Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/48

18 to myself, 'They will cry me down without cause in those parts, call me tyrant, and calumniate me before you!'"

"Great is your luck," said Olenka, drawing a deep breath of relief, "for I should not have been able to look you in the eyes."

"But how so?"

"That is a petty nobility, but ancient and renowned. My dear grandfather always loved them, and went with them to war. He served all his life with them. In time of peace he received them in his house. That is an old friendship of our family which you must respect. You have moreover a heart, and will not break that sacred harmony in which thus far we have lived."

"I knew nothing of them at that moment, — may I be slain if I did! — but yet I confess that this barefooted nobledom somehow cannot find place in my head. With us a peasant is a peasant, and nobles are all men of good family, who do not sit two on one mare. God knows that such scurvy fellows have nothing to do with the Kmitas nor with the Billeviches, just as a mudfish has nothing to do with a pike, though this is a fish and that also."

"My grandfather used to say that blood and honor, not wealth, make a man; and these are honorable people, or grandfather would not have made them my guardians."

Pan Andrei was astonished and opened wide his eyes. "Did your grandfather make all the petty nobility of Lauda guardians over you?"

"He did. Do not frown, for the will of the dead is sacred. It is a wonder to me that the messengers did not mention this."

"I should have — But that cannot be. There is a number of villages. Will they all discuss about you? Will they discuss me, — whether I am to their thinking or not? But jest not, for the blood is storming up in me."

"Pan Andrei, I am not jesting; I speak the sacred and sincere truth. They will not debate about you ; but if you will not repulse them nor show haughtiness, you will capture not only them, but my heart. I, together with them, will thank you all my life, — all my life. Pan Andrei."

Her voice trembled as if in a beseeching request; but he did not let the frown go from his brow, and was gloomy. He did not burst into anger, it is true, though at moments there flew over his face as it were lightnings; but he answered with haughtiness and pride, —