But the recollection of Basia burned him with fire most of all. He cared not that one weak hand had hurled from his horse him who at Bratslav, at Kalnik, and a hundred other places had challenged to combat and stretched in death the most terrible skirmishers of the Zaporojia; he cared not for the shame, the disgrace! But he loved that woman beyond measure and thought; he wanted her in his tent, to look at her, to beat her, to kiss her. If it were in his choice to be Padishah and rule half the world, or to take her in his arms, feel with his heart the warmth of her blood, the breath of her face, her lips with his lips, he would prefer her to Tsargrad, to the Bosphorus, to the title of Khalif. He wanted her because he loved her; he wanted her because he hated her. The more she was foreign to him, the more he wanted her; the more she was pure, faithful, untainted, the more he wanted her. More than once when he remembered in his tent that he had kissed those eyes one time in his life, in the ravine after the battle with Azba Bey, and that at Rashkoff he had felt her breast on his, the madness of desire carried him away. He knew not what had become of her, whether she had perished on the road or not. At times he found solace in the thought that she had died. At times he thought, “It had been better not to carry her away, not to burn Rashkoff, not to come to the service of the Sultan, but to stay in Hreptyoff, and even look at her.”
But the unfortunate Zosia Boski was in his tent. Her life passed in low service, in shame and continual terror, for in Azya’s heart there was not a drop of pity for her. He simply tormented her because she was not Basia. She had, however, the sweetness and charm of a field flower; she had youth and beauty: therefore he sated himself with that beauty; but he kicked her for any cause, or flogged her white body with rods. In a worse hell she could not be, for she lived without hope. Her life had begun to bloom in Rashkoff, to bloom like spring with the flower of love for Pan Adam. She loved him with her whole soul; she loved that knightly, noble, and honest nature with all her faculties; and now she was the plaything and the captive of that one-eyed monster. She had to crawl at his feet and tremble like a beaten dog, look into his face, look at his hands to see if they were not about to seize a club or a whip; she had to hold back her breath and her tears.
She knew well that there was not and could not be mercy for her; for though a miracle were to wrest her from those terrible hands, she was no longer that former Zosia, white as the first snows, and able to repay love with a clean heart. All that had passed beyond recovery. But since the dreadful disgrace in which she was living was not due to the least fault of hers—on the contrary, she had been hitherto a maiden stainless as a lamb, innocent as a dove, trusting as a child, simple, loving—she did not understand why this fearful injustice was wrought on her, an injustice which could not be recompensed; why such inexorable anger of God was weighing upon her; and this mental discord increased her pain, her despair. And so days, weeks, and months passed. Azya came to the plain of Kuchunkaury in winter, and the march to the boundary of the Commonwealth began only in June. All this time passed for Zosia in shame, in torment, in toil. For Azya, in spite of her beauty and sweetness, and though he kept her in his tent, not only did not love her, but rather he hated her because she was not Basia. He looked on her as a common captive; therefore she had to work like a captive. She watered his horses and camels from the river; she carried water for his ablutions, wood for the fire; she spread the skins for his bed; she cooked his food. In other divisions of the Turkish armies women did not go out of the tents through fear of the janissaries, or through custom; but the camp of the Lithuanian Tartars stood apart, and the custom of hiding women was not common among them, for having lived formerly in the Commonwealth, they had grown used to something different. The captives of common soldiers, in so far as soldiers had captives, did not even cover their faces with veils. It is true that women were not free to go beyond the boundaries of the square, for beyond those boundaries they would have been carried off surely; but on the square itself they could go everywhere safely, and occupy themselves with camp housekeeping.
Notwithstanding the heavy toil,
