Suddenly he quivered and awoke entirely.
“O gracious Christ! what is that?”
From the high window in the adjacent tower, the sounds of a lute, hardly heard at first, reached his ear. Jurand, while on the way to Szczytno, was sure that Danusia was not in the castle, and yet this sound of the lute at night aroused his heart in an instant. It seemed to him that he knew those sounds, and that nobody else was playing but she—his child! his darling…. He therefore fell upon his knees, clasped his hands to pray, and listened shivering, as in a fever.
Just then a half-childish and as if ardently longing voice began to sing:
“Had I the dear little wings
Of a gosling,
I would fly
To Jasiek at Szlonsk.”
Jurand wished to reply, to utter the dear name, but his words were imprisoned in his throat,
