'Stop the sledge, I shall get out!'

'No, go on!'

'Jesus Mary!'

'Have the musicians been spilt yet?'

'Not yet, but they will be.'

'Oh...la la!'

Maciek now understood that this was a sleigh race. The teams of two-and four-horsed sleighs approached at a gallop, accompanied by riders on horseback carrying torches. In the thick mist it looked as if the procession appeared out of an abyss through a circular gate of fire. They bore straight down upon the spot where Maciek and his sledge had come to a standstill. Suddenly the first one stopped.

'Hey...what's that?'

'Something is in the way.'

'What is it?'

'A peasant with a cartload of wood.'

'Out of the way, dog. Throw him into the ditch!'

'Shut up! We'd better move him on.'

'That we will! We are going to move the peasant on. Out of your sledges, gentlemen!'

Before Maciek had recovered from his astonishment, he was surrounded by masked men in rich costumes with plumed hats, swords, guitars, or brooms. They seized his sledge and himself, pushed them to the top of the hill and down the other side on to level ground.

'Thank G.o.d!' thought the dazed man. 'If the devil hadn't led them this way, I might have been here till the morning. They are fine fellows!'

'The ladies are afraid to drive down the hill,' some one shouted from the distance.

'Then let them get out and walk!'

'The sledges had better not go down.'

'Why not? Go on, Antoni!'

'I don't advise it, sir.'

'Then get off and be hanged! I'll drive myself!'

Bells jingled violently, and a one-horse sledge pa.s.sed Maciek like a whirlwind. He crossed himself.

'Drive on, Andrei!'

'Stop, Count! It's too risky!'

'Go on!'

Another sledge flew past.

'Bravo! Sporting fellow!'

'Drive on, Jacent!'

Two sledges were racing each other, a driver and a mask in each. The mad race had made the road sufficiently safe for the other empty sledges to pa.s.s with greater caution.

'Now give your arm to the ladies! A polonaise! Musicians!'

The outriders with torches posted themselves along the road, the musicians tuned up, and couple after couple detached itself from the darkness like an iridescent apparition. They hovered past to the melancholy strains of the Oginski polonaise.

Maciek took off his cap, drew the child from under the sheepskin and stood beside his sledge.

'Now look, you'll never see anything so beautiful again. Don't be afraid!'

An armoured and visored man pa.s.sed.

'Do you see that knight? Formerly people like that conquered half the world, now there are none of them left.'

A grey-bearded senator pa.s.sed.

'Look at him! People used to fear his judgment, but there are none like him left! That one, as gaudy as a woodp.e.c.k.e.r, was a great n.o.bleman once; he did nothing but drink and dance; he could drain a barrel at a bout, and he spent so much money that he had to sell his family estate, poor wretch! There's a Uhlan; they used to fight for Napoleon and conquer all the nations, but there are no fighters left in the world.

There's a chimney sweep and a peasant...but in reality they are all gentlemen amusing themselves.'

The procession pa.s.sed; fainter and fainter grew the strains of the Oginski polonaise; with shouts and laughter the masks got back into the sleighs, hoofs clattered and whips cracked.

Maciek started cautiously homeward in the wake of the jingling sleighs.

Distant flames were still twinkling ahead, and the wind carried faint sounds of merriment back to him. Then all was silent.

'Are they doing right?' he murmured, perturbed.

For he recalled the portrait of the grey-headed senator in the choir of the church; he had even prayed to it sometimes.... The bald-headed n.o.bleman was there too, whom the peasants called 'the cursed man', and the knight in armour who was lying on his tomb beside the altar of the Holy Martyr Apollonius. Then he remembered the friar who walked through the Vistula, and Queen Jadwiga who had brought salt from Hungary. And by the side of all these he saw his own old wise grandfather, Roch Owczarz, who had been a soldier under Napoleon, and came home without a penny, and in his old age became sacristan at the church, and explained all the pictures to the gospodarze so beautifully that he earned more money than the organist.

'The Lord rest his soul eternally!'

And now these n.o.blemen were amusing themselves with sacred matters!

What would they do next?...

Slimak met him when he was about a verst from the cottage.

'We have been wondering if you had got stuck on the hill. Thank G.o.d you are safe. Did you see the sleigh race?'

'Oho!' said Maciek.

'I wonder they did not smash you to pieces.'

'Why should they? They even helped me up the hill.'