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+Project Gutenberg's The Deluge, Vol. II. (of 2), by Henryk Sienkiewicz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Deluge, Vol. II. (of 2)
+       An Historical Novel of Poland, Sweden, and Russia.
+
+Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
+
+Translator: Jeremiah Curtin
+
+Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37308]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DELUGE, VOL. II. (OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/delugeanhistori05siengoog
+
+   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE DELUGE.
+
+
+                                Vol. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE DELUGE.
+
+
+                          An Historical Novel
+
+                                   OF
+
+                      POLAND, SWEDEN, AND RUSSIA.
+
+                              A SEQUEL TO
+
+                         "WITH FIRE AND SWORD."
+
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                          HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.
+
+
+              _AUTHORIZED AND UNABRIDGED TRANSLATION FROM
+                             THE POLISH BY_
+
+                            JEREMIAH CURTIN.
+
+
+
+
+                            IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+                                Vol. II.
+
+
+
+
+                                BOSTON:
+                       LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+                                 1915.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                 _Copyright, 1891_, by Jeremiah Curtin.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+                                Printers
+                  S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE DELUGE
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The war with cannon was no bar to negotiations, which the fathers
+determined to use at every opportunity. They wished to delude the enemy
+and procrastinate till aid came, or at least severe winter. But Miller
+did not cease to believe that the monks wished merely to extort the
+best terms.
+
+In the evening, therefore, after that cannonading, he sent Colonel
+Kuklinovski again with a summons to surrender. The prior showed
+Kuklinovski the safeguard of the king, which closed his mouth at once.
+But Miller had a later command of the king to occupy Boleslav,
+Vyelunie, Kjepits, and Chenstohova.
+
+"Take this order to them," said he to Kuklinovski; "for I think that
+they will lack means of evasion when it is shown them." But he was
+deceived.
+
+The prior answered: "If the command includes Chenstohova, let the
+general occupy the place with good fortune. He may be sure that the
+cloister will make no opposition; but Chenstohova is not Yasna Gora, of
+which no mention is made in the order."
+
+When Miller heard this answer he saw that he had to deal with diplomats
+more adroit than himself; reasons were just what he lacked,--and there
+remained only cannon.
+
+A truce lasted through the night. The Swedes worked with vigor at
+making better trenches; and on Yasna Gora they looked for the damages
+of the previous day, and saw with astonishment that there were none.
+Here and there roofs and rafters were broken, here and there plaster
+had dropped from the walls,--that was all. Of the men, none had fallen,
+no one was even maimed. The prior, going around on the walls, said with
+a smile to the soldiers,--
+
+"But see, this enemy with his bombarding is not so terrible as
+reported. After a festival there is often more harm done. God's care is
+guarding you; God's hand protects you; only let us endure, and we shall
+see greater wonders."
+
+Sunday came, the festival of the offering of the Holy Lady. There was
+no hindrance to services, since Miller was waiting for the final
+answer, which the monks had promised to send after midday.
+
+Mindful meanwhile of the words of Scripture, how Israel bore the ark of
+God around the camp to terrify the Philistines, they went again in
+procession with the monstrance.
+
+The letter was sent about one o'clock, not to surrender; but to repeat
+the answer given Kuklinovski, that the church and the cloister are
+called Yasna Gora, and that the town Chenstohova does not belong to the
+cloister at all. "Therefore we implore earnestly his worthiness," wrote
+the prior Kordetski, "to be pleased to leave in peace our Congregation
+and the church consecrated to God and His Most Holy Mother, so that God
+may be honored therein during future times. In this church also we
+shall implore the Majesty of God for the health and success of the Most
+Serene King of Sweden. Meanwhile we, unworthy men, while preferring our
+request, commend ourselves most earnestly to the kindly consideration
+of your worthiness, confiding in your goodness, from which we promise
+much to ourselves in the future."
+
+There were present at the reading of the letter, Sadovski; Count
+Veyhard; Horn, governor of Kjepitsi; De Fossis, a famous engineer; and
+the Prince of Hesse, a man young and very haughty, who though
+subordinate to Miller, was willing to show his own importance. He
+laughed therefore maliciously, and repeated the conclusion of the
+letter with emphasis,--
+
+"They promise much to themselves from your kindness; General, that is a
+hint for a contribution. I put one question, gentlemen: Are the monks
+better beggars or better gunners?"
+
+"True," said Horn, "during these first days we have lost so many men
+that a good battle would not have taken more."
+
+"As for me," continued the Prince of Hesse, "I do not want money; I am
+not seeking for glory, and I shall freeze off my feet in these huts.
+What a pity that we did not go to Prussia, a rich country, pleasant,
+one town excelling another."
+
+Miller, who acted quickly but thought slowly, now first understood the
+sense of the letter; he grew purple and said,--
+
+"The monks are jeering at us, gracious gentlemen."
+
+"They had not the intention of doing so, but it comes out all the
+same," answered Horn.
+
+"To the trenches, then! Yesterday the fire was weak, the balls few."
+
+The orders given flew swiftly from end to end of the Swedish line. The
+trenches were covered with blue clouds; the cloister answered quickly
+with all its energy. But this time the Swedish guns were better
+planted, and began to cause greater damage. Bombs, loaded with powder,
+were scattered, each drawing behind it a curl of flame. Lighted torches
+were hurled too, and rolls of hemp steeped in rosin.
+
+As sometimes flocks of passing cranes, tired from long flying, besiege
+a high cliff, so swarms of these fiery messengers fell on the summit of
+the church and on the wooden roofs of the buildings. Whoso was not
+taking part in the struggle, was near a cannon, was sitting on a roof.
+Some dipped water from wells, others drew up the buckets with ropes,
+while third parties put out fire with wet cloths. Balls crashing
+rafters and beams fell into garrets, and soon smoke and the odor of
+burning filled all the interior of buildings. But in garrets, too,
+defenders were watching with buckets of water. The heaviest bombs burst
+even through ceilings. In spite of efforts more than human, in spite of
+wakefulness, it seemed that, early or late, flames would embrace the
+whole cloister. Torches and bundles of hemp pushed with hooks from the
+roofs formed burning piles at the foot of the walls. Windows were
+bursting from heat, and women and children confined in rooms were
+stifling from smoke and exhalations. Hardly were some missiles
+extinguished, hardly was the water flowing in broken places, when there
+came new flocks of burning balls, flaming cloths, sparks, living fire.
+The whole cloister was seized with it. You would have said that heaven
+had opened on the place, and that a shower of thunders was falling;
+still it burned, but was not consumed; it was flaming, but did not fall
+into fragments; what was more, the besieged began to sing like those
+youths in the fiery furnace; for, as the day previous, a song was now
+heard from the tower, accompanied by trumpets. To the men standing on
+the walls and working at the guns, who at each moment might think that
+all was blazing and falling to ruins behind their shoulders, that song
+was like healing balsam, announcing continually that the church was
+standing, that the cloister was standing, that so far flames had not
+vanquished the efforts of men. Hence it became a custom to sweeten with
+such harmony the suffering of the siege, and to keep removed from the
+ears of women the terrible shouts of raging soldiery.
+
+But in the Swedish camp that singing and music made no small
+impression. The soldiers in the trenches heard it at first with wonder,
+then with superstitious dread.
+
+"How is it," said they to one another, "we have cast so much fire and
+iron at that hen-house that more than one powerful fortress would have
+flown away in smoke and ashes, but they are playing joyously? What does
+this mean?"
+
+"Enchantment!" said others.
+
+"Balls do not harm those walls. Bombs roll down from the roofs as if
+they were empty kegs! Enchantment, enchantment!" repeated they.
+"Nothing good will meet us in this place."
+
+The officers in fact were ready to ascribe some mysterious meaning to
+those sounds. But others interpreted differently, and Sadovski said
+aloud, so that Miller might hear: "They must feel well there, since
+they rejoice; or are they glad because we have spent so much powder for
+nothing?"
+
+"Of which we have not too much," added the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"But we have as leader Poliorcetes," said Sadovski, in such a tone that
+it could not be understood whether he was ridiculing or flattering
+Miller. But the latter evidently took it as ridicule, for he bit his
+mustache.
+
+"We shall see whether they will be playing an hour later," said he,
+turning to his staff.
+
+Miller gave orders to double the fire, but these orders were carried
+out over-zealously. In their hurry, the gunners pointed the cannons too
+high, and the result was they carried too far. Some of the balls,
+soaring above the church and the cloister, went to the Swedish trenches
+on the opposite side, smashing timber works, scattering baskets,
+killing men.
+
+An hour passed; then a second. From the church tower came solemn music
+unbroken.
+
+Miller stood with his glass turned on Chenstohova. He looked a long
+time. Those present noticed that the hand with which he held the glass
+to his eyes trembled more and more; at last he turned and cried,--
+
+"The shots do not injure the church one whit!" And anger, unrestrained,
+mad, seized the old warrior. He hurled the glass to the earth, and it
+broke into pieces. "I shall go wild from this music!" roared he.
+
+At that moment De Fossis, the engineer, galloped up. "General," said
+he, "it is impossible to make a mine. Under a layer of earth lies rock.
+There miners are needed."
+
+Miller used an oath. But he had not finished the imprecation when
+another officer came with a rush from the Chenstohova entrenchment, and
+saluting, said,--
+
+"Our largest gun has burst. Shall we bring others from Lgota?"
+
+Fire had slackened somewhat; the music was heard with more and more
+solemnity. Miller rode off to his quarters without saying a word. But
+he gave no orders to slacken the struggle; he determined to worry the
+besieged. They had in the fortress barely two hundred men as garrison;
+he had continual relays of fresh soldiers.
+
+Night came, the guns thundered unceasingly; but the cloister guns
+answered actively,--more actively indeed than during the day, for the
+Swedish camp-fires showed them ready work. More than once it happened
+that soldiers had barely sat around the fire and the kettle hanging
+over it, when a ball from the cloister flew to them out of the
+darkness, like an angel of death. The fire was scattered to splinters
+and sparks, the soldiers ran apart with unearthly cries, and either
+sought refuge with other comrades, or wandered through the night,
+chilled, hungry, and frightened.
+
+About midnight the fire from the cloister increased to such force that
+within reach of a cannon not a stick could be kindled. The besieged
+seemed to speak in the language of cannons the following words: "You
+wish to wear us out,--try it! We challenge you!"
+
+One o'clock struck, and two. A fine rain began to fall in the form of
+cold mist, but piercing, and in places thickened as if into pillars,
+columns and bridges seeming red from the light of the fire. Through
+these fantastic arcades and pillars were seen at times the threatening
+outlines of the cloister, which changed before the eye; at one time it
+seemed higher than usual, then again it fell away as if in an abyss.
+From the trenches to its walls stretched as it were ill-omened arches
+and corridors formed of darkness and mist, and through those corridors
+flew balls bearing death; at times all the air above the cloister
+seemed clear as if illumined by a lightning flash; the walls, the lofty
+works, and the towers were all outlined in brightness, then again they
+were quenched. The soldiers looked before them with superstitious and
+gloomy dread. Time after time one pushed another and whispered,--
+
+"Hast seen it? This cloister appears and vanishes in turn. That is a
+power not human."
+
+"I saw something better than that," answered the other. "We were aiming
+with that gun that burst, when in a moment the whole fortress began to
+jump and quiver, as if some one were raising and lowering it. Fire at
+such a fortress; hit it!"
+
+The soldier then threw aside the cannon brush, and after a while
+added,--
+
+"We can win nothing here! We shall never smell their treasures. Brr, it
+is cold! Have you the tar-bucket there? Set fire to it; we can even
+warm our hands."
+
+One of the soldiers started to light the tar by means of a sulphured
+thread. He ignited the sulphur first, then began to let it down slowly.
+
+"Put out that light!" sounded the voice of an officer. But almost the
+same instant was heard the noise of a ball; then a short cry, and the
+light was put out.
+
+The night brought the Swedes heavy losses. A multitude of men perished
+at the camp-fires; in places regiments fell into such disorder that
+they could not form line before morning. The besieged, as if wishing to
+show that they needed no sleep, fired with increasing rapidity.
+
+The dawn lighted tired faces on the walls, pale, sleepless, but
+enlivened by feverishness. Kordetski had lain in the form of a cross in
+the church all night; with daylight he appeared on the walls, and his
+pleasant voice was heard at the cannon, in the curtains, and near the
+gates.
+
+"God is forming the day, my children," said he. "Blessed be His light.
+There is no damage in the church, none in the buildings. The fire is
+put out, no one has lost his life. Pan Mosinski, a fiery ball fell
+under the cradle of your little child, and was quenched, causing no
+harm. Give thanks to the Most Holy Lady; repay her."
+
+"May Her name be blessed," said Mosinski; "I serve as I can."
+
+The prior went farther.
+
+It had become bright day when he stood near Charnyetski and Kmita. He
+did not see Kmita; for he had crawled to the other side to examine the
+woodwork, which a Swedish ball had harmed somewhat. The prior asked
+straightway,--
+
+"But where is Babinich? Is he not sleeping?"
+
+"I, sleep in such a night as this!" answered Pan Andrei, climbing up on
+the wall. "I should have no conscience. Better watch as an orderly of
+the Most Holy Lady."
+
+"Better, better, faithful servant!" answered Kordetski.
+
+Pan Andrei saw at that moment a faint Swedish light gleaming, and
+immediately he cried,--
+
+"Fire, there, fire! Aim! higher! at the dog-brothers!"
+
+Kordetski smiled, seeing such zeal, and returned to the cloister to
+send to the wearied men a drink made of beer with pieces of cheese
+broken in it.
+
+Half an hour later appeared women, priests, and old men of the church,
+bringing steaming pots and jugs. The soldiers seized these with
+alacrity, and soon was heard along all the walls eager drinking. They
+praised the drink, saying,--
+
+"We are not forgotten in the service of the Most Holy Lady. We have
+good food."
+
+"It is worse for the Swedes," added others. "It was hard for them to
+cook food the past night; it will be worse the night coming."
+
+"They have enough, the dog-faiths. They will surely give themselves and
+us rest during the day. Their poor guns must be hoarse by this time
+from roaring continually."
+
+But the soldiers were mistaken, for the day was not to bring rest When,
+in the morning, officers coming with the reports informed Miller that
+the result of the night's cannonading was nothing, that in fact the
+night had brought the Swedes a considerable loss in men, the general
+was stubborn and gave command to continue cannonading. "They will grow
+tired at last," said he to the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"This is an immense outlay of powder," answered that officer.
+
+"But they burn powder too?"
+
+"They must have endless supplies of saltpetre and sulphur, and we shall
+give them charcoal ourselves, if we are able to burn even one booth. In
+the night I went near the walls, and in spite of the thunder, I heard a
+mill clearly, that must be a powder-mill."
+
+"I will give orders to cannonade as fiercely as yesterday, till sunset.
+We will rest for the night. We shall see if an embassy does not come
+out."
+
+"Your worthiness knows that they have sent one to Wittemberg?"
+
+"I know; I will send too for the largest cannons. If it is impossible
+to frighten the monks or to raise a fire inside the fortress, we must
+make a breach."
+
+"I hope, your worthiness, that the field-marshal will approve the
+siege."
+
+"The field-marshal knows of my intention, and he has said nothing,"
+replied Miller, dryly. "If failure pursues me still farther, the
+field-marshal will give censure instead of approval, and will not fail
+to lay all the blame at my door. The king will say he is right,--I know
+that. I have suffered not a little from the field-marshal's sullen
+humor, just as if 'tis my fault that he, as the Italians state, is
+consumed by _mal francese_."
+
+"That they will throw the blame on you I doubt not, especially when it
+appears that Sadovich is right."
+
+"How right? Sadovich speaks for those monks as if he were hired by
+them. What does he say?"
+
+"He says that these shots will be heard through the whole country, from
+the Carpathians to the Baltic."
+
+"Let the king command in such case to tear the skin from Count Veyhard
+and send it as an offering to the cloister; for he it is who instigated
+to this siege."
+
+Here Miller seized his head.
+
+"But it is necessary to finish at a blow. It seems to me, something
+tells me, that in the night they will send some one to negotiate;
+meanwhile fire after fire!"
+
+The day passed then as the day previous, full of thunder, smoke, and
+flames. Many such were to pass yet over Yasna Gora. But the defenders
+quenched the conflagrations and cannonaded no less bravely. One half
+the soldiers went to rest, the other half were on the walls at the
+guns.
+
+The people began to grow accustomed to the unbroken roar, especially
+when convinced that no great damage was done. Faith strengthened the
+less experienced; but among them were old soldiers, acquainted with
+war, who performed their service as a trade. These gave comfort to the
+villagers.
+
+Soroka acquired much consideration among them; for, having spent a
+great part of his life in war, he was as indifferent to its uproar as
+an old innkeeper to the shouts of carousers. In the evening when the
+guns had grown silent he told his comrades of the siege of Zbaraj. He
+had not been there in person, but he knew of it minutely from soldiers
+who had gone through that siege and had told him.
+
+"There rolled on Cossacks, Tartars, and Turks, so many that there were
+more under-cooks there than all the Swedes that are here. And still our
+people did not yield to them. Besides, evil spirits have no power here;
+but there it was only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday that the devils did
+not help the ruffians; the rest of the time they terrified our people
+whole nights. They sent Death to the breastworks to appear to the
+soldiers and take from them courage for battle. I know this from a man
+who saw Death himself."
+
+"Did he see her?" asked with curiosity peasants gathering around the
+sergeant.
+
+"With his own eyes. He was going from digging a well; for water was
+lacking, and what was in the ponds smelt badly. He was going, going,
+till he saw walking in front of him some kind of figure in a black
+mantle."
+
+"In a black, not in a white one?"
+
+"In black; in war Death dresses in black. It was growing dark, the
+soldier came up. 'Who is here?' inquired he--no answer. Then he pulled
+the mantle, looked, and saw a skeleton. 'But what art thou here for?'
+asked the soldier. 'I am Death,' was the answer; 'and I am coming for
+thee in a week.' The soldier thought that was bad. 'Why,' asked he, 'in
+a week, and not sooner? Art thou not free to come sooner?' The other
+said: 'I can do nothing before a week, for such is the order.'"
+
+"The soldier thought to himself: 'That is hard; but if she can do
+nothing to me now, I'll pay her what I owe.' Winding Death up in the
+mantle, he began to beat her bones on the pebbles; but she cried and
+begged: 'I'll come in two weeks!' 'Impossible.' 'In three, four, ten,
+when the siege is over; a year, two, fifteen--' 'Impossible.' 'I'll
+come in fifty years.' The soldier was pleased, for he was then fifty,
+and thought: 'A hundred years is enough; I'll let her go.' The man is
+living this minute, and well; he goes to a battle as to a dance, for
+what does he care?"
+
+"But if he had been frightened, it would have been all over with him?"
+
+"The worst is to fear Death," said Soroka, with importance. "This
+soldier did good to others too; for after he had beaten Death, he hurt
+her so that she was fainting for three days, and during that time no
+one fell in camp, though sorties were made."
+
+"But we never go out at night against the Swedes."
+
+"We haven't the head for it," answered Soroka.
+
+The last question and answer were heard by Kmita, who was standing not
+far away, and he struck his head. Then he looked at the Swedish
+trenches. It was already night. At the trenches for an hour past deep
+silence had reigned. The wearied soldiers were seemingly sleeping at
+the guns.
+
+At two cannon-shots' distance gleamed a number of fires; but at the
+trenches themselves was thick darkness.
+
+"That will not enter their heads, nor the suspicion of it, and they
+cannot suppose it," whispered Kmita to himself.
+
+He went straight to Charnyetski, who, sitting at the gun-carriage, was
+reading his rosary, and striking one foot against the other, for both
+feet were cold.
+
+"Cold," said he, seeing Kmita; "and my head is heavy from the thunder
+of two days and one night. In my ears there is continual ringing."
+
+"In whose head would it not ring from such uproars? But to-day we shall
+rest. They have gone to sleep for good. It would be possible to
+surprise them like a bear in a den; I know not whether guns would rouse
+them."
+
+"Oh," said Charnyetski, raising his head, "of what are you thinking?"
+
+"I am thinking of Zbaraj, how the besieged inflicted with sorties more
+than one great defeat on the ruffians."
+
+"You are thinking of blood, like a wolf in the night."
+
+"By the living God and his wounds, let us make a sortie! We will cut
+down men, spike guns! They expect no attack."
+
+Charnyetski sprang to his feet.
+
+"And in the morning they will go wild. They imagine, perhaps, that they
+have frightened us enough and we are thinking of surrender; they will
+get their answer. As I love God, 'tis a splendid idea, a real knightly
+deed! That should have come to my head too. But it is needful to tell
+all to Kordetski, for he is commander."
+
+They went.
+
+Kordetski was taking counsel in the chamber with Zamoyski. When he
+heard steps, he raised his voice and pushing a candle to one side,
+inquired,--
+
+"Who is coming? Is there anything new?"
+
+"It is I, Charnyetski," replied Pan Pyotr, "with me is Babinich;
+neither of us can sleep. We have a terrible odor of the Swedes. This
+Babinich, father, has a restless head and cannot stay in one place. He
+is boring me, boring; for he wants terribly to go to the Swedes beyond
+the walls to ask them if they will fire to-morrow also, or give us and
+themselves time to breathe."
+
+"How is that?" inquired the prior, not concealing his astonishment
+"Babinich wants to make a sortie from the fortress?"
+
+"In company, in company," answered Charnyetski, hurriedly, "with me and
+some others. They, it seems, are sleeping like dead men at the
+trenches; there is no fire visible, no sentries to be seen. They trust
+over much in our weakness."
+
+"We will spike the guns," said Kmita.
+
+"Give that Babinich this way!" exclaimed Zamoyski; "let me embrace him!
+The sting is itching, O hornet! thou wouldst gladly sting even at
+night. This is a great undertaking, which may have the finest results.
+God gave us only one Lithuanian, but that one an enraged and biting
+beast. I applaud the design; no one here will find fault with it. I am
+ready to go myself."
+
+Kordetski at first was alarmed, for he feared bloodshed, especially
+when his own life was not exposed; after he had examined the idea more
+closely, he recognized it as worthy of the defenders.
+
+"Let me pray," said he. And kneeling before the image of the Mother of
+God, he prayed a while, with outspread arms, and then rose with serene
+face.
+
+"Pray you as well," said he; "and then go."
+
+A quarter of an hour later the four went out and repaired to the walls.
+The trenches in the distance were sleeping. The night was very dark.
+
+"How many men will you take?" asked Kordetski of Kmita.
+
+"I?" answered Pan Andrei, in surprise. "I am not leader, and I do not
+know the place so well as Pan Charnyetski. I will go with my sabre, but
+let Charnyetski lead the men, and me with the others; I only wish to
+have my Soroka go, for he can hew terribly."
+
+This answer pleased both Charnyetski and the prior, for they saw in it
+clear proof of submission. They set about the affair briskly. Men were
+selected, the greatest silence was enjoined, and they began to remove
+the beams, stones, and brick from the passage in the wall.
+
+This labor lasted about an hour. At length the opening was ready, and
+the men began to dive into the narrow jaws. They had sabres, pistols,
+guns, and some, namely peasants, had scythes with points downward,--a
+weapon with which they were best acquainted.
+
+When outside the wall they organized; Charnyetski stood at the head of
+the party, Kmita at the flank; and they moved along the ditch silently,
+restraining the breath in their breasts, like wolves stealing up to a
+sheepfold.
+
+Still, at times a scythe struck a scythe, at times a stone gritted
+under a foot, and by those noises it was possible to know that they
+were pushing forward unceasingly. When they had come down to the plain,
+Charnyetski halted, and, not far from the enemy's trenches, left some
+of his men, under command of Yanich, a Hungarian, an old, experienced
+soldier; these men he commanded to lie on the ground. Charnyetski
+himself advanced somewhat to the right, and having now under foot soft
+earth which gave out no echo, began to lead forward his party more
+swiftly. His plan was to pass around the intrenchment, strike on the
+sleeping Swedes from the rear, and push them toward the cloister
+against Yanich's men. This idea was suggested by Kmita, who now
+marching near him with sabre in hand, whispered,--
+
+"The intrenchment is extended in such fashion that between it and the
+main camp there is open ground. Sentries, if there are any, are before
+the trenches and not on this side of it, so that we can go behind
+freely, and attack them on the side from which they least expect
+attack."
+
+"That is well," said Charnyetski; "not a foot of those men should
+escape."
+
+"If any one speaks when we enter," continued Pan Andrei, "let me
+answer; I can speak German as well as Polish; they will think that some
+one is coming from Miller, from the camp."
+
+"If only there are no sentries behind the intrenchments."
+
+"Even if there are, we shall spring on in a moment; before they can
+understand who and what, we shall have them down."
+
+"It is time to turn, the end of the trench can be seen," said
+Charnyetski; and turning he called softly, "To the right, to the
+right!"
+
+The silent line began to bend. That moment the moon lighted a bank of
+clouds somewhat, and it grew clearer. The advancing men saw an empty
+space in the rear of the trench.
+
+As Kmita had foreseen, there were no sentries whatever on that space;
+for why should the Swedes station sentries between their trenches and
+their own army, stationed in the rear of the trenches. The most
+sharp-sighted leader could not suspect danger from that side.
+
+At that moment Charnyetski said in the lowest whisper; "Tents are
+now visible. And in two of them are lights. People are still awake
+there,--surely officers. Entrance from the rear must be easy."
+
+"Evidently," answered Kmita. "Over that road they draw cannon, and by
+it troops enter. The bank is already at hand. Have a care now that arms
+do not clatter."
+
+They had reached the elevation raised carefully with earth dug from so
+many trenches. A whole line of wagons was standing there, in which
+powder and balls had been brought.
+
+But at the wagons, no man was watching; passing them, therefore, they
+began to climb the embankment without trouble, as they had justly
+foreseen, for it was gradual and well raised.
+
+In this manner they went right to the tents, and with drawn weapons
+stood straight in front of them. In two of the tents lights were
+actually burning; therefore Kmita said to Charnyetski,--
+
+"I will go in advance to those who are not sleeping. Wait for my
+pistol, and then on the enemy!" When he had said this, he went forward.
+
+The success of the sortie was already assured; therefore he did not try
+to go in very great silence. He passed a few tents buried in darkness;
+no one woke, no one inquired, "Who is there?"
+
+The soldiers of Yasna Gora heard the squeak of his daring steps and the
+beating of their own hearts. He reached the lighted tent, raised the
+curtain and entered, halted at the entrance with pistol in hand and
+sabre down on its strap.
+
+He halted because the light dazzled him somewhat, for on the camp table
+stood a candlestick with six arms, in which bright lights were burning.
+
+At the table were sitting three officers, bent over plans. One of them,
+sitting in the middle, was poring over these plans so intently that his
+long hair lay on the white paper. Seeing some one enter, he raised his
+head, and asked in a calm voice,--
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"A soldier," answered Kmita.
+
+That moment the two other officers turned their eyes toward the
+entrance.
+
+"What soldier, where from?" asked the first, who was De Fossis, the
+officer who chiefly directed the siege.
+
+"From the cloister," answered Kmita. But there was something terrible
+in his voice.
+
+De Fossis rose quickly and shaded his eyes with his hand. Kmita was
+standing erect and motionless as an apparition; only the threatening
+face, like the head of a predatory bird, announced sudden danger.
+
+Still the thought, quick as lightning, rushed through the head of De
+Fossis, that he might be a deserter from Yasna Gora; therefore he asked
+again, but excitedly,--
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"I want this!" cried Kmita; and he fired from a pistol into the very
+breast of De Fossis.
+
+With that a terrible shout and a salvo of shots was heard on the
+trench. De Fossis fell as falls a pine-tree struck by lightning;
+another officer rushed at Kmita with his sword, but the latter slashed
+him between the eyes with his sabre, which gritted on the bone; the
+third officer threw himself on the ground, wishing to slip out under
+the side of the tent, but Kmita sprang at him, put his foot on his
+shoulder, and nailed him to the earth with a thrust.
+
+By this time the silence of night had turned into the day of judgment.
+Wild shouts: "Slay, kill!" were mingled with howls and shrill calls of
+Swedish soldiers for aid. Men bewildered from terror rushed out of the
+tents, not knowing whither to turn, in what direction to flee. Some,
+without noting at once whence the attack came, ran straight to the
+enemy, and perished under sabres, scythes, and axes, before they had
+time to cry "Quarter!" Some in the darkness stabbed their own comrades;
+others unarmed, half-dressed, without caps, with hands raised upward,
+stood motionless on one spot; some at last dropped on the earth among
+the overturned tents. A small handful wished to defend themselves; but
+a blinded throng bore them away, threw them down, and trampled them.
+
+Groans of the dying and heart-rending prayers for quarter increased the
+confusion.
+
+When at last it grew clear from the cries that the attack had come, not
+from the side of the cloister, but from the rear, just from the
+direction of the Swedish army, then real desperation seized the
+attacked. They judged evidently that some squadrons, allies of the
+cloister, had struck on them suddenly.
+
+Crowds of infantry began to spring out of the intrenchment and run
+toward the cloister, as if they wished to find refuge within its walls.
+But soon new shouts showed that they had come upon the party of the
+Hungarian, Yanich, who finished them under the very fortress.
+
+Meanwhile the cloister-men, slashing, thrusting, trampling, advanced
+toward the cannons. Men with spikes ready, rushed at them immediately;
+but others continued the work of death. Peasants, who would not have
+stood before trained soldiers in the open field, rushed now a handful
+at a crowd.
+
+Valiant Colonel Horn, governor of Kjepitsi, endeavored to rally the
+fleeing soldiers; springing into a corner of the trench, he shouted in
+the darkness and waved his sword. The Swedes recognized him and began
+at once to assemble; but in their tracks and with them rushed the
+attackers, whom it was difficult to distinguish in the darkness.
+
+At once was heard a terrible whistle of scythes, and the voice of Horn
+ceased in a moment. The crowd of soldiers scattered as if driven apart
+by a bomb. Kmita and Charnyetski rushed after them with a few people,
+and cut them to pieces.
+
+The trench was taken.
+
+In the main camp of the Swedes trumpets sounded the alarm. Straightway
+the guns of Yasna Gora gave answer, and fiery balls began to fly from
+the cloister to light up the way for the home-coming men. They came
+panting, bloody, like wolves who had made a slaughter in a sheepfold;
+they were retreating before the approaching sound of musketeers.
+Charnyetski led the van, Kmita brought up the rear.
+
+In half an hour they reached the party left with Yanich; but he did not
+answer their call; he alone had paid for the sortie with his life, for
+when he rushed after some officer, his own soldiers shot him.
+
+The party entered the cloister amid the thunder of cannon and the gleam
+of flames. At the entrance the prior was waiting, and he counted them
+in order as the heads were pushed in through the opening. No one was
+missing save Yanich.
+
+Two men went out for him at once, and half an hour later they brought
+his body; for Kordetski wished to honor him with a fitting burial.
+
+But the quiet of night, once broken, did not return till white day.
+From the walls cannon were playing; in the Swedish positions the
+greatest confusion continued. The enemy not knowing well their own
+losses, not knowing whence the aggressor might come, fled from the
+trenches nearest the cloister. Whole regiments wandered in despairing
+disorder till morning, mistaking frequently their own for the enemy,
+and firing at one another. Even in the main camp were soldiers and
+officers who abandoned their tents and remained under the open sky,
+awaiting the end of that ghastly night. Alarming news flew from mouth
+to mouth. Some said that succor had come to the fortress, others
+asserted that all the nearer intrenchments were captured.
+
+Miller, Sadovski, the Prince of Hesse, Count Veyhard, and other
+superior officers, made superhuman exertions to bring the terrified
+regiments to order. At the same time the cannonade of the cloister was
+answered by balls of fire, to scatter the darkness and enable fugitives
+to assemble. One of the balls struck the roof of the chapel, but
+striking only the edge of it, returned with rattling and crackling
+toward the camp, casting a flood of flame through the air.
+
+At last the night of tumult was ended. The cloister and the Swedish
+camp became still. Morning had begun to whiten the summits of the
+church, the roofs took on gradually a ruddy light, and day came.
+
+In that hour Miller, at the head of his staff, rode to the captured
+trench. They could, it is true, see him from the cloister and open
+fire; but the old general cared not for that. He wished to see with his
+own eyes all the injury, and count the slain. The staff followed him;
+all were disturbed,--they had sorrow and seriousness in their faces.
+When they reached the intrenchment, they dismounted and began to
+ascend. Traces of the struggle were visible everywhere; lower down than
+the guns were the overthrown tents; some were still open, empty,
+silent. There were piles of bodies, especially among the tents;
+half-naked corpses, mangled, with staring eyes, and with terror
+stiffened in their dead eyeballs, presented a dreadful sight. Evidently
+all these men had been surprised in deep sleep; some of them were
+barefoot; it was a rare one who grasped his rapier in his dead hand;
+almost no one wore a helmet or a cap. Some were lying in tents,
+especially at the side of the entrance; these, it was apparent, had
+barely succeeded in waking; others, at the sides of tents, were caught
+by death at the moment when they were seeking safety in flight.
+Everywhere there were many bodies, and in places such piles that it
+might be thought some cataclysm of nature had killed those soldiers;
+but the deep wounds in their faces and breasts, some faces blackened by
+shots, so near that all the powder had not been burned, testified but
+too plainly that the hand of man had caused the destruction.
+
+Miller went higher, to the guns; they were standing dumb, spiked, no
+more terrible now than logs of wood; across one of them lay hanging on
+both sides the body of a gunner, almost cut in two by the terrible
+sweep of a scythe. Blood had flowed over the carriage and formed a
+broad pool beneath it. Miller observed everything minutely, in silence
+and with frowning brow. No officer dared break that silence. For how
+could they bring consolation to that aged general, who had been beaten
+like a novice through his own want of care? That was not only defeat,
+but shame; for the general himself had called that fortress a
+hen-house, and promised to crush it between his fingers, for he had
+nine thousand soldiers, and there were two hundred men in the garrison;
+finally, that general was a soldier, blood and bone, and against him
+were monks.
+
+That day had a grievous beginning for Miller.
+
+Now the infantry came up and began to carry out bodies. Four of them,
+bearing on a stretcher a corpse, stopped before the general without
+being ordered.
+
+Miller looked at the stretcher and closed his eyes.
+
+"De Fossis," said he, in a hollow voice.
+
+Scarcely had they gone aside when others came, this time Sadovski moved
+toward them and called from a distance, turning to the staff,--
+
+"They are carrying Horn!"
+
+But Horn was alive yet, and had before him long days of atrocious
+suffering. A peasant had cut him with the very point of a scythe; but
+the blow was so fearful that it opened the whole framework of his
+breast. Still the wounded man retained his presence of mind. Seeing
+Miller and the staff, he smiled, wished to say something, but instead
+of a sound there came through his lips merely rose-colored froth; then
+he began to blink, and fainted.
+
+"Carry him to my tent," said Miller, "and let my doctor attend to him
+immediately."
+
+Then the officers heard him say to himself,--
+
+"Horn, Horn,--I saw him last night in a dream,--just in the evening. A
+terrible thing, beyond comprehension!"
+
+And fixing his eyes on the ground, he dropped into deep thought; all at
+once he was roused from his revery by the voice of Sadovski, who cried:
+"General! look there, there--the cloister!"
+
+Miller looked and was astonished. It was broad day and clear, only fogs
+were hanging over the earth; but the sky was clear and blushing from
+the light of the morning. A white fog hid the summit itself of Yasna
+Gora, and according to the usual order of things ought to hide the
+church, but by a peculiar phenomenon the church, with the tower,
+was raised, not only above the cliff, but above the fog, high,
+high,--precisely as if it had separated from its foundations and was
+hanging in the blue under the dome of the sky. The cries of the
+soldiers announced that they too saw the phenomenon.
+
+"That fog deceives the eye!" said Miller.
+
+"The fog is lying under the church," answered Sadovski.
+
+"It is a wonderful thing; but that church is ten times higher than it
+was yesterday, and hangs in the air," said the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"It is going yet! higher, higher!" cried the soldiers. "It will vanish
+from the eye!"
+
+In fact the fog hanging on the cliff began to rise toward the sky in
+the form of an immense pillar of smoke; the church planted, as it were,
+on the summit of that pillar, seemed to rise higher each instant; at
+the same time when it was far up, as high as the clouds themselves, it
+was veiled more and more with vapor; you would have said that it was
+melting, liquefying; it became more indistinct, and at last vanished
+altogether.
+
+Miller turned to the officers, and in his eyes were depicted
+astonishment and a superstitious dread.
+
+"I acknowledge, gentlemen," said he, "that I have never seen such a
+thing in my life, altogether opposed to nature: it must be the
+enchantment of papists."
+
+"I have heard," said Sadovski, "soldiers crying out, 'How can you fire
+at such a fortress?' In truth I know not how."
+
+"But what is there now?" cried the Prince of Hesse. "Is that church in
+the fog, or is it gone?"
+
+"Though this were an ordinary phenomenon of nature, in any event it
+forebodes us no good. See, gentlemen, from the time that we came here
+we have not advanced one step."
+
+"If," answered Sadovski, "we had only not advanced; but to tell the
+truth, we have suffered defeat after defeat, and last night was the
+worst. The soldiers losing willingness lose courage, and will begin to
+be negligent. You have no idea of what they say in the regiments.
+Besides, wonderful things take place; for instance, for a certain time
+no man can go alone, or even two men, out of the camp; whoever does so
+is as if he had fallen through the earth, as if wolves were prowling
+around Chenstohova. I sent myself, not long since, a banneret and three
+men to Vyelunie for warm clothing, and from that day, no tidings of
+them."
+
+"It will be worse when winter comes; even now the nights are
+unendurable," added the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"The mist is growing thinner!" said Miller, on a sudden.
+
+In fact a breeze rose and began to blow away the vapors. In the bundles
+of fog something began to quiver; finally the sun rose and the air grew
+transparent. The walls of the cloister were outlined faintly, then out
+came the church and the cloister. Everything was in its old place. The
+fortress was quiet and still, as if people were not living in it.
+
+"General," said the Prince of Hesse, with energy, "try negotiations
+again, it is needful to finish at once."
+
+"But if negotiations lead to nothing, do you, gentlemen, advise to give
+up the siege?" asked Miller, gloomily.
+
+The officers were silent. After a while Sadovski said,--
+
+"Your worthiness knows best that it will come to that."
+
+"I know," answered Miller, haughtily, "and I say this only to you, that
+I curse the day and the hour in which I came hither, as well as the
+counsellor who persuaded me to this siege [here he pierced Count
+Veyhard with his glance]. You know, however, after what has happened,
+that I shall not withdraw until I turn this cursed fortress into a heap
+of ruins, or fall myself."
+
+Displeasure was reflected in the face of the Prince of Hesse. He had
+never respected Miller over-much; hence he considered this mere
+military braggadocio ill-timed, in view of the captured trenches, the
+corpses, and the spiked cannon. He turned to him then and answered with
+evident sarcasm,--
+
+"General, you are not able to promise that; for you would withdraw in
+view of the first command of the king, or of Marshal Wittemberg.
+Sometimes also circumstances are able to command not worse than kings
+and marshals."
+
+Miller wrinkled his heavy brows, seeing which Count Veyhard said
+hurriedly,--
+
+"Meanwhile we will try negotiations. They will yield; it cannot be
+otherwise."
+
+The rest of his words were drowned by the rejoicing sound of bells,
+summoning to early Mass in the church of Yasna Gora. The general with
+his staff rode away slowly toward Chenstohova; but had not reached
+headquarters when an officer rushed up on a foaming horse.
+
+"He is from Marshal Wittemberg!" said Miller.
+
+The officer handed him a letter. The general broke the seal hurriedly,
+and running over the letter quickly with his eyes, said with confusion
+in his countenance,--
+
+"No! This is from Poznan. Evil tidings. In Great Poland the nobles are
+rising, the people are joining them. At the head of the movement is
+Krishtof Jegotski, who wants to march to the aid of Chenstohova."
+
+"I foretold that these shots would be heard from the Carpathians to the
+Baltic," muttered Sadovski. "With this people change is sudden. You do
+not know the Poles yet; you will discover them later."
+
+"Well! we shall know them," answered Miller. "I prefer an open enemy to
+a false ally. They yielded of their own accord, and now they are taking
+arms. Well! they will know our weapons."
+
+"And we theirs," blurted out Sadovski. "General, let us finish
+negotiations with Chenstohova; let us agree to any capitulation. It is
+not a question of the fortress, but of the rule of his Royal Grace in
+this country."
+
+"The monks will capitulate," said Count Veyhard. "Today or to-morrow
+they will yield."
+
+So they conversed with one another; but in the cloister after early
+Mass the joy was unbounded. Those who had not gone out in the sortie
+asked those who had how everything had happened. Those who had taken
+part boasted greatly, glorifying their own bravery and the defeat they
+had given the enemy.
+
+Among the priests and women curiosity became paramount. White habits
+and women's robes covered the wall. It was a beautiful and gladsome
+day. The women gathered around Charnyetski, crying "Our deliverer! our
+guardian!" He defended himself particularly when they wanted to kiss
+his hands, and pointing to Kmita, said,--
+
+"Thank him too. He is Babinich,[1] but no old woman. He will not let
+his hands be Kissed, for there is blood on them yet; but if any of the
+younger would like to kiss him on the lips, I think that he would not
+flinch."
+
+The younger women did in fact cast modest and at the same time enticing
+glances at Pan Andrei, admiring his splendid beauty; but he did not
+answer with his eyes to those dumb questions, for the sight of these
+maidens reminded him of Olenka.
+
+"Oh, my poor girl!" thought he, "if you only knew that in the service
+of the Most Holy Lady I am opposing those enemies whom formerly I
+served to my sorrow!"
+
+And he promised himself that the moment the siege was over he would
+write to her in Kyedani, and hurry off Soroka with the letter. "And I
+shall send her not empty words and promises; for now deeds are behind
+me, which without empty boasting, but accurately, I shall describe in
+the letter. Let her know that she has done this, let her be comforted."
+
+And he consoled himself with this thought so much that he did not even
+notice how the maidens said to one another, in departing,--
+
+"He is a good warrior; but it is clear that he looks only to battle,
+and is an unsocial grumbler."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+
+According to the wish of his officers, Miller began negotiations again.
+There came to the cloister from the Swedish camp a well-known Polish
+noble, respected for his age and his eloquence. They received him
+graciously on Yasna Gora, judging that only in seeming and through
+constraint would he argue for surrender, but in reality would add to
+their courage and confirm the news, which had broken through the
+besieged wall, of the rising in Great Poland; of the dislike of the
+quarter troops to Sweden; of the negotiations of Yan Kazimir with the
+Cossacks, who, as it were, seemed willing to return to obedience;
+finally, of the tremendous declaration of the Khan of the Tartars, that
+he was marching with aid to the vanquished king, all of whose enemies
+he would pursue with fire and sword.
+
+But how the monks were mistaken! The personage brought indeed a large
+bundle of news,--but news that was appalling, news to cool the most
+fervent zeal, to crush the most invincible resolution, stagger the most
+ardent faith.
+
+The priests and the nobles gathered around him in the council chamber,
+in the midst of silence and attention; from his lips sincerity itself
+seemed to flow, and pain for the fate of the country. He placed his
+hand frequently on his white head as if wishing to restrain an outburst
+of despair; he gazed on the crucifix; he had tears in his eyes, and in
+slow, broken accents, he uttered the following words:--
+
+"Ah, what times the suffering country has lived to! All help is past:
+it is incumbent to yield to the King of the Swedes. For whom in reality
+have you, revered fathers, and you lords brothers, the nobles, seized
+your swords? For whom are you sparing neither watching nor toil, nor
+suffering nor blood? For whom, through resistance,--unfortunately
+vain,--are you exposing yourselves and holy places to the terrible
+vengeance of the invincible legions of Sweden? Is it for Yan Kazimir?
+But he has already disregarded our kingdom. Do you not know that he has
+already made his choice, and preferring wealth, joyous feasts; and
+peaceful delights to a troublesome throne, has abdicated in favor of
+Karl Gustav? You are not willing to leave him, but he has left you, you
+are unwilling to break your oath, he has broken it; you are ready to
+die for him, but he cares not for you nor for any of us. Our lawful
+king now is Karl Gustav! Be careful, then, lest you draw on your heads,
+not merely anger, vengeance, and ruin, but sin before heaven, the
+cross, and the Most Holy Lady; for you are raising insolent hands, not
+against invaders, but against your own king."
+
+These words were received in silence, as though death were flying
+through that chamber. What could be more terrible than news of the
+abdication of Yan Kazimir? It was in truth news monstrously improbable;
+but that old noble gave it there in presence of the cross, in presence
+of the image of Mary, and with tears in his eyes.
+
+But if it were true, further resistance was in fact madness. The nobles
+covered their eyes with their hands, the monks pulled their cowls over
+their heads, and silence, as of the grave, continued unbroken; but
+Kordetski, the prior, began to whisper earnest prayer with his pallid
+lips, and his eyes, calm, deep, clear, and piercing, were fixed on the
+speaker immovably.
+
+The noble felt that inquiring glance, was ill at ease and oppressed by
+it; he wished to preserve the marks of importance, benignity,
+compassionate virtue, good wishes, but could not; he began to cast
+restless glances on the other fathers, and after a while he spoke
+further:--
+
+"It is the worst thing to inflame stubbornness by a long abuse of
+patience. The result of your resistance will be the destruction of this
+holy church, and the infliction on you--God avert it!--of a terrible
+and cruel rule, which you will be forced to obey. Aversion to the world
+and avoidance of its questions are the weapons of monks. What have you
+to do with the uproar of war,--you, whom the precepts of your order
+call to retirement and silence? My brothers, revered and most beloved
+fathers! do not take on your hearts, do not take on your consciences,
+such a terrible responsibility. It was not you who built this sacred
+retreat, not for you alone must it serve! Permit that it flourish, and
+that it bless this land for long ages, so that our sons and grandsons
+may rejoice in it."
+
+Here the traitor opened his arms and fell into tears. The nobles were
+silent, the fathers were silent; doubt had seized all. Their hearts
+were tortured, and despair was at hand; the memory of baffled and
+useless endeavors weighed on their minds like lead.
+
+"I am waiting for your answer, fathers," said the venerable traitor,
+dropping his head on his breast.
+
+Kordetski now rose, and with a voice in which there was not the least
+hesitation or doubt, spoke as if with the vision of a prophet,--
+
+"Your statement that Yan Kazimir has abandoned us, has abdicated and
+transferred his rights to Karl Gustav, is a calumny. Hope has entered
+the heart of our banished king, and never has he toiled more zealously
+than he is toiling at this moment to secure the salvation of the
+country, to secure his throne, and bring us aid in oppression."
+
+The mask fell in an instant from the face of the traitor; malignity and
+deceit were reflected in it as clearly as if dragons had crept out at
+once from the dens of his soul, in which till that moment they had held
+themselves hidden.
+
+"Whence this intelligence, whence this certainty?" inquired he.
+
+"Whence?" answered the prior, pointing to a great crucifix hanging on
+the wall. "Go! place your finger on the pierced feet of Christ, and
+repeat what you have told us."
+
+The traitor began to bend as if under the crushing of an iron hand, and
+a new dragon, terror, crawled forth to his face.
+
+Kordetski, the prior, stood lordly, terrible as Moses; rays seemed to
+shoot from his temples.
+
+"Go, repeat!" said he, without lowering his hand, in a voice so
+powerful that the shaken arches of the council chamber trembled and
+echoed as if in fear,--"Go, repeat!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; at last the stifled voice of the visitor
+was heard,--
+
+"I wash my hands--"
+
+"Like Pilate!" finished Kordetski.
+
+The traitor rose and walked out of the room. He hurried through the
+yard of the cloister, and when he found himself outside the gate, he
+began to run, almost as if something were hunting him from the cloister
+to the Swedes.
+
+Zamoyski went to Charnyetski and Kmita, who had not been in the hall,
+to tell them what had happened.
+
+"Did that envoy bring any good?" asked Charnyetski; "he had an
+honest face."
+
+"God guard us from such honest men!" answered Zamoyski; "he brought
+doubt and temptation."
+
+"What did he say?" asked Kmita, raising a little the lighted match
+which he was holding in his hand.
+
+"He spoke like a hired traitor."
+
+"That is why he hastens so now, I suppose," said Charnyetski. "See! he
+is running with almost full speed to the Swedish camp. Oh, I would send
+a ball after him!"
+
+"A good thing!" said Kmita, and he put the match to the cannon.
+
+The thunder of the gun was heard before Zamoyski and Charnyetski could
+see what had happened. Zamoyski caught his head.
+
+"In God's name!" cried he, "what have you done?--he was an envoy."
+
+"I have done ill!" answered Kmita; "for I missed. He is on his feet
+again and hastens farther. Oh! why did it go over him?" Here he turned
+to Zamoyski. "Though I had hit him in the loins, they could not have
+proved that we fired at him purposely, and God knows I could not hold
+the match in my fingers; it came down of itself. Never should I have
+fired at an envoy who was a Swede, but at sight of Polish traitors my
+entrails revolt."
+
+"Oh, curb yourself; for there would be trouble, and they would be ready
+to injure our envoys."
+
+But Charnyetski was content in his soul; for Kmita heard him mutter,
+"At least that traitor will be sure not to come on an embassy again."
+
+This did not escape the ear of Zamoyski, for he answered: "If not this
+one, others will be found; and do you, gentlemen, make no opposition to
+their negotiations, do not interrupt them of your own will; for the
+more they drag on, the more it results to our profit. Succor, if God
+sends it, will have time to assemble, and a hard winter is coming,
+making the siege more and more difficult. Delay is loss for the enemy,
+but brings profit to us."
+
+Zamoyski then went to the chamber, where, after the envoy's departure,
+consultation was still going on. The words of the traitor had startled
+men; minds and souls were excited. They did not believe, it is true, in
+the abdication of Yan Kazimir; but the envoy had held up to their
+vision the power of the Swedes, which previous days of success had
+permitted them to forget. Now it confronted their minds with all that
+terror before which towns and fortresses not such as theirs had been
+frightened,--Poznan, Warsaw, Cracow, not counting the multitude of
+castles which had opened their gates to the conqueror; how could Yasna
+Gora defend itself in a general deluge of defeats?
+
+"We shall defend ourselves a week longer, two, three," thought to
+themselves some of the nobles and some of the monks; "but what farther,
+what end will there be to these efforts?"
+
+The whole country was like a ship already deep in the abyss, and that
+cloister was peering up like the top of a mast through the waves. Could
+those wrecked ones, clinging to the mast, think not merely of saving
+themselves, but of raising that vessel from under the ocean?
+
+According to man's calculations they could not, and still, at the
+moment when Zamoyski re-entered the hall, Kordetski was saying,--
+
+"My brothers! if you sleep not, neither do I sleep. When you are
+imploring our Patroness for rescue, I too am praying. Weariness, toil,
+weakness, cling to my bones as well as to yours; responsibility in like
+manner weighs upon me--nay, more perhaps, than upon you. Why have I
+faith while you seem in doubt? Enter into yourselves; or is it that
+your eyes, blinded by earthly power, see not a power greater than the
+Swedes? Or think you that no defence will suffice, that no hand can
+overcome that preponderance? If that is the case your thoughts are
+sinful, and you blaspheme against the mercy of God, against the
+all-might of our Lord, against the power of that Patroness whose
+servants you call yourselves. Who of you will dare to say that that
+Most Holy Queen cannot shield us and send victory? Therefore let us
+beseech her, let us implore night and day, till by our endurance, our
+humility, our tears, our sacrifice of body and health, we soften her
+heart, and pray away our previous sins."
+
+"Father," said one of the nobles, "it is not a question for us of our
+lives or of our wives and children; but we tremble at the thought of
+the insults which may be put on the image, should the enemy capture the
+fortress by storm."
+
+"And we do not wish to take on ourselves the responsibility," added
+another.
+
+"For no one has a right to take it, not even the prior," added a third.
+
+And the opposition increased, and gained boldness, all the more since
+many monks maintained silence. The prior, instead of answering
+directly, began to pray.
+
+"O Mother of Thy only Son!" said he, raising his hands and his eyes
+toward heaven, "if Thou hast visited us so that in Thy capital we
+should give an example to others of endurance, of bravery, of
+faithfulness to Thee, to the country, to the king,--if Thou hast chosen
+this place in order to rouse by it the consciences of men and save the
+whole country, have mercy on those who desire to restrain, to stop the
+fountain of Thy grace, to hinder Thy miracles, and resist Thy holy
+will." Here he remained a moment in ecstasy, and then turned to the
+monks and nobles: "What man will take on his shoulders this
+responsibility,--the responsibility of stopping the miracles of Mary
+Her grace. Her salvation for this kingdom and the Catholic faith?"
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" answered a number of
+voices, "God preserve us from that!"
+
+"Such a man will not be found!" cried Zamoyski.
+
+And those of the monks in whose hearts doubt had been plunging began to
+beat their breasts, for no small fear had now seized them; and none of
+the councillors thought of surrender that evening.
+
+But though the hearts of the older men were strengthened, the
+destructive planting of that hireling had given forth fruits of poison.
+
+News of the abdication of Yan Kazimir and the improbability of succor
+went from the nobles to the women, from the women to the servants; the
+servants spread it among the soldiers, on whom it made the very worst
+impression. The peasants were astonished least of all; but experienced
+soldiers, accustomed to calculate the turns of war in soldier fashion
+only, began to assemble and explain to one another the impossibility of
+further defence, complaining of the stubbornness of monks, who did not
+understand the position; and, finally, to conspire and talk in secret.
+
+A certain gunner, a German of suspected fidelity, proposed that the
+soldiers themselves take the matter in hand, and come to an
+understanding with the Swedes touching the surrender of the fortress.
+Others caught at this idea; but there were those who not only opposed
+the treason resolutely, but informed Kordetski of it without delay.
+
+Kordetski, who knew how to join with the firmest trust in the powers of
+heaven the greatest earthly adroitness and caution, destroyed the
+secretly spreading treason in its inception.
+
+First of all he expelled from the fortress the leaders of the treason,
+and at the head of them that gunner, having no fear whatever of what
+they could inform the Swedes regarding the state of the fortress and
+its weak sides; then, doubling the monthly wages of the garrison, he
+took from them an oath to defend the cloister to the last drop of their
+blood.
+
+But he redoubled also his watchfulness, resolving to look with more
+care to the paid soldiers, as well as the nobles, and even his own
+monks. The older fathers were detailed to the night choirs; the
+younger, besides the service of God, were obliged to render service on
+the walls.
+
+Next day a review of the infantry was held. To each bastion one noble
+with his servants, ten monks and two reliable gunners were detailed.
+All these were bound to watch, night and day, the places confided to
+them.
+
+Pan Mosinski took his place at the northeastern bastion; he was a good
+soldier, the man whose little child had survived in a miraculous
+manner, though a bomb fell near its cradle. With him Father Hilary
+Slavoshevski kept guard. On the western bastion was Father Myeletski,
+of the nobles Pan Mikolai Kryshtoporski, a man surly and abrupt in
+speech, but of unterrified valor. The southeastern bastion was occupied
+by Charnyetski and Kmita, and with them was Father Adam Stypulski, who
+had formerly been a hussar. He, when the need came, tucked up his
+habit, aimed cannon, and took no more heed of the balls flying over his
+head than did the old sergeant Soroka. Finally, to the southwestern
+bastion were appointed Pan Skorjevski and Father Daniel Ryhtalski, who
+were distinguished by this, that both could abstain from sleep two and
+three nights in succession without harm to their health or their
+strength.
+
+Fathers Dobrosh and Malahovski were appointed over the sentries.
+Persons unfitted for fighting were appointed to the roofs. The armory
+and all military implements Father Lyassota took under his care; after
+Father Dobrosh, he took also the office of master of the fires. In the
+night he had to illuminate the walls so that infantry of the enemy
+might not approach them. He arranged sockets and iron-holders on the
+towers, on which flamed at night torches and lights.
+
+In fact, the whole tower looked every night like one gigantic torch. It
+is true that this lightened cannonading for the Swedes; but it might
+serve as a sign that the fortress was holding out yet, if, perchance,
+some army should march to relieve the besieged.
+
+So then not only had designs of surrender crept apart into nothing, but
+the besieged turned with still greater zeal to defence. Next morning
+the prior walked along the walls, like a shepherd through a sheepfold,
+saw that everything was right, smiled kindly, praised the chiefs and
+the soldiers, and coming to Charnyetski, said with radiant face,--
+
+"Our beloved leader, Pan Zamoyski, rejoices equally with me, for he
+says that we are now twice as strong as at first. A new spirit has
+entered men's hearts, the grace of the Most Holy Lady will do the rest;
+but meanwhile I will take to negotiations again. We will delay and put
+off, for by such means the blood of people will be spared."
+
+"Oh, revered father!" said Kmita, "what good are negotiations? Loss of
+time! Better another sortie to-night, and we will cut up those dogs."
+
+Kordetski (for he was in good humor) smiled as a mother smiles at a
+wayward child; then he raised a band of straw lying near the gun, and
+pretended to strike Pan Andrei with it on the shoulders: "And you will
+interfere here, you Lithuanian plague; you will lap blood as a wolf,
+and give an example of disobedience; here it is for you, here it is for
+you!"
+
+Kmita, delighted as a schoolboy, dodged to the right and to the left,
+and as if teasing purposely, repeated: "Kill the Swedes! kill, kill,
+kill!"
+
+And so they gave comfort to one another, having ardent souls devoted to
+the country. But Kordetski did not omit negotiations, seeing that
+Miller desired them earnestly and caught after every pretext. This
+desire pleased Kordetski, for he divined, without trouble, that it
+could not be going well with the enemy if he was so anxious to finish.
+
+Days passed then, one after another, in which guns and muskets were not
+indeed silent, but pens were working mainly. In this way the siege was
+prolonged, and winter was coming harsher and harsher. On the Carpathian
+summits clouds hatched in their precipitous nests storms, frost, and
+snows, and then came forth on the country, leading their icy
+descendants. At night the Swedes cowered around fires, choosing to die
+from the balls of the cloister rather than freeze.
+
+A hard winter had rendered difficult the digging of trenches and the
+making of mines. There was no progress in the siege. In the mouths
+not merely of officers, but of the whole army, there was only one
+word,--"negociations."
+
+The priests feigned at first a desire to surrender. Father Dobrosh and
+the learned priest Sebastyan Stavitski came to Miller as envoys. They
+gave him some hope of agreement. He had barely heard this when he
+opened his arms and was ready to seize them with joy to his embraces.
+It was no longer a question of Chenstohova, but of the whole country.
+The surrender of Yasna Gora would have removed the last hope of the
+patriots, and pushed the Commonwealth finally into the arms of the King
+of Sweden; while, on the contrary, resistance, and that a victorious
+resistance, might change hearts and call out a terrible new war. Signs
+were not wanting. Miller knew this, felt what he had undertaken, what a
+terrible responsibility was weighing on him; he knew that either the
+favor of the king, with the baton of a marshal, honors, a title, were
+waiting for him, or final fall. Since he had begun to convince himself
+that he could not crack this "nut," he received the priests with
+unheard-of honor, as if they were embassadors from the Emperor of
+Germany or the Sultan. He invited them to a feast, he drank to their
+honor, and also to the health of the prior and Pan Zamoyski; he gave
+them fish for the cloister; finally, he offered conditions of surrender
+so gracious that he did not doubt for a moment that they would be
+accepted in haste.
+
+The fathers thanked him humbly, as beseemed monks; they took the paper
+and went their way. Miller promised the opening of the gates at eight
+of the following morning. Joy indescribable reigned in the camp of the
+Swedes. The soldiers left the trenches, approached the walls, and began
+to address the besieged.
+
+But it was announced from the cloister that in an affair of such weight
+the prior must consult the whole Congregation; the monks therefore
+begged for one day's delay. Miller consented without hesitation.
+Meanwhile they were counselling in the chamber till late at night.
+
+Though Miller was an old and trained warrior, though there was not,
+perhaps, in the whole Swedish army a general who had conducted more
+negotiations with various places than that Poliorcetes, still his heart
+beat unquietly when next morning he saw two white habits approaching
+his quarters.
+
+They were not the same fathers. First walked Father Bleshynski, a
+reader of philosophy, bearing a sealed letter; after him came Father
+Malahovski, with hands crossed on his breast, with drooping head and a
+face slightly pale.
+
+The general received them surrounded by his staff and all his noted
+colonels; and when he had answered politely the submissive bow of
+Father Bleshynski, he took the letter from his hand hastily and began
+to read.
+
+But all at once his face changed terribly: a wave of blood flew to his
+head; his eyes were bursting forth, his neck grew thick, and terrible
+anger raised the hair under his wig. For a while speech was taken from
+him; he only indicated with his hand the letter to the Prince of Hesse,
+who ran over it with his eyes, and turning to the colonels, said
+calmly,--
+
+"The monks declare only this much, that they cannot renounce Yan
+Kazimir before the primate proclaims a new king; or speaking in other
+words, they will not recognize Karl Gustav."
+
+Here the Prince of Hesse laughed. Sadovski fixed a jeering glance on
+Miller, and Count Veyhard began to pluck his own beard from rage. A
+terrible murmur of excitement rose among those present.
+
+Then Miller struck his palms on his knees and cried,--
+
+"Guards, guards!"
+
+The mustached faces of four musketeers showed themselves quickly in the
+door.
+
+"Take those shaven sticks," cried the general, "and confine them! And
+Pan Sadovski, do you trumpet for me under the cloister, that if they
+open fire from one cannon on the walls, I will hang these two monks the
+next moment."
+
+The two priests were led out amid ridicule and the scoffing of
+soldiers. The musketeers put their own caps on the priests' heads, or
+rather on their faces to cover their eyes, and led them of purpose to
+various obstacles. When either of the priests stumbled or fell, an
+outburst of laughter was heard in the crowds; but the fallen man they
+raised with the butts of muskets, and pretending to support, they
+pushed him by the loins and the shoulders. Some threw horse-dung at the
+priests; others took snow and rubbed it on their shaven crowns, or let
+it roll down on their habits. The soldiers tore strings from trumpets,
+and tying one end to the neck of each priest, held the other, and
+imitating men taking cattle to a fair, called out the prices.
+
+Both fathers walked on in silence, with hands crossed on their breasts
+and prayers on their lips. Finally, trembling from cold and insulted,
+they were enclosed in a barn; around the place guards armed with
+muskets were stationed.
+
+Miller's command, or rather his threat, was trumpeted under the
+cloister walls.
+
+The fathers were frightened, and the troops were benumbed from the
+threat. The cannon were silent; a council was assembled, they knew not
+what to do. To leave the fathers in cruel hands was impossible; and if
+they sent others, Miller would detain them as well. A few hours later
+he himself sent a messenger, asking what the monks thought of doing.
+
+They answered that until the fathers were freed no negotiations could
+take place; for how could the monks believe that the general would
+observe conditions with them if, despite the chief law of nations, he
+imprisoned envoys whose sacredness even barbarians respect?
+
+To this declaration there was no ready answer; hence terrible
+uncertainty weighed on the cloister and froze the zeal of its
+defenders.
+
+The Swedish army dug new trenches in haste, filled baskets with earth,
+planted cannon; insolent soldiers pushed forward to within half a
+musket-shot of the walls. They threatened the church, the defenders;
+half-drunken soldiers shouted, raising their hands toward the walls,
+"Surrender the cloister, or you will see your monks hanging!"
+
+Others blasphemed terribly against the Mother of God and the Catholic
+faith. The besieged, out of respect to the life of the fathers, had to
+listen with patience. Rage stopped the breath in Kmita's breast. He
+tore the hair on his head, the clothing on his breast, and wringing his
+hands, said to Charnyetski,--
+
+"I asked, 'Of what use is negotiation with criminals?' Now stand and
+suffer, while they are crawling into our eyes and blaspheming! Mother
+of God, have mercy on me, and give me patience! By the living God, they
+will begin soon to climb the walls! Hold me, chain me like a murderer,
+for I shall not contain myself."
+
+But the Swedes came ever nearer, blaspheming more boldly.
+
+Meanwhile a fresh event brought the besieged to despair. Stefan
+Charnyetski in surrendering Cracow had obtained the condition of going
+out with all his troops, and remaining with them in Silesia till the
+end of the war. Seven hundred infantry of those troops of the royal
+guard, under command of Colonel Wolf, were near the boundary, and
+trusting in stipulations, were not on their guard. Count Veyhard
+persuaded Miller to capture those men.
+
+Miller sent Count Veyhard himself, with two thousand cavalry, who
+crossing the boundary at night attacked those troops during sleep, and
+captured them to the last man. When they were brought to the Swedish
+camp, Miller commanded to lead them around the wall, so as to show the
+priests that that army from which they had hoped succor would serve
+specially for the capture of Chenstohova.
+
+The sight of that brilliant guard of the king dragged along the walls
+was crushing to the besieged, for no one doubted that Miller would
+force them first to the storm.
+
+Panic spread again among the troops of the cloister; some of the
+soldiers began to break their weapons and exclaim that there was help
+no longer, that it was necessary to surrender at the earliest. Even the
+hearts of the nobles had fallen; some of them appeared before Kordetski
+again with entreaties to take pity on their children, on the sacred
+place, on the image, and on the Congregation of monks. The courage of
+the prior and Pan Zamoyski was barely enough to put down this movement.
+
+But Kordetski had the liberation of the imprisoned fathers on his mind
+first of all, and he took the best method; for he wrote to Miller that
+he would sacrifice those brothers willingly for the good of the church.
+Let the general condemn them to death; all would know in future what to
+expect from him, and what faith to give his promises.
+
+Miller was joyful, for he thought the affair was approaching its end.
+But he did not trust the words of Kordetski at once, nor his readiness
+to sacrifice the monks. He sent therefore one of them, Father
+Bleshynski, to the cloister, binding him first with an oath to explain
+the power of the Swedes and the impossibility of resistance. The monk
+repeated everything faithfully, but his eyes spoke something else, and
+concluding he said,--
+
+"But prizing life less than the good of the Congregation, I am waiting
+for the will of the council; and whatsoever you decide I will lay
+before the enemy most faithfully."
+
+They directed him to say: "The monks are anxious to treat, but cannot
+believe a general who imprisons envoys." Next day the other envoy of
+the fathers came to the cloister, and returned with a similar answer.
+
+After this both heard the sentence of death. The sentence was read at
+Miller's quarters in presence of the staff and distinguished officers.
+All observed carefully the faces of the monks, curious to learn what
+impression the sentence would make; and with the greatest amazement
+they saw in both a joy as great, as unearthly, as if the highest
+fortune had been announced to them. The pale faces of the monks flushed
+suddenly, their eyes were filled with light, and Father Malahovski said
+with a voice trembling from emotion,--
+
+"Ah! why should we not die to-day, since we are predestined to fall a
+sacrifice for our Lord and the king?"
+
+Miller commanded to lead them forth straightway. The officers looked at
+one another. At last one remarked; "A struggle with such fanaticism is
+difficult."
+
+The Prince of Hesse added: "Only the first Christians had such faith.
+Is that what you wish to say?" Then he turned to Count Veyhard. "Pan
+Veyhard," said he, "I should be glad to know what you think of these
+monks?"
+
+"I have no need to trouble my head over them," answered he, insolently;
+"the general has already taken care of them."
+
+Then Sadovski stepped forward to the middle of the room, stood before
+Miller, and said with decision: "Your worthiness, do not command to
+execute these monks."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because there will be no talk of negotiations after that; for the
+garrison of the fortress will be flaming with vengeance, and those men
+will rather fall one upon the other than surrender."
+
+"Wittemberg will send me heavy guns."
+
+"Your worthiness, do not do this deed," continued Sadovski, with force;
+"they are envoys who have come here with confidence."
+
+"I shall not have them hanged on confidence, but on gibbets."
+
+"The echo of this deed will spread through the whole country, will
+enrage all hearts, and turn them away from us."
+
+"Give me peace with your echoes; I have heard of them already a hundred
+times."
+
+"Your worthiness will not do this without the knowledge of his Royal
+Grace?"
+
+"You have no right to remind me of my duties to the king."
+
+"But I have the right to ask for permission to resign from service, and
+to present my reasons to his Royal Grace. I wish to be a soldier, not
+an executioner."
+
+The Prince of Hesse issued from the circle in the middle of the room,
+and said ostentatiously,--
+
+"Give me your hand. Pan Sadovski; you are a gentleman, a noble, and an
+honest man."
+
+"What does this mean?" roared Miller, springing from his seat.
+
+"General," answered the Prince of Hesse, "I permit myself to remark
+that Pan Sadovski is an honorable man, and I judge that there is
+nothing in this against discipline."
+
+Miller did not like the Prince of Hesse; but that cool, polite, and
+also contemptuous manner of speaking, special to men of high rank,
+imposed on him, as it does on many persons of low birth. Miller made
+great efforts to acquire this manner, but had no success. He restrained
+his outburst, however, and said calmly,--
+
+"The monks will be hanged to-morrow."
+
+"That is not my affair," answered the Prince of Hesse; "but in that
+event let your worthiness order an attack on those two thousand Poles
+who are in our camp, for if you do not they will attack us. Even now it
+is less dangerous for a Swedish soldier to go among a pack of wolves
+than among their tents. This is all I have to say, and now I permit
+myself to wish you success." When he had said this he left the
+quarters.
+
+Miller saw that he had gone too far. But he did not withdraw his
+orders, and that same day gibbets wore erected in view of the whole
+cloister. At the same time the soldiers, taking advantage of the truce,
+pushed still nearer the walls, not ceasing to jeer, insult, blaspheme,
+and challenge. Whole throngs of them climbed the mountain, stood as
+closely together as if they intended to make an assault.
+
+That time Kmita, whom they had not chained as he had requested, did not
+in fact restrain himself, and thundered from a cannon into the thickest
+group, with such effect that he laid down in a row all those who stood
+in front of the shot. That was like a watchword; for at once, without
+orders, and even in spite of orders, all the cannons began to play,
+muskets and guns thundered.
+
+The Swedes, exposed to fire from every side, fled from the fortress
+with howling and screaming, many falling dead on the road.
+
+Charnyetski sprang to Kmita: "Do you know that for that the reward is a
+bullet in the head?"
+
+"I know, all one to me. Let me be--"
+
+"In that case aim surely,"
+
+Kmita aimed surely; soon, however, he missed. A great movement rose
+meanwhile in the Swedish camp, but it was so evident that the Swedes
+were the first to violate the truce, that Miller himself recognized in
+his soul that the besieged were in the right.
+
+What is more, Kmita did not even suspect that with his shots he had
+perhaps saved the lives of the fathers; but Miller, because of these
+shots, became convinced that the monks in the last extremity were
+really ready to sacrifice their two brethren for the good of the church
+and the cloister.
+
+The shots beat into his head this idea also, that if a hair were to
+fall from the heads of the envoys, he would not hear from the cloister
+anything save similar thunders; so next day he invited the two
+imprisoned monks to dinner, and the day after he sent them to the
+cloister.
+
+Kordetski wept when he saw them, all took them in their arms and were
+astonished at hearing from their mouths that it was specially owing to
+those shots that they were saved. The prior, who had been angry at
+Kmita, called him at once and said,--
+
+"I was angry because I thought that you had destroyed the two fathers;
+but the Most Holy Lady evidently inspired you. This is a sign of Her
+favor, be rejoiced."
+
+"Dearest, beloved father, there will be no more negotiations, will
+there?" asked Kmita, kissing Kordetski's hands.
+
+But barely had he finished speaking, when a trumpet was heard at the
+gates, and an envoy from Miller entered the cloister.
+
+This was Pan Kuklinovski, colonel of the volunteer squadron attached
+to the Swedes. The greatest ruffians without honor or faith served in
+that squadron, in part dissidents such as Lutherans, Arians,
+Calvinists,--whereby was explained their friendship for Sweden; but a
+thirst for robbery and plunder attracted them mainly to Miller's army.
+That band, made up of nobles, outlaws, fugitives from prison and from
+the hands of a master, of attendants, and of gallows-birds snatched
+from the rope, was somewhat like Kmita's old party, save in this, that
+Kmita's men fought as do lions, and those preferred to plunder, offer
+violence to noble women, break open stables and treasure chests. But
+Kuklinovski himself had less resemblance to Kmita. Age had mixed gray
+with his hair. He had a face dried, insolent, and shameless. His eyes,
+which were unusually prominent and greedy, indicated violence of
+character. He was one of those soldiers in whom, because of a turbulent
+life and continuous wars, conscience had been burned out to the bottom.
+A multitude of such men strolled about in that time, after the Thirty
+Years' War, through all Germany and Poland. They were ready to serve
+any man, and more than once a mere simple incident determined the side
+on which they were to stand.
+
+Country and faith, in a word all things sacred, were thoroughly
+indifferent to them. They recognized nothing but war, and sought in it
+pleasure, dissipation, profit, and oblivion of life. But still when
+they had chosen some side they served it loyally enough, and that
+through a certain soldier-robber honor, so as not to close the career
+to themselves and to others. Such a man was Kuklinovski. Stern daring
+and immeasurable stubbornness had won for him consideration among the
+disorderly. It was easy for him to find men. He had served in various
+arms and services. He had been ataman in the Saitch; he had led
+regiments in Wallachia; in Germany he had enlisted volunteers in the
+Thirty Years' War, and had won a certain fame as a leader of cavalry.
+His crooked legs, bent in bow fashion, showed that he had spent the
+greater part of his life on horseback. He was as thin as a splinter,
+and somewhat bent from profligacy. Much blood, shed not in war only,
+weighed upon him. And still he was not a man wholly wicked by nature;
+he felt at times nobler influences. But he was spoiled to the marrow of
+his bones, and insolent to the last degree. Frequently had he said in
+intimate company, in drink; "More than one deed was done for which the
+thunderbolt should have fallen, but it fell not."
+
+The effect of this impunity was that he did not believe in the justice
+of God, and punishment, not only during life, but after death. In other
+words, he did not believe in God; still, he believed in the devil, in
+witches, in astrologers, and in alchemy. He wore the Polish dress, for
+he thought it most fitting for cavalry; but his mustache, still black,
+he trimmed in Swedish fashion, and spread at the ends turned upward. In
+speaking he made every word diminutive, like a child; this produced a
+strange impression when heard from the mouth of such a devil incarnate
+and such a cruel ruffian, who was ever gulping human blood. He talked
+much and boastingly; clearly he thought himself a celebrated personage,
+and one of the first cavalry colonels on earth.
+
+Miller, who, though on a broader pattern, belonged himself to a similar
+class, valued him greatly, and loved specially to seat him at his own
+table. At that juncture Kuklinovski forced himself on the general as an
+assistant, guaranteeing that he would with his eloquence bring the
+priests to their senses at once.
+
+Earlier, when, after the arrest of the priests, Pan Zamoyski was
+preparing to visit Miller's camp and asked for a hostage, Miller sent
+Kuklinovski; but Zamoyski and the prior would not accept him, as not
+being of requisite rank.
+
+From that moment, touched in his self-love, Kuklinovski conceived a
+mortal hatred for the defenders of Yasna Gora, and determined to
+injure them with all his power. Therefore he chose himself as an
+embassy,--first for the embassy itself, and second so as to survey
+everything and cast evil seed here and there. Since he was long known
+to Charnyetski he approached the gate guarded by him; but Charnyetski
+was sleeping at the time,--Kmita, taking his place, conducted the guest
+to the council hall.
+
+Kuklinovski looked at Pan Andrei with the eye of a specialist, and at
+once he was pleased not only with the form but the bearing of the young
+hero, which might serve as a model.
+
+"A soldier," said he, raising his hand to his cap, "knows at once a
+real soldier. I did not think that the priests had such men in their
+service. What is your rank, I pray?"
+
+Id Kmita, who had the zeal of a new convert, the soul revolted at sight
+of Poles who served Swedes; still, he remembered the recent anger of
+Kordetski at his disregard of negotiations; therefore he answered
+coldly, but calmly,--
+
+"I am Babinich, former colonel in the Lithuanian army, but now a
+volunteer in the service of the Most Holy Lady."
+
+"And I am Kuklinovski, also colonel, of whom you must have heard; for
+during more than one little war men mentioned frequently that name and
+this sabre [here he struck at his side], not only here in the
+Commonwealth, but in foreign countries."
+
+"With the forehead," said Kmita, "I have heard."
+
+"Well, so you are from Lithuania, and in that land are famous soldiers.
+We know of each other, for the trumpet of fame is to be heard from one
+end of the world to the other. Do you know there, worthy sir, a certain
+Kmita?"
+
+The question fell so suddenly that Pan Andrei was as if fixed to the
+spot. "But why do you ask of him?"
+
+"Because I love him, though I know him not, for we are alike as two
+boots of one pair; and I always repeat this, with your permission,
+'There are two genuine soldiers in the Commonwealth,--I in the kingdom,
+and Kmita in Lithuania,'--a pair of dear doves, is not that true? Did
+you know him personally?"
+
+"Would to God that you were killed!" thought Kmita; but, remembering
+Kuklinovski's character of envoy, he answered aloud: "I did not know
+him personally. But now come in, for the council is waiting."
+
+When he had said this, he indicated the door through which a priest
+came out to receive the guest. Kuklinovski entered the chamber with him
+at once, but first he turned to Kmita: "It would please me," said he,
+"if at my return you and none other were to conduct me out."
+
+"I will wait here," answered Kmita. And he was left alone. After a
+while he began to walk back and forth with quick steps; his whole soul
+was roused within him, and his heart was filled with blood, black from
+anger.
+
+"Pitch does not stick to a garment like evil fame to a man," muttered
+he. "This scoundrel, this wretch, this traitor calls me boldly his
+brother, and thinks he has me as a comrade. See to what I have come!
+All gallows-birds proclaim me their own, and no decent man calls me to
+mind without horror. I have done little yet, little! If I could only
+give a lesson to this rascal! It cannot be but that I shall put my
+score on him."
+
+The council lasted long in the chamber. It had grown dark. Kmita was
+waiting yet.
+
+At last Kuklinovski appeared. Pan Andrei could not see the colonel's
+face, but he inferred from his quick panting, that the mission had
+failed, and had been also displeasing, for the envoy had lost desire
+for talk. They walked on then for some time in silence. Kmita
+determined meanwhile to get at the truth, and said with feigned
+sympathy,--
+
+"Surely, you are coming with nothing.--Our priests are stubborn; and,
+between you and me, they act ill, for we cannot defend ourselves
+forever."
+
+Kuklinovski halted and pulled him by the sleeve. "And do you think that
+they act ill? You have your senses; these priests will be ground into
+bran,--I guarantee that! They are unwilling to obey Kuklinovski; they
+will obey his sword."
+
+"You see, it is not a question of the priests with me," said Kmita,
+"but of this place, which is holy, that is not to be denied, but which
+the later it is surrendered the more severe must the conditions be. Is
+what men say true, that through the country tumults are rising, that
+here and there they are slashing the Swedes, and that the Khan is
+marching with aid? If that is true, Miller must retreat."
+
+"I tell you in confidence, a wish for Swedish broth is rising in the
+country, and likely in the army as well; that is true. They are talking
+of the Khan also. But Miller will not retreat; in a couple of days
+heavy artillery will come. We'll dig these foxes out of their hole, and
+then what will be will be!--But you have sense."
+
+"Here is the gate!" said Kmita; "here I must leave you, unless you wish
+me to attend you down the slope?"
+
+"Attend me, attend me! A couple of days ago you fired after an envoy."
+
+"Indeed! What do you mean?"
+
+"Maybe unwillingly. But better attend me; I have a few words to say to
+you."
+
+"And I to you."
+
+"That is well."
+
+They went outside the gate and sank in the darkness. Here Kuklinovski
+stopped, and taking Kmita again by the sleeve, began to speak,--
+
+"You, Sir Cavalier, seem to me adroit and foreseeing, and besides I
+feel in you a soldier, blood and bone. What the devil do you stick to
+priests for, and not to soldiers? Why be a serving lad for priests?
+There is a better and a pleasanter company with us,--with cups, dice,
+and women. Do you understand?"
+
+Here he pressed Kmita's arm with his fingers. "This house," continued
+he, pointing with his finger to the fortress, "is on fire, and a fool
+is he who flees not from a house when 'tis burning. Maybe you fear the
+name of traitor? Spit on those who would call you that! Come to our
+company; I, Kuklinovski, propose this. Obey, if you like; if you don't
+like, obey not--there will be no offence. General Miller will receive
+you well, I guarantee that; you have touched my heart, and I speak thus
+from good wishes. Ours is a joyous company, joyous! A soldier's freedom
+is in this,--to serve whom he likes. Monks are nothing to you! If a bit
+of virtue hinders you, then cough it out. Remember this also, that
+honest men serve with us. How many nobles, magnates, hetmans! What can
+be better? Who takes the part of our little Kazimir? No man save
+Sapyeha alone, who is bending Radzivill."
+
+Kmita grew curious; "Did you say that Sapyeha is bending Radzivill?"
+
+"I did. He is troubling him terribly there in Podlyasye, and is
+besieging him now in Tykotsin. But we do not disturb him."
+
+"Why is that?"
+
+"Because the King of Sweden wants them to devour one another. Radzivill
+was never reliable; he was thinking of himself. Besides, he is barely
+breathing. Whoever lets himself be besieged is in a fix, he is
+finished."
+
+"Will not the Swedes go to succor him?"
+
+"Who is to go? The king himself is in Prussia, for there lies the great
+question. The elector has wriggled out hitherto; he will not wriggle
+out this time. In Great Poland is war, Wittemberg is needed in Cracow,
+Douglas has work with the hill-men; so they have left Radzivill to
+himself. Let Sapyeha devour him. Sapyeha has grown, that is true, but
+his turn will come also. Our Karl, when he finishes with Prussia, will
+twist the horns of Sapyeha. Now there is no power against him, for all
+Lithuania stands at his side."
+
+"But Jmud?"
+
+"Pontus de la Gardie holds that in his paws, and heavy are the paws, I
+know him."
+
+"How is it that Radzivill has fallen, he whose power was equal to that
+of kings?"
+
+"It is quenching already, quenching--"
+
+"Wonderful are the ordinances of God!"
+
+"The wheel of war changes. But no more of this. Well, what? Do you make
+up your mind to my proposition? You'll not be sorry! Come to us. If it
+is too hurried to-day, think till to-morrow, till the day after, before
+the heavy artillery comes. These people here trust you evidently, since
+you pass through the gate as you do now. Or come with letters and go
+back no more."
+
+"You attract others to the Swedish side, for you are an envoy of
+Sweden," said Kmita; "it does not beseem you to act otherwise, though
+in your soul who knows what you think? There are those who serve the
+Swedes, but wish them ill in their hearts."
+
+"Word of a cavalier!" answered Kuklinovski, "that I speak sincerely,
+and not because I am filling the function of an envoy. Outside the gate
+I am no longer an envoy; and if you wish I will remove the office of
+envoy of my own will, and speak to you as a private man. Throw that
+vile fortress to the devil!"
+
+"Do you say this as a private man?"
+
+"Yes,"
+
+"And may I give answer to you as to a private man?"
+
+"As true as life I propose it myself."
+
+"Then listen, Pan Kuklinovski," Here Kmita inclined and looked into the
+very eyes of the ruffian. "You are a rascal, a traitor, a scoundrel, a
+crab-monger, an arch-cur! Have you enough, or shall I spit in your eyes
+yet?"
+
+Kuklinovski was astounded to such a degree that for a time there was
+silence.
+
+"What is this? How is this? Do I hear correctly?"
+
+"Have you enough, you cur? or do you wish me to spit in your eyes?"
+
+Kuklinovski drew his sabre; but Kmita caught him with his iron hand by
+the wrist, twisted his arm, wrested the sabre from him, then slapped
+him on the cheek so that the sound went out in the darkness; seized him
+by the other side, turned him in his hand like a top, and kicking him
+with all his strength, cried,--
+
+"To a private man, not to an envoy!"
+
+Kuklinovski rolled down like a stone thrown from a ballista. Pan Andrei
+went quietly to the gate.
+
+The two men parted on the slope of the eminence; hence it was difficult
+to see them from the walls. But Kmita found waiting for him at the gate
+Kordetski, who took him aside at once, and asked,--
+
+"What were you doing so long with Kuklinovski."
+
+"I was entering into confidence with him," answered Pan Andrei.
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said that it was true concerning the Khan."
+
+"Praise be to God, who can change the hearts of pagans and make friends
+out of enemies."
+
+"He told me that Great Poland is moving."
+
+"Praise be to God!"
+
+"That the quarter soldiers are more and more unwilling to remain with
+the Swedes; that in Podlyasye, the voevoda of Vityebsk, Sapyeha, has
+beaten the traitor Radzivill, and that he has all honest people with
+him. As all Lithuania stands by him, except Jmud, which De la Gardie
+has taken."
+
+"Praise be to God! Have you had no other talk with each other?"
+
+"Yes; Kuklinovski tried afterward to persuade me to go over to the
+Swedes."
+
+"I expected that," said the prior; "he is a bad man. And what did you
+answer?"
+
+"You see he told me, revered father, as follows: 'I put aside my office
+of envoy, which without that is finished beyond the gates, and I
+persuade you as a private man.' And I to make sure asked, 'May I answer
+as to a private man?' He said, 'Yes'--then--"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Then I gave it to him in the snout, and he rolled down hill."
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
+
+"Be not angry, father; I acted very carefully, and that he will not say
+a word about the matter to any man is certain."
+
+The priest was silent for a time, then said; "That you acted honestly,
+I know. I am only troubled at this, that you have gained a new enemy.
+He is a terrible man."
