When it became night and I had held prayer with my Zaporogean and yet once more reproached him that he had stolen my snuff-spoon, the garrulous man began to talk to me in an undertone and say: “I see clearly, little father, that you are in love with Feodosova, and in truth she is a good and pure woman whom you may take to wife. That you never would enter upon any love-dealing of another sort I have understood from the first.”
“Truth is in the long run less dangerous than lying, you used to say.”
When he struck me with my own maxim-staff, I became confounded, and he proceeded.
“The czar has promised good employment and wages to everyone of you Swedes who will become his subject and be converted to the true faith.”
“You are out of your wits. But if I could get off and take her home with me on horseback, I would do it.”
Next morning, when I had played my psalm, I learned that today it was my turn to go out under the open heavens.
I became warm and restless. I combed and fixed myself up even more carefully than at other times, and changed to the Zaporogean’s ensign coat so as not to wear my torn one. Meanwhile I deliberated with myself. Should I go up to her? What should I say then? Perhaps, though, that would be the only time in my life when I could get to speak with her, and how should I not repent thereafter even to my gray old age, if out of awkwardness I had missed that one chance! My heart beat more violently than at any affair with the enemy, when I stood with my bandages among the bullets and the fallen. I stuck the flute into my pocket and went out.
When I came down on the street she sat at the window without seeing me. I would not go to her without first asking leave, and I did not know rightly how I should conduct myself. Pondering, I took a couple of steps forward.
I lifted my hand to my hat, but with a long ringing burst of laughter she sprang up and cried, “Haha! Look, look, he has a wooden leg!”
I stood with my hand raised, and stared and stared, and I had neither thought nor feeling. It was as if my heart had swelled out and filled all my breast, so that it was near to bursting. I believe I stammered something. I only remember that I did not know whither I should turn, that I heard her still laughing, that everything in the world was indifferent to me, that freedom would have frightened me as much as my captivity and my wretchedness, that of a sudden I had become a broken man.
