Repa sprang up like a madman, and shouted that he would not go to the pen, and as to the chancery fine, he would give not two rubles, but the fifty rubles received from the mayor; and he threw them on the floor, crying,-- "Let the man take them who wishes!" A terrible uproar began. The policeman ran in and fell to dragging Repa; Repa at him with his fist, he at Repa's hair. She screamed till one of the councilmen took her by the neck and pushed her through the doorway, giving her a fist in the back to help her out; others helped the policeman to drag Repa to the pen. Meanwhile the secretary wrote down, "From Vavron Repa one ruble and twenty-five copecks for the chancery." Repa's wife went to her empty house almost out of her senses. She saw nothing in front of her, and stumbled against every stone, wringing her hands above her head and crying, "Ooo! oo! oo!" The mayor had a good heart, therefore, while going slowly with Gomula toward the inn, he said,-- "I am a little sorry for that woman. Shall I give them a quarter of peas, or something?" CHAPTER VI. IMOGENE. Here I hope that the reader has understood sufficiently and estimated the genial plan of my sympathetic hero. Pan Zolzik had, as has been said, checkmated Repa and his wife. To inscribe Repa on the list would have led to nothing. But to make him drunk, and bring it about that he should sign the agreement himself, and take the money, that involved the affair somewhat, and was a clever trick which showed that in a concourse of circumstances Pan Zolzik might play a famous rôle. The mayor, who was ready to ransom his son with eight hundred rubles, that was surely all his "copper," agreed to the plan with delight; all the more since Pan Zolzik was as moderate as he was genial, taking only twenty-five rubles for his part in the affair. But even this money he took without greed, just as he gave part of the chancery money also without greed to Burak. I have to confess that Pan Zolzik was always in debt to Srul, the tailor from Oslovitsi, who furnished the whole region about with "pure Parisian" garments. And now, since I have come out into the road of confession, I will not conceal the reason why Pan Zolzik dressed so carefully. It flowed, no doubt, from æsthetic causes; but there was also another motive, the following: Pan Zolzik was in love. Do not think, however, that it was with Repa's wife. He had for the woman, as he expressed himself once, a "little appetite," and that was all. Besides this, Pan Zolzik was capable of a feeling which reached higher and was very complicated. My male, if not female, readers surely divine that the object of these feelings could be no other than Panna Yadviga Skorabevski. More than once when the silver moon had mounted the sky, Pan Zolzik took his harmonium, on which instrument he played with skill, sat on the bench before the house of four tenements, and, looking toward the mansion, sang with melancholy, and sometimes with sighing:--