+
+"One more, one less!" said Kmita. Then he bent to the ear of the
+priest. "But Prince Boguslav, he at least is an enemy! What is such a
+Kuklinovski? I don't even look back at him."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Now the terrible Arwid Wittemberg made himself heard. A famous officer
+brought his stern letter to the cloister, commanding the fathers to
+surrender the fortress to Miller. "In the opposite event," wrote
+Wittemberg, "if you do not abandon resistance, and do not yield to the
+said general, you may be sure that a punishment awaits you which will
+serve others as an example. The blame for your suffering lay to
+yourselves."
+
+The fathers after receiving this letter determined in old fashion to
+procrastinate, and present new difficulties daily. Again days passed
+during which the thunder of artillery interrupted negotiations, and the
+contrary.
+
+Miller declared that he wished to introduce his garrison only to insure
+the cloister against bands of freebooters. The fathers answered that
+since their garrison appeared sufficient against such a powerful leader
+as the general himself, all the more would it suffice against bands of
+freebooters. They implored Miller, therefore, by all that was sacred,
+by the respect which the people had for the place, by God and by Mary,
+to go to Vyelunie, or wherever it might please him. But the patience of
+the Swedes was exhausted. That humility of the besieged, who implored
+for mercy while they were firing more and more quickly from cannons,
+brought the chief and the army to desperation.
+
+At first Miller could not get it into his head why, when the whole
+country had surrendered, that one place was defending itself; what
+power was upholding them; in the name of what hopes did these monks
+refuse to yield, for what were they striving, for what were they
+hoping?
+
+But flowing time brought more clearly the answer to that question. The
+resistance which had begun there was spreading like a conflagration. In
+spite of a rather dull brain, the general saw at last what the question
+with Kordetski was; and besides, Sadovski had explained
+incontrovertibly that it was not a question of that rocky nest, nor of
+Yasna Gora, nor of the treasures gathered in the cloister, nor of the
+safety of the Congregation, but of the fate of the whole Commonwealth.
+Miller discovered that that silent priest knew what he was doing, that
+he had knowledge of his mission, that he had risen as a prophet to
+enlighten the land by example,--to call with a mighty voice to the east
+and the west, to the north and the south, _Sursum corda!_ (Raise your
+hearts) in order to rouse, either by his victory or his death and
+sacrifice, the sleeping from their slumber, to purify the sinful, to
+bring light into darkness.
+
+When he had discovered this, that old warrior was simply terrified at
+that defender and at his own task. All at once that "hen-house" of
+Chenstohova seemed to him a giant mountain defended by a Titan, and the
+general seemed small to himself; and on his own army he looked, for the
+first time in his life, as on a handful of wretched worms. Was it for
+them to raise hands against that mysterious and heaven-touching power?
+Therefore Miller was terrified, and doubt began to steal into his
+heart. Seeing that the fault would be placed upon him, he began himself
+to seek the guilty, and his anger fell first on Count Veyhard. Disputes
+rose in the camp, and dissensions began to inflame hearts against one
+another; the works of the siege had to suffer therefrom.
+
+Miller had been too long accustomed to estimate men and events by the
+common measure of a soldier, not to console himself still at times with
+the thought that at last the fortress would surrender. And taking
+things in human fashion, it could not be otherwise. Besides, Wittemberg
+was sending him six siege guns of the heaviest calibre, which had shown
+their force at Cracow.
+
+"Devil take it!" thought Miller; "such walls will not stand against
+guns like these, and if that nest of terrors, of superstitions, of
+enchantment, winds up in smoke, then things will take another turn, and
+the whole country will be pacified."
+
+While waiting for the heavier guns, he commanded to fire from the
+smaller. The days of conflict returned. But in vain did balls of fire
+fall on the roofs, in vain did the best gunners exert superhuman power.
+As often as the wind blew away the sea of smoke, the cloister appeared
+untouched, imposing as ever, lofty, with towers piercing calmly the
+blue of the sky. At the same time things happened which spread
+superstitious terror among the besiegers. Now balls flew over the whole
+mountain and struck soldiers on the other side; now a gunner, occupied
+in aiming a gun, fell on a sudden; now smoke disposed itself in
+terrible and strange forms; now powder in the boxes exploded all at
+once, as if fired by some invisible hand.
+
+Besides, soldiers were perishing continually who alone, in twos or in
+threes, went out of the camp. Suspicion fell on the Polish auxiliary
+squadrons, which, with the exception of Kuklinovski's regiment, refused
+out and out every cooperation in the siege, and showed daily more
+menacing looks. Miller threatened Colonel Zbrojek with a court-martial,
+but he answered in presence of all the officers: "Try it, General."
+
+Officers from the Polish squadrons strolled purposely through the
+Swedish camp, exhibiting contempt and disregard for the soldiers, and
+raising quarrels with the officers. Thence it came to duels, in which
+the Swedes, as less trained in fencing, fell victims more frequently.
+Miller issued a severe order against duels, and finally forbade the
+Poles entrance to the camp. From this it came that at last both armies
+were side by side like enemies, merely awaiting an opportunity for
+battle.
+
+But the cloister defended itself ever better. It turned out that the
+guns sent by Pan Myaskovski were in no wise inferior to those which
+Miller had, and the gunners through constant practice arrived at such
+accuracy that each shot threw down an enemy. The Swedes attributed this
+to enchantment. The gunners answered the officers that with that power
+which defended the cloister it was no business of theirs to do battle.
+
+A certain morning a panic began in the southwestern trench, for the
+soldiers had seen distinctly a woman in a blue robe shielding the
+church and the cloister. At sight of this they threw themselves down on
+their faces. In vain did Miller ride up, in vain did he explain that
+mist and smoke had disposed themselves in that form, in vain besides
+was his threat of court-martial and punishment. At the first moment no
+one would hear him, especially as the general himself was unable to
+hide his amazement.
+
+Soon after this the opinion was spread through the whole army that no
+one taking part in the siege would die his own death. Many officers
+shared this belief, and Miller was not free from fears; for he brought
+in Lutheran ministers and enjoined on them to undo the enchantment.
+They walked through the camp whispering, and singing psalms; fear,
+however, had so spread that more than once they heard from the mouths
+of the soldiers: "Beyond your power, beyond your strength!"
+
+In the midst of discharges of cannon a new envoy from Miller entered
+the cloister, and stood before the face of Kordetski and the council.
+
+This was Pan Sladkovski, chamberlain of Rava, whom Swedish parties had
+seized as he was returning from Prussia. They received him coldly and
+harshly, though he had an honest face and his look was as mild as the
+sky; but the monks had grown accustomed to see honest faces on
+traitors. He was not confused a whit by such a reception; combing
+briskly his yellow forelock with his fingers, he began:--
+
+"Praised be Jesus Christ!"
+
+"For the ages of ages!" answered the Congregation, in a chorus.
+
+And Kordetski added at once; "Blessed be those who serve him."
+
+"I serve him," answered Sladkovski, "and that I serve him more
+sincerely than I do Miller will be shown soon. H'm! permit me,
+worthy and beloved fathers, to cough, for I must first spit out
+foulness. Miller then--tfu! sent me, my good lords, to you to persuade
+you--tfu!--to surrender. But I accepted the office so as to say to you:
+Defend yourselves, think not of surrender, for the Swedes are spinning
+thin, and the Devil is taking them by the eye."
+
+The monks and the laity were astonished at sight of such an envoy. Pan
+Zamoyski exclaimed at once: "As God is dear to me, this is an honest
+man!" and springing to him began to shake his hand; but Sladkovski,
+gathering his forelock into one bunch, said,--
+
+"That I am no knave will be shown straightway. I have become Miller's
+envoy so as to tell you news so favorable that I could wish, my good
+lords, to tell it all in one breath. Give thanks to God and His Most
+Holy Mother who chose you as instruments for changing men's hearts. The
+country, taught by your example and by your defence, is beginning to
+throw off the yoke of the Swedes. What's the use in talking? In Great
+Poland and Mazovia the people are beating the Swedes, destroying
+smaller parties, blocking roads and passages. In some places they have
+given the enemy terrible punishment already. The nobles are mounting
+their horses, the peasants are gathering in crowds, and when they seize
+a Swede they tear straps out of him. Chips are flying, tow is flying!
+This is what it has come to. And whose work is this?--yours."
+
+"An angel, an angel is speaking!" cried monks and nobles, raising their
+hands toward heaven.
+
+"Not an angel, but Sladkovski, at your service. This is
+nothing!--Listen on. The Khan, remembering the kindness of the brother
+of our rightful king, Yan Kazimir, to whom may God give many years! is
+marching with aid, and has already passed the boundary of the
+Commonwealth. The Cossacks who were opposed he has cut to pieces, and
+is moving on with a horde of a hundred thousand toward Lvoff, and
+Hmelnitski _nolens volens_ is coming with him."
+
+"For God's sake, for God's sake!" repeated people, overcome as it were
+by happiness.
+
+But Pan Sladkovski, sweating and waving his hand, with still more vigor
+cried,--
+
+"That is nothing yet! Pan Stefan Charnyetski, with whom the Swedes
+violated faith, for they carried captive his infantry under Wolf, feels
+free of his word and is mounting. Yan Kazimir is collecting troops, and
+may return any day to the country and the hetmans. Listen further, the
+hetmans, Pototski and Lantskoronski, and with them all the troops, are
+waiting only for the coming of the king to desert the Swedes and raise
+sabres against them. Meanwhile they are coming to an understanding with
+Sapyeha and the Khan. The Swedes are in terror; there is fire in the
+whole country, war in the whole country--whosoever is living is going
+to the field!"
+
+What took place in the hearts of the monks and the nobles is difficult
+of description. Some wept, some fell on their knees, other repeated,
+"It cannot be, it cannot be!" Hearing this, Sladkovski approached the
+great crucifix hanging on the wall and said,--
+
+"I place my hands on these feet of Christ pierced with a nail, and
+swear that I declare the pure and clean truth. I repeat only: Defend
+yourselves, fail not; trust not the Swedes; think not that by
+submission and surrender you could insure any safety for yourselves.
+They keep no promises, no treaties. You who are closed in here know not
+what is passing in the whole country, what oppression has come, what
+deeds of violent are done,--murdering of priests, profanation of
+sanctuaries, contempt of all law. They promise you everything, they
+observe nothing. The whole kingdom is given up as plunder to a
+dissolute soldiery. Even those who still adhere to the Swedes are
+unable to escape injustice. Such is the punishment of God on traitors,
+on those who break faith with the king. Delay!--I, as you see me here,
+if only I survive, if I succeed in slipping away from Miller, will move
+straightway to Silesia, to our king. I will fall at his feet and say:
+Gracious King, save Chenstohova and your most faithful servants! But,
+most beloved fathers, stand firm, for the salvation of the whole
+Commonwealth is depending upon you."
+
+Here Sladkovski's voice trembled, tears appeared on his eyelids, but he
+spoke further. "You will have grievous times yet: siege guns are coming
+from Cracow, which two hundred infantry are bringing. One is a
+particularly dreadful cannon. Terrible assaults will follow. But these
+will be the last efforts. Endure yet these, for salvation is coming
+already. By these red wounds of God, the king, the hetmans, the army,
+the whole Commonwealth will come to rescue its Patroness. This is what
+I tell you: rescue, salvation, glory is right here--not distant."
+
+The worthy noble now burst into tears, and sobbing became universal.
+
+Ah! still better news was due to that wearied handful of defenders, to
+that handful of faithful servants, and a sure consolation from the
+country.
+
+The prior rose, approached Sladkovski, and opened wide his arms.
+Sladkovski rushed into them, and they embraced each other long; others
+following their example began to fall into one another's arms, embrace,
+kiss, and congratulate one another as if the Swedes had already
+retreated. At last the prior said,--
+
+"To the chapel, my brethren, to the chapel!"
+
+He went in advance, and after him the others. All the candles were
+lighted, for it was growing dark outside; and the curtains were drawn
+aside from the wonder-working image, from which sweet abundant rays
+were scattered at once round about. Kordetski knelt on the steps,
+farther away the monks, the nobles, and common people; women with
+children were present also. Pale and wearied faces and eyes which had
+wept were raised toward the image; but from behind the tears was
+shining on each face a smile of happiness. Silence continued for a
+time; at last Kordetski began,--
+
+"Under thy protection we take refuge, Holy Mother of God--"
+
+Further words stopped on his lips, weariness, long suffering, hidden
+alarms, together with the gladsome hope of rescue, rose in him like a
+mighty wave; therefore sobbing shook his breast, and that man, who bore
+on his shoulders the fate of the whole country, bent like a weak child,
+fell on his face, and with weeping immeasurable had strength only to
+cry: "O Mary, Mary, Mary!"
+
+All wept with him, but the image from above cast brightest rays.
+
+It was late at night when the monks and the nobles went each his own
+way to the walls; but Kordetski remained all night lying in the chapel
+in the form of a cross. There were fears in the cloister that weariness
+might overpower him; but next morning he appeared on the bastions, went
+among the soldiers and the garrison, glad and refreshed, and here and
+there he repeated,--
+
+"Children, the Most Holy Lady will show again that she is mightier than
+siege guns, and then will come the end of your sorrows and torments."
+
+That morning Yatsek Bjuhanski, an inhabitant of Chenstohova, disguised
+as a Swede, approached the walls to confirm the news that great guns
+were coming from Cracow, but also that the Khan with the horde was
+approaching. He delivered a letter from Father Anton Pashkovski, of the
+monastery at Cracow, who, describing the terrible cruelty and robbery
+of the Swedes, incited and implored the fathers of Yasna Gora to put no
+trust in the promises of the enemy, but to defend the sacred place
+patiently against the insolence of the godless.
+
+"There is no faith in the Swedes," wrote Father Pashkovski, "no
+religion. Nothing divine or human is sacred and inviolate for them. It
+is not their custom to respect anything, though guarded by treaties or
+public declarations."
+
+That was the day of the Immaculate Conception. Some tens of officers
+and soldiers of the allied Polish squadrons besought with most urgent
+requests Miller's permission to go to the fortress for divine service.
+Perhaps Miller thought that they would become friendly with the
+garrison, carry news of the siege guns and spread alarm; perhaps he did
+not wish by refusing to cast sparks on inflammable elements, which
+without that made relations between the Poles and the Swedes more and
+more dangerous: 'tis enough that he gave the permission.
+
+With these quarter soldiers went a certain Tartar of the Polish
+Mohammedan Tartars. He, amid universal astonishment, encouraged the
+monks not to yield their holy place to vile enemies, considering with
+certainty that the Swedes would soon go away with shame and defeat. The
+quarter soldiers repeated the same, confirming completely the news
+brought by Sladkovski. All this taken together raised the courage of
+the besieged to such a degree that they had no fear of those gigantic
+cannons, and the soldiers made sport of them among themselves.
+
+After services firing began on both sides. There was a certain Swedish
+soldier who had come many times to the wall, and with a trumpet-like
+voice had blasphemed against the Mother of God. Many a time had the
+besieged fired at him, but always without result. Kmita aimed at him
+once, but his bow-string broke; the soldier became more and more
+insolent, and roused others by his daring. It was said that he had
+seven devils in his service who guarded and shielded him.
+
+He came this day again to blaspheme; but the besieged, trusting that on
+the day of the Immaculate Conception enchantments would have less
+effect, determined to punish him without fail. They fired a good while
+in vain; at last a cannon ball, rebounding from an ice wall, and
+tripping along the snow like a bird, struck him straight in the breast
+and tore him in two. The defenders comforted themselves with this and
+cried out: "Who will blaspheme against Her another time?" Meanwhile the
+revilers had rushed down to the trenches, in panic.
+
+The Swedes fired at the walls and the roofs; but the balls brought no
+terror to the besieged.
+
+The old beggarwoman, Konstantsia, who dwelt in a cranny of the cliff,
+used to go, as if in ridicule of the Swedes, along the whole slope,
+gathering bullets in her apron, and threatening from time to time the
+soldiers with her staff. They, thinking her a witch, were afraid she
+would injure them, especially when they saw that bullets did not touch
+her.
+
+Two whole days passed in vain firing. They hurled on the roof ship
+ropes very thickly steeped in pitch; these flew like fiery serpents;
+but the guards, trained in a masterly manner, met the danger in time. A
+night came with such darkness that, in spite of the fires, tar barrels,
+and the fireworks of Father Lyassota, the besieged could see nothing.
+
+Meanwhile some uncommon movement reigned among the Swedes. The squeak
+of wheels was heard, men's voices, at times the neighing of horses, and
+various other kinds of uproar. The soldiers on the walls guessed the
+cause easily.
+
+"The guns have come surely," said some.
+
+The officers were deliberating on a sortie which Charnyetski advised;
+but Zamoyski opposed, insisting, with reason, that at such important
+works the enemy must have secured themselves sufficiently, and must
+surely hold infantry in readiness. They resolved merely to fire toward
+the north and south, whence the greatest noise came. It was impossible
+to see the result in the darkness.
+
+Day broke at last, and its first rays exposed the works of the Swedes.
+North and south of the fortress were intrenchments, on which some
+thousands of men were employed. These intrenchments stood so high that
+to the besieged the summits of them seemed on a line with the walls of
+the fortress. In the openings at the top were seen great jaws of guns,
+and the soldiers standing behind them looked at a distance like swarms
+of yellow wasps.
+
+The morning Mass was not over in the church when unusual thunder shook
+the air; the window-panes rattled; some of them dropped out of the
+frames from shaking alone, and were broken with a sharp shiver on the
+stone floor; and the whole church was filled with dust which rose from
+fallen plaster.
+
+The great siege guns had spoken.
+
+A terrible fire began, such as the besieged had not experienced. At the
+end of Mass all rushed out on the walls and roofs. The preceding storms
+seemed innocent play in comparison with this terrible letting loose of
+fire and iron.
+
+The smaller pieces thundered in support of the siege guns. Great bombs,
+pieces of cloth steeped in pitch, torches, and fiery ropes were flying.
+Balls twenty-six pounds in weight tore out battlements, struck the
+walls of buildings; some settled in them, others made great holes,
+tearing off plaster and bricks. The walls surrounding the cloister
+began to shake here and there and lose pieces, and struck incessantly
+by new balls threatened to fall. The buildings of the cloister were
+covered with fire.
+
+The trumpeters on the tower felt it totter under them. The church
+quaked from continuous pounding, and candles fell out of the sockets at
+some of the altars.
+
+Water was poured in immense quantities on the fires that had begun, on
+the blazing torches, on the walls, on the fire balls; and formed,
+together with the smoke and the dust, rolls of steam so thick that
+light could not be seen through them. Damage was done to the walls and
+buildings. The cry, "It is burning, it is burning!" was heard oftener
+amid the thunder of cannon and the whistle of bullets. At the northern
+bastion the two wheels of a cannon were broken, and one injured cannon
+was silent. A ball had fallen into a stable, killed three horses, and
+set fire to the building. Not only balls, but bits of grenades, were
+falling as thickly as rain on the roofs, the bastions, and the walls.
+
+In a short time the groans of the wounded were heard. By a strange
+chance three young men fell, all named Yan. This amazed other defenders
+bearing the same name; but in general the defence was worthy of the
+storm. Even women, children, and old men came out on the walls.
+Soldiers stood there with unterrified heart, in smoke and fire, amid a
+rain of missiles, and answered with determination to the fire of the
+enemy. Some seized the wheels and rolled the cannon to the most exposed
+places; others thrust into breaches in the walls stones, beams, dung,
+and earth.
+
+Women with dishevelled hair and inflamed faces gave an example of
+daring, and some were seen running with buckets of water after bombs
+which were still springing and ready to burst right there, that moment.
+Ardor rose every instant, as if that smell of powder, smoke, and steam,
+that thunder, those streams of fire and iron, had the property of
+rousing it. All acted without command, for words died amid the awful
+noise. Only the supplications which were sung in the chapel rose above
+the voices of cannon.
+
+About noon firing ceased. All drew breath; but before the gate a drum
+was sounded, and the drummer sent by Miller, approaching the gate,
+inquired if the fathers had had  enough, and if they wished to
+surrender at once. Kordetski answered that they would deliberate over
+the question till morning. The answer had barely reached Miller when
+the attack began anew, and the artillery fire was redoubled.
+
+From time to time deep ranks of infantry pushed forward under fire
+toward the mountain, as if wishing to try an assault; but decimated by
+cannon and muskets, they returned each time quickly and in disorder
+under their own batteries. As a wave of the sea covers the shore and
+when it retreats leaves on the sand weeds, mussels, and various
+fragments broken in the deep, so each one of those Swedish waves when
+it sank back left behind bodies thrown here and there on the slope.
+
+Miller did not give orders to fire at the bastions, but at the wall
+between them, where resistance was least. Indeed, here and there
+considerable rents were made, but not large enough for the infantry to
+rush through.
+
+Suddenly a certain event checked the storm.
+
+It was well toward evening when a Swedish gunner about to apply a
+lighted match to one of the largest guns was struck in the very breast
+by a ball from the cloister. The ball came not with the first force,
+but after a third bound from the ice piled up at the intrenchment; it
+merely hurled the gunner a number of yards. He fell on an open box
+partly filled with powder. A terrible explosion was heard that instant,
+and masses of smoke covered the trench. When the smoke fell away it
+appeared that five gunners had lost their lives; the wheels of the
+cannon were injured, and terror seized the soldiers. It was necessary
+to cease fire for the time from that intrenchment, since a heavy fog
+had filled the darkness; they also stopped firing in other places.
+
+The next day was Sunday. Lutheran ministers held services in the
+trenches, and the guns were silent. Miller again inquired if the
+fathers had had  enough. They answered that they could endure more.
+
+Meanwhile the damage in the cloister was examined and found to be
+considerable. People were killed and the wall was shaken here and
+there. The most formidable gun was a gigantic culverin standing on the
+north. It had broken the wall to such a degree, torn out so many stones
+and bricks, that the besieged could foresee that should the fire
+continue two days longer a considerable part of the wall would give
+away.
+
+A breach such as the culverin would make could not be filled with beams
+or earth. The prior foresaw with an eye full of sorrow the ruin which
+he could not prevent.
+
+Monday the attack was begun anew, and the gigantic gun widened the
+breach. Various mishaps met the Swedes, however. About dusk that day a
+Swedish gunner killed on the spot Miller's sister's son, whom the
+general loved as though he had been his own, and intended to leave him
+all that he had,--beginning with his name and military reputation and
+ending with his fortune. But the heart of the old warrior blazed up
+with hatred all the more from this loss.
+
+The wall at the northern bastion was so broken that preparations were
+made in the night for a hand-to-hand assault. That the infantry might
+approach the fortress with less danger, Miller commanded to throw up in
+the darkness a whole series of small redoubts, reaching the very slope.
+But the night was clear, and white light from the snow betrayed the
+movements of the enemy. The cannons of Yasna Gora scattered the men
+occupied in making those parapets formed of fascines, fences, baskets,
+and timbers.
+
+At daybreak Charnyetski saw a siege machine which they had already
+rolled toward the walls. But the besieged broke it with cannon fire
+without difficulty; so many men were killed on that occasion that the
+day might have been called a day of victory for the besieged, had it
+not been for that great gun which shook the wall incessantly with
+irrestrainable power.
+
+A thaw came on the following days, and such dense mists settled down
+that the fathers attributed them to the action of evil spirits. It was
+impossible to see either the machines of war, the erection of parapets,
+or the work of the siege. The Swedes came near the very walls of the
+cloister. In the evening Charnyetski, when the prior was making his
+usual round of the walls, took him by the side and said in a low
+voice,--
+
+"Bad, revered father! Our wall will not hold out beyond a day."
+
+"Perhaps these fogs will prevent them from firing," answered Kordetski;
+"and we meanwhile will repair the rents somehow."
+
+"The fogs will not prevent the Swedes, for that gun once aimed may
+continue even in darkness the work of destruction; but here the ruins
+are falling and falling."
+
+"In God and in the Most Holy Lady is our hope."
+
+"True! But if we make a sortie? Even were we to lose men, if they could
+only spike that dragon of hell."
+
+Just then some form looked dark in the fog, and Babinich appeared near
+the speakers.
+
+"I saw that some one was speaking; but faces cannot be distinguished
+three yards away," said he. "Good evening, revered father! But of what
+is the conversation?"
+
+"We are talking of that gun. Pan Charnyetski advises a sortie. These
+fogs are spread by Satan; I have commanded an exorcism."
+
+"Dear father," said Pan Andrei, "since that gun has begun to shake the
+wall, I am thinking of it, and something keeps coming to my head. A
+sortie is of no use. But let us go to some room; there I will tell you
+my plans."
+
+"Well," said the prior, "come to my cell."
+
+Soon after they were sitting at a pine table in Kordetski's modest
+cell. Charnyetski and the priest were looking carefully into the
+youthful face of Babinich, who said,--
+
+"A sortie is of no use in this case. They will see it and repulse it.
+Here one man must do the work."
+
+"How is that?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"One man must go and burst that cannon with powder; and he can do it
+during such fogs. It is best that he go in disguise. There are jackets
+here like those worn by the enemy. As it will not be possible to do
+otherwise, he will slip in among the Swedes; but if at this side of the
+trench from which the gun is projecting there are no soldiers, that
+will be better still."
+
+"For God's sake! what will the man do?"
+
+"It is only necessary to put a box of powder into the mouth of the gun,
+with a hanging fuse and a thread to be ignited. When the powder
+explodes, the gun--devil I wanted to say--will burst."
+
+"Oh, my son! what do you say? Is it little powder that they thrust into
+it every day, and it does not burst?"
+
+Kmita laughed, and kissed the priest on the sleeve of his habit.
+"Beloved father, there is a great heart in you, heroic and holy--"
+
+"Give peace now!" answered the prior.
+
+"And holy," repeated Kmita; "but you do not understand cannon. It is
+one thing when powder bursts in the butt of the cannon, for then it
+casts forth the ball and the force flies out forward, but another if
+you stop the mouth of a gun with powder and ignite it,--no cannon can
+stand such a trial. Ask Pan Charnyetski. The same thing will take place
+if you fill the mouth of a cannon with snow and fire it; the piece will
+burst. Such is the villanous power of powder. What will it be when a
+whole box of it explodes at the mouth? Ask Pan Charnyetski."
+
+"That is true. These are no secrets for soldiers," answered
+Charnyetski.
+
+"You see if this gun is burst," continued Kmita, "all the rest are a
+joke."
+
+"This seems impossible to me," said Kordetski; "for, first, who will
+undertake to do it?"
+
+"A certain poor fellow," said Kmita; "but he is resolute, his name is
+Babinich."
+
+"You!" cried the priest and Charnyetski together.
+
+"Ai, father, benefactor! I was with you at confession, and acknowledged
+all my deeds in sincerity; among them were deeds not worse than the one
+I am now planning; how can you doubt that I will undertake it? Do you
+not know me?"
+
+"He is a hero, a knight above knights," cried Charnyetski. And seizing
+Kmita by the neck, he continued: "Let me kiss you for the wish alone;
+give me your mouth."
+
+"Show me another remedy, and I will not go," said Kmita; "but it seems
+to me that I shall manage this matter somehow. Remember that I speak
+German as if I had been dealing in staves, wainscots, and wall plank in
+Dantzig. That means much, for if I am disguised they will not easily
+discover that I am not of their camp. But I think that no one is
+standing before the mouth of the cannon; for it is not safe there, and
+I think that I shall do the work before they can see me."
+
+"Pan Charnyetski, what do you think of this?" asked the prior, quickly.
+
+"Out of one hundred men one might return from such an undertaking; but
+_audaces fortuna juvat_ [fortune favors the bold]."
+
+"I have been in hotter places than this," said Kmita: "nothing will
+happen to me, for such is my fortune. Ai, beloved father, and what a
+difference! Ere now to exhibit myself, and for vainglory, I crawled
+into danger; but this undertaking is for the Most Holy Lady. Even
+should I have to lay down my head, which I do not foresee, say yourself
+could a more praiseworthy death be wished to any man than down there in
+this cause?"
+
+The priest was long silent, and then said at last,--
+
+"I should try to restrain you with persuasion, with prayers and
+imploring, if you wished to go for mere glory; but you are right: this
+is a question affecting the honor of the Most Holy Lady, this sacred
+place, the whole country! And you, my son, whether you return safely or
+win the palm of glory, you will gain the supreme happiness,--salvation.
+Against my heart then I say, Go; I do not detain you. Our prayers, the
+protection of God, will go with you."
+
+"In such company I shall go boldly and perish with joy."
+
+"But return, soldier of God, return safely; for you are loved with
+sincerity here. May Saint Raphael attend you and bring you back,
+cherished son, my dear child!"
+
+"Then I will begin preparations at once," said Pan Andrei, joyfully
+pressing the priest. "I will dress in Swedish fashion with a jacket and
+wide-legged boots. I will fill in the powder, and do you, father, stop
+the exorcisms for this night; fog is needful to the Swedes, but also to
+me."
+
+"And do you not wish to confess before starting?"
+
+"Of course, without that I should not go; for the devil would have
+approach to me."
+
+"Then begin with confession."
+
+Charnyetski went out of the cell, and Kmita knell down near the priest
+and purged himself of his sins. Then, gladsome as a bird, he began to
+make preparations.
+
+An hour or two later, in the deep night, he knocked again at the
+prior's cell, where Pan Charnyetski also was waiting.
+
+The two scarcely knew Pan Andrei, so good a Swede had he made himself.
+He had twirled his mustaches to his eyes and brushed them out at the
+ends; he had put his hat on one side of his head, and looked precisely
+like some cavalry officer of noted family.
+
+"As God lives, one would draw a sabre at sight of him," said
+Charnyetski.
+
+"Put the light at a distance," said Kmita; "I will show you something."
+
+When Father Kordetski had put the light aside quickly, Pan Andrei
+placed on a table a roll, a foot and a half long and as thick as the
+arm of a sturdy man, sewn up in pitched linen and filled firmly with
+powder. From one end of it was hanging a long string made of tow
+steeped in sulphur.
+
+"Well," said he, "when I put this flea-bane in the mouth of the cannon
+and ignite the string, then its belly will burst."
+
+"Lucifer would burst!" cried Pan Charnyetski. But he remembered that it
+was better not to mention the name of the foul one, and he slapped his
+own mouth.
+
+"But how will you set fire to the string?" asked Kordetski.
+
+"In that lies the whole danger, for I must strike fire. I have good
+flint, dry tinder, and steel of the best; but there will be a noise,
+and they may notice something. The string I hope will not quench, for
+it will hang at the beard of the gun, and it will be hard to see it,
+especially as it will hide itself quickly in burning; but they may
+pursue me, and I cannot flee straight toward the cloister."
+
+"Why not?" asked the priest.
+
+"For the explosion would kill me. The moment I see the spark on the
+string I must jump aside with all the strength in my legs, and when I
+have run about fifty yards, must fall to the ground under the
+intrenchment. After the explosion I shall rush toward the cloister."
+
+"My God, my God, how many dangers!" said the prior, raising his eyes to
+heaven.
+
+"Beloved father, so sure am I of returning that even emotion does not
+touch me, which on an occasion like this ought to seize me. This is
+nothing! Farewell, and pray the Lord God to give me luck. Only conduct
+me to the gate."
+
+"How is that? Do you want to go now?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"Am I to wait till daylight, or till the fog rises? Is not my head dear
+to me?"
+
+But Pan Andrei did not go that night, for just as they came to the
+gate, darkness, as if out of spite, began to grow light. Some movement
+too was heard around the great siege gun.
+
+Next morning the besieged were convinced that the gun was transferred
+to another place.
+
+The Swedes had received apparently some report of a great weakness in
+the wall a little beyond the bend near the southern bastion, and they
+determined to direct missiles to that spot. Maybe too the prior was not
+a stranger to the affair, for the day before they had seen old Kostuha
+(Konstantsia) going out of the cloister. She was employed chiefly when
+there was need of giving false reports to the Swedes. Be that as it
+may, it was a mistake on their part; for the besieged could now repair
+in the old place the wall so greatly shaken, and to make a new breach a
+number of days would be needed.
+
+The nights were clear in succession, the days full of uproar. The
+Swedes fired with terrible energy. The spirit of doubt began again to
+fly over the fortress. Among the besieged were nobles who wished to
+surrender; some of the monks too had lost heart. The opposition gained
+strength and importance. The prior made head against it with
+unrestrained energy, but his health began to give way. Meanwhile came
+reinforcements to the Swedes and supplies from Cracow, especially
+terrible explosive missiles in the form of iron cylinders filled with
+powder and lead. These caused more terror than damage to the besieged.
+
+Kmita, from the time that he had conceived the plan of bursting the
+siege gun, secreted himself in the fortress. He looked every day at the
+roll, with heart-sickness. On reflection he made it still larger, so
+that it was almost an ell long and as thick as a boot-leg. In the
+evening he cast greedy looks toward the gun, then examined the sky like
+an astrologer. But the bright moon, shining on the snow continually,
+baffled his plan.
+
+All at once a thaw came; clouds covered the horizon, and the night was
+dark,--so dark that even strain your eyes you could see nothing. Pan
+Andrei fell into such humor as if some one had given him the steed of
+the Sultan; and midnight had barely sounded when he stood before
+Charnyetski in his cavalry dress, the roll under his arm.
+
+"I am going!" said he.
+
+"Wait, I will speak to the prior."
+
+"That is well. Kiss me. Pan Pyotr, and go for the prior."
+
+Charnyetski kissed him with feeling, and turned away. He had hardly
+gone thirty steps when Kordetski stood before him in white. He had
+guessed that Kmita was going, and had come there to bless him.
+
+"Babinich is ready; he is only waiting for your reverence."
+
+"I hurry, I hurry!" answered the priest. "O Mother of God, save him and
+aid him!"
+
+After a while both were standing at the opening where Charnyetski left
+Kmita, but there was no trace of him.
+
+"He has gone!" said the prior, in amazement.
+
+"He has gone!" repeated Charnyetski.
+
+"But, the traitor!" said the prior, with emotion, "I intended to put
+this little scapular on his neck."
+
+Both ceased to speak; there was silence around, and as the darkness was
+dense there was firing from neither side. On a sudden Charnyetski
+whispered eagerly,--
+
+"As God is dear to me, he is not even trying to go in silence! Do you
+hear steps crushing the snow?"
+
+"Most Holy Lady, guard thy servant!" said the prior.
+
+Both listened carefully for a time, till the brisk steps and the noise
+on the snow had ceased.
+
+"Do you know, your reverence, at moments I think that he will succeed,
+and I fear nothing for him. The strange man went as if he were going to
+an inn to drink a glass of liquor. What courage he has in him! Either
+he will lay down his head untimely, or he will be hetman. H'm! if I did
+not know him as a servant of Mary, I should think that he has--God give
+him success, God grant it to him! for such another cavalier there is
+not in the Commonwealth."
+
+"It is so dark, so dark!" said Kordetski; "but they are on their guard
+since the night of your sortie. He might come upon a whole rank before
+he could see it."
+
+"I do not think so. The infantry are watching, that I know, and watch
+carefully; but they are in the intrenchment, not before the muzzles of
+their own cannon. If they do not hear the steps, he can easily push
+under the intrenchment, and then the height of it alone will cover
+him--Uf!"
+
+Here Charnyetski puffed and ceased speaking; for his heart began to
+beat like a hammer from expectation and alarm, and breath failed him.
+
+Kordetski made the sign of the cross in the darkness.
+
+A third person stood near the two. This was Zamoyski.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked he.
+
+"Babinich has gone to blow up the siege gun."
+
+"How is that? What is that?"
+
+"He took a roll of powder, cord, and flint, and went."
+
+Zamoyski pressed his head between his hands.
+
+"Jesus, Mary! Jesus, Mary! All alone?"
+
+"All alone."
+
+"Who let him go? That's an impossible deed!"
+
+"I. For the might of God all things are possible, even his safe
+return," said Kordetski.
+
+Zamoyski was silent. Charnyetski began to pant from emotion.
+
+"Let us pray," said the prior.
+
+The three knelt down and began to pray. But anxiety raised the hair on
+the heads of both knights. A quarter of an hour passed, half an hour,
+an hour as long as a lifetime.
+
+"There will be nothing now!" said Charnyetski, sighing deeply.
+
+All at once in the distance a gigantic column of flame burst forth, and
+a roar as if all the thunders of heaven had been hurled to the earth;
+it shook the walls, the church, and the cloister.
+
+"He has burst it, he has burst it!" shouted Charnyetski.
+
+New explosions interrupted further speech of his.
+
+Kordetski threw himself on his knees, and raising his hands, cried to
+heaven, "Most Holy Mother, Guardian, Patroness, bring him back safely!"
+
+A noise was made on the walls. The garrison, not knowing what had
+happened, seized their arms. The monks rushed from their cells. No one
+was sleeping. Even women sprang forth. Questions and answers crossed
+one another like lightnings.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"An assault!"
+
+"The Swedish gun has burst!" cried one of the cannoneers.
+
+"A miracle, a miracle!"
+
+"The largest gun is burst!"
+
+"That great one!"
+
+"Where is the prior?"
+
+"On the wall. He is praying; he did this."
+
+"Babinich burst the gun!" cried Charnyetski.
+
+"Babinich, Babinich! Praise to the Most Holy Lady! They will harm us no
+longer."
+
+At the same time sounds of confusion rose from the Swedish camp. In all
+the trenches fires began to shine. An increasing uproar was heard. By
+the light of the fires masses of soldiers were seen moving in various
+directions without order, trumpets sounded, drums rolled continually;
+to the walls came shouts in which alarm and amazement were heard.
+
+Kordetski continued kneeling on the wall.
+
+At last the night began to grow pale, but Babinich came not to the
+fortress.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+What had happened to Pan Andrei, and in what way had he been able to
+carry out his plan?
+
+After leaving the fortress he advanced some time with a sure and wary
+step. At the very end of the slope he halted and listened. It was
+silent around,--so silent in fact that his steps were heard clearly on
+the snow. In proportion as he receded from the walls, he stepped more
+carefully. He halted again, and again listened. He was somewhat afraid
+of slipping and falling, and thus dampening his precious roll; he drew
+out his rapier therefore and leaned on it. That helped him greatly.
+Thus feeling his way, after the course of half an hour he heard a
+slight sound directly in front.
+
+"Ah! they are watching. The sortie has taught them wariness," thought
+he.
+
+And he went farther now very slowly. He was glad that he had not gone
+astray, for the darkness was such that he could not see the end of the
+rapier.
+
+"Those trenches are considerably farther: I am advancing well then!"
+whispered he to himself.
+
+He hoped also not to find men before the intrenchment; for, properly
+speaking, they had nothing to do there, especially at night. It might
+be that at something like a hundred or fewer yards apart single
+sentries were stationed; but he hoped to pass them in such darkness. It
+was joyous in his soul.
+
+Kmita was not only daring but audacious. The thought of bursting the
+gigantic gun delighted him to the bottom of his soul,--not only as
+heroism, not only as an immortal service to the besieged, but as a
+terrible damage to the Swedes. He imagined how Miller would be
+astounded, how he would gnash his teeth, how he would gaze in
+helplessness on those walls; and at moments pure laughter seized him.
+
+And as he had himself said, he felt no emotion, no fear, no unquiet. It
+did not even enter his head to what an awful danger he was exposing
+himself. He went on as a school-boy goes to an orchard to make havoc
+among apples. He recalled other times when he harried Hovanski, stole
+up at night to a camp of thirty thousand with two hundred such fighters
+as himself.
+
+His comrades stood before his mind: Kokosinski, the gigantic
+Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus, the spotted Ranitski, of senatorial stock, and
+others; then for a moment he sighed after them. "If they were here
+now," thought he, "we might blow up six guns." Then the feeling of
+loneliness oppressed him somewhat, but only for a short while; soon
+memory brought before his eyes Olenka. Love spoke in him with
+immeasurable power. He was moved to tenderness. If she could see him,
+the heart would rejoice in her this time. Perhaps she thinks yet that
+he is serving the Swedes. He is serving them nicely! And soon he will
+oblige them! What will happen when she learns of all these perils? What
+will she think? She will think surely, "He is a whirlwind, but when it
+comes to a deed which no other can do, he will do it; where another
+dares not go, he will go. Such a man is that Kmita!"
+
+"Another such deed I shall never accomplish," said Pan Andrei; and
+boastfulness seized him completely. Still, in spite of these thoughts
+he did not forget where he was, whither he was going, what he intended
+to do; and he began to advance like a wolf on a night pasture. He
+looked behind once and a second time. No church, no cloister! All was
+covered with thick, impenetrable gloom. He noted, however, by the time,
+that he must have advanced far already, and that the trench might be
+right there.
+
+"I am curious to know if there are sentries," thought he.
+
+But he had not advanced two steps after giving himself this question,
+when, in front of him, was heard the tramp of measured steps and a
+number of voices inquired at various distances,--
+
+"Who goes?"
+
+Pan Andrei stood as if fixed to the earth. He felt hot.
+
+"Ours," answered a number of voices.
+
+"The watchword!"
+
+"Upsala."
+
+"The counter-sign!"
+
+"The crown."
+
+Kmita saw at this moment that there was a change of sentries. "I'll
+give you Upsala and a crown!" And he rejoiced. This was really for him
+a very favorable circumstance, for he might pass the line of guards at
+the moment of changing sentries, when the tramp of the soldiers drowned
+his own steps.
+
+In fact, he did so without the least difficulty, and went after the
+returning soldiers rather boldly up to the trench itself. There they
+made a turn to go around it; but he pushed quickly into the ditch and
+hid in it.
+
+Meanwhile objects had become somewhat more visible; Pan Andrei thanked
+Heaven, for in the previous darkness he could not by feeling have found
+the gun sought for. Now, by throwing back his head and straining his
+vision, he saw above him a black line, indicating the edge of the
+trench, and also the black outlines of the baskets between which stood
+the guns.
+
+He could indeed see their jaws thrust out a little above the trench.
+Advancing slowly in the ditch, he discovered the great gun at last. He
+halted and began to listen. From the intrenchment a noise came,--a
+murmur; evidently the infantry were near the guns, in readiness. But
+the height of the intrenchment concealed Kmita; they might hear him,
+they could not see him. Now he had only to rise from below to the mouth
+of the gun, which was high above his head.
+
+Fortunately the sides of the ditch were not too steep; and besides the
+embankment freshly made, or moist with water, had not frozen, since for
+some time there had been a thaw.
+
+Taking note of all this, Kmita began to sink holes quietly in the slope
+of the intrenchment and to climb slowly to the gun. After fifteen
+minutes' work he was able to seize the opening of the culverin. Soon he
+was hanging in the air, but his uncommon strength permitted him to hold
+himself thus till he pushed the roll into the jaws of the cannon.
+
+"Here's dog sausage for thee!" muttered he, "only don't choke with it!"
+
+Then he slipped down and began to look for the string, which, fastened
+to the inner side of the roll, was hanging to the ditch. After a while
+he felt it with his hand. But then came the greatest difficulty, for he
+had to strike fire and ignite the string.
+
+Kmita waited for a moment, thinking that the noise would increase
+somewhat among the soldiers in the breastworks. At last he began to
+strike the flint lightly with the steel. But that moment above his head
+was heard in German the question,--
+
+"Who is there in the ditch?"
+
+"It is I, Hans!" answered Kmita, without hesitation; "the devils have
+taken my ramrod into the ditch, and I am striking fire to find it."
+
+"All right, all right," said the gunner. "It is your luck there is no
+firing, for the wind would have taken your head off."
+
+"Ah!" thought Kmita, "the gun besides my charge has still its own,--so
+much the better."
+
+At that moment the sulphur-string caught, and delicate little sparks
+began to run upward along its dry exterior.
+
+It was time to disappear. Kmita hurried along the ditch with all the
+strength in his legs, not losing an instant, not thinking overmuch of
+the noise he was making. But when he had run twenty yards, curiosity
+overcame in him the feeling of his terrible danger.
+
+"The string has gone out, there is moisture in the air!" thought he;
+and he stopped. Casting a look behind, he saw a little spark yet, but
+much higher than he had left it.
+
+"Eh, am I not too near?" thought he; and fear hurried him forward.
+
+He pushed on at full speed; all at once he struck a stone and fell. At
+that moment a terrible roar rent the air; the earth trembled, pieces of
+wood, iron, stones, lumps of ice and earth, whistled about his ears,
+and here his sensations ended.
+
+After that were heard new explosions in turn. These were powder-boxes
+standing near the cannon which exploded from the shock.
+
+But Kmita did not hear these; he lay as if dead in the ditch. He did
+not hear also how, after a time of deep silence, the groans of men were
+heard, cries and shouts for help; how nearly half the army, Swedish and
+allied, assembled.
+
+The confusion and uproar lasted long, till from the chaos of testimony
+the Swedish general reached the fact that the siege-gun had been blown
+up of purpose by some one. Search was ordered immediately. In the
+morning the searching soldiers found Kmita lying in the ditch.
+
+It appeared that he was merely stunned from the explosion. He had lost,
+to begin with, control of his hands and feet. His powerlessness lasted
+the whole ensuing day. They nursed him with the utmost care. In the
+evening he had recovered his power almost completely.
+
+He was brought then by command before Miller, who occupied the middle
+place at the table in his quarters; around him sat the Prince of Hesse,
+Count Veyhard, Sadovski, all the noted officers of the Swedes, of the
+Poles, Zbrojek, Kalinski, and Kuklinovski. The last at sight of Kmita
+became blue, his eyes burned like two coals, and his mustaches began to
+quiver. Without awaiting the question of the general, he said,--
+
+"I know this bird. He is from the Chenstohova garrison. His name is
+Babinich."
+
+Kmita was silent; pallor and weariness were evident on his face, but
+his glance was bold and his countenance calm.
+
+"Did you blow up the siege-gun?" asked Miller.
+
+"I did."
+
+"How did you do it?"
+
+Kmita stated all briefly, concealed nothing. The officers looked at one
+another in amazement.
+
+"A hero!" whispered the Prince of Hesse to Sadovski.
+
+But Sadovski inclined to Count Veyhard. "Count Veyhard," asked he, "how
+are we to take a fortress with such defenders? What do you think, will
+they surrender?"
+
+"There are more of us in the fortress ready for such deeds," said
+Kmita. "You know not the day nor the hour."
+
+"I too have more than one halter in the camp," said Miller.
+
+"We know that. But you will not take Yasna Gora while there is one man
+alive there."
+
+A moment of silence followed. Then Miller inquired,--
+
+"Is your name Babinich?"
+
+Pan Andrei thought that after what he had done, and in presence of
+death, the time had come in which he had no need to conceal his name.
+Let people forget the faults and transgressions bound up with it; let
+glory and devotion shine over them.
+
+"My name is not Babinich," said he, with a certain pride, "my name is
+Andrei Kmita; I was colonel of my own personal squadron in the
+Lithuanian contingent."
+
+Hardly had Kuklinovski heard this when he sprang up as if possessed,
+stuck out his eyes, opened his mouth, and began to strike his sides
+with his hands. At last he cried,--
+
+"General, I beg for a word without delay, without delay."
+
+A murmur rose at the same time among the Polish officers, which the
+Swedes heard with wonder, since for them the name Kmita meant nothing.
+They noted at once that this must be no common soldier, for Zbrojek
+rose, and approaching the prisoner said,--
+
+"Worthy colonel, in the straits in which you are I cannot help you; but
+give me your hand, I pray."
+
+Kmita raised his head and began to snort.
+
+"I will not give a hand to traitors who serve against their country!"
+
+Zbrojek's face flushed. Kalinski, who stood right behind him, withdrew.
+The Swedish officers surrounded them at once, asking what man this
+Kmita was whose name had made such an impression. During this time
+Kuklinovski had squeezed Miller up to the window, and said,--
+
+"For your worthiness the name Kmita is nothing; but he is the first
+soldier, the first colonel, in the whole Commonwealth. All know of him,
+all know that name; once he served Radzivill and the Swedes; now it is
+clear that he has gone over to Yan Kazimir. There is not his equal
+among soldiers, save me. He was the only man who could go alone and
+blow up that gun. From this one deed you may know him. He fought
+Hovanski, so that a reward was put on his head. He with two or three
+hundred men kept up the whole war after the defeat at Shklov, until
+others were found who, imitating him, began to tear at the enemy. He is
+the most dangerous man in all the country--"
+
+"Why do you sing his praises to me?" inquired Miller. "That he is
+dangerous I know to my own irreparable loss."
+
+"What does your worthiness think of doing with him?"
+
+"I should give orders to hang him; but being a soldier myself, I know
+how to value daring and bravery. Besides, he is a noble of high
+birth,--I will order him shot, and that to-day."
+
+"Your worthiness, it is not for me to instruct the most celebrated
+soldier and statesman of modern times; but I permit myself to say that
+that man is too famous. If you shoot him, Zbrojek's squadron and
+Kalinski's will withdraw at the latest this very day, and go over to
+Yan Kazimir."
+
+"If that is true, I'll have them cut to pieces before they go!" cried
+Miller.
+
+"Your worthiness, a terrible responsibility! for if that becomes
+known,--and the cutting down of two squadrons is hard to hide,--the
+whole Polish army will leave Karl Gustav; at present their loyalty is
+tottering, as you know. The hetmans are not reliable. Pan Konyetspolski
+with six thousand of the best cavalry is at the side of our king. That
+force is no trifle. God defend us if these too should turn against us,
+against the person of his Royal Grace! Besides, this fortress defends
+itself; and to cut down the squadrons of Zbrojek and Kalinski is no
+easy matter, for Wolf is here too with his infantry. They might come to
+an agreement with the garrison of the fortress."
+
+"A hundred horned devils!" cried Miller; "what do you want,
+Kuklinovski? do you want me to give Kmita his life? That cannot be."
+
+"I want," answered Kuklinovski, "you to give him to me."
+
+"What will you do with him?"
+
+"Ah, I--will tear him alive from his skin."
+
+"You did not know even his real name, you do not know him. What have
+you against him?"
+
+"I made his acquaintance first in the fortress, where I have been twice
+as an envoy to the monks."
+
+"Have you reasons for vengeance?"
+
+"Your worthiness, I wished privately to bring him to our camp. He,
+taking advantage of the fact that I laid aside my office of envoy,
+insulted me, Kuklinovski, as no man in life has insulted me."
+
+"What did he do to you?"
+
+Kuklinovski trembled and gnashed his teeth. "Better not speak of it.
+Only give him to me. He is doomed to death anyhow, and I would like
+before his end to have a little amusement with him,--all the more
+because he is the Kmita whom formerly I venerated, and who repaid me in
+such fashion. Give him to me; it will be better for you. If I rub him
+out, Zbrojek and Kalinski and with them all the Polish knighthood will
+fall not upon you, but upon me, and I'll help myself. There will not be
+anger, wry faces, and mutiny. It will be my private matter about
+Kmita's skin, of which I shall have a drum made."
+
+Miller fell to thinking; a sudden suspicion flashed over his face.
+
+"Kuklinovski," said he, "maybe you wish to save him?"
+
+Kuklinovski smiled quietly, but that smile was so terrible and sincere
+that Miller ceased to doubt.
+
+"Perhaps you give sound advice," said he.
+
+"For all my services I beg this reward only."
+
+"Take him, then."
+
+Now both returned to the room where the rest of the officers were
+assembled. Miller turned to them and said,--
+
+"In view of the services of Pan Kuklinovski I place at his absolute
+disposal this prisoner."
+
+A moment of silence followed; then Pan Zbrojek put his hands on his
+sides, and asked with a certain accent of contempt,--
+
+"And what does Pan Kuklinovski think to do with the prisoner?"
+
+Kuklinovski bent, straightened himself quickly, his lips opened with an
+ill-omened smile, and his eyes began to quiver.
+
+"Whoso is not pleased with what I do to the prisoner, knows where to
+find me." And he shook his sabre.
+
+"Your promise, Pan Kuklinovski," said Zbrojek.
+
+"Promise, promise!"
+
+When he had said this he approached Kmita. "Follow me, little worm;
+come after me, famous soldier. Thou'rt a trifle weak; thou needst
+swathing,--I'll swathe thee."
+
+"Ruffian!" said Kmita.
+
+"Very good, very good, daring soul! Meanwhile step along."
+
+The officers remained in the room; Kuklinovski mounted his horse before
+the quarters. Having with him three soldiers, he commanded one of them
+to lead Kmita by a lariat; and all went together toward Lgota, where
+Kuklinovski's regiment was quartered.
+
+On the way Kmita prayed ardently. He saw that death was approaching,
+and he committed himself with his whole soul to God. He was so sunk in
+prayer and in his own doom that he did not hear what Kuklinovski said
+to him; he did not know even how long the road was.
+
+They stopped at last before an empty, half-ruined barn, standing in the
+open field, at some distance from the quarters of Kuklinovski's
+regiment. The colonel ordered them to lead Kmita in, and turning
+himself to one of the soldiers, said,--
+
+"Hurry for me to the camp, bring ropes and a tar bucket!"
+
+The soldier galloped with all the breath in his horse, and in quarter
+of an hour returned at the same pace, with a comrade. They had brought
+the requisite articles.
+
+"Strip this spark naked!" ordered Kuklinovski; "tie his hands and feet
+behind him with a rope, and then fasten him to a beam."
+
+"Ruffian!" said Kmita.
+
+"Good, good! we can talk yet, we have time!"
+
+Meanwhile one of the soldiers climbed up on the beam, and the others
+fell to dragging the clothes from Kmita. When he was naked the three
+executioners placed Pan Andrei with his face to the ground, bound his
+hands and feet with a long rope, then passing it still around his waist
+they threw the other end to the soldier sitting on the beam.
+
+"Now raise him, and let the man on the beam pull the rope and tie it!"
+said Kuklinovski.
+
+In a moment the order was obeyed.
+
+"Let him go!"
+
+The rope squeaked. Pan Andrei was hanging parallel with the earth, a
+few ells above the threshing-floor. Then Kuklinovski dipped tow in the
+burning tar-bucket, walked up to him, and said,--
+
+"Well, Pan Kmita, did not I say that there are two colonels in the
+Commonwealth?--only two, I and thou! And thou didst not wish to join
+company with Kuklinovski, and kicked him! Well, little worm, thou art
+right! Not for thee is the company of Kuklinovski, for Kuklinovski is
+better. Hei! a famous colonel is Pan Kmita, and Kuklinovski has him in
+his hand, and Kuklinovski is roasting his sides!"
+
+"Ruffian!" repeated Kmita, for the third time.
+
+"This is how he will roast his sides!" finished Kuklinovski, and he
+touched Kmita's side with the burning tow; then he said,--
+
+"Not too much at first; we have time."
+
+Just then the tramp of horses was heard near the barn-door.
+
+"Whom are the devils bringing?" asked Kuklinovski.
+
+The door squeaked and a soldier entered. "General Miller wishes to see
+your grace at once!"
+
+"Ah! that is thou, old man?" asked Kuklinovski. "What business? What
+devil?"
+
+"The general asks your grace to come to him straightway."
+
+"Who came from the general?"
+
+"There was a Swedish officer; he has ridden off already. He had almost
+driven the breath out of his horse."
+
+"I'll go," said Kuklinovski. Then he turned to Kmita: "It was hot for
+thee; cool off now, little worm. I'll come again soon, we'll have
+another talk."
+
+"What shall be done with the prisoner?" asked one of the soldiers.
+
+"Leave him as he is. I shall return directly. Let one go with me."
+
+The colonel went out, and with him that soldier who had sat on the beam
+at first. There remained only three, but soon three new ones entered
+the barn.
+
+"You may go to sleep," said he who had reported Miller's order to
+Kuklinovski, "the colonel has left the guard to us."
+
+"We prefer to remain," replied one of the first three soldiers, "to see
+the wonder; for such a--"
+
+Suddenly he stopped. A certain unearthly sound was wrested from his
+throat like the call of a strangled cock. He threw out his arms and
+fell as if struck by lightning.
+
+At the same moment the cry of "Pound" was heard through the barn, and
+two of the newly arrived rushed like leopards on the two remaining
+soldiers. A terrible, short struggle surged up, lighted by the gleams
+of the burning tar-bucket. After a moment two bodies fell in the straw,
+for a moment longer were heard the gasps of the dying, then that voice
+rose which at first seemed familiar to Kmita.
+
+"Your grace, it is I, Kyemlich, and my sons. We have been waiting since
+morning for a chance, we have been watching since morning." Then
+he turned to his sons: "Now out, rogues, free the colonel in a
+breath,--quickly!"
+
+And before Kmita was able to understand what was taking place there
+appeared near him the two bushy forelocks of Kosma and Damian, like two
+gigantic distaffs. The ropes were soon cut, and Kmita stood on his
+feet. He tottered at first; his stiffened lips were barely able to
+say,--
+
+"That is you?--I am thankful."
+
+"It is I!" answered the terrible old man. "Mother of God! Oh--let his
+grace dress quickly. You rogues--" And he began to give Kmita his
+clothes.
+
+"The horses are standing at the door," said he. "From here the way is
+open. There are guards; maybe they would let no one in, but as to
+letting out, they will let out. We know the password. How does your
+grace feel?"
+
+"He burned my side, but only a little. My feet are weak--"
+
+"Drink some gorailka."
+
+Kmita seized with eagerness the flask the old man gave him, and
+emptying half of it said,--
+
+"I was stiff from the cold. I shall be better at once."
+
+"Your grace will grow warm on the saddle. The horses are waiting."
+
+"In a moment I shall be better," repeated Kmita. "My side is smarting a
+little--that's nothing!--I am quite well." And he sat on the edge of a
+grain-bin.
+
+After a while he recovered his strength really, and looked with perfect
+presence of mind on the ill-omened faces of the three Kyemliches,
+lighted by the yellowish flame of the burning pitch. The old man stood
+before him.
+
+"Your grace, there is need of haste. The horses are waiting."
+
+But in Pan Andrei the Kmita of old times was roused altogether.
+
+"Oh, impossible!" cried he, suddenly; "now I am waiting for that
+traitor."
+
+The Kyemliches looked amazed, but uttered not a word,--so accustomed
+were they from former times to listen blindly to this leader.
+
+The veins came out on his forehead; his eyes were burning in the dark,
+like two stars, such was the hate and the desire of vengeance that
+gleamed in them. That which he did then was madness, he might pay for
+it with his life; but his life was made up of a series of such
+madnesses. His side pained him fiercely, so that every moment he seized
+it unwittingly with his hand; but he was thinking only of Kuklinovski,
+and he was ready to wait for him even till morning.
+
+"Listen!" said he; "did Miller really call him?"
+
+"No," answered the old man. "I invented that to manage the others here
+more easily. It would have been hard for us three against five, for
+some one might have raised a cry."
+
+"That was well. He will return alone or in company. If there are any
+people with him, then strike at once on them. Leave him to me. Then to
+horse! Has any one pistols?"
+
+"I have," said Kosma.
+
+"Give them here! Are they loaded, is there powder in the pan?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. If he comes back alone, when he enters spring on him and
+shut his mouth. You can stuff his own cap into it."
+
+"According to command," said the old man. "Your grace permits us now to
+search these? We are poor men."
+
+He pointed to the corpses lying on the straw.
+
+"No! Be on the watch. What you find on Kuklinovski will be yours."
+
+"If he returns alone," said the old man, "I fear nothing. I shall stand
+behind the door; and even if some one from the quarters should come, I
+shall say that the colonel gave orders not to admit."
+
+"That will do. Watch!"
+
+The tramp of a horse was heard behind the barn. Kmita sprang up and
+stood in the shadow at the wall. Kosma and Damian took their places
+near the door, like two cats waiting for a mouse.
+
+"He is alone," said the old man.
+
+"Alone," repeated Kosma and Damian.
+
+The tramp approached, was right there and halted suddenly.
+
+"Come out here, some one,--hold the horse!"
+
+The old man jumped out quickly. A moment of silence followed, then to
+those waiting in the barn came the following conversation,--
+
+"Is that you, Kyemlich? What the thunder! art mad, or an idiot? It is
+night, Miller is asleep. The guard will not give admission; they say
+that no officer went away. How is that?"
+
+"The officer is waiting here in the barn for your grace. He came right
+away after you rode off; he says that he missed your grace."
+
+"What does all this mean? But the prisoner?"
+
+"Is hanging."
+
+The door squeaked, and Kuklinovski pushed into the barn; but before he
+had gone a step two iron hands caught him by the throat, and smothered
+his cry of terror. Kosma and Damian, with the adroitness of genuine
+murderers, hurled him to the ground, put their knees on his breast,
+pressed him so that his ribs began to crack, and gagged him in the
+twinkle of an eye.
+
+Kmita came forward, and holding the pitch light to his eyes, said,--
+
+"Ah! this is Pan Kuklinovski! Now I have something to say to you!"
+
+Kuklinovski's face was blue, the veins were so swollen that it seemed
+they might burst any moment; but in his eyes, which were coming out of
+his head and bloodshot, there was quite as much wonder as terror.
+
+"Strip him and put him on the beam!" cried Kmita.
+
+Kosma and Damian fell to stripping him as zealously as if they wished
+to take the skin from him together with his clothing.
+
+In a quarter of an hour Kuklinovski was hanging by his hands and feet,
+like a half goose, on the beam. Then Kmita put his hands on his hips
+and began to brag terribly.
+
+"Well, Pan Kuklinovski," said he, "who is better, Kmita or Kuklinovski?"
+Then he seized the burning tow and took a step nearer. "Thy camp is
+distant one shot from a bow, thy thousand ruffians are within call,
+there is thy Swedish general a little beyond, and thou art hanging here
+from this same beam from which 'twas thy thought to roast me.--Learn to
+know Kmita! Thou hadst the thought to be equal to Kmita, to belong to
+his company, to be compared with him? Thou cut-purse, thou low ruffian,
+terror of old women, thou offscouring of man. Lord Scoundrel of
+Scoundrelton! Wry-mouth, trash, slave! I might have thee cut up like a
+kid, like a capon; but I choose to roast thee alive as thou didst think
+to roast me."
+
+Saying this, he raised the tow and applied it to the side of the
+hanging, hapless man; but he held it longer, until the odor of the
+burned flesh began to spread through the barn.
+
+Kuklinovski writhed till the rope was swinging with him. His eyes,
+fastened on Kmita, expressed terrible pain and a dumb imploring for
+pity; from his gagged lips came woful groans; but war had hardened the
+heart of Pan Andrei, and there was no pity in him, above all, none for
+traitors.
+
+Removing at last the tow from Kuklinovski's side, he put it for a while
+under his nose, rubbed with it his mustaches, his eyelashes, and his
+brows; then he said,--
+
+"I give thee thy life to meditate on Kmita. Thou wilt hang here till
+morning, and now pray to God that people find thee before thou art
+frozen."
+
+Then he turned to Kosma and Damian. "To horse!" cried he, and went out
+of the barn.
+
+Half an hour later around the four riders were quiet hills, silent and
+empty fields. The fresh breeze, not filled with smoke of powder,
+entered their lungs. Kmita rode ahead, the Kyemliches after him. They
+spoke in low voices. Pan Andrei was silent, or rather he was repeating
+in silence the morning "Our Father," for it was not long before dawn.
+
+From time to time a hiss or even a low groan was rent from his lips,
+when his burned side pained him greatly. But at the same time he felt
+on horseback and free; and the thought that he had blown up the
+greatest siege gun, and besides that had torn himself from the hands of
+Kuklinovski and had wrought vengeance on him, filled Pan Andrei with
+such consolation that in view of it the pain was nothing.
+
+Meanwhile a quiet dialogue between the father and the sons turned into
+a loud dispute.
+
+"The money belt is good," said the greedy old man; "but where are the
+rings? He had rings on his fingers; in one was a stone worth twenty
+ducats."
+
+"I forgot to take it," answered Kosma.
+
+"I wish you were killed! Let the old man think of everything, and these
+rascals haven't wit for a copper! You forgot the rings, you thieves?
+You lie like dogs!"
+
+"Then turn back, father, and look," muttered Damian.
+
+"You lie, you thieves! You hide things. You wrong your old
+father,--such sons! I wish that I had not begotten you. You will die
+without a blessing."
+
+Kmita reined in his horse somewhat. "Come this way!" called he.
+
+The dispute ceased, the Kyemliches hurried up, and they rode farther
+four abreast.
+
+"And do you know the road to the Silesian boundary?"
+asked Pan Andrei.
+
+"O Mother of God! we know, we know," answered the old man.
+
+"There are no Swedish parties on the road?"
+
+"No, for all are at Chenstohova, unless we might meet a single man; but
+God give us one!"
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"Then you served with Kuklinovski?" asked Kmita.
+
+"We did, for we thought that being near we might serve the holy monks
+and your grace, and so it has happened. We did not serve against the
+fortress,--God save us from that! we took no pay unless we found
+something on Swedes."
+
+"How on Swedes?"
+
+"For we wanted to serve the Most Holy Lady even outside the walls;
+therefore we rode around the camp at night or in the daytime, as the
+Lord God gave us; and when any of the Swedes happened alone, then
+we--that is--O Refuge of sinners!--we--"
+
+"Pounded him!" finished Kosma and Damian.
+
+Kmita laughed. "Kuklinovski had good servants in you. But did he know
+about this?"
+
+"He received a share, an income. He knew, and the scoundrel commanded
+us to give a thaler a head. Otherwise he threatened to betray us. Such
+a robber,--he wronged poor men! And we have kept faith with your grace,
+for not such is service with you. Your grace adds besides of your own;
+but he, a thaler a head, for our toil, for our labor. On him may God--"
+
+"I will reward you abundantly for what you have done," said Kmita. "I
+did not expect this of you."
+
+The distant sound of guns interrupted further words. Evidently the
+Swedes had begun to fire with the first dawn. After a while the roar
+increased. Kmita stopped his horse; it seemed to him that he
+distinguished the sound of the fortress cannon from the cannon of the
+Swedes, therefore he clinched his fist, and threatening with it in the
+direction of the enemies' camp said,--
+
+"Fire away, fire away! Where is your greatest gun now?"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The bursting of the gigantic culverin had really a crushing effect upon
+Miller, for all his hopes had rested hitherto on that gun. Infantry
+were ready for the assault, ladders and piles of fascines were
+collected; but now it was necessary to abandon all thought of a storm.
+
+The plan of blowing up the cloister by means of mines came also to
+nothing. Miners brought in previously from Olkush split, it is true,
+the rock, and approached on a diagonal to the cloister; but work
+progressed slowly. The workmen, in spite of every precaution, fell
+frequently from the guns of the church, and labored unwillingly. Many
+of them preferred to die rather than aid in the destruction of a sacred
+place.
+
+Miller felt a daily increasing opposition. The frost took away the
+remnant of courage from his unwilling troops, among whom terror was
+spreading from day to day with a belief that the capture of the
+cloister did not lie within human power.
+
+Finally Miller himself began to lose hope, and after the bursting of
+the gun he was simply in despair; a feeling of helplessness and
+impotence took possession of him. Next morning he called a council, but
+he called it with the secret wish to hear from officers encouragement
+to abandon the fortress.
+
+They began to assemble, all wearied and gloomy. In silence they took
+their places around a table in an enormous and cold room, in which the
+steam from their breaths stood before their faces, and they looked from
+behind it as from behind a cloud. Each one felt in his soul exhaustion
+and weariness; each one said to himself: "There is no counsel to give
+save one, which it is better for no man to be the first to give." All
+waited for what Miller would say. He ordered first of all to bring
+plenty of heated wine, hoping that under the influence of warm drink it
+would be easier to obtain a real thought from those silent figures, and
+encouragement to retreat from the fortress.
+
+At last, when he supposed that the wine had produced its effect, he
+spoke in the following words--
+
+"Have you noticed, gentlemen, that none of the Polish colonels have
+come to this council, though I summoned them all?"
+
+"It is known of course to your worthiness that servants of the Polish
+squadron have, while fishing, found silver belonging to the cloister,
+and that they fought for it with our soldiers. More than ten men have
+been cut down."
+
+"I know; I succeeded in snatching a part of that silver from their
+hands, indeed the greater part. It is here now, and I am thinking what
+to do with it."
+
+"This is surely the cause of the anger of the Polish colonels. They say
+that if the Poles found the silver, it belongs to the Poles."
+
+"That's a reason!" cried Count Veyhard.
+
+"For my mind, it is a strong reason," said Sadovski; "and I think that
+if you had found the silver you would not feel bound to divide it, not
+only with the Poles, but even with me, a Cheh."
+
+"First of all, my dear sir, I do not share your good will for the
+enemies of our king," answered the count, with a frown.
+
+"But we, thanks to you, must share with you shame and disgrace, not
+being able to succeed against a fortress to which you have brought us."
+
+"Then have you lost all hope?"
+
+"But have you any yourself to give away?"
+
+"Just as if you knew; and I think that these gentlemen share more
+willingly with me in my hope, than with you in your fear."
+
+"Do you make me a coward, Count Veyhard?"
+
+"I do not ascribe to you more courage than you show."
+
+"And I ascribe to you less."
+
+"But I," said Miller, who for some time had looked on the count with
+dislike as the instigator of the ill-starred undertaking, "shall have
+the silver sent to the cloister. Perhaps kindness and graciousness will
+do more with these surly monks than balls and cannon. Let them
+understand that we wish to possess the fortress, not their treasures."
+
+The officers looked on Miller with wonder, so little accustomed were
+they to magnanimity from him. At last Sadovski said,--
+
+"Nothing better could be done, for it will close at once the mouths of
+the Polish colonels who lay claim to the silver. In the fortress it
+will surely make a good impression."
+
+"The death of that Kmita will make the best impression," answered Count
+Veyhard. "I hope that Kuklinovski has already torn him out of his
+skin."
+
+"I think that he is no longer alive," said Miller. "But that name
+reminds me of our loss, which nothing can make good. That was the
+greatest gun in the whole artillery of his grace. I do not hide from
+you, gentlemen, that all my hopes were placed on it. The breach was
+already made, terror was spreading in the fortress. A couple of days
+longer and we should have moved to a storm. Now all our labor is
+useless, all our exertions vain. They will repair the wall in one day.
+And the guns which we have now are no better than those of the
+fortress, and can be easily dismounted. No larger ones can be had
+anywhere, for even Marshal Wittemberg hasn't them. The more I ponder
+over it, the more the disaster seems dreadful. And to think that one
+man did this,--one dog! one Satan! I shall go mad! To all the horned
+devils!"
+
+Here Miller struck the table with his fist, for unrestrained anger had
+seized him, the more desperately because he was powerless. After a
+while he cried,--
+
+"But what will the king say when he hears of this loss?" After a while
+he added: "And what shall we do? We cannot gnaw away that cliff with
+our teeth. Would that the plague might strike those who persuaded me to
+come to this fortress!"
+
+Having said this, he took a crystal goblet, and in his excitement
+hurled it to the floor so that the crystal was broken into small bits.
+
+This unbecoming frenzy, more befitting a peasant than a warrior holding
+such a high office, turned all hearts from him, and soured good-humor
+completely.
+
+"Give counsel, gentlemen!" cried Miller.
+
+"It is possible to counsel, but only in calmness," answered the Prince
+of Hesse.
+
+Miller began to puff and blow out his anger through his nostrils. After
+a time he grew calm, and passing his eyes over those present as if
+encouraging them with a glance, he said,--
+
+"I ask your pardon, gentlemen, but my anger is not strange. I will not
+mention those places which, when I had taken command after Torstenson,
+I captured, for I do not wish, in view of the present disaster, to
+boast of past fortune. All that is done at this fortress simply passes
+reason. But still it is necessary to take counsel. For that purpose I
+have summoned you. Deliberate, then, and what the majority of us
+determine at this council will be done."
+
+"Let your worthiness give us the subject for deliberation," said the
+Prince of Hesse. "Have we to deliberate only concerning the capture of
+the fortress, or also concerning this, whether it is better to
+withdraw?"
+
+Miller did not wish to put the question so clearly, or at least he did
+not wish the "either--or," to come first from his mouth; therefore he
+said,--
+
+"Let each speak clearly what he thinks. It should be a question for us
+of the profit and praise of the king."
+
+But none of the officers wished more than Miller to appear first with
+the proposition to retreat, therefore there was silence again.
+
+"Pan Sadovski," said Miller after a while, in a voice which he tried to
+make agreeable and kind, "you say what you think more sincerely than
+others, for your reputation insures you against all suspicion."
+
+"I think, General," answered the colonel, "that Kmita was one of the
+greatest soldiers of this age, and that our position is desperate."
+
+"But you were in favor of withdrawing from the fortress?"
+
+"With permission of your worthiness, I was only in favor of not
+beginning the siege. That is a thing quite different."
+
+"Then what do you advise now?"
+
+"Now I give the floor to Count Veyhard."
+
+Miller swore like a pagan.
+
+"Count Veyhard will answer for this unfortunate affair," said he.
+
+"My counsels have not all been carried out," answered the count,
+insolently. "I can boldly cast responsibility from myself. There were
+men who with a wonderful, in truth an inexplicable, good-will for the
+priests, dissuaded his worthiness from all severe measures. My advice
+was to hang those envoy priests, and I am convinced that if this had
+been done terror would have opened to us before this time the gates of
+that hen-house."
+
+Here the count looked at Sadovski; but before the latter had answered,
+the Prince of Hesse interfered: "Count, do not call that fortress a
+hen-house, for the more you decrease its importance the more you
+increase our shame."
+
+"Nevertheless I advised to hang the envoys. Terror and always terror,
+that is what I repeated from morning till night; but Pan Sadovski
+threatened resignation, and the priests went unharmed."
+
+"Go, Count, to-day to the fortress," answered Sadovski, "blow up with
+powder their greatest gun as Kmita did ours, and I guarantee that, that
+will spread more terror than a murderous execution of envoys."
+
+The count turned directly to Miller: "Your worthiness I thought we had
+come here for counsel and not for amusement."
+
+"Have you an answer to baseless reproaches?" asked Miller.
+
+"I have, in spite of the joyousness of these gentlemen, who might save
+their humor for better times."
+
+"Oh, son of Laertes, famous for stratagems!" exclaimed the Prince of
+Hesse.
+
+"Gentlemen," answered the count, "it is universally known that not
+Minerva but Mars is your guardian deity; but since Mars has not favored
+you, and you have renounced your right of speech, let me speak."
+
+"The mountain is beginning to groan, and soon we shall see the small
+tail of a mouse," said Sadovski.
+
+"I ask for silence!" said Miller, severely. "Speak, Count, but keep in
+mind that up to this moment your counsels have given bitter fruit."
+
+"Which, though it is winter, we must eat like mouldy biscuits," put in
+the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"This explains why your princely highness drinks so much wine," said
+Count Veyhard; "and though it does not take the place of native wit, it
+helps you to a happy digestion of even disgrace. But no matter! I know
+well that there is a party in the fortress which is long desirous of
+surrender, and that only our weakness on one side and the superhuman
+stubbornness of the prior on the other keep it in check. New terror
+will give this party new power; for this purpose we should show that we
+make no account of the loss of the gun, and storm the more vigorously."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Even if it were all, I think that such counsel is more in accordance
+with the honor of Swedish soldiers than barren jests at cups, or than
+sleeping after drinking-bouts. But that is not all. We should spread
+the report among our soldiers, and especially among the Poles, that the
+men at work now making a mine have discovered the old underground
+passage leading to the cloister and the church."
+
+"That is good counsel," said Miller.
+
+"When this report is spread among the soldiers and the Poles, the Poles
+themselves will persuade the monks to surrender, for it is a question
+with them as with the monks, that that nest of superstitions should
+remain intact."
+
+"For a Catholic that is not bad!" muttered Sadovski.
+
+"If he served the Turks he would call Rome a nest of superstitions,"
+said the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"Then, beyond doubt, the Poles will send envoys to the priests,"
+continued Count Veyhard,--"that party in the cloister, which is long
+anxious for surrender will renew its efforts under the influence of
+fear; and who knows but its members will force the prior and the
+stubborn to open the gates?"
+
+"The city of Priam will perish through the cunning of the divine son of
+Laertes," declaimed the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"As God lives, a real Trojan history, and he thinks he has invented
+something new!" said Sadovski.
+
+But the advice pleased Miller, for in very truth it was not bad. The
+party which the count spoke of existed really in the cloister. Even
+some priests of weaker soul belonged to it. Besides, fear might extend
+among the garrison, including even those who so far were ready to
+defend it to the last drop of blood.
+
+"Let us try, let us try!" said Miller, who like a drowning man seized
+every plank, and from despair passed easily to hope. "But will
+Kuklinovski or Zbrojek agree to go again as envoys to the cloister, or
+will they believe in that passage, and will they inform the priests of
+it?"
+
+"In every case Kuklinovski will agree," answered the count; "but it is
+better that he should believe really in the existence of the passage."
+
+At that moment they heard the tramp of a horse in front of the
+quarters.
+
+"There, Pan Zbrojek has come!" said the Prince of Hesse, looking
+through the window.
+
+A moment later spurs rattled, and Zbrojek entered, or rather rushed
+into the room. His face was pale, excited, and before the officers
+could ask the cause of his excitement the colonel cried,--
+
+"Kuklinovski is no longer living!"
+
+"How? What do you say? What has happened?" exclaimed Miller.
+
+"Let me catch breath," said Zbrojek, "for what I have seen passes
+imagination."
+
+"Talk more quickly. Has he been murdered?" cried all.
+
+"By Kmita," answered Zbrojek.
+
+The officers all sprang from their seats, and began to look at Zbrojek
+as at a madman; and he, while blowing in quick succession bunches of
+steam from his nostrils, said,--
+
+"If I had not seen I should not have believed, for that is not a human
+power. Kuklinovski is not living, three soldiers are killed, and of
+Kmita not a trace. I know that he was a terrible man. His reputation is
+known in the whole country. But for him, a prisoner and bound, not only
+to free himself, but to kill the soldiers and torture Kuklinovski to
+death,--that a man could not do, only a devil!"
+
+"Nothing like that has ever happened; that's impossible of belief!"
+whispered Sadovski.
+
+"That Kmita has shown what he can do," said the Prince of Hesse. "We
+did not believe the Poles yesterday when they told us what kind of bird
+he was; we thought they were telling big stories, as is usual with
+them."
+
+"Enough to drive a man mad," said the count.
+
+Miller seized his head with his hands, and said nothing. When at last
+he raised his eyes, flashes of wrath were crossing in them with flashes
+of suspicion.
+
+"Pan Zbrojek," said he, "though he were Satan and not a man, he could
+not do this without some treason, without assistance. Kmita had his
+admirers here; Kuklinovski his enemies, and you belong to the number."
+
+Zbrojek was in the full sense of the word an insolent soldier;
+therefore when he heard an accusation directed against himself, he grew
+still paler, sprang from his place, approached Miller, and halting in
+front of him looked him straight in the eyes.
+
+"Does your worthiness suspect me?" inquired he.
+
+A very oppressive moment followed. The officers present had not the
+slightest doubt were Miller to give an affirmative answer something
+would follow terrible and unparalled in the history of camps. All hands
+rested on their rapier hilts. Sadovski even drew his weapon altogether.
+
+But at that moment the officers saw before the window a yard filled
+with Polish horsemen. Probably they also had come with news of
+Kuklinovski, but in case of collision they would stand beyond doubt on
+Zbrojek's side. Miller too saw them, and though the paleness of rage
+had come on his face, still he restrained himself, and feigning to see
+no challenge in Zbrojek's action, he answered in a voice which he
+strove to make natural,--
+
+"Tell in detail how it happened."
+
+Zbrojek stood for a time yet with nostrils distended, but he too
+remembered himself; and then his thoughts turned in another direction,
+for his comrades, who had just ridden up, entered the room.
+
+"Kuklinovski is murdered!" repeated they, one after another.
+"Kuklinovski is killed! His regiment will scatter! His soldiers are
+going wild!"
+
+"Gentlemen, permit Pan Zbrojek to speak; he brought the news first,"
+cried Miller.
+
+After a while there was silence, and Zbrojek spoke as follows,--
+
+"It is known to you, gentlemen, that at the last council I challenged
+Kuklinovski on the word of a cavalier. I was an admirer of Kmita, it is
+true; but even you, though his enemies, must acknowledge that no common
+man could have done such a deed as bursting that cannon. It behooves us
+to esteem daring even in an enemy; therefore I offered him my hand, but
+he refused his, and called me a traitor. Then I thought to myself, 'Let
+Kuklinovski do what he likes with him.' My only other thought was this:
+'If Kuklinovski acts against knightly honor in dealing with Kmita, the
+disgrace of his deed must not fall on all Poles, and among others on
+me.' For that very reason I wished surely to fight with Kuklinovski,
+and this morning taking two comrades, I set out for his camp. We come
+to his quarters; they say there, 'He is not at home.' I send to this
+place,--he is not here. At his quarters they tell us, 'He has not
+returned the whole night.' But they are not alarmed, for they think
+that he has remained with your worthiness. At last one soldier says,
+'Last evening he went to that little barn in the field with Kmita, whom
+he was going to burn there.' I ride to the barn; the doors are wide
+open. I enter; I see inside a naked body hanging from a beam. 'That is
+Kmita,' thought I; but when my eyes have grown used to the darkness, I
+see that the body is some thin and bony one, and Kmita looked like a
+Hercules. It is a wonder to me that he could shrink so much in one
+night. I draw near--Kuklinovski!"
+
+"Hanging from the beam?" asked Miller.
+
+"Exactly! I make the sign of the cross,--I think, 'Is it witchcraft, an
+omen, deception, or what?' But when I saw three corpses of soldiers,
+the truth stood as if living before me. That terrible man had killed
+these, hung Kuklinovski, burned him like an executioner, and then
+escaped."
+
+"It is not far to the Silesian boundary," said Sadovski.
+
+A moment of silence followed. Every suspicion of Zbrojek's
+participation in the affair was extinguished in Miller's soul. But the
+event itself astonished and filled him with a certain undefined fear.
+He saw dangers rising around, or rather their terrible shadows, against
+which he knew not how to struggle; he felt that some kind of chain of
+failures surrounded him. The first links were before his eyes, but
+farther the gloom of the future was lying. Just such a feeling mastered
+him as if he were in a cracked house which might fall on his head any
+moment. Uncertainty crushed him with an insupportable weight, and he
+asked himself what he had to lay hands on.
+
+Meanwhile Count Veyhard struck himself on the forehead. "As God lives,"
+said he, "when I saw this Kmita yesterday it seemed as if I had known
+him somewhere. Now again I see before me that face. I remember the
+sound of his voice. I must have met him for a short time and in the
+dark, in the evening; but he is going through my head,--going--" Here
+he began to rub his forehead with his hand.
+
+"What is that to us?" asked Miller; "you will not mend the gun, even
+should you remember; you will not bring Kuklinovski to life."
+
+Here he turned to the officers. "Gentlemen, come with me, whoso wishes,
+to the scene of this deed."
+
+All wished to go, for curiosity was exciting them. Horses were brought,
+and they moved on at a trot, the general at the head. When they came to
+the little barn they saw a number of tens of Polish horsemen scattered
+around that building, on the road, and along the field.
+
+"What men are they?" asked Miller of Zbrojek.
+
+"They must be Kuklinovski's; I tell your worthiness that those
+ragamuffins have simply gone wild."
+
+Zbrojek then beckoned to one of the horsemen,--
+
+"Come this way, come this way. Quickly!"
+
+The soldier rode up.
+
+"Are you Kuklinovski's men?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is the rest of the regiment?"
+
+"They have run away. They refused to serve longer against Yasna Gora."
+
+"What does he say?" asked Miller.
+
+Zbrojek interpreted the words.
+
+"Ask him where they went to."
+
+Zbrojek repeated the question.
+
+"It is unknown," said the soldier. "Some have gone to Silesia. Others
+said that they would serve with Kmita, for there is not another such
+colonel either among the Poles or the Swedes."
+
+When Zbrojek interpreted these words to Miller, he grew serious. In
+truth, such men as Kuklinovski had were ready to pass over to the
+command of Kmita without hesitation. But then they might become
+terrible, if not for Miller's army, at least for his supplies and
+communication. A river of perils was rising higher and higher around
+the enchanted fortress.
+
+Zbrojek, into whose head this idea must have come, said, as if in
+answer to these thoughts of Miller: "It is certain that everything is
+in a storm now in our Commonwealth. Let only such a Kmita shout,
+hundreds and thousands will surround him, especially after what he has
+done."
+
+"But what can he effect?" asked Miller.
+
+"Remember, your worthiness, that that man brought Hovanski to
+desperation, and Hovanski had, counting the Cossacks, six times as
+many men as we. Not a transport will come to us without his permission,
+the country houses are destroyed, and we are beginning to feel hunger.
+Besides, this Kmita may join with Jegotski and Kulesha; then he will
+have several thousand sabres at his call. He is a grievous man, and may
+become most harmful."
+
+"Are you sure of your soldiers?"
+
+"Surer than of myself," answered Zbrojek, with brutal frankness.
+
+"How surer?"
+
+"For, to tell the truth, we have all of us enough of this siege."
+
+"I trust that it will soon come to an end."
+
+"Only the question is: How? But for that matter to capture this
+fortress is at present as great a calamity as to retire from it."
+
+Meanwhile they had reached the little barn. Miller dismounted, after
+him the officers, and all entered. The soldiers had removed Kuklinovski
+from the beam, and covering him with a rug laid him on his back on
+remnants of straw. The bodies of three soldiers lay at one side, placed
+evenly one by the other.
+
+"These were killed with knives."
+
+"But Kuklinovski?"
+
+"There are no wounds on Kuklinovski, but his side is roasted and his
+mustaches daubed with pitch. He must have perished of cold or
+suffocation, for he holds his own cap in his teeth to this moment."
+
+"Uncover him."
