Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/290

260 this no wit is needed. But he was made officer because his fist pleased the prince; for he breaks horseshoes, wrestles with tame bears, and the man has not yet been discovered whom he cannot bring to the earth."

"Has he such strength?"

"That he has such strength is true; but were his superior to order him to batter down a wall with his head he would fall to battering it without a moment's delay. He is ordered to take us to Birji, and he will take us, even if the earth had to sink."

"'Pon my word," said Zagloba, who listened to this conversation with great attention, " he is a resolute fellow."

"Yes, but with him resolution consists in stupidity alone. When he has time, and is not eating, he is sleeping. It is an astonishing thing, which you will not believe; but once he slept forty-eight hours in the barracks, and yawned when they dragged him from the plank bed."

"This officer pleases me greatly," said Zagloba, "for I always like to know with whom I have to do."

When he had said this he turned to Kovalski. "But come this way, please!" cried he, in a patronizing tone.

"What is it?" asked Kovalski, turning his horse.

"Have you gorailka?"

"I have."

"Give it!"

"How give it?"

"You know, gracious Kovalski, if it were not permitted you would have had an order not to give it; but since you have not an order, give it."

"Ah," said Kovalski, astonished, "as I live! but that is like forcing."

"Forcing or not forcing, it is permitted you; and it is proper to assist a blood relative and an older man, who, if he had married your mother, might have been your father as easily as wink."

"What relative are you of mine?"

"I am, for there are two stocks of Kovalskis, — they who use the seal of Vyerush and have a goat painted on their shield, with upraised hind leg; and they who have on their shield the ship in which their ancestor Kovalski sailed from England across the sea to Poland; and these are my relatives, through my grandmother, and this is why I, too, have the ship on my shield."

" As God lives! you are my relative."