Текст книги "The Collected tales of Nikolai Gogol"

Автор книги: Николай Гоголь

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Still more swiftly in the remaining time of night did the devil race home with the blacksmith. Vakula instantly found himself by his cottage. Just then the cock crowed. "Hold on!" he cried, snatching the devil by the tail as he was about to run away. "Wait, friend, that's not all-I haven't thanked you yet." Here, seizing a switch, he measured him out three strokes, and the poor devil broke into a run, like a muzhik who has just been given a roasting by an assessor. And so, instead of deceiving, seducing, and duping others, the enemy of the human race was duped himself. After which, Vakula went into the front hall, burrowed under the hay, and slept until dinnertime. Waking up, he was frightened when he saw the sun already high. "I slept through matins and the liturgy!"-and the pious blacksmith sank into dejection, reasoning that God, as a punishment for his sinful intention of destroying his soul, must have sent him a sleep that kept him from going to church on such a solemn feast day. However, having calmed himself by deciding to confess it to the priest the next week and to start that same day making fifty bows a day for a whole year, he peeked into the cottage; but no one was home. Solokha must not have come back yet. He carefully took the shoes from his bosom and again marveled at the costly workmanship and the strange adventure of the past night; he washed, dressed the best he could, putting on the clothes he got from the Cossacks, took from his trunk a new hat of Reshetilovo astrakhan with a blue top, which he had not worn even once since he bought it while he was in Poltava; he also took out a new belt of all colors; he put it all into a handkerchief along with a whip and went straight to Choub.

Choub goggled his eyes when the blacksmith came in, and didn't know which to marvel at: that the blacksmith had resurrected, or that the blacksmith had dared to come to him, or that he had got himself up so foppishly as a Zaporozhye Cossack. But he was still more amazed when Vakula untied the handkerchief and placed before him a brand-new hat and a belt such as had never been seen in the village, and himself fell at his feet and said in a pleading voice:

"Have mercy, father! don't be angry! here's a whip for you: beat me as much as your soul desires, I give myself up; I repent of everything; beat me, only don't be angry! You were once bosom friends with my late father, you ate bread and salt together and drank each other's health."

Choub, not without secret pleasure, beheld the blacksmith– who did not care a hoot about anyone in the village, who bent copper coins and horseshoes in his bare hands like buckwheat pancakes-this same blacksmith, lying at his feet. So as not to demean himself, Choub took the whip and struck him three times on the back.

"Well, that's enough for you, get up! Always listen to your elders! Let's forget whatever was between us! So, tell me now, what do you want?"

"Give me Oksana for my wife, father!"

Choub thought a little, looked at the hat and belt; it was a wonderful hat and the belt was no worse; he remembered the perfidious Solokha and said resolutely:

"Right-o! Send the matchmakers!"

"Aie!" Oksana cried out, stepping across the threshold and seeing the blacksmith, and with amazement and joy she fastened her eyes on him.

"Look, what booties I've brought you!" said Vakula, "the very ones the tsaritsa wears!"

"No! no! I don't need any booties!" she said, waving her hands and not taking her eyes off him. "Even without the booties, I…" She blushed and did not say any more.

The blacksmith went up to her and took her hand; the beauty looked down. Never yet had she been so wondrously pretty. The delighted blacksmith gently kissed her, her face flushed still more, and she became even prettier.

A bishop of blessed memory was driving through Dikanka, praised the location of the village, and, driving down the street, stopped in front of a new cottage.

"And to whom does this painted cottage belong?" His Reverence asked of the beautiful woman with a baby in her arms who was standing by the door.

"To the blacksmith Vakula," said Oksana, bowing to him, for it was precisely she.

"Fine! fine work!" said His Reverence, studying the doors and windows. The windows were all outlined in red, and on the doors everywhere there were mounted Cossacks with pipes in their teeth.

But His Reverence praised Vakula still more when he learned that he had undergone a church penance and had painted the entire left-hand choir green with red flowers free of charge. That, however, was not all: on the wall to the right as you entered the church, Vakula had painted a devil in hell, such a nasty one that everybody spat as they went by; and the women, if a child started crying in their arms, would carry it over to the picture and say, "See what a caca's painted there!" and the child, holding back its tears, would look askance at the picture and press against its mother's breast.