+
+The soldier raised a corner of the rug, and a terrible face was
+uncovered, swollen, with eyes bursting out. On the remnants of his
+pitched mustaches were icicles formed from his frozen breath and mixed
+with soot, making as it were tusks sticking out of his mouth. That face
+was so revolting that Miller, though accustomed to all kinds of
+ghastliness, shuddered and said,--
+
+"Cover it quickly. Terrible, terrible!"
+
+Silence reigned in the barn.
+
+"Why have we come here?" asked the Prince of Hesse, spitting. "I shall
+not touch food for a whole day."
+
+All at once some kind of uncommon exasperation closely bordering on
+frenzy took possession of Miller. His face became blue, his eyes
+expanded, he began to gnash his teeth, a wild thirst for the blood of
+some one had seized him; then turning to Zbrojek, he screamed,--
+
+"Where is that soldier who saw that Kuklinovski was in the barn? He
+must be a confederate!"
+
+"I know not whether that soldier is here yet," answered Zbrojek. "All
+Kuklinovski's men have scattered like oxen let out from the yoke."
+
+"Then catch him!" bellowed Miller, in fury.
+
+"Catch him yourself!" cried Zbrojek, in similar fury.
+
+And again a terrible outburst hung as it were on a spider-web over the
+heads of the Swedes and the Poles. The latter began to gather around
+Zbrojek, moving their mustaches threateningly and rattling their
+sabres.
+
+During this noise the echoes of shots and the tramp of horses were
+heard, and into the barn rushed a Swedish officer of cavalry.
+
+"General!" cried he. "A sortie from the cloister! The men working at
+the mine have been cut to pieces! A party of infantry is scattered!"
+
+"I shall go wild!" roared Miller, seizing the hair of his wig. "To
+horse!"
+
+In a moment they were all rushing like a whirlwind toward the cloister,
+so that lumps of snow fell like hail from the hoofs of their horses. A
+hundred of Sadovski's cavalry, under command of his brother, joined
+Miller and ran to assist. On the way they saw parties of terrified
+infantry fleeing in disorder and panic, so fallen were the hearts of
+the Swedish infantry, elsewhere unrivalled. They had left even trenches
+which were not threatened by any danger. The oncoming officers and
+cavalry trampled a few, and rode finally to within a furlong of the
+fortress, but only to see on the height as clearly as on the palm of
+the hand, the attacking party returning safely to the cloister; songs,
+shouts of joy, and laughter came from them to Miller's ears.
+
+Single persons stood forth and threatened with bloody sabres in the
+direction of the staff. The Poles present at the side of the Swedish
+general recognized Zamoyski himself, who had led the sortie in person,
+and who, when he saw the staff, stopped and saluted it solemnly with
+his cap. No wonder he felt safe under cover of the fortress cannon.
+
+And, in fact, it began to smoke on the walls, and iron flocks of cannon
+balls were flying with terrible whistling among the officers. Troopers
+tottered in their saddles, and groans answered whistles.
+
+"We are under fire. Retreat!" commanded Sadovski.
+
+Zbrojek seized the reins of Miller's horse. "General, withdraw! It is
+death here!"
+
+Miller, as if he had become torpid, said not a word, and let himself be
+led out of range of the missiles. Returning to his quarters, he locked
+himself in, and for a whole day would see no man. He was meditating
+surely over his fame of Poliorcetes.
+
+Count Veyhard now took all power in hand, and began with immense energy
+to make preparations for a storm. New breastworks were thrown up; the
+soldiers succeeding the miners broke the cliff unweariedly to prepare a
+mine. A feverish movement continued in the whole Swedish camp. It
+seemed that a new spirit had entered the besiegers, or that
+reinforcements had come. A few days later the news thundered through
+the Swedish and allied Polish camps that the miners had found a passage
+going under the church and the cloister, and that it depended now only
+on the good-will of the general to blow up the whole fortress.
+
+Delight seized the soldiers worn out with cold, hunger, and fruitless
+toil. Shouts of: "We have Chenstohova! We'll blow up that hen-house!"
+ran from mouth to mouth. Feasting and drinking began.
+
+The count was present everywhere; he encouraged the soldiers, kept them
+in that belief, repeated a hundred times daily the news of finding the
+passage, incited to feasting and frolics.
+
+The echo of this gladness reached the cloister at last. News of the
+mines dug and ready to explode ran with the speed of lightning from
+rampart to rampart. Even the most daring were frightened. Weeping women
+began to besiege the prior's dwelling, to hold out to him their
+children when he appeared for a while, and cry,--
+
+"Destroy not the innocent! Their blood will fall on thy head!"
+
+The greater coward a man had been, the greater his daring now in urging
+Kordetski not to expose to destruction the sacred place, the capital of
+the Most Holy Lady.
+
+Such grievous, painful times followed, for the unbending soul of our
+hero in a habit, as had not been till that hour. It was fortunate that
+the Swedes ceased their assaults, so as to prove more convincingly that
+they needed no longer either balls or cannon, that it was enough for
+them to ignite one little powder fuse. But for this very reason terror
+increased in the cloister. In the hour of deep night it seemed to some,
+the most timid, that they heard under the earth certain sounds, certain
+movements; that the Swedes were already under the cloister. Finally, a
+considerable number of the monks fell in spirit. Those, with Father
+Stradomski at the head of them, went to the prior and urged him to
+begin negotiations at once for surrender. The greater part of the
+soldiers went with them, and some of the nobles.
+
+Kordetski appeared in the courtyard, and when the throng gathered
+around him in a close circle, he said,--
+
+"Have we not sworn to one another to defend this holy place to the last
+drop of our blood? In truth, I tell you that if powder hurls us forth,
+only our wretched bodies, only the temporary covering, will fall away
+and return to the earth, but the souls will not return,--heaven will
+open above them, and they will enter into rejoicing and happiness, as
+into a sea without bounds. There Jesus Christ will receive them, and
+that Most Holy Mother will meet them, and they like golden bees will
+sit on her robe, and will sink in light and gaze on the face of the
+Lord."
+
+Here the reflection of that brightness was gleaming on his face. He
+raised his inspired eyes upward, and spoke on with a dignity and a calm
+not of earth:--
+
+"O Lord, the Ruler of worlds, Thou art looking into my heart, and Thou
+knowest that I am not deceiving this people when I say that if I
+desired only my own happiness I would stretch out my hands to Thee and
+cry from the depth of my soul: O Lord! let powder be there, let it
+explode, for in such a death is redemption of sins and faults, for it
+is eternal rest, and Thy servant is weary and toil worn over-much. And
+who would not wish a reward of such kind, for a death without pain and
+as short as the twinkle of an eye, as a flash in the heavens, after
+which is eternity unbroken, happiness inexhaustible, joy without end.
+But Thou hast commanded me to guard Thy retreat, therefore it is not
+permitted me to go. Thou hast placed me on guard, therefore Thou hast
+poured into me Thy strength, and I know, O Lord, I see and feel that
+although the malice of the enemy were to force itself under this
+church, though all the powder and destructive saltpetre were placed
+there, it would be enough for me to make the sign of the cross above
+them and they would never explode."
+
+Here he turned to the assembly and continued: "God has given me this
+power, but do you take fear out of your hearts. My spirit pierces the
+earth and tells you; Your enemies lie, there are no powder dragons
+under the church. You, people of timid hearts, you in whom fear has
+stifled faith, deserve not to enter the kingdom of grace and repose
+to-day. There is no powder under your feet then! God wishes to preserve
+this retreat, so that, like Noah's ark, it may be borne above the
+deluge of disasters and mishap; therefore, in the name of God, for the
+third time I tell you, there is no powder under the church. And when I
+speak in His name, who will make bold to oppose me, who will dare still
+to doubt?"
+
+When he had said this he was silent and looked at the throng of monks,
+nobles, and soldiers. But such was the unshaken faith, the conviction
+and power in his voice that they were silent also, and no man came
+forward. On the contrary, solace began to enter their hearts, till at
+last one of the soldiers, a simple peasant, said,--
+
+"Praise to the name of the Lord! For three days they say they are able
+to blow up the fortress; why do they not blow it up?"
+
+"Praise to the Most Holy Lady! Why do they not blow it up?" repeated a
+number of voices.
+
+Then a wonderful sign was made manifest. Behold all about them on a
+sudden was heard the sound of wings, and whole flocks of small winter
+birds appeared in the court of the fortress, and every moment new ones
+flew in from the starved country-places around. Birds such as gray
+larks, ortolans, buntings with yellow breasts, poor sparrows, green
+titmice, red bulfinches, sat on the slopes of the roofs, on the corners
+over the doors, on the church; others flew around in a many-colored
+crown above the head of the prior, flapping their wings, chirping sadly
+as if begging for alms, and having no fear whatever of man. People
+present were amazed at the sight; and Kordetski, after he had prayed
+for a while, said at last,--
+
+"See these little birds of the forest. They come to the protection of
+the Mother of God, but you doubt Her power."
+
+Consolation and hope had entered their hearts; the monks, beating their
+breasts, went to the church, and the soldiers mounted the walls.
+
+Women scattered grain to the birds, which began to pick it up eagerly.
+
+All interpreted the visit of these tiny forest-dwellers as a sign of
+success to themselves, and of evil to the enemy.
+
+"Fierce snows must be lying, when these little birds, caring neither
+for shots nor the thunder of cannon, flock to our buildings," said the
+soldiers.
+
+"But why do they fly from the Swedes to us?"
+
+"Because the meanest creature has the wit to distinguish an enemy from
+a friend."
+
+"That cannot be," said another soldier, "for in the Swedish camp are
+Poles too; but it means that there must be hunger there, and a lack of
+oats for the horses."
+
+"It means still better," said a third, "that what they say of the
+powder is downright falsehood."
+
+"How is that?" asked all, in one voice.
+
+"Old people say," replied the soldier, "that if a house is to fall, the
+sparrows and swallows having nests in spring under the roof, go away
+two or three days in advance; every creature has sense to feel danger
+beforehand. Now if powder were under the cloister, these little birds
+would not fly to us."
+
+"Is that true?"
+
+"As true as Amen to 'Our Father!'"
+
+"Praise to the Most Holy Lady! it will be bad for the Swedes."
+
+At this moment the sound of a trumpet was heard at the northwestern
+gate; all ran to see who was coming.
+
+It was a Swedish trumpeter with a letter from the camp. The monks
+assembled at once in the council hall. The letter was from Count
+Veyhard, and announced that if the fortress were not surrendered before
+the following day it would be hurled into the air. But those who before
+had fallen under the weight of fear had no faith now in this threat.
+
+"Those are vain threats!" said the priests and the nobles together.
+
+"Let us write to them not to spare us; let them blow us up!"
+
+And in fact they answered in that sense.
+
+Meanwhile the soldiers who had gathered around the trumpeter answered
+his warnings with ridicule.
+
+"Good!" said they to him. "Why do you spare us? We will go the sooner
+to heaven."
+
+But the man who delivered the answering letter to the messenger said,--
+
+"Do not lose words and time for nothing. Want is gnawing you, but we
+lack nothing, praise be to God! Even the birds fly away from you."
+
+And in this way Count Veyhard's last trick came to nothing. And when
+another day had passed it was shown with perfect proof how vain were
+the fears of the besieged, and peace returned to the cloister.
+
+The following day a worthy man from Chenstohova, Yatsek Bjuhanski, left
+a letter again giving warning of a storm; also news of the return of
+Yan Kazimir from Silesia, and the uprising of the whole Commonwealth
+against the Swedes. But according to reports circulating outside the
+walls, this was to be the last storm.
+
+Bjuhanski brought the letter with a bag of fish to the priests for
+Christmas Eve, and approached the walls disguised as a Swedish soldier.
+Poor man!-the Swedes saw him and seized him. Miller gave command to
+stretch him on the rack; but the old man had heavenly visions in the
+time of his torture, and smiled as sweetly as a child, and instead of
+pain unspeakable joy was depicted on his face. The general was present
+at the torture, but he gained no confession from the martyr; he merely
+acquired the despairing conviction that nothing could bend those
+people, nothing could break them.
+
+Now came the old beggarwoman Kostuha, with a letter from Kordetski
+begging most humbly that the storm be delayed during service on the day
+of Christ's birth. The guards and the officers received the beggarwoman
+with insults and jeers at such an envoy, but she answered them straight
+in the face,--
+
+"No other would come, for to envoys you are as murderers, and I took
+the office for bread,--a crust. I shall not be long in this world; I
+have no fear of you: if you do not believe, you have me in your hands."
+
+But no harm was done her. What is more, Miller, eager to try
+conciliation again, agreed to the prior's request, even accepted a
+ransom for Bjuhanski, not yet tortured quite out of his life; he sent
+also that part of the silver found with the Swedish soldiers. He did
+this last out of malice to Count Veyhard, who after the failure of the
+mine had fallen into disfavor again.
+
+At last Christmas Eve came. With the first star, lights great and small
+began to shine all around in the fortress. The night was still, frosty,
+but clear. The Swedish soldiers, stiffened with cold in the
+intrenchments, gazed from below on the dark walls of the unapproachable
+fortress, and to their minds came the warm Scandinavian cottages
+stuffed with moss, their wives and children, the fir-tree gleaming with
+lights; and more than one iron breast swelled with a sigh, with regret,
+with homesickness, with despair. But in the fortress, at tables covered
+with hay, the besieged were breaking wafers. A quiet joy was shining in
+all faces, for each one had the foreboding, almost the certainty, that
+the hours of suffering would be soon at an end.
+
+"Another storm to-morrow, but that will be the last," repeated the
+priests and the soldiers. "Let him to whom God will send death give
+thanks that the Lord lets him be present at Mass, and thus opens more
+surely heaven's gates, for whoso dies for the faith on the day of
+Christ's birth must be received into glory."
+
+They wished one another success, long years, or a heavenly crown; and
+so relief dropped into every heart, as if suffering were over already.
+
+But there stood one empty chair near the prior; before it a plate on
+which was a package of white wafers bound with a blue ribbon. When all
+had sat down, no one occupied that place. Zamoyski said,--
+
+"I see, revered father, that according to ancient custom there are
+places for men outside the cloister."
+
+"Not for men outside," said Father Agustine, "but as a remembrance of
+that young man whom we loved as a son, and whose soul is looking with
+pleasure upon us because we keep him in eternal memory."
+
+"As God lives," replied Zamoyski, "he is happier now than we. We owe
+him due thanks."
+
+Kordetski had tears in his eyes, and Charnyetski said,--
+
+"They write of smaller men in the chronicles. If God gives me life, and
+any one asks me hereafter, who was there among us the equal of ancient
+heroes, I shall say Babinich."
+
+"Babinich was not his name," said Kordetski.
+
+"How not Babinich?"
+
+"I long knew his real name under the seal of confession; but when going
+out against that cannon, he said to me: 'If I perish, let men know who
+I am, so that honorable repute may rest with my name, and destroy my
+former misdeeds.' He went, he perished; now I can tell you that he was
+Kmita!"
+
+"That renowned Lithuanian Kmita?" cried Charnyetski, seizing his
+forelock.
+
+"The same. How the grace of God changes hearts!"
+
+"For God's sake. Now I understand why he undertook that work; now I
+understand where he got that daring, that boldness, in which he
+surpassed all men. Kmita, Kmita, that terrible Kmita whom Lithuania
+celebrates."
+
+"Henceforth not only Lithuania, but the whole Commonwealth will glorify
+him in a different manner."
+
+"He was the first to warn us against Count Veyhard."
+
+"Through his advice we closed the gates in good season, and made
+preparations."
+
+"He killed the first Swede with a shot from a bow."
+
+"And how many of their cannon did he spoil! Who brought down De
+Fossis?"
+
+"And that siege gun! If we are not terrified at the storm of to-morrow,
+who is the cause?"
+
+"Let each remember him with honor, and celebrate his name wherever
+possible, so that justice be done," said Kordetski; "and now may God
+give him eternal rest."
+
+"And may everlasting light shine on him," answered one chorus of
+voices.
+
+But Pan Charnyetski was unable for a long time to calm himself, and his
+thoughts were continually turning to Kmita.
+
+"I tell you, gentlemen, that there was something of such kind in that
+man that though he served as a simple soldier, the command of itself
+crawled at once to his hand, so that it was a wonder to me how people
+obeyed such a young man unwittingly. In fact, he was commander on the
+bastion, and I obeyed him myself. Oh, had I known him then to be
+Kmita!"
+
+"Still it is a wonder to me," said Zamoyski, "that the Swedes have not
+boasted of his death."
+
+Kordetski sighed. "The powder must have killed him on the spot."
+
+"I would let a hand be cut from me could he be alive again," cried
+Charnyetski. "But that such a Kmita let himself be blown up by powder!"
+
+"He gave his life for ours," said Kordetski.
+
+"It is true," added Zamoyski, "that if that cannon were lying in the
+intrenchment, I should not think so pleasantly of to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow God will give us a new victory," said the prior, "for the
+ark of Noah cannot be lost in the deluge."
+
+Thus they conversed with one another on Christmas Eve, and then
+separated; the monks going to the church, the soldiers, some to quiet
+rest, and others to keep watch on the walls and at the gates. But great
+care was superfluous, for in the Swedish camp there reigned unbroken
+calm. They had given themselves to rest and meditation, for to them too
+was approaching a most serious day.
+
+The night was solemn. Legions of stars twinkled in the sky, changing
+into blue and rosy colors. The light of the moon changed to green the
+shrouds of snow stretching between the fortress and the hostile camp.
+The wind did not howl, and it was calm, as from the beginning of the
+siege it had not been near the cloister.
+
+At midnight the Swedish soldiers heard the flow of the mild and grand
+tones of the organ; then the voices of men were joined with them; then
+the sounds of bells, large and small. Joy, consolation, and great calm
+were in those sounds; and the greater was the doubt, the greater the
+feeling of helplessness which weighed down the hearts of the Swedes.
+
+The Polish soldiers from the commands of Zbrojek and Kalinski, without
+seeking permission, went up to the very walls. They were not permitted
+to enter through fear of some snare; but they were permitted to stand
+near the walls. They also collected together. Some knelt on the snow,
+others shook their heads pitifully, sighing over their own lot, or beat
+their breasts, promising repentance; and all heard with delight and
+with tears in their eyes the music and the hymns sung according to
+ancient usage.
+
+At the same time the sentries on the walls who could not be in the
+church, wishing to make up for their loss, began also to sing, and soon
+was heard throughout the whole circuit of the walls the Christmas
+hymn:--
+
+
+                 "He is lying in the manger;
+                  Who will run
+                  To greet the little stranger?"
+
+
+In the afternoon of the following day the thunder of guns drowned again
+every other sound. All the intrenchments began to smoke simultaneously,
+the earth trembled in its foundations; as of old there flew on the roof
+of the church heavy balls, bombs, grenades, and torches fixed in
+cylinders, pouring a rain of melted lead, and naked torches, knots and
+ropes. Never had the thunder been so unceasing, never till then had
+such a river of fire and iron fallen on the cloister; but among the
+Swedish guns was not that great gun, which alone could crush the wall
+and make a breach necessary for assault.
+
+But the besieged were so accustomed to fire that each man knew what he
+had to do, and the defence went in its ordinary course without command.
+Fire was answered with fire, missile with missile, but better aimed,
+for with more calmness.
+
+Toward evening Miller went out to see by the last rays of the setting
+sun the results; and his glance fell on the tower outlined calmly on
+the background of the sky.
+
+"That cloister will stand for the ages of ages!" cried he, beside
+himself.
+
+"Amen!" answered Zbrojek, quietly.
+
+In the evening a council was assembled again at headquarters, still
+more gloomy than usual. Miller opened it himself.
+
+"The storm of to-day," said he, "has brought no result. Our powder is
+nearly consumed; half of our men are lost, the rest discouraged: they
+look for disasters, not victory. We have no supplies; we cannot expect
+reinforcements."
+
+"But the cloister stands unmoved as on the first day of the siege,"
+added Sadovski.
+
+"What remains for us?"
+
+"Disgrace."
+
+"I have received orders," said the general, "to finish quickly or
+retreat to Prussia."
+
+"What remains to us?" repeated the Prince of Hesse.
+
+All eyes were turned to Count Veyhard, who said: "To save our honor!"
+
+A short broken laugh, more like the gnashing of teeth, came from
+Miller, who was called Poliorcetes. "The Count wishes to teach us how
+to raise the dead," said he.
+
+Count Veyhard acted as though he had not heard this.
+
+"Only the slain have saved their honor," said Sadovski.
+
+Miller began to lose his cool blood. "And that cloister stands there
+yet, that Yasna Gora, that hen-house! I have not taken it! And we
+withdraw. Is this a dream, or am I speaking in my senses?"
+
+"That cloister stands there yet, that Yasna Gora!" repeated word for
+word the Prince of Hesse, "and we shall withdraw,--defeated!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; it seemed as though the leader and his
+subordinates found a certain wild pleasure in bringing to mind their
+shame and defeat.
+
+Now Count Veyhard said slowly and emphatically: "It has happened more
+than once in every war that a besieged fortress has ransomed itself
+from the besiegers, who then went away as victors; for whoso pays a
+ransom, by this same recognizes himself as defeated."
+
+The officers, who at first listened to the words of the speaker with
+scorn and contempt, now began to listen more attentively.
+
+"Let that cloister pay us any kind of ransom," continued the count;
+"then no one will say that we could not take it, but that we did not
+wish to take it."
+
+"Will they agree?" asked the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"I will lay down my head," answered Count Veyhard, "and more than that,
+my honor as a soldier."
+
+"Can that be!" asked Sadovski. "We have enough of this siege, but have
+they enough? What does your worthiness think of this?"
+
+Miller turned to Veyhard "Many grievous moments, the most grievous of
+my life, have I passed because of your counsels, Sir Count; but for
+this last advice I thank you, and will be grateful."
+
+All breasts breathed more freely. There could be no real question but
+that of retreating with honor.
+
+On the morrow, the day of Saint Stephen, the officers assembled to the
+last man to hear Kordetski's answer to Miller's letter, which proposed
+a ransom, and was sent in the morning.
+
+They had to wait long. Miller feigned joyousness, but constraint was
+evident on his face. No one of the officers could keep his place. All
+hearts beat unquietly. The Prince of Hesse and Sadovski stood under the
+window conversing in a low voice.
+
+"What do you think?" asked the first; "will they agree?"
+
+"Everything indicates that they will agree. Who would not wish to be
+rid of such terrible danger come what may, at the price of a few tens
+of thousands of thalers, especially since monks have not worldly
+ambition and military honor, or at least should not have? I only fear
+that the general has asked too much."
+
+"How much has he asked?"
+
+"Forty thousand from the monks, and twenty thousand from the nobles,
+but in the worst event they will try to reduce the sum."
+
+"Let us yield, in God's name, let us yield. If they have not the money,
+I would prefer to lend them my own, if they will let us go away with
+even the semblance of honor. But I tell your princely highness that
+though I recognize the count's advice this time as good, and I believe
+that they will ransom themselves, such a fever is gnawing me that I
+would prefer ten storms to this waiting."
+
+"Uf! you are right But still this Count Veyhard may go high."
+
+"Even as high as the gibbet," said the other.
+
+But the speakers did not foresee that a worse fate than even the gibbet
+was awaiting Count Veyhard.
+
+That moment the thunder of cannon interrupted further conversation.
+
+"What is that? firing from the fortress!" cried Miller. And springing
+up like a man possessed, he ran out of the room.
+
+All ran after him and listened. The sound of regular salvos came indeed
+from the fortress.
+
+"Are they fighting inside, or what?" cried Miller; "I don't
+understand."
+
+"I will explain to your worthiness," said Zbrojek, "this is Saint
+Stephen's Day, and the name's day of the Zamoyskis, father and son; the
+firing is in their honor."
+
+With that shouts of applause were heard from the fortress, and after
+them new salvos.
+
+"They have powder enough," said Miller, gloomily. "That is for us a new
+indication."
+
+But fate did not spare him another very painful lesson.
+
+The Swedish soldiers were so discouraged and fallen in spirit that at
+the sound of firing from the fortress the detachments guarding the
+nearest intrenchments deserted them in panic.
+
+Miller saw one whole regiment, the musketeers of Smaland, taking refuge
+in disorder at his own quarters; he heard too how the officers repeated
+among themselves at this sight,--
+
+"It is time, it is time, it is time to retreat!"
+
+But by degrees everything grew calm; one crushing impression remained.
+The leader, and after him the subordinates, entered the room and
+waited, waited impatiently; even the face of Count Veyhard, till then
+motionless, betrayed disquiet.
+
+At last the clatter of spurs was heard in the antechamber, and the
+trumpeter entered, all red from cold, his mustaches covered with his
+frozen breath.
+
+"An answer from the cloister!" said he, giving a large packet wound up
+in a colored handkerchief bound with a string.
+
+Miller's hands trembled somewhat, and he chose to cut the string with a
+dagger rather than to open it slowly. A number of pairs of eyes were
+fixed on the packet; the officers were breathless. The general unwound
+one roll of the cloth, a second, and a third, unwound with increasing
+haste till at last a package of wafers fell out on the table. Then he
+grew pale, and though no one asked what was in the package, he said,
+"Wafers!"
+
+"Nothing more?" asked some one in the crowd.
+
+"Nothing more!" answered the general, like an echo.
+
+A moment of silence followed, broken only by panting; at times too was
+heard the gritting of teeth, at times the rattling of rapiers.
+
+"Count Veyhard!" said Miller, at last, with a terrible and ill-omened
+voice.
+
+"He is no longer here!" answered one of the officers.
+
+Again silence followed.
+
+That night movement reigned in the whole camp. Scarcely was the light
+of day quenched when voices of command were heard, the hurrying of
+considerable divisions of cavalry, the sound of measured steps of
+infantry, the neighing of horses, the squeaking of wagons, the dull
+thump of cannon, with the biting of iron, the rattle of chains, noise,
+bustle, and turmoil.
+
+"Will there be a new storm in the morning?" asked the guards at the
+gates.
+
+But they were unable to see, for since twilight the sky was covered
+with clouds, and abundant snow had begun to fall. Its frequent flakes
+excluded the light. About five o'clock in the morning all sounds had
+ceased, but the snow was falling still more densely. On the walls and
+battlements it had created new walls and battlements. It covered the
+whole cloister and church, as if wishing to hide them from the glance
+of the enemy, to shelter and cover them from iron missiles.
+
+At last the air began to grow gray, and the bell commenced tolling for
+morning service, when the soldiers standing guard at the southern gate
+heard the snorting of a horse.
+
+Before the gate stood a peasant, all covered with snow; behind him was
+a low, small wooden sleigh, drawn by a thin, shaggy horse. The peasant
+fell to striking his body with his arms, to jumping from one foot to
+the other, and to crying,--
+
+"People, but open here!"
+
+"Who is alive?" they asked from the walls.
+
+"Your own, from Dzbov. I have brought game for the benefactors."
+
+"And how did the Swedes let you come?"
+
+"What Swedes?"
+
+"Those who are besieging the church."
+
+"Oho, there are no Swedes now!"
+
+"Praise God, every soul! Have they gone?"
+
+"The tracks behind them are covered."
+
+With that, crowds of villagers and peasants blackened the road, some
+riding, others on foot, there were women too, and all began to cry from
+afar,--
+
+"There are no Swedes! there are none! They have gone to Vyelunie. Open
+the gates! There is not a man in the camp!"
+
+"The Swedes have gone, the Swedes have gone!" cried men on the walls;
+and the news ran around like lightning.
+
+Soldiers rushed to the bells, and rang them all as if for an alarm.
+Every living soul rushed out of the cells, the dwellings, and the
+church.
+
+The news thundered all the time. The court was swarming with monks,
+nobles, soldiers, women, and children. Joyful shouts were heard around.
+Some ran out on the walls to examine the empty camp; others burst into
+laughter or into sobs. Some would not believe yet, but new crowds came
+continually, peasants and villagers.
+
+They came from Chenstohova, from the surrounding villages, and from the
+forests near by, noisily, joyously, and with singing. New tidings
+crossed one another each moment. All had seen the retreating Swedes,
+and told in what direction they were going.
+
+A few hours later the slope and the plain below the mountain were
+filled with people. The gates of the cloister were open wide, as they
+had been before the siege; and all the bells were ringing, ringing,
+ringing,--and those voices of triumph flew to the distance, and then
+the whole Commonwealth heard them.
+
+The snow was covering and covering the tracks of the Swedes.
+
+About noon of that day the church was so filled with people that head
+was as near head as on a paved street in a city one stone is near
+another. Father Kordetski himself celebrated a thanksgiving Mass, and
+to the throng of people it seemed that a white angel was celebrating
+it. And it seemed to them also that he was singing out his soul in that
+Mass, or that it was borne heavenward in the smoke of the incense, and
+was expanding in praise to the Lord.
+
+The thunder of cannon shook not the walls, nor the glass in the
+windows, nor covered the people with dust, nor interrupted prayer, nor
+that thanksgiving hymn which amid universal ecstasy and weeping, the
+holy prior was intoning--
+
+"Te Deum laudamus."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The horses bore Kmita and the Kyemliches swiftly to ward the Silesian
+boundary. They advanced with caution to avoid meeting Swedish scouts,
+for though the cunning Kyemliches had "passes," given by Kuklinovski
+and signed by Miller, still soldiers, though furnished with such
+documents, were usually subjected to examination, and examination might
+have an evil issue for Pan Andrei and his comrades. They rode,
+therefore, swiftly, so as to pass the boundary in all haste and push
+into the depth of the Emperor's territory. The boundaries themselves
+were not free from Swedish ravagers, and frequently whole parties of
+horsemen rode into Silesia to seize those who were going to Yan
+Kazimir. But the Kyemliches, during their stay at Chenstohova, occupied
+continually with hunting individual Swedes, had learned through and
+through the whole region, all the boundary roads, passages, and paths
+where the chase was most abundant, and were as if in their own land.
+
+Along the road old Kyemlich told Pan Andrei what was to be heard in the
+Commonwealth; and Pan Andrei, having been confined so long in the
+fortress, forgetting his own pain, listened to the news eagerly, for it
+was very unfavorable to the Swedes, and heralded a near end to their
+domination in Poland.
+
+"The army is sick of Swedish fortune and Swedish company," said old
+Kyemlich; "and as some time ago the soldiers threatened the hetmans
+with their lives if they would not join the Swedes, so now the same men
+entreat Pototski and send deputations asking him to save the
+Commonwealth from oppression, swearing to stand by him to the death.
+Some colonels also have begun to attack the Swedes on their own
+responsibility."
+
+"Who began first?"
+
+"Jegotski, the starosta of Babimost, and Pan Kulesha. These began in
+Great Poland, and annoy the Swedes notably. There are many small
+divisions in the whole country, but it is difficult to learn the names
+of the leaders, for they conceal them to save their own families and
+property from Swedish vengeance. Of the army that regiment rose first
+which is commanded by Pan Voynillovich."
+
+"Gabryel? He is my relative, though I do not know him."
+
+"A genuine soldier. He is the man who rubbed out Pratski's party, which
+was serving the Swedes, and shot Pratski himself; but now he has gone
+to the rough mountains beyond Cracow; there he cut up a Swedish
+division, and secured the mountaineers from oppression."
+
+"Are the mountaineers fighting with the Swedes already?"
+
+"They were the first to rise; but as they are stupid peasants, they
+wanted to rescue Cracow straightway with axes. General Douglas
+scattered them, for they knew nothing of the level country; but of the
+parties sent to pursue them in the mountains, not a man has returned.
+Pan Voynillovich has helped those peasants, and now has gone himself to
+the marshal at Lyubovlya, and joined his forces."
+
+"Is Pan Lyubomirski, the marshal, opposed to the Swedes?"
+
+"Reports disagreed. They said that he favored this side and that; but
+when men began to mount their horses throughout the whole country he
+went against the Swedes. He is a powerful man, and can do them a great
+deal of harm. He alone might war with the King of Sweden. People say
+too that before spring there will not be one Swede in the
+Commonwealth."
+
+"God grant that!"
+
+"How can it be otherwise, your grace, since for the siege of
+Chenstohova all are enraged against them? The army is rising, the
+nobles are fighting already wherever they can, the peasants are
+collecting in crowds, and besides, the Tartars are marching; the Khan,
+who defeated Hmelnitski and the Cossacks, and promised to destroy them
+completely unless they would march against the Swedes, is coming in
+person."
+
+"But the Swedes have still much support among magnates and nobles?"
+
+"Only those take their part who must, and even they are merely waiting
+for a chance. The prince voevoda of Vilna is the only man who has
+joined them sincerely, and that act has turned out ill for him."
+
+Kmita stopped his horse, and at the same time caught his side, for
+terrible pain had shot through him.
+
+"In God's name!" cried he, suppressing a groan, "tell me what is taking
+place with Radzivill. Is he all the time in Kyedani?"
+
+"O Ivory Gate!" said the old man; "I know as much as people say, and
+God knows what they do not say. Some report that the prince voevoda is
+living no longer; others that he is still defending himself against Pan
+Sapyeha, but is barely breathing. It is likely that they are struggling
+with each other in Podlyasye, and that Pan Sapyeha has the upper hand,
+for the Swedes could not save the prince voevoda. Now they say that,
+besieged in Tykotsin by Sapyeha, it is all over with him."
+
+"Praise be to God! The honest are conquering traitors! Praise be to
+God! Praise be to God!"
+
+Kyemlich looked from under his brows at Kmita, and knew not himself
+what to think, for it was known in the whole Commonwealth that if
+Radzivill had triumphed in the beginning over his own troops and the
+nobles who did not wish Swedish rule, it happened, mainly, thanks to
+Kmita and his men. But old Kyemlich did not let that thought be known
+to his colonel, and rode farther in silence.
+
+"But what has happened to Prince Boguslav?" asked Pan Andrei, at last.
+
+"I have heard nothing of him, your grace," answered Kyemlich. "Maybe he
+is in Tykotsin, and maybe with the elector. War is there at present,
+and the King of Sweden has gone to Prussia; but we meanwhile are
+waiting for our own king. God give him! for let him only show himself,
+all to a man will rise, and the troops will leave the Swedes
+straightway."
+
+"Is that certain?"
+
+"Your grace, I know only what those soldiers said who had to be with
+the Swedes at Chenstohova. They are very fine cavalry, some thousands
+strong, under Zbrojek, Kalinski, and other colonels. I may tell your
+grace that no man serves there of his own will, except Kuklinovski's
+ravagers; they wanted to get the treasures of Yasna Gora. But all
+honorable soldiers did nothing but lament, and one quicker than another
+complained: 'We have enough of this Jew's service! Only let our king
+put a foot over the boundary, we will turn our sabres at once on the
+Swedes; but while he is not here, how can we begin, whither can we go?'
+So they complain; and in the other regiments which are under the
+hetmans it is still worse. This I know certainly, for deputations came
+from them to Pan Zbrojek with arguments, and they had secret talks
+there at night; this Miller did not know, though he felt that there was
+evil about him."
+
+"But is the prince voevoda of Vilna besieged in Tykotsin?" asked Pan
+Andrei.
+
+Kyemlich looked again unquietly on Kmita, for he thought that surely a
+fever was seizing him if he asked to have the same information
+repeated; still he answered,--
+
+"Besieged by Pan Sapyeha."
+
+"Just are Thy judgments, God!" said Kmita. "He who might compare in
+power with kings! Has no one remained with him?"
+
+"In Tykotsin there is a Swedish garrison. But with the prince only some
+of his trustiest attendants have remained."
+
+Kmita's breast was filled with delight. He had feared the vengeance of
+the terrible magnate on Olenka, and though it seemed to him that he had
+prevented that vengeance with his threats, still he was tormented by
+the thought that it would be better and safer for Olenka and all the
+Billeviches to live in a lion's den than in Kyedani, under the hand of
+the prince, who never forgave any man. But now when he had fallen his
+opponents must triumph by the event; now when he was deprived of power
+and significance, when he was lord of only one poor castle, in which he
+defended his own life and freedom, he could not think of vengeance; his
+hand had ceased to weigh on his enemies.
+
+"Praise be to God! praise be to God!" repeated Kmita.
+
+He had his head so filled with the change in Radzivill's fortunes, so
+occupied with that which had happened during his stay in Chenstohova,
+and with the question where was she whom his heart loved, and what had
+become of her, that a third time he asked Kyemlich: "You say that the
+prince is broken?"
+
+"Broken completely," answered the old man. "But are you not sick?"
+
+"My side is burned. That is nothing!" answered Kmita.
+
+Again they rode on in silence. The tired horses lessened their speed by
+degrees, till at last they were going at a walk. That monotonous
+movement lulled to sleep Pan Andrei, who was mortally wearied, and he
+slept long, nodding in the saddle. He was roused only by the white
+light of day. He looked around with amazement, for in the first moment
+it seemed to him that everything through which he had passed in that
+night was merely a dream; at last he inquired,--
+
+"Is that you, Kyemlich? Are we riding from Chenstohova?"
+
+"Of course, your grace."
+
+"But where are we?"
+
+"Oho, in Silesia already. Here the Swedes will not get us."
+
+"That is well!" said Kmita, coming to his senses completely. "But where
+is our gracious king living?"
+
+"At Glogov."
+
+"We will go there then to bow down to our lord, and offer him service.
+But listen, old man, to me."
+
+"I am listening, your grace."
+
+Kmita fell to thinking, however, and did not speak at once. He was
+evidently combining something in his head; he hesitated, considered,
+and at last said: "It cannot be otherwise!"
+
+"I am listening, your grace," repeated Kyemlich.
+
+"Neither to the king nor to any man at the court must you mutter who I
+am. I call myself Babinich, I am faring from Chenstohova. Of the great
+gun and of Kuklinovski you may talk, so that my intentions be not
+misconstrued, and I be considered a traitor, for in my blindness I
+aided and served Prince Radzivill; of this they may have heard at the
+court."
+
+"I may speak of what your grace did at Chenstohova--"
+
+"But who will show that 'tis true till the siege is over?"
+
+"I will act at your command."
+
+"The day will come for truth to appear at the top," added Kmita, as it
+were to himself, "but first our gracious lord must convince himself.
+Later he also will give me his witness."
+
+Here the conversation was broken. By this time it had become perfect
+day. Old Kyemlich began to sing matins, and Kosma and Damian
+accompanied him with bass voices. The road was difficult, for the frost
+was cutting, and besides, the travellers were stopped continually and
+asked for news, especially if Chenstohova was resisting yet. Kmita
+answered that it was resisting, and would take care of itself; but
+there was no end to questions. The roads were swarming with travellers,
+the inns everywhere filled. Some people were seeking refuge in the
+depth of the country from the neighboring parts of the Commonwealth
+before Swedish oppression; others were pushing toward the boundary for
+news. From time to time appeared nobles, who, having had enough of the
+Swedes, were going, like Kmita, to offer their services to the fugitive
+king. There were seen, also, attendants of private persons; at times
+smaller or larger parties of soldiers, from armies, which either
+voluntarily or in virtue of treaties with the Swedes had passed the
+boundaries,--such, for instance, as the troops of Stefan Charnyetski.
+News from the Commonwealth had roused the hope of those "exiles," and
+many of them were making ready to come home in arms. In all Silesia,
+and particularly in the provinces of Ratibor and Opol, it was boiling
+as in a pot; messengers were flying with letters to the king and from
+the king; they were flying with letters to Charnyetski, to the primate,
+to Pan Korytsinski, the chancellor; to Pan Varshytski, the castellan of
+Cracow, the first senator of the Commonwealth, who had not deserted the
+cause of Yan Kazimir for an instant.
+
+These lords, in agreement with the great queen, who was unshaken in
+misfortune, were coming to an understanding with one another, with the
+country, and with the foremost men in it, of whom it was known that
+they would gladly resume allegiance to their legal lord. Messengers
+were sent independently by the marshal of the kingdom, the hetmans, the
+army, and the nobles, who were making ready to take up arms.
+
+It was the eve of a general war, which in some places had broken out
+already. The Swedes put down these local outbursts either with arms or
+with the executioner's axe, but the fire quenched in one place flamed
+up at once in another. An awful storm was hanging over the heads of the
+Scandinavian invaders; the ground itself, though covered with snow,
+began to burn their feet; threats and vengeance surrounded them on all
+sides; their own shadows alarmed them.
+
+They went around like men astray. The recent songs of triumph died on
+their lips, and they asked one another in the greatest amazement, "Are
+these the same people who yesterday left their own king, and gave up
+without fighting a battle?" Yes, lords, nobles, army,--an example
+unheard of in history,--passed over to the conqueror; towns and castles
+threw open their gates; the country was occupied. Never had a conquest
+cost fewer exertions, less blood. The Swedes themselves, wondering at
+the ease with which they had occupied a mighty Commonwealth, could not
+conceal their contempt for the conquered, who at the first gleam of a
+Swedish sword rejected their own king, their country, provided that
+they could enjoy life and goods in peace, or acquire new goods in the
+confusion. What in his time Count Veyhard had told the emperor's envoy,
+Lisola, the king himself, and all the Swedish generals repeated: "There
+is no manhood in this nation, there is no stability, there is no order,
+no faith, no patriotism! It must perish."
+
+They forgot that that nation had still one feeling, specially that one
+whose earthly expression was Yasna Gora. And in that feeling was
+rebirth.
+
+Therefore the thunder of cannon which was heard under the sacred
+retreat found an echo at once in the hearts of all magnates, nobles,
+town-dwellers, and peasants. An outcry of awe was heard from the
+Carpathians to the Baltic, and the giant was roused from his torpor.
+
+"That is another people!" said the amazed Swedish generals.
+
+And all, from Arwid Wittemberg to the commandants of single castles,
+sent to Karl Gustav in Prussia tidings filled with terror.
+
+The earth was pushing from under their feet; instead of recent friends,
+they met enemies on all sides; instead of submission, hostility;
+instead of fear, a wild daring ready for everything; instead of
+mildness, ferocity; instead of long-suffering, vengeance.
+
+Meanwhile from hand to hand were flying in thousands throughout the
+whole Commonwealth the manifestoes of Yan Kazimir, which, issued at
+first in Silesia, had found no immediate echo. Now, on the contrary,
+they were seen in castles still free of the enemy. Wherever the Swedish
+hand was not weighing, the nobles assembled in crowds large and small,
+and beat their breasts, listening to the lofty words of the fugitive
+king, who, recounting faults and sins, urged them not to lose hope, but
+hasten to the rescue of the fallen Commonwealth.
+
+"Though the enemy have already advanced far, it is not too late," wrote
+Yan Kazimir, "for us to recover the lost provinces and towns, give due
+praise to God, satisfy the profaned churches with the blood of the
+enemy, and restore the former liberties, laws, and ancient enactments
+of Poland to their usual circuit; if only there is a return of that
+ancient Polish virtue, and that devotion and love of God peculiar to
+your ancestors, virtues for which our great-grandfather, Sigismund I.,
+honored them before many nations. A return to virtue has already
+diminished these recent transgressions. Let those of you to whom God
+and His holy faith are dearer than aught else rise against the Swedish
+enemy. Do not wait for leaders or voevodas, or for such an order of
+things as is described in public law. At present the enemy have brought
+all these things to confusion among you; but do you join, the first man
+to a second, a third to these two, a fourth to the three, a fifth to
+the four, and thus farther, so that each one with his own subjects may
+come, and when it is possible try resistance. Afterward you will select
+a leader. Join yourselves one party to another, and you will form an
+army. When the army is formed and you have chosen a known chief over
+it, wait for our person, not neglecting an occasion wherever it comes
+to defeat the enemy. If we hear of the occasion, and your readiness and
+inclination, we will come at once and lay down our life wherever the
+defence of the country requires it."
+
+This manifesto was read even in the camp of Karl Gustav, in castles
+having Swedish garrisons, in all places wherever Polish squadrons were
+found. The nobles shed tears at every word of the king their kind lord,
+and took an oath on crosses, on pictures of the Most Holy Lady, and on
+scapulars to please him. To give a proof of their readiness, while
+ardor was in their hearts and their tears were not dry, they mounted
+here and there without hesitation, and moved on while hot against the
+Swedes.
+
+In this way the smaller Swedish parties began to melt and to vanish.
+This was done in Lithuania, Mazovia, Great and Little Poland. More than
+once nobles who had assembled at a neighbor's house for a christening,
+a name's day, a wedding or a dance, without any thought of war,
+finished the entertainment with this, that after they had taken a good
+share of drink they struck like a thunderbolt and cut to pieces the
+nearest Swedish command. Then, amid songs and shouts, they assembled
+for the road. Those who wished to "hunt" rode farther, changed into a
+crowd greedy for blood, from a crowd into a "party" which began steady
+war. Subject peasants and house-servants joined the amusement in
+throngs; others gave information about single Swedes or small squads
+disposed incautiously through the villages. And the number of "balls"
+and "masquerades" increased with each day. Joyousness and daring
+personal to the people were bound up with these bloody amusements.
+
+They disguised themselves gladly as Tartars, the very name of which
+filled the Swedes with alarm; for among them were current marvellous
+accounts and fables touching the ferocity, the terrible and savage
+bravery of those sons of the Crimean steppes, with whom the
+Scandinavians had never met hitherto. Besides, it was known universally
+that the Khan with about a hundred thousand of the horde was marching
+to succor Yan Kazimir; and the nobles made a great uproar while
+attacking Swedish commands, from which wonderful disorder resulted.
+
+The Swedish colonels and commandants in many places were really
+convinced that Tartars were present, and retreated in haste to larger
+fortresses and camps, spreading everywhere erroneous reports and alarm.
+Meanwhile the neighborhoods which were freed in this manner from the
+enemy were able to defend themselves, and change an unruly rabble into
+the most disciplined of armies.
+
+But more terrible for the Swedes than "masquerades" of nobles, or than
+the Tartars themselves, were the movements of the peasants. Excitement
+among the people began with the first day of the siege of Chenstohova;
+and ploughmen hitherto silent and patient began here and there to offer
+resistance, here and there to take scythes and flails and help nobles.
+The most brilliant Swedish generals looked with the greatest alarm at
+these crowds, which might at any moment turn into a genuine deluge and
+overwhelm beyond rescue the invaders.
+
+Terror seemed to them the most appropriate means by which to crush in
+the beginning this dreadful danger. Karl Gustav cajoled still, and
+retained with words of kindness those Polish squadrons which had
+followed him to Prussia. He had not spared flattery on Konyetspolski,
+the celebrated commander from Zbaraj. This commander stood at his side
+with six thousand cavalry, which at the first hostile meeting with the
+elector spread such terror and destruction among the Prussians that the
+elector abandoning the fight agreed as quickly as possible to the
+conditions.
+
+The King of Sweden sent letters also to the hetmans, the magnates, and
+the nobles, full of graciousness, promises, and encouragement to
+preserve loyalty to him. But at the same time he issued commands to his
+generals and commandants to destroy with fire and sword every
+opposition within the country, and especially to cut to pieces peasant
+parties. Then began a period of iron military rule. The Swedes cast
+aside the semblance of friendship. The sword, fire, pillage,
+oppression, took the place of the former pretended good will. From the
+castles they sent strong detachments of cavalry and infantry in pursuit
+of the "masqueraders." Whole villages, with churches and priests'
+dwellings, were levelled to the earth. Nobles taken prisoners, were
+delivered to the executioner; the right hands were cut from captured
+peasants, then they were sent home.
+
+These Swedish detachments were specially savage in Great Poland, which,
+as it was the first to surrender, was also the first to rise against
+foreign dominion. Commandant Stein gave orders on a certain occasion to
+cut the hands from more than three hundred peasants. In towns they
+built permanent gibbets, which every day were adorned with new victims.
+Pontus de la Gardie did the same in Lithuania and Jmud, where the noble
+villages took up arms first, and after them the peasants. Because in
+general it was difficult for the Swedes in the disturbance to
+distinguish their friends from their enemies, no one was spared.
+
+But the fire put down in blood, instead of dying, grew without ceasing,
+and a war began which was not on either side a question merely of
+victory, castles, towns, or provinces, but of life or death. Cruelty
+increased hatred, and they began not to struggle, but to exterminate
+each the other without mercy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+This war of extermination was just beginning when Kmita, with the three
+Kyemliches, reached Glogov, after a journey which was difficult in view
+of Pan Andrei's shaken health. They arrived in the night. The town was
+crowded with troops, lords, nobles, servants of the king and of
+magnates. The inns were so occupied that old Kyemlich with the greatest
+trouble found lodgings for his colonel outside the town at the house of
+a rope-maker.
+
+Pan Andrei spent the whole first day in bed in pain and fever from the
+burn. At times he thought that he should be seriously and grievously
+ill; but his iron constitution gained the victory. The following night
+brought him ease, and at daybreak he dressed and went to the parish
+church to thank God for his miraculous escape.
+
+The gray and snowy winter morning had barely dissipated the darkness.
+The town was still sleeping, but through the church door lights could
+be seen on the altar, and the sounds of the organ came forth.
+
+Kmita went to the centre of the church. The priest was celebrating Mass
+before the altar; there were few worshippers so far. At benches some
+persons were kneeling with their faces hidden in their hands; but
+besides those Pan Andrei saw, when his eyes had grown used to the
+darkness, a certain figure lying in the form of a cross in front of the
+pews on a carpet. Behind him were kneeling two youths with ruddy and
+almost angelic childish faces.
+
+This man was motionless, and only from his breast moving continually
+with deep sighs could it be known that he was not sleeping, but praying
+earnestly and with his whole soul. Kmita himself became absorbed in a
+thanksgiving prayer; but when he had finished his eyes turned
+involuntarily to the man lying as a cross, and could not leave him;
+something fastened them to him. Sighs deep as groans, audible in the
+silence of the church, shook that figure continually. The yellow rays
+of the candles burning before the altar, together with the light of
+day, whitening in the windows, brought it out of the gloom, and made it
+more and more visible.
+
+Pan Andrei conjectured at once from the dress that he must be some
+noted person, besides all present, not excepting the priest celebrating
+Mass, looked on him with honor and respect. The unknown was dressed
+entirely in black velvet bound with sable, but on his shoulders he had,
+turned down, a white lace collar, from under which peeped the golden
+links of a chain; a black hat with feathers of like color lay at his
+side; one of the pages kneeling beyond the carpet held gloves and a
+sword enamelled in blue. Kmita could not see the face of the unknown,
+for it was hidden by the folds of the carpet, and besides, the locks of
+an unusually thick wig scattered around his head concealed it
+completely.
+
+Pan Andrei pressed up to the front pew to see the face of the unknown
+when he rose. Mass was then drawing to an end. The priest was singing
+_Pater noster_. The people who wished to be at the following Mass were
+coming in through the main entrance. The church was filled gradually
+with figures with heads shaven at the sides, dressed in cloaks with
+long sleeves, in military burkas, in fur cloaks, and in brocade coats.
+It became somewhat crowded. Kmita then pushed with his elbow a noble
+standing at his side, and whispered,--
+
+"Pardon, your grace, that I trouble you during service, but my
+curiosity is most powerful. Who is that?" He indicated with his eyes
+the man lying in the form of a cross.
+
+"Have you come from a distance, that you know not?" asked the noble.
+
+"Certainly I come from a distance, and therefore I ask in hope that if
+I find some polite man he will not begrudge an answer."
+
+"That is the king."
+
+"As God lives!" cried Kmita.
+
+But at that moment the king rose, for the priest had begun to read the
+Gospel.
+
+Pan Andrei saw an emaciated face, yellow and transparent, like church
+wax. The eyes of the king were moist, and his lids red. You would have
+said that all the fate of the country was reflected in that noble face,
+so much was there in it of pain, suffering, care. Sleepless nights
+divided between prayer and grief, terrible deceptions, wandering,
+desertion, the humiliated majesty of that son, grandson, and
+great-grandson of powerful kings, the gall which his own subjects had
+given him to drink so bountifully, the ingratitude of that country for
+which he was ready to devote his blood and life,--all this could be
+read in that face as in a book, and still it expressed not only
+resignation, obtained through faith and prayer, not only the majesty of
+a king and an anointed of God, but such great, inexhaustible kindness
+that evidently it would be enough for the greatest renegade, the most
+guilty man, only to stretch out his hands to that father, and that
+father would receive him, forgive him, and forget his offences.
+
+It seemed to Kmita at sight of him that some one had squeezed his heart
+with an iron hand. Compassion rose in the ardent soul of the young
+hero. Compunction, sorrow, and homage straitened the breath in his
+throat, a feeling of immeasurable guilt cut his knees under him so that
+he began to tremble through his whole body, and at once a new feeling
+rose in his breast. In one moment he had conceived such a love for that
+suffering king that to him there was nothing dearer on earth than that
+father and lord, for whom he was ready to sacrifice blood and life,
+bear torture and everything else in the world. He wished to throw
+himself at those feet, to embrace those knees, and implore forgiveness
+for his crimes. The noble, the insolent disturber, had died in him in
+one moment, and the royalist was born, devoted with his whole soul to
+his king.
+
+"That is our lord, our unhappy king," repeated he to himself, as if he
+wished with his lips to give witness to what his eyes saw and what his
+heart felt.
+
+After the Gospel, Yan Kazimir knelt again, stretched out his arms,
+raised his eyes to heaven, and was sunk in prayer. The priest went out
+at last, there was a movement in the church, the king remained
+kneeling.
+
+Then that noble whom Kmita had addressed pushed Pan Andrei in the side.
+
+"But who are you?" asked he.
+
+Kmita did not understand the question at once, and did not answer it
+directly, so greatly were his heart and mind occupied by the person of
+the king.
+
+"And who are you?" repeated that personage.
+
+"A noble like yourself," answered Pan Andrei, waking as if from a
+dream.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"What is my name? Babinich; I am from Lithuania, from near Vityebsk."
+
+"And I am Pan Lugovski, of the king's household. Have you just come
+from Lithuania, from Vityebsk?"
+
+"No; I come from Chenstohova."
+
+Pan Lugovski was dumb for a moment from wonder.
+
+"But if that is true, then come and tell us the news. The king is
+almost dead from anxiety because he has had no certain tidings these
+three days. How is it? You are perhaps from the squadron of Zbrojek,
+Kalinski, or Kuklinovski, from near Chenstohova."
+
+"Not from near Chenstohova, but directly from the cloister itself."
+
+"Are you not jesting? What is going on there, what is to be heard? Does
+Yasna Gora defend itself yet?"
+
+"It does, and will defend itself. The Swedes are about to retreat."
+
+"For God's sake! The king will cover you with gold. From the very
+cloister do you say that you have come? How did the Swedes let you
+pass?"
+
+"I did not ask their permission; but pardon me, I cannot give a more
+extended account in the church."
+
+"Right, right!" said Pan Lugovski. "God is merciful! You have fallen
+from heaven to us! It is not proper in the church,--right! Wait a
+moment. The king will rise directly; he will go to breakfast before
+high Mass. To-day is Sunday. Come stand with me at the door, and when
+the king is going out I will present you. Come, come, there is no time
+to spare."
+
+He pushed ahead, and Kmita followed. They had barely taken their places
+at the door when the two pages appeared, and after them came Yan
+Kazimir slowly.
+
+"Gracious King!" cried Pan Lugovski, "there are tidings from
+Chenstohova."
+
+The wax-like face of Yan Kazimir became animated in an instant.
+
+"What tidings? Where is the man?" inquired he.
+
+"This noble; he says that he has come from the very cloister."
+
+"Is the cloister captured?" cried the king.
+
+That moment Pan Andrei fell his whole length at the feet of the king.
+Yan Kazimir inclined and began to raise him by the arms.
+
+"Oh, ceremony another time, another time!" cried he. "Rise, in God's
+name, rise! Speak quickly! Is the cloister taken?"
+
+Kmita sprang up with tears in his eyes, and cried with animation,--
+
+"It is not, and will not be taken, Gracious Lord. The Swedes are
+beaten. The great gun is blown up. There is fear among them, hunger,
+misery. They are thinking of retreat."
+
+"Praise, praise to Thee, Queen of the Angels and of us!" said the king.
+Then he turned to the church door, removed his hat, and without
+entering knelt on the snow at the door. He supported his head on a
+stone pillar, and sank into silence. After a while sobbing began to
+shake him. Emotion seized all, and Pan Andrei wept loudly. The king,
+after he had prayed and shed tears, rose quieted, with a face much
+clearer. He inquired his name of Kmita, and when the latter had told
+his assumed one, said,--
+
+"Let Pan Lugovski conduct you at once to our quarters. We shall not
+take our morning food without hearing of the defence."
+
+A quarter of an hour later Kmita was standing in the king's chamber
+before a distinguished assembly. The king was only waiting for the
+queen, to sit down to breakfast. Marya Ludvika appeared soon. Yan
+Kazimir barely saw her when he exclaimed,--
+
+"Chenstohova has held out! The Swedes will retreat! Here is Pan
+Babinich, who has just come, and he brings the news."
+
+The black eyes of the queen rested inquiringly on the youthful face of
+the hero, and seeing its sincerity, they grew bright with joy; and he,
+when he had made a profound obeisance, looked also at her boldly, as
+truth and honesty know how to look.
+
+"The power of God!" said the queen. "You have taken a terrible weight
+from our hearts, and God grant this is the beginning of a change of
+fortune. Do you come straight from near Chenstohova?"
+
+"Not from near Chenstohova, he says, but from the cloister itself,--one
+of the defenders!" exclaimed the king. "A golden guest! God grant such
+to come daily; but let him begin. Tell, brother, tell how you defended
+yourselves, and how the hand of God guarded you."
+
+"It is sure, Gracious King and Queen, that nothing saved us but the
+guardianship of God and the miracles of the Most Holy Lady, which I saw
+every day with my eyes."
+
+Here Kmita was preparing for his narrative, when new dignitaries
+appeared. First came the nuncio of the Pope; then the primate,
+Leshchynski; after him Vydjga, a golden-mouthed preacher, who was the
+queen's chancellor, later bishop of Varmia, and finally primate. With
+him came the chancellor of the kingdom, Pan Korytsinski, and the
+Frenchman De Noyers, a relative of the queen, and other dignitaries who
+had not deserted the king in misfortune, but chose to share with him
+the bitter bread of exile rather than break plighted faith.
+
+The king was eager to hear; therefore he ceased eating, every moment,
+and repeated, "Listen, gentlemen, listen; a guest from Chenstohova!
+Good news; hear it! From Yasna Gora itself!"
+
+Then the dignitaries looked with curiosity on Kmita, who was standing
+as it were before a court; but he, bold by nature and accustomed to
+intercourse with great people, was not a whit alarmed at sight of so
+many celebrated persons; and when all had taken their places, he began
+to describe the whole siege.
+
+Truth was evident in his words; for he spoke with clearness and
+strength, like a soldier who had seen everything, touched everything,
+passed through everything. He praised to the skies Pan Zamoyski and Pan
+Charnyetski; spoke of Kordetski, the prior, as of a holy prophet;
+exalted other fathers; missed no one save himself; but he ascribed the
+whole success of the defence, without deviation, to the Most Holy Lady,
+to Her favor and miracles.
+
+The king and the dignitaries listened to him in amazement. The
+archbishop raised his tearful eyes to heaven. Father Vydjga interpreted
+everything hurriedly to the nuncio; other great personages caught their
+heads; some prayed, or beat their breasts.
+
+At last, when Kmita came to the recent storms,--when he began to relate
+how Miller had brought heavy guns from Cracow, and among them one
+against which not only the walls of Chenstohova, but no walls in the
+world could stand,--such silence began as though some one were sowing
+poppy seeds, and all eyes rested on Pan Andrei's lips.
+
+But he stopped suddenly, and began to breathe quickly; a clear flush
+came out on his face; he frowned, raised his head, and spoke boldly:
+"Now I must speak of myself, though I should prefer to be silent. And
+if I say aught which seems praise, God is my witness that I do so not
+for rewards, for I do not need them, since the greatest reward for me
+is to shed my blood for majesty."
+
+"Speak boldly, I believe you," said the king. "But that great gun?"
+
+"That great gun--I, stealing out in the night from the fortress, blew
+into fragments with powder."
+
+"O loving God!" cried the king.
+
+But after this cry was silence, such astonishment had seized each
+person. All looked as at a rainbow at the young hero, who stood with
+flashing eyes, with a flush on his face, and with head proudly erect.
+And so much was there in him at that moment of a certain terribleness
+and wild courage that the thought came to each one unwittingly, such a
+man might dare such a deed. After silence of a moment the primate
+said,--
+
+"This man looks like that!"
+
+"How did you do it?" asked the king.
+
+Kmita explained how he did it.
+
+"I cannot believe my ears," said Pan Korytsinski, the chancellor.
+
+"Worthy gentlemen," answered the king, with dignity, "you do not know
+whom we have before us. There is yet hope that the Commonwealth has not
+perished while it gives such cavaliers and citizens."
+
+"This man might say of himself, '_Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum
+ferient ruinæ_ (If the broken firmament should fall the ruins would
+strike him unterrified)!'" said Father Vydjga, who loved to quote
+authors at every opportunity.
+
+"These are almost impossible things," said the chancellor again. "Tell,
+Cavalier, how you brought away your life, and how you passed through
+the Swedes."
+
+"The explosion stunned me," said Kmita, "and next day the Swedes found
+me in the ditch lying as if lifeless. They judged me at once, and
+Miller condemned me to death."
+
+"Then did you escape?"
+
+"A certain Kuklinovski begged me of Miller, so that he might put me to
+death, for he had a fierce animosity against me."
+
+"He is a well-known disturber and murderer; we have heard of him," said
+the castellan of Kjyvinsk. "His regiment is with Miller at Chenstohova.
+That is true!"
+
+"Previously Kuklinovski was an envoy from Miller to the cloister, and
+once tried to persuade me in secret to treason when I was conducting
+him to the gate. I struck him in the face and kicked him. For that
+insult he was enraged against me."
+
+"Ah, this I see is a noble of fire and sulphur!" cried the king,
+amused. "Do not go into such a man's road. Did Miller then give you to
+Kuklinovski?"
+
+"He did, Gracious Gentlemen. Kuklinovski shut me with himself and some
+men in an empty little barn. There he had me tied to a beam with ropes,
+then he began to torture me and to burn my sides with fire."
+
+"By the living God!"
+
+"While doing this he was called away to Miller; when he was gone three
+nobles came, certain Kyemliches, his soldiers, who had served with me
+previously. They killed the guards, and unbound me from the beam--"
+
+"And you fled! Now I understand," said the king.
+
+"No, your Royal Grace. We waited for the return of Kuklinovski. Then I
+gave command to tie him to that same beam, and I burned him better with
+fire."
+
+When he had said this, Kmita, roused by remembrance, became red again,
+and his eyes gleamed like those of a wolf. But the king, who passed
+easily from grief to joy, from seriousness to sport, began to strike
+the table with his hand, and exclaim with laughter,--
+
+"That was good for him! that was good for him! Such a traitor deserved
+nothing better!"
+
+"I left him alive," continued Kmita, "but he must have perished from
+cold before morning."
+
+"That's a deed; he does not give away his own. We need more of such!"
+cried the king, now completely delighted. "Did you come hither with
+those soldiers? What are their names?"
+
+"They are Kyemlich, a father and two sons."
+
+"My mother is from the house of Kyemlich," said Father Vydjga.
+
+"It is evident that there are great and small Kyemliches," answered
+Kmita, smiling; "these are not only small persons, but robbers; they
+are fierce soldiers, however, and faithful to me."
+
+Meanwhile the chancellor, who had been whispering for a time in the ear
+of the Archbishop of Gnyezno, said at last,--
+
+"Many come here who for their own praise or for an expected reward are
+glad to raise dust. They bring false and disturbing news, and are
+frequently sent by the enemy."
+
+This remark chilled all present. Kmita's face became purple.
+
+"I do not know the office of your grace," said he, "which, I think,
+must be considerable, therefore I do not wish to offend you; but there
+is no office, as I think, which would empower any one to give the lie
+to a noble, without reason."
+
+"Man! you are speaking to the grand chancellor of the kingdom," said
+Lugovski.
+
+"Whoso gives me the lie, even if he is chancellor, I answer him, it is
+easier to give the lie than to give your life, it is easier to seal
+with wax than with blood!"
+
+Pan Korytsinski was not angry; he only said: "I do not give you the
+lie, Cavalier; but if what you say is true, you must have a burned
+side."
+
+"Come to another place, your great mightiness, to another room, and I
+will show it to you!" roared Kmita.
+
+"It is not needful," said the king; "I believe you without that."
+
+"It cannot be, your Royal Grace," exclaimed Pan Andrei; "I wish it
+myself, I beg it as a favor, so that here no one, even though I know
+not how worthy, should make me an exaggerator. My torment would be an
+ill reward; I wish belief."
+
+"I believe you," answered the king.
+
+"Truth itself was in his words," added Marya Ludvika. "I am not
+deceived in men."
+
+"Gracious King and Queen, permit. Let some man go aside with me, for it
+would be grievous for me to live here in suspicion."
+
+"I will go," said Pan Tyzenhauz, a young attendant of the king. So
+saying, he conducted Kmita to another room, and on the way said to him,
+"I do not go because I do not believe you, for I believe; but to speak
+with you. Have we met somewhere in Lithuania? I cannot remember your
+name, for it may be that I saw you when a youth, and I myself was a
+youth then?"
+
+Kmita turned away his face somewhat to hide his sudden confusion.
+
+"Perhaps at some provincial diet. My late father took me with him
+frequently to see public business."
+
+"Perhaps. Your face is surely not strange to me, though at that time it
+had not those scars. Still see how _memoria fragilis est_ (weak memory
+is); also it seems to me you had a different name."
+
+"Years dull the memory," answered Pan Andrei.
+
+They went to another room. After a while Tyzenhauz returned to the
+royal pair.
+
+"He is roasted, Gracious King, as on a spit," said he; "his whole side
+is burned."
+
+When Kmita in his turn came back, the king rose, pressed his head, and
+said,--
+
+"We have never doubted that you speak the truth, and neither your pain
+nor your services will pass unrewarded."
+
+"We are your debtors," added the queen, extending her hand to him.
+
+Pan Andrei dropped on one knee and kissed with reverence the hand of
+the queen, who stroked him on the head like a mother.
+
+"Be not angry with the chancellor," said the king. "In this place there
+are really not a few traitors, or, if not traitors, men who are unwise,
+that wind three after three, and it belongs to the chancellor's office
+to discover truth touching public affairs."
+
+"What does my poor anger mean for such a great man?" answered Pan
+Andrei. "And I should not dare to murmur against a worthy senator, who
+gives an example of loyalty and love of country to all."
+
+The chancellor smiled kindly and extended his hand. "Well, let there be
+peace! You spoke ill to me of wax; but know this, that the Korytsinskis
+have sealed often with blood, not with wax only."
+
+The king was rejoiced. "This Babinich has pleased us," said he to the
+senators, "has touched our heart as few have. We will not let you go
+from our side, and God grant that we shall return together soon to our
+beloved country."
+
+"Oh, Most Serene King," cried Kmita, with ecstasy; "though confined in
+the fortress of Yasna Gora, I know from the nobles, from the army, and
+even from those who, serving under Zbrojek and Kalinski, besieged
+Chenstohova, that all are waiting for the day and the hour of your
+return. Only show yourself. Gracious Lord, and that day all Lithuania,
+Poland, and Russia will stand by you as one man! The nobles will join;
+even insignificant peasants will go with their lord to resist. The army
+under the hetmans is barely breathing from eagerness to move against
+the Swedes. I know this, too, that at Chenstohova deputies came from
+the hetmans' troops to arouse Zbrojek, Kalinski, and Kuklinovski,
+against the Swedes. Appear on the boundary to-day, and in a week there
+will not be a Swede; only appear, only show yourself, for we are there
+like sheep without a shepherd."
+
+Sparks came from Kmita's eyes while he was speaking, and such great
+ardor seized him that he knelt in the middle of the hall. His
+enthusiasm was communicated even to the queen herself, who, being of
+fearless courage, had long been persuading the king to return.
+
+Therefore, turning to Yan Kazimir, she said with energy and
+determination: "I hear the voice of the whole people through the mouth
+of this noble."
+
+"That is true, that is true, Gracious Lady, our Mother!" exclaimed
+Kmita.
+
+But certain words in what Kmita had said struck the chancellor and the
+king.
+
+"We have always been ready," said the king, "to sacrifice our health
+and life, and hitherto we have been waiting for nothing else but a
+change in our subjects."
+
+"That change has taken place already," said Marya Ludvika.
+
+"_Majestas infracta malis_ (Majesty unbroken by misfortune)!" said
+Father Vydjga, looking at her with homage.
+
+"It is important," said the archbishop, "if, really, deputations from
+the hetmans went to Chenstohova."
+
+"I know this from my men, those Kyemliches," answered Pan Andrei. "In
+the squadrons of Zbrojek and Kalinski all spoke openly of this, paying
+no attention to Miller and the Swedes. These Kyemliches were not
+enclosed in the fortress; they had relations with the world, with
+soldiers and nobles,--I can bring them before your Royal Grace and your
+worthinesses; let them tell how it is seething in the whole country as
+in a pot. The hetmans joined the Swedes from constraint only; the
+troops wish to return to duty. The Swedes beat nobles and priests,
+plunder, violate ancient liberties; it is no wonder then that each man
+balls his fist and looks anxiously at his sabre."
+
+"We, too, have had news from the troops," said the king; "there were
+here, also, secret envoys who told us of the general wish to return to
+former loyalty and honor."
+
+"And that agrees with what this cavalier tells," said the chancellor.
+"But if deputations are passing among the regiments it is important,
+for it means that the fruit is already ripe, that our efforts were not
+vain, that our work is accomplished, that the time is at hand."
+
+"But Konyetspolski," said the king, "and so many others who are still
+at the side of the invader, who look into his eyes and give assurances
+of their devotion?"
+
+Then all grew silent, the king became gloomy on a sudden, and as when
+the sun goes behind a cloud a shadow covers at once the whole world, so
+did his face grow dark. After a time he said,--
+
+"God sees in our heart that even to-day we are ready to move, and that
+not the power of Sweden detains us, but the unhappy fickleness of our
+people, who, like Proteus, take on a new form every moment. Can we
+believe that this change is sincere, this desire not imagined, this
+readiness not deceitful? Can we believe that people who so recently
+deserted us, and with such light hearts joined the invader against
+their own king, against their own country, against their own liberties?
+Pain straitens our heart, and we are ashamed of our own subjects! Where
+does history show such examples? What king has met so many treasons, so
+much ill-will? Who has been so deserted? Call to mind, your kindnesses,
+that we in the midst of our army, in the midst of those who were bound
+to shed their blood for us,--it is a danger and a terror to tell
+it,--we were not sure of our life. And if we left the country and had
+to seek an asylum, it is not from fear of the Swedish enemy, but of our
+own subjects, to save our own children from the terrible crime of king
+murder and parricide."
+
+"Gracious Lord!" exclaimed Kmita; "our people have sinned grievously;
+they are guilty, and the hand of God is punishing them justly; but
+still, by the wounds of Christ, there has not been found among that
+people, and God grant that there will never be found, a man who would
+raise his hand on the sacred person of the anointed of God."
+
+"You do not believe, because you are honest," said the king, "but we
+have letters and proofs. The Radzivills have paid us badly for the
+kindness with which we have covered them; but still Boguslav, though a
+traitor, was moved by conscience, and not only did he not wish to lend
+a hand to such a deed, but he was the first to warn us of it."
+
+"What deed?" asked the astonished Kmita.
+
+"He informed us," said the king, "that there was a man who offered for
+one hundred gold ducats to seize us and deliver us, living or dead, to
+the Swedes."
+
+A shiver passed through the whole assembly at these words of the king,
+and Kmita was barely able to groan out the question, "Who was that
+man?--who was he?"
+
+"A certain Kmita," answered the king.
+
+A wave of blood suddenly struck Pan Andrei in the head, it grew dark in
+his eyes, he seized his forelock, and with a terribly wandering voice
+said: "That is a lie! Prince Boguslav lies like a dog! Gracious King,
+believe not that traitor; he did that of purpose to bring infamy on an
+enemy, and to frighten you, my king. He is a traitor! Kmita would not
+have done such a deed."
+
+Here Pan Andrei turned suddenly where he was standing. His strength,
+exhausted by the siege, undermined by the explosion of powder in the
+great gun, and through the torture given by Kuklinovski, left him
+altogether, and he fell without consciousness at the feet of the king.
+
+They bore him into the adjoining room, where the king's physician
+examined him. But in the assembly of dignitaries they knew not how to
+explain why the words of the king had produced such a terrible
+impression on the young man.
+
+"Either he is so honest that horror alone has thrown him off his feet,
+or he is some relative of that Kmita," said the castellan of Cracow.
+
+"We must ask him," replied the chancellor. "In Lithuania nobles are all
+related one to another, as in fact they are with us."
+
+"Gracious Lord," said Tyzenhauz, "God preserve me from wishing to speak
+evil of this young man; but we should not trust him at present too
+much. That he served in Chenstohova is certain,--his side is burned;
+this the monks would not have done in any event, for they as servants
+of God must have every clemency, even for prisoners and traitors; but
+one thing is coming continually to my head and destroying trust in him,
+that is, I met him somewhere in Lithuania,--still a youth, at a diet or
+a carnival,--I don't remember--"
+
+"And what of that?" asked the king.
+
+"And it seems to me always that his name was not Babinich."
+
+"Do not tell every little thing," said the king; "you are young and
+inattentive, and a thing might easily enter your head. Whether he is
+Babinich or not, why should I not trust him? Sincerity and truth are
+written on his lips, and evidently he has a golden heart. I should not
+trust myself, if I could not trust a soldier who has shed his blood for
+us and the country."
+
+"He deserves more confidence than the letter of Prince Boguslav," said
+the queen, suddenly, "and I recommend this to the consideration of your
+worthinesses, there may not be a word of truth in that letter. It might
+have been very important for the Radzivills of Birji that we should
+lose courage completely, and it is easy to admit that Prince Boguslav
+wished also to ruin some enemy of his, and leave a door open to himself
+in case of changed fortune."
+
+"If I were not accustomed," said the primate, "to hear wisdom itself
+coming from the mouth of the gracious queen, I should be astonished at
+the quickness of these words, worthy of the ablest statesman--"
+
+"_Comasque gerens, animosque viriles_ (Though wearing tresses, she has
+the courage of a man)," interrupted Father Vydjga, in a low voice.
+
+Encouraged by these words, the queen rose from her chair and began to
+speak: "I care not for the Radzivills of Birji, for they, as heretics,
+listen easily to the whispers of the enemy of the human race; nor of
+the letter of Prince Boguslav, which may touch private affairs. But I
+am most pained by the despairing words of my lord and husband, the
+king, spoken against this people. For who will spare them if their own
+king condemns them? And still, when I look through the world, I ask in
+vain, where is there another such people in which the praise of God
+endures with the manner of ancient sincerity and increases continually?
+In vain do I look for another people in which such open candor exists.
+Where is there another State in which no one has heard of those hellish
+blasphemies, subtle crimes, and never ending feuds with which foreign
+chronicles are filled. Let people skilled in the history of the world
+show me another kingdom where all the kings died their own quiet
+deaths. You have no knives or poisons here; you have no protectors, as
+among the English. It is true that this nation has grown grievously
+guilty, has sinned through frivolity and license. But where is the
+nation that never errs, and where is the one which, as soon as it has
+recognized its offence, begins penance and reformation? Behold they
+have already taken thought, they are now coming, beating their breasts
+to your majesty, ready to spill their blood, to yield their lives, to
+sacrifice their fortune for you. And will you reject them; will you not
+forgive the penitent; will you not trust those who have reformed, those
+who are doing penance; will you not return the affection of a father to
+children who have erred? Trust them, since they are yearning for their
+Yagyellon blood, and for your government, which is of their fathers. Go
+among them; I, a woman, fear no treason, for I see love, I see sorrow
+for sins and restoration of this kingdom to which they called you after
+your father and your brother. It does not seem to me likely that God
+will destroy such a great commonwealth, in which the light of the true
+faith is burning. For a short period God's justice has stretched forth
+the rod to chastise, not to ruin its children, and soon will the
+fatherly love of that heavenly Lord receive them and cherish them. But
+do not contemn them, O king, and fear not to confide in their sonly
+discretion, for in this way alone can you turn evil into good,
+suffering into comfort, defeat into triumph."
+
+When she had said this, the queen sat down, with fire still in her
+eyes, and heaving breast; all looked at her with veneration, and her
+chancellor, Vydjga, began to speak with a resonant voice,--
+
+
+           "Nulla sors longa est, dolor et voluptas,
+            Invicens cedunt.
+            Ima permutat brevis hora summis."
+
+            (No fortune is long, pain and pleasure
+            Yield in turn.
+            A short hour changes the lowest with the highest.)
+
+
+But no one heard what he said, for the ardor of the heroic lady was
+communicated to every heart. The king himself sprang up, with a flush
+on his sallow face, and said,--
+
+"I have not lost the kingdom yet, since I have such a queen. Let her
+will be done, for she spoke with prophetic inspiration. The sooner I
+move and appear in my realms the better."
+
+To this the primate answered with seriousness: "I do not wish to oppose
+the will of my gracious king and queen, nor to turn them from an
+undertaking in which there is hazard, but in which there may be also
+salvation. Still I should consider it a wise thing to assemble in Opol,
+where a majority of the senators are tarrying, and there listen to the
+ideas of all; these may develop and explain the affair more clearly and
+broadly."
+
+"Then to Opol!" exclaimed the king, "and afterward to the road, and
+what God will give!"
+
+"God will give a happy return and victory!" said the queen.
+
+"Amen!" said the primate.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Pan Andrei fretted in his lodgings like a wounded wildcat. The hellish
+revenge of Boguslav Radzivill brought him almost to madness. Not enough
+that that prince had sprung out of his hands, killed his men, almost
+deprived him of life; he had put upon him besides shame such as no one,
+not merely of his name, but no Pole from the beginning of the world,
+had ever groaned under.
+
+There were moments when Kmita wished to leave everything--the glory
+which was opening before him, the service of the king--and fly away to
+avenge himself on that magnate whom he wanted to eat up alive.
+
+But on the other hand, in spite of all his rage and the whirlwind in
+his head, he remembered that while the prince lived revenge would not
+vanish; and the best means, the only way to hurl back his calumny and
+lay bare all the infamy of his accusation, was precisely the service of
+the king; for in it he could show the world that not only had he not
+thought of raising his hand against the sacred person of Yan Kazimir,
+but that among all the nobles of Lithuania and Poland no person more
+loyal than Kmita could be found.
+
+But he gnashed his teeth and was boiling like a stew; he tore his
+clothing, and long, long was it before he could calm himself. He
+gloated over the thought of revenge. He saw this Radzivill again in his
+hands; he swore by the memory of his father, that he must reach
+Boguslav even if death and torments were awaiting him therefor. And
+though the prince was a mighty lord whom not only the revenge of a
+common noble, but even the revenge of a king, could not easily touch;
+still, whoso knew that unrestrained soul better, would not have slept
+calmly, and more than once would have trembled before his vows.
+
+And still Pan Andrei did not know yet that the prince had not merely
+covered him with shame and robbed him of repute.
+
+Meanwhile the king, who from the first had conceived a great love for
+the young hero, sent Pan Lugovski to him that same day, and on the
+morrow commanded Kmita to accompany his majesty to Opol, where at a
+general assembly of the senators it was intended to deliberate on the
+return of the king to the country. Indeed there was something over
+which to deliberate. Lyubomirski, the marshal of the kingdom, had sent
+a new letter, announcing that everything in the country was ready for a
+general war, and urging earnestly the return. Besides this, news was
+spread of a certain league of nobles and soldiers formed for the
+defence of the king and the country, concerning which men had really
+been thinking for some time, but which, as appeared afterward, was
+concluded a little later, under the name of the Confederation of
+Tishovtsi.
+
+All minds were greatly occupied by the news, and immediately after a
+thanksgiving Mass they assembled in a secret council, to which, at the
+instance of the king, Kmita too was admitted, since he had brought news
+from Chenstohova.
+
+They began then to discuss whether the return was to take place at
+once, or whether it were better to defer it till the army, not only by
+wish, but by deed, should abandon the Swedes.
+
+Yan Kazimir put an end to these discussions by saying: "Do not discuss,
+your worthinesses, the return, or whether it is better to defer it
+awhile, for I have taken counsel already concerning that with God and
+the Most Holy Lady. Therefore I communicate to you that whatever may
+happen we shall move in person these days. Express your ideas
+therefore, your worthinesses, and be not sparing of counsel as to how
+our return may be best and most safely accomplished."
+
+Opinions were various. Some advised not to trust too greatly to the
+marshal of the kingdom, who had once shown hesitation and disobedience,
+when, instead of giving the crown to the emperor for safe keeping,
+according to the order of the king, he had carried it to Lyubovlya.
+"Great," said they, "is the pride and ambition of that lord, and if he
+should have the person of the king in his castle, who knows what he
+might do, or what he would ask for his services; who knows that he
+would not try, or wish to seize the whole government in his own hands,
+and become the protector, not only of the entire country, but of the
+king?"
+
+These advised the king therefore to wait for the retreat of the Swedes
+and repair to Chenstohova, as to the place from which grace and rebirth
+had spread over the Commonwealth. But others gave different opinions,--
+
+"The Swedes are yet at Chenstohova, and though by the grace of God they
+will not capture the place, still there are no unoccupied roads. All
+the districts about there are in Swedish hands. The enemy are at
+Kjepitsi, Vyelunie, Cracow; along the boundary also considerable forces
+are disposed. In the mountains near the Hungarian border, where
+Lyubovlya is situated, there are no troops save those of the marshal;
+the Swedes have never gone to that distance, not having men enough nor
+daring sufficient. From Lyubovlya it is nearer to Russia, which is free
+of hostile occupation, and to Lvoff, which has not ceased to be loyal,
+and to the Tartars, who, according to information, are coming with
+succor; all these are waiting specially for the decision of the king."
+
+"As to Pan Lyubomirski," said the Bishop of Cracow, "his ambition will
+be satisfied with this, that he will receive the king first in his
+starostaship of Spij, and will surround him with protection. The
+government will remain with the king, but the hope itself of great
+services will satisfy the marshal. If he wishes to tower above all
+others through his loyalty, then, whether his loyalty flows from
+ambition or from love to the king and the country, his majesty will
+always receive notable profit."
+
+This opinion of a worthy and experienced bishop seemed the most proper;
+therefore it was decided that the king should go through the mountains
+to Lyubovlya, and thence to Lvoff, or whithersoever circumstances might
+indicate.
+
+They discussed also the day of returning; but the voevoda of Lenchytsk,
+who had just come from his mission to the emperor for aid, said that it
+was better not to fix the date, but to leave the decision to the king,
+so that the news might not be spread and the enemy forewarned. They
+decided only this, that the king would move on with three hundred
+dragoons, under command of Tyzenhauz, who, though young, enjoyed
+already the reputation of a great soldier.
+
+But still more important was the second part of the deliberations, in
+which it was voted unanimously that on his arrival in the country,
+government and the direction of the war should pass into the hands of
+the king, whom nobles, troops, and hetmans were to obey in all things.
+They spoke besides of the future, and touched upon the causes of those
+sudden misfortunes which, as a deluge, had covered the whole land in
+such a brief period. And the primate himself gave no other cause for
+this than the disorder, want of obedience, and excessive contempt for
+the office and majesty of the king.
+
+He was heard in silence, for each man understood that it was a question
+here of the fate of the Commonwealth, and of great, hitherto unexampled
+changes in it, which might bring back the ancient power of the State,
+and which was long desired by the wise queen who loved her adopted
+country.
+
+From the mouth of the worthy prince of the church there came words like
+thunderbolts, and the souls of the hearers opened to the truth, almost
+as flowers open to the sun.
+
+"Not against ancient liberties do I rise," said the primate, "but
+against that license which with its own hands is murdering the country.
+In very truth men have forgotten in this Commonwealth the distinction
+between freedom and license; and as excessive pleasure ends in pain, so
+freedom unchecked has ended in slavery. You have descended to such
+error, citizens of this illustrious Commonwealth, that only he among
+you passes for a defender of liberty who raises an uproar, who breaks
+diets and opposes the king, not when it is needful, but when for the
+king it is a question of saving the country. In our treasury the bottom
+of the chest can be seen; the soldier unpaid seeks pay of the enemy;
+the diets, the only foundation of this Commonwealth, are dissolved
+after having done nothing, for one disorderly man, one evil citizen,
+for his own private purpose may prevent deliberation. What manner of
+liberty is that which permits one man to stand against all? If that is
+freedom for one man, then it is bondage for all others. And where have
+we gone with the use of this freedom which seemed such sweet fruit?
+Behold one weak enemy, against whom our ancestors gained so many
+splendid victories, now _sicut fulgur exit ab occidente et poret usque
+ad orientem_ (flashes like lightning from the west, and goes as far as
+the east). No one opposes him, traitorous heretics aided him, and he
+seized possession of all things; he persecutes the faith, he desecrates
+churches, and when you speak of your liberties he shows you the sword.
+Behold what your provincial diets have come to, what your veto has come
+to, what your license has come to, your degradation of the king at
+every step. Your king, the natural defender of the country, you have
+rendered, first of all, powerless, and then you complain that he does
+not defend you. You did not want your own government, and now the enemy
+is governing. And who, I ask, can save us in this fall, who can bring
+back ancient glory to this Commonwealth, if not he who has spent so
+much of his life and time for it; when the unhappy domestic war with
+the Cossacks tore it, who exposed his consecrated person to dangers
+such as no monarch in our time has passed through; who at Zborovo, at
+Berestechko, and at Jvanyets fought like a common soldier, bearing
+toils and hardships beyond his station of king? To him now we will
+confide ourselves; to him, with the example of the ancient Romans, we
+will give the dictatorship, and take counsel ourselves how to save in
+time coming this fatherland from domestic enemies, from vice, license,
+disorder, disobedience, and restore due dignity to the government and
+the king."
