between them that they saw it as clearly as they saw the path along which they paced together.
Thus then it came to pass that in Podskali the sandsmen and the boatmen prepared for the nuptial day of Francis and Malka. They discussed it a whole week beforehand on the quay, and were planning for a whole week how to celebrate the happy event. For Francis had always been to them like their own soul; in summer on the skiffs and on the boats, in the winter on the ice where he selected and set in order and superintended the skating rinks over which he himself sped along like the fickle wind over field and fish pond. For this reason people had prophesied but last summer that all his life long he would never marry, for that he was too free and joyous-hearted, too like the wind and too inconstant, and that any woman who was his wife would doom herself to a truly thorny path. And now Francis was to marry.
Thus then, all the sandsmen and boatmen clubbed together and agreed as to the manner in which they were to spend the festive evening. The preparations for that evening might be heard discussed on the river bank, on the water, and wherever people were engaged at their work. Only when Francis came to the quay these discussions about the preparation for the day tacitly dropped.
But still Poldik heard all that was being prepared. However, he already treated the matter, or