The Terrible Vengeance

Noise and thunder at the end of Kiev: Captain Gorobets is celebrating his son's wedding. Many people have gathered as the captain's guests. In the old days people liked to eat well, better still did they like to drink, and better still did they like to make merry. On his bay steed came the Zaporozhets Mikitka, 1 straight from a wild spree on the Pereshlai field, where he kept the Polish noblemen drunk on red wine for seven days and seven nights. There came also the captain's sworn brother, Danilo Burulbash, with his young wife, Katerina, and his one-year-old son, from the other shore of the Dnieper, where he had a farmstead between two hills. The guests marveled at Mistress Katerina's white face, her eyebrows black as German velvet, her fancy woolen dress and light blue silken shirt, her boots with silver-shod heels; but still more they marveled that her old father had not come with her. For one year only had he been living across the Dnieper, but for twenty-one he had vanished without a word and had returned to his daughter when she was already married and had borne a son. He surely could have told of many wonders. How could he not after having lived for so long in foreign lands! There everything is different: the people are not the same, and there are no churches of Christ… But he had not come.

The guests were offered hot spiced vodka with raisins and plums and a round wedding loaf on a big platter. The musicians got to the bottom of it, where money had been baked in, and, quieting down for a while, laid aside their cymbals, violins, and tambourines. Meanwhile the young women and girls, wiping their lips with embroidered handkerchiefs, again stepped out from their rows; and the lads, arms akimbo, proudly looking about, were ready to rush to meet them-when the old captain brought out two icons to bless the young couple. These icons had come to him from an honorable monk, the elder Varfolomey. Their casings were not rich, they did not shine with silver or gold, but no unclean powers dared to touch anyone who had them in the house. Raising the icons aloft, the captain was about to say a short prayer… when the children who were playing on the ground suddenly cried out in fright; following them, the people backed away, and all pointed their fingers in fear at a Cossack who stood in their midst. Who he was, no one knew. But he had already done a fine Cossack dance and managed to make the crowd around him laugh. Yet when the captain raised the icons, his whole face suddenly changed: his nose grew and bent to one side, his eyes, green now instead of brown, leaped, his lips turned blue, his chin trembled and grew sharp as a spear, a fang shot from his mouth, a hump rose behind his head, and the Cossack was-an old man.

"It's him! It's him!" people in the crowd cried, pressing close to each other.

"The sorcerer has appeared again!" cried the mothers, snatching up their children.

Majestically and dignifiedly the captain stepped forward and said in a loud voice, setting the icons against him:

"Vanish, image of Satan, there is no place for you here!" And, hissing and snapping his teeth like a wolf, the strange old man vanished.

There arose, arose noisily, like the sea in bad weather, a murmuring and talking among the folk.

"What is this sorcerer?" asked the young and unseasoned people.

"There'll be trouble!" said the old ones, wagging their heads.

And everywhere, all over the captain's wide yard, they began gathering in clusters and listening to stories about the strange sorcerer. But they almost all said different things, and no one could tell anything for certain about him.

A barrel of mead was rolled out into the yard, and not a few buckets of Greek wine were brought. All became merry again. The musicians struck up; the girls, the young women, the dashing Cossacks in bright jackets broke into a dance. Ninety– and hundred-year-olds got tipsy and also started to dance, recalling the years that had not vanished in vain. They feasted till late into the night, and they feasted as no one feasts any longer. The guests began to disperse, but few went home: many stayed the night in the captain's wide yard; still more Cossacks fell asleep, uninvited, under the benches, on the floor, by their horses, near the barn; wherever a drunken Cossack head staggered to, there he lay and snored for all Kiev to hear.

II

It shone quietly over all the world: the moon rose from behind the hill. It covered the hilly bank of the Dnieper as with precious, snow-white damask muslin, and the shade sank still deeper into the pine thicket.

In the middle of the Dnieper floated a boat. Two lads sat in the bow, their black Cossack hats cocked, and the spray from under their oars flew in all directions like sparks from a tinderbox.

Why are the Cossacks not singing? They do not talk of ksiedzy 2 going all over the Ukraine rebaptising people as Catholics; nor of the two-day battle with the Horde at the Salt Lake. 3 How can they sing, how can they talk of daring deeds: their master Danilo has fallen into thought, and the sleeve of his red flannel jacket, hanging out of the boat, trails in the water; their mistress Katerina quietly rocks the baby without taking her eyes off him, and a gray dust of water sprays over the linen covering her fancy dress.