+
+So spoke the primate; and misfortune with the experience of recent
+times had changed his hearers in such a degree that no man protested,
+for all saw clearly that either the power of the king must be
+strengthened, or the Commonwealth must perish without fail. They began
+therefore to consider in various ways how to bring the counsels of the
+primate into practice. The king and queen listened to them eagerly and
+with joy, especially the queen, who had labored long and earnestly at
+the introduction of order into the Commonwealth.
+
+The king returned then to Glogov glad and satisfied, and summoning a
+number of confidential officers, among whom was Kmita, he said,--
+
+"I am impatient, my stay in this country is burning me, I could wish to
+start even to-morrow; therefore I have called you, as men of arms and
+experience, to provide ready methods. It is a pity that we should lose
+time, when our presence may hasten considerably a general war."
+
+"In truth," said Lugovski, "if such is the will of your Royal Grace,
+why delay? The sooner the better."
+
+"While the affair is not noised about and the enemy do not double their
+watchfulness," added Colonel Wolf.
+
+"The enemy are already on their guard, and have taken possession of the
+roads so far as they are able," said Kmita.
+
+"How is that?" asked the king.
+
+"Gracious Lord, your intended return is no news for the Swedes. Almost
+every day a report travels over the whole Commonwealth, that your Royal
+Grace is already on the road, or even now in your realms, _inter
+regna_. Therefore it is necessary to observe the greatest care, and to
+hurry by through narrow places stealthily, for Douglas's scouts are
+waiting on the roads."
+
+"The best carefulness," said Tyzenhauz, looking at Kmita, "is three
+hundred faithful sabres; and if my gracious lord gives me command over
+them, I will conduct him in safety, even over the breasts of Douglas's
+scouts."
+
+"You will conduct if there are just three hundred, but suppose that you
+meet six hundred or a thousand, or come upon a superior force waiting
+in ambush, what then?"
+
+"I said three hundred," answered Tyzenhauz, "for three hundred were
+mentioned. If however that is too small a party, we can provide five
+hundred and even more."
+
+"God save us from that. The larger the party, the more noise will it
+make," said Kmita.
+
+"I think that the marshal of the kingdom will come out to meet us with
+his squadrons," put in the king.
+
+"The marshal will not come out," answered Kmita, "for he will not know
+the day and the hour, and even if he did know some delay might happen
+on the road, as is usual; it is difficult to foresee everything."
+
+"A soldier says that, a genuine soldier!" said the king. "It is clear
+that you are not a stranger to war."
+
+Kmita laughed, for he remembered his attacks on Hovanski. Who was more
+skilled than he in such actions? To whom could the escort of the king
+be entrusted with more judgment?
+
+But Tyzenhauz was evidently of a different opinion from the king, for
+he frowned and said with sarcasm against Kmita, "We wait then for your
+enlightened counsel."
+
+Kmita felt ill will in the words; therefore he fixed his glance on
+Tyzenhauz and answered,--
+
+"My opinion is that the smaller the party the easier it will pass."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"The will of your Royal Grace is unfettered," said Kmita, "and can do
+what it likes, but my reason teaches me this: Let Pan Tyzenhauz go
+ahead with the dragoons, giving out purposely that he is conducting the
+king; this he will do to attract the enemy to himself. His affair is to
+wind out, to escape from the trap safely. And we with a small band in a
+day or two will move after him with your Royal Grace; and when the
+enemy's attention is turned in another direction it will be easy for us
+to reach Lyubovlya."
+
+The king clapped his hands with delight. "God sent us this soldier!"
+cried he. "Solomon could not judge better. I give my vote for this
+plan, and there must not be another. They will hunt for the king among
+the dragoons, and the king will pass by under their noses. It could not
+be better!"
+
+"Gracious King," cried Tyzenhauz, "that is pastime."
+
+"Soldier's pastime!" said the king. "But no matter, I will not recede
+from that plan."
+
+Kmita's eyes shone from delight because his opinion had prevailed, but
+Tyzenhauz sprang from his seat.
+
+"Gracious Lord!" said he, "I resign my command from the dragoons. Let
+some one else lead them."
+
+"And why is that?"
+
+"For if your Royal Grace will go without defence, exposed to the play
+of fortune, to every destructive chance which may happen, I wish to be
+near your person to expose my breast for you and to die should the need
+be."
+
+"I thank you for your sincere intention," answered Yan Kazimir; "but
+calm yourself, for in just such a way as Babinich advises shall I be
+least exposed."
+
+"Let Pan Babinich, or whatever his name may be, take what he advises on
+his own responsibility! It may concern him that your Royal Grace be
+lost in the mountains. I take as witness God and my companions here
+present that I advised against it from my soul."
+
+Scarcely had he finished speaking when Kmita sprang up, and standing
+face to face with Tyzenhauz asked, "What do you mean by these words?"
+
+Tyzenhauz measured him haughtily with his eyes from head to foot, and
+said, "Do not strain your head, little man, toward mine, the place is
+too high for you."
+
+To which Kmita with lightning in his eyes replied, "It is not known for
+whom it would be too high if--"
+
+"If what?" asked Tyzenhauz, looking at him quickly.
+
+"If I should reach higher people, than you."
+
+Tyzenhauz laughed. "But where would you seek them?"
+
+"Silence!" said the king suddenly, with a frown. "Do not begin a
+quarrel in my presence."
+
+Yan Kazimir made an impression of such dignity on all surrounding him,
+that both young men were silent and confused, remembering that in the
+presence of the king unseemly words had escaped them. But the king
+added,--
+
+"No one has the right to exalt himself above that cavalier who burst
+the siege gun and escaped from Swedish hands, even though his father
+lived in a village, which, as I see, was not the case, for a bird from
+his feathers, and blood from deeds are easily known. Drop your
+offences." Here the king turned to Tyzenhauz. "You wish it; then remain
+with our person. We may not refuse that. Wolf or Denhoff will lead the
+dragoons. But Babinich too will remain, and we will go according to his
+counsel, for he has pleased our heart."
+
+"I wash my hands!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"Only preserve the secret, gentlemen. Let the dragoons go to Ratibor
+to-day, and spread as widely as possible the report that I am with
+them. And then be on the watch, for you know not the day nor the
+hour--Go, Tyzenhauz, give the order to the captain of the dragoons."
+
+Tyzenhauz went out wringing his hands from anger and sorrow; after him
+went other officers.
+
+That same day the news thundered through all Glogov that the king had
+already gone to the boundaries of the Commonwealth. Even many
+distinguished senators thought that the departure had really taken
+place. Couriers, sent purposely, took the report to Opol and to the
+roads on the boundary.
+
+Tyzenhauz, though he had declared that he washed his hands, did not
+give up the affair as lost; as attendant of the king, he had access to
+the person of the monarch every moment made easy. That very day
+therefore, after the dragoons had gone, he stood before the face of Yan
+Kazimir, or rather before both royal persons, for Marya Ludvika was
+present.
+
+"I have come for the order," said he; "when do we start?"
+
+"The day after to-morrow, before dawn."
+
+"Are many people to go?"
+
+"You will go; Lugovski with the soldiers. The castellan of Sandomir
+goes also with me. I begged him to take as few men as possible; but we
+cannot dispense with a few trusty and tried sabres. Besides, his
+holiness the nuncio wishes to accompany me; his presence will add
+importance, and will touch all who are faithful to the true church. He
+does not hesitate therefore to expose his sacred person to hazard. Do
+you have a care that there are not more than forty horses, for that is
+Babinich's counsel."
+
+"Gracious Lord!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"And what do you wish yet?"
+
+"On my knees I implore one favor. The question is settled, the dragoons
+have gone,--we shall travel without defence, and the first scouting
+party of a few tens of horses may capture us. Listen, your Royal Grace,
+to the prayer of your servant, on whose faithfulness God is looking,
+and do not trust in everything to that noble. He is an adroit man,
+since he has been able in so short a time to steal into your heart and
+favor; but--"
+
+"Do you envy him?" interrupted the king.
+
+"I do not envy him, Gracious Lord; I do not wish even to suspect him of
+treason positively; but I would swear that his name is not Babinich.
+Why does he hide his real name? Why is it somehow inconvenient to tell
+what he did before the siege of Chenstohova? Why specially has he
+insisted upon dragoons going out first, and that your Royal Grace
+should go without an escort?"
+
+The king thought awhile, and began, according to his custom, to pout
+his lips repeatedly.
+
+"If it were a question of collusion with the Swedes," said he at last,
+"what could three hundred dragoons do? What power would they be, and
+what protection? Babinich would need merely to notify the Swedes to
+dispose a few hundred infantry along the roads, and they could take us
+as in a net. But only think if there can be a question of treason here.
+He would have had to know beforehand the date of our journey, and to
+inform the Swedes in Cracow; and how could he do so, since we move the
+day after to-morrow? He could not even guess that we would choose his
+plan; we might have gone according to your suggestion or that of
+others. It was at first decided to go with the dragoons; then if he
+wished to talk with the Swedes this special party would have confused
+his arrangements, for he would have to send out new messengers and give
+fresh notice. All these are irrefragable reasons. And besides he did
+not insist at all on his opinion, as you say; he only offered, as did
+others, what seemed to him best. No, no! Sincerity is looking forth
+from the eyes of that noble, and his burned side bears witness that he
+is ready to disregard even torture."
+
+"His Royal Grace is right," said the queen, on a sudden; "these points
+are irrefragable, and the advice was and is good."
+
+Tyzenhauz knew from experience that when the queen gave her opinion it
+would be vain for him to appeal to the king, Yan Kazimir had such
+confidence in her wit and penetration. And it was a question now with
+the young man only that the king should observe needful caution.
+
+"It is not my duty," answered he, "to oppose my king and queen. But if
+we are to go the day after to-morrow, let this Babinich not know of it
+till the hour of departure."
+
+"That may be," said the king.
+
+"And on the road I will have an eye on him, and should anything happen
+he will not go alive from my hands."
+
+"You will not have to act," said the queen. "Listen; not you will
+preserve the king from evil happenings on the road, from treason, and
+snares of the enemy; not you, not Babinich, not the dragoons, not the
+powers of earth, but the Providence of God, whose eye is turned
+continually on the shepherds of nations and the anointed of the Lord.
+It will guard him. It will protect him and bring him safely; and in
+case of need, send him assistance, of which you do not even think, you
+who believe in earthly power only."
+
+"Most Serene Lady!" answered Tyzenhauz, "I believe, too, that without
+the will of God not a hair will fall from the head of any man; but to
+guard the king's person through fear of traitors is no sin for me."
+
+Marya Ludvika smiled graciously. "But you suspect too hastily, and thus
+cast shame on a whole nation, in which, as this same Babinich has said,
+there has not yet been found one to raise his hand against his own
+king. Let it not astonish you that after such desertion, after such a
+breaking of oaths and faith as the king and I have experienced, I say
+still that no one has dared such a terrible crime, not even those who
+to-day serve the Swedes."
+
+"Prince Boguslav's letter, Gracious Lady?"
+
+"That letter utters untruth," said the queen, with decision. "If there
+is a man in the Commonwealth ready to betray even the king, that man is
+Prince Boguslav, for he in name only belongs to this people."
+
+"Speaking briefly, do not put suspicion on Babinich," said the king.
+"As to his name, it must be doubled in your head. Besides, we may ask
+him; but how can we say to him here, how inquire, 'If you are not
+Babinich, then what is your name?' Such a question might pain an honest
+man terribly, and I'll risk my head that he is an honest man."
+
+"At such a price, Gracious Lord, I would not convince myself of his
+honesty."
+
+"Well, well, we are thankful for your care. To-morrow for prayer and
+penance, and the day after to the road, to the road!"
+
+Tyzenhauz withdrew with a sigh, and in the greatest secrecy began
+preparations that very day for the journey. Even dignitaries who were
+to accompany the king were not all informed of the time. But the
+servants were ordered to have horses in readiness, for they might start
+any day for Ratibor.
+
+The king did not show himself the entire following day, even in the
+church; but he lay in the form of a cross in his own room till night,
+fasting and imploring the King of kings for aid, not for himself, but
+for the Commonwealth.
+
+Marya Ludvika, together with her ladies-in-waiting, was also in prayer.
+
+Then the following night freshened the strength of the wearied ones;
+and when in darkness the Glogov church-bell sounded to matins, the hour
+had struck for the journey.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+They rode through Ratibor, merely stopping to feed the horses. No one
+recognized the king, no one paid much attention to the party, for all
+were occupied with the recent passage of the dragoons, among whom, as
+all thought, was the King of Poland. The retinue was about fifty in
+number, for several dignitaries accompanied the king; five bishops
+alone, and among others the nuncio, ventured to share with him the
+toils of a journey not without peril. The road within the boundary of
+the empire, however, presented no danger. At Oderberg, not far from the
+junction of the Olsha with the Odra, they entered Moravia.
+
+The day was cloudy, and snow fell so thickly that it was not possible
+to see the road a few steps ahead. But the king was joyous and full of
+courage, for a sign had been manifested which all considered most
+favorable, and which contemporary historians did not neglect to insert
+in their chronicles. Behold, just as the king was departing from
+Glogov, a little bird, entirely white, appeared before his horse and
+began to circle round, rising at times in the air, at times coming down
+to the head of the king, chirping and twittering joyously meanwhile.
+They remembered that a similar bird, but black, had circled over the
+king when he was retreating from Warsaw before the Swedes.
+
+But this was white, exactly of the size and form of a swallow; which
+fact roused the greater wonder, because it was deep winter, and
+swallows were not thinking yet of return. But all were rejoiced, and
+the king for the first few days spoke of nothing else, and promised
+himself the most successful future. It appeared from the beginning,
+too, how sound was Kmita's advice to travel apart.
+
+Everywhere in Moravia people were telling of the recent passage of the
+King of Poland. Some stated that they had seen him with their own eyes,
+all in armor, with a sword in his hand and a crown on his head. Various
+stories, also, were current of the forces which he had with him, and in
+general the number of his dragoons was exaggerated to the fabulous.
+There were some who had seen ten thousand, and who could not wait till
+the last horses, men, gunners, and flags had passed.
+
+"Surely," said they, "the Swedes will spring before them, but what they
+will do with such a force is unknown."
+
+"Well," asked the king of Tyzenhauz, "was not Babinich right?"
+
+"We are not in Lyubovlya yet, Gracious Lord," replied the young
+magnate.
+
+Babinich was satisfied with himself and with the journey. Generally he
+went ahead of the king's party with the three Kyemliches, examining the
+road; sometimes he rode with the rest, entertaining the king with
+narratives of single incidents in the siege of Chenstohova, of which
+the king never had enough. And almost every hour that young hero,
+cheerful, mettlesome, eagle-like, drew nearer the heart of the king.
+Time passed for the monarch now in prayer, now in pious meditation on
+eternal life, now in discussing the coming war and the aid hoped from
+the emperor, and finally in looking at knightly amusements with which
+the attendant soldiers endeavored to shorten the time of the journey.
+For Yan Kazimir had this in his nature, that his mind passed easily
+from seriousness almost to frivolity, from hard labor to amusements, to
+which, when there was leisure, he gave himself with his whole soul, as
+if no care, no grief had pressed him at any time.
+
+The soldiers then exhibited themselves, each with what he could do; the
+Kyemliches, Kosma, and Damian, immense and awkward figures, amused the
+king by breaking horseshoes, which they broke like canes; he paid them
+a thaler apiece, though his wallet was empty enough, for all his money,
+and even the diamonds and "parafanaly" (paraphernalia) of the queen,
+had been spent on the army.
+
+Pan Andrei exhibited himself by throwing a heavy hatchet, which he
+hurled upward with such force that it was barely visible, and then he
+sprang under the instrument with his horse and caught it by the handle
+as it fell. At sight of this the king clapped his hands.
+
+"I saw that done," said he, "by Pan Slushka, brother of the
+vice-chancellor's wife, but he threw not so high by half."
+
+"This is customary with us in Lithuania," said Pan Andrei; "and when a
+man practises it from childhood he becomes skilful."
+
+"Whence have you those scars across the lip?" asked the king of him
+once, pointing to Kmita's scars. "Some one went through you well with a
+sabre."
+
+"That is not from a sabre, Gracious Lord, but from a bullet. I was
+fired at by a man who put the pistol to my mouth."
+
+"An enemy or one of ours?"
+
+"One of ours; but an enemy whom I shall yet call to account, and till
+that happens it is not proper for me to speak of it."
+
+"Have you such animosity as that?"
+
+"I have no animosity. Gracious Lord, for on my head I bear a still
+deeper scar from a sabre, through which cut my soul almost left me; but
+since an honorable man did it I harbor no offence against him." Kmita
+removed his cap and showed the king a deep furrow, the white edges of
+which were perfectly visible. "I am not ashamed of this wound," said
+he, "for it was given me by such a master that there is not another
+like him in the Commonwealth."
+
+"Who is such a master?"
+
+"Pan Volodyovski."
+
+"For God's sake! I know him. He did wonders at Zbaraj. And I was at the
+wedding of his comrade, Skshetuski, who was the first to bring me news
+of the besieged. Those are great cavaliers! And with them was a third,
+him the whole army glorified as the greatest of all. A fat noble, and
+so amusing that we almost burst our sides from laughter."
+
+"That is Pan Zagloba, I think!" said Kmita; "he is a man not only
+brave, but full of wonderful stratagems."
+
+"Do you know what they are doing now?"
+
+"Volodyovski used to lead dragoons with the voevoda of Vilna."
+
+The king frowned. "And is he serving the Swedes now with the prince
+voevoda?"
+
+"He! The Swedes? He is with Pan Sapyeha. I saw myself how, after the
+treason of the prince, he threw his baton at his feet."
+
+"Oh, he is a worthy soldier!" answered the king. "From Pan Sapyeha we
+have had news from Tykotsin, where he is besieging the voevoda. God
+give him luck! If all were like him, the Swedish enemy would regret
+their undertaking."
+
+Here Tyzenhauz, who had been listening to the conversation, asked
+suddenly, "Then were you with Radzivill at Kyedani?"
+
+Kmita was somewhat confused, and began to throw up his hatchet. "I
+was," answered he.
+
+"Give peace to your hatchet," said Tyzenhauz. "And what were you doing
+at the prince's house?"
+
+"I was a guest," answered Kmita, impatiently, "and I ate his bread,
+until I was disgusted with his treason."
+
+"And why did you not go with other honorable soldiers to Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"Because I had made a vow to go to Chenstohova, which you will more
+easily understand when I tell you that our Ostra Brama was occupied by
+the Northerners."
+
+Tyzenhauz began to shake his head and smack his lips; this attracted
+the attention of the king, so that he looked inquiringly at Kmita. The
+latter, made impatient, turned to Tyzenhauz and said,--
+
+"My worthy sir! Why do I not inquire of you where you have been, and
+what you have been doing?"
+
+"Ask me," replied Tyzenhauz; "I have nothing to conceal."
+
+"Neither am I before a court; and if I shall ever be, you will not be
+my judge. Leave me, then, that I lose not my patience."
+
+When he had said this, he hurled the hatchet so sharply that it grew
+small in the height; the king raised his eyes after it, and at that
+moment he was thinking of nothing save this, would Babinich catch it in
+its fall, or would he not catch it?
+
+Babinich put spurs to his horse, sprang forward, and caught it. That
+same evening Tyzenhauz said to the king,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, this noble pleases me less and less."
+
+"But me more and more," answered the king, pursing his lips.
+
+"I heard to-day one of his people call him colonel; he only looked
+threateningly, and straightway confused the man. There is something in
+that."
+
+"And it seems to me sometimes that he does not wish to tell
+everything," added the king; "but that is his affair."
+
+"No, Gracious Lord," exclaimed Tyzenhauz, forcibly, "it is not his
+affair, it is our affair, and that of the whole Commonwealth. For if he
+is some traitor who is planning the death or captivity of your Royal
+Grace, then with your person will perish all those who at this moment
+have taken arms; the whole Commonwealth will perish, which you alone
+are competent to save."
+
+"I will ask him myself to-morrow."
+
+"God grant that I be a false prophet, but nothing good looks out of his
+eyes. He is too smart, too bold, too daring; and such people are ready
+for anything."
+
+The king looked troubled. Next morning, when they moved on their
+journey, he beckoned Kmita to approach him.
+
+"Where were you, Colonel?" asked the king, suddenly.
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+Kmita struggled with himself; the wish was burning him to spring from
+his horse, fall at the feet of the king, and throw off the burden he
+was bearing,--tell the whole truth at once. But he thought of the
+fearful impression which the name Kmita would make, especially after
+the letter of Prince Boguslav Radzivill. How could he, who had been the
+right hand of Radzivill, who had maintained the preponderance of Prince
+Yanush, who had aided him in scattering his disobedient squadrons, who
+supported him in treason; how could he, accused and suspected of the
+most terrible crime,--an attack on the person of the king,--succeed in
+convincing the king, the bishops, and senators, that he had corrected
+himself, that he was transformed? With what could he show the sincerity
+of his intentions? What proofs could he bring save naked words? His
+former offences pursue him unceasingly, unsparingly, as furious dogs a
+wild beast in the forest. He determined on silence. But he felt also
+unspeakable disgust and hatred of subterfuge. Must he throw dust in the
+eyes of the king, whom he loved with all the power of his soul, and
+deceive him with fictitious tales?
+
+He felt that strength failed him for this; therefore he said, after a
+while: "Gracious King, the time will come, perhaps soon, in which I
+shall open my whole soul to your Royal Grace as in confession to a
+priest. But I wish deeds to vouch for me, for my sincere intention, for
+my loyalty and my love of majesty, not words simply. I have offended
+against you, my Gracious Lord, and the country, and I have repented too
+little yet; therefore I am seeking service in which I can find
+reparation more easily. Besides, who has not offended? Who in the whole
+Commonwealth does not need to beat his breast? It may be that I have
+offended more grievously than others, but I was the first also to
+bethink myself. Do not inquire, Gracious Lord, about anything until the
+present service will convince you concerning me; do not ask, for I
+cannot answer without closing the road of salvation to myself, for God
+is the witness, and the Most Holy Lady, our Queen, that I had no evil
+intent, that I am ready to give the last drop of my blood for you."
+
+Here Pan Andrei's eyes grew moist, and such sincerity and sorrow
+appeared on his face that his countenance defended him with greater
+power than his words.
+
+"God is looking at my intentions," said he, "and will account them to
+me at judgment, but, Gracious Lord, if you do not trust me, dismiss me,
+remove me from your person. I will follow at a distance, so as to come
+in time of difficulty, even without being called, and lay down my life
+for you. And then, Gracious Lord, you will believe that I am not a
+traitor, but one of that kind of servants of whom you have not many,
+even among those who cast suspicion on others."
+
+"I believe you to-day," said the king. "Remain near our person as
+before, for treason does not speak in such fashion."
+
+"I thank your Royal Grace," answered Kmita; and reining in his horse
+somewhat, he pushed back among the last ranks of the party.
+
+But Tyzenhauz did not limit himself to conveying suspicions to the
+king. The result was that all began to look askance at Kmita. Audible
+conversation ceased at his approach, and whispers began. Every movement
+of his was followed, every word considered. Kmita noticed this, and was
+ill at ease among these men.
+
+Even the king, though he did not remove confidence from him, had not
+for Pan Andrei such a joyful countenance as before. Therefore the young
+hero lost his daring, grew gloomy, sadness and bitterness took
+possession of his heart. Formerly in front, among the first, he used to
+make his horse prance; now he dragged on many yards behind the
+cavalcade, with hanging head and gloomy thoughts.
+
+At last the Carpathians stood white before the travellers. Snow lay on
+their slopes, clouds spread their unwieldy bodies on the summits; and
+when an evening came clear at sunset, those mountains put on flaming
+garments from which marvellously bright gleams went forth till quenched
+in the darkness embracing the whole world. Kmita gazed on those wonders
+of nature which to that time he had never seen; and though greatly
+grieved, he forgot his cares from admiration and wonder.
+
+Each day those giants grew greater, more mighty, till at last the
+retinue of the king came to them and entered a pass which opened on a
+sudden, like a gate.
+
+"The boundary must be near," said the king, with emotion.
+
+Then they saw a small wagon, drawn by one horse, and in the wagon a
+peasant. The king's men stopped him at once.
+
+"Man," said Tyzenhauz, "are we in Poland?"
+
+"Beyond that cliff and that little river is the emperor's boundary, but
+you are standing on the king's land."
+
+"Which way is it then to Jivyets?"
+
+"Go straight ahead; you will come to the road." And the mountaineer
+whipped his horse.
+
+Tyzenhauz galloped to the retinue standing at a distance.
+
+"Gracious Lord," cried he, with emotion, "you are now _inter regna_,
+for at that little river your kingdom begins."
+
+The king said nothing, only made a sign to hold his horse, dismounted,
+and throwing himself on his knees, raised his eyes and his hands
+upward.
+
+At sight of this, all dismounted and followed his example. That king,
+then a wanderer, fell after a moment in the form of a cross on the
+snow, and began to kiss that land, so beloved and so thankless, which
+in time of disaster had refused refuge to his head.
+
+Silence followed, and only sighs interrupted it.
+
+The evening was frosty, clear; the mountains and the summits of the
+neighboring fir-trees were in purple, farther off in the shadow they
+had begun to put on violet; but the road on which the king was lying
+turned as it were into a ruddy and golden ribbon, and rays fell on the
+king, bishops, and dignitaries.
+
+Then a breeze began from the summits, and bearing on its wings sparks
+of snow, flew to the valley. Therefore the nearer fir-trees began to
+bend their snow-covered heads, bow to their lord, and to make a joyous
+and rustling sound, as if they were singing that old song, "Be welcome
+to us, thou dear master!"
+
+Darkness had already filled the air when the king's retinue moved
+forward. Beyond the defile was spread out a rather roomy plain, the
+other end of which was lost in the distance. Light was dying all
+around; only in one place the sky was still bright with red. The king
+began to repeat _Ave Maria_; after him the others with concentration of
+spirit repeated the pious words.
+
+Their native land, unvisited by them for a long time; the mountains
+which night was now covering; the dying twilight, the prayer,--all
+these caused a solemnity of heart and mind; hence after the prayer the
+king, the dignitaries, and the knights rode on in silence. Night fell,
+but in the east the sky was shining still more redly.
+
+"Let us go toward that twilight," said the king, at last; "it is a
+wonder that it is shining yet."
+
+Then Kmita galloped up. "Gracious Lord, that is a fire!"
+cried he.
+
+All halted.
+
+"How is that?" asked the king; "it seems to me that 'tis the twilight."
+
+"A fire, a fire! I am not mistaken!" cried Kmita.
+
+And indeed, of all of the attendants of the king he knew most in that
+matter. At last it was no longer possible to doubt, since above that
+supposed twilight were rising as it were red clouds, rolling now
+brighter, now darker in turn.
+
+"It is as if Jivyets were burning!" cried the king; "maybe the enemy is
+ravaging it."
+
+He had not finished speaking when to their ears flew the noise of men,
+the snorting of horses, and a number of dark figures appeared before
+the retinue.
+
+"Halt, halt!" cried Tyzenhauz.
+
+These figures halted, as if uncertain what to do farther.
+
+"Who are you?" was asked from the retinue.
+
+"Ours!" said a number of voices. "Ours! We are escaping with our lives
+from Jivyets. The Swedes are burning Jivyets, and murdering people."
+
+"Stop, in God's name! What do you say? Whence have they come?"
+
+"They were waiting for our king. There is a power of them, a power! May
+the Mother of God have the king in Her keeping!"
+
+Tyzenhauz lost his head for a moment. "See what it is to go with a
+small party!" cried he to Kmita; "Would that you were killed for such
+counsel!"
+
+Yan Kazimir began to inquire himself of the fugitives. "But where is
+the king?"
+
+"The king has gone to the mountains with a great army. Two days ago he
+passed through Jivyets; they pursued him, and were fighting somewhere
+near Suha. We have not heard whether they took him or not; but to-day
+they returned to Jivyets, and are burning and murdering."
+
+"Go with God!" said Yan Kazimir.
+
+The fugitives shot past quickly.
+
+"See what would have met us had we gone with the dragoons!" exclaimed
+Kmita.
+
+"Gracious King!" said Father Gembitski, "the enemy is before us. What
+are we to do?"
+
+All surrounded the monarch, as if wishing to protect him with their
+persons from sudden danger. The king gazed on that fire which was
+reflected in his eyes, and he was silent; no one advanced an opinion,
+so difficult was it to give good advice.
+
+"When I was going out of the country a fire lighted me," said Yan
+Kazimir, at last; "and when I enter, another gives light."
+
+Again silence, only still longer than before.
+
+"Who has any advice?" inquired Father Gembitski, at last.
+
+Then the voice of Tyzenhauz was heard, full of bitterness, and insult:
+"He who did not hesitate to expose the king's person to danger, who
+said that the king should go without a guard, let him now give advice."
+
+At this moment a horseman pushed out of the circle. It was Kmita.
+
+"Very well!" said he. And rising in the stirrups he shouted, turning to
+his attendants standing at some distance, "Kyemliches, after me!"
+
+Then he urged his horse to a gallop, and after him shot the three
+horsemen with all the breath that was in the breasts of their horses.
+
+A cry of despair came from Tyzenhauz: "That is a conspiracy!" said he.
+"These traitors will give us up surely. Gracious King, save yourself
+while there is time, for the enemy will soon close the pass! Gracious
+King, save yourself! Back! back!"
+
+"Let us return, let us return!" cried the bishops and dignitaries, in
+one voice.
+
+Yan Kazimir became impatient, lightnings flashed from his eyes;
+suddenly he drew his sword from its sheath and cried,--
+
+"May God not grant me to leave my country a second time. Come what may,
+I have had enough of that!" And he put spurs to his horse to move
+forward; but the nuncio himself seized the reins.
+
+"Your Royal Grace," said he, seriously, "you bear on your shoulders the
+fate of the Catholic Church and the country, therefore you are not free
+to expose your person."
+
+"Not free," repeated the bishops.
+
+"I will not return to Silesia, so help me the Holy Cross!" answered Yan
+Kazimir.
+
+"Gracious Lord! listen to the prayers of your subjects," said the
+castellan of Sandomir. "If you do not wish to return to the emperor's
+territory, let us go at least from this place and turn toward the
+Hungarian boundary, or let us go back through this pass, so that our
+return be not intercepted. There we will wait. In case of an attack by
+the enemy, escape on horses will remain to us; but at least let them
+not enclose us as in a trap."
+
+"Let it be even so," said the king. "I do not reject prudent counsel,
+but I will not go wandering a second time. If we cannot appear by this
+road, we will by another. But I think that you are alarmed in vain.
+Since the Swedes looked for us among the dragoons, as the people from
+Jivyets said, it is clear proof that they know nothing of us, and that
+there is no treason or conspiracy. Just consider; you are men of
+experience. The Swedes would not have attacked the dragoons, they would
+not have fired a gun at them if they know that we were following them.
+Be calm, gentlemen! Babinich has gone with his men for news, and he
+will return soon of a certainty."
+
+When he had said this the king turned his horse toward the pass; after
+him his attendants. They halted on the spot where the first mountaineer
+had shown them the boundary.
+
+A quarter of an hour passed, then a half-hour and an hour.
+
+"Have you noticed, gentlemen," asked the voevoda of Lenchytsk on a
+sudden, "that the fire is decreasing?"
+
+"It is going out, going out; you can almost see it die," said a number
+of voices.
+
+"That is a good sign," said the king.
+
+"I will go ahead with a few men," said Tyzenhauz. "We will halt about a
+furlong from here, and if the Swedes come we will detain them till we
+die. In every case there will be time to think of the safety of the
+king's person."
+
+"Remain with the party; I forbid you to go!" said the king.
+
+To which Tyzenhauz answered,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, give command later to shoot me for disobedience, but
+now I will go, for now it is a question of you." And calling upon a
+number of soldiers in whom it was possible to trust in every emergency,
+he moved forward.
+
+They halted at the other end of the defile which opened into the
+valley, and stood in silence, with muskets ready, holding their ears
+toward every sound. The silence lasted long; finally the sound of snow
+trampled by horses' feet came to them.
+
+"They are coming!" whispered one of the soldiers.
+
+"That is no party; only a few horses are to be heard," answered the
+other. "Pan Babinich is returning."
+
+Meanwhile those approaching came in the darkness within a few tens of
+yards.
+
+"Who is there?" cried Tyzenhauz.
+
+"Ours! Do not fire there!" sounded the voice of Kmita.
+
+At that moment he appeared before Tyzenhauz, and not knowing him in the
+darkness, inquired,--
+
+"But where is the king?"
+
+"At the end of the pass."
+
+"Who is speaking, for I cannot see?"
+
+"Tyzenhauz. But what is that great bundle which you have before you?"
+And he pointed to some dark form hanging before Kmita, on the front of
+the saddle.
+
+Pan Andrei made no answer, but rode on. When he had reached the king's
+escort, he recognized the person of the king, for it was much clearer
+beyond the pass, and cried,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, the road is open!"
+
+"Are there no Swedes in Jivyets?"
+
+"They have gone to Vadovitsi. That was a party of German mercenaries.
+But here is one of them, Gracious Lord; ask him yourself." And Pan
+Andrei pushed to the ground that form which he held before him, so that
+a groan was heard in the still night.
+
+"Who is that?" asked the astonished king.
+
+"A horseman!"
+
+"As God is dear to me! And you have brought an informant! How is that?
+Tell me."
+
+"Gracious Lord; when a wolf prowls in the night around a flock of sheep
+it is easy for him to seize one; and besides, to tell the truth, this
+is not the first time with me."
+
+The king raised his hands. "But this Babinich is a soldier, may the
+bullets strike him! I see that with such servants I can go even in the
+midst of Swedes."
+
+Meanwhile all gathered around the horseman, who did not rise from the
+ground however.
+
+"Ask him, Gracious Lord," said Kmita, not without a certain
+boastfulness in his voice; "though I do not know whether he will
+answer, for he is throttled a little and there is nothing here to burn
+him with."
+
+"Pour some gorailka into his throat," said the king.
+
+And indeed that medicine helped more than burning, for the horseman
+soon recovered strength and voice. Then Kmita, putting a sword-point to
+his throat, commanded him to tell the whole truth.
+
+The prisoner confessed that he belonged to the regiment of Colonel
+Irlehorn, that they had intelligence of the passage of the king with
+dragoons, therefore they fell upon them near Suha, but meeting firm
+resistance they had to withdraw to Jivyets, whence they marched on to
+Vadovitsi and Cracow, for such were their orders.
+
+"Are there other divisions of the Swedes in the mountains?" asked Kmita
+in German, while squeezing the throat of the horseman somewhat more
+vigorously.
+
+"Maybe there are some," answered he in a broken voice. "General Douglas
+sent scouting-parties around, but they are all withdrawing, for the
+peasants are attacking them in passes."
+
+"Were you the only ones in the neighborhood of Jivyets?"
+
+"The only ones."
+
+"Do you know that the King of Poland has passed?"
+
+"He passed with those dragoons who fought with us at Suha. Many saw
+him."
+
+"Why did you not pursue him?"
+
+"We were afraid of the mountaineers."
+
+Here Kmita began again in Polish: "Gracious Lord, the road is open and
+you will find a night's lodging in Jivyets, for only a part of the
+place is burned."
+
+But unconfiding Tyzenhauz was speaking at this time with the castellan
+of Voinik, and said: "Either that is a great warrior and true as gold,
+or a finished traitor. Consider, your worthiness, that all this may be
+simulated, from the taking of this horseman to his confederates. And if
+this is a trick,--if the Swedes are in ambush in Jivyets,--if the king
+goes and falls as into a net?"
+
+"It is safer to convince one's self," answered the castellan of Voinik.
+
+Then Tyzenhauz turned to the king and said aloud: "Gracious Lord,
+permit me to go ahead to Jivyets and convince myself that what this
+cavalier says and what this trooper declares is true."
+
+"Let it be so! Permit them to go, Gracious Lord," said Kmita.
+
+"Go," said the king; "but we will move forward a little, for it is
+cold."
+
+Tyzenhauz rushed on at all speed, and the escort of the king began to
+move after him slowly. The king regained his good humor and
+cheerfulness, and after a while said to Kmita,--
+
+"But with you it is possible to hunt Swedes as birds with a falcon, for
+you strike from above."
+
+"That is my fashion," said Kmita. "Whenever your Royal Grace wishes to
+hunt, the falcon will always be ready."
+
+"Tell how you caught him."
+
+"That is not difficult. When a regiment marches there are always a few
+men who lag in the rear, and I got this one about half a furlong
+behind. I rode up to him; he thought that I was one of his own people,
+he was not on his guard, and before he could think I had seized and
+gagged him so that he could not shout."
+
+"You said that this was not your first time. Have you then practised
+somewhere before?"
+
+Kmita laughed. "Oh, Gracious Lord, I have, and that of the best. Let
+your Royal Grace but give the order and I will go again, overtake them,
+for their horses are road-weary, take another man, and order my
+Kyemliches to take also."
+
+They advanced some time in silence; then the tramp of a horse was
+heard, and Tyzenhauz flew up. "Gracious King," said he, "the road is
+free, and lodgings are ready."
+
+"But did not I say so?" cried Yan Kazimir. "You, gentlemen, had no need
+to be anxious. Let us ride on now, let us ride, for we have earned our
+rest."
+
+All advanced at a trot, briskly, joyously; and an hour later the
+wearied king was sleeping a sleep without care on his own territory.
+
+That evening Tyzenhauz approached Kmita. "Forgive me," said he; "out of
+love for the king I brought you under suspicion."
+
+Kmita refused his hand and said: "Oh, that cannot be! You made me a
+traitor and a betrayer."
+
+"I would have done more, for I would have shot you in the head; but
+since I have convinced myself that you are an honest man and love the
+king, I stretch out my hand to you. If you wish, take it; if not, take
+it not. I would prefer to have no rivalry with you save that of
+attachment to the king; but I am not afraid of other rivalry."
+
+"Is that your thought? H'm! perhaps you are right, but I am angry with
+you."
+
+"Well, stop being angry. You are a strong soldier. But give us your
+lips, so that we may not lie down to sleep in hatred."
+
+"Let it be so!" said Kmita.
+
+And they fell into each other's arms.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The king's party arrived at Jivyets late in the evening, and paid
+almost no attention to the place, which was terrified by the recent
+attack of the Swedish detachment. The king did not go to the castle,
+which had been ravaged by the enemy and burned in part, but stopped at
+the priest's house. Kmita spread the news that the party was escorting
+the ambassador of the emperor, who was going from Silesia to Cracow.
+
+Next morning they held on toward Vadovitsi, and then turned
+considerably to one side toward Suha. From this place they were to pass
+through Kjechoni to Yordanovo, thence to Novy Targ, and if it appeared
+that there were no Swedish parties near Chorshtyn to go to Chorshtyn;
+if there were, they were to turn toward Hungary and advance on
+Hungarian soil to Lyubovlya. The king hoped, too, that the marshal of
+the kingdom, who disposed of forces so considerable that no reigning
+prince had so many, would make the road safe and hasten forth to meet
+his sovereign. Only this could prevent, that the marshal knew not which
+road the king would take; but among the mountaineers there was no lack
+of trusty men ready to bear word to the marshal. There was no need even
+of confiding the secret to them, for they went willingly when told that
+it was a question of serving the king. These people, though poor and
+half wild, tilling little or not at all an ungrateful soil, living by
+their herds, pious, and hating heretics, were, in truth, given heart
+and soul to the sovereign. They were the first to seize their axes and
+move from the mountains when news of the taking of Cracow spread
+through the country, and especially when news came of the siege of
+Chenstohova, to which pious women were accustomed to go on pilgrimages.
+General Douglas, a well-known warrior, furnished with cannon and
+muskets, scattered them, it is true, on the plains, to which they were
+not accustomed; but the Swedes only with the greatest caution entered
+their special districts, in which it was not easy to reach them, and
+easy to suffer disaster,--so that some smaller divisions, having
+needlessly entered this labyrinth of mountains, were lost.
+
+And now news of the king's passage with an army had already done its
+own, for all had sprung up as one man to defend him and accompany him
+with their axes, even to the end of the world. Yan Kazimir might, if he
+had only disclosed who he was, have surrounded himself in a short time
+with thousands of half-wild "householders;" but he thought justly that
+in such an event the news would be carried about everywhere by all the
+whirlwinds through the whole region, and that the Swedes might send out
+numerous troops to meet him, therefore he chose to travel unknown even
+to the mountaineers.
+
+But in all places trusty guides were found, to whom it was enough to
+say that they were conducting bishops and lords who desired to preserve
+themselves from Swedish hands. They were led, therefore, among snows,
+cliffs, and whirlwinds, and over places so inaccessible that you would
+have said: "A bird cannot fly through them."
+
+More than once the king and the dignitaries had clouds below them, and
+when there were not clouds their glances passed over a shoreless
+expanse, covered with white snows, an expanse seemingly as wide as the
+whole country was wide; more than once they entered mountain throats,
+almost dark, covered with snow, in which perhaps only a wild beast
+might have its lair. But they avoided places accessible to the enemy,
+shortening the road; and it happened that a settlement, at which they
+expected to arrive in half a day, appeared suddenly under their feet,
+and in it they awaited rest and hospitality, though in a smoky hut and
+a sooty room.
+
+The king was in continual good humor; he gave courage to others to
+endure the excessive toil, and he guaranteed that by such roads they
+would surely reach Lyubovlya as safely as unexpectedly.
+
+"The marshal does not expect that we shall fall on his shoulders!"
+repeated the king, frequently.
+
+"What was the return of Xenophon to our journey among the clouds?"
+asked the nuncio.
+
+"The higher we rise, the lower will Swedish fortune fall," answered the
+king.
+
+They arrived at Novy Targ. It seemed that all danger was passed; still
+the mountaineers declared that Swedish troops were moving about near
+Chorshtyn and in the neighborhood. The king supposed that they might be
+the marshal's German cavalry, of which he had two regiments, or they
+might be his own dragoons sent in advance and mistaken for the enemy's
+scouts. Since in Chorshtyn the bishop of Cracow had a garrison,
+opinions were divided in the royal party. Some wished to go by the road
+to Chorshtyn, and then pass along the boundary to Spij; others advised
+to turn straight to Hungary, which came up in wedge-form to Novy Targ,
+and go over heights and through passes, taking guides everywhere who
+knew the most dangerous places.
+
+This last opinion prevailed, for in that way meeting with the Swedes
+became almost impossible; and besides this "eagle" road over the
+precipices and through the clouds gave pleasure to the king.
+
+They passed then from Novy Targ somewhat to the south and west, on the
+right hand of the Byaly Dunayets. The road at first lay through a
+region rather open and spacious, but as they advanced the mountains
+began to run together and the valleys to contract. They went along
+roads over which horses could barely advance. At times the riders had
+to dismount and lead; and more than once the beasts resisted, pointing
+their ears and stretching their distended and steaming nostrils forward
+toward precipices, from the depths of which death seemed to gaze
+upward.
+
+The mountaineers, accustomed to precipices, frequently considered roads
+good on which the heads of unaccustomed men turned and their ears rang.
+At last they entered a kind of rocky chasm long, straight, and so
+narrow that three men could barely ride abreast in it. Two cliffs
+bounded it on the right side and the left. At places however the edges
+inclined, forming slopes less steep, covered with piles of snow
+bordered on the edges with dark pine-trees. Winds blew away the snow
+immediately from the bottom of the pass, and the hoofs of horses
+gritted everywhere on a stony road. But at that moment the wind was not
+blowing, and such silence reigned that there was a ringing in the ears.
+Above where between the woody edges a blue belt of sky was visible,
+black flocks of birds flew past from time to time, shaking their wings
+and screaming.
+
+The king's party halted for rest. Clouds of steam rose from the horses,
+and the men too were tired.
+
+"Is this Poland or Hungary?" inquired, after a time, the king of a
+guide.
+
+"This is Poland."
+
+"But why do we not turn directly to Hungary?"
+
+"Because it is impossible. At some distance this pass turns, beyond the
+turn is a cliff, beyond that we come out on the high-road, turn, then
+go through one more pass, and there the Hungarian country begins."
+
+"Then I see it would have been better to go by the highway at first,"
+said the king.
+
+"Quiet!" cried the mountaineer, quickly. And springing to the cliff he
+put his ear to it.
+
+All fixed their eyes on him; his face changed in a moment, and he said:
+"Beyond the turn troops are coming from the water-fall! For God's sake!
+Are they not Swedes?"
+
+"Where? How? What?" men began to ask on every side. "We hear nothing."
+
+"No, for snow is lying on the sides. By God's wounds, they are near!
+they will be here straightway!"
+
+"Maybe they are the marshal's troops," said the king.
+
+In one moment Kmita urged his horse forward. "I will go and see!" said
+he.
+
+The Kyemliches moved that instant after him, like hunting-dogs in a
+chase; but barely had they stirred from their places when the turn of
+the pass, about a hundred yards distant, was made black by men and
+horses. Kmita looked at them, and the soul quivered within him from
+terror.
+
+Swedes were advancing.
+
+They were so near that it was impossible to retreat, especially since
+the king's party had wearied horses. It only remained to break through,
+to perish, or to go into captivity. The unterrified king understood
+this in a flash; therefore he seized the hilt of his sword.
+
+"Cover the king and retreat!" cried Kmita.
+
+Tyzenhauz with twenty men pushed forward in the twinkle of an eye; but
+Kmita instead of joining them moved on at a sharp trot against the
+Swedes.
+
+He wore the Swedish dress, the same in which he disguised himself when
+going out from the cloister. Seeing a horseman coming toward them in
+such a dress, the Swedes thought perhaps this was some party of their
+own belonging to the King of Sweden; they did not hasten their pace,
+but the captain commanding pushed out beyond the first three.
+
+"What people are you?" asked he in Swedish, looking at the threatening
+and pale face of the young man approaching.
+
+Kmita rode up to him so closely that their knees almost touched, and
+without speaking a word fired from a pistol directly into his ear.
+
+A shout of terror was rent from the breasts of the Swedish cavalry; but
+still louder thundered the voice of Pan Andrei, "Strike!"
+
+And like a rock torn from a cliff rolling down, crushing everything in
+its course, so did he fall on the first rank, bearing death and
+destruction. The two young Kyemliches, like two bears, sprang after him
+into the whirl. The clatter of sabres on mail and helmets was heard,
+like the sound of hammers, and was followed straightway by outcries and
+groans.
+
+It seemed at the first moment to the astonished Swedes that three
+giants had fallen upon them in that wild mountain pass. The first three
+pushed back confused in the presence of the terrible man, and when the
+succeeding ones had extricated themselves from behind the bend of the
+pass, those in the rear were thrown back and confused. The horses fell
+to biting and kicking. The soldiers in the remoter ranks were not able
+to shoot, nor come to the assistance of those in front, who perished
+without aid under the blows of the three giants. In vain did they fall,
+in vain did they present their weapon points; here sabres were
+breaking, there men and horses fell. Kmita urged his horse till his
+hoofs were hanging above the heads of the steeds of his opponents, he
+was raging himself, cutting and thrusting. The blood rushed to his
+face, and from his eyes fire flashed. All thoughts were quenched in him
+save one,--he might perish, but he must detain the Swedes. That thought
+turned in him to a species of wild ecstasy; therefore his powers were
+trebled, his movements became like those of a leopard, mad, and swift
+as lightning. With blows of his sabre, which were blows beyond human,
+he crushed men as a thunderbolt crushes young trees; the twin
+Kyemliches followed, and the old man, standing a trifle in the rear,
+thrust his rapier out every moment between his sons, as a serpent
+thrusts out its bloody tongue.
+
+Meanwhile around the king there rose confusion. The nuncio, as at
+Jivyets, seized the reins of his horse, and on the other side the
+bishop of Cracow pulled back the steed with all his force; but the king
+spurred him till he stood on his hind legs.
+
+"Let me go!" cried the king. "As God lives! We shall pass through the
+enemy!"
+
+"My Lord, think of the country!" cried the bishop of Cracow.
+
+The king was unable to tear himself from their hands, especially since
+young Tyzenhauz with all his men closed the road. Tyzenhauz did not go
+to help Kmita; he sacrificed him, he wanted only to save the king.
+
+"By the passion of our Lord!" cried he, in despair, "those men will
+perish immediately! Gracious Lord, save yourself while there is time! I
+will hold them here yet awhile!"
+
+But the stubbornness of the king when once roused reckoned with nothing
+and no man. Yan Kazimir spurred his horse still more violently, and
+instead of retreating pushed forward.
+
+But time passed, and each moment might bring with it final destruction.
+
+"I will die on my own soil! Let me go!" cried the king.
+
+Fortunately, against Kmita and the Kyemliches, by reason of the
+narrowness of the pass, only a small number of men could act at once,
+consequently they were able to hold out long. But gradually even their
+powers began to be exhausted. A number of times the rapiers of the
+Swedes had struck Kmita's body, and his blood began to flow. His eyes
+were veiled as it were by a mist. The breath halted in his breast. He
+felt the approach of death; therefore he wanted only to sell his life
+dearly. "Even one more!" repeated he to himself, and he sent down his
+steel blade on the head or the shoulder of the nearest horseman, and
+again he turned to another; but evidently the Swedes felt ashamed,
+after the first moment of confusion and fear, that four men were able
+to detain them so long, and they crowded forward with fury; soon the
+very weight of men and horses drove back the four men, and each moment
+more swiftly and strongly.
+
+With that Kmita's horse fell, and the torrent covered the rider.
+
+The Kyemliches struggled still for a time, like swimmers who seeing
+that they are drowning make efforts to keep their heads above the whirl
+of the sea, but soon they also fell. Then the Swedes moved on like a
+whirlwind toward the party of the king.
+
+Tyzenhauz with his men sprang against them, and struck them in such
+fashion that the sound was heard through the mountains.
+
+But what could that handful of men, led by Tyzenhauz, do against a
+detachment of nearly three hundred strong?
+
+There was no doubt that for the king and his party the fatal hour of
+death or captivity must come.
+
+Yan Kazimir, preferring evidently the first to the second, freed
+finally the reins from the hands of the bishops, and pushed forward
+quickly toward Tyzenhauz. In an instant he halted as if fixed to the
+earth.
+
+Something uncommon had happened. To spectators it seemed as though the
+mountains themselves were coming to the aid of the rightful king.
+
+Behold on a sudden the edges of the pass quivered as if the earth were
+moving from its foundations, as if the pines on the mountain desired to
+take part in the battle; and logs of wood, blocks of snow and ice,
+stones, fragments of cliff's, began to roll down with a terrible crash
+and roar on the ranks of the Swedes crowded in the pass. At the same
+time an unearthly howl was heard on each side of the narrow place.
+
+Below in the ranks began seething which passed human belief. It seemed
+to the Swedes that the mountains were falling and covering them. Shouts
+rose, the lamentations of crushed men, despairing cries for assistance,
+the whining of horses, the bite and terrible sound of fragments of
+cliffs on armor.
+
+At last men and horses formed one mass quivering convulsively, crushed,
+groaning, despairing, and dreadful. But the stones and pieces of
+cliff's ground them continually, rolling without mercy on the now
+formless masses, the bodies of horses and men.
+
+"The mountaineers! the mountaineers!" shouted men in the retinue of the
+king.
+
+"With axes at the dog-brothers!" called voices from the mountain.
+
+And that very moment from both rocky edges appeared long-haired heads,
+covered with round fur caps, and after them came out bodies, and
+several hundred strange forms began to let themselves down on the
+slopes of the snow.
+
+Dark and white rags floating above their shoulders gave them the
+appearance of some kind of awful birds of prey. They pushed down in the
+twinkle of an eye; the sound of their axes emphasized their wild
+ominous shouting and the groans of the Swedes.
+
+The king himself tried to restrain the slaughter; some horsemen, still
+living, threw themselves on their knees, and raising their defenceless
+hands, begged for their lives. Nothing availed, nothing could stay the
+vengeful axes. A quarter of an hour later there was not one man living
+among the Swedes in the pass.
+
+After that the bloody mountaineers began to hurry toward the escort of
+the king.
+
+The nuncio looked with astonishment on those people, strange to him,
+large, sturdy, covered partly with sheepskin, sprinkled with blood, and
+shaking their still steaming axes.
+
+But at sight of the bishops they uncovered their heads. Many of them
+fell on their knees in the snow.
+
+The bishop of Cracow raising his tearful face toward heaven said,
+"Behold the assistance of God, behold Providence, which watches over
+the majesty of the king." Then turning to the mountaineers, he asked,
+"Men, who are you?"
+
+"We are of this place," answered voices from the crowd.
+
+"Do you know whom you have come to assist? This is your king and your
+lord, whom you have saved."
+
+At these words a shout rose in the crowd. "The king! the king! Jesus,
+Mary! the king!" And the joyful mountaineers began to throng and crowd
+around Yan Kazimir. With weeping they fell to him from every side; with
+weeping, they kissed his feet, his stirrups, even the hoofs of his
+horse. Such excitement reigned, such shouting, such weeping that the
+bishops from fear for the king's person were forced to restrain the
+excessive enthusiasm.
+
+And the king was in the midst of a faithful people, like a shepherd
+among sheep, and great tears were flowing down his face. Then his
+countenance became bright, as if some sudden change had taken place in
+his soul, as if a new, great thought from heaven by birth had flashed
+into his mind, and he indicated with his hand that he wished to speak;
+and when there was silence he said with a voice so loud that the whole
+multitude heard him,--
+
+"O God, Thou who hast saved me by the hands of simple people, I swear
+by the suffering and death of Thy Son to be a father to them from this
+moment forward."
+
+"Amen!" responded the bishops.
+
+For a certain time a solemn silence reigned, then a new burst of joy.
+They inquired of the mountaineers whence they had come into the passes,
+and in what way they had appeared to rescue the king. It turned out
+that considerable parties of Swedes had been wandering about Chorshtyn,
+and, not capturing the castle itself, they seemed to seek some one and
+to wait. The mountaineers too had heard of a battle which those parties
+had delivered against troops among whom it was said that the king
+himself was advancing. Then they determined to push the Swedes into an
+ambush, and sending to them deceitful guides, they lured them into the
+pass.
+
+"We saw," said the mountaineers, "how those four horsemen attacked
+those dogs; we wanted to assist the four horsemen, but were afraid to
+fall upon the dog-brothers too soon!"
+
+Here the king seized his head. "Mother of Thy only Son!" cried he,
+"find Babinich for me! Let us give him at least a funeral! And he is
+the man who was considered a traitor, the one who first shed his own
+blood for us."
+
+"It was I who accused him. Gracious Lord!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"Find him, find him!" cried the king. "I will not leave here till I
+look upon his face and put my blessing on him."
+
+The soldiers and the mountaineers sprang to the place of the first
+struggle, and soon they removed from the pile of dead horses and men
+Pan Andrei. His face was pale, all bespattered with blood, which was
+hanging in large stiffened drops on his mustaches; his eyes were
+closed; his armor was bent from the blows of swords and horses' hoofs.
+But that armor had saved him from being crushed, and to the soldier who
+raised him it seemed as though he heard a low groan.
+
+"As God is true, he is alive!" cried he.
+
+"Remove his armor," called others.
+
+They cut the straps quickly. Kmita breathed more deeply.
+
+"He is breathing, he is breathing! He is alive!" repeated a number of
+voices.
+
+But he lay a certain time motionless; then he opened his eyes. At that
+time one of the soldiers poured a little gorailka into his mouth;
+others raised him by the armpits.
+
+Now the king, to whose hearing the cry repeated by several voices had
+come, rode up in haste. The soldiers drew into his presence Pan Andrei,
+who was hanging on them and slipping from their hands to the ground.
+Still, at sight of the king consciousness returned to him for a moment,
+a smile almost childlike lighted his face, and his pale lips whispered
+clearly,--
+
+"My lord, my king, is alive--is free." And tears shone on his
+eyelashes.
+
+"Babinich, Babinich! with what can I reward you?" cried the king.
+
+"I am not Babinich; I am Kmita!" whispered the knight.
+
+When he had said this he hung like a corpse in the arms of the
+soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Since the mountaineers gave sure information that on the road to
+Chorshtyn there was nothing to be heard of other Swedish parties, the
+retinue of the king turned toward the castle, and soon found themselves
+on the highway, along which the journey was easiest and least tiresome.
+They rode on amid songs of the mountaineers and shouts, "The king is
+coming! The king is coming!" and along the road new crowds of men
+joined them, armed with flails, scythes, forks, and guns, so that Yan
+Kazimir was soon at the head of a considerable division of men, not
+trained, it is true, but ready at any moment to go with him even to
+Cracow and spill their blood for their sovereign. Near Chorshtyn more
+than a thousand "householders" and half-wild shepherds surrounded the
+king.
+
+Then nobles from Novy Sanch and Stary Sanch began to come in. They said
+that a Polish regiment, under command of Voynillovich, had defeated,
+that morning, just before the town of Novy Sanch, a considerable
+detachment of Swedes, of which almost all the men were either slain, or
+drowned in the Kamyenna or Dunayets.
+
+This turned out to be really the fact, when soon after on the road
+banners began to gleam, and Voynillovich himself came up with the
+regiment of the voevoda of Bratslav.
+
+The king greeted with joy a celebrated and to him well-known knight,
+and amidst the universal enthusiasm of the people and the army, he rode
+on toward Spij. Meanwhile men on horseback rushed with all breath to
+forewarn the marshal that the king was approaching, and to be ready to
+receive him.
+
+Joyous and noisy was the continuation of the journey. New crowds were
+added continually. The nuncio, who had left Silesia filled with fear
+for the king's fate and his own, and for whom the beginning of the
+journey had increased this fear, was beside himself now with delight,
+for he was certain that the future would surely bring victory to the
+king, and besides to the church over heretics. The bishops shared his
+joy; the lay dignitaries asserted that the whole people, from the
+Carpathians to the Baltic, would grasp their weapons as these crowds
+had done. Voynillovich stated that for the greater part this had taken
+place already. And he told what was to be heard in the country, what a
+terror had fallen upon the Swedes, how they dared go no longer outside
+fortifications in small numbers, how they were leaving the smaller
+castles, which they burned, and taking refuge in the strongest.
+
+"The Polish troops are beating their breasts with one hand, and are
+beginning to beat the Swedes with the other," said he. "Vilchkovski,
+who commands the hussar regiment of your Royal Grace, has already
+thanked the Swedes for their service, and that in such fashion that he
+fell upon them at Zakjevo, under the command of Colonel Altenberg, and
+slew a large number,--destroyed almost all. I, with the assistance of
+God, drove them out of Novy Sanch, and God gave a noted victory. I do
+not know whether one escaped alive. Pan Felitsyan Kohovski with the
+infantry of Navoi helped me greatly, and so they received pay for those
+dragoons at least whom they attacked two or three days ago."
+
+"What dragoons?" asked the king.
+
+"Those whom your Royal Grace sent ahead from Silesia. The Swedes fell
+on these suddenly, and though not able to disperse them, for they
+defended themselves desperately, they inflicted considerable loss. And
+we were almost dying of despair, for we thought that your Royal Grace
+was among those men in your own person, and we feared lest some evil
+might happen to majesty. God inspired your Royal Grace to send the
+dragoons ahead. The Swedes heard of it at once, and occupied the roads
+everywhere."
+
+"Do you hear, Tyzenhauz?" asked the king. "An experienced soldier is
+talking."
+
+"I hear, Gracious Lord," answered the young magnate.
+
+"And what further, what further? Tell on!" said the king, turning to
+Voynillovich.
+
+"What I know I shall surely not hide. Jegotski and Kulesha are active
+in Great Poland; Varshytski has driven Lindorm from the castle of
+Pilets; Dankoff is defending itself; Lantskoron is in our hands; and in
+Podlyasye, Sapyeha is gaining every day at Tykotsin. The Swedes are in
+greater straits in the castle, and with them is failing the prince
+voevoda of Vilna. As to the hetmans, they have moved already from
+Sandomir to Lyubelsk, showing clearly that they are breaking with the
+enemy. The voevoda of Chernigov is with them, and from the region about
+is marching to them every living man who can hold a sabre in his hand.
+They say, too, that there is some kind of federation to be formed there
+against the Swedes, in which is the hand of Sapyeha as well as that of
+Stefan Charnyetski."
+
+"Is Charnyetski now in Lyubelsk?"
+
+"He is, your Royal Grace. But he is here to-day and there to-morrow. I
+have to join him, but where to find him I know not."
+
+"There will be noise around him," said the king; "you will not need to
+inquire."
+
+"So I think too," answered Voynillovich.
+
+In such conversation was the road passed. Meanwhile the sky had grown
+perfectly clear, so that the azure was unspotted by even a small cloud.
+The snow was glittering in the sunlight. The mountains of Spij were
+extended gloriously and joyously before the travellers, and Nature
+itself seemed to smile on the king.
+
+"Dear country!" said Yan Kazimir, "God grant me strength to bring thee
+peace before my bones rest in thy earth."
+
+They rode out on a lofty eminence, from which the view was open and
+wide, for beyond, at the foot of it, was spread a broad plain. There
+they saw below, and at a great distance as it were, the movement of a
+human ant-hill.
+
+"The troops of the marshal!" cried Voynillovich.
+
+"Unless they are Swedes," said the king.
+
+"No, Gracious Lord! The Swedes could not march from Hungary, from the
+south. I see now the hussar flag."
+
+In fact a forest of spears soon pushed out in the blue distance, and
+colored streamers were quivering like flowers moved by the wind; above
+these flags spear-points were glittering like little flames. The sun
+played on the armor and helmets.
+
+The throngs of people accompanying the king gave forth a joyous shout,
+which was heard at a distance, for the mass of horses, riders, flags,
+horse-tail standards, and ensigns began to move more quickly. Evidently
+they were moving with all speed, for the regiments became each moment
+more definite, and increased in the eye with incomprehensible rapidity.
+
+"Let us stay on this height. We will await the marshal here," said the
+king.
+
+The retinue halted; the men coming toward them moved still more
+rapidly. At moments they were concealed from the eye by turns of the
+road, or small hills and cliffs, scattered along the plain; but soon
+they appeared again, like a serpent with a skin of splendid colors
+playing most beautifully. At last they came within a quarter of a mile
+of the height, and slackened their speed. The eye could take them in
+perfectly, and gain pleasure from them. First advanced the hussar
+squadron of the marshal himself, well armored, and so imposing that any
+king might be proud of such troops. Only nobles of the mountains served
+in this squadron, chosen men of equal size; their armor was of bright
+squares inlaid with bronze, gorgets with the image of the Most Holy
+Lady of Chenstohova, round helmets with steel rims, crests on the top,
+and at the side wings of eagles and vultures, on their shoulders tiger
+and leopard skins, but on the officers wolf skins, according to custom.
+
+A forest of green and black streamers waved above them. In front rode
+Lieutenant Victor; after him a janissary band with bells, trumpets,
+drums, and pipes; then a wall of the breasts of horses and men clothed
+in iron.
+
+The king's heart opened at that lordly sight. Next to the hussars came
+a light regiment still more numerous, with drawn sabres in their hands
+and bows at their shoulders; then three companies of Cossacks, in
+colors like blooming poppies, armed with spears and muskets; next two
+hundred dragoons in red jackets; then escorts belonging to different
+personages visiting at Lyubovlya, attendants dressed as if for a
+wedding, guards, haiduks, grooms, Hungarians, and janissaries, attached
+to the service of great lords.
+
+And all that changed in colors like a rainbow, and came on
+tumultuously, noisily, amid the neighing of horses, the clatter of
+armor, the thunder of kettle-drums, the roll of other drums, the blare
+of trumpets, and cries so loud that it seemed as though the snows would
+rush down from the mountains because of them. In the rear of the troops
+were to be seen closed and open carriages, in which evidently were
+riding dignitaries of the church and the world.
+
+The troops took position in two lines along the road, and between them
+appeared, on a horse white as milk, the marshal of the kingdom, Pan
+Yerzy Lyubomirski. He flew on like a whirlwind over that road, and
+behind him raced two equerries, glittering in gold. When he had ridden
+to the foot of the eminence, he sprang from his horse, and throwing the
+reins to one of the equerries, went on foot to the king standing above.
+
+He removed his cap, and placing it on the hilt of his sabre, advanced
+with uncovered head, leaning on a staff all set with pearls. He was
+dressed in Polish fashion, in military costume; on his breast was armor
+of silver plates thickly inlaid at the edges with precious stones, and
+so polished that he seemed to be bearing the sun on his bosom; over his
+left shoulder was hanging a cloak of Venetian velvet of dark color,
+passing into violet purple; it was fastened at the throat by a cord
+with a buckle of diamonds, and the whole cloak was embroidered with
+diamonds; in like manner a diamond was trembling in his cap, and these
+stones glittered like many-colored sparks around his whole person, and
+dazzled the eyes, such was the brightness which came from them.
+
+He was a man in the vigor of life, of splendid form. His head was
+shaven around the temples; his forelock was rather thin, growing gray,
+and lay on his forehead in a shaggy tuft; his mustache, as black as the
+wing of a crow, drooped in fine points at both sides. His lofty
+forehead and Roman nose added to the beauty of his face, but the face
+was marred somewhat by cheeks that were too plump, and small eyes
+encircled with red lids. Great dignity, but also unparalleled pride and
+vanity were depicted on that face. You might easily divine that that
+magnate wished to turn to himself eternally the eyes of the whole
+Commonwealth, nay, of all Europe; and such was the case in reality.
+
+Where Yerzy Lyubomirski could not hold the first place, where he could
+only share glory and merit with others, his wounded pride was ready to
+bar the way and corrupt and crush every endeavor, even when it was a
+question of saving the country.
+
+He was an adroit and fortunate leader, but even in this respect others
+surpassed him immeasurably; and in general his abilities, though
+uncommon, were not equal to his ambition and desire of distinction.
+Endless unrest therefore was boiling in his soul, whence was born that
+suspiciousness, that envy, which later on carried him so far that he
+became more destructive to the Commonwealth than the terrible Yanush
+Radzivill. The black soul which dwelt in Prince Yanush was great also;
+it stopped before no man and no thing. Yanush wanted a crown, and he
+went toward it consciously over graves and the ruin of his country.
+Lyubomirski would have taken a crown if the hands of the nobles had
+placed it on his head; but having a smaller soul, he dared not desire
+the crown openly and expressly. Radzivill was one of those men whom
+failure casts down to the level of criminals, and success elevates to
+the greatness of demigods; Lyubomirski was a mighty disturber who was
+always ready to ruin work for the salvation of the country, in the name
+of his own offended pride, and to build up nothing in place of it. He
+did not even dare to raise himself, he did not know how. Radzivill died
+the more guilty, Lyubomirski the more harmful man.
+
+But at that hour, when in gold, velvet, and precious stones he stood in
+front of the king, his pride was sufficiently satisfied. For he was the
+first magnate to receive his own king on his own land; he first took
+him under a species of guardianship, he had to conduct him to a throne
+which had been overturned, and to drive out the enemy; from him the
+king and the country expected everything; on him all eyes were turned.
+Therefore to show loyalty and service coincided with his self-love, in
+fact flattered it, he was ready in truth for sacrifices and devotion,
+he was ready to exceed the measure even with expressions of respect and
+loyalty. When therefore he had ascended one half of that eminence on
+which the king was standing, he took his cap from the sword-hilt and
+began, while bowing, to sweep the snow with its diamond plume.
+
+The king urged his horse somewhat toward the descent, then halted to
+dismount, for the greeting. Seeing this, the marshal sprang forward to
+hold the stirrup with his worthy hands, and at that moment grasping
+after his cloak, he drew it from his shoulders, and following the
+example of a certain English courtier, threw it under the feet of the
+monarch.
+
+The king, touched to the heart, opened his arms to the marshal, and
+seized him like a brother in his embrace. For a while neither was able
+to speak; but at that exalted spectacle the army, the nobles, the
+people, roared in one voice, and thousands of caps flew into the air,
+all the guns, muskets, and blunderbusses sounded, cannon from Lyubovlya
+answered in a distant bass, till the mountains trembled; all the echoes
+were roused and began to course around, striking the dark walls of pine
+woods, the cliffs and rocks, and flew with the news to remoter
+mountains and cliffs.
+
+"Lord Marshal," said the king, "we will thank you for the restoration
+of the kingdom!"
+
+"Gracious Lord!" answered Lyubomirski, "my fortune, my life, my blood,
+all I have I place at the feet of your Royal Grace."
+
+"Vivat! vivat Yoannes Casimirus Rex!" thundered the shouts.
+
+"May the king live! our father!" cried the mountaineers.
+
+Meanwhile the gentlemen who were riding with the king surrounded the
+marshal; but he did not leave the royal person. After the first
+greetings the king mounted his horse again; but the marshal, not
+wishing to recognize bounds to his hospitality and honor to his guest,
+seized the bridle, and going himself on foot, led the king through the
+lines of the army amid deafening shouts, till they came to a gilded
+carriage drawn by eight dapple-gray horses; in this carriage Yan
+Kazimir took his seat, together with Vidon, the nuncio of the Pope.
+
+The bishops and dignitaries took seats in succeeding carriages, then
+they moved on slowly to Lyubovlya. The marshal rode at the window of
+the king's carriage, splendid, self-satisfied, as if he were already
+proclaimed father of the country. At both sides went a dense army,
+singing songs, thundering out in the following words:--
+
+
+                 "Cut the Swedes, cut,
+                  With sharpened swords.
+
+                 "Beat the Swedes, beat,
+                  With strong sticks.
+
+                 "Roll the Swedes, roll,
+                  Empale them on stakes.
+
+                 "Torment the Swedes, torment,
+                  And torture them as you can.
+
+                 "Pound the Swedes, pound,
+                  Pull them out of their skins.
+
+                 "Cut the Swedes, cut,
+                  Then there will be fewer.
+
+                 "Drown the Swedes, drown,
+                  If you are a good man!"
+
+
+Unfortunately amidst the universal rejoicing and enthusiasm no one
+foresaw that later the same troops of Lyubomirski, after they had
+rebelled against their legal lord and king, would sing the same song,
+putting the French in place of the Swedes.
+
+But now it was far from such a state. In Lyubovlya the cannon were
+thundering in greeting till the towers and battlements were covered
+with smoke, the bells were tolling as at a fire. At the part of the
+courtyard in which the king descended from the carriage, the porch and
+the steps were covered with scarlet cloth. In vases brought from Italy
+were burning perfumes of the East. The greater part of the treasures of
+the Lyubomirskis,--cabinets of gold and silver, carpets, mats, gobelin
+tapestry, woven wonderfully by Flemish hands, statues, clocks,
+cupboards, ornamented with precious stones, cabinets inlaid with
+mother-of-pearl and amber brought previously to Lyubovlya to preserve
+them from Swedish rapacity, were now arranged and hung up in display;
+they dazzled the eye and changed that castle into a kind of fairy
+residence. And the marshal had arranged all this luxury, worthy of a
+Sultan, in this fashion of purpose to show the king that though he was
+returning as an exile, without money, without troops, having scarcely a
+change of clothing, still he was a mighty lord, since he had servants
+so powerful, and as faithful as powerful. The king understood this
+intention, and his heart rose in gratitude; every moment therefore he
+took the marshal by the shoulder, pressed his head and thanked him. The
+nuncio, though accustomed to luxury, expressed his astonishment at what
+he beheld, and they heard him say to Count Apotyngen that hitherto he
+had had  no idea of the power of the King of Poland, and now saw that
+the previous defeats were merely a temporary reverse of fortune, which
+soon must be changed.
+
+At the feast, which followed a rest, the king sat on an elevation, and
+the marshal himself served him, permitting no one to take his place. At
+the right of the king sat the nuncio, at his left the prince primate,
+Leshchynski, farther on both sides dignitaries, lay and clerical, such
+as the bishops of Cracow, Poznan, Lvoff, Lutsk, Premysl, Helm; the
+archdeacon of Cracow; farther on keepers of the royal seal and
+voevodas, of whom eight had assembled, and castellans and
+referendaries; of officers, there were sitting at the feast
+Voynillovich, Viktor, Stabkovski, and Baldwin Shurski.
+
+In another hall a table was set for inferior nobles, and there were
+large barracks for peasants, for all had to be joyful on the day of the
+king's coming.
+
+At the tables there was no other conversation but touching the royal
+return, and the terrible adventures which had met them on the road, in
+which the hand of God had preserved the king. Yan Kazimir himself
+described the battle in the pass, and praised the cavalier who had held
+back the first Swedish onset.
+
+"And how is he?" asked he of the marshal.
+
+"The physician does not leave him, and guarantees his life; and
+besides, maidens and ladies in waiting have taken him in care, and
+surely they will not let the soul go from the body, for the body is
+shapely and young!" answered the marshal, joyously.
+
+"Praise be to God!" cried the king. "I heard from his lips something
+which I shall not repeat to you, for it seems to me that I heard
+incorrectly, or that he said it in delirium; but should it come true
+you will be astonished."
+
+"If he has said nothing which might make your Royal Grace gloomy."
+
+"Nothing whatever of that nature," said the king; "it has comforted us
+beyond measure, for it seems that even those whom we had reason to hold
+our greatest enemies are ready to spill their blood for us if need be."
+
+"Gracious Lord!" cried the marshal, "the time of reform has come; but
+under this roof your Royal Grace is among persons who have never sinned
+even in thought against majesty."
+
+"True, true!" answered the king, "and you, Lord Marshal, are in the
+first rank."
+
+"I am a poor servant of your Royal Grace."
+
+At table the noise grew greater. Gradually they began to speak of
+political combinations; of aid from the emperor, hitherto looked for in
+vain; of Tartar assistance, and of the coming war with the Swedes.
+Fresh rejoicing set in when the marshal stated that the envoy sent by
+him to the Khan had returned just a couple of days before, and reported
+that forty thousand of the horde were in readiness, and perhaps even a
+hundred thousand, as soon as the king would reach Lvoff and conclude a
+treaty with the Khan. The same envoy had reported that the Cossacks
+through fear of the Tartars had returned to obedience.
+
+"You have thought of everything," said the king, "in such fashion that
+we could not have thought it out better ourselves." Then he seized his
+glass and said: "To the health of our host and friend, the marshal of
+the kingdom!"
+
+"Impossible, Gracious Lord!" cried the marshal; "no man's health can be
+drunk here before the health of your Royal Grace."
+
+All restrained their half-raised goblets; but Lyubomirski, filled with
+delight, perspiring, beckoned to his chief butler.
+
+At this sign the servants who were swarming through the hall rushed to
+pour out Malvoisie again, taken with gilded dippers from kegs of pure
+silver. Pleasure increased still more, and all were waiting for the
+toast of the marshal.
+
+The chief butler brought now two goblets of Venetian crystal of such
+marvellous work that they might pass for the eighth wonder of the
+world. The crystal, bored and polished to thinness during whole years,
+perhaps, cast real diamond light. On the setting great artists of Italy
+had labored. The base of each goblet was gold, carved in small figures
+representing the entrance of a conqueror to the Capitol. The conqueror
+rode in a chariot of gold on a street paved with pearls. Behind him
+followed captives with bound hands; with them a king, in a turban
+formed of one emerald; farther followed legionaries with eagles
+and ensigns. More than fifty small figures found room on each
+base,--figures as high as a hazel-nut, but made so marvellously that
+the features of the faces and the feelings of each one could be
+distinguished, the pride of the victors, the grief of the vanquished.
+The base was bound to the goblet with golden filigree, fine as hair
+bent with wondrous art into grape leaves, clusters, and various
+flowers. Those filigree were wound around the crystal, and joining at
+the top in one ring formed the edge of the goblet, which was set with
+stones in seven colors.
+
+The head butler gave one such goblet to the king and the other to the
+marshal, both filled with Malvoisie. All rose from their seats;
+the marshal raised the goblet, and cried with all the voice in his
+breast,--
+
+"Vivat Yoannes Casimirus Rex!"
+
+"Vivat! vivat! vivat!"
+
+At that moment the guns thundered again so that the walls of the castle
+were trembling. The nobles feasting in the second hall came with their
+goblets; the marshal wished to make an oration, but could not, for his
+words were lost in the endless shouts: "Vivat! vivat! vivat!"
+
+Such joy seized the marshal, such ecstasy, that wildness was gleaming
+in his eyes, and emptying his goblet he shouted so, that he was heard
+even in the universal tumult,--
+
+"_Ego ultimus_ (I am the last)!"
+
+Then he struck the priceless goblet on his own head with such force
+that the crystal sprang into a hundred fragments, which fell with a
+rattle on the floor, and the head of the magnate was covered with
+blood. All were astonished, and the king said,--
+
+"Lord Marshal, we regret not the goblet, but the head which we value so
+greatly."
+
+"Treasures and jewels are nothing to me," cried the marshal, "when I
+have the honor of receiving your Royal Grace in my house. Vivat Yoannes
+Casimirus Rex!"
+
+Here the butler gave him another goblet.
+
+"Vivat! vivat!" shouted the guests without ceasing. The sound of broken
+glass was mingled with the shout. Only the bishops did not follow the
+example of the marshal, for their spiritual dignity forbade them.
+
+The nuncio, who did not know of that custom of breaking glasses on the
+head, bent to the bishop of Poznan, sitting near him, and said,--
+
+"As God lives, astonishment seizes me! Your treasury is empty, and for
+one such goblet two good regiments of men might be equipped and
+maintained."
+
+"It is always so with us," answered the bishop; "when desire rises in
+the heart there is no measure in anything."
+
+And in fact the desire grew greater each moment. Toward the end of the
+feast a bright light struck the windows of the castle.
+
+"What is that?" asked the king.
+
+"Gracious Lord, I beg you to the spectacle," answered the marshal. And
+tottering slightly, he conducted the king to the window. There a
+wonderful sight struck their eyes. It was as clear in the court as when
+there is daylight. A number of tens of pitch-barrels cast a bright
+yellow gleam on the pavement, cleared of snow and strewn with leaves of
+mountain-fern. Here and there were burning tubs of brandy which cast
+blue light; salt was sprinkled into some to make them burn red.
+
+The spectacle began. First knights cut off Turkish heads, tilted at a
+ring and at one another; then the dogs of Liptovo fought with a bear;
+later, a man from the hills, a kind of mountain Samson, threw a
+millstone and caught it in the air. Midnight put an end to these
+amusements.
+
+Thus did the marshal declare himself, though the Swedes were still in
+the land.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+In the midst of feasting and the throng of new dignitaries, nobles, and
+knights who were coming continually, the kindly king forgot not his
+faithful servant who in the mountain-pass had exposed his breast to the
+Swedish sword with such daring; and on the day following his arrival in
+Lyubovlya he visited the wounded Pan Andrei. He found him conscious and
+almost joyful, though pale as death; by a lucky fortune the young hero
+had received no grievous wound, only blood had left him in large
+quantities.
+
+At sight of the king, Kmita even rose in the bed to a sitting position,
+and though the king insisted that he should lie down again, he was
+unwilling to do so.
+
+"Gracious Lord," said he, "in a couple of days I shall be on horseback,
+and with your gracious permission will go farther, for I feel that
+nothing is the matter with me."
+
+"Still they must have cut you terribly. It is an unheard of thing for
+one to withstand such a number."
+
+"That has happened to me more than once, for I think that in an evil
+juncture the sabre and courage are best. Ei, Gracious Lord, the number
+of cuts that have healed on my skin you could not count on an ox-hide.
+Such is my fortune."
+
+"Complain not of fortune, for it is evident that you go headlong to
+places where not only blows but deaths are distributed. But how long do
+you practise such tactics? Where have you fought before now?"
+
+A passing blush covered the youthful face of Kmita.
+
+"Gracious Lord, I attacked Hovanski when all dropped their hands, and a
+price was set on my head."
+
+"But listen," said the king, suddenly; "you told me a wonderful word in
+that pass. I thought that delirium had seized you and unsettled your
+reason. Now you say that you attacked Hovanski. Who are you? Are you
+not really Babinich? We know who attacked Hovanski!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; at last the young knight raised his pale
+face, and said,--
+
+"Not delirium spoke through me, but truth; it was I who battered
+Hovanski, from which war my name was heard throughout the whole
+Commonwealth. I am Andrei Kmita, the banneret of Orsha."
+
+Here Kmita closed his eyes and grew still paler; but when the
+astonished king was silent, he began to speak farther,--
+
+"I am, Gracious Lord, that outlaw, condemned by God and the judgments
+of men for killing and violence. I served Radzivill, and together with
+him I betrayed you and the country; but now, thrust with rapiers and
+trampled with horses' hoofs, unable to rise, I beat my breast,
+repeating, _Mea culpa, mea culpa!_ (My fault, my fault!) and I implore
+your fatherly mercy. Forgive me, for I have cursed my previous acts,
+and have long since turned from that road which lies toward hell."
+
+Tears dropped from the eyes of the knight, and with trembling he began
+to seek the hand of the king. Yan Kazimir, it is true, did not withdraw
+his hand; but he grew gloomy, and said,--
+
+"Whoso in this land wears a crown should be unceasingly ready to
+pardon; therefore we are willing to forgive your offence, since on
+Yasna Gora and on the road you have served us with faithfulness,
+exposing your breast."
+
+"Then forgive them, Gracious Lord! Shorten my torment"
+
+"But one thing we cannot forget,--that in spite of the virtue of this
+people you offered Prince Boguslav to raise hands on majesty, hitherto
+inviolable, and bear us away living or dead, and deliver us into
+Swedish hands."
+
+Kmita, though a moment before he had said himself that he was unable to
+rise, sprang from the bed, seized the crucifix hanging above him, and
+with the cuts on his face and fever in his flashing eyes, and breathing
+quickly, began to speak thus,--
+
+"By the salvation of my father and mother, by the wounds of the
+Crucified, it is untrue! If I am guilty of that sin, may God punish me
+at once with sudden death and with eternal fires. If you do not believe
+me, I will tear these bandages, let out the remnant of the blood which
+the Swedes did not shed. I never made the offer. Never was such a
+thought in my head. For the kingdom of this world, I would not have
+done such a deed. Amen! on this cross, amen, amen!" And he trembled
+from feverish excitement.
+
+"Then did the prince invent it?" asked the astonished king. "Why? for
+what reason?"
+
+"He did invent it. It was his hellish revenge on me for what I did to
+him."
+
+"What did you do to him?"
+
+"I carried him off from the middle of his court and of his whole army.
+I wanted to cast him bound at the feet of your Royal Grace."
+
+"It's a wonder, it's a wonder! I believe you, but I do not understand.
+How was it? You were serving Yanush, and carried off Boguslav, who was
+less guilty, and you wanted to bring him bound to me?"
+
+Kmita wished to answer; but the king saw at that moment his pallor and
+suffering, therefore he said,--
+
+"Rest, and later tell me all from the beginning. I believe you; here is
+our hand."
+
+Kmita pressed the king's hand to his lips, and for some time was
+silent, for breath failed him; he merely looked at the king's face with
+immeasurable affection; at last he collected his strength, and said,--
+
+"I will tell all from the beginning. I warred against Hovanski, but I
+was hard with my own people. In part I was forced to wrong them, and to
+take what I needed; I did this partly from violence, for the blood was
+storming within me. I had companions, good nobles, but no better than
+I. Here and there a man was cut down, here and there a house was
+burned, here and there some one was chased over the snow with sticks.
+An outcry was raised. Where an enemy could not touch me, complaint was
+made before a court. I lost cases by default. Sentences came one after
+another, but I paid no heed; besides, the devil flattered me, and
+whispered to surpass Pan Lashch, who had his cloak lined with
+judgments; and still he was famous, and is famous till now."
+
+"For he did penance, and died piously," remarked the king.
+
+When he had rested somewhat, Kmita continued: "Meanwhile Colonel
+Billevich--the Billeviches are a great family in Jmud--put off his
+transitory form, and was taken to a better world; but he left me a
+village and his granddaughter. I do not care for the village, for in
+continual attacks on the enemy I have gathered no little property, and
+not only have made good the fortune taken from me by the Northerners,
+but have increased it. I have still in Chenstohova enough to buy two
+such villages, and I need ask no one for bread. But when my party
+separated I went to winter quarters in the Lauda region. There the
+maiden, Billevich's granddaughter, came so near my heart that I forgot
+God's world. The virtue and honesty in this lady were such that I grew
+shamefaced in presence of my former deeds. She too, having an inborn
+hatred of transgression, pressed me to leave my previous manner of
+life, put an end to disturbances, repair wrongs, and live honestly."
+
+"Did you follow her advice?"
+
+"How could I, Gracious Lord! I wished to do so, it is true,--God sees
+that I wished; but old sins follow a man. First, my soldiers were
+attacked in Upita, for which I burned some of the place."
+
+"In God's name! that is a crime," said the king.
+
+"That is nothing yet. Later on, the nobles of Lauda slaughtered my
+comrades, worthy cavaliers though violent. I was forced to avenge them.
+I fell upon the village of the Butryms that very night, and took
+vengeance, with fire and sword, for the murder. But they defeated me,
+for a crowd of homespuns live in that neighborhood. I had to hide. The
+maiden would not look at me, for those homespuns were made fathers and
+guardians to her by the will. But my heart was so drawn to her that I
+could not help myself. Unable to live without her, I collected a new
+party and seized her with armed hand."
+
+"Why, the Tartars do not make love differently."
+
+"I own that it was a deed of violence. But God punished me through the
+hands of Pan Volodyovski, and he cut me so that I barely escaped with
+my life. It would have been a hundred times better for me if I had not
+escaped, for I should not have joined the Radzivills to the injury of
+the king and the country. But how could it be otherwise? A new suit was
+begun against me for a capital offence; it was a question of life. I
+knew not what to do, when suddenly the voevoda of Vilna came to me with
+assistance."
