with the district police, with the military commissioner, with the chief of the district, with the commander of the guard. Not all at least of these were interested in presenting the army and the State with Repa instead of Burak. "To inscribe him in the recruiting list, and what further?" asked my sympathetic hero. "They will verify the list, and it must be compared with the parish record; and since it will be hard to muzzle Repa's mouth, they will give a reprimand, and perhaps throw the secretary out of his office, and thus finish the matter."

The greatest men have committed follies under the influence of passion, but just in this is their greatness, that they open their eyes in proper season. Zolzik said to himself that in promising Burak to inscribe Repa in the list of recruits he had committed his first stupidity; in going to Repa's wife and attacking her at the hemp, he had committed the second; when he frightened her and her husband with the enrolment, he committed the third stupidity. Oh, lofty moment! in which a man truly great says to himself, "I am an ass!" thou didst come to Barania-Glova, thou didst descend, as if on wings, from that region where the lofty rests on the sublime, for Zolzik said to himself plainly, "I am an ass!"

But was he to reject the plan now, when he had shed his own blood for it (in his enthusiasm he had said, the blood of his own breast)? Was he to reject the plan when he had sanctified it by a new pair of trousers, for which he had not paid Srul, the tailor, and a pair of nankeens, he did not know himself whether he had worn them twice?--No, and never! On the contrary now, when to his projects against Repa's wife was added a desire for vengeance against both, and Kruchek with them, Zolzik swore to himself that he would be a fool unless he poured tallow into Repa's skin.

He meditated over methods the first day, while changing poultices; he meditated the second day, while changing poultices; he meditated the third day, while changing poultices; and do you know what he thought out? Well, he didn't think out anything!

On the fourth day, the guard brought him diachylum from the apothecary in Oslovitsi; Zolzik spread it on a cloth, applied it, and how wonderful were the effects of this medicament! Almost simultaneously he cried out, "I have found it!" In fact, he had found something.

CHAPTER IV.

WHICH MAY BE ENTITLED: THE BEAST IN THE SNARE.

A few days later, I do not know well whether five or six, in a private room of the public-house in Barania-Glova sat Burak the mayor, the councilman Gomula, and young Repa. The mayor took his glass,--

"You might stop quarrelling, when there is nothing to quarrel about."

"But I say that the Frenchman will not give up to the Prussian," replied Gomula, striking the table with his fist.