First came the Krepetskis who were both the nearest relatives and nearest neighbors. The father was almost eighty years old, with the visage of a vulture, and renowned as a miser. He had three daughters: Tekla, the youngest, was pretty and pleasant; Agneshka and Johanna were not youthful, they were testy old maids with pimples on their cheeks at all seasons. He had a son, Martsian, nicknamed Pniak (stump) in the neighborhood. He bore the name justly, for at the first glance he seemed a great stump; he had a mighty chest, and broad shoulders. His bow-legs were so short that he was almost dwarflike, and his arms reached his kneepans. Some thought him a hunchback; he was not, however, but his head without a neck was fixed so closely to his body that his high shoulders reached his ears, very nearly. Out of that head peered prominent, lustful eyes, and his face was like that of a he-goat. A small beard which he wore as if in defiance of general custom, increased the resemblance. He did not serve as a warrior, for he had been ridiculed from service, for which reason he had had in his time many duels. There was uncommon strength in his stumpy body, and people feared him in all places, since he was a quarreller and a road-blocker, who, in every affair, was glad to seek pretexts; he was as irritable as a vicious beast, and wounded savagely in Radom one Krepetski, his cousin, a handsome and worthy young man who almost died of the injuries then inflicted. He felt respect only for Yatsek, whose skill at the sabre was known to him, and before the Bukoyemskis, one of whom, Lukash, threw him over a fence like a bundle of straw once in Yedlina. He had the deserved reputation of being a great profligate. Pan Gideon had driven him out of the mansion a few years before that, because he had looked too much in goat fashion at Panna Anulka, a little girl at that period. But since then some years had passed, and, as they had met later in Radom, and in neighboring houses, Pan Gideon invited him now with the family. Immediately after the Krepetskis came the Sulgostovskis, twin brothers, who so resembled each other that when they put on coats of like fashion no man could distinguish them; next came three remote Sulgostovskis from beyond Prityk--and then a numerous family formed of nine people, the handsome Zabierzovskis. From Yedlinka came Pan Serafin, but alone, since his son had gone to his regiment already; Pan Podlodovski, the starosta, once the agent of the great lord in Zamost; the Kohanovskis; the priest from Prityk; the prelate Tvorkovski from Radom, who was to bless the ring, and many small nobles from near and distant places, some even without invitation, with this idea, that a guest though quite unknown would be sure to find welcome, and that when there is a chance to eat and drink a man should not miss it.