+
+"Did he protect you?"
+
+"He sent me a commission through this same Pan Volodyovski, and thereby
+I went under the jurisdiction of the hetman, and was not afraid of the
+courts. I clung to Radzivill as to a plank of salvation. Soon I put on
+foot a squadron of men known as the greatest fighters in all Lithuania.
+There were none better in the army. I led them to Kyedani. Radzivill
+received me as a son, referred to our kinship through the Kishkis, and
+promised to protect me. He had his object. He needed daring men ready
+for all things, and I, simpleton, crawled as it were into bird-lime.
+Before his plans had come to the surface, he commanded me to swear on a
+crucifix that I would not abandon him in any straits. Thinking it a
+question of war with the Swedes or the Northerners, I took the oath
+willingly. Then came that terrible feast at which the Kyedani treaty
+was read. The treason was published. Other colonels threw their batons
+at the feet of the hetman, but the oath held me as a chain holds a dog,
+and I could not leave him."
+
+"But did not all those who deserted us later swear loyalty?" asked the
+king, sadly.
+
+"I, too, though I did not throw down my baton, had no wish to steep my
+hands in treason. What I suffered, Gracious Lord, God alone knows. I
+was writhing from pain, as if men were burning me alive with fire; and
+my maiden, though even after the seizure the agreement between us
+remained still unbroken, now proclaimed me a traitor, and despised me
+as a vile reptile. But I had taken oath not to abandon Radzivill. She,
+though a woman, would shame a man with her wit, and lets no one surpass
+her in loyalty to your Royal Grace."
+
+"God bless her!" said the king. "I respect her for that."
+
+"She thought to reform me into a partisan of the king and the country;
+and when that came to naught, she grew so steadfast against me that her
+hatred became as great as her love had been once. At that juncture
+Radzivill called me before him, and began to convince me. He explained,
+as two and two form four, that in this way alone could he save the
+falling country. I cannot, indeed, repeat his arguments, they were so
+great, and promised such happiness to the land. He would have convinced
+a man a hundred times wiser, much less me, a simple soldier, he such a
+statesman! Then, I say, your Royal Grace, that I held to him with both
+hands and my heart, for I thought that all others were blind; only he
+saw the truth, all others were sinning, only he was the just man. And I
+would have sprung into fire for him, as now I would for your Royal
+Grace, for I know not how to serve or to love with half a heart."
+
+"I see that, this is true!" said Yan Kazimir.
+
+"I rendered him signal service," continued Kmita, gloomily, "and I can
+say that had it not been for me his treason could not have yielded any
+poisonous fruits, for his own troops would have cut him to pieces with
+sabres. They were all ready for that. The dragoons, the Hungarian
+infantry and the light squadrons were already slaying his Scots, when I
+sprang in with my men and rubbed them out in one twinkle. But there
+were other squadrons at various quarters; these I dispersed. Pan
+Volodyovski alone, who had come out from prison, led his Lauda men to
+Podlyasye by a wonder and by superhuman resolve, so as to join with
+Sapyeha. Those who escaped me assembled in Podlyasye in considerable
+numbers, but before they could do that many good soldiers perished
+through me. God alone can count them. I acknowledge the truth as if at
+confession. Pan Volodyovski, on his way to Podlyasye, seized me, and
+did not wish to let me live; but I escaped because of letters which
+they found on my person, and from which it transpired that when
+Volodyovski was in prison and Radzivill was going to shoot him, I
+interceded persistently and saved him. He let me go free then; I
+returned to Radzivill and served longer. But the service was bitter for
+me, the soul began to revolt within me at certain deeds of the prince,
+for there is not in him either faith, honesty, or conscience, and from
+his own words it comes out that he works as much for himself as for the
+King of Sweden. I began then to spring at his eyes. He grew enraged at
+my boldness, and at last sent me off with letters."
+
+"It is wonderful what important things you tell," said the king. "At
+least we know from an eyewitness who _pars magna fuit_ (took a great
+part) in affairs, how things happened there."
+
+"It is true that _pars magna fui_ (I took a great part)," answered
+Kmita. "I set out with the letters willingly, for I could not remain in
+that place. In Pilvishki I met Prince Boguslav. May God give him into
+my hands, to which end I shall use all my power, so that my vengeance
+may not miss him for that slander. Not only did I not promise him
+anything, Gracious Lord, not only is that a shameless lie, but it was
+just there in Pilvishki that I became converted when I saw all the
+naked deceit of those heretics."
+
+"Tell quickly how it was, for we were told that Boguslav aided his
+cousin only through constraint."
+
+"He? He is worse than Prince Yanush, and in his head was the treason
+first hatched. Did he not tempt the hetman first, pointing out a crown
+to him? God will decide at the judgment. Yanush at least simulated and
+shielded himself with _bono publico_ (public good); but Boguslav,
+taking me for an arch scoundrel, revealed his whole soul to me. It is a
+terror to repeat what he said. 'The devils,' said he, 'must take your
+Commonwealth, it is a piece of red cloth, and we not only will not
+raise a hand to save it, but will pull besides, so that the largest
+piece may come to us. Lithuania,' said he, 'must remain to us, and
+after Yanush I will put on the cap of Grand Prince, and marry his
+daughter.'"
+
+The king covered his eyes with his hands. "O passion of our Lord!" said
+he. "The Radzivills, Radzeyovski, Opalinski--how could that which
+happened not happen!--they must have crowns, even through rending what
+the Lord had united."
+
+"I grew numb, Gracious Lord, I had water poured on my head so as not to
+go mad. The soul changed in me in one moment, as if a thunderbolt had
+shaken it. I was terrified at my own work. I knew not what to do,
+whether to thrust a knife into Boguslav or into myself. I bellowed like
+a wild beast, they had driven me into such a trap. I wanted service no
+longer with the Radzivills, but vengeance. God gave me a sudden
+thought: I went with a few men to the quarters of Prince Boguslav, I
+brought him out beyond the town, I carried him off and wanted to bring
+him to the confederates so as to buy myself into their company and into
+the service of your Royal Grace at the price of his head."
+
+"I forgive you all!" cried the king, "for they led you astray; but you
+have repaid them! Kmita alone could have done that, no man besides. I
+overlook all and forgive you from my heart! But tell me quickly, for
+curiosity is burning me, did he escape?"
+
+"At the first station he snatched the pistol from my belt and shot me
+in the mouth,--here is the scar. He killed my men and escaped. He is a
+famous knight, it would be hard to deny that; but we shall meet again,
+though that were to be my last hour."
+
+Here Kmita began to tear at the blanket with which he was covered, but
+the king interrupted him quickly,--
+
+"And through revenge he invented that letter against you?"
+
+"And through revenge he sent that letter. I recovered from the wound,
+in the forest, but my soul was suffering more and more. To Volodyovski,
+to the confederates I could not go, for the Lauda men would have cut me
+to pieces with their sabres. Still, knowing that the hetman was about
+to march against them, I forewarned them to collect in a body. And that
+was my first good deed, for without that Radzivill would have crushed
+them out, squadron after squadron; but now they have overcome him and,
+as I hear, are besieging him. May God aid them and send punishment to
+Radzivill, amen!"
+
+"That may have happened already; and if not it will happen surely,"
+said the king. "What did you do further?"
+
+"I made up my mind that, not being able to serve with the confederate
+troops of your Royal Grace, I would go to your person and there atone
+for my former offences with loyalty. But how was I to go? Who would
+receive Kmita, who would believe him, who would not proclaim him a
+traitor? Therefore I assumed the name Babinich, and passing through the
+whole Commonwealth, I reached Chenstohova. Whether I have rendered any
+services there, let Father Kordetski give witness. Day and night I was
+thinking only how to repair the injuries to the country, how to spill
+my blood for it, how to restore myself to repute and to honesty. The
+rest, Gracious Lord, you know already, for you have seen it. And if a
+fatherly kind heart incline you, if this new service has outweighed my
+old sins, or even equalled them, then receive me to your favor and your
+heart, for all have deserted me, no one comforts me save you. You alone
+see my sorrow and tears,--I am an outcast, a traitor, an oath-breaker,
+and still I love this country and your Royal Grace. God sees that I
+wish to serve both."
+
+Here hot tears dropped from the eyes of the young man till he was
+carried away with weeping; but the king, like a loving father, seizing
+him by the head began to kiss his forehead and comfort him.
+
+"Yendrek! you are as dear to me as if you were my own son. What have I
+said to you? That you sinned through blindness; and how many sin from
+calculation? From my heart I forgive you all, for you have wiped away
+your faults. More than one would be glad to boast of such services as
+yours. I forgive you and the country forgives; and besides, we are
+indebted to you. Put an end to your grieving."
+
+"God give your Royal Grace everything good for this sympathy," said the
+knight, with tears. "But as it is I must do penance yet in the world
+for that oath to Radzivill; for though I knew not to what I was
+swearing, still an oath is an oath."
+
+"God will not condemn you for that," said the king. "He would have to
+send half this Commonwealth to hell; namely, all those who broke faith
+with us."
+
+"I think myself, Gracious King, that I shall not go to hell, for
+Kordetski assured me of that, though he was not certain that purgatory
+would miss me. It is a hard thing to roast for a hundred of years. But
+it is well even to go there! A man can endure much when the hope of
+salvation is lighting him; and besides prayers can help somewhat and
+shorten the torment."
+
+"Do not grieve," said Yan Kazimir, "I will prevail on the nuncio
+himself to say Mass for your intention. With such assistance you will
+not suffer great harm. Trust in the mercy of God."
+
+Kmita smiled through his tears. "Besides," said he, "God give me to
+return to strength, then I will shell the soul out of more than one
+Swede, and through that there will be not only merit in heaven, but it
+will repair my earthly repute."
+
+"Be of good cheer and do not be troubled about earthly glory. I
+guarantee that what belongs to you will not miss you. More peaceful
+times will come; I myself will declare your services, which are not
+small, and surely they will be greater; and at the Diet, with God's
+help, I will have this question raised, and you will be restored soon
+to honor."
+
+"Let that, Gracious Lord, give some comfort; but before then the courts
+will attack me, from which even the influence of your Royal Grace
+cannot shield me. But never mind! I will not yield while there is
+breath in my nostrils, and a sabre in my hand. I am anxious concerning
+the maiden. Olenka is her name. Gracious Lord; I have not seen her this
+long time, and I have suffered, oh, I have suffered a world without her
+and because of her; and though at times I might wish to drive her out
+of my heart and wrestle with love as with a bear, it's of no use, for
+such a fellow as he will not let a man go."
+
+Yan Kazimir smiled good-naturedly and kindly: "How can I help you here,
+my poor man?"
+
+"Who can help me if not your grace? That maiden is an inveterate
+royalist, and she will never forgive me my deeds at Kyedani, unless
+your Royal Grace will make intercession, and give witness how I changed
+and returned to the service of the king and my country, not from
+constraint, not for profit, but through my own will and repentance."
+
+"If that is the question I will make the intercession; and if she is
+such a royalist as you say, the intercession should be effectual,--if
+the girl is only free, and if some mishap has not met her such as are
+frequent in war-time."
+
+"May angels protect her!"
+
+"She deserves it. So that the courts may not trouble you, act thus
+wise: Levies will be made now in haste. Since, as you say, outlawry
+weighs on you, I cannot give you a commission as Kmita, but I will give
+you one as Babinich; you will make a levy which will be for the good of
+the country, for you are clearly a mettlesome soldier with experience.
+You will take the field under Stefan Charnyetski; under him death is
+easiest, but the chances of glory are easiest. And if need comes you
+will attack the Swedes of yourself as you did Hovanski. Your conversion
+and good deeds commenced with the day when you called yourself
+Babinich; call yourself Babinich still further, and the courts will
+leave you at rest. When you will be as bright as the sun, when the
+report of your services will be heard through the Commonwealth, let men
+discover who this great cavalier is. This and that kind of man will be
+ashamed to summon such a knight to a court. At that time some will have
+died, you will satisfy others. Not a few decisions will be lost, and I
+promise to exalt your services to the skies, and will present them to
+the Diet for reward, for in my eyes they deserve it."
+
+"Gracious Lord! how have I earned such favors?"
+
+"Better than many who think they have a right to them. Well, well! be
+not grieved, dear royalist, for I trust that the royalist maiden will
+not be lost to you, and God grant you to assemble for me more royalists
+soon."
+
+Kmita, though sick, sprang quickly from the bed and fell his whole
+length at the feet of the king.
+
+"In God's name! what are you doing?" cried the king. "The blood will
+leave you! Yendrek! Hither, some one!"
+
+In came the marshal himself, who had long been looking for the king
+through the castle.
+
+"Holy Yerzy! my patron, what do I see?" cried he, when he saw the king
+raising Kmita with his own hands.
+
+"This is Babinich, my most beloved soldier and most faithful servant,
+who saved my life yesterday," said the king. "Help, Lord Marshal, to
+raise him to the couch."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+From Lyubovlya the king advanced to Dukla, Krosno, Lantsut, and Lvoff,
+having at his side the marshal of the kingdom, many dignitaries and
+senators, with the court squadrons and escorts. And as a great river
+flowing through a country gathers to itself all the smaller waters, so
+did new legions gather to the retinue of the king. Lords and armed
+nobles thronged forward, and soldiers, now singly, now in groups, and
+crowds of armed peasants burning with special hatred against the
+Swedes.
+
+The movement was becoming universal, and the military order of things
+had begun to lead to it. Threatening manifestoes had appeared dated
+from Sanch: one by Constantine Lyubomirski, the marshal of the Circle
+of Knights; the other by Yan Vyelopolski, the castellan of Voinik, both
+calling on the nobles in the province of Cracow to join the general
+militia; those failing to appear were threatened with the punishments
+of public law. The manifesto of the king completed these, and brought
+the most slothful to their feet.
+
+But there was no need of threats, for an immense enthusiasm had seized
+all ranks. Old men and children mounted their horses. Women gave up
+their jewels, their dresses; some rushed off to the conflict
+themselves.
+
+In the forges gypsies were pounding whole nights and days with their
+hammers, turning the innocent tools of the ploughman into weapons.
+Villages and towns were empty, for the men had marched to the field.
+From the heaven-touching mountains night and day crowds of wild people
+were pouring down. The forces of the king increased with each moment.
+The clergy came forth with crosses and banners to meet the king; Jewish
+societies came with their rabbis; his advance was like a mighty
+triumph. From every side flew in the best tidings, as if borne by the
+wind.
+
+Not only in that part of the country which the invasion of the enemy
+had not included did people rush to arms. Everywhere in the remotest
+lands and provinces, in towns, villages, settlements, and
+unapproachable wildernesses, the awful war of revenge and retaliation
+raised its flaming head. The lower the people had fallen before, the
+higher they raised their heads now; they had been reborn, changed in
+spirit, and in their exaltation did not even hesitate to tear open
+their own half-healed wounds, to free their blood of poisoned juices.
+
+They had begun already to speak, and with increasing loudness, of the
+powerful union of the nobles and the army, at the head of which were to
+be the old grand hetman Revera Pototski and the full hetman
+Lantskoronski, Stefan Charnyetski and Sapyeha, Michael Radzivill, a
+powerful magnate anxious to remove the ill-fame which Yanush had
+brought on the house, and Pan Kryshtof Tyshkyevich, with many other
+senators, provincial and military officials and nobles.
+
+Letters were flying every day between these men and the marshal of the
+kingdom, who did not wish that so noted a union should be formed
+without him. Tidings more and more certain arrived, till at last it was
+announced with authority that the hetmans and with them the army had
+abandoned the Swedes, and formed for the defence of the king and the
+country the confederation of Tyshovtsi.
+
+The king knew of this first, for he and the queen, though far apart,
+had labored no little through letters and messengers at the formation
+of it; still, not being able to take personal part in the affair, he
+waited for the tenor of it with impatience. But before he came to
+Lvoff, Pan Slujevski with Pan Domashevski, judge of Lukoff, came to him
+bringing assurances of service and loyalty from the confederates and
+the act of union for confirmation.
+
+The king then read that act at a general council of bishops and
+senators. The hearts of all were filled with delight, their spirits
+rose in thankfulness to God; for that memorable confederacy announced
+not merely that the people had come to their senses, but that they had
+changed; that people of whom not long before the foreign invader might
+say that they had no loyalty, no love of country, no conscience, no
+order, no endurance, nor any of those virtues through which nations and
+States do endure.
+
+The testimony of all these virtues lay now before the king in the act
+of a confederation and its manifesto. In it was summed up the perfidy
+of Karl Gustav, his violation of oaths and promises, the cruelty of his
+generals and his soldiers, such as are not practised by even the
+wildest of people, desecration of churches, oppression, rapacity,
+robbery, shedding of innocent blood, and they declared against the
+Scandinavian invasion a war of life or death. A manifesto terrible as
+the trumpet of the archangel, summoned not only knights but all ranks
+and all people in the Commonwealth. Even _infames_ (the infamous),
+_banniti_ (outlaws), and _proscripti_ (the proscribed) should
+go to this war, said the manifesto. The knights were to mount their
+horses and expose their own breasts, and the land was to furnish
+infantry,--wealthy holders more, the poorer less, according to their
+wealth and means.
+
+"Since in this state good and evil belong equally to all, it is proper
+that all should share danger. Whoso calls himself a noble, with hind or
+without it, and if one noble has a number of sons, they should all go
+to the war against the enemies of the Commonwealth. Since we all,
+whether of higher or lower birth, being nobles, are eligible to all the
+prerogatives of office, dignity, and profit in the country, so we are
+equal in this, that we should go in like manner with our own persons to
+the defence of these liberties and benefits."
+
+Thus did that manifesto explain the equality of nobles. The king, the
+bishops, and the senators, who for a long time had carried in their
+hearts the thought of reforming the Commonwealth, convinced themselves
+with joyful wonder that the people had become ripe for that reform,
+that they were ready to enter upon now paths, rub the rust and mould
+from themselves, and begin a new, glorious life.
+
+"With this," explained the manifesto, "we open to each deserving man of
+plebeian condition a place, we indicate and offer by this our
+confederation an opportunity to reach and acquire the honors,
+prerogatives, and benefits which the noble estate enjoys--"
+
+When this introduction was read at the royal council, a deep silence
+followed. Those who with the king desired most earnestly that access to
+rights of nobility should be open to people of lower station thought
+that they would have to overcome, endure, and break no small
+opposition; that whole years would pass before it would be safe to give
+utterance to anything similar; meanwhile that same nobility which
+hitherto had been so jealous of its prerogatives, so stubborn in
+appearance, opened wide the gate to the gray crowds of peasants.
+
+The primate rose, encircled as it were by the spirit of prophecy, and
+said,--
+
+"Since you have inserted that _punctum_ (paragraph), posterity will
+glorify this confederation from age to age, and when any one shall wish
+to consider these times as times of the fall of ancient Polish virtue,
+in contradicting him men will point to you."
+
+Father Gembitski was ill; therefore he could not speak, but with hand
+trembling from emotion he blessed the act and the envoys.
+
+"I see the enemy already departing in shame from this land!" said the
+king.
+
+"God grant it most quickly!" cried both envoys.
+
+"Gentlemen, you will go with us to Lvoff," said the king, "where we
+will confirm this confederation at once, and besides shall conclude
+another which the powers of hell itself will not overcome."
+
+The envoys and senators looked at one another as if asking what power
+was in question; the king was silent, but his countenance grew brighter
+and brighter; he took the act again in his hand and read it a second
+time, smiled, and asked,--
+
+"Were there many opponents?"
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Pan Domashevski, "this confederacy arose with
+unanimity through the efforts of the hetmans, of Sapyeha, of Pan
+Charnyetski; and among nobles not a voice was raised in opposition, so
+angry are they all at the Swedes, and so have they flamed up with love
+for the country and your majesty."
+
+"We decided, moreover, in advance," added Pan Slujevski, "that this was
+not to be a diet, but that _pluralitas_ (plurality) alone was to
+decide; therefore no man's _veto_ could injure the cause; we should
+have cut an opponent to pieces with our sabres. All said too that it
+was necessary to finish with the _liberum veto_, since it is freedom
+for one, but slavery for many."
+
+"Golden words of yours!" said the primate. "Only let a reform of the
+Commonwealth come, and no enemy will frighten us."
+
+"But where is the voevoda of Vityebsk?" asked the king.
+
+"He went in the night, after the signing of the manifesto, to his own
+troops at Tykotsin, in which he holds the voevoda of Vilna, the
+traitor, besieged. Before this time he must have taken him, living or
+dead."
+
+"Was he so sure of capturing him?"
+
+"He was as sure as that night follows day. All, even his most faithful
+servants, have deserted the traitor. Only a handful of Swedes are
+defending themselves there, and reinforcements cannot come from any
+side. Pan Sapyeha said in Tyshovtsi, 'I wanted to wait one day, for I
+should have finished with Radzivill before evening! but this is more
+important than Radzivill, for they can take him without me; one
+squadron is enough.'"
+
+"Praise be to God!" said the king. "But where is Charnyetski?"
+
+"So many of the best cavaliers have hurried to him that in one day he
+was at the head of an excellent squadron. He moved at once on the
+Swedes, and where he is at this moment we know not."
+
+"But the hetmans?"
+
+"They are waiting anxiously for the commands of your Royal Grace. They
+are both laying plans for the coming war, and are in communication with
+Pan Yan Zamoyski in Zamost; meanwhile regiments are rolling to them
+every day with the snow."
+
+"Have all left the Swedes then?"
+
+"Yes, Gracious King. There were deputies also to the hetmans from the
+troops of Konyetspolski, who is with the person of Karl Gustav. And
+they too would be glad to return to their lawful service, though Karl
+does not spare on them promises or flattery. They said too that though
+they could not _recedere_ (withdraw) at once, they would do so as soon
+as a convenient time came, for they have grown tired of his feasts and
+his flattery, his eye-winking and clapping of hands. They can barely
+hold out."
+
+"Everywhere people are coming to their senses, everywhere good news,"
+said the king. "Praise to the Most Holy Lady! This is the happiest day
+of my life, and a second such will come only when the last soldier of
+the enemy leaves the boundary of the Commonwealth."
+
+At this Pan Domashevski struck his sword. "May God not grant that to
+happen!" said he.
+
+"How is that?" asked the king, with astonishment.
+
+"That the last wide-breeches should leave the boundaries of the
+Commonwealth on his own feet? Impossible, Gracious Lord! What have we
+sabres at our sides for?"
+
+"Oh!" said the king, made glad, "that is bravery."
+
+But Pan Slujevski, not wishing to remain behind Domashevski, said: "As
+true as life we will not agree to that, and first I will place a veto
+on it. We shall not be content with their retreat; we will follow
+them!"
+
+The primate shook his head, and smiled kindly. "Oh, the nobles are on
+horseback, and they will ride on and on! But not too fast, not too
+fast! The enemy are still within the boundaries."
+
+"Their time is short!" cried both confederates.
+
+"The spirit has changed, and fortune will change," said Father
+Gembitski, in a weak voice.
+
+"Wine!" cried the king. "Let me drink to the change, with the
+confederates."
+
+They brought wine; but with the servants who brought the wine entered
+an old attendant of the king, who said,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, Pan Kryshtoporski has come from Chenstohova, and wishes
+to do homage to your Royal Grace."
+
+"Bring him here quickly!" cried the king.
+
+In a moment a tall, thin noble entered, with a frowning look. He bowed
+before the king to his feet, then rather haughtily to the dignitaries,
+and said,--
+
+"May the Lord Jesus Christ be praised!"
+
+"For the ages of ages!" answered the king. "What is to be heard from
+the monastery?"
+
+"Terrible frost. Gracious Lord, so that the eyelids are frozen to the
+eyeballs."
+
+"But for God's sake! tell us of the Swedes and not of the frost!" cried
+the king.
+
+"But what can I say of them, Gracious Lord, when there are none at
+Chenstohova?" asked he, humorously.
+
+"Those tidings have come to us," replied the king, "but only from the
+talk of people, and you have come from the cloister itself. Are you an
+eyewitness?"
+
+"I am. Gracious Lord, a partner in the defence and an eyewitness of the
+miracles of the Most Holy Lady."
+
+"That was not the end of Her grace," said the king, raising his eyes to
+heaven, "but let us earn them further."
+
+"I have seen much in my life," continued the noble; "but such evident
+miracles I have not seen, touching which the prior Kordetski writes in
+detail in this letter."
+
+Yan Kazimir seized hastily the letter handed him by the noble, and
+began to read. At times he interrupted the reading to pray, then again
+turned to the letter. His face changed with joyful feelings; at last he
+raised his eyes to the noble.
+
+"Father Kordetski writes me," said he, "that you have lost a great
+cavalier, a certain Babinich, who blew up the Swedish siege gun with
+powder?"
+
+"He sacrificed himself for all. But some say he is alive, and God knows
+what they have said; not being certain, we have not ceased to mourn
+him, for without his gallant deed it would have been hard for us to
+defend ourselves."
+
+"If that is true, then cease to mourn him. Pan Babinich is alive, and
+here with us. He was the first to inform us that the Swedes, not being
+able to do anything against the power of God, were thinking of retreat.
+And later he rendered such famous service that we know not ourselves
+how to pay him."
+
+"Oh, that will comfort the prior!" cried the noble, with gladness; "but
+if Pan Babinich is alive, it is only because he has the special favor
+of the Most Holy Lady. How that will comfort Father Kordetski! A father
+could not love a son as he loved him. And your Royal Grace will permit
+me to greet Pan Babinich, for there is not a second man of such daring
+in the Commonwealth."
+
+But the king began again to read, and after a while cried,--
+
+"What do I hear? After retreating they tried once again to steal on the
+cloister?"
+
+"When Miller went away, he did not show himself again; but Count
+Veyhard appeared unexpectedly at the walls, trusting, it seems, to find
+the gates open. He did, but the peasants fell on him with such rage
+that he retreated shamefully. While the world is a world, simple
+peasants have never fought so in the open field against cavalry. Then
+Pan Pyotr Charnyetski and Pan Kulesha came up and cut him to pieces."
+
+The king turned to the senators.
+
+"See how poor ploughmen stand up in defence of this country and the
+holy faith."
+
+"That they stand up, Gracious King, is true," cried the noble. "Whole
+villages near Chenstohova are empty, for the peasants are in the field
+with their scythes. There is a fierce war everywhere; the Swedes are
+forced to keep together in numbers, and if the peasants catch one of
+them they treat him so that it would be better for him to go straight
+to hell. Who is not taking up arms now in the Commonwealth? It was not
+for the dog-brothers to attack Chenstohova. From that hour they could
+not remain in this country."
+
+"From this hour no man will suffer oppression in this land who resists
+now with his blood," said the king, with solemnity; "so help me God and
+the holy cross!"
+
+"Amen!" added the primate.
+
+Now the noble struck his forehead with his hand. "The frost has
+disturbed my mind, Gracious Lord, for I forgot to tell one thing, that
+such a son, the voevoda of Poznan, is dead. He died, they say,
+suddenly."
+
+Here the noble was somewhat ashamed, seeing that he had called a great
+senator "that such a son" in presence of the king and dignitaries;
+therefore he added, confused,--
+
+"I did not wish to belittle an honorable station, but a traitor."
+
+But no one had noticed that clearly, for all looked at the king, who
+said,--
+
+"We have long predestined Pan Yan Leshchynski to be voevoda of Poznan,
+even during the life of Pan Opalinski. Let him fill that office more
+worthily. The judgment of God, I see, has begun upon those who brought
+this country to its decline, for at this moment, perhaps, the voevoda
+of Vilna is giving an account of his deeds before the Supreme Judge."
+Here he turned to the bishops and senators,--
+
+"But it is time for us to think of a general war, and I wish to have
+the opinion of all of you, gentlemen, on this question."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+At the moment when the king was saying that the voevoda of Vilna was
+standing, perhaps, before the judgment of God, he spoke as it were with
+a prophetic spirit, for at that hour the affair of Tykotsin was
+decided.
+
+On December 25 Sapyeha was so sure of capturing Tykotsin that he went
+himself to Tyshovtsi, leaving the further conduct of the siege to Pan
+Oskyerko. He gave command to wait for the final storm till his return,
+which was to follow quickly; assembling, therefore, his more prominent
+officers, he said,--
+
+"Reports have come to me that among the officers there is a plan to
+bear apart on sabres the voevoda of Vilna immediately after capturing
+the castle. Now if the castle, as may happen, should surrender during
+my absence, I inform you, gentlemen, that I prohibit most strictly an
+attack on Radzivill's life. I receive letters, it is true, from persons
+of whom you gentlemen do not even dream, not to let him live when I
+take him. But I do not choose to obey these commands; and this I do not
+from any compassion, for the traitor is not worthy of that, but because
+I have no right over his life, and I prefer to bring him before the
+Diet, so that posterity may have in this case an example that no
+greatness of family, no office can cover such offence, nor protect him
+from public punishment."
+
+In this sense spoke the voevoda of Vityebsk, but more minutely, for his
+honesty was equalled by this weakness: he esteemed himself an orator,
+and loved on every occasion to speak copiously, and listened with
+delight to his own words, adding to them the most beautiful sentences
+from the ancients.
+
+"Then I must steep my right hand well in water," answered Zagloba, "for
+it itches terribly. But I only say this, that if Radzivill had me in
+his hands, surely he would not spare my head till sunset. He knows well
+who in great part made his troops leave him; he knows well who
+embroiled him with the Swedes. But even if he does, I know not why I
+should be more indulgent to Radzivill than Radzivill to me."
+
+"Because the command is not in your hands and you must obey," said
+Sapyeha, with dignity.
+
+"That I must obey is true, but it is well at times also to obey
+Zagloba. I say this boldly, because if Radzivill had listened to me
+when I urged him to defend the country, he would not be in Tykotsin
+to-day, but in the field at the head of all the troops of Lithuania."
+
+"Does it seem to you that the baton is in bad hands?"
+
+"It would not become me to say that, for I placed it in those hands.
+Our gracious lord, Yan Kazimir, has only to confirm my choice, nothing
+more."
+
+The voevoda smiled at this, for he loved Zagloba and his jokes.
+
+"Lord brother," said he, "you crushed Radzivill, you made me hetman,
+and all this is your merit. Permit me now to go in peace to Tyshovtsi,
+so that Sapyeha too may serve the country in something."
+
+Zagloba put his hands on his hips, thought awhile as if he were
+considering whether he ought to permit or not; at last his eye gleamed,
+he nodded, and said with importance,--
+
+"Go, your grace, in peace."
+
+"God reward you for the permission!" answered the voevoda, with a
+laugh.
+
+Other officers seconded the voevoda's laugh. He was preparing to start,
+for the carriage was under the window; he took farewell of all,
+therefore, giving each instructions what to do during his absence; then
+approaching Volodyovski, he said,--
+
+"If the castle surrenders you will answer to me for the life of the
+voevoda."
+
+"According to order! a hair will not fall from his head," said the
+little knight.
+
+"Pan Michael," said Zagloba to him, after the departure of the voevoda,
+"I am curious to know what persons are urging our Sapyo[2] not to let
+Radzivill live when he captures him."
+
+"How should I know?" answered the little knight.
+
+"If you say that what another mouth does not whisper to your ear your
+own will not suggest, you tell the truth! But they must be some
+considerable persons, since they are able to command the voevoda."
+
+"Maybe it is the king himself."
+
+"The king? If a dog bit the king he would forgive him that minute, and
+give him cheese in addition. Such is his heart."
+
+"I will not dispute about that; but still, do they not say that he is
+greatly incensed at Radzivill?"
+
+"First, any man will succeed in being angry,--for example, my anger at
+Radzivill; secondly, how could he be incensed at Radzeyovski when he
+took his sons in guardianship, because the father was not better? That
+is a golden heart, and I think it is the queen who is making requests
+against the life of Radzivill. She is a worthy lady, not a word against
+that, but she has a woman's mind; and know that if a woman is enraged
+at you, even should you hide in a crack of the floor, she will pick you
+out with a pin."
+
+Volodyovski sighed at this, and said,--
+
+"Why should any woman be angry with me, since I have never made trouble
+for one in my life?"
+
+"Ah, but you would have been glad to do so. Therefore, though you serve
+in the cavalry, you rush on so wildly against the walls of Tykotsin
+with infantry, for you think not only is Radzivill there, but Panna
+Billevich. I know you, you rogue! Is it not true? You have not driven
+her out of your head yet."
+
+"There was a time when I had put her thoroughly out of my head; and
+Kmita himself, if now here, would be forced to confess that my action
+was knightly, not wishing to act against people in love. I chose to
+forget my rebuff, but I will not hide this: if Panna Billevich is now
+in Tykotsin, and if God permits me a second time to save her from
+trouble, I shall see in that the expressed will of Providence. I need
+take no thought of Kmita, I owe him nothing; and the hope is alive in
+me that if he left her of his own will she must have forgotten him, and
+such a thing will not happen now as happened to me the first time."
+
+Conversing in this way, they reached their quarters, where they found
+Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav, Roh Kovalski and the lord tenant of Vansosh,
+Jendzian.
+
+The cause of Sapyeha's trip to Tyshovtsi was no secret, hence all the
+knights were pleased that so honorable a confederacy would rise in
+defence of the faith and the country.
+
+"Another wind is blowing now in the whole Commonwealth," said Pan
+Stanislav, "and, thanks be to God, in the eyes of the Swedes."
+
+"It began from Chenstohova," answered Pan Yan. "There was news
+yesterday that the cloister holds out yet, and repulses more and more
+powerful assaults. Permit not, Most Holy Mother, the enemy to put Thy
+dwelling-place to shame."
+
+Here Jendzian sighed and said: "Besides the holy images how much
+precious treasure would go into enemies' hands; when a man thinks of
+that, food refuses to pass his throat!"
+
+"The troops are just tearing away to the assault; we can hardly hold
+them back," said Pan Michael. "Yesterday Stankyevich's squadron moved
+without orders and without ladders, for they said, 'When we finish this
+traitor, we will go to relieve Chenstohova;' and when any man mentions
+Chenstohova all grit their teeth and shake their sabres."
+
+"Why have we so many squadrons here when one half would be enough for
+Tykotsin?" asked Zagloba. "It is the stubbornness of Sapyeha, nothing
+more. He does not wish to obey me; he wants to show that without my
+counsel he can do something. As you see yourselves, how are so many men
+to invest one paltry castle? They merely hinder one another, for there
+is not room for them all."
+
+"Military experience speaks through you,--it is impossible!" answered
+Pan Stanislav.
+
+"Well, I have a head on my shoulders."
+
+"Uncle has a head on his shoulders!" cried Pan Roh, suddenly; and
+straightening his mustaches, he began to look around on all present as
+if seeking some one to contradict him.
+
+"But the voevoda too has a head," answered Pan Yan; "and if so many
+squadrons are here, there is danger that Prince Boguslav might come to
+the relief of his cousin."
+
+"Then send a couple of light squadrons to ravage Electoral Prussia,"
+said Zagloba; "and summon volunteers there from among common people. I
+myself would be the first man to go to try Prussian beer."
+
+"Beer is not good in winter, unless warmed," remarked Pan Michael.
+
+"Then give us wine, or gorailka, or mead," said Zagloba.
+
+Others also exhibited a willingness to drink; therefore the lord tenant
+of Vansosh occupied himself with that business, and soon a number of
+decanters were on the table. Hearts were glad at this sight, and the
+knights began to drink to one another, raising their goblets each time
+for a new health.
+
+"Destruction to the Swedes, may they not skin our bread very long!"
+said Zagloba. "Let them devour their pine cones in Sweden."
+
+"To the health of his Royal Grace and the Queen!" said Pan Yan.
+
+"And to loyal men!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"Then to our own healths!"
+
+"To the health of Uncle!" thundered Kovalski.
+
+"God reward! Into your hands! and empty though your lips to the bottom.
+Zagloba is not yet entirely old! Worthy gentlemen! may we smoke this
+badger out of his hole with all haste, and move then to Chenstohova."
+
+"To Chenstohova!" shouted Kovalski. "To the rescue of the Most Holy
+Lady."
+
+"To Chenstohova!" cried all.
+
+"To defend the treasures of Yasna Gora from the Pagans!" added
+Jendzian.
+
+"Who pretend that they believe in the Lord Jesus, wishing to hide their
+wickedness; but in fact they only howl at the moon like dogs, and in
+this is all their religion."
+
+"And such as these raise their hands against the splendors of Yasna
+Gora!"
+
+"You have touched the spot in speaking of their faith," said
+Volodyovski to Zagloba, "for I myself have heard how they howl at the
+moon. They said afterward that they were singing Lutheran psalms; but
+it is certain that the dogs sing such psalms."
+
+"How is that?" asked Kovalski. "Are there such people among them?"
+
+"There is no other kind," answered Zagloba, with deep conviction.
+
+"And is their king no better?"
+
+"Their king is the worst of all. He began this war of purpose to
+blaspheme the true faith in the churches."
+
+Here Kovalski, who had drunk much, rose and said: "If that is true,
+then as sure as you are looking at me, and as I am Kovalski, I'll
+spring straight at the Swedish king in the first battle, and though he
+stood in the densest throng, that is nothing! My death or his! I'll
+reach him with my lance,--hold me a fool, gentlemen, if I do not!"
+
+When he had said this he clinched his fist and was going to thunder on
+the table. He would have smashed the glasses and decanters, and broken
+the table; but Zagloba caught him hastily by the arm and said,--
+
+"Sit down, Roh, and give us peace. We will not think you a fool if you
+do not do this, but know that we will not stop thinking you a fool
+until you have done it. I do not understand, though, how you can raise
+a lance on the King of Sweden, when you are not in the hussars."
+
+"I will join the escort and be enrolled in the squadron of Prince
+Polubinski; and my father will help me."
+
+"Father Roh?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Let him help you, but break not these glasses, or I'll be the first
+man to break your head. Of what was I speaking, gentlemen? Ah! of
+Chenstohova. _Luctus_ (grief) will devour me, if we do not come in time
+to save the holy place. _Luctus_ will devour me, I tell you all! And
+all through that traitor Radzivill and the philosophical reasoning of
+Sapyeha."
+
+"Say nothing against the voevoda. He is an honorable man," said the
+little knight.
+
+"Why cover Radzivill with two halves when one is sufficient? Nearly ten
+thousand men are around this little booth of a castle, the best cavalry
+and infantry. Soon they will lick the soot out of all the chimneys in
+this region, for what was on the hearths they have eaten already."
+
+"It is not for us to argue over the reasons of superiors, but to obey!"
+
+"It is not for you to argue, Pan Michael, but for me; half of the
+troops who abandoned Radzivill chose me as leader, and I would have
+driven Karl Gustav beyond the tenth boundary ere now, but for that
+luckless modesty which commanded me to place the baton in the hands of
+Sapyeha. Let him put an end to his delay, lest I take back what I
+gave."
+
+"You are only so daring after drink," said Volodyovski.
+
+"Do you say that? Well, you will see! This very day I will go among the
+squadrons and call out, 'Gracious gentlemen, whoso chooses come with me
+to Chenstohova; it is not for you to wear out your elbows and knifes
+against the mortar of Tykotsin! I beg you to come with me! Whoso made
+me commander, whoso gave me power, whoso had confidence that I would do
+what was useful for the country and the faith, let him stand at my
+side. It is a beautiful thing to punish traitors, but a hundred times
+more beautiful to save the Holy Lady, our Mother and the Patroness of
+this kingdom from oppression and the yoke of the heretic.'"
+
+Here Zagloba, from whose forelock the steam had for some time been
+rising, started up from his place, sprang to a bench, and began to
+shout as if he were before an assembly,--
+
+"Worthy gentlemen! whoso is a Catholic, whoso a Pole, whoso has pity on
+the Most Holy Lady, let him follow me! To the relief of Chenstohova!"
+
+"I go!" shouted Roh Kovalski.
+
+Zagloba looked for a while on those present, and seeing astonishment
+and silent faces, he came down from the bench and said,--
+
+"I'll teach Sapyeha reason! I am a rascal if by tomorrow I do not take
+half the army from Tykotsin and lead it to Chenstohova."
+
+"For God's sake, restrain yourself, father!" said Pan Yan.
+
+"I'm a rascal, I tell you!" repeated Zagloba.
+
+They were frightened lest he should carry out his threat, for he was
+able to do so. In many squadrons there was murmuring at the delay in
+Tykotsin; men really gnashed their teeth thinking of Chenstohova. It
+was enough to cast a spark on that powder; and what if a man so
+stubborn, of such immense knightly importance as Zagloba, should cast
+it? To begin with, the greater part of Sapyeha's army was composed of
+new recruits, and therefore of men unused to discipline, and ready for
+action on their own account, and they would have gone as one man
+without doubt after Zagloba to Chenstohova.
+
+Therefore both Skshetuskis were frightened at this undertaking, and
+Volodyovski cried,--
+
+"Barely has a small army been formed by the greatest labor of the
+voevoda, barely is there a little power for the defence of the
+Commonwealth, and you wish with disorder to break up the squadrons,
+bring them to disobedience. Radzivill would pay much for such counsel,
+for it is water to his mill. Is it not a shame for you to speak of such
+a deed?"
+
+"I'm a scoundrel if I don't do it!" said Zagloba.
+
+"Uncle will do it!" said Kovalski.
+
+"Silence, you horseskull!" roared out Pan Michael.
+
+Pan Roh stared, shut his mouth, and straightened himself at once.
+
+Then Volodyovski turned to Zagloba: "And I am a scoundrel if one man of
+my squadron goes with you; you wish to ruin the army, and I tell you
+that I will fall first upon your volunteers."
+
+"O Pagan, faithless Turk!" said Zagloba. "How is that? you would attack
+knights of the Most Holy Lady? Are you ready? Well, I know you! Do you
+think, gentlemen, that it is a question with him of an army or
+discipline? No! he sniffs Panna Billevich behind the walls of Tykotsin.
+For a private question, for your own wishes you would not hesitate to
+desert the best cause. You would be glad to flutter around a maiden, to
+stand on one foot, then the other, and display yourself. But nothing
+will come of this! My head for it, that better than you are running
+after her, even that same Kmita, for even he is no worse than you."
+
+Volodyovski looked at those present, taking them to witness what
+injustice was done him; then he frowned. They thought he would burst
+out in anger, but because he had been drinking, he fell all at once
+into tenderness.
+
+"This is my reward," said he. "From the years of a stripling I have
+served the country; I have not put the sabre out of my hand! I
+have neither cottage, wife, nor children; my head is as lone as a
+lance-point. The most honorable think of themselves, but I have no
+rewards save wounds in the flesh; nay, I am accused of selfishness,
+almost held a traitor."
+
+Tears began to drop on his yellow mustaches. Zagloba softened in a
+moment, and throwing open his arms, cried,--
+
+"Pan Michael, I have done you cruel injustice! I should be given to the
+hangman for having belittled such a tried friend!"
+
+Then falling into mutual embraces, they began to kiss each other; they
+drank more to good understanding, and when sorrow had gone considerably
+out of his heart, Volodyovski said,--
+
+"But you will not ruin the army, bring disobedience, and give an evil
+example?"
+
+"I will not, Pan Michael, I will not for your sake."
+
+"God grant us to take Tykotsin; whose affair is it what I seek behind
+the walls of the fortress? Why should any man jeer at me?"
+
+Struck by that question, Zagloba began to put the ends of his mustaches
+in his mouth and gnaw them; at last he said: "Pan Michael, I love you
+as the apple of my eye, but drive that Panna Billevich out of your
+head."
+
+"Why?" asked Pan Michael, with astonishment.
+
+"She is beautiful, _assentior_ (I agree)," answered Zagloba, "but she
+is distinguished in person, and there is no proportion whatever between
+you. You might sit on her shoulder, like a canary-bird, and peck sugar
+out of her mouth. She might carry you like a falcon on her glove, and
+let you off against every enemy, for though you are little you are
+venomous like a hornet."
+
+"Well, have you begun?" asked Volodyovski.
+
+"If I have begun, then let me finish. There is one woman as if created
+for you, and she is precisely that kernel-- What is her name? That one
+whom Podbipienta was to marry?"
+
+"Anusia Borzobogati!" cried Pan Yan. "She is indeed an old love of
+Michael's."
+
+"A regular grain of buckwheat, but a pretty little rogue; just like a
+doll," said Zagloba, smacking his lips.
+
+Volodyovski began to sigh, and to repeat time after time what he always
+repeated when mention was made of Anusia: "What is happening to the
+poor girl? Oh, if she could only be found!"
+
+"You would not let her out of your hands, for, God bless me, I have not
+seen in my life any man so given to falling in love. You ought to have
+been born a rooster, scratch the sweepings in a house-yard, and cry,
+'Co, co, co,' at the top-knots."
+
+"Anusia! Anusia!" repeated Pan Michael. "If God would send her to
+me--But perhaps she is not in the world, or perhaps she is married--"
+
+"How could she be? She was a green turnip when I saw her, and
+afterward, even if she ripened, she may still be in the maiden state.
+After such a man as Podbipienta she could not take any common fellow.
+Besides, in these times of war few are thinking of marriage."
+
+"You did not know her well," answered Pan Michael. "She was wonderfully
+honest; but she had such a nature that she let no man pass without
+piercing his heart. The Lord God created her thus. She did not miss
+even men of lower station; for example, Princess Griselda's physician,
+that Italian, who was desperately in love with her. Maybe she has
+married him and he has taken her beyond the sea."
+
+"Don't talk such nonsense, Michael!" cried Zagloba, with indignation.
+"A doctor, a doctor,--that the daughter of a noble of honorable blood
+should marry a man of such low estate! I have already said that that is
+impossible."
+
+"I was angry with her myself, for I thought, 'This is without limit;
+soon she will be turning the heads of attorneys.'"
+
+"I prophesy that you will see her yet," said Zagloba.
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Pan
+Tokarzevich, who had served formerly with Radzivill, but after the
+treason of the hetman, left him, in company with others, and was now
+standard-bearer in Oskyerko's regiment.
+
+"Colonel," said he to Volodyovski, "we are to explode a petard."
+
+"Is Pan Oskyerko ready?"
+
+"He was ready at midday, and he is not willing to wait, for the night
+promises to be dark."
+
+"That is well; we will go to see. I will order the men to be ready with
+muskets, so that the besieged may not make a sortie. Will Pan Oskyerko
+himself explode the petard?"
+
+"He will--in his own person. A crowd of volunteers go with him."
+
+"And I will go!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"And we!" cried Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav.
+
+"Oh, 'tis a pity that old eyes cannot see in the dark," said Zagloba,
+"for of a surety I should not let you go alone. But what is to be done?
+When dusk comes I cannot draw my sword. In the daytime, in the daytime,
+in the sunlight, then the old man likes to move to the field. Give me
+the strongest of the Swedes, if at midday."
+
+"But I will go," said, after some thought, the tenant of Vansosh. "When
+they blow up the gate the troops will spring to the storm in a crowd,
+and in the castle there may be great wealth in plate and in jewels."
+
+All went out, for it was now growing dark; in the quarters Zagloba
+alone remained. He listened for a while to the snow squeaking under the
+steps of the departing men, then began to raise one after another the
+decanters, and look through them at the light burning in the chimney to
+see if there was something yet in any of them.
+
+The others marched toward the castle in darkness and wind, which rose
+from the north and blew with increasing force, howling, storming,
+bringing with it clouds of snow broken fine.
+
+"A good night to explode a petard!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"But also for a sortie," answered Pan Yan. "We must keep a watchful eye
+and ready muskets."
+
+"God grant," said Pan Tokarzevich, "that at Chenstohova there is a
+still greater storm. It is always warmer for our men behind the walls.
+But may the Swedes freeze there on guard, may they freeze!"
+
+"A terrible night!" said Pan Stanislav; "do you hear, gentlemen, how it
+howls, as if Tartars were rushing through the air to attack?"
+
+"Or as if devils were singing a requiem for Radzivill!" said
+Volodyovski.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+But a few days subsequent the great traitor in the castle was looking
+at the darkness coming down on the snowy shrouds and listening to the
+howling of the wind.
+
+The lamp of his life was burning out slowly. At noon of that day he was
+still walking around and looking through the battlements, at the tents
+and the wooden huts of Sapyeha's troops; but two hours later he grew so
+ill that they had to carry him to his chambers.
+
+From those times at Kyedani in which he had striven for a crown, he had
+changed beyond recognition. The hair on his head had grown white,
+around his eyes red rings had formed, his face was swollen and flabby,
+therefore it seemed still more enormous, but it was the face of a half
+corpse, marked with blue spots and terrible through its expression of
+hellish suffering.
+
+And still, though his life could be measured by hours, he had lived too
+long, for not only had he outlived faith in himself and his fortunate
+star, faith in his own hopes and plans, but his fall was so deep that
+when he looked at the bottom of that precipice to which he was rolling,
+he would not believe himself. Everything had deceived him: events,
+calculations, allies. He, for whom it was not enough to be the
+mightiest lord in Poland, a prince of the Roman Empire, grand hetman,
+and voevoda of Vilna; he, for whom all Lithuania was less than what he
+desired and was lusting after, was confined in one narrow, small castle
+in which either Death or Captivity was waiting for him. And he watched
+the door every day to see which of these two terrible goddesses would
+enter first to take his soul or his more than half-ruined body.
+
+Of his lands, of his estates and starostaships, it was possible not
+long before to mark out a vassal kingdom; now he is not master even of
+the walls of Tykotsin.
+
+Barely a few months before he was treating with neighboring kings;
+to-day one Swedish captain obeys his commands with impatience and
+contempt, and dares to bend him to his will.
+
+When his troops left him, when from a lord and a magnate who made the
+whole country tremble, he became a powerless pauper who needed rescue
+and assistance himself, Karl Gustav despised him. He would have raised
+to the skies a mighty ally, but he turned with haughtiness from the
+supplicant.
+
+Like Kostka Napyerski, the foot-pad, besieged on a time in Chorshtyn,
+is he, Radzivill, besieged now in Tykotsin. And who is besieging him?
+Sapyeha, his greatest personal enemy. When they capture him they will
+drag him to justice in worse fashion than a robber, as a traitor.
+
+His kinsmen have deserted him, his friends, his connections. Armies
+have plundered his property, his treasures and riches are blown into
+mist, and that lord, that prince, who once upon a time astonished the
+court of France and dazzled it with his luxury, he who at feasts
+received thousands of nobles, who maintained tens of thousands of his
+own troops, whom he fed and supported, had not now wherewith to nourish
+his own failing strength; and terrible to relate, he, Radzivill, in the
+last moments of his life, almost at the hour of his death, was hungry!
+
+In the castle there had long been a lack of provisions; from the scant
+remaining supplies the Swedish commander dealt stingy rations, and the
+prince would not beg of him.
+
+If only the fever which was devouring his strength had deprived him of
+consciousness; but it had not. His breast rose with increasing
+heaviness, his breath turned into a rattle, his swollen feet and hands
+were freezing, but his mind, omitting moments of delirium, omitting the
+terrible visions and nightmares which passed before his eyes, remained
+for the greater part of the time clear. And that prince saw his whole
+fall, all his want, all his misery and humiliation; that former
+warrior-victor saw all his defeat, and his sufferings were so immense
+that they could be equalled only by his sins.
+
+Besides, as the Furies tormented Orestes, so was he tormented by
+reproaches of conscience, and in no part of the world was there a
+sanctuary to which he could flee from them. They tormented him in the
+day, they tormented him at night, in the field, under the roof; pride
+could not withstand them nor repulse them. The deeper his fall, the
+more fiercely they lashed him. And there were moments in which he tore
+his own breast. When enemies came against his country from every side,
+when foreign nations grieved over its hapless condition, its sufferings
+and bloodshed, he, the grand hetman, instead of moving to the field,
+instead of sacrificing the last drop of his blood, instead of
+astonishing the world like Leonidas or Themistocles, instead of pawning
+his last coat like Sapyeha, made a treaty with enemies against the
+mother, raised a sacrilegious hand against his own king, and imbrued it
+in blood near and dear to him. He had done all this, and now he is at
+the limit not only of infamy, but of life, close to his reckoning,
+there beyond. What is awaiting him?
+
+The hair rose on his head when he thought of that. For he had raised
+his hand against his country, he had appeared to himself great in
+relation to that country, and now all had changed. Now he had become
+small, and the Commonwealth, rising from dust and blood, appeared to
+him something great and continually greater, invested with a mysterious
+terror, full of a sacred majesty, awful. And she grew, increased
+continually in his eyes, and became more and more gigantic. In presence
+of her he felt himself dust as prince and as hetman, as Radzivill. He
+could not understand what that was. Some unknown waves were rising
+around him, flowing toward him, with roaring, with thunder, flowing
+ever nearer, rising more terribly, and he understood that he must be
+drowned in that immensity, hundreds such as he would be drowned. But
+why had he not seen this awfulness and this mysterious power at first;
+why had he, mad man, rushed against it? When these ideas roared in his
+head, fear seized him in presence of that mother, in presence of that
+Commonwealth; for he did not recognize her features, which formerly
+were so kind and so mild.
+
+The spirit was breaking within him, and terror dwelt in his breast. At
+moments he thought that another country altogether, another people,
+were around him. Through the besieged walls came news of everything
+that men were doing in the invaded Commonwealth, and marvellous and
+astonishing things were they doing. A war of life or death against the
+Swedes and traitors had begun, all the more terrible in that it had not
+been foreseen by any man. The Commonwealth had begun to punish. There
+was something in this of the anger of God for the insult to majesty.
+
+When through the walls of Tykotsin came news of the siege of
+Chenstohova, Radzivill, a Calvinist, was frightened; and fright did not
+leave his soul from that day, for then he perceived for the first time
+those mysterious waves which, after they had risen, were to swallow the
+Swedes and him; then the invasion of the Swedes seemed not an invasion,
+but a sacrilege, and the punishment of it inevitable. Then for the
+first time the veil dropped from his eyes, and he saw the changed face
+of the Commonwealth, no longer a mother, but a punishing queen.
+
+All who had remained true to her and served with heart and soul, rose
+and grew greater and greater; whoso sinned against her went down. "And
+therefore it is not free to any one to think," said the prince to
+himself, "of his own elevation, or that of his family, but he must
+sacrifice life, strength, and love to her."
+
+But for him it was now too late; he had nothing to sacrifice; he had no
+future before him save that beyond the grave, at sight of which he
+shuddered.
+
+From the time of besieging Chenstohova, when one terrible cry was torn
+from the breast of an immense country, when as if by a miracle there
+was found in it a certain wonderful, hitherto unknown and not
+understood power, when you would have said that a mysterious hand from
+beyond this world rose in its defence, a new doubt gnawed into the soul
+of the prince, and he could not free himself from the terrible thought
+that God stood with that cause and that faith.
+
+And when such thoughts roared in his head he doubted his own faith, and
+then his despair passed even the measure of his sins. Temporal fall,
+spiritual fall, darkness, nothingness,--behold to what he had come,
+what he had gained by serving self.
+
+And still at the beginning of the expedition from Kyedani against
+Podlyasye he was full of hope. It is true that Sapyeha, a leader
+inferior to him beyond comparison, had defeated him in the field, and
+the rest of the squadrons left him, but he strengthened himself with
+the thought that any day Boguslav might come with assistance. That
+young eagle of the Radzivills would fly to him at the head of Prussian
+Lutheran legions, who would not pass over to the papists like the
+Lithuanian squadrons; and at once he would bend Sapyeha in two, scatter
+his forces, scatter the confederates, and putting themselves on the
+corpse of Lithuania, like two lions on the carcass of a deer, with
+roaring alone would terrify all who might wish to tear it away from
+them.
+
+But time passed; the forces of Prince Yanush melted; even the foreign
+regiments went over to the terrible Sapyeha; days passed, weeks,
+months, but Boguslav came not.
+
+At last the siege of Tykotsin began.
+
+The Swedes, a handful of whom remained with Yanush, defended themselves
+heroically; for, stained already with terrible cruelty, they saw that
+even surrender would not guard them from the vengeful hands of the
+Lithuanians. The prince in the beginning of the siege had still the
+hope that at the last moment, perhaps, the King of Sweden himself would
+move to his aid, and perhaps Pan Konyetspolski, who at the head of six
+thousand cavalry was with Karl Gustav. But his hope was vain. No one
+gave him a thought, no one came with assistance.
+
+"Oh, Boguslav! Boguslav!" repeated the prince, walking through the
+chambers of Tykotsin; "if you will not save a cousin, save at least a
+Radzivill!"
+
+At last in his final despair Prince Yanush resolved on taking a step at
+which his pride revolted fearfully; that was to implore Prince Michael
+Radzivill of Nyesvyej for rescue. This letter, however, was intercepted
+on the road by Sapyeha's men; but the voevoda of Vityebsk sent to
+Yanush in answer a letter which he had himself received from Prince
+Michael a week before.
+
+Prince Yanush found in it the following passage:--
+
+
+"If news has come to you, gracious lord, that I intend to go with
+succor to my relative, the voevoda of Vilna, believe it not, for I hold
+only with those who endure in loyalty to the country and our king, and
+who desire to restore the former liberties of this most illustrious
+Commonwealth. This course will not, as I think, bring me to protect
+traitors from just and proper punishment. Boguslav too will not come,
+for, as I hear, the elector prefers to think of himself, and does not
+wish to divide his forces; and _quod attinet_ (as to) Konyetspolski,
+since he will pay court to Prince Yanush's widow, should she become
+one, it is to his profit that the prince voevoda be destroyed with all
+speed."
+
+
+This letter, addressed to Sapyeha, stripped the unfortunate Yanush of
+the remnant of his hope, and nothing was left him but to wait for the
+accomplishment of his destiny.
+
+The siege was hastening to its close.
+
+News of the departure of Sapyeha passed through the wall almost that
+moment; but the hope that in consequence of his departure hostile steps
+would be abandoned were of short duration, for in the infantry
+regiments an unusual movement was observable. Still some days passed
+quietly enough, since the plan of blowing up the gate with a petard
+resulted in nothing; but December 31 came, on which only the
+approaching night might incommode the besiegers, for evidently they
+were preparing something against the castle, at least a new attack of
+cannon on the weakened walls.
+
+The day was drawing to a close. The prince was lying in the so-called
+"Corner" hall situated in the western part of the castle. In an
+enormous fireplace were burning whole logs of pine wood which cast a
+lively light on the white and rather empty walls. The prince was lying
+on his back on a Turkish sofa, pushed out purposely into the middle of
+the room, so that the warmth of the blaze might reach it. Nearer to the
+fireplace, a little in the shade, slept a page, on a carpet; near the
+prince were sitting, slumbering in arm-chairs, Pani Yakimovich,
+formerly chief lady-in-waiting at Kyedani, another page, a physician,
+also the prince's astrologer, and Kharlamp.
+
+Kharlamp had not left the prince, though he was almost the only one of
+his former officers who had remained. That was a bitter service, for
+the heart and soul of the officer were outside the walls of Tykotsin,
+in the camp of Sapyeha; still he remained faithful at the side of his
+old leader. From hunger and watching the poor fellow had grown as thin
+as a skeleton. Of his face there remained but the nose, which now
+seemed still greater, and mustaches like bushes. He was clothed in
+complete armor, breastplate, shoulder-pieces, and morion, with a wire
+cape which came down to his shoulders. His cuirass was battered, for he
+had just returned from the walls, to which he had gone to make
+observations a little while before, and on which he sought death every
+day. He was slumbering at the moment from weariness, though there was a
+terrible rattling in the prince's breast as if he had begun to die, and
+though the wind howled and whistled outside.
+
+Suddenly short quivering began to shake the gigantic body of Radzivill,
+and the rattling ceased. Those who were around him woke at once and
+looked quickly, first at him and then at one another. But he said,--
+
+"It is as if something had gone out of my breast; I feel easier."
+
+He turned his head a little, looked carefully toward the door, at last
+he said, "Kharlamp!"
+
+"At the service of your highness!"
+
+"What does Stahovich want here?"
+
+The legs began to tremble under poor Kharlamp, for unterrified as he
+was in battle he was superstitious in the same degree; therefore he
+looked around quickly, and said in a stifled voice,--
+
+"Stahovich is not here; your highness gave orders to shoot him at
+Kyedani."
+
+The prince closed his eyes and answered not a word.
+
+For a time there was nothing to be heard save the doleful and
+continuous howling of the wind.
+
+"The weeping of people is heard in that wind," said the prince, again
+opening his eyes in perfect consciousness. "But I did not bring in the
+Swedes; it was Radzeyovski."
+
+When no one gave answer, he said after a short time,--
+
+"He is most to blame, he is most to blame, he is most to blame."
+
+And a species of consolation entered his breast, as if the remembrance
+rejoiced him that there was some one more guilty than he.
+
+Soon, however, more grievous thoughts must have come to his head, for
+his face grew dark, and he repeated a number of times,--
+
+"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"
+
+And again choking attacked him; a rattling began in his throat more
+terrible than before. Meanwhile from without came the sound of
+musketry, at first infrequent, then more frequent; but amidst the
+drifting of the snow and the howling of the whirlwind they did not
+sound too loudly, and it might have been thought that that was some
+continual knocking at the gate.
+
+"They are fighting!" said the prince's physician.
+
+"As usual!" answered Kharlamp. "People are freezing in the snow-drifts,
+and they wish to fight to grow warm."
+
+"This is the sixth day of the whirlwind and the snow," answered the
+doctor. "Great changes will come in the kingdom, for this is an unheard
+of thing."
+
+"God grant it!" said Kharlamp. "It cannot be worse."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the prince, to whom a new
+relief had come.
+
+"Kharlamp!"
+
+"At the service of your highness!"
+
+"Does it seem to me so from weakness, or did Oskyerko try to blow up
+the gate with a petard two days since?"
+
+"He tried, your highness; but the Swedes seized the petards and wounded
+him slightly, and Sapyeha's men were repulsed."
+
+"If wounded slightly, then he will try again. But what day is it?"
+
+"The last day of December, your highness."
+
+"God be merciful to my soul! I shall not live to the New Year. Long ago
+it was foretold me that every fifth year death is near me."
+
+"God is kind, your highness."
+
+"God is with Sapyeha," said the prince, gloomily.
+
+All at once he looked around and said: "Cold comes to me from it. I do
+not see it, but I feel that it is here."
+
+"What is that, your highness?"
+
+"Death!"
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; nothing was heard but the whispered "Our
+Father," repeated by Pani Yakimovich.
+
+"Tell me," said the prince, with a broken voice, "do you believe that
+outside of your faith no one can be saved?"
+
+"Even in the moment of death it is possible to renounce errors," said
+Kharlamp.
+
+The sound of shots had become at that moment more frequent. The thunder
+of cannon began to shake the windowpanes, which answered each report
+with a plaintive sound.
+
+The prince listened a certain time calmly, then rose slightly on the
+pillow; his eyes began slowly to widen, his pupils to glitter. He sat
+up; for a moment he held his head with his hand, then cried suddenly,
+as if in bewilderment,--
+
+"Boguslav! Boguslav! Boguslav!"
+
+Kharlamp ran out of the room like a madman.
+
+The whole castle trembled and quivered from the thunder of cannon.
+
+All at once there was heard the cry of several thousand voices; then
+something was torn with a ghastly smashing of walls, so that brands and
+coals from the chimney were scattered on the floor. At the same time
+Kharlamp rushed into the chamber.
+
+"Sapyeha's men have blown up the gate!" cried he. "The Swedes have fled
+to the tower! The enemy is here! Your highness--"
+
+Further words died on his lips. Radzivill was sitting on the sofa with
+eyes starting out; with open lips he was gulping the air, his teeth
+bared like those of a dog when he snarls; he tore with his hands the
+sofa on which he was sitting, and gazing with terror into the depth of
+the chamber, cried, or rather gave out hoarse rattles between one
+breath and another,--
+
+"It was Radzeyovski--Not I--Save me!--What do you want? Take the
+crown!--It was Radzeyovski--Save me, people! Jesus! Jesus! Mary!"
+
+These were the last words of Radzivill.
+
+Then a terrible coughing seized him; his eyes came out in still more
+ghastly fashion from their sockets; he stretched himself out, fell on
+his back, and remained motionless.
+
+"He is dead!" said the doctor.
+
+"He cried Mary, though a Calvinist, you have heard!" said Pani
+Yakimovich.
+
+"Throw wood on the fire!" said Kharlamp to the terrified pages.
+
+He drew near to the corpse, closed the eyelids; then he took from his
+own armor a gilded image of the Mother of God which he wore on a chain,
+and placing the hands of Radzivill together on his breast, he put the
+image between the dead fingers.
+
+The light of the fire was reflected from the golden ground of the
+image, and that reflection fell upon the face of the voevoda and made
+it cheerful so that never had it seemed so calm.
+
+Kharlamp sat at the side of the body, and resting his elbows on his
+knees, hid his face in his hands.
+
+The silence was broken only by the sound of shots.
+
+All at once something terrible took place. First of all was a flash of
+awful brightness; the whole world seemed turned into fire, and at the
+same time there was given forth such a sound as if the earth had fallen
+from under the castle. The walls tottered; the ceilings cracked with a
+terrible noise; all the windows tumbled in on the floor, and the panes
+were broken into hundreds of fragments. Through the empty openings of
+the windows that moment clouds of snow drifted in, and the whirlwind
+began to howl gloomily in the corners of the chamber.
+
+All the people present fell to the floor on their faces, speechless
+from terror.
+
+Kharlamp rose first, and looked directly on the corpse of the voevoda;
+the corpse was lying in calmness, but the gilded image had slipped a
+little in the hands.
+
+Kharlamp recovered his breath. At first he felt certain that that was
+an army of Satans who had broken into the chamber for the body of the
+prince.
+
+"The word has become flesh!" said he. "The Swedes must have blown up
+the tower and themselves."
+
+But from without there came no sound. Evidently the troops of Sapyeha
+were standing in dumb wonder, or perhaps in fear that the whole castle
+was mined, and that there would be explosion after explosion.
+
+"Put wood on the fire!" said Kharlamp to the pages.
+
+Again the room was gleaming with a bright, quivering light. Round about
+a deathlike stillness continued; but the fire hissed, the whirlwind
+howled, and the snow rolled each moment more densely through the window
+openings.
+
+At last confused voices were heard, then the clatter of spurs and the
+tramp of many feet; the door of the chamber was opened wide, and
+soldiers rushed in.
+
+It was bright from the naked sabres, and more and more figures of
+knights in helmets, caps, and kolpaks crowded through the door. Many
+were bearing lanterns in their hands, and they held them to the light,
+advancing carefully, though it was light in the room from the fire as
+well.
+
+At last there sprang forth from the crowd a little knight all in
+enamelled armor, and cried,--
+
+"Where is the voevoda of Vilna?"
+
+"Here!" said Kharlamp, pointing to the body lying on the sofa.
+
+Volodyovski looked at him, and said,--
+
+"He is not living!"
+
+"He is not living, he is not living!" went from mouth to mouth.
+
+"The traitor, the betrayer is not living!"
+
+"So it is," said Kharlamp, gloomily. "But if you dishonor his body and
+bear it apart with sabres, you will do ill, for before his end he
+called on the Most Holy Lady, and he holds Her image in his hand."
+
+These words made a deep impression. The shouts were hushed. Then the
+soldiers began to approach, to go around the sofa, and look at the dead
+man. Those who had lanterns turned the light of them on his eyes; and
+he lay there, gigantic, gloomy, on his face the majesty of a hetman and
+the cold dignity of death.
+
+The soldiers came one after another, and among them the officers;
+therefore Stankyevich approached, the two Skshetuskis, Horotkyevich,
+Yakub Kmita, Oskyerko, and Pan Zagloba.
+
+"It is true!" said Zagloba, in a low voice, as if he feared to rouse
+the prince. "He holds in his hands the Most Holy Lady, and the shining
+from Her falls on his face."
+
+When he said this he removed his cap. That instant all the others bared
+their heads. A moment of silence filled with reverence followed, which
+was broken at last by Volodyovski.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "he is before the judgment of God, and people have
+nothing to do with him." Here he turned to Kharlamp: "But you,
+unfortunate, why did you for his sake leave your country and king?"
+
+"Give him this way!" called a number of voices at once.
+
+Then Kharlamp rose, and taking off his sabre threw it with a clatter on
+the floor, and said,--
+
+"Here I am, cut me to pieces! I did not leave him with you, when he was
+powerful as a king, and afterward it was not proper to leave him when
+he was in misery and no one stayed with him. I have not grown fat in
+his service; for three days I have had nothing in my mouth, and the
+legs are bending under me. But here I am, cut me to pieces! for I
+confess furthermore [here Kharlamp's voice trembled] that I loved him."
+
+When he had said this he tottered and would have fallen; but Zagloba
+opened his arms to him, caught him, supported him, and cried,--
+
+"By the living God! Give the man food and drink!"
+
+That touched all to the heart; therefore they took Kharlamp by the arms
+and led him out of the chamber at once. Then the soldiers began to
+leave it one after another, making the sign of the cross with devotion.
+
+On the road to their quarters Zagloba was meditating over something. He
+stopped, coughed, then pulled Volodyovski by the skirt. "Pan Michael,"
+said he.
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"My anger against Radzivill is passed; a dead man is a dead man! I
+forgive him from my heart for having made an attempt on my life."
+
+"He is before the tribunal of heaven," said Volodyovski.
+
+"That's it, that's it! H'm, if it would help him I would even give for
+a Mass, since it seems to me that he has an awfully small chance up
+there."
+
+"God is merciful!"
+
+"As to being merciful, he is merciful; still the Lord cannot look
+without abhorrence on heretics. And Radzivill was not only a heretic,
+but a traitor. There is where the trouble is!"
+
+Here Zagloba shook his head and began to look upward.
+
+"I am afraid," said he, after a while, "that some of those Swedes who
+blew themselves up will fall on my head; that they will not be received
+there in heaven is certain."
+
+"They were good men," said Pan Michael, with recognition; "they
+preferred death to surrender, there are few such soldiers in the
+world."
+
+All at once Volodyovski halted: "Panna Billevich was not in the
+castle," said he.
+
+"But how do you know?"
+
+"I asked those pages. Boguslav took her to Taurogi."
+
+"El!" said Zagloba, "that was as if to confide a kid to a wolf. But it
+is not your affair; your predestined is that kernel!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Lvoff from the moment of the king's arrival was turned into a real
+capital of the Commonwealth. Together with the king came the greater
+part of the bishops from the whole country and all those lay senators
+who had not served the enemy. The calls already issued summoned also to
+arms the nobles of Rus and of the remoter adjoining provinces, they
+came in numbers and armed with the greater ease because the Swedes had
+not been in those regions. Eyes were opened and hearts rose at sight of
+this general militia, for it reminded one in nothing of that of Great
+Poland, which at Uistsie offered such weak opposition to the enemy. On
+the contrary, in this case marched a warlike and terrible nobility,
+reared from childhood on horseback and in the field, amidst continual
+attacks of wild Tartars, accustomed to bloodshed and burning, better
+masters of the sabre than of Latin. These nobles were in fresh training
+yet from Hmelnitski's uprising, which lasted seven years without
+interval, so that there was not a man among them who was not as many
+times in fire as he had years of life. New swarms of these were
+arriving continually in Lvoff: some had marched from the Byeshchadi
+full of precipices, others from the Pruth, the Dniester, and the
+Seret; some lived on the steep banks of the Dniester, some on the
+wide-spreading Bug; some on the Sinyuha had not been destroyed from the
+face of the earth by peasant incursions; some had been left on the
+Tartar boundaries;--all these hurried at the call of the king to the
+city of the Lion,[3] some to march thence against an enemy as yet
+unknown. The nobles came in from Volynia and from more distant
+provinces, such hatred was kindled in all souls by the terrible tidings
+that the enemy had raised sacrilegious hands on the Patroness of the
+Commonwealth in Chenstohova.
+
+And the Cossacks dared not raise obstacles, for the hearts were moved
+in the most hardened, and besides, they were forced by the Tartars to
+beat with the forehead to the king, and to renew for the hundredth time
+their oath of loyalty. A Tartar embassy, dangerous to the enemies of
+the king, was in Lvoff under the leadership of Suba Gazi Bey, offering,
+in the name of the Khan, a horde a hundred thousand strong to assist
+the Commonwealth; of these forty thousand from near Kamenyets could
+take the field at once.
+
+Besides the Tartar embassy a legation had come from Transylvania to
+carry through negotiations begun with Rakotsy concerning succession to
+the throne. The ambassador of the emperor was present; so was the papal
+nuncio, who had come with the king. Every day deputations arrived from
+the armies of the kingdom and Lithuania, from provinces and lands, with
+declarations of loyalty, and a wish to defend to the death the invaded
+country.
+
+The fortunes of the king increased; the Commonwealth, crushed
+altogether so recently, was rising before the eyes of all to the wonder
+of ages and nations. The souls of men were inflamed with thirst for war
+and retaliation, and at the same time they grew strong. And as in
+spring-time a warm generous rain melts the snow, so mighty hope melted
+doubt. Not only did they wish for victory, but they believed in it. New
+and favorable tidings came in continually; though often untrue, they
+passed from mouth to mouth. Time after time men told now of castles
+recovered, now of battles in which unknown regiments under leaders
+hitherto unknown had crushed the Swedes, now of terrible clouds of
+peasants sweeping along, like locusts, against the enemy. The name of
+Stefan Charnyetski was more and more frequent on every lip.
+
+The details in these tidings were often untrue, but taken together they
+reflected as a mirror what was being done in the whole country.
+
+But in Lvoff reigned as it were a continual holiday. When the king came
+the city greeted him solemnly, the clergy of the three rites, the
+councillors of the city, the merchants, the guilds. On the squares and
+streets, wherever an eye was cast, banners, white, sapphire, purple,
+and gilded, were waving. The Lvoff people raised proudly their golden
+lion on a blue field, recalling with self-praise the scarcely passed
+Cossack and Tartar attacks.
+
+At every appearance of the king a shout was raised among the crowds,
+and crowds were never lacking.
+
+The population doubled in recent days. Besides senators and bishops,
+besides nobles, flowed in throngs of peasants also, for the news had
+spread that the king intended to improve their condition. Therefore
+rustic coats and horse-blankets were mingled with the yellow coats of
+the townspeople. The mercantile Armenians with their swarthy faces put
+up booths for merchandise and arms which the assembled nobles bought
+willingly.
+
+There were many Tartars also with the embassy; there were Hungarians,
+Wallachians, and Austrians,--a multitude of people, a multitude of
+troops, a multitude of different kinds of faces, many strange garments
+in colors brilliant and varied, troops of court servants, hence
+gigantic grooms, haiduks, janissaries, red Cossacks, messengers in
+foreign costume.
+
+The streets were filled from morning till evening with the noise of
+men, now passing squadrons of a quota, now divisions of mounted nobles,
+the cries of command, the shining of armor and naked sabres, the
+neighing of horses, the rumble of cannon, and songs full of threatening
+and curses for the Swedes.
+
+The bells in the churches, Polish, Russian, and Armenian, were tolling
+continually, announcing to all that the king was in the city, and that
+Lvoff, to its eternal praise, was the first of the capitals that had
+received the king, the exile.
+
+They beat to him with the forehead; wherever he appeared caps flew
+upward, and shouts of "Vivat!" shook the air. They beat with the
+forehead also before the carriages of bishops, who through the windows
+blessed the assembled throngs; they bowed to and applauded senators,
+honoring in them loyalty to the king and country.
+
+So the whole city was seething. At night they even burned on the square
+piles of wood, at which in spite of cold and frost those men were
+encamped who could not find lodgings because of the excessive
+multitude.
+
+The king spent whole days in consultation with senators. Audience was
+given to foreign embassies, to deputations from provinces and troops;
+methods of filling the empty treasury with money were considered; all
+means were used to rouse war wherever it had not flamed up already.
+
+Couriers were flying to the most important towns in every part of the
+Commonwealth, to distant Prussia, to sacred Jmud, to Tyshovtsi, to the
+hetmans, to Sapyeha, who after the storming of Tykotsin took his army
+to the south with forced marches; couriers went also to Konyetspolski,
+who was still with the Swedes. Where it was needful money was sent; the
+slothful were roused with manifestoes.
+
+The king recognized, consecrated, and confirmed the confederation of
+Tyshovtsi and joined it himself; taking the direction of all affairs
+into his untiring hands, he labored from morning till night, esteeming
+the Commonwealth more than his own rest, his own health.
+
+But this was not the limit of his efforts; for he had determined to
+conclude in his own name and the name of the estates a league such that
+no earthly power, could overcome,--a league which in future might serve
+to reform the Commonwealth.
+
+The moment for this had come at last.
+
+The secret must have escaped from the senators to the nobles, and from
+the nobles to the peasants, for since morning it had been said that at
+the hour of services something important would happen,--that the king
+would make some solemn vow, concerning, as was said, the condition of
+the peasants and a confederation with heaven. There were persons,
+however, who asserted that these were incredible things, without an
+example in history; but curiosity was excited, and everywhere something
+was looked for.
+
+The day was frosty, clear; tiny flakes of snow were flying through the
+air, glittering like sparks. The land infantry of Lvoff and the
+district of Jidache, in blue half shubas, hemmed with gold, and half a
+Hungarian regiment were drawn out in a long line before the cathedral,
+holding their muskets at their feet in front of them; officers passed
+up and down with staffs in their hands. Between these two lines a
+many-colored throng flowed into the church, like a river. In front
+nobles and knights, after them the senate of the city, with gilded
+chains on their necks, and tapers in their hands. They were led by the
+mayor, a physician noted throughout the whole province; he was dressed
+in a black velvet toga, and wore a calotte. After the senate went
+merchants, and among them many Armenians with green and gold skull-caps
+on their heads, and wearing roomy Eastern gowns. These, though
+belonging to a special rite, went with the others to represent the
+estate. After the merchants came, with their banners, the guilds, such
+as butchers, bakers, tailors, goldsmiths, confectioners, embroiderers,
+linen-drapers, tanners, mead-boilers, and a number of others yet; from
+each company representatives went with their own banner, which was
+borne by a man the most distinguished of all for beauty. Then came
+various brotherhoods and the common throng in coats, in sheepskins, in
+horse-blankets, in homespun; dwellers in the suburbs, peasants.
+Admittance was barred to no one till the church was packed closely with
+people of all ranks and both sexes.
+
+At last carriages began to arrive; but they avoided the main door, for
+the king, the bishops, and the dignitaries had a special entrance
+nearer the high altar. Every moment the troops presented arms; at last
+the soldiers dropped their muskets to their feet, and blew on their
+chilled hands, throwing out clouds of steam from their breasts.
+
+The king came with the nuncio, Vidon; then arrived the archbishop of
+Gnyezno and the bishop, Prince Chartoryski; next appeared the bishop of
+Cracow, the archbishop of Lvoff, the grand chancellor of the kingdom,
+many voevodas and castellans. All these vanished through the side door;
+and their carriages, retinues, equerries, and attendants of every
+description formed as it were a new army, standing at the side of the
+cathedral.
+
+Mass was celebrated by the apostolic nuncio, Vidon, arrayed in purple,
+in a white chasuble embroidered with pearls and gold.
+
+For the king a kneeling-stool was placed between the great altar and
+the pews; before the kneeling-stool was a Turkish sofa. The church
+arm-chairs were occupied by bishops and lay senators.
+
+Many colored rays, passing through the windows, joined with the gleam
+of candles, with which the altar seemed burning, and fell upon the
+faces of senators in the church chairs, on the white beards, on the
+imposing forms, on golden chains, on violet velvet. You would have
+said, "A Roman senate!" such was the majesty and dignity of these old
+men. Here and there among gray heads was to be seen the face of a
+warrior senator; here and there gleamed the blond head of a youthful
+lord. All eyes were fixed on the altar, all were praying; the flames of
+the candles were glittering and quivering; the smoke from the censers
+was playing and curling in the bright air. The body of the church was
+packed with heads, and over the heads a rainbow of banners was playing,
+like a rainbow of flowers.
+
+The majesty of the king, Yan Kazimir, prostrated itself, according to
+his custom, in the form of a cross, and humiliated itself before the
+majesty of God. At last the nuncio brought from the tabernacle a
+chalice, and bearing it before him approached the kneeling-stool, then
+the king raised himself with a brighter face, the voice of the nuncio
+was heard: "_Ecce Agnus Dei_ (Behold the Lamb of God)," and the king
+received communion.
+
+For a time he remained kneeling, with inclined head; at last he rose,
+turned his eyes toward heaven, and stretched out both hands.
+
+There was sudden silence in the church, so that breathing was not
+audible. All divined that the moment had come, and that the king would
+make some vow; all listened with collected spirit. But he stood with
+outstretched arms; at last, with a voice filled with emotion, but as
+far reaching as a bell, he began to speak,--
+
+"O Great Mother of Divine humanity, and Virgin! I, Yan Kazimir, king by
+the favor of Thy Son, King of kings and my Lord, and by Thy favor
+approaching Thy Most Holy feet, form this, the following pact. I to-day
+choose Thee my Patroness and Queen of my dominions. I commit to Thy
+special guardianship and protection myself, my Polish kingdom, the
+Grand Principality of Lithuania, Russia, Prussia, Mazovia, Jmud,
+Livland, and Chernigov, the armies of both nations and all common
+people. I beg obediently Thy aid and favor against enemies in the
+present affliction of my kingdom."
+
+Here the king fell on his knees and was silent for a time. In the
+church a deathlike stillness continued unbroken; then rising he spoke
+on,--
+
+"And constrained by Thy great benefactions, I, with the Polish people,
+am drawn to a new and ardent bond of service to Thee. I promise Thee in
+my own name and in the names of my ministers, senators, nobles, and
+people, to extend honor and glory to Thy Son, Jesus Christ, Our
+Saviour, through all regions of the Polish kingdom; to make a promise
+that when, with the mercy of Thy Son, I obtain victory over the Swedes,
+I will endeavor that an anniversary be celebrated solemnly in my
+kingdom to the end of the world, in memory of the favor of God, and of
+Thee, O Most Holy Virgin."
+
+Here he ceased again and knelt. In the church there was a murmur; but
+the voice of the king stopped it quickly, and though he trembled this
+time with penitence and emotion, he continued still more distinctly,--
+
+"And since, with great sorrow of heart, I confess that I endure from
+God just punishment, which is afflicting us all in my kingdom with
+various plagues for seven years, because poor, simple tillers of the
+soil groan in suffering, oppressed by the soldiery, I bind myself on
+the conclusion of peace to use earnest efforts, together with the
+estates of the Commonwealth, to free suffering peasants from every
+cruelty, in which, O Mother of Mercy, Queen, and my Lady, since Thou
+hast inspired me to make this vow, obtain for me, by grace of Thy
+mercy, aid from Thy Son to accomplish what I here promise."
+
+These words of the king were heard by the clergy, the senators, the
+nobles, and the common people. A great wail was raised in the church,
+which came first from hearts of the peasants; it burst forth from them,
+and then became universal. All raised their hands to heaven; weeping
+voices repeated, "Amen, amen, amen!" in testimony that they had joined
+their feelings and vows with the promise of the king. Enthusiasm seized
+their hearts, and at that moment made them brothers in love for the
+Commonwealth and its Patroness. Indescribable joy shone on their faces
+like a clear flame, and in all that church there was no one who doubted
+that God would overwhelm the Swedes.
+
+After that service the king, amid the thunder of musketry and cannon
+and mighty shouts of "Victory! victory! may he live!" went to the
+castle, and there he confirmed the heavenly confederation together with
+that of Tyshovtsi.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+After these solemnities various tidings flew into Lvoff like winged
+birds. There were older and fresh tidings more or less favorable, but
+all increased courage. First the confederation of Tyshovtsi grew like a
+conflagration; every one living joined it, nobles as well as peasants.
+Towns furnished wagons, firearms, and infantry; the Jews money. No one
+dared to oppose the manifestoes; the most indolent mounted. There came
+also a terrible manifesto from Wittemberg, turned against the
+confederation. Fire and sword were to punish those who joined it. This
+manifesto produced the same effect as if a man tried to quench flames
+with powder. The manifesto, with the knowledge assuredly of the king,
+and to rouse hatred more thoroughly against the Swedes, was scattered
+through Lvoff in great numbers, and it is not becoming to state what
+common people did with the copies; it suffices to say that the wind
+bore them terribly dishonored through the streets of the city, and the
+students showed, to the delight of crowds, "Wittemberg's Confusion,"
+singing at the same time the song beginning with these words,--
+
+
+                 "O Wittemberg, poor man,
+                  Race across over the sea,
+                        Like a hare!
+                  But when thy buttons are lost
+                  Thou wilt drop down thy trousers,
+                        While racing away!"
+
+
+And Wittemberg, as if making the words of the song true, gave up his
+command in Cracow to the valiant Wirtz, and betook himself hurriedly to
+Elblang, where the King of Sweden was sojourning with the queen,
+spending his time at feasts, and rejoicing in his heart that he had
+become the lord of such an illustrious kingdom.
+
+Accounts came also to Lvoff of the fall of Tykotsin, and minds were
+gladdened. It was strange that men had begun to speak of that event
+before a courier had come; only they did not say whether Radzivill had
+died or was in captivity. It was asserted, however, that Sapyeha, at
+the head of a considerable force, had gone from Podlyasye to Lyubelsk
+to join the hetmans; that on the road he was beating the Swedes and
+growing in power every day.
+
+At last envoys came from Sapyeha himself in a considerable number, for
+the voevoda had sent neither less nor more than one whole squadron to
+be at the disposal of the king, desiring in this way to show honor to
+the sovereign, to secure his person from every possible accident, and
+perhaps specially to increase his significance.
+
+The squadron was brought by Volodyovski, well known to the king; so Yan
+Kazimir gave command that he should stand at once in his presence, and
+taking Pan Michael's head between his hands, he said,--
+
+"I greet thee, famous soldier! Much water has flowed down since we lost
+sight of thee. I think that we saw thee last at Berestechko, all
+covered with blood."