Fair is the sight from the midst of the Dnieper of the high hills, the broad meadows, and the green forest! Those hills are not hills: they have no foot; they are sharp-peaked at both bottom and top; under them and over them is the tall sky. Those woods standing on the slopes are not woods; they are hair growing on the shaggy head of the old man of the forest. Under it his beard washes in the water, and under his beard and over his hair-the tall sky. Those meadows are not meadows: they are a green belt tied in the middle of the round sky, and the moon strolls about in both the upper and the lower half.

Master Danilo looks to neither side, he looks at his young wife.

"What is it, my young wife, my golden Katerina, have you fallen into sadness?"

"I have not fallen into sadness, my master Danilo! I am frightened by the strange stories about the sorcerer. They say he was born so frightful… and from an early age no child wanted to play with him. Listen, Master Danilo, to what frightening things they say: as if he always imagined that everyone was laughing at him. He would meet some man on a dark evening, and at once it would seem to him that he had opened his mouth and bared his teeth. And the next day the man would be found dead. I felt strange, I felt frightened when I heard these stories," said Katerina, taking out a handkerchief and wiping the face of the baby asleep in her arms. She had embroidered the handkerchief with red silk leaves and berries.

Master Danilo said not a word and began looking to the dark side, where far beyond the forest an earthen rampart blackened and an old castle rose from behind the rampart. Three wrinkles all at once creased his brow; his left hand stroked his gallant mustache.

"It is not so frightening that he is a sorcerer," he said, "as that he is an evil guest. Why this whim of dragging himself here? I've heard that the Polacks want to build some sort of fortress to cut off our way to the Zaporozhye. Only let it be true… I'll scatter the devil's nest if I hear so much as a rumor that he has any sort of den there. I'll burn the old sorcerer so that the crows have nothing to peck at. Besides, I think he has no lack of gold and other goods. Here is where the devil lives. If he has gold… Now we're going to pass the crosses-it's the cemetery! here his unclean forebears rot. They say they were all ready to sell themselves to Satan, souls and tattered jackets, for money. If indeed he has gold, there's no point in delaying now: war can't always bring…"

"I know what you are plotting. No good does the encounter with him promise me. But you are breathing so hard, you look so stern, your eyes are so grim under their scowling brows!…"

"Silence, woman!" Danilo said angrily. "Whoever deals with you becomes a woman himself. Lad, give me a light for my pipe!" Here he turned to one of the oarsmen, who knocked hot ashes from his pipe and transferred them to his master's pipe. "Frightening me with a sorcerer!" Master Danilo went on. "A Cossack, thank God, fears neither devils nor ksiedzy. Much good there'd be if we started listening to our wives. Right, lads? Our wife is a pipe and a sharp saber!"

Katerina fell silent, looking down into the slumbering water; and the wind sent ripples over the water, and the whole Dnieper silvered like a wolf's fur in the night.

The boat swung and began to hug the wooded bank. On the bank a cemetery could be seen: decrepit crosses crowded together. Guelder rose does not grow among them, there is no green grass, only the moon warms them from its heavenly height.

"Do you hear cries, my lads? Someone's calling us for help!" said Master Danilo, turning to his oarsmen.

"We hear the cries, and they seem to come from that direction," the lads said together, pointing to the cemetery.

But all grew still. The boat swung and began to round the jutting bank. Suddenly the oarsmen lowered their oars and stared fixedly. Master Danilo also stopped: fear and chill cut into their Cossack fibers.

The cross on one tomb swayed and out of it quietly rose a withered dead man. Beard down to his waist; claws on his fingers, long, longer than the fingers themselves. Quietly he raised his arms. His whole face twisted and trembled. He obviously suffered terrible torment. "I can't breathe! I can't breathe!" he moaned in a wild, inhuman voice. Like a knife blade his voice scraped at the heart, and the dead man suddenly sank under the ground. Another cross swayed, and again a dead man came out, still taller, still more terrible than the first; all overgrown, beard down to his knees, and still longer, bony nails. Still more wildly he cried: "I can't breathe!" and sank under the ground. A third cross swayed, a third dead man rose. It seemed as if nothing but bones rose high over the ground. Beard down to his very heels; fingers with long claws stuck into the ground. Terribly he stretched his arms upwards, as if trying to reach the moon, and cried out as if someone were sawing at his yellow bones…

The baby asleep in Katerina's arms gave a cry and woke up. The mistress herself gave a cry. The oarsmen dropped their hats into the Dnieper. The master himself shook.

Suddenly it all disappeared as if it had never been; nevertheless, the lads did not take up their oars for a long time.

Anxiously did Burulbash look at his young wife, who fearfully rocked the crying baby in her arms; he pressed her to his heart and kissed her on the brow.

