district, a rich man and of noted family, had but one child, a daughter beautiful as an angel; so not a few of the gentry and the young notables paid their court to the Pantler's daughter. Among the gentry there was one great roistering blade, a fighting bully, Jacek Soplica, who was called in jest the Wojewoda; in truth he was of great influence in the wojewodeship, for he had absolute authority over the whole family of the Soplicas and controlled their three hundred votes according to his will, although he himself possessed nothing except a little plot of ground, a sabre, and great mustaches that stretched from ear to ear. So the Pantler often invited this ruffian to his place and entertained him there, especially at the time of the district diets, in order to make himself popular among the fellow's kinsmen and partisans. The mustachioed champion was so much elated by his courteous reception that he took it into his head that he might become his host's son-in-law. He came to the castle more and more frequently, even when uninvited, and finally settled down among us as if in his own home, and it seemed that he was on the point of declaring himself; but they remarked this, and served him at the table with black soup.39 It may very well be that the Pantler's daughter had taken a fancy to the Soplica, but that she kept it a deep secret from her parents.
"Those were the times of Kosciuszko; my lord supported the Constitution of the Third of May,40 and was already gathering the gentry in order to go to the aid of the Confederates, when suddenly the Muscovites encircled the castle by night; there was barely time to fire an alarm signal from the mortar, and to close the gates below and fasten them with a bar. There was no one in the whole castle except the Pantler, myself, and