+
+Pan Michael bent to the knees of the king, and said,--
+
+"It was later, in Warsaw, Gracious Lord; also in the castle with the
+present castellan of Kieff, Pan Charnyetski."
+
+"But are you serving all the time? Had you no desire to enjoy leisure
+at home?"
+
+"No; for the Commonwealth was in need, and besides, in these public
+commotions my property has been lost. I have no place in which to put
+my head, Gracious Lord; but I am not sorry for myself, thinking that
+the first duty of a soldier is to the king and the country."
+
+"Ah, would there were more such! The enemy would not be so rich. God
+grant the time for rewards will come; but now tell me what you have
+done with the voevoda of Vilna?"
+
+"The voevoda of Vilna is before the judgment of God. The soul went out
+of him just as we were going to the final storm."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Here is Pan Sapyeha's report," said Volodyovski.
+
+The king took Sapyeha's letter and began to read; he had barely begun
+when he stopped.
+
+"Pan Sapyeha is mistaken," said he, "when he writes that the grand
+baton of Lithuania is unoccupied; it is not, for I give it to him."
+
+"There is no one more worthy," said Pan Michael, "and to your Royal
+Grace the whole army will be grateful till death for this deed."
+
+The king smiled at the simple soldierly confidence, and read on. After
+a while he sighed, and said,--
+
+"Radzivill might have been the first pearl in this glorious kingdom, if
+pride and the errors which he committed had not withered his soul. It
+is accomplished! Inscrutable are the decisions of God! Radzivill and
+Opalinski--almost in the same hour! Judge them, O Lord, not according
+to their sins, but according to Thy mercy."
+
+Silence followed; then the king again began to read.
+
+"We are thankful to the voevoda," said he, when he had finished, "for
+sending a whole squadron and under the greatest cavalier, as he writes.
+But I am safe here; and cavaliers, especially such as you, are more
+needed in the field. Rest a little, and then I will send you to assist
+Charnyetski, for on him evidently the greatest pressure will be
+turned."
+
+"We have rested enough already at Tykotsin, Gracious Lord," said the
+little knight, with enthusiasm; "if our horses were fed a little, we
+might move to-day, for with Charnyetski there will be unspeakable
+delights. It is a great happiness to look on the face of our gracious
+lord, but we are anxious to see the Swedes."
+
+The king grew radiant. A fatherly kindness appeared on his face, and he
+said, looking with pleasure on the sulphurous figure of the little
+knight,--
+
+"You were the first little soldier to throw the baton of a colonel at
+the feet of the late prince voevoda."
+
+"Not the first, your Royal Grace; but it was the first, and God grant
+the last, time for me to act against military discipline." Pan Michael
+stopped, and after a while added, "It was impossible to do otherwise."
+
+"Certainly," said the king. "That was a grievous hour for those who
+understood military duty; but obedience must have its limits, beyond
+which guilt begins. Did many officers remain in with Radzivill?"
+
+"In Tykotsin we found only one officer, Pan Kharlamp, who did not leave
+the prince at once, and who did not wish afterward to desert him in
+misery. Compassion alone kept Kharlamp with Radzivill, for natural
+affection drew him to us. We were barely able to restore him to health,
+such hunger had there been in Tykotsin, and he took the food from his
+own mouth to nourish the prince. He has come here to Lvoff to implore
+pardon of your Royal Grace, and I too fall at your feet for him; he is
+a tried and good soldier."
+
+"Let him come hither," said the king.
+
+"He has also something important to tell, which he heard in Kyedani
+from the mouth of Prince Boguslav, and which relates to the person of
+your Royal Grace, which is sacred to us."
+
+"Is this about Kmita?"
+
+"Yes, Gracious Lord."
+
+"Did you know Kmita?"
+
+"I knew him and fought with him; but where he is now, I know not."
+
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Gracious Lord, since he undertook such a deed there are no torments of
+which he is not worthy, for he is an abortion of hell."
+
+"That story is untrue," said the king; "it is all an invention of
+Prince Boguslav. But putting that affair aside, what do you know of
+Kmita in times previous?"
+
+"He was always a great soldier, and in military affairs incomparable.
+He used to steal up to Hovanski so that with a few hundred people he
+brought the whole force of the enemy to misery; no other man could have
+done that. It is a miracle that the skin was not torn from him and
+stretched over a drum. If at that time some one had placed Prince
+Radzivill himself in the hands of Hovanski, he would not have given him
+so much pleasure as he would had he made him a present of Kmita. Why!
+it went so far that Kmita ate out of Hovanski's camp-chests, slept on
+his rugs, rode in his sleighs and on his horse. But he was an
+infliction on his own people too, terribly self-willed; like Pan
+Lashch, he might have lined his cloak with sentences, and in Kyedani he
+was lost altogether."
+
+Here Volodyovski related in detail all that had happened in Kyedani.
+
+Yan Kazimir listened eagerly, and when at last Pan Michael told how
+Zagloba had freed first himself and then all his comrades from
+Radzivill's captivity, the king held his sides from laughter.
+
+"_Vir incomparabilis! vir incomparabilis_ (an incomparable man)!" he
+repeated. "But is he here with you?"
+
+"At the command of your Royal Grace!" answered Volodyovski.
+
+"That noble surpasses Ulysses! Bring him to me to dinner for a pleasant
+hour, and also the Skshetuskis; and now toll me what you know more of
+Kmita."
+
+"From letters found on Roh Kovalski we learned that we were sent to
+Birji to die. The prince pursued us afterward and tried to surround us,
+but he did not take us. We escaped luckily. And that was not all, for
+not far from Kyedani we caught Kmita, whom I sent at once to be shot."
+
+"Oh!" said the king, "I see that you had sharp work there in
+Lithuania."
+
+"But first Pan Zagloba had him searched to find letters on his person.
+In fact, a letter from the hetman was found, in which we learned that
+had it not been for Kmita we should not have been taken to Birji, but
+would have been shot without delay in Kyedani."
+
+"But you see!" said the king.
+
+"In view of that we could not take his life. We let him go. What he did
+further I know not, but he did not leave Radzivill at that time. God
+knows what kind of man he is. It is easier to form an opinion of any
+one else than of such a whirlwind. He remained with Radzivill and then
+went somewhere. Later he warned us that the prince was marching from
+Kyedani. It is hard to belittle the notable service he did us, for had
+it not been for that warning Radzivill would have fallen on unprepared
+troops, and destroyed the squadrons one after the other. I know not
+myself, Gracious Lord, what to think,--whether that was a calumny which
+Prince Boguslav uttered."
+
+"That will appear at once," said the king; and he clapped his hands.
+"Call hither Pan Babinich!" said he to a page who appeared on the
+threshold.
+
+The page vanished, and soon the door of the king's chamber opened, and
+in it stood Pan Andrei. Volodyovski did not know him at once, for he
+had changed greatly and grown pale, as he had not recovered from the
+struggle in the pass. Pan Michael therefore looked at him without
+recognition.
+
+"It is a wonder," said he at last; "were it not for the thinness of
+lips and because your Royal Grace gives another name, I should say this
+is Pan Kmita."
+
+The king smiled and said,--
+
+"This little knight has just told me of a terrible disturber of that
+name, but I explained as on my palm that he was deceived in his
+judgment, and I am sure that Pan Babinich will confirm what I say."
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Babinich, quickly, "one word from your grace
+will clear that disturber more than my greatest oath."
+
+"And the voice is the same," said Pan Michael, with growing
+astonishment; "but that wound across the mouth was not there."
+
+"Worthy sir," answered Kmita, "the head of a noble is a register on
+which sometimes a man's hand writes with a sabre. And here is your
+note; recognize it."
+
+He bowed his head, shaven at the sides, and pointed at the long whitish
+scar.
+
+"My hand!" cried Volodyovski.
+
+"But I say that you do not know Kmita," put in the king.
+
+"How is that, Gracious Lord?"
+
+"For you know a great soldier, but a self-willed one, an associate in
+the treason of Radzivill. But here stands the Hector of Chenstohova, to
+whom, next to Kordetski, Yasna Gora owes most; here stands the defender
+of the country and my faithful servant, who covered me with his own
+breast and saved my life when in the pass I had fallen among the Swedes
+as among wolves. Such is this new Kmita. Know him and love him, for he
+deserves it."
+
+Volodyovski began to move his yellow mustaches, not knowing what to
+say; and the king added,--
+
+"And know that not only did he promise Prince Boguslav nothing, but he
+began on him the punishment for Radzivill intrigues, for he seized him
+and intended to give him into your hands."
+
+"And he warned us against Prince Yanush!" cried Volodyovski. "What
+angel converted you?"
+
+"Embrace each other!" said the king.
+
+"I loved you at once!" said Kmita to Volodyovski.
+
+Then they fell into each other's embraces, and the king looked on them
+and pursed out his lips with delight, time after time, as was his
+habit. But Kmita embraced the little knight with such feeling that he
+raised him as he would a cat, and not soon did he place him back on his
+feet.
+
+Then the king went to the daily council, for the two hetmans of the
+kingdom had come to Lvoff, they were to form the army there, and lead
+it later to the aid of Charnyetski, and the confederate divisions
+marching, under various leaders, throughout the country.
+
+The knights were alone.
+
+"Come to my quarters," said Volodyovski; "you will find there Pan Yan,
+Pan Stanislav, and Zagloba, who will be glad to hear what the king has
+told me. There too is Kharlamp."
+
+But Kmita approached the little knight with great disquiet on his face.
+"Did you find many people with Radzivill?" asked he.
+
+"Of officers, Kharlamp alone was there."
+
+"I do not ask about the military, but about women."
+
+"I know what you mean," answered Pan Michael, flushing somewhat.
+"Prince Boguslav took Panna Billevich to Taurogi."
+
+Kmita's face changed at once; first it was pale as a parchment, then
+purple, and again whiter than before. He did not find words at once;
+but his nostrils quivered while he was catching breath, which
+apparently failed in his breast. Then he seized his temples with both
+hands, and running through the room like a madman, began to repeat,--
+
+"Woe to me, woe, woe!"
+
+"Come! Kharlamp will tell you better, for he was present," said
+Volodyovski.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+When they had left the king's chamber the two knights walked on in
+silence. Volodyovski did not wish to speak; Kmita was unable to utter a
+word, for pain and rage were gnawing him. They broke through the crowds
+of people who had collected in great numbers on the streets in
+consequence of tidings that the first detachment of the Tartars
+promised by the Khan had arrived, and was to enter the city to be
+presented to the king. The little knight led on; Kmita hastened after
+him like one beside himself, with his cap pulled over his eyes and
+stumbling against men on the way.
+
+When they had come to a more spacious place Pan Michael seized Kmita by
+the wrist and said,--
+
+"Control yourself! Despair will do nothing."
+
+"I am not in despair," answered Kmita, "but I want his blood."
+
+"You may be sure to find him among the enemies of the country."
+
+"So much the better," answered Kmita, feverishly; "but even should I
+find him in a church--"
+
+"In God's name, do not commit sacrilege!" interrupted the little
+colonel, quickly.
+
+"That traitor will bring me to sin."
+
+They were silent for a time. Then Kmita asked, "Where is he now?"
+
+"Maybe in Taurogi, and maybe not. Kharlamp will know better."
+
+"Let us go."
+
+"It is not far. The squadron is outside the town, but we are here; and
+Kharlamp is with us."
+
+Then Kmita began to breathe heavily like a man going up a steep
+mountain. "I am fearfully weak yet," said he.
+
+"You need moderation all the more, since you will have to deal with
+such a knight."
+
+"I had him once, and here is what remained." Kmita pointed to the scar
+on his face.
+
+"Tell me how it was, for the king barely mentioned it."
+
+Kmita began to tell; and though he gritted his teeth, and even threw
+his cap on the ground, still his mind escaped from misfortune, and he
+calmed himself somewhat.
+
+"I knew that you were daring," said Volodyovski; "but to carry off
+Radzivill from the middle of his own squadron, I did not expect that,
+even of you."
+
+Meanwhile they arrived at the quarters. Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav,
+Zagloba, Jendzian, and Kharlamp were looking at Crimean coats made of
+sheepskin, which a trading Tartar had brought. Kharlamp, who knew Kmita
+better, recognized him at one glance of the eye, and dropping the coat
+exclaimed,--
+
+"Jesus, Mary!"
+
+"May the name of the Lord be praised!" cried Jendzian.
+
+But before all had recovered breath after the wonder, Volodyovski
+said,--
+
+"I present to you, gentlemen, the Hector of Chenstohova, the faithful
+servant of the king, who has shed his blood for the faith, the country,
+and the sovereign."
+
+When astonishment had grown still greater, the worthy Pan Michael began
+to relate with enthusiasm what he had heard from the king of Kmita's
+services, and from Pan Andrei himself of the seizure of Prince
+Boguslav; at last he finished thus,--
+
+"Not only is what Prince Boguslav told of this knight not true, but the
+prince has no greater enemy than Pan Kmita, and therefore he has taken
+Panna Billevich from Kyedani, so as to pour out on him in some way his
+vengeance."
+
+"And this cavalier has saved our lives and warned the confederates
+against Prince Yanush," cried Zagloba. "In view of such services,
+previous offences are nothing. As God lives, it is well that he came to
+us with you. Pan Michael, and not alone; it is well also that our
+squadron is outside the city, for there is a terrible hatred against
+him among the Lauda men, and before he could have uttered a syllable
+they would have cut him to pieces."
+
+"We greet you with full hearts as a brother and future comrade," said
+Pan Yan.
+
+Kharlamp seized his head.
+
+"Such men never sink," said he; "they swim out on every side, and
+besides bring glory to the shore."
+
+"Did I not tell you that?" cried Zagloba. "The minute I saw him in
+Kyedani I thought at once, 'That is a soldier, a man of courage.' And
+you remember that we fell to kissing each other straightway. It is true
+that Radzivill was ruined through me, but also through him. God
+inspired me in Billeviche not to let him be shot. Worthy gentlemen, it
+is not becoming to give a dry reception to a cavalier like him; he may
+think that we are hypocrites."
+
+When he heard this Jendzian packed off the Tartar with his coats, and
+bustled around with the servant to get drinks.
+
+But Kmita was thinking only how to hear most quickly from Kharlamp
+about the removal of Olenka.
+
+"Where were you then?" asked he.
+
+"I scarcely ever left Kyedani," answered Great Nose. "Prince Boguslav
+came to our prince voevoda. He so dressed himself for supper that one's
+eyes ached in looking at him; it was clear that Panna Billevich had
+pleased him mightily, for he was almost purring from pleasure, like a
+cat rubbed on the back. It is said that a cat repeats prayers, but if
+Boguslav prayed he was praising the devil. Oh, but he was agreeable,
+and sweet and pleasant spoken."
+
+"Let that go!" said Pan Michael, "you cause too great pain to the
+knight."
+
+"On the contrary. Speak! speak!" cried Kmita.
+
+"He said then at table," continued Kharlamp, "that it was no derogation
+even to a Radzivill to marry the daughter of a common noble, and that
+he himself would prefer such a lady to one of those princesses whom the
+King and Queen of France wished to give him, and whose names I cannot
+remember, for they sounded as when a man is calling hounds in the
+forest."
+
+"Less of that!" said Zagloba.
+
+"He said it evidently to captivate the lady; we, knowing that, began
+one after another to look and mutter, thinking truly that he was
+setting traps for the innocent."
+
+"But she? but she?" asked Kmita, feverishly.
+
+"She, like a maiden of high blood and lofty bearing, showed no
+satisfaction, did not look at him; but when Boguslav began to talk
+about you, she fixed her eyes on him quickly. It is terrible what
+happened when he said that you offered for so many ducats to seize the
+king and deliver him dead or alive to the Swedes. We thought the soul
+would go out of her; but her anger against you was so great that it
+overcame her woman's weakness. When he told with what disgust he had
+rejected your offer, she began to respect him, and look at him
+thankfully; afterward she did not withdraw her hand from him when he
+wished to escort her from the table."
+
+Kmita covered his eyes with his hands. "Strike, strike, whoso believes
+in God!" said he. Suddenly he sprang from his place. "Farewell,
+gentlemen!"
+
+"How is this? Whither?" asked Zagloba, stopping the way.
+
+"The king will give me permission; I will go and find him," said Kmita.
+
+"By God's wounds, wait! You have not yet learned all, and to find him
+there is time. With whom will you go? Where will you find him?"
+
+Kmita perhaps might not have obeyed, but strength failed him; he was
+exhausted from wounds, therefore he dropped on the bench, and resting
+his shoulders against the wall, closed his eyes. Zagloba gave him a
+glass of wine; he seized it with trembling bands, and spilling some on
+his beard and breast, drained it to the bottom.
+
+"There is nothing lost," said Pan Yan; "but the greatest prudence is
+needed, for you have an affair with a celebrated man. Through hurried
+action and sudden impulse you may ruin Panna Billevich and yourself."
+
+"Hear Kharlamp to the end," said Zagloba.
+
+Kmita gritted his teeth. "I am listening with patience."
+
+"Whether the lady went willingly I know not," said Kharlamp, "for I was
+not present at her departure. I know that the sword-bearer of Rossyeni
+protested when they urged him previously; then they shut him up in the
+barracks, and finally he was allowed to go to Billeviche without
+hindrance. The lady is in evil hands; this cannot be concealed, for
+according to what they say of the young prince no Mussulman has such
+greed of the fair sex. If any fair head strikes his eye, though she be
+married, he is ready to disregard even that."
+
+"Woe! woe!" repeated Kmita.
+
+"The scoundrel!" cried Zagloba.
+
+"But it is a wonder to me that the prince voevoda gave her to
+Boguslav," said Pan Yan.
+
+"I am not a statesman, therefore I repeat only what the officers said,
+and namely Ganhoff, who knew all the secrets of the prince; I heard
+with my own ears how some one cried out in his presence, 'Kmita will
+have nothing after our young prince!' and Ganhoff answered, 'There is
+more of politics in this removal than love. Prince Boguslav,' said he,
+'lets no one off; but if the lady resists he will not be able to treat
+her like others, in Taurogi, for a noise would be made. Yanush's
+princess is living there with her daughter; therefore Boguslav must be
+very careful, for he seeks the hand of his cousin. It will be hard for
+him to simulate virtue,' said he, 'but he must in Taurogi.'"
+
+"A stone has of course fallen from your heart," cried Zagloba, "for
+from this it is clear that nothing threatens the lady."
+
+"But why did they take her away?" cried Kmita.
+
+"It is well that you turn to me," said Zagloba, "for I reason out
+quickly more than one thing over which another would break his head for
+a whole year in vain. Why did he take her away? I do not deny that she
+must have struck his eye; but he took her away to restrain through her
+all the Billeviches, who are numerous and powerful, from rising against
+the Radzivills."
+
+"That may be!" said Kharlamp. "It is certain that in Taurogi he must
+curb himself greatly; there he cannot go to extremes."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"The prince voevoda supposed in Tykotsin that he must be at Elblang
+with the King of Sweden, to whom he had to go for reinforcements. It is
+certain that he is not in Taurogi at present, for envoys did not find
+him there."
+
+Here Kharlamp turned to Kmita. "If you wish to listen to a simple
+soldier I will tell you what I think. If any misadventure has happened
+to Panna Billevich in Taurogi, or if the prince has been able to arouse
+in her affection, you have no reason to go; but if not, if she is with
+Yanush's widow and will go with her to Courland, it will be safer there
+than elsewhere, and a better place could not be found for her in this
+whole Commonwealth, covered with the flame of war."
+
+"If you are a man of such courage as they say, and as I myself think,"
+added Pan Yan, "you have first to get Boguslav, and when you have him
+in your hands, you have all."
+
+"Where is he now?" repeated Kmita, turning to Kharlamp.
+
+"I have told you already," answered Great Nose, "but you are forgetful
+from sorrow; I suppose that he is in Elblang, and certainly will take
+the field with Karl Gustav against Charnyetski."
+
+"You will do best if you go with us to Charnyetski, for in this way you
+will soon meet Boguslav," said Volodyovski.
+
+"I thank you, gentlemen, for kindly advice," cried Kmita. And he began
+to take hasty farewell of all, and they did not detain him, knowing
+that a suffering man is not good for the cup or for converse; but Pan
+Michael said,--
+
+"I will attend you to the archbishop's palace, for you are so reduced
+that you may fall somewhere on the street."
+
+"And I!" said Pan Yan.
+
+"Then we will all go!" put in Zagloba.
+
+They girded on their sabres, put on warm burkas, and went out. On the
+streets there were still more people than before. Every moment the
+knights met groups of armed nobles, soldiers, servants of magnates and
+nobles, Armenians, Jews, Wallachians, Russian peasants from the suburbs
+burned during the two attacks of Hmelnitski.
+
+Merchants were standing before their shops; the windows of the houses
+were filled with heads of curious people. All were repeating that the
+chambul had come, and would soon march through the city to be presented
+to the king. Every living person wished to see that chambul, for it was
+a great rarity to look on Tartars marching in peace through the streets
+of a city. In other temper had Lvoff seen these guests hitherto; the
+city had seen them only beyond the walls, in the form of impenetrable
+clouds on the background of flaming suburbs and neighboring villages.
+Now they were to march in as allies against Sweden. Our knights were
+barely able to open a way for themselves through the throng. Every
+moment there were cries; "They are coming, they are coming!" People ran
+from street to street, and were packed in such masses that not a step
+forward was possible.
+
+"Ha!" said Zagloba, "let us stop a little, Pan Michael. They will
+remind us of the near past, for we did not look sidewise but straight
+into the eyes of these bull-drivers. And I too have been in captivity
+among them. They say that the future Khan is as much like me as one cup
+is like another. But why talk of past follies?"
+
+"They are coming, they are coming!" cried the people again.
+
+"God has changed the hearts of the dog-brothers," continued Zagloba,
+"so that instead of ravaging the Russian borders they come to aid us.
+This is a clear miracle! For I tell you that if for every pagan whom
+this old hand has sent to hell, one of my sins had been forgiven, I
+should be canonized now, and people would have to fast on the eve of my
+festival, or I should have been swept up living to heaven in a chariot
+of fire."
+
+"And do you remember," asked Volodyovski, "how it was with them when
+they were returning from the Valadynka from Rashkoff to Zbaraj?"
+
+"Of course I do, Pan Michael; but somehow you fell into a hole, and I
+chased through the thick wood to the high-road. And when we came back
+to find you, the knights could not restrain their astonishment, for at
+each bush lay a dead beast of a Tartar."
+
+Pan Volodyovski remembered that at the time in question it was just the
+opposite; but he said nothing, for he was wonderfully astonished, and
+before he could recover breath voices were shouting for the tenth time;
+"They are coming, they are coming!"
+
+The shout became general; then there was silence, and all heads were
+turned in the direction from which the chambul was to come. Now
+piercing music was heard in the distance, the crowds began to open from
+the middle of the street toward the walls of the houses, and from the
+end appeared the first Tartar horsemen.
+
+"See! they have a band even; that is uncommon with Tartars!"
+
+"They wish to make the best impression," said Pan Yan; "but still some
+chambuls after they have lived long in camp, have their own musicians.
+That must be a choice body."
+
+Meanwhile the horsemen had come up and begun to ride past. In front on
+a pied horse sat a Tartar holding two pipes in his mouth, and as tawny
+as if he had been dried and smoked. Bending his head backward and
+closing his eyes, he ran his fingers over those pipes, obtaining from
+them notes squeaking, sharp, and so quick that the ear could barely
+catch them. After him rode two others holding staffs furnished at the
+ends with brass rattles, and they were shaking these rattles as if in
+frenzy; farther back some were making shrill sounds with brass plates,
+some were beating drums, while others were playing in Cossack fashion
+on teorbans; and all, with the exception of the pipers were singing, or
+rather howling, from moment to moment, a wild song, at the same time
+showing their teeth and rolling their eyes. After that chaotic music,
+which went like a brawl past the dwellers in Lvoff, clattered horses
+four abreast; the whole party was made up of about four hundred men.
+
+This was in fact a chosen body, as a specimen, and to do honor to the
+King of Poland, for his own use, and as an earnest sent by the Khan.
+They were led by Akbah Ulan, of the Dobrudja, therefore of the
+sturdiest Tartars in battle, an old and experienced warrior, greatly
+respected in the Uluses (Tartar villages), because of his bravery and
+severity. He rode between the music and the rest of the party, dressed
+in a shuba of rose-colored velvet, but greatly faded, and too narrow
+for his powerful person; it was lined with tattered marten-skin, he
+held in front of him a baton, like those used by Cossack colonels. His
+red face had become blue from the cold wind, and he swayed somewhat on
+his lofty saddle; from one moment to another he looked from side to
+side, or turned his face around to his Tartars, as if not perfectly
+sure that they could restrain themselves at sight of the crowds, the
+women, the children, the open shops, the rich goods, and that they
+would not rush with a shout at those wonders.
+
+But they rode on quietly, like dogs led by chains and fearing the lash,
+and only from their gloomy and greedy glances might it be inferred what
+was passing in the souls of those barbarians. The crowds gazed on them
+with curiosity, though almost with hostility, so great in those parts
+of the Commonwealth was hatred of the Pagan. From time to time cries
+were heard: "Ahu! ahu!" as if at wolves. Still there were some who
+expected much from them.
+
+"The Swedes have a terrible fear of the Tartars, and the soldiers tell
+wonders of them, from which their fear increases," said some, looking
+at the Tartars.
+
+"And justly," answered others. "It is not for the cavalry of Karl to
+war with the Tartars, who, especially those of the Dobrudja, are equal
+sometimes to our cavalry. Before a Swedish horseman can look around,
+the Tartar will have him on a lariat."
+
+"It is a sin to call sons of Pagans to aid us," said some voice.
+
+"Sin or no sin, they will serve us."
+
+"A very decent chambul!" said Zagloba.
+
+Really the Tartars were well dressed in white, black, and party-colored
+sheepskin coats, the wool on the outside; black bows, and quivers full
+of arrows were shaking on their shoulders; each had besides a sabre,
+which was not always the case in large chambuls, for the poorest were
+not able to obtain such a luxury, using in hand-to-hand conflict a
+horse-skull fastened to a club. But these were men, as was said, to be
+exhibited; therefore some of them had even muskets in felt cases, and
+all were sitting on good horses, small, it is true, rather lean and
+short, with long forelocks on their faces, but of incomparable
+swiftness.
+
+In the centre of the party went also four camels: the crowd concluded
+that in their packs were presents from the Khan to the king; but in
+that they were mistaken, for the Khan chose to take gifts, not give
+them; he promised, it is true, reinforcements, but not for nothing.
+
+When they had passed, Zagloba said: "That aid will cost dear. Though
+allies, they will ruin the country. After the Swedes and them, there
+will not be one sound roof in the Commonwealth."
+
+"It is sure that they are terribly grievous allies," said Pan Yan.
+
+"I have heard on the road," said Pan Michael, "that the king has made a
+treaty, that to every five hundred of the horde is to be given one of
+our officers, who is to have command and the right of punishment.
+Otherwise these friends would leave only heaven and earth behind them."
+
+"But this is a small chambul; what will the king do with it?"
+
+"The Khan sent them to be placed at the disposal of the king almost as
+a gift; and though he will make account of them, still the king can do
+what he likes with them, and undoubtedly he will send them with us to
+Charnyetski."
+
+"Well, Charnyetski will be able to keep them in bounds."
+
+"Not unless he is among them, otherwise they will plunder. It cannot
+be, but they will give them an officer at once."
+
+"And will he lead them? But what will that big Agá do?"
+
+"If he does not meet a fool, he will carry out orders."
+
+"Farewell, gentlemen!" cried Kmita, on a sudden.
+
+"Whither in such haste?"
+
+"To fall at the king's feet, and ask him to give me command of these
+people."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+That same day Akbah Ulan beat with his forehead to the king, and
+delivered to him letters of the Khan in which the latter repeated his
+promise of moving with one hundred thousand of the horde against the
+Swedes, when forty thousand thalers were paid him in advance, and when
+the first grass was on the fields, without which, in a country so
+ruined by war, it would be difficult to maintain such a great number of
+horses. As to that small chambul, the Khan had sent it to his "dearest
+brother" as a proof of his favor, so that the Cossacks, who were still
+thinking of disobedience, might have an evident sign that this favor
+endures steadily, and let but the first sound of rebellion reach the
+ears of the Khan, his vengeful anger will fall on all Cossacks.
+
+The king received Akbah Ulan affably, and presenting him with a
+beautiful steed, said that he would send him soon to Pan Charnyetski in
+the field, for he wished to convince the Swedes by facts, that the Khan
+was giving aid to the Commonwealth. The eyes of the Tartar glittered
+when he heard of service under Charnyetski; for knowing him from the
+time of former wars in the Ukraine, he, in common with all the Agás,
+admired him.
+
+But he was less pleased with the part of the Khan's letter which asked
+the king to attach to the chambul an officer, who knew the country
+well, who would lead the party and restrain the men, and also Akbah
+Ulan himself from plunder and excesses. Akbah Ulan would have preferred
+certainly not to have such a patron over him; but since the will of the
+Khan and the king were explicit, he merely beat with his forehead once
+more, hiding carefully his vexation, and perhaps promising in his soul
+that not he would bow down before that patron, but the patron before
+him.
+
+Barely had the Tartar gone out, and the senators withdrawn, when Kmita,
+who had an audience at once, fell at the feet of the king, and said,--
+
+"Gracious Lord! I am not worthy of the favor for which I ask, but I set
+as much by it as by life itself. Permit me to take command over these
+Tartars and move to the field with them at once."
+
+"I do not refuse," answered the astonished Yan Kazimir, "for a better
+leader it would be difficult to find. A cavalier of great daring and
+resolve is needed to hold them in check, or they will begin straightway
+to burn and murder our people. To this only am I firmly opposed, that
+you go tomorrow, before your flesh has healed from the wounds made by
+Swedish rapiers."
+
+"I feel that as soon as the wind blows around me in the field, my
+weakness will pass, and strength will enter me again; as to the
+Tartars, I will manage them and bend them into soft wax."
+
+"But why in such haste? Whither are you going?"
+
+"Against the Swedes, Gracious Lord; I have nothing to wait for here,
+since what I wanted I have, that is your favor and pardon for my former
+offences. I will go to Charnyetski with Volodyovski, or I will attack
+the enemy separately, as I did once Hovanski, and I trust in God that I
+shall have success."
+
+"It must be that something else is drawing you to the field."
+
+"I will confess as to a father, and open my whole soul. Prince
+Boguslav, not content with the calumny which he cast on me, has taken
+that maiden from Kyedani and confined her in Taurogi, or worse, for he
+is attacking her honesty, her virtue, her honor as a woman. Gracious
+Lord! the reason is confused in my head, when I think in what hands the
+poor girl is at present. By the passion of the Lord! these wounds pain
+less. That maiden thinks to this moment that I offered that damned
+soul, that arch-cur to raise hands on your Royal Grace--and she holds
+me the lowest of all the degenerate. I cannot endure, I am not able to
+endure, till I find her, till I free her. Give me those Tartars and I
+swear that I will not do my own work alone, but I will crush so many
+Swedes that the court of this castle might be paved with their skulls."
+
+"Calm yourself," said the king.
+
+"If I had to leave service and the defence of majesty and the
+Commonwealth for my own cause, it would be a shame for me to ask, but
+here one unites with the other. The time has come to beat the Swedes, I
+will do nothing else. The time has come to hunt a traitor; I will hunt
+him to Livland, to Courland, and even as far as the Northerners, or
+beyond the sea to Sweden, should he hide there."
+
+"We have information that Boguslav will move very soon with Karl, from
+Elblang."
+
+"Then I will go to meet them."
+
+"With such a small chambul? They will cover you with a cap."
+
+"Hovanski, with eighty thousand, was covering me, but he did not
+succeed."
+
+"All the loyal army is under Charnyetski. They will strike Charnyetski
+first of all."
+
+"I will go to Charnyetski. It is needful to give him aid the more
+quickly."
+
+"You will go to Charnyetski, but to Taurogi with such a small number
+you cannot go. Radzivill delivered all the castles in Jmud to the
+enemy, and Swedish garrisons are stationed everywhere; but Taurogi, it
+seems to me, is somewhere on the boundary of Prussia?"
+
+"On the very boundary of Electoral Prussia, but on our side, and twenty
+miles from Tyltsa. Wherever I have to go, I will go, and not only will
+I not lose men, but crowds of daring soldiers will gather to me on the
+road. And consider this, Gracious Lord, that wherever I show myself the
+whole neighborhood will mount against the Swedes. First, I will rouse
+Jmud, if no one else does it. What place may not be reached now, when
+the whole country is boiling like water in a pot? I am accustomed to be
+in a boil."
+
+"But you do not think of this,--perhaps the Tartars will not like to go
+so far with you."
+
+"Only let them not like! only let them try not to like," said Kmita,
+gritting his teeth at the very thought, "as there are four hundred,
+or whatever number there is of them, I'll have all four hundred
+hanged--there will be no lack of trees! Just let them try to rebel
+against me."
+
+"Yandrek!" cried the king, falling into good humor and pursing his
+lips, "as God is dear to me, I cannot find a better shepherd for those
+lambs! Take them and lead them wherever it pleases thee most."
+
+"I give thanks, Gracious Lord!" said the knight, pressing the knees of
+the king.
+
+"When do you wish to start?" asked Yan Kazimir.
+
+"God willing, to-morrow."
+
+"Maybe Akbah Ulan will not be ready, because his horses are
+road-weary."
+
+"Then I will have him lashed to a saddle with a lariat, and he will go
+on foot if he spares his horse."
+
+"I see that you will get on with him. Still use mild measures while
+possible. But now, Yendrek, it is late; to-morrow I wish to see you
+again. Meanwhile take this ring, tell your royalist lady that you have
+it from the king, and tell her that the king commands her to love
+firmly his faithful servant and defender."
+
+"God grant me," said the young hero, with tears in his eyes, "not to
+die save in defence of your Royal Grace!"
+
+Here the king withdrew, for it was already late; and Kmita went to his
+own quarters to prepare for the road, and think what to begin, and
+whither he ought to go first.
+
+He remembered the words of Kharlamp, that should it appear that
+Boguslav was not in Taurogi it would really be better to leave the
+maiden there, for from Taurogi being near the boundary, it was easy to
+take refuge in Tyltsa, under care of the elector. Moreover, though the
+Swedes had abandoned in his last need the voevoda of Vilna, it was
+reasonable to expect that they would have regard for his widow; hence,
+if Olenka was under her care, no evil could meet her. If they had gone
+to Courland, that was still better. "And to Courland I cannot go with
+my Tartars," said Kmita to himself, "for that is another State."
+
+He walked then, and worked with his head. Hour followed hour, but he
+did not think yet of rest; and the thought of his new expedition so
+cheered him, that though that day he was weak in the morning, he felt
+now that his strength was returning, and he was ready to mount in a
+moment.
+
+The servants at last had finished tying the saddle-straps and were
+preparing to sleep, when all at once some one began to scratch at the
+door of the room.
+
+"Who is there?" asked Kmita. Then to his attendant, "Go and see!"
+
+He went, and after he had spoken to some one outside the door, he
+returned.
+
+"Some soldier wants to see your grace greatly. He says that his name is
+Soroka."
+
+"By the dear God! let him in," called Kmita. And without waiting for
+the attendant to carry out the order, he sprang to the door. "Come in,
+dear Soroka! come hither!"
+
+The soldier entered the room, and with his first movement wished to
+fall at the feet of his colonel, for he was a friend and a servant as
+faithful as he was attached; but soldierly subordination carried the
+day, therefore he stood erect and said,--
+
+"At the orders of your grace!"
+
+"Be greeted, dear comrade, be greeted!" said Kmita, with emotion. "I
+thought they had cut you to pieces in Chenstohova." And he pressed
+Soroka's head, then began to shake him, which he could do without
+lowering himself too much, for Soroka was descended from village
+nobility.
+
+Then the old sergeant fell to embracing Kmita's knees.
+
+"Whence do you come?" asked Kmita.
+
+"From Chenstohova."
+
+"And you were looking for me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And from whom did you learn that I was alive?"
+
+"From Kuklinovski's men. The prior, Kordetski, celebrated High Mass
+from delight, in thanksgiving to God. Then there was a report that Pan
+Babinich had conducted the king through the mountains; so I knew that
+that was your grace, no one else."
+
+"And Father Kordetski is well?"
+
+"Well; only it is unknown whether the angels will not take him alive to
+heaven any day, for he is a saint."
+
+"Surely he is nothing else. Where did you discover that I came with the
+king to Lvoff?"
+
+"I thought, since you conducted the king you must be near him; but I
+was afraid that your grace might move to the field and that I should be
+late."
+
+"To-morrow I go with the Tartars."
+
+"Then it has happened well, for I bring your grace two full belts, one
+which I wore and the other you carried, and besides, those precious
+stones which we took from the caps of boyars, and those which your
+grace took when we seized the treasury of Hovanski."
+
+"Those were good times when we gathered in wealth; but there cannot be
+much of it now, for I left a good bit with Father Kordetski."
+
+"I do not know how much, but the prior himself said that two good
+villages might be bought with it."
+
+Then Soroka drew near the table, and began to remove the belts from his
+body. "And the stones are in this canteen," added he, putting the
+canteen near the belts.
+
+Kmita made no reply, but shook in his hand some gold ducats without
+counting them, and said to the sergeant,--
+
+"Take these!"
+
+"I fall at the feet of your grace. Ei, if I had had  on the road one
+such ducat!"
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Because I am terribly weak. There are few places now where they will
+give one morsel of bread to a man, for all are afraid; and at last I
+barely dragged my feet forward from hunger."
+
+"By the dear God! but you had all this with you!"
+
+"I dared not use it without leave."
+
+"Take this!" said Kmita, giving him another handful. Then he cried to
+the servants,--
+
+"Now, scoundrels, give him to eat in less time than a man might say
+'Our Father,' or I'll take your heads!"
+
+They sprang one in front of another, and in little while there was an
+enormous dish of smoked sausage before Soroka, and a flask of vodka.
+The soldier fastened his eyes greedily on the food, and his lips and
+mustaches were quivering; but he dared not sit in presence of the
+colonel.
+
+"Sit down, eat!" commanded Kmita.
+
+Kmita had barely spoken when a dry sausage was crunching between the
+powerful jaws of Soroka. The two attendants looked on him with
+protruding eyes.
+
+"Be off!" cried Kmita.
+
+They sprang out with all breath through the door; out the knight walked
+with hasty steps up and down the room, not wishing to interrupt his
+faithful servant. But he, as often as he poured out a glass of vodka,
+looked sidewise at the colonel, fearing to find a frown; then he
+emptied the glass and turned toward the wall.
+
+Kmita walked, walked; at last he began to speak to himself. "It cannot
+be otherwise!" muttered he; "it is needful to send him. I will give
+orders to tell her--No use, she will not believe! She will not read a
+letter, for she holds me a traitor and a dog. Let him not come in her
+way, but let him see and tell me what is taking place there."
+
+Then he said on a sudden; "Soroka!"
+
+The soldier sprang up so quickly that he came near overturning the
+table, and straightened as straight as a string.
+
+"According to order!"
+
+"You are an honest man, and in need you are cunning. You will go on a
+long road, but not on a hungry one."
+
+"According to order!"
+
+"To Tyltsa, on the Prussian border. There Panna Billevich is living in
+the castle of Boguslav Radzivill. You will learn if the prince is
+there, and have an eye on everything. Do not try to see Panna
+Billevich, but should a meeting happen of itself, tell her, and swear
+that I brought the king through the mountains, and that I am near his
+person. She will surely not give you credit; for the prince has defamed
+me, saying that I wished to attempt the life of the king,--which is a
+lie befitting a dog."
+
+"According to order!"
+
+"Do not try to see her, as I have said, for she will not believe you.
+But if you meet by chance, tell her what you know. Look at every thing,
+and listen! But take care of yourself, for if the prince is there and
+recognizes you, or if any one from his court recognizes you, you will
+be impaled on a stake. I would send old Kyemlich, but he is in the
+other world, slain in the pass, and his sons are too dull. They will go
+with me. Have you been in Tyltsa?"
+
+"I have not, your grace."
+
+"You will go to Shchuchyn, thence along the Prussian boundary to
+Tyltsa. Taurogi is twenty miles distant from Tyltsa and opposite, on
+our side. Stay in Taurogi till you have seen everything, then come to
+me. You will find me where I shall be. Ask for the Tartars and Pan
+Babinich. And now go to sleep with the Kyemliches. To-morrow for the
+road."
+
+After these words, Soroka went out. Kmita did not lie down to sleep for
+a long time, but at last weariness overcame him; then he threw himself
+on the bed, and slept a stone sleep.
+
+Next morning he rose greatly refreshed and stronger than the day
+before. The whole court was already on foot, and the usual activity had
+begun. Kmita went first to the chancellery, for his commission and
+safe-conduct; he visited Suba Gazi Bey, chief of the Khan's embassy in
+Lvoff, and had a long conversation with him.
+
+During that conversation Pan Andrei put his hand twice in his purse; so
+that when he was going out Suba Gazi Bey changed caps with him, gave
+him a baton of green feathers and some yards of an equally green cord
+of silk.
+
+Armed in this fashion, Pan Andrei returned to the king, who had just
+come from Mass; then the young man fell once more at the knees of the
+sovereign; after that he went, together with the Kyemliches and his
+attendants, directly to the place where Akbah Ulan was quartered with
+his chambul.
+
+At sight of him the old Tartar put his hand to his forehead, his mouth,
+and his breast; but learning who Kmita was and why he had come, he grew
+severe at once; his face became gloomy, and was veiled with
+haughtiness.
+
+"And the king has sent you to me as a guide," said he to Kmita, in
+broken Russian; "you will show me the road, though I should be able to
+go myself wherever it is needed, and you are young and inexperienced."
+
+"He indicates in advance what I am to be," thought Kmita, "but I will
+be polite to him as long as I can." Then he said aloud: "Akbah Ulan,
+the king has sent me here as a chief, not as a guide. And I tell you
+this, that you will do better not to oppose the will of his grace."
+
+"The Khan makes appointments over the Tartars, not the king," answered
+Akbah Ulan.
+
+"Akbah Ulan," repeated Kmita, with emphasis, "the Khan has made a
+present of thee to the king, as he would a dog or a falcon; therefore
+show no disrespect to him, lest thou be tied like a dog with a rope."
+
+"Allah!" cried the astonished Tartar.
+
+"Hei! have a care that thou anger me not!" said Kmita.
+
+Akbah Ulan's eyes became bloodshot. For a time he could not utter a
+word; the veins on his neck were swollen, his hands sought his dagger.
+
+"I'll bite, I'll bite!" said he, with stifled voice.
+
+But Pan Andrei, though he had promised to be polite, had had  enough,
+for by nature he was very excitable. In one moment therefore something
+struck him as if a serpent had stung; he seized the Tartar by the thin
+beard with his whole hand, and pushing back his head as if he wished to
+show him something on the ceiling, he began to talk through his set
+teeth.
+
+"Hear me, son of a goat! Thou wouldst like to have no one above thee,
+so as to burn, rob, and slaughter! Thou wouldst have me as guide! Here
+is thy guide! thou hast a guide!" And thrusting him to the wall, he
+began to pound his head against a corner of it.
+
+He let him go at last, completely stunned, but not looking for his
+knife now. Kmita, following the impulse of his hot blood, discovered
+the best method of convincing Oriental people accustomed to slavery;
+for in the pounded head of the Tartar, in spite of all the rage which
+was stifling him, the thought gleamed at once how powerful and
+commanding must that knight be who could act in this manner with him,
+Akbah Ulan; and with his bloody lips he repeated three times,--
+
+"Bagadyr (hero), Bagadyr, Bagadyr!"
+
+Kmita meanwhile placed on his own head the cap of Suba Grazi, drew
+forth the green baton, which he had kept behind his belt of purpose
+till that moment, and said,--
+
+"Look at these, slave! and these!"
+
+"Allah!" exclaimed the astonished Ulan.
+
+"And here!" added Kmita, taking the cord from his pocket.
+
+But Akbah Ulan was already lying at his feet, and striking the floor
+with his forehead.
+
+An hour later the Tartars were marching out in a long line over the
+road from Lvoff to Vyelki Ochi; and Kmita, sitting on a valiant
+chestnut steed which the king had given him, drove along the chambul as
+a shepherd dog drives sheep. Akbah Ulan looked at the young hero with
+wonder and fear.
+
+The Tartars, who were judges of warriors, divined at the first glance
+that under that leader there would be no lack of blood and plunder, and
+went willingly with singing and music.
+
+And Kmita's heart swelled within him when he looked at those forms,
+resembling beasts of the wilderness; for they were dressed in sheepskin
+and camel-skin coats with the wool outside. The wave of wild heads
+shook with the movements of the horses; he counted them, and was
+thinking how much he could undertake with that force.
+
+"It is a peculiar body," thought he, "and it seems to me as if I were
+leading a pack of wolves; and with such men precisely would it be
+possible to run through the whole Commonwealth, and trample all
+Prussia. Wait awhile, Prince Boguslav!"
+
+Here boastful thoughts began to flow into his head, for he was inclined
+greatly to boastfulness.
+
+"God has given man adroitness," said he to himself; "yesterday I had
+only the two Kyemliches, but to-day four hundred horses are clattering
+behind me. Only let the dance begin; I shall have a thousand or two of
+such roisterers as my old comrades would not be ashamed of. Wait a
+while, Boguslav!"
+
+But after a moment he added, to quiet his own conscience: "And I shall
+serve also the king and the country."
+
+He fell into excellent humor. This too pleased him greatly, that
+nobles, Jews, peasants, even large crowds of general militia, could not
+guard themselves from fear in the first moment at sight of his Tartars.
+And there was a fog, for the thaw had filled the air with a vapor. It
+happened then every little while that some one rode up near, and seeing
+all at once whom they had before them, cried out,--
+
+"The word is made flesh!"
+
+"Jesus! Mary! Joseph!"
+
+"The Tartars! the horde!"
+
+But the Tartars passed peacefully the equipages, loaded wagons, herds
+of horses and travellers. It would have been different had the leader
+permitted, but they dared not undertake anything of their own will, for
+they had seen how at starting Akbah Ulan had held the stirrup of that
+leader.
+
+Now Lvoff had vanished in the distance beyond the mist. The Tartars had
+ceased to sing, and the chambul moved slowly amid the clouds of steam
+rising from the horses. All at once the tramp of a horse was heard
+behind. In a moment two horsemen appeared. One of them was Pan Michael,
+the other was the tenant of Vansosh; both, passing the chambul, pushed
+straight to Kmita.
+
+"Stop! stop!" cried the little knight.
+
+Kmita held in his horse. "Is that you?"
+
+Pan Michael reined in his horse. "With the forehead!" said he, "letters
+from the king: one to you, the other to the voevoda of Vityebsk."
+
+"I am going to Pan Charnyetski, not to Sapyeha."
+
+"But read the letter."
+
+Kmita broke the seal and read as follows:--
+
+
+We learn through a courier just arrived from the voevoda of Vityebsk
+that he cannot march hither to Little Poland, and is turning back again
+to Podlyasye, because Prince Boguslav, who is not with the King of
+Sweden, has planned to fall upon Tykotsin and Pan Sapyeha. And since he
+must leave a great part of his troops in garrisons, we order you to go
+to his assistance with that Tartar chambul. And since your own wish is
+thus gratified, we need not urge you to hasten. The other letter you
+will give to the voevoda; in it we commend Pan Babinich, our faithful
+servant, to the good will of the voevoda, and above all to the
+protection of God.            YAN KAZIMIR, _King_.
+
+
+"By the dear God! by the dear God! This is happy news for me!" cried
+Kmita. "I know not how to thank the king and you for it."
+
+"I offered myself to come," said the little knight, "out of compassion,
+for I saw your pain; I came so that the letters might reach you
+surely."
+
+"When did the courier arrive?"
+
+"We were with the king at dinner,--I, Pan Yan, Pan Stanislav, Kharlamp,
+and Zagloba. You cannot imagine what Zagloba told there about the
+carelessness of Sapyeha, and his own services. It is enough that the
+king cried from continual laughter, and both hetmans were holding their
+sides all the time. At last the chamber servant came with a letter;
+when the king burst out, 'Go to the hangman, maybe evil news will spoil
+my fun!' When he learned that it was from Pan Sapyeha, he began to read
+it. Indeed he read evil news, for that was confirmed which had long
+been discussed; the elector had broken all his oaths, and against his
+own rightful sovereign had joined the King of Sweden at last."
+
+"Another enemy, as if there were few of them hitherto!" cried Kmita;
+and he folded his hands. "Great God! only let Pan Sapyeha send me for a
+week to Prussia, and God the Merciful grant that ten generations will
+remember me and my Tartars."
+
+"Perhaps you will go there," said Pan Michael; "but first you must
+defeat Boguslav, for as a result of that treason of the elector is he
+furnished with men and permitted to go to Podlyasye."
+
+"Then we shall meet, as to-day is to-day; as God is in heaven, so shall
+we meet," cried Kmita, with flashing eyes. "If you had brought me the
+appointment of voevoda of Vilna, it would not have given me more
+pleasure."
+
+"The king too cried at once; 'There is an expedition ready for Yendrek,
+from which the soul will rejoice in him.' He wanted to send his servant
+after you, but I said I will go myself, I will take farewell of him
+once more."
+
+Kmita bent on his horse, and seized the little knight in his embrace.
+
+"A brother would not have done for me what you have done! God grant me
+to thank you in some way."
+
+"Tfu! Did not I want to shoot you?"
+
+"I deserved nothing better. Never mind! May I be slain in the first
+battle if in all knighthood I love a man more than I love you."
+
+Then they began to embrace again at parting, and Volodyovski said,--
+
+"Be careful with Boguslav, be careful, for it is no easy matter with
+him."
+
+"For one of us death is written. Ei! if you who are a genius at the
+sabre could discover your secrets to me. But there is no time. As it
+is, may the angels help me; and I will see his blood, or my eyes will
+close forever on the light of day."
+
+"God aid you! A lucky journey, and give angelica to those traitors of
+Prussians!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"Be sure on that point. The disgusting Lutherans!"
+
+Here Volodyovski nodded to Jendzian, who during this time was talking
+to Akbah Ulan, explaining the former successes of Kmita over Hovanski.
+And both rode back to Lvoff.
+
+Then Kmita turned his chambul on the spot, as a driver turns his wagon,
+and went straight toward the north.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Though the Tartars, and especially those of the Dobrudja, knew how to
+stand breast to breast against armed men in the field, their most
+cherished warfare was the slaughter of defenceless people, the seizing
+of women and peasants captive, and above all, plunder. The road was
+very bitter therefore to that chambul which Kmita led, for under
+his iron hand these wild warriors had to become lambs, keep their
+knives in the sheaths, and the quenched tinder and coiled ropes in
+their saddle-bags. They murmured at first.
+
+Near Tarnogrod a few remained behind of purpose to let free the "red
+birds" in Hmyelevsk and to frolic with the women. But Kmita, who had
+pushed on toward Tomashov, returned at sight of the first gleam of
+fire, and commanded the guilty to hang the guilty. And he had gained
+such control of Akbah Ulan, that the old Tartar not only did not
+resist, but he urged the condemned to hang quickly, or the "bogadyr"
+would be angry. Thenceforth "the lambs" marched quietly, crowding more
+closely together through the villages and towns, lest suspicion might
+fall on them. And the execution, though Kmita carried it out so
+severely, did not rouse even ill will or hatred against him; such
+fortune had that fighter that his subordinates felt just as much love
+for him as they did fear.
+
+It is true that Pan Andrei permitted no one to wrong them. The country
+had been terribly ravaged by the recent attack of Hmelnitski and
+Sheremetyeff; therefore it was as difficult to find provisions and
+pasture as before harvest, and besides, everything had to be in time
+and in plenty; in Krinitsi, where the townspeople offered resistance
+and would not furnish supplies, Pan Andrei ordered that some of them be
+beaten with sticks, and the under-starosta he stretched out with the
+blow of a whirlbat.
+
+This delighted the horde immensely, and hearing with pleasure the
+uproar of the beaten people, they said among themselves,--
+
+"Ei! our Babinich is a falcon; he lets no man offend his lambs."
+
+It is enough that not only did they not grow thin, but the men and
+horses improved in condition. Old Ulan, whose stomach had expanded,
+looked with growing wonder on the young hero and clicked with his
+tongue.
+
+"If Allah were to give me a son, I should like such a one. I should not
+die of hunger in my old age in the Ulus," repeated he.
+
+But Kmita from time to time struck him on the stomach and said,--
+
+"Here listen, wild boar! If the Swedes do not open your paunch, you
+will hide the contents of all cupboards inside it."
+
+"Where are the Swedes? Our ropes will rot, our bows will be mildewed,"
+answered Ulan, who was homesick for war.
+
+They were advancing indeed through a country to which a Swedish foot
+had not been able to come, but farther they would pass through one in
+which there had been garrisons afterward driven out by confederates.
+They met everywhere smaller and larger bands of armed nobles, marching
+in various directions, and not smaller bands of peasants, who more than
+once stopped the road to them threateningly, and to whom it was often
+difficult to explain that they had to do with friends and servants of
+the King of Poland.
+
+They came at last to Zamost. The Tartars were amazed at sight of this
+mighty fortress; but what did they think when told that not long before
+it had stopped the whole power of Hmelnitski?
+
+Pan Zamoyski, the owner by inheritance, permitted them as a mark of
+great affection and favor to enter the town. They were admitted through
+a brick gate, while the other two were stone. Kmita himself did not
+expect to see anything similar, and he could not recover from
+astonishment at sight of the broad streets, built in straight lines,
+Italian fashion; at sight of the splendid college, and the academy, the
+castle, walls, the great cannon and every kind of provision. As few
+among magnates could be compared with the grandson of the great
+chancellor, so there were few fortresses that could be compared with
+Zamost.
+
+But the greatest ecstasy seized the Tartars, when they saw the Armenian
+part of the town. Their nostrils drew in greedily the odor of morocco,
+a great manufacture of which was carried on by industrial immigrants
+from Kaffa; and their eyes laughed at sight of the dried fruits and
+confectionery, Eastern carpets, girdles, inlaid sabres, daggers, bows,
+Turkish lamps, and every kind of costly article.
+
+The cup-bearer of the kingdom himself pleased Kmita's heart greatly, he
+was a genuine kinglet in that Zamost of his; a man in the strength of
+his years, of fine presence though lacking somewhat robustness, for he
+had not restrained sufficiently the ardors of nature in early years. He
+had always loved the fair sex, but his health had not been shaken to
+that degree that joyousness had vanished from his face. So far he had
+not married, and though the most renowned houses in the Commonwealth
+had opened wide their doors, he asserted that he could not find in them
+a sufficiently beautiful maiden. He found her somewhat later, in the
+person of a young French lady, who though in love with another gave him
+her hand without hesitation, not foreseeing that the first one,
+disregarded, would adorn in the future his own and her head with a
+kingly crown.
+
+The lord of Zamost was not distinguished for quick wit, though he had
+enough for his own use. He did not strive for dignities and offices,
+though they came to him of themselves; and when his friends reproached
+him with a lack of native ambition, he answered,--"It is not true that
+I lack it, for I have more than those who bow down. Why should I wear
+out the thresholds of the court? In Zamost I am not only Yan Zamoyski,
+but Sobiepan Zamoyski,"[4] with which name he was very well pleased. He
+was glad to affect simple manners, though he had received a refined
+education and had passed his youth in journeys through foreign lands.
+He spoke of himself as a common noble, and spoke emphatically of the
+moderateness of his station, perhaps so that others might contradict
+him, and perhaps so that they might not notice his medium wit. On the
+whole he was an honorable man, and a better son of the Commonwealth
+than many others.
+
+And as he came near Kmita's heart, so did Kmita please him; therefore
+he invited Pan Andrei to the chambers of the castle and entertained
+him, for he loved this also, that men should exalt his hospitality.
+
+Pan Andrei came to know in the castle many noted persons; above all,
+Princess Griselda Vishnyevetski, sister of Pan Zamoyski and widow of
+the great Yeremi,--a man who in his time was well-nigh the greatest in
+the Commonwealth, who nevertheless had lost his whole immense fortune
+in the time of the Cossack incursion, so that the princess was now
+living at Zamost, on the bounty of her brother Yan.
+
+But that lady was so full of grandeur, of majesty and virtue, that her
+brother was the first to blow away the dust from before her; and
+moreover he feared her like fire. There was no case in which he did not
+gratify her wishes, nor an affair the most important concerning which
+he did not advise with her. The people of the castle said that the
+princess ruled Zamost, the army, the treasury, and her brother; but she
+did not wish to take advantage of her preponderance, being given with
+her whole soul to grief for her husband and to the education of her
+son.
+
+That son had recently returned for a short time from the court of
+Vienna and was living with her. He was a youth in the springtime of
+life; but in vain did Kmita seek in him those marks which the son of
+the great Yeremi should bear in his features.
+
+The figure of the young prince was graceful; but he had a large, full
+face, and protruding eyes with a timid look; he had coarse lips, moist,
+as with people inclined to pleasures of the table; an immense growth of
+hair, black as a raven's wing, fell to his shoulders. He inherited from
+his father only that raven hair and dark complexion.
+
+Pan Andrei was assured by those who were more intimate with the prince
+that he had a noble soul, unusual understanding, and a remarkable
+memory, thanks to which he was able to speak almost all languages; and
+that a certain heaviness of body and temperament with a native greed
+for food were the only defects of that otherwise remarkable young man.
+
+In fact, after he had entered into conversation with him Pan Andrei
+became convinced that the prince not only had an understanding mind and
+a striking judgment touching everything, but the gift of attracting
+people. Kmita loved him after the first conversation with that feeling
+in which compassion is the greatest element. He felt that he would give
+much to bring back to that orphan the brilliant future which belonged
+to him by right of birth.
+
+Pan Andrei convinced himself at the first dinner that what was said of
+the gluttony of Michael Vishnyevetski was true. The young prince seemed
+to think of nothing save eating. His prominent eyes followed each dish
+uneasily, and when they brought him the platter he took an enormous
+quantity on his plate and ate ravenously, smacking his lips as only
+gluttons do. The marble face of the princess grew clouded with still
+greater sorrow at that sight. It became awkward for Kmita, so that he
+turned away his eyes and looked at Sobiepan.
+
+But Zamoyski was not looking either at Prince Michael or his own guest.
+Kmita followed his glance, and behind the shoulders of Princess
+Griselda he saw a wonderful sight indeed, which he had not hitherto
+noticed.
+
+It was the small pretty head of a maiden, who was as fair as milk, as
+red as a rose, and beautiful as an image. Short wavy locks ornamented
+her forehead; her quick eyes were directed to the officers sitting near
+Zamoyski, not omitting Sobiepan himself. At last those eyes rested on
+Kmita, and looked at him fixedly, as full of coquetry as if they
+intended to gaze into the depth of his heart.
+
+But Kmita was not easily confused; therefore he began to look at once
+into those eyes with perfect insolence, and then he punched in the side
+Pan Shurski, lieutenant of the armored castle squadron at Zamost, who
+was sitting near him, and asked in an undertone,--
+
+"But who is that tailed farthing?"
+
+"Worthy sir," answered Shurski, aloud, "do not speak slightingly when
+you do not know of whom you are speaking. That is Panna Anusia
+Borzobogati. And you will not call her otherwise unless you wish to
+regret your rudeness."
+
+"You do not know, sir, that a farthing is a kind of bird and very
+beautiful, therefore there is no contempt in the name," answered Kmita,
+laughing; "but noticing your anger you must be terribly in love."
+
+"But who is not in love?" muttered the testy Shurski. "Pan Zamoyski
+himself has almost looked his eyes out, and is as if sitting on an
+awl."
+
+"I see that, I see that!"
+
+"What do you see? He, I, Grabovski, Stolangyevich, Konoyadzki, Rubetski
+of the dragoons, Pyechynga,--she has sunk us all. And with you it will
+be the same, if you stay here. With her twenty-four hours are
+sufficient."
+
+"Lord brother! with me she could do nothing in twenty-four months."
+
+"How is that?" asked Shurski, with indignation; "are you made of metal,
+or what?"
+
+"No! But if some one had stolen the last dollar from your pocket you
+would not be afraid of a thief."
+
+"Is that it?" answered Shurski.
+
+Kmita grew gloomy at once, for his trouble came to his mind, and he
+noticed no longer that the black eyes were looking still more
+stubbornly at him, as if asking, "What is thy name, whence dost thou
+come, youthful knight?"
+
+But Shurski muttered: "Bore, bore away! She bored that way into me till
+she bored to my heart. Now she does not even care."
+
+Kmita shook himself out of his seriousness.
+
+"Why the hangman does not some one of you marry her?"
+
+"Each one prevents every other."
+
+"The girl will be left in the lurch," said Kmita, "though in truth
+there must be white seeds in that pear yet."
+
+Shurski opened his eyes, and bending to Kmita's ear said very
+mysteriously,--
+
+"They say that she is twenty-five, as I love God. She was with Princess
+Griselda before the incursion of the rabble?"
+
+"Wonder of wonders, I should not give her more than sixteen or eighteen
+at the most."
+
+This time the devil (the girl) guessed apparently that they were
+talking of her, for she covered her gleaming eyes with the lids, and
+only shot sidelong glances at Kmita, inquiring continually: "Who art
+thou, so handsome? Whence dost thou come?" And he began involuntarily
+to twirl his mustache.
+
+After dinner Zamoyski, who from respect to the courtly manners of Kmita
+treated him as an unusual guest, took him by the arm. "Pan Babinich,"
+said he, "you have told me that you are from Lithuania?"
+
+"That is true, Pan Zamoyski."
+
+"Tell me, did you know the Podbipientas?"
+
+"As to knowing I know them not, for they are no longer in the world, at
+least those who had the arms Tear-Cowl. The last one fell at Zbaraj. He
+was the greatest knight that Lithuania had. Who of us does not know of
+Podbipienta?"
+
+"I have heard also of him; but I ask for this reason: There is in
+attendance on my sister a lady of honorable family. She was the
+betrothed of this Podbipienta who was killed at Zbaraj. She is an
+orphan, without father or mother; and though my sister loves her
+greatly, still, being the natural guardian of my sister, I have in this
+way the maiden in guardianship."
+
+"A pleasant guardianship!" put in Kmita.
+
+Zamoyski smiled, winked, and smacked his tongue. "Sweetcakes! isn't
+she?"
+
+But suddenly he saw that he was betraying himself, and assumed a
+serious air.
+
+"Oh, you traitor!" said he, half jestingly, half seriously, "you want
+to hang me on a hook, and I almost let it out!"
+
+"What?" asked Kmita, looking him quickly in the eyes.
+
+Here Zamoyski saw clearly that in quickness of wit he was not the equal
+of his guest, and turned the conversation at once.
+
+"That Podbipienta," said he, "bequeathed her some estates there
+in your region. I don't remember the names of them, for they are
+strange,--Baltupie, Syrutsiani, Myshykishki,--in a word, all that he
+had. Would I could remember them! Five or six estates."
+
+"They are adjoining estates, not separate. Podbipienta was a very
+wealthy man, and if that lady should come to his fortune she might have
+her own ladies-in-waiting, and seek for a husband among senators."
+
+"Do you tell me that? Do you know those places?"
+
+"I know only Lyubovich and Sheputy, for they are near my land. The
+forest boundary alone is ten miles long, and the fields and meadows are
+as much more."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"In Vityebsk."
+
+"Oh, far away! the affair is not worth the trouble, and the country is
+under the enemy."
+
+"When we drive out the enemy we shall come to the property. But the
+Podbipientas have property in other places,--in Jmud very considerable,
+I know, for I have a piece of land there myself."
+
+"I see that your substance is not a bag of chopped straw."
+
+"It brings in nothing now. But I need nothing from others."
+
+"Advise me how to put that maiden on her feet."
+
+Kmita laughed.
+
+"I prefer to talk over this matter rather than others. It would be
+better for her to go to Pan Sapyeha. If he would take the affair in
+hand, he could do a great deal as voevoda of Vityebsk and the most
+noted man in Lithuania. He could send notices to the tribunals that the
+will was made to Panna Borzobogati, so that Podbipienta's more distant
+relatives should not seize the property."
+
+"That is true; but now there are no tribunals, and Sapyeha has
+something else in his head."
+
+"The lady might be placed in his hands and under his guardianship.
+Having her before his eyes, he would give aid more speedily."
+
+Kmita looked with astonishment at Zamoyski. "What object has he in
+wishing to remove her from this place?" thought he.
+
+Zamoyski continued: "It would be difficult for her to live in camp, in
+the tent of the voevoda of Vityebsk; but she might stay with his
+daughters."
+
+"I do not understand this," thought Kmita; "would he consent to be only
+her guardian?"
+
+"But here is the difficulty: how can I send her to those parts in the
+present time of disturbance? Several hundred men would be needed, and I
+cannot strip Zamost. If I could only find some one to conduct her. Now,
+you might take her; you are going to Sapyeha. I would give you letters,
+and you would give me your word of honor to take her in safety."
+
+"I conduct her to Sapyeha?" asked Kmita, in amazement.
+
+"Is the office unpleasant? Even if it should come to love on the
+road--"
+
+"Ah," said Kmita, "another one is managing my affections; and though
+the tenant pays nothing, still I do not think of making a change."
+
+"So much the better; with all the greater satisfaction can I confide
+her to you."
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"Well, will you undertake it?" asked the starosta,
+
+"I am marching with Tartars."
+
+"People tell me that the Tartars fear you worse than fire. Well, what?
+Will you undertake it?"
+
+"H'm! why not, if thereby I can oblige your grace? But--"
+
+"Ah, you think that the princess must give permission; she will, as God
+is dear to me! For she,--fancy to yourself,--she suspects me."
+
+Here the starosta whispered in Kmita's ear; at last he said aloud,--
+
+"She was very angry with me for that, and I put my ears aside; for to
+war with women,--behold you! I would rather have the Swedes outside
+Zamost. But she will have the best proof that I am planning no evil,
+when I wish to send the girl away. She will be terribly amazed, it is
+true; but at the first opportunity I'll talk with her touching this
+matter."
+
+When he had said this, Zamoyski turned and went away. Kmita looked at
+him, and muttered,--
+
+"You are setting some snare, Pan Sobiepan; and though I do not
+understand the object, I see the snare quickly, for you are a terribly
+awkward trapper."
+
+Zamoyski was pleased with himself, though he understood well that the
+work was only half done; and another remained so difficult that at
+thought of it despair seized him, and even terror. He had to get
+permission of Princess Griselda, whose severity and penetrating mind
+Pan Sobiepan feared from his whole soul. But having begun, he wished to
+bring the work to completion as early as possible; therefore next
+morning, after Mass, and breakfast, and after he had reviewed the hired
+German infantry, he went to the chambers of the princess.
+
+He found the lady embroidering a cope for the college. Behind her was
+Anusia winding silk hung upon two armchairs; a second skein of rose
+color she had placed around her neck, and moving her hands quickly, she
+ran around the chairs in pursuit of the unwinding thread.
+
+Zamoyski's eyes grew bright at sight of her; but he assumed quickly a
+serious look, and greeting the princess, began as if unwillingly,--
+
+"That Pan Babinich who has come here with the Tartars is a
+Lithuanian,--a man of importance, a very elegant fellow, a born knight
+in appearance. Have you noticed him?"
+
+"You brought him to me yourself," answered the princess, indifferently,
+"he has an honest face."
+
+"I asked him concerning that property left Panna Borzobogati. He says
+it is a fortune almost equal to that of the Radzivills."
+
+"God grant it to Anusia; her orphanhood will be the lighter, and her
+old age as well," said the lady.
+
+"But there is a danger lest distant relatives tear it apart. Babinich
+says that Sapyeha might occupy himself with it, if he wished. He is an
+honest man, and very friendly to us: I would confide my own daughter to
+him. It would be enough for him to send notices to the tribunals, and
+proclaim the guardianship. But Babinich says it is needful that Panna
+Anusia should go to those places in person."
+
+"Where,--to Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"Or to his daughters, so as to be there, that the formal installation
+might take place."
+
+The starosta invented at that moment "formal installation," thinking
+justly that the princess would accept this counterfeit money instead of
+true coin. She thought a moment, and asked,--
+
+"How could she go now, when Swedes are on the road?"
+
+"I have news that the Swedes have left Lublin. All this side of the
+Vistula is free."
+
+"And who would take Anusia to Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"Suppose this same Babinich."
+
+"With Tartars? Lord Brother, fear God; those are wild, chaotic people!"
+
+"I am not afraid," put in Anusia, curtesying.
+
+But Princess Griselda had noted already that her brother came with some
+plan all prepared; therefore she sent Anusia out of the room, and began
+to look at Pan Sobiepan with an inquiring gaze. But he said as if to
+himself,--
+
+"These Tartars are down in the dust before Babinich; he hangs them for
+any insubordination."
+
+"I cannot permit this journey," answered the princess. "The girl is
+honest but giddy, and rouses enthusiasm quickly. You know that best
+yourself. I would never confide her to a young, unknown man."
+
+"Unknown here he is not, for who has not heard of the Babiniches as men
+of high family and steady people? [Zamoyski had never heard of the
+Babiniches in his life.] Besides," continued he, "you might give her
+some sedate woman as companion, and then decorum would be observed.
+Babinich I guarantee. I tell you this, too, Lady Sister, that he has in
+those places a betrothed with whom he is, as he tells me himself, in
+love; and whoso is in love has something else in his head. The
+foundation of the matter is this, that another such chance may not come
+for a long time,--the fortune may be lost to the girl, and in ripe
+years she may be without a roof above her."
+
+The princess ceased embroidering, raised her head, and fixing her
+penetrating eyes on her brother, asked,--
+
+"What reason have you to send her from here?"
+
+"What reason have I?" repeated he, dropping his glance; "what can I
+have?--none!"
+
+"Yan, you have conspired with Babinich against her virtue!"
+
+"There it is! As God is dear to me, only that was wanting! You will
+read the letter which I shall send to Sapyeha, and give your own. I
+will merely say this to you, that I shall not leave Zamost. Finally
+examine Babinich himself, and ask him whether he will undertake the
+office.
+
+"The moment you suspect me I step aside."
+
+"Why do you insist so that she shall leave Zamost?"
+
+"For I wish her good, and it is the question of an immense fortune.
+Besides, I confess it concerns me much that she should leave Zamost.
+Your suspicions have grown disagreeable; it is not to my taste that you
+should be frowning at me forever and looking stern. I thought that in
+consenting to the departure of the young lady I should find the best
+argument against suspicions. God knows I have enough of this, for I am
+no student who steals under windows at night. I tell you more: my
+officers are enraged one against the other, and shaking their sabres at
+one another. There is neither harmony, nor order, nor service as there
+should be. I have enough of this. But since you are boring me with your
+eyes, then do as you wish; but look after Michael yourself, for that is
+your affair, not mine."
+
+"Michael!" exclaimed the astonished princess.
+
+"I say nothing against the girl. She does not disturb him more than
+others; but if you do not see his arrowy glances and ardent affection,
+then I tell you this, that Cupid has not such power to blind as a
+mother's love."
+
+Princess Griselda's brows contracted, and her face grew pale.
+
+Pan Sobiepan, seeing that he had struck home at last, slapped his knees
+with his hands and continued,--
+
+"Lady Sister, thus it is, thus it is! What is the affair to me? Let
+Michael give her silk to unwind, let his nostrils quiver when he looks
+at her, let him blush, let him look at her through keyholes! What is
+that to me? Still, I know--she has a good fortune--her family--well,
+she is of nobles, and I do not raise myself above nobles. If you want
+it yourself, all right. Their years are not the same, but again it is
+not my affair."
+
+Zamoyski rose, and bowing to his sister very politely, started to go
+out.
+
+The blood rushed to her face. The proud lady did not see in the whole
+Commonwealth a match worthy of Vishnyevetski, and abroad, perhaps among
+the archduchesses of Austria; therefore these words of her brother
+burned her like iron red hot.
+
+"Yan!" said she, "wait!"
+
+"Lady Sister," said Zamoyski, "I wished first to give you proof that
+you suspect me unjustly; second, that you should watch some one besides
+me. Now you will do as you please; I have nothing more to say."
+
+Then Pan Zamoyski bowed and went out.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Pan Zamoyski had not uttered pure calumny to his sister when he spoke
+of Michael's love for Anusia, for the young prince had fallen in love
+with her, as had all, not excepting the pages of the castle. But that
+love was not over-violent, and by no means aggressive; it was rather an
+agreeable intoxication of the head and mind, than an impulse of the
+heart, which, when it loves, impels to permanent possession of the
+object beloved. For such action Michael had not the energy.
+
+Nevertheless, Princess Griselda, dreaming of a brilliant future for her
+son, was greatly terrified at that feeling. In the first moment the
+sudden consent of her brother to Anusia's departure astonished her; now
+she ceased thinking of that, so far had the threatening danger seized
+her whole soul. A conversation with her son, who grew pale and
+trembled, and who before he had confessed anything shed tears,
+confirmed her in the supposition that the danger was terrible.
+
+Still she did not conquer her scruples of conscience at once, and it
+was only when Anusia, who wanted to see a new world, new people, and
+perhaps also turn the head of the handsome cavalier, fell at her feet
+with a request for permission, that the princess did not find strength
+sufficient to refuse.
+
+Anusia, it is true, covered herself with tears at the thought of
+parting with her mistress and mother; but for the clever girl it was
+perfectly evident that by asking for the separation she had cleared
+herself from every suspicion of having with preconceived purpose turned
+the head of Prince Michael, or even Zamoyski himself.
+
+Princess Griselda, from desire to know surely if there was a conspiracy
+between her brother and Kmita, directed the latter to come to her
+presence. Her brother's promise not to leave Zamost had calmed her
+considerably, it is true; she wished, however, to know more intimately
+the man who was to conduct the young lady.
+
+The conversation with Kmita set her at rest thoroughly.
+
+There looked from the blue eyes of the young noble such sincerity and
+truth that it was impossible to doubt him. He confessed at once that he
+was in love with another, and besides he had neither the wish nor the
+head for folly. Finally he gave his word as a cavalier that he would
+guard the lady from every misfortune, even if he had to lay down his
+head.
+
+"I will take her safely to Pan Sapyeha, for Pan Zamoyski says that the
+enemy has left Lublin. But I can do no more; not because I hesitate in
+willing service for your highness, since I am always willing to shed my
+blood for the widow of the greatest warrior and the glory of the whole
+Commonwealth, but because I have my own grievous troubles, out of which
+I know not whether I shall bring my life."
+
+"It is a question of nothing more," answered the princess, "than that
+you give her into the hands of Pan Sapyeha, and he will not refuse my
+request to be her guardian."
+
+Here she gave Kmita her hand, which he kissed with the greatest
+reverence, and she said in parting,--
+
+"Be watchful, Cavalier, be watchful, and do not place safety in this,
+that the country is free of the enemy."
+
+These last words arrested Kmita; but he had no time to think over them,
+for Zamoyski soon caught him.
+
+"Gracious Knight," said he, gayly, "you are taking the greatest
+ornament of Zamost away from me."
+
+"But at your wish," answered Kmita.
+
+"Take good care of her. She is a toothsome dainty. Some one may be
+ready to take her from you."
+
+"Let him try! Oh, ho! I have given the word of a cavalier to the
+princess, and with me my word is sacred."
+
+"Oh, I only say this as a jest. Fear not, neither take unusual
+caution."
+
+"Still I will ask of your serene great mightiness a carriage with
+windows."
+
+"I will give you two. But you are not going at once, are you?"
+
+"I am in a hurry. As it is, I am here too long."
+
+"Then send your Tartars in advance to Krasnystav. I will hurry off a
+courier to have oats ready for them there, and will give you an escort
+of my own to that place. No evil can happen to you here, for this is my
+country. I will give you good men of the German dragoons, bold fellows
+and acquainted with the road. Besides, to Krasnystav the road is as if
+cut out with a sickle."
+
+"But why am I to stay here?"
+
+"To remain longer with us; you are a dear guest. I should be glad to
+detain you a year. Meanwhile I shall send to the herds at Perespa;
+perhaps some horse will be found which will not fail you in need."
+
+Kmita looked quickly into the eyes of his host; then, as if making a
+sudden decision, said,--
+
+"I thank you, I will remain, and will send on the Tartars."
+
+He went straight to give them orders, and taking Akbah Ulan to one side
+he said,--
+
+"Akbah Ulan, you are to go to Krasnystav by the road, straight as if
+cut with a sickle. I stay here, and a day later will move after you
+with Zamoyski's escort. Listen now to what I say! You will not go to
+Krasnystav, but strike into the first forest, not far from Zamost, so
+that a living soul may not know of you; and when you hear a shot on the
+highroad, hurry to me, for they are preparing some trick against me in
+this place."
+
+"Your will," said Akbah Ulan, placing his hand on his forehead, his
+mouth, and his breast.
+
+"I have seen through you, Pan Zamoyski," said Kmita to himself. "In
+Zamost you are afraid of your sister therefore you wish to seize the
+young lady, and secret her somewhere in the neighborhood, and make of
+me the instrument of your desires, and who knows if not to take my
+life. But wait! You found a man keener than yourself; you will fall
+into your own trap!"
+
+In the evening Lieutenant Shurski knocked at Kmita's door. This
+officer, too, knew something, and had his suspicions; and because he
+loved Anusia he preferred that she should depart, rather than fall into
+the power of Zamoyski. Still he did not dare to speak openly, and
+perhaps because he was not sure; but he wondered that Kmita had
+consented to send the Tartars on in advance; he declared that the roads
+were not so safe as was said, that everywhere armed bands were
+wandering,--hands swift to deeds of violence.
+
+Pan Andrei decided to feign that he divined nothing "What can happen to
+me?" asked he; "besides, Zamoyski gives me his own escort."
+
+"Bah! Germans!"
+
+"Are they not reliable men?"
+
+"Is it possible to depend upon those dog-brothers ever? It has happened
+that after conspiring on the road they went over to the enemy."
+
+"But there are no Swedes on this side of the Vistula."
+
+"They are in Lublin, the dogs! It is not true that they have left. I
+advise you honestly not to send the Tartars in advance, for it is
+always safer in a large company."
+
+"It is a pity that you did not inform me before. I have one tongue in
+my mouth, and an order given I never withdraw."
+
+Next morning the Tartars moved on. Kmita was to follow toward evening,
+so as to pass the first night at Krasnystav. Two letters to Pan Sapyeha
+were given him,--one from the princess, the other from her brother.
+
+Kmita had a great desire to open the second, but he dared not; he
+looked at it, however, before the light, and saw that inside was blank
+paper. This discovery was proof to him that both the maiden and the
+letters were to be taken from him on the road.
+
+Meanwhile the horses came from Perespa, and Zamoyski presented the
+knight with a steed beautiful beyond admiration; the steed he received
+with thankfulness, thinking in his soul that he would ride farther on
+him than Zamoyski expected. He thought also of his Tartars, who must
+now be in the forest, and wild laughter seized him. At times again he
+was indignant in soul, and promised to give the master of Zamost a
+lesson.
+
+Finally the hour of dinner came, which passed in great gloom. Anusia
+had red eyes; the officers were in deep silence. Pan Zamoyski alone was
+cheerful, and gave orders to fill the goblets; Kmita emptied his, one
+after another. But when the hour of parting came, not many persons took
+leave of the travellers, for Zamoyski had sent the officers to their
+service. Anusia fell at the feet of the princess, and for a long time
+could not be removed from her; the princess herself had evident
+disquiet in her face. Perhaps she reproached herself in secret for
+permitting the departure of a faithful servant at a period when mishap
+might come easily. But the loud weeping of Michael, who held his fists
+to his eyes, crying like a school-boy, confirmed the proud lady in her
+conviction that it was needful to stifle the further growth of this
+boyish affection. Besides, she was quieted by the hope that in the
+family of Sapyeha the young lady would find protection, safety, and
+also the great fortune which was to settle her fate for the rest of her
+life.
+
+"I commit her to your virtue, bravery, and honor," said the princess
+once more to Kmita; "and remember that you have sworn to me to conduct
+her to Pan Sapyeha without fail."
+
+"I will take her as I would a glass, and in need will wind oakum around
+her, because I have given my word; death alone will prevent me from
+keeping it," answered the knight.
+
+He gave his arm to Anusia, but she was angry and did not look at him;
+he had treated her rather slightingly, therefore she gave him her hand
+very haughtily, turning her face and head in another direction.
+
+She was sorry to depart, and fear seized her; but it was too late then
+to draw back.
+
+The moment came; they took their seats,--she in the carriage with her
+old servant, Panna Suvalski, he on his horse,--and they started. Twelve
+German horsemen surrounded the carriage and the wagon with Anusia's
+effects. When at last the doors in the Warsaw gate squeaked and the
+rattle of wheels was heard on the drop-bridge, Anusia burst into loud
+weeping.
+
+Kmita bent toward the carriage. "Fear not, my lady, I will not eat
+you!"
+
+"Clown!" thought Anusia.
+
+They rode some time along the houses outside the walls, straight toward
+Old Zamost; then they entered fields and a pine-wood, which in those
+days stretched along a hilly country to the Bug on one side; on the
+other it extended, interrupted by villages, to Zavihost.
+
+Night had fallen, but very calm and clear; the road was marked by a
+silver line; only the rolling of the carriage and the tramp of the
+horses broke the silence.
+
+"My Tartars must be lurking here like wolves in a thicket," thought
+Kmita.
+
+Then he bent his ear.
+
+"What is that?" asked he of the officer who was leading the escort.
+
+"A tramp! Some horseman is galloping after us!" answered the officer.
+
+He had barely finished speaking when a Cossack hurried up on a foaming
+horse, crying,--
+
+"Pan Babinich! Pan Babinich! A letter from Pan Zamoyski."
+
+The retinue halted. The Cossack gave the letter to Kmita.
+
+Kmita broke the seal, and by the light of a lantern read as follows:--
+
+
+"Gracious and dearest Pan Babinich! Soon after the departure of Panna
+Borzobogati tidings came to us that the Swedes not only have not left
+Lublin, but that they intend to attack my Zamost. In view of this,
+further journeying and peregrination become inconvenient. Considering
+therefore the dangers to which a fair head might be exposed, we wish to
+have Panna Borzobogati in Zamost. Those same knights will bring her
+back; but you, who must be in haste to continue your journey, we do not
+wish to trouble uselessly. Announcing which will of ours to your grace,
+we beg you to give orders to the horseman according to our wishes."
+
+
+"Still he is honest enough not to attack my life; he only wishes to
+make a fool of me," thought Kmita. "But we shall soon see if there is a
+trap here or not."
+
+Now Anusia put her head out of the window. "What is the matter?" asked
+she.
+
+"Nothing! Pan Zamoyski commends you once more to my bravery. Nothing
+more."
+
+Here he turned to the driver,--
+
+"Forward!"
+
+The officer leading the horsemen reined in his horse. "Stop!" cried he
+to the driver. Then to Kmita, "Why move on?"
+
+"But why halt longer in the forest?" asked Kmita, with the face of a
+stupid rogue.
+
+"For you have received some order."
+
+"And what is that to you? I have received, and that is why I command to
+move on."
+
+"Stop!" repeated the officer.
+
+"Move on!" repeated Kmita.
+
+"What is this?" inquired Anusia again.
+
+"We will not go a step farther till I see the order!" said the officer,
+with decision.
+
+"You will not see the order, for it is not sent to you."
+
+"Since you will not obey it, I will carry it out. You move on to
+Krasnystav, and have a care lest we give you something for the road,
+but we will go home with the lady."
+
+Kmita only wished the officer to acknowledge that he knew the contents
+of the order; this proved with perfect certainty that the whole affair
+was a trick arranged in advance.
+
+"Move on with God!" repeated the officer now, with a threat.
+
+At that moment the horsemen began one after another to take out their
+sabres.
+
+"Oh, such sons! not to Zamost did you wish to take the maiden, but
+aside somewhere, so that Pan Zamoyski might give free reign to his
+wishes; but you have met with a more cunning man!" When Babinich had
+said this, he fired upward from a pistol.
+
+At this sound there was such an uproar in the forest, as if the shot
+had roused whole legions of wolves sleeping near by. The howl was heard
+in front, behind, from the sides. At once the tramp of horses sounded
+with the cracking of limbs breaking under their hoofs, and on the road
+were seen black groups of horsemen, who approached with unearthly
+howling.
+
+"Jesus! Mary! Joseph!" cried the terrified women in the carriage.
+
+Now the Tartars rushed up like a cloud; but Kmita restrained them with
+a triple cry, and turning to the astonished officer, began to boast,--
+
+"Know whom you have met! Pan Zamoyski wished to make a fool of me, a
+blind instrument. To you he intrusted the functions of a pander, which
+you undertook, Sir Officer for the favor of a master. How down to
+Zamoyski from Babinich, and tell him that the maiden will go safely to
+Pan Sapyeha."
+
+The officer looked around with frightened glance, and saw the wild
+faces gazing with terrible eagerness on him and his men. It was evident
+that they were waiting only for a word to hurl themselves on the twelve
+horsemen and tear them in pieces.
+
+"Your grace, you will do what you wish, for we cannot manage superior
+power," said he, with trembling voice "but Pan Zamoyski is able to
+avenge himself."
+
+Kmita laughed. "Let him avenge himself on you; for had it not come out
+that you knew the contents of the order and had you not opposed the
+advance, I should not have been sure of the trick, and should have
+given you the maiden straightway. Tell the starosta to appoint a keener
+pander than you."
