proverb says: 'As lucky a
man as an alms-gatherer in Niehrymow.' "

"And be good enough to visit us," said Zubkowski. "You will get a
half-piece of linen, a firkin of butter, a sheep or a cow. Remember these
words, sir: 'A man is lucky if he strikes it as rich as a monk in
Zubkow.' "

"And on us," said Skoluba; "and on us," added Terajewicz; "no Bernardine
ever departed hungry from Pucewicze."

Thus all the gentry said good-bye to the Monk with prayers and promises;
he was already the other side of the door.

Through the window he had caught sight of Thaddeus flying along the
highway, at full gallop, without his hat, with head bent forward, and with
a pale, gloomy face, continually whipping and spurring on his horse. This
sight greatly disturbed the Bernardine; so he hastened with quick steps
after the young man, towards the great forest, which, as far as the eye
could reach, showed black along the entire horizon.

Who has explored the deep abysses of the Lithuanian forests up to the very
centre, the kernel of the thicket? A fisherman is scarcely acquainted with
the bottom of the sea close to the shore; a huntsman skirts around the bed
of the Lithuanian forests; he knows them barely on the surface, their form
and face, but the inner secrets of their heart are a mystery to him; only
rumour or fable knows what goes on within them. For, when you have passed
the woods and the dense, tangled thickets, in the depths you come upon a
great rampart of stumps, logs, and roots, defended by a quagmire, a
thousand streams, and a net of overgrown weeds and ant-hills, nests of
wasps and hornets, and coils of serpents. If by some superhuman valour you
surmount even these barriers, farther on you will meet with still greater
danger. At each step there lie in wait for you, like the dens of wolves,
little lakes, half overgrown with grass, so deep that men cannot find
their bottom; in them it is very probable that devils dwell. The water of
these wells is iridescent, spotted with a bloody rust, and from within
continually rises a steam that breathes forth a nasty odour, from which
the trees around lose their bark and leaves; bald, dwarfed, wormlike, and
sick, hanging their branches knotted together with moss, and with humped
trunks bearded with filthy fungi, they sit around the water, like a group
of witches warming themselves around a kettle in which they are boiling a
corpse.

Beyond these pools it is vain to try to penetrate even