"Don't be afraid, Katerina! Look, there's nothing!" he said, pointing all around. "It's the sorcerer trying to frighten people, so that no one gets into his unclean nest. He'll only frighten women with that! Give my son here!" With these words, Master Danilo raised his son to his lips. "What, Ivan, you're not afraid of sorcerers? No, papa, he says, I'm a Cossack. Enough, then, stop crying! We'll go home! we'll go home-mother will feed you porridge, put you to bed in your cradle, and sing:

Lullay, lullay, lullay,

Lullay, little son, lullay,

Grow up, grow up wise,

Win glory in the Cossacks' eyes

And punish their enemies.

Listen, Katerina, it seems to me your father doesn't want to live in accord with us. He arrived sullen, stern, as if he's angry… Well, if you're displeased, then why come? He didn't want to drink to Cossack freedom, he didn't rock the baby in his arms! First I wanted to confide everything in my heart to him, but it didn't come out, and my speech stumbled. No, his is not a Cossack's heart! Cossack hearts, when they meet, never fail to go out to each other! What, my sweet lads, it's soon the shore? Well, I'll give you new hats. To you, Stetsko, I'll give a velvet one with gold. I took it from a Tartar, along with his head. I got all his gear; only his soul I let go free. Well, tie up! Here, Ivan, we've come home and you keep on crying! Take him, Katerina!"

They all got out. A thatched roof showed from behind the hill: the ancestral mansion of Master Danilo. Beyond it another hill, then a field, and then you could walk for a hundred miles and not find even one Cossack.

III

Master Danilo's farmstead lies between two hills, in a narrow valley that runs down to the Dnieper. His mansion is not tall: a cottage by the looks, like those of simple Cossacks, and only one room in it; but there is enough space inside for him, and his wife, and the old serving woman, and ten choice youths. There are oak shelves up on the walls all around. They are laden with bowls and pots for eating. There are silver goblets among them and glasses trimmed with gold-gifts or the plunder of war. Below them hang costly muskets, sabers, harquebuses, lances. Willingly or unwillingly they were passed on from Tartars, Turks, and Polacks; and so they are not a little nicked. Looking at them, Master Danilo recalled his battles as if by banners. Along the wall, smoothly hewn oak benches. Next to them, before the stove seat, 4 a cradle hangs on ropes put through a ring screwed into the ceiling. The floor of the room is beaten smooth and covered with clay. On the benches Master Danilo sleeps with his wife. On the stove seat sleeps the old serving woman. In the cradle the little baby sports and is lulled to sleep. On the floor the youths lie side by side. But it is better for a Cossack to sleep on the level ground under the open sky; he needs no down or feather beds; he puts fresh hay under his head and sprawls freely on the grass. It delights him to wake up in the middle of the night, to gaze at the tall, star-strewn sky and shiver from the cool of the night that refreshes his Cossack bones. Stretching and murmuring in his sleep, he lights his pipe and wraps himself tighter in his warm sheepskin.

It was not early that Burulbash woke up after the previous day's merrymaking, and when he did wake up, he sat in the corner on the bench and began to sharpen a new Turkish saber he had taken in trade; and Mistress Katerina started to embroider a silken towel with gold. Suddenly Katerina's father came in, angry, scowling, with an outlandish pipe in his teeth, approached his daughter, and began to question her sternly: What was the reason for her coming home so late?

"About such things, father-in-law, you should ask me, not her! The husband is answerable, not the wife. That's how it is with us, meaning no offense to you!" said Danilo, without quitting his occupation. "Maybe there, in infidel lands, it's different-I wouldn't know."

Color came to the father-in-law's stern face, and his eyes glinted savagely.

"Who, if not a father, is to look after his daughter!" he muttered to himself. "I ask you, then: Where were you dragging about till late in the night?"

"Now you're talking, dear father-in-law! To that I will tell you that I'm long past the age of being swaddled by women. I can seat a horse. I can wield a sharp saber with my hand. I can do a thing or two besides… I can answer to no one for what I do."

"I see, Danilo, I know, you want a quarrel! Whoever hides himself must have evil things on his mind."

"Think what you like," said Danilo, "and I'll think, too. Thank God, I've never yet been part of any dishonorable thing; I've always stood for the Orthodox faith and the fatherland-not like some vagabonds who drag about God knows where while Orthodox people are fighting to the death, and then come down to reap where they haven't sown. They're not even like the Uniates 5: they never peek inside a church of God. It's they who should be questioned properly about where they drag about."