+
+The calm tone with which Kmita said this assured the officer somewhat,
+at least on this point,--that death did not threaten either him or his
+troopers; therefore he breathed easily, and said,--
+
+"And must we return with nothing to Zamost?"
+
+"You will return with my letter, which will be written on the skin of
+each one of you."
+
+"Your grace--"
+
+"Take them!" cried Kmita; and he seized the officer himself by the
+shoulder.
+
+An uproar and struggle began around the carriage. The shouts of the
+Tartars deadened the cries for assistance and the screams of terror
+coming from the breasts of the women.
+
+But the struggle did not last long, for a few minutes later the
+horsemen were lying on the road tied, one at the side of the other.
+
+Kmita gave command to flog them with bullock-skin whips, but not beyond
+measure, so that they might retain strength to walk back to Zamost. The
+common soldiers received one hundred, and the officer a hundred and
+fifty lashes, in spite of the prayers and entreaties of Anusia, who not
+knowing what was passing around her, and thinking that she had fallen
+into terrible hands, began to implore with joined palms and tearful
+eyes for her life.
+
+"Spare my life, knight! In what am I guilty before you? Spare me, spare
+me!"
+
+"Be quiet, young lady!" roared Kmita.
+
+"In what have I offended?"
+
+"Maybe you are in the plot yourself?"
+
+"In what plot? O God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"
+
+"Then you did not know that Pan Zamoyski only permitted your departure
+apparently, so as to separate you from the princess and carry you off
+on the road, to make an attempt on your honor in some empty castle?"
+
+"O Jesus of Nazareth!" screamed Anusia.
+
+And there was so much truth and sincerity in that cry that Kmita said
+more mildly,--
+
+"How is that? Then you were not in the plot? That may be!"
+
+Anusia covered her face with her hands, but she could say nothing; she
+merely repeated, time after time,--
+
+"Jesus, Mary! Jesus, Mary!"
+
+"Calm yourself," said Kmita, still more mildly. "You will go in safety
+to Pan Sapyeha, for Pan Zamoyski did not know with whom he had to deal.
+See, those men whom they are flogging were to carry you off. I give
+them their lives, so that they may tell Pan Zamoyski how smoothly it
+went with them."
+
+"Then have you defended me from shame?"
+
+"I have, though I did not know whether you would be glad."
+
+Anusia, instead of making answer or contradiction, seized Pan Andrei's
+hand and pressed it to her pale lips; and sparks went from his feet to
+his head.
+
+"Give peace, for God's sake!" cried he. "Sit in the carriage, for you
+will wet your feet--and be not afraid! You would not be better cared
+for with your mother."
+
+"I will go now with you even to the end of the world."
+
+"Do not say such things."
+
+"God will reward you for defending honor."
+
+"It is the first time that I have had the opportunity," said Kmita. And
+then he muttered in an undertone to himself: "So far I have defended
+her as much as a cat sheds tears."
+
+Meanwhile the Tartars had ceased to beat the horsemen and Pan Andrei
+gave command to drive them naked and bloody along the road toward
+Zamost. They went, weeping bitterly. Their horses, weapons, and
+clothing Kmita gave his Tartars; and then moved on quickly, for it was
+unsafe to loiter.
+
+On the road the young knight could not restrain himself from looking
+into the carriage to gaze at the flashing eyes and wonderful face of
+the maiden. He asked each time if she did not need something, if the
+carriage was convenient, or the quick travelling did not tire her too
+much.
+
+She answered, with thankfulness, that it was pleasant to her as it had
+never been. She had recovered from her terror completely. Her heart
+rose in gratitude to her defender, and she thought: "He is not so rude
+and surly as I held at first."
+
+"Ai, Olenka, what do I suffer for you!" said Kmita to himself; "do you
+not feed me with ingratitude? Had this been in old times, u-ha!"
+
+Then he remembered his comrades and the various deeds of violence which
+he had committed in company with them; then he began to drive away
+temptation, began to repeat for their unhappy souls, "Eternal rest."
+
+When they had reached Krasnystav, Kmita considered it better not to
+wait for news from Zamost, and went on farther. But at parting he wrote
+and sent to Zamoyski the following letter:--
+
+
+SERENE GREAT MIGHTY LORD STAROSTA,[5] and to me very Gracious Favorer
+and Benefactor! Whomsoever God has made great in the world, to him He
+deals out wit in more bountiful measure. I knew at once that you,
+Serene Great Mighty Lord, only wished to put me on trial, when you sent
+the order to give up Panna Borzobogati. I knew this all the better when
+the horsemen betrayed that they knew the substance of the order, though
+I did not show them the letter, and though you wrote to me that the
+idea came to you only after my departure. As on the one hand I admire
+all the more your penetration, so on the other, to put the careful
+guardian more completely at rest, I promise anew that nothing will
+suffice to lead me away from fulfilling the function imposed on me. But
+since those soldiers, evidently misunderstanding your intention, turned
+out to be great ruffians, and even threatened my life, I think that I
+should have hit upon your thought if I had commanded to hang them.
+Because I did not do so, I beg your forgiveness; still I gave orders to
+flog them properly with bullock-skin whips, which punishment, if your
+Great Mighty Lordship considers it too small, you can increase
+according to your will. With this, hoping that I have earned the
+increased confidence and gratitude of your Serene Great Mighty
+Lordship, I subscribe myself the faithful and well-wishing servant of
+your Serene Great Mighty Lordship.
+
+                                                BABINICH.
+
+
+The dragoons, when they had dragged themselves to Zamost late at night,
+did not dare to appear before the eyes of their master; therefore he
+learned of the whole matter from this letter which the Krasnystav
+Cossack brought next day.
+
+After he had read Kmita's letter, Zamoyski shut himself up in his rooms
+for three days, admitting no attendant save the chamber servants, who
+brought him his food. They heard, also, how he swore in French, which
+he did only when he was in the greatest fury.
+
+By degrees, however, the storm was allayed. On the fourth day and fifth
+Zamoyski was still very silent; he was ruminating over something and
+pulling at his mustache; in a week, when he was very pleasant and had
+drunk a little at table, he began to twirl his mustache, not to pull
+it, and said to Princess Griselda,--
+
+"Lady Sister, you know that there is no lack of penetration in me; a
+couple of days ago I tested of purpose that noble who took Anusia, and
+I can assure you that he will take her faithfully to Pan Sapyeha."
+
+About a month later, as it seems, Pan Sobiepan turned his heart in
+another direction; and besides he became altogether convinced that what
+had happened, happened with his will and knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The province of Lyubelsk and the greater part of Podlyasye were almost
+completely in the hands of Poles, that is, of the confederates and
+Sapyeha's men. Since the King of Sweden remained in Prussia, where he
+was treating with the elector, the Swedes, not feeling very powerful in
+presence of the general uprising, which increased every day, dared not
+come out of the towns and castles, and still less to cross to the
+eastern side of the Vistula, where the Polish forces were greatest. In
+those two provinces, therefore, the Poles were laboring to form a
+considerable and well-ordered army, able to meet the regular soldiers
+of Sweden. In the provincial towns they were training infantry, and
+since the peasants in general had risen, there was no lack of
+volunteers; it was only necessary to organize in bodies and regular
+commands those chaotic masses of men frequently dangerous to their own
+country.
+
+The district captains betook themselves to this labor. Besides, the
+king had issued a number of commissions to old and tried soldiers;
+troops were enrolled in all provinces, and since there was no lack of
+military people in those regions, squadrons of perfect cavalry were
+formed. Some went west of the Vistula, others to Charnyetski, still
+others to Sapyeha. Such multitudes had taken arms that Yan Kazimir's
+forces were already more numerous than those of the Swedes.
+
+A country over whose weakness all Europe had recently wondered, gave
+now an example of power unsuspected, not only by its enemies, but by
+its own king, and even by those whose faithful hearts, a few months
+before, had been rent by pain and despair. Money was found, as well as
+enthusiasm and bravery; the most despairing souls were convinced that
+there is no position, no fall, no weakness from which there may not be
+a deliverance, and that when children are born consolation cannot die.
+
+Kmita went on without hindrance, gathering on his road unquiet spirits,
+who joined the chambul with readiness, hoping to find most blood and
+plunder in company with the Tartars. These he changed easily into good
+and prompt soldiers, for he had the gift to make his subordinates fear
+and obey. He was greeted joyously on the road, and that by reason of
+the Tartars; for the sight of them convinced men that the Khan was
+indeed coming with succor to the Commonwealth. It was declaimed openly
+that forty thousand chosen Tartar cavalry were marching to strengthen
+Sapyeha. Wonders were told of the "modesty" of these allies,--how they
+committed no violence or murder on the road. They were shown as an
+example to the soldiers of the country.
+
+Pan Sapyeha was quartered temporarily at Byala. His forces were
+composed of about ten thousand regular troops, cavalry and infantry.
+They were the remnants of the Lithuanian armies, increased by new men.
+The cavalry, especially some of the squadrons, surpassed in valor and
+training the Swedish horsemen; but the infantry were badly trained, and
+lacked firearms, powder, and cannon. Sapyeha had thought to find these
+in Tykotsin; but the Swedes, by blowing themselves up with the powder,
+destroyed at the same time all the cannons of the castle.
+
+Besides these forces there were in the neighborhood of Byala twelve
+thousand general militia from all Lithuania, Mazovia, and Podlyasye;
+but from few of these did the voevoda promise himself service,
+especially since having an immense number of wagons they hindered
+movement and turned the army into a clumsy, unwieldy multitude.
+
+Kmita thought of one thing in entering Byala. There were under Sapyeha
+so many nobles from Lithuania and so many of Radzivill's officers, his
+former acquaintances, that he feared they would recognize him and cut
+him to pieces before he could cry, "Jesus! Mary!"
+
+His name was detested in Sapyeha's camp and in all Lithuania; for men
+still preserved in vivid remembrance the fact that while serving Prince
+Yanush, he had cut down those squadrons which, opposing the hetman, had
+declared for the country.
+
+Pan Andrei had changed much, and this gave him comfort. First, he had
+become thin; second, he had the scar on his face from Boguslav's
+bullet; finally, he wore a beard, rather long, pointed in Swedish
+fashion, and his mustache he combed upward, so that he was more like
+some Erickson than a Polish noble.
+
+"If there is not a tumult against me at once, men will judge me
+differently after the first battle," thought Kmita, when entering
+Byala.
+
+He arrived in the evening, announced who he was, whence he had come,
+that he was bearing letters from the king, and asked a special audience
+of the voevoda.
+
+The voevoda received him graciously because of the warm recommendation
+of the king, who wrote,--
+
+
+"We send to you our most faithful servant, who is called the Hector of
+Chenstohova, from the time of the siege of that glorious place; and he
+has saved our freedom and life at the risk of his own during our
+passage through the mountains. Have him in special care, so that no
+injustice come to him from the soldiers. We know his real name, and the
+reasons for which he serves under an assumed one; no man is to hold him
+in suspicion because of this change, or suspect him of intrigues."
+
+
+"But is it not possible to know why you bear an assumed name?" asked
+the voevoda.
+
+"I am under sentence, and cannot make levies in my own name. The king
+gave me a commission, and I can make levies as Babinich."
+
+"Why do you want levies if you have Tartars?"
+
+"For a greater force would not be in the way."
+
+"And why are you under sentence?"
+
+"Under the command and protection of whomsoever I go, him I ought to
+tell all as to a father. My real name is Kmita."
+
+The voevoda pushed back a couple of steps,--
+
+"He who promised Boguslav to carry off our king, living or dead?"
+
+Kmita related with all his energy how and what had happened,--how,
+befogged by Prince Yanush, he had served the Radzivills; how he had
+learned their real purposes from the mouth of Boguslav, and then
+carried off the latter and thus incurred his implacable vengeance.
+
+The voevoda believed, for he could not refuse belief, especially since
+the king's letter confirmed the truth of Kmita's words. Besides, his
+soul was so delighted in the voevoda that he would at that moment have
+pressed his worst enemy to his heart and forgiven his greatest offence.
+This delight was caused by the following passage in the king's
+letter:--
+
+
+"Though the grand baton of Lithuania, unused now after the death of the
+voevoda of Vilna, can by usual procedure be given to a successor only
+at the Diet, still in the present extraordinary circumstances,
+disregarding the usual course, We give this baton to you, greatly
+cherished by us, for the good of the Commonwealth and your memorable
+services, thinking justly that, God giving peace, no voice at the
+coming Diet will be raised against this our choice, and that our act
+will find general approval."
+
+
+Pan Sapyeha, as was said then in the Commonwealth, "had pawned his coat
+and sold his last silver spoon;" he had not served his country for
+profit, nor for honors. But even the most disinterested man is glad to
+see that his services are appreciated, that they are rewarded with
+gratitude, that his virtue is recognized. Therefore Sapyeha's serious
+face was uncommonly radiant.
+
+This act of the king adorned the house of Sapyeha with new splendor;
+and to this no "kinglet" of that time was indifferent,--it were well
+had there been none to strive for elevation _per nefas_ (through
+injustice). Therefore Pan Sapyeha was ready to do for the king what was
+in his power and what was out of his power.
+
+"Since I am hetman," said he to Kmita, "you come under my jurisdiction
+and are under my guardianship. There is a multitude here of the general
+militia, hence tumult is near; therefore do not show yourself over-much
+till I warn the soldiers, and remove that calumny which Boguslav cast
+on you."
+
+Kmita thanked him from his heart, and then spoke of Anusia, whom he had
+brought to Byala. In answer the hetman fell to scolding, but being in
+excellent humor he scolded joyously.
+
+"You made a fool of Sobiepan, as God is dear to me! He sits there with
+his sister inside the walls of Zamost, as with the Lord God, behind the
+stove, and thinks that every one can do as he does,--raise the skirts
+of his coat, turn to the fire, and warm his back. I know the
+Podbipientas, for they are related to the Bjostovskis, and the
+Bjostovskis to me. The fortune is a lordly one, that is not to be
+denied; but though war with the Northerners has weakened it for a time,
+still people are alive yet in those regions. Where can anything be
+found, where any courts, any officers? Who will take the property and
+put the young lady in possession? They have gone stark mad! Boguslav is
+sitting on my shoulders; I have my duties in the army, but they would
+have me fill my head with women."
+
+"She is not a woman, but a cherry," said Kmita. "She is nothing however
+to me. They asked me to bring her here; I have brought her. They asked
+me to give her to you; I give her."
+
+The hetman then took Kmita by the ear and said: "But who knows,
+protector, in what form you have brought her? God preserve us, people
+may say that from the guardianship of Sapyeha she has suffered; and I,
+old man, shall have to keep my eyes open. What did you do at the
+stopping-places? Tell me right away, Pagan, did you not learn from your
+Tartars some heathen customs?"
+
+"At the stopping-places," answered Kmita, jestingly, "I commanded my
+attendants to plough my skin with discipline, so as to drive out the
+less worthy motives, which have their seat under the skin, and which I
+confess were plaguing me worse than horseflies."
+
+"Ah, you see-- Is she a worthy maiden?"
+
+"Really so; and terribly pretty."
+
+"And the Turk was at hand?"
+
+"But she is as honest as a nun; that I must say for her. And as to
+suffering I think that would come sooner from the Zamoyski guardianship
+than from you."
+
+Here Kmita told what had taken place and how. Then the hetman fell to
+clapping him on the shoulder and laughing,--
+
+"Well, you are a crafty fellow! Not in vain do they tell so much of
+Kmita. Have no fear! Pan Zamoyski is not a stubborn man, and he is my
+friend. His first anger will pass, and he will even laugh at it himself
+and reward you."
+
+"I need no reward!" interrupted Kmita.
+
+"It is well that you have ambition and are not looking for favor. Only
+serve me against Boguslav, and you will not need to think of past
+outlawry."
+
+Sapyeha was astonished when he looked at the soldier's face, which a
+moment before was so open and joyous. Kmita at mention of Boguslav grew
+pale in an instant, and his face took on wrinkles like the face of a
+dog, when preparing to bite.
+
+"Would that the traitor were poisoned with his own spittle, if he could
+only fall into my hands before his death!" said he, gloomily.
+
+"I do not wonder at your venom. Have a care, though, that your anger
+does not choke your adroitness, for you have to deal with no common
+man. It is well that the king sent you hither. You will attack Boguslav
+for me, as you once did Hovanski."
+
+"I will attack him better!" said Kmita, with the same gloom.
+
+With this the conversation ended. Kmita went away to sleep in his
+quarters, for he was wearied from the road.
+
+Meanwhile the news spread through the army that the king had sent the
+baton to their beloved chief. Joy burst out like a flame among
+thousands of men. The officers of various squadrons hurried to the
+quarters of the hetman. The sleeping town sprang up from its slumber.
+Bonfires were kindled. Standard-bearers came with their standards.
+Trumpets sounded and kettle-drums thundered; discharges from muskets
+and cannon roared. Pan Sapyeha ordered a lordly feast, and they
+applauded the whole night through, drinking to the health of the king,
+the hetman, and to the coming victory over Boguslav.
+
+Pan Andrei, as was agreed, was not present at the feast.
+
+The hetman at the table began a conversation about Boguslav, and not
+telling who that officer was who had come with the Tartars and brought
+the baton, he spoke in general of the perversity of Boguslav.
+
+"Both Radzivills," said he, "were fond of intrigues, but Prince
+Boguslav goes beyond his dead cousin. You remember, gentlemen, Kmita,
+or at least you have heard of him. Now imagine to yourselves, what
+Boguslav reported--that Kmita offered to raise his hand on the king our
+lord--was not true."
+
+"Still Kmita helped Yanush to cut down good cavaliers."
+
+"It Is true that he helped Yanush; but at last he saw what he was
+doing, and then not only did he leave the service, but as you know,
+being a man of daring, he attacked Boguslav. It was close work there
+for the young prince, and he barely escaped with his life from Kmita's
+hands."
+
+"Kmita was a great soldier!" answered many voices.
+
+"The prince through revenge invented against him a calumny at which the
+soul shudders."
+
+"The devil could not have invented a keener!"
+
+"Do you know that I have in my hands proofs in black and white that
+that was revenge for the change in Kmita?"
+
+"To put infamy in such a way on any one's name! Only Boguslav could do
+that! To sink such a soldier!"
+
+"I have heard this," continued the hetman: "Kmita, seeing that nothing
+remained for him to do in this region, hurried off to Chenstohova,
+rendered there famous services, and then defended the king with his own
+breast."
+
+Hearing this, the same soldiers who would have cut Kmita to pieces with
+their sabres began to speak of him more and more kindly.
+
+"Kmita will not forgive the calumny, he is not such a man; he will fall
+on Boguslav."
+
+"Boguslav has insulted all soldiers, by casting such infamy on one of
+them."
+
+"Kmita was cruel and violent, but he was not a parricide."
+
+"He will have vengeance!"
+
+"We will be first to take vengeance for him!"
+
+"If you, serene great mighty hetman, guarantee this with your office,
+it must have been so."
+
+"It was so!" said the hetman.
+
+And they lacked little of drinking Kmita's health. But in truth there
+were very violent voices against this, especially among the former
+officers of Radzivill. Hearing these, the hetman said,--
+
+"And do you know, gentlemen, how this Kmita comes to my mind? Babinich,
+the king's courier, resembles him much. At the first moment I was
+mistaken myself."
+
+Here Sapyeha began to look around with more severity and to speak with
+greater seriousness,--
+
+"Though Kmita were to come here himself, since he has changed, since he
+has defended a holy place with immense bravery, I should defend him
+with my office of hetman. I ask you therefore, gentlemen, to raise no
+disturbance here by reason of this newly arrived. I ask you to remember
+that he has come here by appointment of the king and the Khan. But
+especially do I recommend this to you who are captains in the general
+militia, for with you it is harder to preserve discipline."
+
+Whenever Sapyeha spoke thus, Zagloba alone dared to murmur, all others
+would sit in obedience, and so they sat now; but when the hetman's face
+grew gladsome again, all rejoiced. The goblets moving swiftly filled
+the measure of rejoicing, and the whole town was thundering till
+morning, so that the walls of houses were shaking on their foundation,
+and the smoke of salutes veiled them, as in time of battle.
+
+Next morning Sapyeha sent Anusia to Grodno with Pan Kotchyts. In
+Grodno, from which Hovanski had long since withdrawn, the voevoda's
+family was living.
+
+Poor Anusia, whose head the handsome Babinich had turned somewhat, took
+farewell of him very tenderly; but he was on his guard, and only at the
+very parting did he say to her,--
+
+"Were it not for one devil which sits in my heart like a thorn, I
+should surely have fallen in love with you to kill."
+
+Anusia thought to herself that there is no splinter which may not be
+picked out with patience and a needle; but she feared somewhat this
+Babinich, therefore she said nothing, sighed quietly, and departed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+A week after the departure of Anusia with Kotchyts, Sapyeha's camp was
+still at Byala. Kmita, with the Tartars, was ordered to the
+neighborhood of Rokitno; he was resting too, for the horses needed food
+and rest after the long road. Prince Michael Kazimir Radzivill, the
+owner of the place by inheritance, came also to Byala; he was a
+powerful magnate of the Nyesvyej branch of Radzivills, of whom it was
+said that they had inherited from the Kishkis alone seventy towns and
+four hundred villages. This Radzivill resembled in nothing his kinsmen
+of Birji. Not less ambitious perhaps than they, but differing in faith,
+an ardent patriot, and an adherent of the lawful king, he joined with
+his whole soul the confederacy of Tyshovtsi, and strengthened it as
+best he could. His immense possessions were, it is true, greatly
+ravaged by the last war, but still he stood at the head of considerable
+forces and brought the hetman no small aid.
+
+Not so much, however, did the number of his soldiers weigh in the
+balance as the fact that Radzivill stood against Radzivill; in this way
+the last seeming of justice was taken from Boguslav, and his acts were
+covered with the open character of invasion and treason.
+
+Therefore Sapyeha saw Prince Michael in his camp with delight. He was
+certain now that he would overcome Boguslav, for he surpassed him much
+in power; but according to his custom he weighed his plans slowly,
+stopped, considered, and summoned councils of officers.
+
+Kmita also was at these councils. He so hated the name Radzivill that
+at first sight of Prince Michael he trembled from anger and rage; but
+Michael knew how to win people by his countenance alone, on which
+beauty was united with kindness. The great qualities of this Radzivill,
+the grievous times which he had recently passed while defending the
+country from Zolotarenko and Serobryani, his genuine love for the king,
+made him one of the most honorable cavaliers of his time. His very
+presence in the camp of Sapyeha, the rival of the house of Radzivill,
+testified how far the young prince knew how to sacrifice private to
+public affairs. Whoso knew him was forced to love him. This feeling
+could not be resisted even by the passionate Kmita, despite his first
+opposition.
+
+Finally the prince captivated the heart of Pan Andrei by his advice.
+
+This advice was not merely to move against Boguslav, but to move
+without negotiations, to dash upon him at once: "Do not let him take
+castles; give him neither rest nor chance to draw breath; make war upon
+him with his own method." In such decision the prince saw speedy and
+certain victory.
+
+"It cannot be that Karl Gustav has not moved also; we must have our
+hands free, therefore, as soon as possible, and hasten to succor
+Charnyetski."
+
+Of the same opinion was Kmita, who had been fighting three days with
+his old evil habit of self-will so as to restrain himself from
+advancing without orders.
+
+But Sapyeha liked to act with certainty, he feared every inconsiderate
+step; therefore he determined to wait for surer intelligence.
+
+And the hetman had his reasons. The reported expedition of Boguslav
+against Podlyasye might be only a snare, a trick of war. Perhaps it was
+a feigned expedition with small forces, to prevent the junction of
+Sapyeha with the king. That done, Boguslav would escape from before
+Sapyeha, receiving battle nowhere, or delaying; but meanwhile Karl
+Gustav with the elector would strike Charnyetski, crush him with
+superior forces, move against the king himself, and smother the work in
+its inception,--the work of defence created by the glorious example of
+Chenstohova. Sapyeha was not only a leader, but a statesman. He
+explained his reasons with power at the councils, so that even Kmita
+was forced in his soul to agree with him. First of all, it was
+incumbent to know what course to take. If Boguslav's invasion proved to
+be merely a trick, it was sufficient to send a number of squadrons
+against him, and move with all speed to Charnyetski against the chief
+power of the enemy. The hetman might leave boldly a few or even more
+squadrons, for his forces were not all around Byala. Young Pan
+Krishtof, or the so-called Kryshtofek Sapyeha, was posted with two
+light squadrons and a regiment of infantry at Yavorov; Horotkyevich was
+moving around Tykotsin, having under him half a dragoon regiment very
+well trained, and five hundred volunteers, besides a light horse
+squadron named for Sapyeha; and in Byalystok were land infantry.
+
+These forces would more than suffice to stand against Boguslav, if he
+had only a few hundred horses.
+
+But the clear-sighted hetman sent couriers in every direction and
+waited for tidings.
+
+At last tidings came; but like thunderbolts, and all the more so that
+by a peculiar concurrence of circumstances all came in one evening.
+
+They were just at council in the castle of Byala when an officer of
+orderlies entered and gave a letter to the hetman. Barely had the
+hetman cast eyes on it when he changed in the face and said,--
+
+"My relative is cut to pieces at Yavorov by Boguslav himself; hardly
+has he escaped with his life."
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"The letter is written in Bransk, in fright and confusion," said he;
+"therefore it contains not a word touching Boguslav's power, which
+must, I think, be considerable, since, as I read, two squadrons and a
+regiment of infantry are cut to pieces. It must be, however, that
+Boguslav fell on them unawares. The letter gives nothing positive."
+
+"I am certain now," said Prince Michael, "that Boguslav wants to seize
+all Podlyasye, so as to make of it a separate or feudal possession in
+the treaties. Therefore he has surely come with as much power as he
+could possibly get. I have no other proofs save a knowledge of
+Boguslav. He cares neither for the Swedes nor the Brandenburgers, only
+for himself. He is an uncommon warrior, who trusts in his fortunate
+star. He wants to win a province, to avenge Yanush, to cover himself
+with glory; and to do this he must have a corresponding power, and has
+it, otherwise he would not march on us."
+
+"For everything the blessing of God is indispensable," said Oskyerko;
+"and the blessing is with us!"
+
+"Serene great mighty hetman," said Kmita, "information is needed. Let
+me loose from the leash with my Tartars, and I will bring you
+information."
+
+Oskyerko, who had been admitted to the secret and knew who Babinich
+was, supported the proposal at once and with vigor.
+
+"As God is good to me, that is the best idea in the world! Such a man
+is needed there, and such troops. If only the horses are rested."
+
+Here Oskyerko was stopped, for the officer of orderlies entered the
+room again.
+
+"Serene great mighty hetman!" said he.
+
+Sapyeha slapped his knees and exclaimed. "They have news! Admit them."
+
+After a while two light-horsemen entered, tattered and muddy.
+
+"From Horotkyevich?" asked Sapyeha.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"Killed, or if not killed, we know not where he is."
+
+The hetman rose, but sat down again and inquired calmly,--
+
+"Where is the squadron?"
+
+"Swept away by Prince Boguslav."
+
+"Were many lost?"
+
+"We were cut to pieces; maybe a few were left who were taken captive
+like us. Some say that the colonel escaped; but that he is wounded I
+saw myself. We escaped from captivity."
+
+"Where were you attacked?"
+
+"At Tykotsin."
+
+"Why did you not go inside the walls, not being in force?"
+
+"Tykotsin is taken."
+
+The hetman covered his eyes for a moment with his hand, then he began
+to pass his hand over his forehead.
+
+"Is there a large force with Boguslav?"
+
+"Four thousand cavalry, besides infantry and cannon; the infantry very
+well trained. The cavalry moved forward, taking us with them; but
+luckily we escaped."
+
+"Whence did you escape?"
+
+"From Drohichyn."
+
+Sapyeha opened wide his eyes. "You are drunk. How could Boguslav come
+to Drohichyn? When did he defeat you?"
+
+"Two weeks ago."
+
+"And is he in Drohichyn?"
+
+"His scouting-parties are. He remained in the rear himself, for some
+convoy is captured which Pan Kotchyts was conducting."
+
+"He was conducting Panna Borzobogati!" cried Kmita.
+
+A silence followed. Boguslav's success, and so sudden, had confused the
+officers beyond measure. All thought in their hearts that the hetman
+was to blame for delay, but no one dared say so aloud.
+
+Sapyeha, however, felt that he had done what was proper, and had acted
+wisely. Therefore he recovered first from the surprise, sent out the
+men with a wave of his hand, and said,--
+
+"These are ordinary incidents of war, which should confuse no one. Do
+not think, gentlemen, that we have suffered any defeat. Those regiments
+are a loss surely; but the loss might have been a hundred times greater
+if Boguslav had enticed us to a distant province. He is coming to us.
+We will go out to meet him like hospitable hosts."
+
+Here he turned to the colonels: "According to my orders all must be
+ready to move?"
+
+"They are ready," said Oskyerko. "Only saddle the horses and sound the
+trumpet."
+
+"Sound it to-day. We move in the morning at dawn, without fail. Pan
+Babinich will gallop ahead with his Tartars, and seize with all haste
+informants."
+
+Kmita had barely heard this when he was outside the door, and a moment
+later hurrying on as his horse could gallop to Rokitno.
+
+And Sapyeha also did not delay long.
+
+It was still night when the trumpets gave out their prolonged sounds;
+then cavalry and infantry poured forth into the field; after them
+stretched a long train of squeaking wagons. The first gleams of day
+were reflected on musket-barrels and spear-points.
+
+And they marched, regiment after regiment, squadron after squadron, in
+great regularity. The cavalry sang their matins, and the horses snorted
+sharply in the morning coolness, from which the soldiers predicted sure
+victory for themselves.
+
+Their hearts were full of consolation; for the knighthood knew from
+experience that Sapyeha weighed everything, that he labored with his
+head, that he considered every undertaking from both sides, that when
+he began a thing he would finish it, and when he moved he would strike.
+
+At Rokitno the lairs of the Tartars were cold; they had gone the night
+before, hence must have pushed far in advance. It surprised Sapyeha
+that along the road it was difficult to learn anything of them, though
+the division, numbering, with volunteers, several hundred, could not
+pass without being seen.
+
+The most experienced officers wondered greatly at this march, and at
+Pan Babinich for being able to lead in such fashion.
+
+"Like a wolf he goes through the willows, and like a wolf he will
+bite," said they; "he is as if born for the work."
+
+But Oskyerko, who, as has been said, knew who Babinich was, said to
+Sapyeha,--
+
+"It was not for nothing that Hovanski put a price on his head. God will
+give victory to whom he chooses; but this is sure, that war with us
+will soon be bitter for Boguslav."
+
+"But it is a pity that Babinich has vanished as if he had fallen into
+water," answered the hetman.
+
+Three days passed without tidings. Sapyeha's main forces had reached
+Drohichyn, had crossed the Bug, and found no enemy in front. The hetman
+began to be disturbed. According to the statements of the light horse,
+Boguslav's scouts had reached Drohichyn; it was evident therefore that
+Boguslav had determined to withdraw. But what was the meaning of this
+withdrawal? Had Boguslav learned that Sapyeha's forces were superior,
+and was he afraid to measure strength with him, or did he wish to
+entice the hetman far toward the north, to lighten for the King of
+Sweden his attack on Charnyetski and the hetmans of the kingdom?
+Babinich was to find an informant and let the hetman know. The reports
+of the light horse as to the number of Boguslav's troops might be
+erroneous; hence the need of precise information at the earliest.
+
+Meanwhile five days more passed, and Babinich gave no account of
+himself. Spring was coming; the days were growing warmer; the snow was
+melting. The neighborhoods were being covered with water, under which
+were sleeping morasses which hindered the march in an unheard of
+degree. The greater part of the cannons and wagons the hetman had to
+leave in Drohichyn, and go farther on horseback. Hence great
+inconvenience and murmuring, especially among the general militia. In
+Bransk they came upon such mud that even the infantry could not march
+farther. The hetman collected on the road horses from peasants and
+small nobles, and seated musketeers on them. The light cavalry took
+others; but they had gone too far already, and the hetman understood
+that only one thing remained,--to advance with all speed.
+
+Boguslav retreated unceasingly. Along the road they found continual
+traces of him in villages burned here and there, in corpses of men
+hanging on trees. The small local nobles came every little while with
+information to Sapyeha; but the truth was lost, as is usual in
+contradictory statements. One saw a single squadron, and swore that the
+prince had no more troops; another saw two; a third three, a fourth an
+army five miles long. In a word they were fables such as men tell who
+know nothing of armies or war.
+
+They had seen Tartars, too, here and there; but the stories concerning
+them seemed most improbable, for it was said that they were seen not
+behind the prince's army, but in front, marching ahead. Sapyeha panted
+angrily when any one mentioned Babinich in his presence, and he said to
+Oskyerko,--
+
+"You overrated him. In an evil hour I sent away Volodyovski, for if he
+were here I should have had long ago as many informants as I need; but
+Babinich is a whirlwind, or even worse. Who knows, he may in truth have
+joined Boguslav and be marching in the vanguard."
+
+Oskyerko himself did not know what to think. Meanwhile another week
+passed; the army had come to Byalystok.
+
+It was midday.
+
+Two hours later the vanguard gave notice that some detachment was
+approaching.
+
+"It may be Babinich!" cried the hetman. "I'll give him _Pater Noster!_"
+
+It was not Babinich himself. But in the camp there rose such commotion
+over the arrival of this detachment that Sapyeha went out to see what
+was taking place.
+
+Meanwhile officers from different squadrons flew in, crying,--
+
+"From Babinich! Prisoners! A whole band! He seized a crowd of men!"
+
+Indeed the hetman saw a number of tens of men on poor, ragged horses.
+Babinich's Tartars drove nearly three hundred men with bound hands,
+beating them with bullock-skin whips. The prisoners presented a
+terrible sight. They were rather shadows than men. With torn clothing,
+half naked, so poor that the bones were pushing through their skin,
+bloody, they marched half alive, indifferent to all things, even to the
+whistle of the whips which cut them, and to the wild shouts of the
+Tartars.
+
+"What kind of men are they?" asked the hetman.
+
+"Boguslav's troops!" answered one of Kmita's volunteers who had brought
+the prisoners together with the Tartars.
+
+"But where did you get so many?"
+
+"Nearly half as many more fell on the road, from exhaustion."
+
+With this an old Tartar, a sergeant in the horde, approached, and
+beating with the forehead, gave a letter from Kmita to Sapyeha.
+
+The hetman, without delay, broke the seal and began to read aloud:--
+
+
+"Serene great mighty hetman! If I have sent neither news nor informants
+with news hitherto, it is because I went in front, and not in the rear
+of Prince Boguslav's army, and I wished to learn the most possible."
+
+
+The hetman stopped reading.
+
+"That is a devil!" said he. "Instead of following the prince, he went
+ahead of him."
+
+"May the bullets strike him!" added Oskyerko, in an undertone.
+
+The hetman read on.
+
+
+"It was dangerous work, as Boguslav's scouts marched in a wide front;
+but after I had cut down two parties and spared none. I worked to the
+van of the army, from which movement great confusion came upon the
+prince, for he fell to thinking at once that he was surrounded, and as
+it were was crawling into a trap."
+
+
+"That is the reason of this unexpected withdrawal!" cried the hetman.
+"A devil, a genuine devil!" He read on with still more curiosity,--
+
+
+"The prince, not understanding what had happened, began to lose his
+head, and sent out party after party, which we cut up notably, so that
+none of them returned in the same number. Marching in advance, we
+seized provisions, cut dams, destroyed bridges, so that Boguslav's men
+advanced with great trouble, neither sleeping nor eating, having rest
+neither day nor night. They could not stir from the camp, for the
+Tartars seized the unwary; and when the camp was sleeping, the Tartars
+howled terribly in the willows; so the enemy, thinking that a great
+army was moving on them, had to stand under arms all night. The prince
+was brought to great despair, not knowing what to begin, where to go,
+how to turn,--for this reason it is needful to march on him quickly,
+before his fear passes. He had six thousand troops, but has lost nearly
+a thousand. His horses are dying. His cavalry is good; his infantry is
+passable; God, however, has granted that from day to day it decreases,
+and if our army comes up it will fly apart. I seized in Byalystok the
+prince's carriages, some of his provision chests and things of value,
+with two cannons; but I was forced to throw most of these into the
+river. The traitor from continual rage has grown seriously ill, and is
+barely able to sit on his horse; fever leaves him neither night nor
+day. Panna Borzobogati is taken, but being ill the prince can make no
+attack on her honor. These reports, with the account of Boguslav's
+desperation, I got from the prisoners whom my Tartars touched up with
+fire, and who if they are touched again will repeat the truth. Now I
+commend my obedient services to you, serene great mighty hetman,
+begging for forgiveness if I have erred, the Tartars are good fellows,
+and seeing a world of plunder, serve marvellously."
+
+
+"Serene great mighty lord," said Oskyerko, "now you surely regret less
+that Volodyovski is away, for he could not equal this devil incarnate.
+Oh, he is an ambitious piece; he even hurled the truth into the eyes of
+Prince Yanush, not caring whether it was pleasant or unpleasant for
+that hetman to hear it. This was his style with Hovanski, but Hovanski
+had fifteen times more troops."
+
+"If that is true, we need to advance at the greatest speed," said
+Sapyeha.
+
+"Before the prince can collect his wits."
+
+"Let us move on, by the dear God! Babinich will cut the dams, and we
+will overtake Boguslav!"
+
+Meanwhile the prisoners, whom the Tartars had kept in a group in front
+of Sapyeha, seeing the hetman, fell to groaning and weeping, showing
+their misery and calling for mercy in various tongues; for there were
+among them Swedes, Germans, and the Scottish guards of Prince Boguslav.
+Sapyeha took them from the Tartars, and gave command to feed them and
+take their testimony without torture. Their statements confirmed the
+truth of Kmita's words; therefore the rest of Sapyeha's army advanced
+at great speed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Kmita's next report came from Sokolka, and was brief:
+
+
+"The prince, to mislead our troops, has feigned a march toward
+Shchuchyn, whither he has sent a party. He has gone himself with his
+main force to Yanov, and has received there a reinforcement of
+infantry, led by Captain Kyritz, eight hundred good men. From the place
+where we are the prince's fires are visible. In Yanov he intends to
+rest one week. The prisoners say that he is ready for battle. The fever
+is shaking him continually."
+
+
+On receipt of this statement Sapyeha, leaving the remainder of his
+cannon and wagons, moved on with cavalry to Sokolka; and at last the
+two armies stood eye to eye. It was foreseen too that a battle was
+unavoidable; for on one side they could flee no longer, the others
+pursuing. Meanwhile, like wrestlers who after a long chase are to seize
+each other by the bodies, they lay opposite each other, catching breath
+in their panting throats, and resting.
+
+When the hetman saw Kmita he seized him by the shoulders, and said,--
+
+"I was angry with you for not giving an account of yourself for so
+long, but I see that you have accomplished more than I could hope for;
+and if God gives victory, not mine but yours will be the merit. You
+went like an angel guardian after Boguslav."
+
+An ill-omened light gleamed in Kmita's eyes. "If I am his angel
+guardian, I must be present at his death."
+
+"God will order that," said the hetman, seriously; "but if you wish the
+Lord to bless you, then pursue the enemy of the country, not your own."
+
+Kmita bowed in silence; but it could not be learned whether the
+beautiful words of the hetman made any impression on him. His face
+expressed implacable hatred, and was the more threatening that the toil
+of pursuit after Boguslav had emaciated it still more. Formerly in that
+countenance was depicted only daring and insolent wildness; now it had
+become also stern and inexorable. You could easily see that he against
+whom that man had recorded vengeance in his soul ought to guard
+himself, even if he were Radzivill.
+
+He had, in truth, avenged himself terribly. The services he had
+rendered in that campaign were immense. By pushing himself in front of
+Boguslav he had beaten him from the road, had made his reckoning false,
+had fixed in him the conviction that he was surrounded, and had forced
+him to retreat. Further he went before him night and day. He destroyed
+scouting-parties; he was without mercy for prisoners. In Syemyatiche,
+in Botski, in Orel and Byelsk he had fallen in the dark night on the
+whole camp.
+
+In Voishki, not far from Zabludovo, in a purely Radzivill country, he
+had fallen like a blind hurricane on the quarters of the prince
+himself, so that Boguslav, who had just sat down to dinner, almost fell
+into his hands; and thanks to Sakovich alone, did he take out his head
+alive.
+
+At Byalystok Kmita seized the carriages and camp-chests of Boguslav. He
+wearied, weakened, and inflicted hunger on Boguslav's troops. The
+choice German infantry and Swedish cavalry which the prince had brought
+with him were like walking skeletons, from wandering, from surprises,
+from sleeplessness. The mad howling of the Tartars and Kmita's
+volunteers was heard in front of them, at the flanks, and in the rear.
+Scarcely had a wearied soldier closed his eyes when he had to seize his
+weapons. The farther on, the worse the condition.
+
+The small nobility inhabiting those neighborhoods joined with the
+Tartars, partly through hatred of the Radzivills of Birji, partly
+through fear of Kmita; for he punished beyond measure those who
+resisted. His forces increased therefore; those of Boguslav melted.
+
+Besides, Boguslav himself was really ill; and though in the heart of
+that man care never had its nest long, and though the astrologers, whom
+he believed blindly, had foretold him in Prussia that his person would
+meet no harm in that expedition, his ambition suffered harshly more
+than once. He, whose name had been repeated with admiration in the
+Netherlands, on the Rhine, and in France, was beaten every day in those
+deep forests by an unseen enemy, and overcome without a battle.
+
+There was, besides, in that pursuit such uncommon stubbornness and
+impetuosity passing the usual measure of war, that Boguslav with his
+native quickness divined after a few days that some inexorable personal
+enemy was following him. He learned the name Babinich easily, for the
+whole neighborhood repeated it; but that name was strange to him. Not
+less glad would he be to know the person; and on the road in times of
+pursuit he arranged tens and hundreds of ambushes,--always in vain.
+Babinich was able to avoid traps, and inflicted defeats where they were
+least expected.
+
+At last both armies came to the neighborhood of Sokolka. Boguslav found
+there the reinforcement under Kyritz, who, not knowing hitherto where
+the prince was, went to Yanov, where the fate of Boguslav's expedition
+was to be decided.
+
+Kmita closed hermetically all the roads leading from Yanov to Sokolka,
+Korychyn, Kuznitsa, and Suhovola. The neighboring forests, willow
+woods, and thickets were occupied by the Tartars. Not a letter could
+pass; no wagon with provisions could be brought in. Boguslav himself
+was in a hurry for battle before his last biscuit in Yanov should be
+eaten.
+
+But as a man of quick wit, trained in every intrigue, he determined to
+try negotiations first. He did not know yet that Sapyeha in this kind
+of intrigue surpassed him greatly in reasoning and quickness. From
+Sokolka then in Boguslav's name came Pan Sakovich, under-chamberlain
+and starosta of Oshmiana, the attendant and personal friend of Prince
+Boguslav, with a letter and authority to conclude peace.
+
+This Pan Sakovich was a wealthy man, who reached senatorial dignity
+later in life, for he became voevoda of Smolensk and treasurer of the
+Grand Principality; he was at that time one of the most noted cavaliers
+in Lithuania, famed equally for bravery and beauty. Pan Sakovich was of
+medium stature; the hair of his head and brows was black as a raven's
+wing, but he had pale blue eyes which gazed with marvellous and
+unspeakable insolence, so that Boguslav said of him that he stunned
+with his eyes as with the back of an axe. He wore foreign garments
+which he brought from journeys made with Boguslav; he spoke nearly all
+languages; in battle he rushed into the greatest whirl so madly that
+among his enemies he was called "the doomed man." But, thanks to his
+uncommon strength and presence of mind, he always came out unharmed. It
+was said that he had strength to stop a carriage in its course by
+seizing the hind wheel; he could drink beyond measure, could toss off a
+quart of cream in vodka, and be as sober as if he had taken nothing in
+his mouth. With men he was morose, haughty, offensive; in Boguslav's
+hand he was as soft as wax. His manners were polished, and though in
+the king's chambers he knew how to bear himself, he had a certain
+wildness in his spirit which burst forth at times like a flame.
+
+Pan Sakovich was rather a companion than a servant of Boguslav.
+Boguslav, who in truth had never loved any one in his life, had an
+unconquerable weakness for this man. By nature exceedingly sordid, he
+was generous to Sakovich alone. By his influence he raised him to be
+under-chamberlain, and had him endowed with the starostaship of
+Oshmiana. After every battle Boguslav's first question was: "Where is
+Sakovich? has he met with no harm?" The prince depended greatly on the
+starosta's counsels, and employed him in war and in negotiations in
+which the courage and impudence of Sakovich were very effective.
+
+This time he sent him to Sapyeha. But the mission was
+difficult,--first, because the suspicion might easily fall on the
+starosta that he had come only to spy out and discover Sapyeha's
+strength; second, because the envoy had much to ask and nothing to
+offer.
+
+Happily, Pan Sakovich did not trouble himself with anything. He entered
+as a victor who comes to dictate terms to the vanquished, and struck
+Sapyeha with his pale eyes.
+
+Sapyeha smiled when he saw that pride, but half of his smile was
+compassion. Every man may impose much with daring and impudence, but on
+people of a certain measure; the hetman was above the measure of
+Sakovich.
+
+"My master, prince in Birji and Dubinki, commander-in-chief of the
+armies of his princely highness the elector," said Sakovich, "has sent
+me with a greeting, and to ask about the health of your worthiness."
+
+"Thank the prince, and say that you saw me well."
+
+Sapyeha took the letter, opened it carelessly enough, read it, and
+said,--
+
+"Too bad to lose time. I cannot see what the prince wants. Do you
+surrender, or do you wish to try your fortune?"
+
+Sakovich feigned astonishment.
+
+"Whether we surrender? I think that the prince proposes specially in
+this letter that you surrender; at least my instructions--"
+
+"Of your instructions we will speak later, my dear Pan Sakovich. We
+have chased you nearly a hundred and fifty miles, as a hound does a
+hare. Have you ever heard of a hare proposing to a hound to surrender?"
+
+"We have received reinforcements."
+
+"Von Kyritz, with eight hundred men, and so tired that they will lay
+down their arms before battle. I will give you Hmelnitski's saying
+'There is no time to talk!'"
+
+"The elector with all his power is with us."
+
+"That is well,--I shall not have far to seek him; for I wish to ask him
+by what right he sends troops into the Commonwealth, of which he is a
+vassal, and to which he is bound in loyalty."
+
+"The right of the strongest."
+
+"Maybe in Prussia such a right exists, but not with us. But if you are
+the stronger, take the field."
+
+"The prince would long since have attacked you, were it not for kindred
+blood."
+
+"I wonder if that is the only hindrance!"
+
+"The prince wonders at the animosity of the Sapyehas against the house
+of Radzivill, and that your worthiness for private revenge hesitates
+not to spill the blood of the country."
+
+"Tfu!" cried Kmita, listening behind the hetman's armchair to the
+conversation.
+
+Pan Sakovich rose, went to Kmita, and struck him with his eyes. But he
+met his own, or better; and in the eyes of Pan Andrei the starosta
+found such an answer that he dropped his glance to the floor.
+
+The hetman frowned. "Take your seat, Pan Sakovich. And do you preserve
+calm" (turning to Kmita). Then he said to Sakovich,--
+
+"Conscience speaks only the truth, but mouths chew it and spit it into
+the world as calumny. He who with foreign troops attacks a country,
+inflicts wrong on him who defends it. God hears this, and the heavenly
+chronicler will inscribe."
+
+"Through hatred of the Sapyehas to the Radzivills was the prince
+voevoda of Vilna consumed."
+
+"I hate traitors, not the Radzivills; and the best proof of this is
+that Prince Michael Radzivill is in my camp now. Tell me what is your
+wish?"
+
+"Your worthiness, I will tell what I have in my heart; he hates who
+sends secret assassins."
+
+Pan Sapyeha was astonished in his turn.
+
+"I send assassins against Prince Boguslav?"
+
+"That is the case!"
+
+"You have gone mad!"
+
+"The other day they caught, beyond Yanov, a murderer who once made an
+attack on the life of the prince. Tortures brought him to tell who sent
+him."
+
+A moment of silence followed; but in that silence Pan Sapyeha heard how
+Kmita, standing behind him, repeated twice through his set lips, "Woe,
+woe!"
+
+"God is my judge," answered the hetman, with real senatorial dignity,
+"that neither to you nor your prince shall I ever justify myself; for
+you were not made to be my judges. But do you, instead of loitering,
+tell directly what you have come for, and what conditions your prince
+offers."
+
+"The prince, my lord, has destroyed Horotkyevich, has defeated Pan
+Krishtof Sapyeha, taken Tykotsin; therefore he can justly call himself
+victor, and ask for considerable advantages. But regretting the loss of
+Christian blood, he desires to return in quiet to Prussia, requiring
+nothing more than the freedom of leaving his garrisons in the castles.
+We have also taken prisoners not a few, among whom are distinguished
+officers, not counting Panna Anusia Borzobogati, who has been sent
+already to Taurogi. These may be exchanged on equal terms."
+
+"Do not boast of your victories, for my advance guard, led by Pan
+Babinich here present, pressed you for a hundred and fifty miles; you
+retreated before it, lost twice as many prisoners as you took
+previously; you lost wagons, cannon, camp-chests. Your army is
+fatigued, dropping from hunger, has nothing to eat; you know not
+whither to turn. You have seen my army; I did not ask to have your eyes
+bound purposely, that you might know whether you are able to measure
+forces with us. As to that young lady, she is not under my
+guardianship, but that of Pan Zamoyski and Princess Griselda
+Vishnyevetski. The prince will reckon with them if he does her any
+injustice. But speak with wisdom; otherwise I shall order Pan Babinich
+to march at once."
+
+Sakovich, instead of answering, turned to Kmita: "Then you are the man
+who made such onsets on the road? You must have learned your murderous
+trade under Kmita--"
+
+"Learn on your own skin whether I practised well!"
+
+The hetman again frowned. "You have nothing to do here," said he to
+Sakovich; "you may go."
+
+"Your worthiness, give me at least a letter."
+
+"Let it be so. Wait at Pan Oskyerko's quarters for a letter."
+
+Hearing this, Pan Oskyerko conducted Sakovich at once to his quarters.
+The hetman waved his hand as a parting; then he turned to Pan Andrei.
+"Why did you say 'Woe,' when he spoke of that man whom they seized?"
+asked he, looking quickly and severely into the eyes of the knight.
+"Has hatred so deadened your conscience that you really sent a murderer
+to the prince?"
+
+"By the Most Holy Lady whom I defended, no!" answered Kmita; "not
+through strange hands did I wish to reach his throat."
+
+"Why did you say 'Woe'? Do you know that man?"
+
+"I know him," answered Kmita, growing pale from emotion and rage. "I
+sent him from Lvoff to Taurogi--Prince Boguslav took Panna Billevich to
+Taurogi--I love that lady. We were to marry--I sent that man to get me
+news of her. She was in such hands--"
+
+"Calm yourself!" said the hetman. "Have you given him any letters?"
+
+"No; she would not read them."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Boguslav told her that I offered to carry away the king."
+
+"Great are your reasons for hating him."
+
+"True, your worthiness, true."
+
+"Does the prince know that man?"
+
+"He knows him. That is the sergeant Soroka. He helped me to carry off
+Boguslav."
+
+"I understand," said the hetman; "the vengeance of the prince is
+awaiting him."
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"The prince is in a trap," said the hetman, after a while; "maybe he
+will consent to give him up."
+
+"Let your worthiness," said Kmita, "detain Sakovich, and send me to the
+prince. Perhaps I may rescue Soroka."
+
+"Is his fate such a great question for you?"
+
+"An old soldier, an old servant; he carried me in his arms. A multitude
+of times he has saved my life. God would punish me were I to abandon
+him in such straits." And Kmita began to tremble from pity and anxiety.
+
+But the hetman said: "It is no wonder to me that the soldiers love you,
+for you love them. I will do what I can. I will write to the prince
+that I will free for him whomsoever he wishes for that soldier, who
+besides at your command has acted as an innocent agent."
+
+Kmita seized his head: "What does he care for prisoners? he will not
+let him go for thirty of them."
+
+"Then he will not give him to you; he will even attempt your life."
+
+"He would give him for one,--for Sakovich."
+
+"I cannot imprison Sakovich; he is an envoy."
+
+"Detain him, and I will go with a letter to the prince. Perhaps I shall
+succeed--God be with him! I will abandon my revenge, if he will give me
+that soldier."
+
+"Wait," said the hetman; "I can detain Sakovich. Besides that I will
+write to the prince to send me a safe-conduct without a name."
+
+The hetman began to write at once. An hour later a Cossack was
+galloping with a letter to Yanov, and toward evening he returned with
+Boguslav's answer:--
+
+
+"I send according to request the safe-conduct with which every envoy
+may return unharmed, though it is a wonder to me that your worthiness
+should ask for a conduct while you have such a hostage as my servant
+and friend Pan Sakovich, for whom I have so much love that I would give
+all the officers in my army for him. It is known also that envoys are
+not killed, but are usually respected even by wild Tartars with whom
+your worthiness is making war against my Christian army. Now,
+guaranteeing the safety of your envoy by my personal princely word, I
+subscribe myself, etc."
+
+
+That same evening Kmita took the safe-conduct and went with the two
+Kyemliches. Pan Sakovich remained in Sokolka as a hostage.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+It was near midnight when Pan Andrei announced himself to the advanced
+pickets of the prince, but no one was sleeping in the whole camp. The
+battle might begin at any moment, therefore they had prepared for it
+carefully. Boguslav's troops had occupied Yanov itself; they commanded
+the road from Sokolka, which was held by artillery, managed by the
+elector's trained men. There were only three cannons, but abundance of
+powder and balls. On both sides of Yanov, among the birch groves,
+Boguslav gave orders to make intrenchments and to occupy them with
+double-barrelled guns and infantry. The cavalry occupied Yanov itself,
+the road behind the cannons, and the intervals between the trenches.
+The position was defensible enough, and with fresh men defence in it
+might be long and bloody; but of fresh soldiers there were only eight
+hundred under Kyritz; the rest were so wearied that they could barely
+stand on their feet. Besides, the howling of the Tartars was heard in
+Suhovola at midnight, and later in the rear of Boguslav's ranks; hence
+a certain fear was spread among the soldiers. Boguslav was forced to
+send in that direction all his light cavalry, which after it had gone
+three miles dared neither return nor advance, for fear of ambushes in
+the forest.
+
+Boguslav, though fever together with violent chills was tormenting him
+more than ever, commanded everything in person; but since he rode with
+difficulty he had himself carried by four soldiers in an open litter.
+In this way he had examined the road as well as the birch groves, and
+was entering Yanov when he was informed that an envoy from Sapyeha was
+approaching.
+
+They were already on the street. Boguslav was unable to recognize Kmita
+because of the darkness, and because Pan Andrei, through excess of
+caution on the part of officers in the advance guard, had his head
+covered with a bag in which there was an opening only for his mouth.
+
+The prince noticed the bag when Kmita, after dismounting, stood near
+him; he gave command to remove it at once.
+
+"This is Yanov," said he, "and there is no reason for secrecy." Then he
+turned in the darkness to Pan Andrei: "Are you from Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"And what is Pan Sakovich doing there?"
+
+"Pan Oskyerko is entertaining him."
+
+"Why did you ask for a safe conduct when you have Sakovich? Pan Sapyeha
+is too careful, and let him see to it that he is not too clever."
+
+"That is not my affair," answered Kmita.
+
+"I see that the envoy is not over-given to speech."
+
+"I have brought a letter, and in the quarters I will speak of my own
+affair."
+
+"Is there a private question?"
+
+"There will be a request to your highness."
+
+"I shall be glad not to refuse it. Now I beg you to follow. Mount your
+horse; I should ask you to the litter, but it is too small."
+
+They moved on. The prince in the litter and Kmita at one side on
+horseback. They looked in the darkness without being able to
+distinguish the faces of each other. After a while the prince, in spite
+of furs, began to shake so that his teeth chattered. At last he said,--
+
+"It has come on me grievously; if it were--brr!--not for this, I would
+give other conditions."
+
+Kmita said nothing, and only wished to pierce with his eyes the
+darkness, in the middle of which the head and face of the prince were
+outlined in indefinite gray and white features. At the sound of
+Boguslav's voice and at sight of his figure all the former insults, the
+old hatred, and the burning desire for revenge so rose in Kmita's heart
+that they turned almost to madness. His hand of itself sought the
+sword, which had been taken from him; but at his girdle he had the
+baton with an iron head, the ensign of his rank of colonel; the devil
+then began to whirl in his brain at once, and to whisper: "Cry in his
+ear who you are, and smash his head into bits. The night is dark, you
+will escape. The Kyemliches are with you. You will rub out a traitor
+and pay for injustice. You will rescue Olenka, Soroka-- Strike!
+strike!"
+
+Kmita came still nearer the litter, and with trembling hand began to
+draw forth the baton. "Strike!" whispered the devil; "you will serve
+the country."
+
+Kmita had now drawn out the baton, and he squeezed the handle as if
+wishing to crush it in his hand. "One, two, three!" whispered the
+devil.
+
+But at that moment Kmita's horse, whether because he had hit the helmet
+of the soldier with his nose, or had shied, it is enough that he
+stumbled violently. Kmita pulled the reins. During this time the litter
+had moved on several steps. The hair stood on the head of the young
+man.
+
+"O Most Holy Mother, restrain my hand!" whispered he, through his set
+teeth. "O Most Holy Mother, save me! I am here an envoy; I came from
+the hetman, and I want to murder like a night assassin. I am a noble; I
+am a servant of Thine. Lead me not into temptation!"
+
+"But why are you loitering?" asked Boguslav, in a voice broken by
+fever.
+
+"I am here!"
+
+"Do you hear the cocks crowing beyond the fences? It is needful to
+hurry, for I am sick and want rest."
+
+Kmita put the baton behind his belt and rode farther, near the litter.
+Still he could not find peace. He understood that only with cool blood
+and self-command could he free Soroka; therefore he stipulated with
+himself in advance what words to use with the prince so as to incline
+and convince him. He vowed to have only Soroka in view, to mention
+nothing else, and especially not Olenka. And he felt how in the
+darkness a burning blush covered his face at the thought that perhaps
+the prince himself would mention her, and maybe mention something that
+Pan Andrei would not be able to endure or listen to.
+
+"Let him not mention her," said he to himself; "let him not allude to
+her, for in that is his death and mine. Let him have mercy upon
+himself, if he lacks shame."
+
+Pan Andrei suffered terribly; his breath failed him, and his throat was
+so straitened that he feared lest he might not be able to bring forth
+the words when he came to speak. In this stifling oppression he began
+the Litany.
+
+After a time relief came; he was quieted considerably, and that grasp
+as it were of an iron hand squeezing his throat was relaxed.
+
+They had now arrived at the prince's quarters. The soldiers put down
+the litter; two attendants took the prince by the armpits; he turned to
+Kmita, and with his teeth chattering continually, said,--
+
+"I beg you to follow. The chill will soon pass; then we can speak."
+
+After a while they found themselves in a separate apartment in which
+heaps of coals were glowing in a fireplace, and in which was
+unendurable heat. His servants placed Prince Boguslav on a long
+campaign arm-chair covered with furs, and brought a light. Then the
+attendants withdrew. The prince threw his head back, closed his eyes,
+and remained in that position motionless for a time; at last he said,--
+
+"Directly,--let me rest."
+
+Kmita looked at him. The prince had not changed much, but the fever had
+pinched his face. He was painted as usual, and his cheeks touched with
+color; but just for that reason, when he lay there with closed eyes and
+head thrown back, he was somewhat like a corpse or a wax figure. Pan
+Andrei stood before him in the bright light. The prince began to open
+his lids lazily; suddenly he opened them completely, and a flame, as it
+were, flew over his face. But it remained only an instant; then again
+he closed his eyes.
+
+"If thou art a spirit, I fear thee not," said he; "but vanish."
+
+"I have come with a letter from the hetman," answered Kmita.
+
+Boguslav shuddered a little, as if he wished to shake off visions; then
+he looked at Kmita and asked,--
+
+"Have I been deceived in you?"
+
+"Not at all," answered Pan Andrei, pointing with his finger to the
+scar.
+
+"That is the second!" muttered the prince to himself; and he added
+aloud, "Where is the letter?"
+
+"Here it is," said Kmita, giving the letter.
+
+Boguslav began to read, and when he had finished a marvellous light
+flashed in his eyes.
+
+"It is well," said he; "there is loitering enough! Tomorrow the
+battle--and I am glad, for I shall not have a fever."
+
+"And we, too, are glad," answered Kmita.
+
+A moment of silence followed, during which these two inexorable enemies
+measured each other with a certain terrible curiosity. The prince first
+resumed the conversation.
+
+"I divine that it was you who attacked me with the Tartars?"
+
+"It was T."
+
+"And did you not fear to come here?"
+
+Kmita did not answer.
+
+"Did you count on our relationship through the Kishkis? For you and I
+have our reckonings. I can tear you out of your skin, Sir Cavalier."
+
+"You can, your highness."
+
+"You came with a safe-conduct, it is true. I understand now why Pan
+Sapyeha asked for it. But you have attempted my life. Sakovich is
+detained there; but Sapyeha has no right to Sakovich, while I have a
+right to you, cousin."
+
+"I have come with a prayer to your highness."
+
+"I beg you to mention it. You can calculate that for you everything
+will be done. What is the prayer?"
+
+"You have here a captive soldier, one of those men who aided me in
+carrying you off. I gave orders, he acted as a blind instrument. Be
+pleased to set that man at liberty."
+
+Boguslav thought awhile.
+
+"I am thinking," said he, "which is greater,--your daring as a soldier,
+or your insolence as a petitioner."
+
+"I do not ask this man from you for nothing."
+
+"And what will you give me for him?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+"Is it possible that he is such a precious soldier? You pay
+bountifully, but see that that is sufficient; for surely you would like
+to ransom something else from me."
+
+Kmita came a step nearer to the prince, and grew so awfully pale that
+Boguslav, in spite of himself, looked at the door, and notwithstanding
+all his daring he changed the subject of conversation.
+
+"Pan Sapyeha will not entertain such an agreement. I should be glad to
+hold you; but I have guaranteed with my word of a prince your safety."
+
+"I will write by that soldier to the hetman that I remain of my own
+will."
+
+"And he will declare that, in spite of your will, I must send you. You
+have given him services too great. He will not set Sakovich free, and
+Sakovich I prize higher than you."
+
+"Then, your highness, free that soldier, and I will go on my word where
+you command."
+
+"I may fall to-morrow; I care nothing for treaties touching the day
+after."
+
+"I implore your highness for that man. I--"
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"I will drop my revenge."
+
+"You see, Pan Kmita, many a time have I gone against a bear with a
+spear, not because I had to do so, but from desire. I am glad when some
+danger threatens, for life is less dull for me. In this case I reserve
+your revenge as a pleasure; for you are, I must confess, of that breed
+of bears which seek the hunter themselves."
+
+"Your highness," said Kmita, "for small mercies God often forgives
+great sins. Neither of us knows when it will come to him to stand
+before the judgment of Christ."
+
+"Enough!" said the prince. "I compose psalms for myself in spite of the
+fever, so as to have some merit before the Lord; should I need a
+preacher I should summon my own. You do not know how to beg with
+sufficient humility, and you go in round-about ways. I will show you
+the method myself: strike to-morrow in the battle on Sapyeha, and after
+to-morrow I will let out the soldier and forgive you your sins. You
+betrayed Radzivill; betray now Sapyeha."
+
+"Is this the last word of your highness? By all the saints, I implore
+you!"
+
+"No! Devil take you! And you change in the face--But don't come too
+near, for, though I am ashamed to call attendants--look here! You are
+too bold!"
+
+Boguslav pointed at a pistol-barrel peeping from under the fur with
+which it was covered, and looked with sparkling eyes into Kmita's eyes.
+
+"Your highness!" cried Kmita, almost joining his hands in prayer, but
+with a face changed by wrath.
+
+"You beg, but you threaten," said Boguslav; "you bend your neck, but
+the devil is gnashing his teeth at me from behind your collar. Pride is
+gleaming in your eyes, and in your mouth it sounds as in a cloud. With
+your forehead to the Radzivill feet when you beg, my little man! Beat
+with your forehead on the floor, then I will answer."
+
+Pan Andrei's face was as pale as a piece of linen; he drew his hand
+over his moist forehead, his eyes, his face; and he spoke with such a
+broken voice, as if the fever from which the prince suffered had
+suddenly sprung upon him.
+
+"If your highness will free for me that old soldier, I am ready to fall
+at your feet."
+
+Satisfaction gleamed in Boguslav's eyes. He had brought down his enemy,
+bent his proud neck. Better food he could not give to his revenge and
+hatred.
+
+Kmita stood before him with hair erect in his forelock, trembling in
+his whole body. His face, resembling even in rest the head of a hawk,
+recalled all the more an enraged bird of prey. You could not tell
+whether at the next moment he would throw himself at the feet, or hurl
+himself at the breast of the prince. But Boguslav not taking his eyes
+from him, said,--
+
+"Before witnesses! before people!" And he turned to the door. "Hither!"
+
+A number of attendants, Poles and foreigners, came in; after them
+officers entered.
+
+"Gracious gentlemen!" said the prince, "behold Pan Kmita, the banneret
+of Orsha and envoy of Pan Sapyeha, who has come to beg a favor of me,
+and he wishes to have all you gentlemen as witnesses."
+
+Kmita tottered like a drunken man, groaned, and fell at Boguslav's
+feet. The prince stretched his feet purposely so that the end of his
+riding-boot touched the forehead of the knight.
+
+All looked in silence, astonished at the famous name, as well as at
+this,--that he who bore it was now an envoy from Pan Sapyeha. All
+understood, too, that something uncommon was taking place.
+
+The prince rose, and without saying a word passed into the adjoining
+chamber, beckoning to two attendants to follow him.
+
+Kmita rose. His face showed no longer either anger or rapacity, merely
+indifference and insensibility. He appeared unconscious of what was
+happening to him, and his energy seemed broken completely.
+
+Half an hour passed; an hour. Outside the windows was heard the tramp
+of horses' feet and the measured tread of soldiers; he sat continually
+as if of stone.
+
+Suddenly the door opened. An officer entered, an old acquaintance of
+Kmita's from Birji, and eight soldiers,--four with muskets, four
+without firearms,--with sabres.
+
+"Gracious Colonel, rise!" said the officer, politely.
+
+Kmita looked on him wanderingly. "Glovbich!" said he, recognizing the
+officer.
+
+"I have an order," answered Glovbich, "to bind your hands and conduct
+you beyond Yanov. The binding is for a time, then you will go free;
+therefore I beg you not to resist."
+
+"Bind!" answered Kmita.
+
+And he permitted them to tie him. But they did not tie his feet. The
+officer led him out of the room and on foot through Yanov. Then they
+advanced for about an hour. On the road some horsemen joined them.
+Kmita heard them speaking in Polish; the Poles, who served with
+Boguslav, all knew the name of Kmita, and therefore were most curious
+to know what would happen to him. The party passed the birch grove and
+came to an open field, on which Pan Andrei saw a detachment of the
+light Polish squadron of Boguslav.
+
+The soldiers stood in rank, forming a square; in the middle was a space
+in which were two foot-soldiers holding horses harnessed to draw, and
+some men with torches.
+
+By the light of the torches Pan Andrei saw a freshly sharpened stake
+lying on the ground with the large end fastened in a great log.
+
+A shiver passed through Kmita involuntarily. "That is for me," thought
+he; "Boguslav has ordered them to draw me on the stake with horses. He
+sacrifices Sakovich to his vengeance."
+
+But he was mistaken; the stake was intended first for Soroka.
+
+By the quivering flames Pan Andrei saw Soroka himself; the old soldier
+was sitting there at the side of the log on a stool, without a cap and
+with bound hands, guarded by four soldiers. A man dressed in a short
+shuba without sleeves was at that moment giving him in a shallow cup
+gorailka, which Soroka drank eagerly enough. When he had drunk, he
+spat; and since at that very moment Kmita was placed between two
+horsemen in the first rank, Soroka saw him, sprang from the stool and
+straightened himself as if on military parade.
+
+For a while they looked the one at the other. Soroka's face was calm
+and resigned; he only moved his jaws as if chewing.
+
+"Soroka!" groaned Kmita, at last.
+
+"At command!" answered the soldier.
+
+And again silence followed. What had they to say at such a moment? Then
+the executioner, who had given Soroka the vodka, approached him.
+
+"Well, old man,"' said he, "it is time for you!"
+
+"And you will draw me on straight?"
+
+"Never fear."
+
+Soroka feared not; but when he felt on his shoulder the hand of the
+executioner, he began to pant quickly and loudly. At last he said,--
+
+"More gorailka!"
+
+"There is none!"
+
+Suddenly one of the soldiers pushed out of the rank and gave a
+canteen,--
+
+"Here is some; give it to him."
+
+"To the rank!" commanded Glovbich.
+
+Still the man in the short shuba held the canteen to Soroka's mouth; he
+drank abundantly, and after he had drunk breathed deeply.
+
+"See!" said he, "the lot of a soldier after thirty years' service.
+Well, if it is time, it is time!"
+
+Another executioner approached and they began to undress him.
+
+A moment of silence. The torches trembled in the hands of those holding
+them; it became terrible for all.
+
+Meanwhile from the ranks surrounding the square was wrested a murmur of
+dissatisfaction, which became louder each instant: "A soldier is not an
+executioner; he gives death himself, but does not wish to see torture."
+
+"Silence!" cried Glovbich.
+
+The murmur became a loud bustle, in which were heard single words:
+"Devils!" "Thunders!" "Pagan service!"
+
+Suddenly Kmita shouted as if they had been drawing him on to the
+stake,--
+
+"Stop!"
+
+The executioner halted involuntarily. All eyes were turned to Kmita.
+
+"Soldiers!" shouted Pan Andrei, "Prince Boguslav is a traitor to the
+king and the Commonwealth! You are surrounded, and to-morrow you will
+be cut to pieces. You are serving a traitor; you are serving against
+the country! But whoso leaves this service leaves the traitor; to him
+forgiveness of the king, forgiveness of the hetman! Choose! Death and
+disgrace, or a reward to-morrow! I will pay wages, and a ducat a
+man,--two ducats a man! Choose! It is not for you, worthy soldiers, to
+serve a traitor! Long life to the king! Long life to the grand hetman
+of Lithuania!"
+
+The disturbance was turned into thunder; the ranks were broken. A
+number of voices shouted,--
+
+"Long life to the king!"
+
+"We have had enough of this service!"
+
+"Destruction to traitors!"
+
+"Stop! stop!" shouted other voices.
+
+"To-morrow you will die in disgrace!" bellowed Kmita.
+
+"The Tartars are in Suhovola!"
+
+"The prince is a traitor!"
+
+"We are fighting against the king!"
+
+"Strike!"
+
+"To the prince!"
+
+"Halt!"
+
+In the disturbance some sabre had cut the ropes tying Kmita's hands. He
+sprang that moment on one of the horses which were to draw Soroka on
+the stake, and cried from the horse,--
+
+"Follow me to the hetman!"
+
+"I go!" shouted Glovbich. "Long life to the king!"
+
+"May he live!" answered fifty voices, and fifty sabres glittered at
+once.
+
+"To horse, Soroka!" commanded Kmita.
+
+There were some who wished to resist, but at sight of the naked sabres
+they grew silent. One, however, turned his horse and vanished from the
+eye in a moment. The torches went out. Darkness embraced all.
+
+"After me!" shouted Kmita. An orderless mass of men moved from the
+place, and then stretched out in a long line.
+
+When they had gone two or three furlongs they met the infantry pickets
+who occupied in large parties the birch grove on the left side.
+
+"Who goes?"
+
+"Glovbich with a party!"
+
+"The word?"
+
+"Trumpets!"
+
+"Pass!"
+
+They rode forward, not hurrying over-much; then they went on a trot.
+
+"Soroka!" said Kmita.
+
+"At command!" answered the voice of the sergeant at his side.
+
+Kmita said nothing more, but stretching out his hand, put his palm on
+Soroka's head, as if wishing to convince himself that he was riding
+there. The soldier pressed Pan Andrei's hand to his lips in silence.
+
+Then Glovbich called from the other side,--
+
+"Your grace! I wanted long to do what I have done to-day."
+
+"You will not regret it!"
+
+"I shall be thankful all my life to you."
+
+"Tell me, Glovbich, why did the prince send you, and not a foreign
+regiment, to the execution?"
+
+"Because he wanted to disgrace you before the Poles. The foreign
+soldiers do not know you."
+
+"And was nothing to happen to me?"
+
+"I had the order to cut your bonds; but if you tried to defend Soroka
+we were to bring you for punishment to the prince."
+
+"Then he was willing to sacrifice Sakovich," muttered Kmita.
+
+Meanwhile Prince Boguslav in Yanov, wearied with the fever and the toil
+of the day, had gone to sleep. He was roused from slumber by an uproar
+in front of his quarters and a knocking at the door.
+
+"Your highness, your highness!" cried a number of voices.
+
+"He is asleep, do not rouse him!" answered the pages.
+
+But the prince sat up in bed and cried,--
+
+"A light!"
+
+They brought in a light, and at the same time the officer on duty
+entered.
+
+"Your highness," said he, "Sapyeha's envoy has brought Glovbich's
+squadron to mutiny and taken it to the hetman."
+
+Silence followed.
+
+"Sound the kettle-drums and other drums!" said Boguslav at last; "let
+the troops form in rank!"
+
+The officer went out; the prince remained alone.
+
+"That is a terrible man!" said he to himself; and he felt that a new
+paroxysm of fever was seizing him.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+It is easy to imagine Sapyeha's amazement when Kmita not only returned
+safely himself, but brought with him a number of tens of horsemen and
+his old servant. Kmita had to tell the hetman and Oskyerko twice what
+had happened, and how it had happened; they listened with curiosity,
+clapping their hands frequently and seizing their heads.
+
+"Learn from this," said the hetman, "that whoso carries vengeance too
+far, from him it often slips away like a bird through the fingers.
+Prince Boguslav wanted to have Pole's as witnesses of your shame and
+suffering so as to disgrace you the more, and he carried the matter too
+far. But do not boast of this, for it was the ordinance of God which
+gave you victory, though, in my way, I will tell you one thing,--he is
+a devil; but you too are a devil! The prince did ill to insult you."
+
+"I will not leave him behind in vengeance, and God grant that I shall
+not overdo it."
+
+"Leave vengeance altogether, as Christ did; though with one word he
+might have destroyed the Jews."
+
+Kmita said nothing, and there was no time for discussion; there was not
+even time for rest. He was mortally wearied, and still he had
+determined to go that night to his Tartars, who were posted in the
+forests and on the roads in the rear of Boguslav's army. But people of
+that period slept soundly on horseback. Pan Andrei simply gave command
+then to saddle a fresh horse, promising himself to slumber sweetly on
+the road.
+
+When he was mounting Soroka came to him and stood straight as in
+service.
+
+"Your grace!" said he.
+
+"What have you to say, old man?"
+
+"I have come to ask when I am to start?"
+
+"For what place?"
+
+"For Taurogi."
+
+Kmita laughed: "You will not go to Taurogi, you will go with me."
+
+"At command!" answered the sergeant, striving not to show his delight
+
+They rode on together. The road was long, for they had to go around by
+forests, so as not to fall into Boguslav's hands; but Kmita and Soroka
+slept a hundred fold, and came to the Tartars without any accident.
+
+Akbah Ulan presented himself at once before Babinich, and gave him a
+report of his activity. Pan Andrei was satisfied. Every bridge had been
+burned, the dams were cut; that was not all, the water of springtime
+had overflowed, changing the fields, meadows, and roads in the lower
+places into muddy quagmires.
+
+Boguslav had no choice but to fight, to conquer or perish; it was
+impossible for him to think of retreat.
+
+"Very well," said Kmita; "he has good cavalry, but heavy. He will not
+have use for it in the mud of to-day."
+
+Then he turned to Akbah Ulan. "You have grown poor," said he, striking
+him on the stomach with his fist; "but after the battle you will fill
+your paunch with the prince's ducats."
+
+"God has created the enemy, so that men of battle might have some one
+to plunder," said the Tartar, with seriousness.
+
+"But Boguslav's cavalry stands in front of you."
+
+"There are some hundreds of good horses, and yesterday a regiment of
+infantry came and intrenched itself."
+
+"But could they not be enticed to the field?"
+
+"They will not come out."
+
+"But turn them, leave them in the rear, and go to Yanov."
+
+"They occupy the road."
+
+"Then we must think of something!" Kmita began to stroke his forelock
+with his hand: "Have you tried to steal up to them? How far will they
+follow you out?"
+
+"A furlong, two,--not farther."
+
+"Then we must think of something!" repeated Kmita.
+
+But that night they thought of nothing. Next morning, however, Kmita
+went with the Tartars toward the camp lying between Suhovol and Yanov,
+and discovered that Akbah Ulan had exaggerated, saying that the
+infantry was intrenched on that side; for they had little ditches,
+nothing more. It was possible to make a protracted defence from them,
+especially against Tartars, who did not go readily to the attack of
+such places; but it was impossible for men in them to think of enduring
+any kind of siege.
+
+"If I had infantry," thought Kmita, "I would go into fire."
+
+But it was difficult even to dream of bringing infantry; for, first,
+Sapyeha himself had not very many; second, there was no time to bring
+them.
+
+Kmita approached so closely that Boguslav's infantry opened fire on
+him; but he did not care. He rode among the bullets and examined,
+looked around; and the Tartars, though less enduring of fire, had to
+keep pace with him. Then cavalry rushed out and undertook to flank him.
+He retreated about three thousand yards and turned again. But they had
+ridden back toward the trenches. In vain did the Tartars let off a
+cloud of arrows after them. Only one man fell from his horse, and that
+one his comrades saved, carried in.
+
+Kmita on returning, instead of riding straight to Suhovola, rushed
+toward the west and came to the Kamyonka.
+
+This swampy river had overflowed widely, for that year the springtime
+was wonderfully abundant in water. Kmita looked at the river, threw a
+number of broken branches into it so as to measure the speed of the
+current, and said to Ulan,--
+
+"We will go around their flank and strike them in the rear."
+
+"Horses cannot swim against the current."
+
+"It goes slowly. They will swim! The water is almost standing."
+
+"The horses will be chilled, and the men cannot endure it. It is cold
+yet."
+
+"Oh, the men will swim holding to the horses' tails! That is your
+Tartar way."
+
+"The men will grow stiff."
+
+"They will get warm under fire."
+
+"Kismet (fate)!"
+
+Before it had grown dark in the world, Kmita had ordered them to cut
+bunches of willows, dry reeds, and rushes, and tie them to the sides of
+the horses. When the first star appeared, he sent about eight hundred
+horses into the water, and they began to swim. He swam himself at the
+head of them; but soon he saw that they were advancing so slowly that
+in two days they would not swim past the trenches. Then he ordered them
+to swim to the other bank.
+
+That was a dangerous undertaking. The other bank was steep and swampy.
+The horses, though light, sank in it to their bellies. But Kmita's men
+pushed forward, though slowly and saving one another, while advancing a
+couple of furlongs.
+
+The stars indicated midnight. Then from the south came to them echoes
+of distant fighting.
+
+"The battle has begun!" shouted Kmita.
+
+"We shall drown!" answered Akbah Ulan.
+
+"After me!"
+
+The Tartars knew not what to do, when on a sudden they saw that Kmita's
+horse issued from the mud, evidently finding firm footing.
+
+In fact, a bench of sand had begun. On the top of it there was water to
+the horses' breasts, but under foot was solid ground. They went
+therefore more swiftly. On the left distant fires were gleaming.
+
+"Those are the trenches!" said Kmita, quietly. "Let us avoid them, go
+around!"
+
+After a while they had really passed the trenches. Then they turned to
+the left, and put their horses into the river again, so as to land
+beyond the trenches.
+
+More than a hundred horses were swamped at the shore; but almost all
+the men came out. Kmita ordered those who had lost their beasts to sit
+behind other horsemen, and they moved toward the trenches. First he
+left volunteers with the order not to disturb the trenches till he
+should have gone around them to the rear. When he was approaching he
+heard shots, at first few, then more frequent.
+
+"It is well!" said he; "Sapyeha is attacking!"
+
+And he moved on.
+
+In the darkness was visible only a multitude of heads jumping with the
+movement of the horses; sabres did not rattle, armor did not sound; the
+Tartars and volunteers knew how to move in silence, like wolves.
+
+From the side of Yanov the firing became more and more vigorous; it was
+evident that Sapyeha was moving along the whole line.
+
+But on the trenches toward which Kmita was advancing shouts were heard
+also. A number of piles of wood were burning near them, casting around
+a strong light. By this light Pan Andrei saw infantry firing rarely,
+more occupied in looking in front at the field, where cavalry was
+fighting with volunteers.
+
+They saw him too from the trenches, but instead of firing they greeted
+the advancing body with a loud shout. The soldiers thought that
+Boguslav had sent them reinforcements.
+
+But when barely a hundred yards separated the approaching body from the
+trenches, the infantry began to move about unquietly; an increasing
+number of soldiers, shading their eyes with their hands, were looking
+to see what kind of people were coming.
+
+When fifty yards distant a fearful howl tore the air, and Kmita's force
+rushed like a storm, took in the infantry, surrounded them like a ring,
+and that whole mass of men began to move convulsively. You would have
+said that a gigantic serpent was stifling a chosen victim.
+
+In this crowd piercing shouts were heard. "Allah!" "Herr Jesus!" "Mein
+Gott!"
+
+Behind the trenches new shouts went up; for the volunteers, though in
+weaker numbers, recognizing that Pan Babinich was in the trenches,
+pressed on the cavalry with fury. Meanwhile the sky, which had been
+cloudy for some time, as is common in spring, poured down a heavy,
+unexpected rain. The blazing fires were put out, and the battle went on
+in the darkness.
+
+But the battle did not last long. Attacked on a sudden, Boguslav's
+infantry went under the knife. The cavalry, in which were many Poles,
+laid down their arms. The foreigners, namely, one hundred dragoons,
+were cut to pieces.
+
+When the moon came out again from behind the clouds, it lighted only
+crowds of Tartars finishing the wounded and taking plunder.
+
+But neither did that last long. The piercing sound of a pipe was heard;
+Tartars and volunteers as one man sprang to their horses.
+
+"After me!" cried Kmita.
+
+And he led them like a whirlwind to Yanov.
+
+A quarter of an hour later the ill-fated place was set on fire at four
+corners, and in an hour one sea of flame was spread as widely as Yanov
+extended. Above the conflagration pillars of fiery sparks were flying
+toward the ruddy sky.
+
+Thus did Kmita let the hetman know that he had taken the rear of
+Boguslav's army.
+
+He himself like an executioner, red from the blood of men, marshalled
+his Tartars amid the fire, so as to lead them on farther.
+
+They were already in line and extending into column, when suddenly, on
+a field as bright as in day, from the fire, he saw before him a
+division of the elector's gigantic cavalry.
+
+A knight led them, distinguishable from afar, for he wore silver-plate
+armor, and sat on a white horse.
+
+"Boguslav!" bellowed Kmita, with an unearthly voice, and rushed forward
+with his whole Tartar column.
+
+They approached one another, like two waves driven by two winds. A
+considerable space divided them; the horses on both sides reached their
+greatest speed, and went with ears down like hounds, almost sweeping
+the earth with their bellies. On one side large men with shining
+breastplates, and sabres held erect in their right hands; on the other,
+a black swarm of Tartars.
+
+At last they struck in a long line on the clear field; but then
+something terrible took place. The Tartar swarm fell as grain bent by a
+whirlwind; the gigantic men rode over it and flew farther, as if the
+men and the horses had the power of thunderbolts and the wings of a
+storm.
+
+Some of the Tartars sprang up and began to pursue. It was possible to
+ride over the wild men, but impossible to kill them at once; so more
+and more of them hastened after the fleeing cavalry. Lariats began to
+whistle in the air.
+
+But at the head of the retreating cavalry the rider on the white horse
+ran ever in the first rank, and among the pursuers was not Kmita.
+
+Only in the gray of dawn did the Tartars begin to return, and almost
+every man had a horseman on his lariat. Soon they found Kmita, and
+carried him in unconsciousness to Pan Sapyeha.
+
+The hetman himself took a seat at Kmita's bedside. About midday Pan
+Andrei opened his eyes.
+
+"Where is Boguslav?" were his first words.
+
+"Cut to pieces. God gave him fortune at first; then he came out of the
+birch groves and in the open field fell on the infantry of Pan
+Oskyerko; there he lost men and victory. I do not know whether he led
+away even five hundred men, for your Tartars caught a good number of
+them."
+
+"But he himself?"
+
+"Escaped!"
+
+Kmita was silent awhile; then said;--
+
+"I cannot measure with him yet. He struck me with a double-handed sword
+on the head, and knocked me down with my horse. My morion was of trusty
+steel, and did not let the sword through; but I fainted."
+
+"You should hang up that morion in a church."
+
+"I will pursue him, even to the end of the world!" said Kmita.
+
+To this the hetman answered: "See what news I have received to-day
+after the battle!"
+
+Kmita read aloud the following words,--
+
+
+The King of Sweden has moved from Elblang; he is marching on Zamost,
+thence to Lvoff against Yan Kazimir. Come, your worthiness, with all
+your forces, to save king and country, for I cannot hold out alone.
+
+                                                 Charnyetski.
+
+
+A moment of silence.
+
+"Will you go with us, or will you go with the Tartars to Taurogi?"
