Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/293

Rh your conscience, — and to have a relative on a man's conscience, believe me, is a terrible burden."

"Oh Uncle, what are you saying! As God lives, I will leave the wagon and sit on my horse. It is not I who will have uncle on my conscience, but the hetman. While I live, nothing will come of this talk."

"Nothing is nothing!" said Zagloba; "I prefer that you speak sincerely, though I was your uncle before Radzivill was your hetman. And do you know, Roh, what an uncle is?"

"An uncle is an uncle."

"You have calculated very adroitly; but when a man has no father, the Scriptures say that he must obey his uncle. The power of an uncle is as that of a father, which it is a sin to resist. For consider even this, that whoever marries may easily become a father; but in your uncle flows the same blood as in your mother. I am not in truth the brother of your mother, but my grandmother must have been your grandmother's aunt. Know then that the authority of several generations rests in me; for like everything else in the world we are mortal, therefore authority passes from one of us to another, and neither the hetman nor the king can ignore it, nor force any one to oppose it. It is sacred! Has the full hetman or even the grand hetman the right to command not merely a noble or an officer, but any kind of camp-follower, to rise up against his father, his mother, his grandfather, or his blind old grandmother? Answer me that, Roh. Has he the right?"

"What?" asked Kovalski, with a sleepy voice.

"Against his blind old grandmother!" repeated Zagloba. "Who in that case would be willing to marry and beget children, or wait for grandchildren ? Answer me that, Roh."

"I am Kovalski, and this is Pani Kovalski," said the still sleepier officer.

"If it is your wish, let it be so," answered Zagloba. "Better indeed that you have no children, there will be fewer fools to storm around in the world. Is it not true, Roh?"

Zagloba held down his ear, but heard nothing, — no answer now.

"Roh! Roh!" called he, in a low voice.

Kovalski was sleeping like a dead man.

"Are you sleeping?" muttered Zagloba. "Wait a bit —