“If that were all!... And I warned him so!... The donkey would not hearken to me; and now he’s in a pretty fix.... The old father is a loud-mouthed boor; but I’m sorry for Felix; a clever young rogue, and with his Latin at his fingers’ ends, as well as any bishop!... What is that saying? ah, ‘Touch not what’s not allowed, and keep yourself from things forbidden’ ... and: ‘A docile calf thrives as though it sucked two mothers.’ Aye ... aye ...” he continued his voice growing feebler, as he went on brushing the flies away. “Recollect that, Jasio, recollect it.” His head fell back, and he sank deep into his vast arm-chair. But as Yanek got up to leave, he opened his eyes and murmured: “Those bees have tired me out!—Come and say the breviary with me of an evening.... And take heed not to be too familiar with the peasants. Note this: ‘He that mixes with chaff will be eaten by swine!’ Eaten, I tell you—and there’s an end.”—With these words he threw a handkerchief over his face, and was asleep in the twinkling of an eye. What the priest had said, Yanek’s father thought, no doubt; for, when the farm-servant came home with the horses from the pastures, and Yanek vaulted upon one of them, the old man cried: “Get down this instant! It is unseemly for a clergyman to ride barebacked, or to keep company with herdsmen!” Dearly as he would have loved a ride, he nevertheless alighted meekly and, twilight having fallen now, went into the garden to say his evening prayers. But he could not keep his mind on them. There was a girl, somewhere about, trilling a song; some women were gossiping in a neighbouring orchard, and every word came wafted over the dewy grass to him; children shouted as they bathed in the pond; in another direction, the sound of laughter struck his ears; and then came the lowing of the cows, and the metallic cackle of the priest’s guinea-fowls pierced the air, and the whole place was full of sounds of every kind, and like a hive of humming bees. All this put him out; and when he had at last collected himself, and, kneeling down at the edge of a rye-field, raised his eyes to the starry heaven, and his soul to the Infinite beyond it, he heard such a sudden din of piercing shrieks and howls and curses that he ran back to the house, not a little alarmed and shaken, to ask his mother (who had just come to call him in for supper) what the matter was, and whether the people there were fighting in earnest. “Oh, ’tis only Joseph Vahnik, back from the police office a little in his cups, and he’s fighting his wife. The woman had long stood in great need of a good drubbing. Do not trouble, she will take no harm.” “But she screeches as if she were being skinned alive!” “That’s her way: if he had taken a stick to her, she’d have been quiet enough. And she’ll get even with him to-morrow, she will!—Come, dearest, or supper will be cold.”