"Eh, Cossack! you know… I'm a bad shot: from a mere two hundred yards my bullet pierces the heart. I'm an unenviable swordsman: what I leave of a man is smaller than the grains they cook for porridge."

"I'm ready," said Master Danilo, briskly passing his saber through the air, as though he knew what he had been sharpening it for.

"Danilo!" Katerina cried loudly, seizing his arm and clinging to it. "Bethink yourself, madman! Look who you are raising your hand against! Father, your hair is white as snow, yet you flare up like a senseless boy!"

"Wife!" Master Danilo cried menacingly, "you know I don't like that. Mind your woman's business!"

The sabers clanged terribly; iron cut against iron, and sparks poured down like dust over the Cossacks. Weeping, Katerina went to her own room, threw herself down on the bed, and stopped her ears so as not to hear the saber blows. But the Cossacks did not fight so poorly that she could stifle the blows. Her heart was about to burst asunder. She felt the sound go through her whole body: clang, clang. "No, I can't bear it, I can't bear it… Maybe the red blood already spurts from his white body. Maybe my dear one is weakening now-and I lie here!" All pale, scarcely breathing, she went out to the room.

Steadily and terribly the Cossacks fought. Neither one could overpower the other. Now Katerina s father attacks-Master Danilo retreats. Master Danilo attacks-the stern father retreats, and again they are even. The pitch of battle. They swing… ough! the sabers clang… and the blades fly clattering aside.

"God be thanked!" said Katerina, but she cried out again when she saw the Cossacks take hold of muskets. They checked the flints, cocked the hammers.

Master Danilo shot-and missed. The father aimed… He is old, his sight is not so keen as the young man's, yet his hand does not tremble. A shot rang out… Master Danilo staggered. Red blood stained the left sleeve of his Cossack jacket.

"No!" he cried, "I won't sell myself so cheaply. Not the left arm but the right is the chief. I have a Turkish pistol hanging on the wall; never once in my life has it betrayed me. Come down from the wall, old friend! do me service!" Danilo reached out.

"Danilo!" Katerina cried in despair, seizing his hands and throwing herself at his feet. "I do not plead for myself. There is only one end for me: unworthy is the wife who lives on after her husband. The Dnieper, the cold Dnieper will be my grave… But look at your son, Danilo, look at your son! Who will shelter the poor child? Who will care for him? Who will teach him to fly on a black steed, to fight for freedom and the faith, to drink and carouse like a Cossack? Perish, my son, perish! Your father does not want to know you! Look how he turns his face away. Oh! I know you now! you're a beast, not a man! you have the heart of a wolf and the soul of a sly vermin. I thought you had a drop of pity in you, that human feeling burned in your stony body. Madly was I mistaken. It will bring you joy. Your bones will dance for joy in your coffin when they hear the impious Polack beasts throw your son into the flames, when your son screams under knives and scalding water. Oh, I know you! You will be glad to rise from your coffin and fan the fire raging under him with your hat!"

"Enough, Katerina! Come, my beloved Ivan, I will kiss you! No, my child, no one will touch even one hair on your head. You will grow up to be the glory of your fatherland; like the wind you will fly in the forefront of the Cossacks, a velvet hat on your head, a sharp saber in your hand. Father, give me your hand! Let us forget what has happened between us. Whatever wrong I did you, the fault was mine. Why won't you give me your hand?" Danilo said to Katerina's father, who stood in one spot, his face expressing neither anger nor reconciliation.

"Father!" Katerina cried out, embracing and kissing him. "Do not be implacable. Forgive Danilo: he will not upset you anymore!"

"For your sake only do I forgive him, my daughter!" he said, kissing her, with a strange glint in his eyes. Katerina gave a slight start: the kiss seemed odd to her, as did the strange glint in his eyes. She leaned her elbow on the table, at which Master Danilo sat bandaging his wounded arm and thinking now that it was wrong and not like a Cossack to ask forgiveness when one was not guilty of anything.

IV There was a glimmer of daylight but no sun: the sky was louring and a fine rain sprinkled the fields, the forests, the wide Dnieper. Mistress Katerina woke up, but not joyfully: tears in her eyes, and all of her confused and troubled.

"My beloved husband, dear husband, I had a strange dream!"

"What dream, my sweet mistress Katerina?"

"I dreamed-it was truly strange, and so alive, as if I was awake-I dreamed that my father is that same monster we saw at the captain's. But I beg you, don't believe in dreams. One can see all sorts of foolishness! It was as if I was standing before him, trembling all over, frightened, and every word he said made all my fibers groan. If only you had heard what he said…"

"What was it he said, my golden Katerina?"

