"For berries of elder go not to the green wood.
Trust not a mad dog, believe not a young man.
Each man in his heart bears rank poison;
If he says that he loves thee, say No."
Volodyovski grew so mirthful that he held his sides from laughter, and cried out: "All the men are traitors? But the military, my benefactress!"
Panna Terka opened her mouth wider and sang with redoubled energy, —
"Far worse than mad dogs are they, far worse, oh, far worse!"
"Do not mind Terka; she is always that way," said Marysia.[1]
"Why not mind," asked Volodyovski, "when she speaks so ill of the whole military order that from shame I know not whither to turn my eyes?"
"You want me to sing, and then make sport of me and laugh at me," said Terka, pouting.
"I do not attack the singing, but the cruel meaning of it for the military," answered the knight. "As to the singing I must confess that in Warsaw I have not heard such remarkable trills. All that would be needed is to dress you in trousers. You might sing at St. Yan's, which is the cathedral church, and in which the king and queen have their box."
"Why dress her in trousers?" asked Zonia, the youngest, made curious by mention of Warsaw, the king, and the queen.
"For in Warsaw women do not sing in the choir, but men and young boys, — the men with voices so deep that no aurochs could bellow like them, and the boys with voices so thin that on a violin no sound could be thinner. I heard them many a time when we came, with our great and lamented voevoda of Kus, to the election of our present gracious lord. It is a real wonder, so that the soul goes out of a man. There is a host of musicians there: Forster, famous for his subtle trills, and Kapula, and Gian Battista, and Elert, a master at the lute, and Marek, and Myelchevski, — beautiful composers. When all these are performing to-
- ↑ Marysia and Maryska are both diminutives of Marya = Maria or Mary, and are used without distinction by the author. There are in Polish eight or ten other variants of the same name.
