3. Little Maroussia

“Coward!” said the older brother. “Coward! When I am a man—”

The ugly red-faced man had something else to do than to listen to him. With a second kick of his foot, he aroused Krouk, who seemed sound asleep, and opened and shut his eyes alternately, with painful effort.

Vorochilo, awakened in the same manner, didn’t seem to know what to think on beholding his assailants. He called the big officer, “Good fellow Générasime,” and the other one, “good fellow Stéphane”; he smiled upon one and winked his eye in a friendly manner to the other; then falling back on his bench, he said:

“Let us sleep, it is time.”

The soldiers examined him one by one.

“It is he,” said some of them. “It is not he,” said others. “What a race of knaves! There is not one of them who is not a traitor!” “Silence!” cried the red-faced man.

He had seated himself at a table, and, making a brutal sign to the mistress of the house: “Come here,” he said.

She approached him.

“Who are you?” he asked her.

“I am the wife of Danilo Tchabane.”

“Where is your husband?”

“He is gone to see a friend.”

“Listen! I am going to teach you what a friend is.” He took a knout which one of his soldiers was carrying, a knout with a carved and richly ornamented handle.

“And these two men, these two drunkards, these two dogs, who are they?”

And, to point them out better, he struck Krouk on the shoulder with his knout and Vorochilo in the face.

“Will you speak?” he cried, making a threatening step toward her.