Two sledges were racing each other, a driver and a mask in each. The mad race had made the road sufficiently safe for the other empty sledges to pass with greater caution. 'Now give your arm to the ladies! A polonaise! Musicians!' The outriders with torches posted themselves along the road, the musicians tuned up, and couple after couple detached itself from the darkness like an iridescent apparition. They hovered past to the melancholy strains of the Oginski polonaise. Maciek took off his cap, drew the child from under the sheepskin and stood beside his sledge. 'Now look, you'll never see anything so beautiful again. Don't be afraid!' An armoured and visored man passed. 'Do you see that knight? Formerly people like that conquered half the world, now there are none of them left.' A grey-bearded senator passed. 'Look at him! People used to fear his judgment, but there are none like him left! That one, as gaudy as a woodpecker, was a great nobleman once; he did nothing but drink and dance; he could drain a barrel at a bout, and he spent so much money that he had to sell his family estate, poor wretch! There's a Uhlan; they used to fight for Napoleon and conquer all the nations, but there are no fighters left in the world. There's a chimney sweep and a peasant...but in reality they are all gentlemen amusing themselves.' The procession passed; fainter and fainter grew the strains of the Oginski polonaise; with shouts and laughter the masks got back into the sleighs, hoofs clattered and whips cracked. Maciek started cautiously homeward in the wake of the jingling sleighs. Distant flames were still twinkling ahead, and the wind carried faint sounds of merriment back to him. Then all was silent. 'Are they doing right?' he murmured, perturbed. For he recalled the portrait of the grey-headed senator in the choir of the church; he had even prayed to it sometimes.... The bald-headed nobleman was there too, whom the peasants called 'the cursed man', and the knight in armour who was lying on his tomb beside the altar of the Holy Martyr Apollonius. Then he remembered the friar who walked through the Vistula, and Queen Jadwiga who had brought salt from Hungary. And by the side of all these he saw his own old wise grandfather, Roch Owczarz, who had been a soldier under Napoleon, and came home without a penny, and in his old age became sacristan at the church, and explained all the pictures to the gospodarze so beautifully that he earned more money than the organist. 'The Lord rest his soul eternally!' And now these noblemen were amusing themselves with sacred matters! What would they do next?... Slimak met him when he was about a verst from the cottage. 'We have been wondering if you had got stuck on the hill. Thank God you are safe. Did you see the sleigh race?' 'Oho!' said Maciek. 'I wonder they did not smash you to pieces.' 'Why should they? They even helped me up the hill.' 'Dear me! And they didn't pull you about?'