2. An Unknows Traveler

Danilo and his friends were struck with his appearance; but the Ukrainians know how to keep their thoughts to themselves, and they let nothing of this be seen. They received the traveler as every traveler ought to be received in a respectable house, with cordiality and kind attention. They placed him at a table and hastened to offer him some food.

The stranger appeared simple, modest, polished, and reserved. Being unknown, and consequently having no right to the special interest of his hosts and their friends, he did not try to show his importance. He did not relate his adventures as others might have done. He did not think it his duty to make strangers acquainted with his projects, if he had any. He did not examine either the people or the house indiscreetly. He did not ask questions. He answered in a few words. If he spoke, it was about the things which, at such a moment interested every one: of the troubles of the country, of the burnt villages and devastated fields which he had seen on his way.

Danilo and his friends imitated this reserve. They probably wondered whence he came, where he was going, and in what part of the country he was born; but since he did not tell them, they did not ask him. They could very well see that, although young, he knew many things, Turkish manners, Polish customs, Russian character, and Tartar habits. It seemed also as if the district of the Setch was not unknown to him.

As to Ukraine, he was well acquainted with it; he had visited, perhaps lived, in the large cities as well as the villages and hamlets. More than one of Danilo’s friends had noticed a scar on the traveler’s left cheek, and had wondered where he had received a wound, caused very surely by a sharp weapon. This was his business. Everyone has his secrets.