"He said, 'Look at me, Katerina, I am handsome! People should not say I am ugly. I will make you a fine husband. See what a look is in my eyes!' Here he aimed his fiery eyes at me, I gave a cry and woke up."

"Yes, dreams tell much truth. However, do you know that things are not so quiet behind the hill? It seems the Polacks have begun to show up again. Gorobets has sent to tell me not to be caught napping. He needn't worry, though; I'm not napping as it is. My lads cut down twelve big trees for barricades last night. The Pospolitstvo 6 will be treated to lead plums, and the gentlemen will dance under our knouts."

"Does my father know about it?"

"Your father is a weight on my neck! I still can't figure him out. He must have committed many sins in foreign lands. What, indeed, can be the reason? He's lived here for nearly a month and has never once made merry like a good Cossack! He refused to drink mead! do you hear, Katerina, he refused to drink the mead I shook out of the Jews in Brest. Hey, lad!" cried Master Danilo. "Run to the cellar, my boy, and fetch me some Jewish mead!… He doesn't even drink vodka! Confound it! I don't think, Mistress Katerina, that he believes in Christ the Lord either! Eh? What do you think?"

"God knows what you're saying, Master Danilo!"

"It's strange, Mistress!" he went on, taking the clay mug from the Cossack. "Even the foul Catholics fall for vodka; only the Turks don't drink. Well, Stetsko, did you have a good sup of mead in the cellar?"

"Just a taste, Master!"

"Lies, you son of a bitch! look at the flies going for your mustache! I can see by your eyes that you downed half a bucket! Eh,

Cossacks! such wicked folk! ready for anything for a comrade, but he'll take care of the liquor all by himself. I haven't been drunk for a long time-eh, Mistress Katerina?"

"Long, you say! And the last time…"

"Don't worry, don't worry, I won't drink more than a mug! And here comes a Turkish abbot squeezing in the door!" he said through his teeth, seeing his father-in-law stooping to enter.

"What is this, my daughter!" the father said, taking off his hat and straightening his belt, from which hung a saber studded with wondrous stones. "The sun is already high, and you have no dinner ready."

"Dinner is ready, my father, we will serve it now! Get out the pot with the dumplings!" said Mistress Katerina to the old serving woman who was wiping the wooden bowls. "Wait, I'd better take it out myself," Katerina went on, "and you call the lads."

Everyone sat on the floor in a circle: the father facing the icon corner, Master Danilo to the left, Mistress Katerina to the right, and the ten trusty youths in blue and yellow jackets.

"I don't like these dumplings!" said the father, having eaten a little and putting down the spoon. "They have no taste!"

"I know," Master Danilo thought to himself, "you prefer Jewish noodles."

"Why, my father-in-law," he went on aloud, "do you say the dumplings have no taste? Are they poorly prepared? My Katerina makes such dumplings as even a hetman 7 rarely gets to eat. There's no need to be squeamish about them. It's Christian food! All God's saints and holy people ate dumplings."

Not a word from the father. Master Danilo also fell silent.

A roast boar with cabbage and plums was served.

"I don't like pork," said Katerina's father, raking up the cabbage with his spoon.

"Why would you not like pork?" said Danilo. "Only Turks and Jews don't like pork."

The father frowned even more sternly.

Milk gruel was all the old father ate, and instead of vodka he sipped some black water from a flask he kept in his bosom.

After dinner, Danilo fell into a mighty hero's sleep and woke up only toward evening. He sat down and began writing letters to the Cossack army; and Mistress Katerina, sitting on the stove seat, rocked the cradle with her foot. Master Danilo sits and looks with his left eye at his writing and with his right eye out the window. And from the window the gleam of the distant hills and the Dnieper can be seen. Beyond the Dnieper, mountains show blue. Up above sparkles the now clear night sky. But it is not the distant sky or the blue forest that Master Danilo admires: he gazes at the jutting spit of land on which the old castle blackens. He fancied that light flashed in a narrow window of the castle. But all is quiet. He must have imagined it. Only the muted rush of the Dnieper can be heard below, and on three sides, one after the other, the echo of momentarily awakened waves. The river is not mutinous. He grumbles and murmurs like an old man: nothing pleases him; everything has changed around him; he is quietly at war with the hills, forests, and meadows on his banks, and carries his complaint against them to the Black Sea.