+
+Kmita closed his eyes. He remembered the words of Father Kordetski, and
+what Volodyovski had told him of Pan Yan, and said,--
+
+"Let private affairs wait! I will meet the enemy at the side of the
+country!"
+
+The hetman pressed Pan Andrei's head. "You are a brother to me!" said
+he; "and because I am old, receive my blessing."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+At a time when all living men in the Commonwealth were mounting their
+horses Karl Gustav stayed continually in Prussia, busied in capturing
+the towns of that province and in negotiating with the elector.
+
+After an easy and unexpected conquest, the quick soldier soon saw that
+the Swedish lion had swallowed more than his stomach could carry. After
+the return of Yan Kazimir he lost hope of retaining the Commonwealth;
+but while making a mental abdication of the whole, he wished at least
+to retain the greater part of his conquest, and above all Royal
+Prussia,--a province fruitful, dotted with large towns, wealthy, and
+adjoining his own Pomerania. But as that province was first to defend
+itself, so did it continue faithful to its lord and the Commonwealth.
+The return of Yan Kazimir, and the war begun by the confederation of
+Tyshovtsi might revive the courage of Prussia, confirm it in loyalty,
+give it will for endurance; therefore Karl Gustav determined to crush
+the uprising, and to wipe out Kazimir's forces so as to take from
+Prussians the hope of resistance.
+
+He had to do this for the sake of the elector, who was ever ready to
+side with the stronger. The King of Sweden knew him thoroughly, and
+doubted not for a moment that if the fortune of Yan Kazimir should
+preponderate, the elector would be on his side again.
+
+When, therefore, the siege of Marienburg advanced slowly,--for the more
+it was attacked the more stubbornly did Pan Weiher defend it,--Karl
+Gustav marched to the Commonwealth, so as to reach Yan Kazimir again,
+even in the remotest corner of the land.
+
+And since with him deed followed decision as swiftly as thunder follows
+lightning, he raised his army disposed in towns; and before any one in
+the Commonwealth had looked around, before the news of his march had
+spread, he had passed Warsaw and had rushed into the greatest blaze of
+conflagration.
+
+Driven by anger, revenge, and bitterness, he moved on like a storm.
+Behind him ten thousand horse trampled the fields, which were still
+covered with snow; and taking the infantry from the garrisons, he went
+on, like a whirlwind, toward the far south of the Commonwealth.
+
+On the road he burned and pursued. He was not now that recent Karl
+Gustav, the kindly, affable, and joyous lord, clapping his hands at
+Polish cavalry, winking at feasts, and praising the soldiers. Now,
+wherever he showed himself the blood of peasants and nobles flowed in a
+torrent. On the road he annihilated "parties," hanged prisoners, spared
+no man.
+
+But as when, in the thick of the pine-woods, a mighty bear rushes
+forward with heavy body crushing branches and brush on the way, while
+wolves follow after, and not daring to block his path, pursue, press
+nearer and nearer behind, so did those "parties" pursuing the armies of
+Karl join in throngs denser and denser, and follow the Swedes as a
+shadow a man, and still more enduringly than a shadow, for they
+followed in the day and the night, in fair and foul weather; before him
+too bridges were ruined, provisions destroyed, so that he had to march
+as in a desert, without a place for his head or anything with which to
+give strength to his body when hungry.
+
+Karl Gustav noted quickly how terrible his task was. The war spread
+around him as widely as the sea spreads around a ship lost in the
+waters. Prussia was on fire; on fire was Great Poland, which had first
+accepted his sovereignty, and first wished to throw off the Swedish
+yoke; Little Poland was on fire, and so were Russia, Lithuania, and
+Jmud. In the castles and large towns the Swedes maintained themselves
+yet, as if on islands; but the villages, the forests, the fields, the
+rivers, were already in Polish hands. Not merely a single man, or small
+detachments, but a whole regiment might not leave the main Swedish army
+for two hours; for if it did the regiment vanished without tidings, and
+prisoners who fell into the hands of peasants died in terrible
+tortures.
+
+In vain had Karl Gustav given orders to proclaim in villages and towns
+that whoso of peasants should bring an armed noble, living or dead,
+would receive freedom forever and land as a reward; for peasants, as
+well as nobles and townsmen, marched off to the woods. Men from the
+mountains, men from deep forests, men from meadows and fields, hid in
+the woods, formed ambushes on the roads against the Swedes, fell upon
+the smaller garrisons, and cut scouting-parties to pieces. Flails,
+forks, and scythes, no less than the sabres of nobles, were streaming
+with Swedish blood.
+
+All the more did wrath rise in the heart of Karl, that a few months
+before he had gathered in that country so easily; hence he could hardly
+understand what had happened, whence these forces, whence that
+resistance, whence that awful war for life or death, the end of which
+he saw not and could not divine.
+
+Frequent councils were held in the Swedish camp. With the king marched
+his brother Adolph, prince of Bipont, who had command over the army;
+Robert Douglas; Henry Horn, relative of that Horn who had been slain by
+the scythe of a peasant at Chenstohova; Waldemar, Prince of Denmark,
+and that Miller who had left his military glory at the foot of Yasna
+Gora; Aschemberg, the ablest cavalry leader among the Swedes;
+Hammerskiold, who commanded the artillery; and the old robber Marshal
+Arwid Wittemberg, famed for rapacity, living on the last of his health,
+for he was eaten by the Gallic disease; Forgell, and many others, all
+leaders skilled in the capture of cities, and in the field yielding in
+genius to the king only.
+
+These men were terrified in their hearts lest the whole army with the
+king should perish through toil, lack of food, and the fury of the
+Poles. Old Wittemberg advised the king directly against the campaign:
+"How will you go, O King," said he, "to the Russian regions after an
+enemy who destroys everything on the way, but is unseen himself? What
+will you do if horses lack not only hay, but even straw from the roofs
+of cottages, and men fall from exhaustion? Where are the armies to come
+to our aid, where are the castles in which to draw breath and rest our
+weary limbs? My fame is not equal to yours; but were I Karl Gustav, I
+would not expose that glory acquired by so many victories to the fickle
+fortune of war."
+
+To which Karl Gustav answered: "And neither would I, were I
+Wittemberg."
+
+Then he mentioned Alexander of Macedon, with whom he liked to be
+compared, and marched forward, pursuing Charnyetski. Charnyetski, not
+having forces so great nor so well trained, retreated before him, but
+retreated like a wolf ever ready to turn on his enemy. Sometimes he
+went in advance of the Swedes, sometimes at their flanks, and sometimes
+in deep forests he let them go in advance; so that while they thought
+themselves the pursuers, he, in fact, was the hunter. He cut off
+the unwary; here and there he hunted down a whole party, destroyed
+foot-regiments marching slowly, attacked provision-trains. The Swedes
+never knew where he was. More than once in the darkness of night they
+began to fire from muskets and cannons into thickets, thinking that
+they had an enemy before them. They were mortally wearied; they marched
+in cold, in hunger, in affliction, and that _vir molestissimus_ (most
+harmful man) hung about them continually, as a hail-cloud hangs over a
+grain-field.
+
+At last they attacked him at Golamb, not far from the junction of the
+Vyepr and the Vistula. Some Polish squadrons being ready for battle
+charged the enemy, spreading disorder and dismay. In front sprang
+Volodyovski with his Lauda squadron, and bore down Waldemar, prince of
+Denmark; but the two Kavetskis, Samuel and Yan, urged from the hill the
+armored squadron against English mercenaries under Wilkinson, and
+devoured them in a moment, as a pike gulps a whiting; and Pan Malavski
+engaged so closely with the Prince of Bipont that men and horses were
+confounded like dust which two whirlwinds sweeping from opposite
+quarters bring together and turn into one circling column. In the
+twinkle of an eye the Swedes were pushed to the Vistula, seeing which
+Douglas hastened to the rescue with chosen horsemen. But even these
+reinforcements could not check the onset; the Swedes began to spring
+from the high bank to the ice, falling dead so thickly that they lay
+black on the snow-field, like letters on white paper. Waldemar, Prince
+of Denmark, fell; Wilkinson fell; and the Prince of Bipont, thrown from
+his horse, broke his leg. But of Poles both Kavetskis fell; killed also
+were Malavski, Rudavski, Rogovski, Tyminski, Hoinski, and Porvanyetski.
+Volodyovski alone, though he dived among the Swedish ranks like a
+seamew in water, came out without having suffered the slightest wound.
+
+Now Karl Gustav himself came up with his main force and with artillery.
+Straightway the form of the battle changed. Charnyetski's other
+regiments, undisciplined and untrained, could not take position in
+season; some had not their horses in readiness, others had been in
+distant villages, and in spite of orders to be always ready, were
+taking their leisure in cottages. When the enemy pressed suddenly on
+these men, they scattered quickly and began to retreat to the Vyepr.
+Therefore Charnyetski gave orders to sound the retreat so as to spare
+those regiments that had opened the battle. Some of the fleeing went
+beyond the Vistula; others to Konskovoli, leaving the field and the
+glory of the victory to Karl; for specially those who had crossed the
+Vyepr were long pursued by the squadrons of Zbrojek and Kalinski, who
+remained yet with the Swedes.
+
+There was delight beyond measure in the Swedish camp. No great trophies
+fell to the king, it is true,--sacks of oats, and a few empty wagons;
+but it was not at that time a question of plunder for Karl. He
+comforted himself with this,--that victory followed his steps as
+before; that barely had he shown himself when he inflicted defeat on
+that very Charnyetski on whom the highest hopes of Yan Kazimir and the
+Commonwealth were founded. He could trust that the news would run
+through the whole country; that every mouth would repeat, "Charnyetski
+is crushed;" that the timid would exaggerate the proportions of the
+defeat, and thus weaken hearts and take courage from those who had
+grasped their weapons at the call of the confederation of Tyshovtsi.
+
+So when they brought in and placed at his feet those bags of oats, and
+with them the bodies of Wilkinson and Prince Waldemar, he turned to his
+fretful generals and said,--
+
+"Unwrinkle your foreheads, gentlemen, for this is the greatest victory
+which I have had for a year, and may end the whole war."
+
+"Your Royal Grace," answered Wittemberg, who, weaker than usual, saw
+things in a gloomier light, "let us thank God even for this,--that we
+shall have a farther march in peace, though Charnyetski's troops
+scatter quickly and rally easily."
+
+"Marshal," answered the king, "I do not think you a worse leader than
+Charnyetski; but if I had beaten you in this fashion, I think you would
+not be able to assemble your troops in two months."
+
+Wittemberg only bowed in silence, and Karl spoke on: "Yes, we shall
+have a quiet march, for Charnyetski alone could really hamper it. If
+Charnyetski's troops are not before us, there is no hindrance."
+
+The generals rejoiced at these words. Intoxicated with victory, the
+troops marched past the king with shouts and with songs. Charnyetski
+ceased to threaten them like a cloud. Charnyetski's troops were
+scattered; he had ceased to exist. In view of this thought their past
+sufferings were forgotten and their future toils were sweet. The king's
+words, heard by many officers, were borne through the camp; and all
+believed that the victory had uncommon significance, that the dragon of
+war was slain once more, and that only days of revenge and dominion
+would come.
+
+The king gave the army some hours of repose; meanwhile from Kozyenitsi
+came trains with provisions. The troops were disposed in Golamb, in
+Krovyeniki, and in Jyrzynie. The cavalry burned some deserted houses,
+hanged a few peasants seized with arms in their hands, and a few
+camp-servants mistaken for peasants; then there was a feast in the
+Swedish camp, after which the soldiers slept a sound sleep, since for a
+long time it was the first quiet one.
+
+Next day they woke in briskness, and the first words which came to the
+mouths of all were: "There is no Charnyetski!"
+
+One repeated this to another, as if to give mutual assurance of the
+good news. The march began joyously. The day was dry, cold, clear. The
+hair of the horses and their nostrils were covered with frost. The cold
+wind froze soft places on the Lyubelsk highroad, and made marching
+easy. The troops stretched out in a line almost five miles long, which
+they had never done previously. Two dragoon regiments, under command of
+Dubois, a Frenchman, went through Markushev and Grabov, five miles from
+the main force. Had they marched thus three days before they would have
+gone to sure death, but now fear and the glory of victory went before
+them.
+
+"Charnyetski is gone," repeated the officers and soldiers to one
+another.
+
+In fact, the march was made in quiet. From the forest depths came no
+shouts; from thickets fell no darts, hurled by invisible hands.
+
+Toward evening Karl Gustav arrived at Grabov, joyous and in good humor.
+He was just preparing for sleep when Aschemberg announced through the
+officer of the day that he wished greatly to see the king.
+
+After a while he entered the royal quarters, not alone, but with a
+captain of dragoons. The king, who had a quick eye and a memory so
+enormous that he remembered nearly every soldier's name, recognized the
+captain at once.
+
+"What is the news, Freed?" asked he. "Has Dubois returned?"
+
+"Dubois is killed."
+
+The king was confused; only now did he notice that the captain looked
+as if he had been taken from the grave; and his clothes were torn.
+
+"But the dragoons?" inquired he, "those two regiments?"
+
+"All cut to pieces. I alone was let off alive."
+
+The dark face of the king became still darker; with his hands he placed
+his locks behind his ears.
+
+"Who did this?"
+
+"Charnyetski."
+
+Karl Gustav was silent, and looked with amazement at Aschemberg; but he
+only nodded as if wishing to repeat: "Charnyetski, Charnyetski,
+Charnyetski!"
+
+"All this is incredible," said the king, after a while. "Have you seen
+him with your own eyes?"
+
+"As I see your Royal Grace. He commanded me to bow to you, and to
+declare that now he will recross the Vistula, but will soon be on our
+track again. I know not whether he told the truth."
+
+"Well," said the king, "had he many men with him?"
+
+"I could not estimate exactly, but I saw about four thousand, and
+beyond the forest was cavalry of some kind. We were surrounded near
+Krasichyn, to which Colonel Dubois went purposely from the highroad,
+for he was told that there were some men there. Now, I think that
+Charnyetski sent an informant to lead us into ambush, since no one save
+me came out alive. The peasants killed the wounded. I escaped by a
+miracle."
+
+"That man must have made a compact with hell," said the king, putting
+his hand to his forehead; "for to rally troops after such a defeat, and
+be on our neck again, is not human power."
+
+"It has happened as Marshal Wittemberg foresaw," put in Aschemberg.
+
+"You all know how to foresee," burst out the king, "but how to advise
+you do not know."
+
+Aschemberg grew pale and was silent. Karl Gustav, when joyous, seemed
+goodness itself; but when once he frowned he roused indescribable fear
+in those nearest him, and birds do not hide so before an eagle as the
+oldest and most meritorious generals hid before him. But this time he
+moderated quickly, and asked Captain Freed again,--
+
+"Has Charnyetski good troops?"
+
+"I saw some unrivalled squadrons, such cavalry as the Poles have."
+
+"They are the same that attacked with such fury in Golamb; they must be
+old regiments. But Charnyetski himself,--was he cheerful, confident?"
+
+"He was as confident as if he had beaten us at Golamb. Now his heart
+must rise the more, for they have forgotten Golembo and boast of
+Krasichyn. Your Royal Grace, what Charnyetski told me to repeat I have
+repeated; but when I was on the point of departing some one of the high
+officers approached me, an old man, and told me that he was the person
+who had stretched out Gustavus Adolphus in a hand-to-hand conflict, and
+he poured much abuse on your Royal Grace; others supported him. So do
+they boast. I left amid insults and abuse."
+
+"Never mind," said Karl Gustav, "Charnyetski is not broken, and has
+rallied his army; that is the main point. All the more speedily must we
+march so as to reach the Polish Darius at the earliest. You are free to
+go, gentlemen. Announce to the army that those regiments perished at
+the hands of peasants in unfrozen morasses. We advance!"
+
+The officers went out; Karl Gustav remained alone. For something like
+an hour he was in gloomy thought. Was the victory at Golamb to bring no
+fruit, no change to the position, but to rouse still greater rage in
+that entire country?
+
+Karl, in presence of the army and of his generals, always showed
+confidence and faith in himself; but when he was alone he began to
+think of that war,--how easy it had been at first, and then increased
+always in difficulty. More than once doubt embraced him. All the events
+seemed to him in some fashion marvellous. Often he could see no
+outcome, could not divine the end. At times it seemed to him that he
+was like a man who, going from the shore of the sea into the water,
+feels at every step that he is going deeper and deeper and soon will
+lose the ground under his feet.
+
+But he believed in his star. And now he went to the window to look at
+the chosen star,--that one which in the Wain or Great Bear occupies the
+highest place and shines brightest. The sky was clear, and therefore at
+that moment the star shone brightly, twinkled blue and red; but from
+afar, lower down on the dark blue of the sky, a lone cloud was
+blackening serpent-shaped, from which extended as it were arms, as it
+were branches, as it were the feelers of a monster of the sea, and it
+seemed to approach the king's star continually.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+Next morning the king marched farther and reached Lublin. There he
+received information that Sapyeha had repulsed Boguslav's invasion, and
+was advancing with a considerable army; he left Lublin the same day,
+merely strengthening the garrison of that place.
+
+The next object of his expedition was Zamost; for if he could occupy
+that strong fortress he would acquire a fixed base for further war, and
+such a notable preponderance that he might look for a successful end
+with all hope. There were various opinions touching Zamost. Those Poles
+still remaining with Karl contended that it was the strongest fortress
+in the Commonwealth, and brought as proof that it had withstood all the
+forces of Hmelnitski.
+
+But since Karl saw that the Poles were in no wise skilled in
+fortification, and considered places strong which in other lands would
+scarcely be held in the third rank; since he knew also that in Poland
+no fortress was properly mounted,--that is, there were neither walls
+kept as they should be, not earthworks, nor suitable arms,--he felt
+well touching Zamost. He counted also on the spell of his name, on the
+fame of an invincible leader, and finally on treaties. With treaties,
+which every magnate in the Commonwealth was authorized to make, or at
+least permitted himself to make, Karl had so far effected more than
+with arms. As an adroit man, and one wishing to know with whom he had
+to deal, he collected carefully all information touching the owner of
+Zamost. He inquired about his ways, his inclinations, his wit and
+fancy.
+
+Yan Sapyeha, who at that time by his treason still spotted the name, to
+the great affliction of Sapyeha the hetman, gave the fullest
+explanations to the king concerning Zamoyski. They spent whole hours in
+council. But Yan Sapyeha did not consider that it would be easy for the
+king to captivate the master of Zamost.
+
+"He cannot be tempted with money," said Yan, "for he is terribly rich.
+He cares not for dignities, and never wished them, even when they
+sought him themselves. As to titles, I have heard him at the court
+reprimand Des Noyers, the queen's secretary, because in addressing him
+he said, 'Mon prince.' 'I am not a prince,' answered he, 'but I have
+had archdukes as prisoners in my Zamost.' The truth is, however, that
+not he had them, but his grandfather, who among our people is surnamed
+the Great."
+
+"If he will open the gates of Zamost, I will offer him something which
+no Polish king could offer."
+
+It did not become Yan Sapyeha to ask what that might be; he merely
+looked with curiosity at Karl Gustav. But the king understood the look,
+and answered, gathering, as was his wont, his hair behind his ears,--
+
+"I will offer him the province of Lyubelsk as an independent
+principality; a crown will tempt him. No one of you could resist such a
+temptation, not even the present voevoda of Vilna."
+
+"Endless is the bounty of your Royal Grace," replied Sapyeha, not
+without a certain irony in his voice.
+
+But Karl answered with a cynicism peculiar to himself: "I give it, for
+it is not mine."
+
+Sapyeha shook his head: "He is an unmarried man and has no sons. A
+crown is dear to him who can leave it to his posterity."
+
+"What means do you advise me to take?"
+
+"I think that flattery would effect most. The man is not too
+quick-witted, and may be easily over-reached. It is necessary to
+represent that on him alone depends the pacification of the
+Commonwealth; it is necessary to tell him that he alone may save it
+from war, from all defeats and future misfortunes; and that especially
+by opening the gates. If the fish will swallow that little hook, we
+shall be in Zamost; otherwise not."
+
+"Cannon remain as the ultimate argument."
+
+"H'm! To that argument there is something in Zamost with which to give
+answer. There is no lack of heavy guns there; we have none, and when
+thaws come it will be impossible to bring them."
+
+"I have heard that the infantry in the fortress is good; but there is a
+lack of cavalry."
+
+"Cavalry are needed only in the open field, and besides, since
+Charnyetski's army, as is shown, is not crushed, he can throw in one or
+two squadrons for the use of the fortress."
+
+"You see nothing save difficulties."
+
+"But I trust ever in the lucky star of your Royal Grace."
+
+Yan Sapyeha was right in foreseeing that Charnyetski would furnish
+Zamost with cavalry needful for scouting and seizing informants. In
+fact, Zamoyski had enough of his own, and needed no assistance
+whatever; but Charnyetski sent the two squadrons which had suffered
+most at Golamb--that is, the Shemberk and Lauda--to the fortress to
+rest, recruit themselves and change their horses, which were fearfully
+cut up. Sobiepan received them hospitably, and when he learned what
+famous soldiers were in them he exalted these men to the skies, covered
+them with gifts, and seated them every day at his table.
+
+But who shall describe the joy and emotion of Princess Griselda at
+sight of Pan Yan and Pan Michael, the most valiant colonels of her
+great husband? Both fell at her feet shedding warm tears at sight of
+the beloved lady; and she could not restrain her weeping. How many
+reminiscences of those old Lubni days were connected with them; when
+her husband, the glory and love of the people, full of the strength of
+life, ruled with power a wild region, rousing terror amid barbarism
+with one frown of his brow, like Jove. Such were those times not long
+past; but where are they now? To-day the lord is in his grave,
+barbarians have taken the land, and she, the widow, sits on the ashes
+of happiness, of greatness, living only with her sorrow and with
+prayer.
+
+Still in those reminiscences sweetness was so mingled with bitterness
+that the thoughts of those three flew gladly to times that were gone.
+They spoke then of their past lives, of those places which their eyes
+were never to see, of the past wars, finally of the present times of
+defeat and God's anger.
+
+"If our prince were alive," said Pan Yan, "there would be another
+career for the Commonwealth. The Cossacks would be rubbed out, the
+Trans-Dnieper would be with the Commonwealth, and the Swede would find
+his conqueror. God has ordained as He willed of purpose to punish us
+for sins."
+
+"Would that God might raise up a defender in Pan Charnyetski!" said
+Princess Griselda.
+
+"He will!" cried Pan Michael. "As our prince was a head above other
+lords, so Charnyetski is not at all like other leaders. I know the two
+hetmans of the kingdom, and Sapyeha of Lithuania. They are great
+soldiers; but there is something uncommon in Charnyetski; you would
+say, he is an eagle, not a man. Though kindly, still all fear him; even
+Pan Zagloba in his presence forgets his jokes frequently. And how he
+leads his troops and moves them, passes imagination. It cannot be
+otherwise than that a great warrior will rise in the Commonwealth."
+
+"My husband, who knew Charnyetski as a colonel, prophesied greatness
+for him," said the princess.
+
+"It was said indeed that he was to seek a wife in our court," put in
+Pan Michael.
+
+"I do not remember that there was talk about that," answered the
+princess.
+
+In truth she could not remember, for there had never been anything of
+the kind; but Pan Michael, cunning at times, invented this, wishing to
+turn the conversation to her ladies and learn something of Anusia; for
+to ask directly he considered improper, and in view of the majesty of
+the princess, too confidential. But the stratagem failed. The princess
+turned her mind again to her husband and the Cossack wars; then the
+little knight thought: "Anusia has not been here, perhaps, for God
+knows how many years." And he asked no more about her. He might have
+asked the officers, but his thoughts and occupations were elsewhere.
+Every day scouts gave notice that the Swedes were nearer; hence
+preparations were made for defence. Pan Yan and Pan Michael received
+places on the walls, as officers knowing the Swedes and warfare against
+them. Zagloba roused courage in the men, and told tales of the enemy to
+those who had no knowledge of them yet; and among warriors in the
+fortress there were many such, for so far the Swedes had not come to
+Zamost.
+
+Zagloba saw through Pan Zamoyski at once; the latter conceived an
+immense love for the bulky noble, and turned to him on all questions,
+especially since he heard from Princess Griselda how Prince Yeremi had
+venerated Zagloba and called him _vir incomparabilis_ (the incomparable
+man). Every day then at table all kept their ears open; and Zagloba
+discoursed of ancient and modern times, told of the wars with the
+Cossacks, of the treason of Radzivill, and how he himself had brought
+Pan Sapyeha into prominence among men.
+
+"I advised him," said he, "to carry hempseed in his pocket, and use a
+little now and then. He has grown so accustomed to this that he takes a
+grain every little while, puts it in his mouth, bites it, breaks it,
+eats it, spits out the husk. At night when he wakes he does the same.
+His wit is so sharp now from hempseed that his greatest intimates do
+not recognize him."
+
+"How is that?" asked Zamoyski.
+
+"There is an oil in hempseed through which the man who eats it
+increases in wit."
+
+"God bless you," said one of the colonels; "but oil goes to the
+stomach, not to the head."
+
+"Oh, there is a method in things!" answered Zagloba. "It is needful in
+this case to drink as much wine as possible; oil, being the lighter, is
+always on top; wine, which goes to the head of itself, carries with it
+every noble substance. I have this secret from Lupul the Hospodar,
+after whom, as is known to you, gentlemen, the Wallachians wished to
+create me hospodar; but the Sultan, whose wish is that the hospodar
+should not have posterity, placed before me conditions to which I could
+not agree."
+
+"You must use a power of hempseed yourself," said Sobiepan.
+
+"I do not need it at all, your worthiness; but from my whole heart I
+advise you to take it."
+
+Hearing these bold words, some were frightened lest the starosta might
+take them to heart; but whether he failed to notice them or did not
+wish to do so, it is enough that he merely laughed and asked,--
+
+"But would not sunflower seeds take the place of hemp?"
+
+"They might," answered Zagloba; "but since sunflower oil is heavier, it
+would be necessary to drink stronger wine than that which we are
+drinking at present."
+
+The starosta understood the hint, was amused, and gave immediate order
+to bring the best wines. Then all rejoiced in their hearts, and the
+rejoicing became universal. They drank and gave vivats to the health of
+the king, the host, and Pan Charnyetski. Zagloba fell into good humor
+and let no one speak. He described at great length the affair at
+Golamb, in which he had really fought well, for, serving in the Lauda
+squadron, he could not do otherwise. But because he had learned from
+Swedish prisoners taken from the regiments of Dubois of the death of
+Prince Waldemar, Zagloba took responsibility for that death on himself.
+
+"The battle," said he, "would have gone altogether differently were it
+not that the day before I went to Baranov to the canon of that place,
+and Charnyetski, not knowing where I was, could not advise with me.
+Maybe the Swedes too had heard of that canon, for he has splendid mead,
+and they went at once to Golamb. When I returned it was too late; the
+king had attacked, and it was necessary to strike at once. We went
+straight into the fire; but what is to be done when the general militia
+choose to show their contempt for the enemy by turning their backs? I
+don't know how Charnyetski will manage at present without me."
+
+"He will manage, have no fear on that point," said Volodyovski.
+
+"I know why. The King of Sweden chooses to pursue me to Zamost rather
+than seek Charnyetski beyond the Vistula. I do not deny that
+Charnyetski is a good soldier; but when he begins to twist his beard
+and look with his wildcat glance, it seems to an officer of the
+lightest squadron that he is a dragoon. He pays no attention to a man's
+office; and this you yourselves saw when he gave orders to drag over
+the square with horses an honorable man, Pan Jyrski, only because he
+did not reach with his detachment the place to which he was ordered.
+With a noble, gracious gentlemen, it is necessary to act like a father,
+not like a dragoon. Say to him, 'Lord brother,' be kind, rouse his
+feelings,--he will call to mind the country and glory, will go farther
+for you than a dragoon who serves for a salary."
+
+"A noble is a noble, and war is war," remarked Zamoyski. "You have
+brought that out in a very masterly manner," answered Zagloba.
+
+"Pan Charnyetski will turn the plans of Karl into folly," said
+Volodyovski. "I have been in more than one war, and I can speak on this
+point."
+
+"First, we will make a fool of him at Zamost," said Sobiepan, pouting
+his lips, puffing, and showing great spirit, staring, and putting his
+hands on his hips. "Bah! Tfu! What do I care? When I invite a man I
+open the door to him. Well!"
+
+Here Zamoyski began to puff still more mightily, to strike the table
+with his knees, bend forward, shake his head, look stern, flash his
+eyes, and speak, as was his habit, with a certain coarse carelessness.
+
+"What do I care? He is lord in Sweden; but Zamoyski is lord for himself
+in Zamost. _Eques polonus sum_ (I am a Polish nobleman), nothing more.
+But I am in my own house; I am Zamoyski, and he is King of Sweden; but
+Maximilian was Austrian, was he not? Is he coming? Let him come. We
+shall see! Sweden is small for him, but Zamost is enough for me. I will
+not yield it."
+
+"It is a delight, gracious gentlemen, to hear not only such eloquence,
+but such honest sentiments," cried Zagloba.
+
+"Zamoyski is Zamoyski!" continued Pan Sobiepan, delighted with the
+praise. "We have not bowed down, and we will not. I will not give up
+Zamost, and that is the end of it."
+
+"To the health of the host!" thundered the officers.
+
+"Vivat! vivat!"
+
+"Pan Zagloba," cried Zamoyski, "I will not let the King of Sweden into
+Zamost, and I will not let you out."
+
+"I thank you for the favor; but, your worthiness, do not do that, for
+as much as you torment Karl with the first decision, so much will you
+delight him with the second."
+
+"Give me your word that you will come to me after the war is over."
+
+"I give it."
+
+Long yet did they feast, then sleep began to overcome the knights;
+therefore they went to rest, especially as sleepless nights were soon
+to begin for them, since the Swedes were already near, and the advance
+guards were looked for at any hour.
+
+"So in truth he will not give up Zamost," said Zagloba, returning to
+his quarters with Pan Yan and Volodyovski. "Have you seen how we have
+fallen in love with each other? It will be pleasant here in Zamost
+for me and you. The host and I have become so attached to each other
+that no cabinet-maker could join inlaid work better. He is a good
+fellow--h'm! If he were my knife and I carried him at my belt, I would
+whet him on a stone pretty often, for he is a trifle dull. But he is a
+good man, and he will not betray like those bull-drivers of Birji. Have
+you noticed how the magnates cling to old Zagloba? I cannot keep them
+off. I'm scarcely away from Sapyeha when there is another at hand. But
+I will tune this one as a bass-viol, and play such an aria on him for
+the Swedes that they will dance to death at Zamost. I will wind him up
+like a Dantzig clock with chimes."
+
+Noise coming from the town interrupted further conversation. After a
+time an officer whom they knew passed quickly near them.
+
+"Stop!" cried Volodyovski; "what is the matter?"
+
+"There is a fire to be seen from the walls. Shchebjeshyn is burning!
+The Swedes are there!"
+
+"Let us go on the walls," said Pan Yan.
+
+"Go; but I will sleep, since I need my strength for to-morrow,"
+answered Zagloba.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+That night Volodyovski went on a scouting expedition, and about morning
+returned with a number of informants. These men asserted that the King
+of Sweden was at Shchebjeshyn in person, and would soon be at Zamost.
+
+Zamoyski was rejoiced at the news, for he hurried around greatly, and
+had a genuine desire to try his walls and guns on the Swedes. He
+considered, and very justly, that even if he had to yield in the end he
+would detain the power of Sweden for whole months; and during that time
+Yan Kazimir would collect troops, bring the entire Tartar force to his
+aid, and organize in the whole country a powerful and victorious
+resistance.
+
+"Since the opportunity is given me," said he, with great spirit, at the
+military council, "to render the country and the king notable service,
+I declare to you, gentlemen, that I will blow myself into the air
+before a Swedish foot shall stand here. They want to take Zamoyski by
+force. Let them take him! We shall see who is better. You, gentlemen,
+will, I trust, aid me most heartily."
+
+"We are ready to perish with your grace," said the officers, in chorus.
+
+"If they will only besiege us," said Zagloba, "I will lead the first
+sortie."
+
+"I will follow, Uncle!" cried Roh Kovalski; "I will spring at the king
+himself!"
+
+"Now to the walls!" commanded Zamoyski.
+
+All went out. The walls were ornamented with soldiers as with flowers.
+Regiments of infantry, so splendid that they were unequalled in the
+whole Commonwealth, stood in readiness, one at the side of the other,
+with musket in hand, and eyes turned to the field. Not many foreigners
+served in these regiments, merely a few Prussians and French; they were
+mainly peasants from Zamoyski's inherited lands. Sturdy, well-grown
+men, who, wearing colored jackets and trained in foreign fashion,
+fought as well as the best Cromwellians of England. They were specially
+powerful when after firing it came to rush on the enemy in hand-to-hand
+conflict. And now, remembering their former triumphs over Hmelnitski,
+they were looking for the Swedes with impatience. At the cannons, which
+stretched out through the embrasures their long necks to the fields as
+if in curiosity, served mainly Flemings, the first of gunners. Outside
+the fortress, beyond the moat, were squadrons of light cavalry, safe
+themselves, for they were under cover of cannon, certain of refuge, and
+able at any moment to spring out whithersoever it might be needed.
+
+Zamoyski, wearing inlaid armor and carrying a gilded baton in his hand,
+rode around the walls, and inquired every moment,--
+
+"Well, what--not in sight yet?" And he muttered oaths when he received
+negative answers on all sides. After a while he went to another side,
+and again he asked,--
+
+"Well, what--not in sight yet?"
+
+It was difficult to see the Swedes, for there was a mist in the air;
+and only about ten o'clock in the forenoon did it begin to disappear.
+The heaven shining blue above the horizon became clear, and immediately
+on the western side of the walls they began to cry,--
+
+"They are coming, they are coming, they are coming!"
+
+Zamoyski, with three adjutants and Zagloba, entered quickly an angle of
+the walls from which there was a distant view, and the four men began
+to look through field-glasses. The mist was lying a little on the
+ground yet, and the Swedish hosts, marching from Vyelanchy, seemed to
+be wading to the knees in that mist, as if they were coming out of wide
+waters. The nearer regiments had become very distinct, so that the
+naked eye could distinguish the infantry; they seemed like clouds of
+dark dust rolling on toward the town. Gradually more regiments,
+artillery, and cavalry appeared.
+
+The sight was beautiful. From each quadrangle of infantry rose an
+admirably regular quadrangle of spears; between them waved banners of
+various colors, but mostly blue with white crosses, and blue with
+golden lions. They came very near. On the walls there was silence;
+therefore the breath of the air brought from the advancing army the
+squeaking of wheels, the clatter of armor, the tramp of horses, and the
+dull sound of human voices. When they had come within twice the
+distance of a shot from a culverin, they began to dispose themselves
+before the fortress. Some quadrangles of infantry broke ranks; others
+prepared to pitch tents and dig trenches.
+
+"They are here!" said Zamoyski.
+
+"They are the dog-brothers!" answered Zagloba. "They could be counted,
+man for man, on the fingers. Persons of my long experience, however, do
+not need to count, but simply to cast an eye on them. There are ten
+thousand cavalry, and eight thousand infantry with artillery. If I am
+mistaken in one common soldier or one horse, I am ready to redeem the
+mistake with my whole fortune."
+
+"Is it possible to estimate in that way?"
+
+"Ten thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry. I have hope in God
+that they will go away in much smaller numbers; only let me lead one
+sortie."
+
+"Do you hear? They are playing an aria."
+
+In fact, trumpeters and drummers stepped out before the regiments, and
+military music began. At the sound of it the more distant regiments
+approached, and encompassed the town from a distance. At last from the
+dense throngs a few horsemen rode forth. When half-way, they put white
+kerchiefs on their swords, and began to wave them.
+
+"An embassy!" cried Zagloba; "I saw how the scoundrels came to Kyedani
+with the same boldness, and it is known what came of that."
+
+"Zamost is not Kyedani, and I am not the voevoda of Vilna," answered
+Zamoyski.
+
+Meanwhile the horsemen were approaching the gate. After a short time an
+officer of the day hurried to Zamoyski with a report that Pan Yan
+Sapyeha desired, in the name of the King of Sweden, to see him and
+speak with him.
+
+Zamoyski put his hands on his hips at once, began to step from one foot
+to the other, to puff, to pout, and said at last, with great
+animation,--
+
+"Tell Pan Sapyeha that Zamoyski does not speak with traitors. If the
+King of Sweden wishes to speak with me, let him send me a Swede by
+race, not a Pole,--for Poles who serve the Swedes may go as embassadors
+to my dogs; I have the same regard for both."
+
+"As God is dear to me, that is an answer!" cried Zagloba, with
+unfeigned enthusiasm.
+
+"But devil take them!" said the starosta, roused by his own words and
+by praise. "Well, shall I stand on ceremony with them?"
+
+"Permit me, your worthiness, to take him that answer," said Zagloba.
+And without waiting, he hastened away with the officer, went to Yan
+Sapyeha, and, apparently, not only repeated the starosta's words, but
+added something very bad from himself; for Sapyeha turned from the town
+as if a thunderbolt had burst in front of his horse, and rode away with
+his cap thrust over his ears.
+
+From the walls and from the squadrons of the cavalry which were
+standing before the gate they began to hoot at the men riding off,--
+
+"To the kennel with traitors, the betrayers! Jew servants! Huz, huz!"
+
+Sapyeha stood before the king, pale, with compressed lips. The king too
+was confused, for Zamost had deceived his hopes, in spite of what had
+been said, he expected to find a town of such power of resistance as
+Cracow, Poznan, and other places, so many of which he had captured;
+meanwhile he found a fortress powerful, calling to mind those of
+Denmark and the Netherlands, which he could not even think of taking
+without guns of heavy calibre.
+
+"What is the result?" asked the king, when he saw Sapyeha.
+
+"Nothing! Zamoyski will not speak with Poles who serve your Royal
+Grace. He sent out his jester, who reviled me and your Royal Grace so
+shamefully that it is not proper to repeat what he said."
+
+"It is all one to me with whom he wants to speak, if he will only
+speak. In default of other arguments, I have iron arguments; but
+meanwhile I will send Forgell."
+
+Half an hour later Forgell, with a purely Swedish suite, announced
+himself at the gate. The drawbridge was let down slowly over the moat,
+and the general entered the fortress amid silence and seriousness.
+Neither the eyes of the envoy nor those of any man in his suite were
+bound; evidently Zamoyski wished him to see everything, and be able to
+report to the king touching everything. The master of Zamost received
+Forgell with as much splendor as an independent prince would have done,
+and arranged all, in truth, admirably, for Swedish lords had not one
+twelfth as much wealth as the Poles had; and Zamoyski among Poles was
+well-nigh the most powerful. The clever Swede began at once to treat
+him as if the king had sent the embassy to a monarch equal to himself;
+to begin with, he called him "Princeps," and continued to address him
+thus, though Pan Sobiepan interrupted him promptly in the beginning,--
+
+"Not princeps, _eques polonus_ (a Polish nobleman), but for that very
+reason the equal of princes."
+
+"Your princely grace," said Forgell, not permitting himself to be
+diverted, "the Most Serene King of Sweden and Lord," here he enumerated
+his titles, "has not come here as an enemy in any sense; but, speaking
+simply, has come on a visit, and through me announces himself, having,
+as I believe, a well-founded hope that your princely grace will desire
+to open your gates to him and his army."
+
+"It is not a custom with us," answered Zamoyski, "to refuse hospitality
+to any man, even should he come uninvited. There will always be a place
+at my table for a guest; but for such a worthy person as the Swedish
+monarch the first place. Inform then the Most Serene King of Sweden
+that I invite him, and all the more gladly since the Most Serene
+Carolus Gustavus is lord in Sweden, as I am in Zamost. But as your
+worthiness has seen, there is no lack of servants in my house;
+therefore his Swedish Serenity need not bring his servants with him.
+Should he bring them I might think that he counts me a poor man, and
+wishes to show me contempt."
+
+"Well done!" whispered Zagloba, standing behind the shoulders of Pan
+Sobiepan.
+
+When Zamoyski had finished his speech he began to pout his lips, to
+puff and repeat,--
+
+"Ah, here it is, this is the position!"
+
+Forgell bit his mustache, was silent awhile, and said,--
+
+"It would be the greatest proof of distrust toward the king if your
+princely grace were not pleased to admit his garrison to the fortress.
+I am the king's confidant. I know his innermost thoughts, and besides
+this I have the order to announce to your worthiness, and to give
+assurance by word in the name of the king, that he does not think of
+occupying the possessions of Zamost or this fortress permanently. But
+since war has broken out anew in this unhappy land, since rebellion has
+raised its head, and Yan Kazimir, unmindful of the miseries which may
+fall on the Commonwealth, and seeking only his own fortune, has
+returned within the boundaries, and, together with pagans, comes forth
+against our Christian troops, the invincible king, my lord, has
+determined to pursue him, even to the wild steppes of the Tartars and
+the Turks, with the sole purpose of restoring peace to the country, the
+reign of justice, prosperity, and freedom to the inhabitants of this
+illustrious Commonwealth."
+
+Zamoyski struck his knee with his hand without saying a word; but
+Zagloba whispered,--
+
+"The Devil has dressed himself in vestments, and is ringing for Mass
+with his tail."
+
+"Many benefits have accrued to this land already from the protection of
+the king," continued Forgell; "but thinking in his fatherly heart that
+he has not done enough, he has left his Prussian province again to go
+once more to the rescue of the Commonwealth, which depends on finishing
+Yan Kazimir. But that this new war should have a speedy and victorious
+conclusion, it is needful that the king occupy for a time this
+fortress. It is to be for his troops a point from which pursuit
+may begin against rebels. But hearing that he who is the lord of
+Zamost surpasses all, not only in wealth, antiquity of stock, wit,
+high-mindedness, but also in love for the country, the king, my master,
+said at once: 'He will understand me, he will be able to appreciate my
+intentions respecting this country, he will not deceive my confidence,
+he will surpass my hopes, he will be the first to put his hand to the
+prosperity and peace of this country.' This is the truth! So on you
+depends the future fate of this country. You may save it and become the
+father of it; therefore I have no doubt of what you will do. Whoever
+inherits from his ancestors such fame should not avoid an opportunity
+to increase that fame and make it immortal. In truth, you will do more
+good by opening the gates of this fortress than if you had added a
+whole province to the Commonwealth. The king is confident that your
+uncommon wisdom, together with your heart, will incline you to this;
+therefore he will not command, he prefers to request, he throws aside
+threats, he offers friendship; not as a ruler with a subject, but as
+powerful with powerful does he wish to deal."
+
+Here General Forgell bowed before Zamoyski with as much respect as
+before an independent monarch. In the hall it grew silent. All eyes
+were fixed on Zamoyski. He began to twist, according to his custom, in
+his gilded armchair, to pout his lips, and exhibit stern resolve; at
+last he thrust out his elbows, placed his palms on his knees, and
+shaking his head like a restive horse, began,--
+
+"This is what I have to say! I am greatly thankful to his Swedish
+Serenity for the lofty opinion which he has of my wit and my love for
+the Commonwealth. Nothing is dearer to me than the friendship of such a
+potentate. But I think that we might love each other all the same if
+his Swedish Serenity remained in Stockholm and I in Zamost; that is
+what it is. For Stockholm belongs to his Swedish Serenity, and Zamost
+to me. As to love for the Commonwealth, this is what I think. The
+Commonwealth will not improve by the coming in of the Swedes, but by
+their departure. That is my argument! I believe that Zamost might help
+his Swedish Serenity to victory over Yan Kazimir; but your worthiness
+should know that I have not given oath to his Swedish Grace, but to Yan
+Kazimir; therefore I wish victory to Yan Kazimir, and I will not give
+Zamost to the King of Sweden. That is my position!"
+
+"That policy suits me!" said Zagloba.
+
+A joyous murmur rose in the hall; but Zamoyski slapped his knees with
+his hands, and the sounds were hushed.
+
+Forgell was confused, and was silent for a time; then he began to argue
+anew, insisted a little, threatened, begged, flattered. Latin flowed
+from his mouth like a stream, till drops of sweat were on his forehead;
+but all was in vain, for after his best arguments, so strong that they
+might move walls, he heard always one answer,--
+
+"But still I will not yield Zamost; that is my position!"
+
+The audience continued beyond measure; at last it became awkward and
+difficult for Forgell, since mirth was seizing those present. More and
+more frequently some word fell, some sneer,--now from Zagloba, now from
+others,--after which smothered laughter was heard in the hall. Forgell
+saw finally that it was necessary to use the last means; therefore he
+unrolled a parchment with seals, which he held in his hand, and to
+which no one had turned attention hitherto, and rising said with a
+solemn, emphatic voice,--
+
+"For opening the gates of the fortress his Royal Grace," here again he
+enumerated the titles, "gives your princely grace the province of
+Lubelsk in perpetual possession."
+
+All were astonished when they heard this, and Zamoyski himself was
+astonished for a moment. Forgell had begun to turn a triumphant look on
+the people around him, when suddenly and in deep silence Zagloba,
+standing behind Zamoyski, said in Polish,--
+
+"Your worthiness, offer the King of Sweden the Netherlands in
+exchange."
+
+Zamoyski, without thinking long, put his hands on his hips and fired
+through the whole hall in Latin,--
+
+"And I offer to his Swedish Serenity the Netherlands!"
+
+That moment the hall resounded with one immense burst of laughter. The
+breasts of all were shaking, and the girdles on their bodies were
+shaking; some clapped their hands, others tottered as drunken men, some
+leaned on their neighbors, but the laughter sounded continuously.
+Forgell was pale; he frowned terribly, but he waited with fire in his
+eyes and his head raised haughtily. At last, when the paroxysm of
+laughter had passed, he asked in a short, broken voice,--
+
+"Is that the final answer of your worthiness?"
+
+Zamoyski twirled his mustache. "No!" said he, raising his head still
+more proudly, "for I have cannon on the walls."
+
+The embassy was at an end.
+
+Two hours later cannons were thundering from the trenches of the
+Swedes, but Zamoyski's guns answered them with equal power. All Zamost
+was covered with smoke, as with an immense cloud; moment after moment
+there were flashes in that cloud, and thunder roared unceasingly. But
+fire from the heavy fortress guns was preponderant. The Swedish balls
+fell in the moat or bounded without effect from the strong angles;
+toward evening the enemy were forced to draw back from the nearer
+trenches, for the fortress was covering them with such a rain of
+missiles that nothing living could endure it. The Swedish king, carried
+away by anger, commanded to burn all the villages and hamlets, so that
+the neighborhood seemed in the night one sea of fire; but Zamoyski
+cared not for that.
+
+"All right!" said he, "let them burn. We have a roof over our heads,
+but soon it will be pouring down their backs."
+
+And he was so satisfied with himself and rejoiced that he made a great
+feast that day and remained till late at the cups. A resounding
+orchestra played at the feast so loudly that, in spite of the thunder
+of artillery, it could be heard in the remotest trenches of the Swedes.
+
+But the Swedes cannonaded continually, so constantly indeed that the
+firing lasted the whole night. Next day a number of guns were brought
+to the king, which as soon as they were placed in the trenches began to
+work against the fortress. The king did not expect, it is true, to make
+a breach in the walls; he merely wished to instil into Zamoyski the
+conviction that he had determined to storm furiously and mercilessly.
+He wished to bring terror on them; but that was bringing terror on
+Poles.[6] Zamoyski paid no attention to it for a moment, and often
+while on the walls he said, in time of the heaviest cannonading,--
+
+"Why do they waste powder?"
+
+Volodyovski and the others offered to make a sortie, but Zamoyski would
+not permit it; he did not wish to waste blood. He knew besides that it
+would be necessary to deliver open battle; for such a careful warrior
+as the king and such a trained army would not let themselves be
+surprised. Zagloba, seeing this fixed determination, insisted all the
+more, and guaranteed that he would lead the sortie.
+
+"You are too bloodthirsty!" answered Zamoyski. "It is pleasant for us
+and unpleasant for the Swedes; why should we go to them? You might
+fall, and I need you as a councillor; for it was by your wit that I
+confounded Forgell so by mentioning the Netherlands."
+
+Zagloba answered that he could not restrain himself within the walls,
+he wanted so much to get at the Swedes; but he was forced to obey. In
+default of other occupation he spent his time on the walls among the
+soldiers, dealing out to them precautions and counsel with importance,
+which all heard with no little respect, holding him a greatly
+experienced warrior, one of the foremost in the Commonwealth; and he
+was rejoiced in soul, looking at the defence and the spirit of the
+knighthood.
+
+"Pan Michael," said he to Volodyovski, "there is another spirit in the
+Commonwealth and in the nobles. No one thinks now of treason or
+surrender; and every one out of good-will for the Commonwealth and the
+king is ready to give his life sooner than yield a step to the enemy.
+You remember how a year ago from every side was heard, 'This one has
+betrayed, that one has betrayed, a third has accepted protection;' and
+now the Swedes need protection more than we. If the Devil does not
+protect them, he will soon take them. We have our stomachs so full here
+that drummers might beat on them, but their entrails are twisted into
+whips from hunger."
+
+Zagloba was right. The Swedish army had no supplies; and for eighteen
+thousand men, not to mention horses, there was no place from which to
+get supplies. Zamoyski, before the arrival of the enemy, had brought in
+from all his estates for many miles around food for man and horse. In
+the more remote neighborhoods of the country swarmed parties of
+confederates and bands of armed peasants, so that foraging detachments
+could not go out, since just beyond the camp certain death was in
+waiting.
+
+In addition to this, Pan Charnyetski had not gone to the west bank of
+the Vistula, but was circling about the Swedish army like a wild beast
+around a sheepfold. Again nightly alarms had begun, and the loss of
+smaller parties without tidings. Near Krasnik appeared certain Polish
+troops, which had cut communication with the Vistula. Finally, news
+came that Pavel Sapyeha, the hetman, was marching from the north with a
+powerful Lithuanian army; that in passing he had destroyed the garrison
+at Lublin, had taken Lublin, and was coming with cavalry to Zamost.
+
+Old Wittemberg, the most experienced of the Swedish leaders, saw the
+whole ghastliness of the position, and laid it plainly before the king.
+
+"I know," said he, "that the genius of your Royal Grace can do wonders;
+but judging things in human fashion, hunger will overcome us, and when
+the enemy fall upon our emaciated army not a living foot of us will
+escape."
+
+"If I had this fortress," answered the king, "I could finish the war in
+two months."
+
+"For such a fortress a year's siege is short."
+
+The king in his soul recognized that the old warrior was right, but he
+did not acknowledge that he saw no means himself, that his genius was
+strained. He counted yet on some unexpected event; hence he gave orders
+to fire night and day.
+
+"I will bend the spirit in them," said he; "they will be more inclined
+to treaties."
+
+After some days of cannonading so furious that the light could not be
+seen behind the smoke, the king sent Forgell again to the fortress.
+
+"The king, my master," said Forgell, appearing before Zamoyski,
+"considers that the damage which Zamost must have suffered from our
+cannonading will soften the lofty mind of your princely grace and
+incline it to negotiations."
+
+To which Zamoyski said: "Of course there is damage! Why should there
+not be? You killed on the market square a pig, which was struck in the
+belly by the fragment of a bomb. If you cannonade another week, perhaps
+you'll kill another pig."
+
+Forgell took that answer to the king. In the evening a new council was
+held in the king's quarters; next day the Swedes began to pack their
+tents in wagons and draw their cannon out of the trenches, and in the
+night the whole army moved onward.
+
+Zamost thundered after them from all its artillery, and when they had
+vanished from the eye two squadrons, the Shemberk and the Lauda, passed
+out through the southern gate and followed in their track.
+
+The Swedes marched southward. Wittemberg advised, it is true, a return
+to Warsaw, and with all his power he tried to convince the king that
+that was the only road of salvation; but the Swedish Alexander had
+determined absolutely to pursue the Polish Darius to the remotest
+boundaries of the kingdom.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+The spring of that year approached with wonderful roads; for while in
+the north of the Commonwealth snow was already thawing, the stiffened
+rivers were set free, and the whole country was filled with March
+water, in the south the icy breath of winter was still descending from
+the mountains to the fields, woods, and forests. In the forests lay
+snow-drifts, in the open country frozen roads sounded under the hoofs
+of horses; the days were dry, the sunsets red, the nights starry and
+frosty. The people living on the rich clay, on the black soil, and in
+the woods of Little Poland comforted themselves with the continuance of
+the cold, stating that the field-mice and the Swedes would perish from
+it. But inasmuch as the spring came late, it came as swiftly as an
+armored squadron advancing to the attack of an enemy. The sun shot down
+living fire from heaven, and at once the crust of winter burst; from
+the Hungarian steppes flew a strong warm wind, and began to blow on the
+fields and wild places. Straightway in the midst of shining ponds
+arable ground became dark, a green fleece shot up on the low
+river-lands, and the forests began to shed tears from bursting buds on
+their branches.
+
+In the heavens continually fair were seen, daily, rows of cranes, wild
+ducks, teal, and geese. Storks flew to their places of the past year,
+and the roofs were swarming with swallows; the twitter of birds was
+heard in the villages, their noise in the woods and ponds, and in the
+evening the whole country was ringing with the croaking and singing of
+frogs, which swam with delight in the waters.
+
+Then came great rains, which were as if they had been warmed; they fell
+in the daytime, they fell in the night, without interruption.
+
+The fields were turned into lakes, the rivers overflowed, the fords
+became impassable; then followed the "stickiness and the impossible of
+muddy roads." Amid all this water, mud, and swamp the Swedish legions
+dragged onward continually toward the south.
+
+But how little was that throng, advancing as it were to destruction,
+like that brilliant army which in its time marched under Wittemberg to
+Great Poland! Hunger had stamped itself on the faces of the old
+soldiers; they went on more like spectres than men, in suffering, in
+toil, in sleeplessness, knowing that at the end of the road not food
+was awaiting, but hunger; not sleep, but a battle; and if rest, then
+the rest of the dead.
+
+Arrayed in iron these skeletons of horsemen sat on skeletons of horses.
+The infantry hardly drew their legs along; barely could they hold
+spears and muskets with trembling hands. Day followed day; they went
+onward continually. Wagons were broken, cannons were fastened in
+sloughs; they went on so slowly that sometimes they were able to
+advance hardly five miles in one day. Diseases fell on the soldiers,
+like ravens on corpses; the teeth of some were chattering from fever;
+others lay down on the ground simply from weakness, choosing rather to
+die than advance.
+
+But the Swedish Alexander hastened toward the Polish Darius
+unceasingly. At the same time he was pursued himself. As in the
+night-time jackals follow a sick buffalo waiting to see if he will soon
+fall, and he knows that he will fall and he hears the howl of the
+hungry pack, so after the Swedes went "parties," nobles and peasants,
+approaching ever nearer, attacking ever more insolently, and snatching
+away.
+
+At last came Charnyetski, the most terrible of all the pursuers, and
+followed closely. The rearguards of the Swedes as often as they looked
+behind saw horsemen, at one time far off on the edge of the horizon, at
+another a furlong away, at another twice the distance of a musket-shot,
+at another time, when attacking, on their very shoulders.
+
+The enemy wanted battle; with despair did the Swedes pray to the Lord
+of Hosts for battle. But Charnyetski did not receive battle, he bided
+his time; meanwhile he preferred to punish the Swedes, or let go from
+his hand against them single parties as one would falcons against water
+birds.
+
+And so they marched one after the other. There were times, however,
+when Charnyetski passed the Swedes, pushed on, and blocked the road
+before them, pretending to prepare for a general battle. Then the
+trumpet sounded joyously from one end of the Swedish camp to the other,
+and, oh miracle! new strength, a new spirit seemed to vivify on a
+sudden the wearied ranks of the Scandinavians. Sick, wet, weak, like
+Lazaruses, they stood in rank promptly for battle, with flaming faces,
+with fire in their eyes. Spears and muskets moved with as much accuracy
+as if iron hands held them; the shouts of battle were heard as loudly
+as if they came from the healthiest bosoms, and they marched forward to
+strike breast against breast.
+
+Then Charnyetski struck once, twice; but when the artillery began to
+thunder he withdrew his troops, leaving to the Swedes as profit, vain
+labor and the greater disappointment and disgust.
+
+When, however, the artillery could not come up, and spears and sabres
+had to decide in the open field, he struck like a thunderbolt, knowing
+that in a hand-to-hand conflict the Swedish cavalry could not stand,
+even against volunteers.
+
+And again Wittemberg implored the king to retreat and thus avoid ruin
+to himself and the army; but Karl Gustav in answer compressed his lips,
+fire flashed from his eyes, and he pointed to the south, where in the
+Russian regions he hoped to find Yan Kazimir, and also fields open to
+conquest, rest, provisions, pastures for horses, and rich plunder.
+
+Meanwhile, to complete the misfortune, those Polish regiments which had
+served him hitherto, and which in one way or another were now alone
+able to meet Charnyetski, began to leave the Swedes. Pan Zbrojek
+resigned first; he had held to Karl hitherto not from desire of gain,
+but from blind attachment to the squadron, and soldierly faithfulness
+to Karl. He resigned in this fashion, that he engaged in conflict with
+a regiment of Miller's dragoons, cut down half the men, and departed.
+After him resigned Pan Kalinski, who rode over the Swedish infantry.
+Yan Sapyeha grew gloomier each day; he was meditating something in his
+soul, plotting something. He had not gone hitherto himself, but his men
+were deserting him daily.
+
+Karl Gustav was marching then through Narol, Tsyeshanov, and Oleshytse,
+to reach the San. He was upheld by the hope that Yan Kazimir would bar
+his road and give him battle. A victory might yet repair the fate of
+Sweden and bring a change of fortune. In fact, rumors were current that
+Yan Kazimir had set out from Lvoff with the quarter soldiers and the
+Tartars. But Karl's reckonings deceived him. Yan Kazimir preferred to
+await the junction of the armies and the arrival of the Lithuanians
+under Sapyeha. Delay was his best ally; for he was growing daily in
+strength, while Karl was becoming weaker.
+
+"That is not the march of troops nor of an army, but a funeral
+procession!" said old warriors in Yan Kazimir's suite.
+
+Many Swedish officers shared this opinion. Karl Gustav however repeated
+still that he was going to Lvoff; but he was deceiving himself and his
+army. It was not for him to go to Lvoff, but to think of his own
+safety. Besides, it was not certain that he would find Yan Kazimir in
+Lvoff; in every event the "Polish Darius" might withdraw far into
+Podolia, and draw after him the enemy into distant steppes where the
+Swedes must perish without rescue.
+
+Douglas went to Premysl to try if that fortress would yield, and
+returned, not merely with nothing, but plucked. The catastrophe was
+coming slowly, but inevitably. All tidings brought to the Swedish camp
+were simply the announcement of it. Each day fresh tidings and ever
+more terrible.
+
+"Sapyeha is marching; he is already in Tomashov!" was repeated one day.
+"Lyubomirski is marching with troops and mountaineers!" was announced
+the day following. And again: "The king is leading the quarter soldiers
+and the horde one hundred thousand strong! He has joined Sapyeha!"
+
+Among these tidings were "tidings of disaster and death," untrue and
+exaggerated, but they always spread fear. The courage of the army fell.
+Formerly whenever Karl appeared in person before his regiments, they
+greeted him with shouts in which rang the hope of victory; now the
+regiments stood before him dull and dumb. And at the fires the
+soldiers, famished and wearied to death, whispered more of Charnyetski
+than of their own king. They saw him everywhere. And, a strange thing!
+when for a couple of days no party had perished, when a few nights
+passed without alarms or cries of "Allah!" and "Strike, kill!" their
+disquiet became still greater. "Charnyetski has fled; God knows what he
+is preparing!" repeated the soldiers.
+
+Karl halted a few days in Yaroslav, pondering what to do. During that
+time the Swedes placed on flat-bottomed boats sick soldiers, of whom
+there were many in camp, and sent them by the river to Sandomir, the
+nearest fortified town still in Swedish hands. After this work had been
+finished, and just when the news of Yan Kazimir's march from Lvoff had
+come in, the King of Sweden determined to discover where Yan Kazimir
+was, and with that object Colonel Kanneberg with one thousand cavalry
+passed the San and moved to the east.
+
+"It may be that you have in your hands the fate of the war and us all,"
+said the king to him at parting.
+
+And in truth much depended on that party, for in the worst case
+Kanneberg was to furnish the camp with provisions; and if he could
+learn certainly where Yan Kazimir was, the Swedish King was to move at
+once with all his forces against the "Polish Darius," whose army he was
+to scatter and whose person he was to seize if he could.
+
+The first soldiers and the best horses were assigned, therefore, to
+Kanneberg. Choice was made the more carefully as the colonel could not
+take artillery or infantry; hence he must have with him men who with
+sabres could stand against Polish cavalry in the field.
+
+March 20, the party set out. A number of officers and soldiers took
+farewell of them, saying: "God conduct you! God give victory! God give
+a fortunate return!" They marched in a long line, being one thousand in
+number, and went two abreast over the newly built bridge which had one
+square still unfinished, but was in some fashion covered with planks so
+that they might pass.
+
+Good hope shone in their faces, for they were exceptionally well fed.
+Food had been taken from others and given to them; gorailka was poured
+into their flasks. When they were riding away they shouted joyfully and
+said to their comrades,--
+
+"We will bring you Charnyetski himself on a rope."
+
+Fools! They knew not that they were going as go bullocks to slaughter
+at the shambles!
+
+Everything combined for their ruin. Barely had they crossed the river
+when the Swedish sappers removed the temporary covering of the bridge,
+so as to lay stronger planks over which cannon might pass. The thousand
+turned toward Vyelki Ochi, singing in low voices to themselves; their
+helmets glittered in the sun on the turn once and a second time; then
+they began to sink in the dense pine-wood.
+
+They rode forward two miles and a half,--emptiness, silence around
+them; the forest depths seemed vacant altogether. They halted to give
+breath to the horses; after that they moved slowly forward. At last
+they reached Vyelki Oehi, in which they found not a living soul. That
+emptiness astonished Kanneberg.
+
+"Evidently they have been waiting for us here," said he to Major Sweno;
+"but Charnyetski must be in some other place, since he has not prepared
+ambushes."
+
+"Does your worthiness order a return?" asked Sweno.
+
+"We will go on even to Lvoff itself, which is not very far. I must find
+an informant, and give the king sure information touching Yan Kazimir."
+
+"But if we meet superior forces?"
+
+"Even if we meet several thousand of those brawlers whom the Poles call
+general militia, we will not let ourselves be torn apart by such
+soldiers."
+
+"But we may meet regular troops. We have no artillery, and against them
+cannons are the main thing."
+
+"Then we will draw back in season and inform the king of the enemy, and
+those who try to cut off our retreat we will disperse."
+
+"I am afraid of the night!" replied Sweno.
+
+"We will take every precaution. We have food for men and horses for two
+days; we need not hurry."
+
+When they entered the pine-wood beyond Vyelki Ochi, they acted with
+vastly more caution. Fifty horsemen rode in advance musket in hand,
+each man with his gunstock on his thigh. They looked carefully on every
+side; examined the thickets, the undergrowth; frequently they halted,
+listened; sometimes they went from the road to one side to examine the
+depths of the forest, but neither on the roads nor at the sides was
+there a man.
+
+But one hour later, after they had passed a rather sudden turn, two
+troopers riding in advance saw a man on horseback about four hundred
+yards ahead.
+
+The day was clear and the sun shone brightly; hence the man could be
+seen as something on the hand. He was a soldier, not large, dressed
+very decently in foreign fashion. He seemed especially small because he
+sat on a large cream-colored steed, evidently of high breed.
+
+The horseman was riding at leisure, as if not seeing that troops were
+rolling on after him. The spring floods had dug deep ditches in the
+road, in which muddy water was sweeping along. The horseman spurred his
+steed in front of the ditches, and the beast sprang across with the
+nimbleness of a deer, and again went on at a trot, throwing his head
+and snorting vivaciously from time to time.
+
+The two troopers reined in their horses and began to look around for
+the sergeant. He clattered up in a moment, looked, and said: "That is
+some hound from the Polish kennel."
+
+"Shall I shout at him?"
+
+"Shout not; there may be more of them. Go to the colonel."
+
+Meanwhile the rest of the advance guard rode up, and all halted; the
+small horseman halted too, and turned the face of his steed to the
+Swedes as if wishing to block the road to them. For a certain time they
+looked at him and he at them.
+
+"There is another! a second! a third! a fourth! a whole party!" were
+the sudden cries in the Swedish ranks.
+
+In fact, horsemen began to pour out from both sides of the road; at
+first singly, then by twos, by threes. All took their places in line
+with him who had appeared first.
+
+But the second Swedish guard with Sweno, and then the whole detachment
+with Kanneberg, came up. Kanneberg and Sweno rode to the front at once.
+
+"I know those men!" cried Sweno, when he had barely seen them; "their
+squadron was the first to strike on Prince Waldemar at Golamb; those
+are Charnyetski's men. He must be here himself!"
+
+These words produced an impression; deep silence followed in the ranks,
+only the horses shook their bridle-bits.
+
+"I sniff some ambush," continued Sweno. "There are too few of them to
+meet us, but there must be others hidden in the woods."
+
+He turned here to Kanneberg: "Your worthiness, let us return."
+
+"You give good counsel," answered the colonel, frowning. "It was not
+worth while to set out if we must return at sight of a few ragged
+fellows. Why did we not return at sight of one? Forward!"
+
+The first Swedish rank moved at that moment with the greatest
+regularity; after it the second, the third, the fourth. The distance
+between the two detachments was becoming less.
+
+"Cock your muskets!" commanded Kanneberg.
+
+The Swedish muskets moved like one; their iron necks were stretched
+toward the Polish horsemen.
+
+But before the muskets thundered, the Polish horsemen turned their
+horses and began to flee in a disorderly group.
+
+"Forward!" cried Kanneberg.
+
+The division moved forward on a gallop, so that the ground trembled
+under the heavy hoofs of the horses.
+
+The forest was filled with the shouts of pursuers and pursued. After
+half an hour of chasing, either because the Swedish horses were better,
+or those of the Poles were wearied by some journey, the distance
+between the two bodies was decreasing.
+
+But at once something wonderful happened. The Polish band, at first
+disorderly, did not scatter more and more as the flight continued, but
+on the contrary, they fled in ever better order, in ranks growing more
+even, as if the very speed of the horses brought the riders into line.
+
+Sweno saw this, urged on his horse, reached Kanneberg, and called
+out,--
+
+"Your worthiness, that is an uncommon party; those are regular
+soldiers, fleeing designedly and leading us to an ambush."
+
+"Will there be devils in the ambush, or men?" asked Kanneberg.
+
+The road rose somewhat and became ever wider, the forest thinner, and
+at the end of the road was to be seen an unoccupied field, or rather a
+great open space, surrounded on all sides by a dense, deep gray
+pine-wood.
+
+The Polish horsemen increased their pace in turn, and it transpired
+that hitherto they had gone slowly of purpose; for now in a short time
+they pushed forward so rapidly that the Swedish leader knew that he
+could never overtake them. But when he had come to the middle of the
+open plain and saw that the enemy were almost touching the other end of
+it, he began to restrain his men and slacken speed.
+
+But, oh marvel! the Poles, instead of sinking in the opposite forest,
+wheeled around at the very edge of the half-circle and returned on a
+gallop toward the Swedes, putting themselves at once in such splendid
+battle order that they roused wonder even in their opponents.
+
+"It is true!" cried Kanneberg, "those are regular soldiers. They turned
+as if on parade. What do they want for the hundredth time?"
+
+"They are attacking us!" cried Sweno.
+
+In fact, the squadron was moving forward at a trot. The little knight
+on the cream-colored steed shouted something to his men, pushed
+forward, again reined in his horse, gave signs with his sabre;
+evidently he was the leader.
+
+"They are attacking really!" said Kanneberg, with astonishment.
+
+And now the horses, with ears dropped back, were coming at the greatest
+speed, stretched out so that their bellies almost touched the ground.
+Their riders bent forward to their shoulders, and were hidden behind
+the horse manes. The Swedes standing in the first rank saw only
+hundreds of distended horse-nostrils and burning eyes. A whirlwind does
+not move as that squadron tore on.
+
+"God with us! Sweden! Fire!" commanded Kanneberg, raising his sword.
+
+All the muskets thundered; but at that very moment the Polish squadron
+fell into the smoke with such impetus that it hurled to the right and
+the left the first Swedish ranks, and drove itself into the density of
+men and horses, as a wedge is driven into a cleft log. A terrible whirl
+was made, breastplate struck breast-plate, sabre struck rapier; and the
+rattle, the whining of horses, the groan of dying men roused every
+echo, so that the whole pine-wood began to give back the sounds of the
+battle, as the steep cliffs of mountains give back the thunder.
+
+The Swedes were confused for a time, especially since a considerable
+number of them fell from the first blow; but soon recovering, they went
+powerfully against the enemy. Their flanks came together; and since the
+Polish squadron was pushing ahead anyhow, for it wished to pass through
+with a thrust, it was soon surrounded. The Swedish centre yielded
+before the squadron, but the flanks pressed on it with the greater
+power, unable to break it; for it defended itself with rage and with
+all that incomparable adroitness which made the Polish cavalry so
+terrible in hand-to-hand conflict. Sabres toiled then against rapiers,
+bodies fell thickly; but the victory was just turning to the Swedish
+side when suddenly from under the dark wall of the pinewood rolled out
+another squadron, and moved forward at once with a shout.
+
+The whole right wing of the Swedes, under the lead of Sweno, faced the
+new enemy in which the trained Swedish soldiers recognized hussars.
+They were led by a man on a valiant dapple gray; he wore a burka, and a
+wild-cat skin cap with a heron feather. He was perfectly visible to the
+eye, for he was riding at one side some yards from the soldiers.
+
+"Charnyetski! Charnyetski!" was the cry in the Swedish ranks.
+
+Sweno looked in despair at the sky, then pressed his horse with his
+knees and rushed forward with his men.
+
+But Charnyetski led his hussars a few yards farther, and when they were
+moving with the swiftest rush, he turned back alone.
+
+With that a third squadron issued from the forest, he galloped to that
+and led it forward; a fourth came out, he led that on; pointing to each
+with his baton, where it must strike. You would have said that he was a
+man leading harvesters to his field and distributing work among them.
+
+At last, when the fifth squadron had come forth from the forest, he put
+himself at the head of that, and with it rushed to the fight.
+
+But the hussars had already forced the right wing to the rear, and
+after a while had broken it completely; the three other squadrons,
+racing around the Swedes in Tartar fashion and raising an uproar, had
+thrown them into disorder; then they fell to cutting them with steel,
+to thrusting them with lances, scattering, trampling, and finally
+pursuing them amid shrieks and slaughter.
+
+Kanneberg saw that he had fallen into an ambush, and had led his
+detachment as it were under the knife. For him there was no thought of
+victory now; but he wished to save as many men as possible, hence he
+ordered to sound the retreat. The Swedes, therefore, turned with all
+speed to that same road by which they had come to Vyelki Ochi; but
+Charnyetski's men so followed them that the breaths of the Polish
+horses warmed the shoulders of the Swedes.
+
+In these conditions and in view of the terror which had seized the
+Swedish cavalry, that return could not take place in order; and soon
+Kanneberg's brilliant division was turned into a crowd fleeing in
+disorder and slaughtered almost without resistance.
+
+The longer the pursuit lasted, the more irregular it became; for the
+Poles did not pursue in order, each of them drove his horse according
+to the breath in the beast's nostrils, and attacked and slew whom he
+wished.
+
+Both sides were mingled and confused in one mass. Some Polish soldiers
+passed the last Swedish ranks; and it happened that when a Pole stood
+in his stirrups to strike with more power the man fleeing in front of
+him, he fell himself thrust with a rapier from behind. The road to
+Vyelki Ochi was strewn with Swedish corpses; but the end of the chase
+was not there. Both sides rushed with the same force along the road
+through the next forest; there however the Swedish horses, wearied
+first, began to go more slowly, and the slaughter became still more
+bloody.
+
+Some of the Swedes sprang from their beasts and vanished in the forest;
+but only a few did so, for the Swedes knew from experience that
+peasants were watching in the forest, and they preferred to die from
+sabres rather than from terrible tortures, of which the infuriated
+people were not sparing. Some asked quarter, but for the most part in
+vain; for each Pole chose to slay an enemy, and chase on rather than
+take him prisoner, guard him, and leave further pursuit.
+
+They cut then without mercy, so that no one might return with news of
+the defeat. Volodyovski was in the van of pursuit with the Lauda
+squadron. He was that horseman who had appeared first to the Swedes as
+a decoy; he had struck first, and now, sitting on a horse which was as
+if impelled by a whirlwind, he enjoyed himself with his whole soul,
+wishing to be sated with blood, and avenge the defeat of Golamb. Every
+little while he overtook a horseman, and when he had overtaken him he
+quenched him as quickly as he would a candle; sometimes he came on the
+shoulders of two, three, or four, but soon, only in a moment, that same
+number of horses ran riderless before him. More than one hapless Swede
+caught his own rapier by the point, and turning the hilt to the knight
+for quarter implored with voice and with eyes. Volodyovski did not
+stop, but thrusting his sabre into the man where the neck joins the
+breast, he gave him a light, small push, and the man dropped his hands,
+gave forth one and a second word with pale lips, then sank in the
+darkness of death.
+
+Volodyovski, not looking around, rushed on and pushed new victims to
+the earth.
+
+The valiant Sweno took note of this terrible harvester, and summoning a
+few of the best horsemen he determined with the sacrifice of his own
+life to restrain even a little of the pursuit in order to save others.
+They turned therefore their horses, and pointing their rapiers waited
+with the points toward the pursuers. Volodyovski, seeing this,
+hesitated not a moment, spurred on his horse, and fell into the midst
+of them.
+
+And before any one could have winked, two helmets had fallen. More than
+ten rapiers were directed at once to the single breast of Volodyovski;
+but at that instant rushed in Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav, Yuzva Butrym,
+Zagloba and Roh Kovalski, of whom Zagloba related, that even when going
+to the attack he had his eyes closed in sleep, and woke only when his
+breast struck the breast of an enemy.
+
+Volodyovski put himself under the saddle so quickly that the rapiers
+passed through empty air. He learned this method from the Tartars of
+Bailgorod; but being small and at the same time adroit beyond human
+belief, he brought it to such perfection that he vanished from the eye
+when he wished, either behind the shoulder or under the belly of the
+horse. So he vanished this time, and before the astonished Swedes could
+understand what had become of him he was erect on the saddle again,
+terrible as a wild-cat which springs down from lofty branches among
+frightened dogs.
+
+Meanwhile his comrades gave him aid, and bore around death and
+confusion. One of the Swedes held a pistol to the very breast of
+Zagloba. Roh Kovalski, having that enemy on his left side, was unable
+to strike him with a sabre; but he balled his fist, struck the Swede's
+head in passing, and that man dropped under the horse as if a
+thunderbolt had met him, and Zagloba, giving forth a shout of delight,
+slashed in the temple Sweno himself, who dropped his hands and fell
+with his forehead to the horse's shoulder. At sight of this the other
+Swedes scattered. Volodyovski, Yuzva Footless, Pan Yan, and Pan
+Stanislav followed and cut them down before they had gone a hundred
+yards.
+
+And the pursuit lasted longer. The Swedish horses had less and less
+breath in their bodies, and ran more and more slowly. At last from a
+thousand of the best horsemen, which had gone out under Kanneberg,
+there remained barely a hundred and some tens; the rest had fallen in a
+long belt over the forest road. And this last group was decreasing, for
+Polish hands ceased not to toil over them.
+
+At last they came out of the forest. The towers of Yaroslav were
+outlined clearly in the azure sky. Now hope entered the hearts of the
+fleeing, for they knew that in Yaroslav was the king with all his
+forces, and at any moment he might come to their aid. They had
+forgotten that immediately after their passage the top had been taken
+from the last square of the bridge, so as to put stronger planks for
+the passage of cannon.
+
+Whether Charnyetski knew of this through his spies, or wished to show
+himself of purpose to the Swedish king and cut down before his eyes the
+last of those unfortunate men, it is enough that not only did he not
+restrain the pursuit, but he sprang forward himself with the Shemberk
+squadron, slashed, cut with his own hand, pursuing the crowd in such
+fashion as if he wished with that same speed to strike Yaroslav.
+
+At last they ran to within a furlong of the bridge; shouts from the
+field came to the Swedish camp. A multitude of soldiers and officers
+ran out from the town to see what was taking place beyond the river;
+they had barely looked when they saw and recognized the horsemen who
+had gone out of camp in the morning.
+
+"Kanneberg's detachment! Kanneberg's detachment!" cried thousands of
+voices.
+
+"Almost cut to pieces! Scarcely a hundred men are running!"
+
+At that moment the king himself galloped up; with him Wittemberg,
+Forgell, Miller, and other generals.
+
+The king grew pale. "Kanneberg!" said he.
+
+"By Christ and his wounds! the bridge is not finished," cried
+Wittemberg; "the enemy will cut them down to the last man."
+
+The king looked at the river, which had risen with spring waters,
+roaring with its yellow waves; to give aid by swimming was not to be
+thought of.
+
+The few men still left were coming nearer.
+
+Now there was a new cry: "The king's train and the guard are coming!
+They too will perish!"
+
+In fact, it had happened that a part of the king's provision-chests
+with a hundred men of the infantry guard had come out at that moment by
+another road from adjoining forests. When they saw what had happened,
+the men of the escort, in the conviction that the bridge was ready,
+hastened with all speed toward the town.
+
+But they were seen from the field by the Poles. Immediately about three
+hundred horsemen rushed toward them at full speed; in front of all,
+with sabre above his head and fire in his eyes, flew the tenant of
+Vansosh, Jendzian. Not many proofs had he given hitherto of his
+bravery; but at sight of the wagons in which there might be rich
+plunder, daring so rose in his heart that he went some tens of yards in
+advance of the others. The infantry at the wagons, seeing that they
+could not escape, formed themselves into a quadrangle, and a hundred
+muskets were directed at once at the breast of Jendzian. A roar shook
+the air, a line of smoke flew along the wall of the quadrangle; but
+before the smoke had cleared away the rider had urged on his horse so
+that the forefeet of the beast were above the heads of the men, and the
+lord tenant fell into the midst of them like a thunderbolt.
+
+An avalanche of horsemen rushed after him. And as when wolves overcome
+a horse, and he, lying yet on his back, defends himself desperately
+with his hoofs, and they cover him completely and tear from him lumps
+of living flesh, so those wagons and the infantry were covered
+completely with a whirling mass of horses and riders. But terrible
+shouts rose from that whirl, and reached the ears of the Swedes
+standing on the other bank.
+
+Meanwhile still nearer the bank the Poles were finishing the remnant of
+Kanneberg's cavalry. The whole Swedish army had come out like one man
+to the lofty bank of the San. Infantry, cavalry, artillery were mingled
+together; and all looked as if in an ancient circus in Rome at the
+spectacle; but they looked with set lips, with despair in their hearts,
+with terror and a feeling of helplessness. At moments from the breasts
+of those unwilling spectators was wrested a terrible cry. At moments a
+general weeping was heard; then again silence, and only the panting of
+the excited soldiers was audible. For that thousand men whom Kanneberg
+had led out were the front and the pride of the whole Swedish army;
+they were veterans, covered with glory in God knows how many lands, and
+God knows how many battles. But now they are running, like a lost flock
+of sheep, over the broad fields in front of the Swedish army, dying
+like sheep under the knife of the butcher. For that was no longer a
+battle, but a hunt. The terrible Polish horsemen circled about, like a
+storm, over the field of struggle, crying in various voices and running
+ahead of the Swedes. Sometimes a number less than ten, sometimes a
+group more than ten fell on one man. Sometimes one met one, sometimes
+the hunted Swede bowed down on the saddle as if to lighten the blow for
+the enemy, sometimes he withstood the brunt: but oftener he perished,
+for with edged weapons the Swedish soldiers were not equal to Polish
+nobles trained in all kinds of fencing.
+
+But among the Poles the little knight was the most terrible of all,
+sitting on his cream-colored steed, which was as nimble and as swift as
+a falcon. The whole army noted him; for whomsoever he pursued he
+killed, whoever met him perished it was unknown how and when, with such
+small and insignificant movements of his sword did he hurl the
+sturdiest horsemen to the earth. At last he saw Kanneberg himself, whom
+more than ten men were chasing; the little knight shouted at them,
+stopped the pursuit by command, and attacked the Swede himself.
+
+The Swedes on the other bank held the breath in their breasts. The king
+had pushed to the edge of the river and looked with throbbing heart,
+moved at once with alarm and hope; for Kanneberg, as a great lord and a
+relative of the king, was trained from childhood in every species of
+sword exercise by Italian masters; in fighting with edged weapons he
+had not his equal in the Swedish army. All eyes therefore were fixed on
+him now, barely did they dare to breathe; but he, seeing that the
+pursuit of the crowd had ceased, and wishing after the loss of his
+troops to save his own glory in the eyes of the king, said to his
+gloomy soul,--
+
+"Woe to me if having first lost my men, I do not seal with my own blood
+the shame, or if I do not purchase my life by having overturned this
+terrible man. In another event, though the hand of God might bear me to
+that bank, I should not dare to look in the eyes of any Swede." When he
+had said this he turned his horse and rushed toward the yellow knight.
+
+Since those Poles who had cut him off from the river had withdrawn,
+Kanneberg had the hope that if he should finish his opponent, he might
+spring into the water, and then what would be would be; if he could not
+swim the stormy stream, its current would bear him far with the horse,
+and his brothers would provide him some rescue.
+
+He sprang therefore like a thunderbolt at the little knight, and the
+little knight at him. The Swede wished during the rush to thrust the
+rapier up to the hilt under the arm of his opponent; but he learned in
+an instant that though a master himself he must meet a master as well,
+for his sword merely slipped along the edge of the Polish sabre, only
+quivered somehow wonderfully in his hand, as if his arm had suddenly
+grown numb; barely was he able to defend himself from the blow which
+the knight then gave him; luckily at that moment their horses bore them
+away in opposite directions.
+
+Both wheeled in a circle and returned simultaneously; but they rode now
+more slowly against each other, wishing to have more time for the
+meeting and even to cross weapons repeatedly. Kanneberg withdrew into
+himself so that he became like a bird which presents to view only
+a powerful beak from the midst of upraised feathers. He knew
+one infallible thrust in which a certain Florentine had trained
+him,--infallible because deceitful and almost impossible to be warded
+off,--consisting in this: that the point of the sword was directed
+apparently at the breast, but by avoiding obstacles at the side it
+passed through the throat till the hilt reached the back of the neck.
+This thrust he determined to make now.
+
+And, sure of himself, he approached, restraining his horse more and
+more; but Volodyovski rode toward him with short springs. For a moment
+he thought to disappear suddenly under the horse like a Tartar, but
+since he had to meet with only one man, and that before the eyes of
+both armies, though he understood that some unexpected thrust was
+waiting for him, he was ashamed to defend himself in Tartar and not in
+knightly fashion.
+
+"He wishes to take me as a heron does a falcon with a thrust," thought
+Pan Michael to himself; "but I will use that windmill which I invented
+in Lubni."
+
+And this idea seemed to him best for the moment; therefore it
+surrounded him like a glittering shield of light, and he struck his
+steed with his spurs and rushed on Kanneberg.
+
+Kanneberg drew himself in still more, and almost grew to the horse; in
+the twinkle of an eye the rapier caught the sabre, and quickly he stuck
+out his head like a snake and made a ghastly thrust.
+
+But in that instant a terrible whirling began to sound, the rapier
+turned in the hands of the Swede; the point struck empty space, but the
+curved end of the sabre fell with the speed of lightning; on the face
+of Kanneberg, cut through a part of his nose, his mouth and beard,
+struck his shoulder-blade, shattered that, and stopped only at the
+sword-belt which crossed his shoulder.
+
+The rapier dropped from the hands of the unfortunate man, and night
+embraced his head; but before he fell from his horse, Volodyovski
+dropped his own weapon and seized him by the shoulder.
+
+The Swedes from the other bank roared with one out burst, but Zagloba
+sprang to the little knight.
+
+"Pan Michael, I knew it would be so, but I was ready to avenge you!"
+
+"He was a master," answered Volodyovski. "You take the horse, for he is
+a good one."
+
+"Ha! if it were not for the river we could rush over and frolic with
+those fellows. I would be the first--"
+
+The whistle of balls interrupted further words of Zagloba; therefore he
+did not finish the expression of his thoughts, but cried,--
+
+"Let us go, Pan Michael; those traitors are ready to fire."
+
+"Their bullets have no force, for the range is too great."
+
+Meanwhile other Polish horsemen came up congratulating Volodyovski and
+looking at him with admiration; but he only moved his mustaches, for he
+was a cause of gladness to himself as well as to them.
+
+But on the other bank among the Swedes, it was seething as in a
+beehive. Artillerists on that side drew out their cannons in haste; and
+in the nearer Polish ranks trumpets were sounded for withdrawal. At
+this sound each man sprang to his squadron, and in a moment all were in
+order. They withdrew then to the forest, and halted again, as if
+offering a place to the enemy and inviting them across the river. At
+last, in front of the ranks of men and horses, rode out on his dapple
+gray the man wearing a burka and a cap with a heron's feather, and
+bearing a gilded baton in his hand.
+
+He was perfectly visible, for the reddish rays of the setting sun fell
+on him, and besides he rode before the regiments as if reviewing them.
+All the Swedes knew him at once, and began to shout,--
+
+"Charnyetski! Charnyetski!"
+
+He said something to the colonels. It was seen how he stopped longer
+with the knight who had slain Kanneberg, and placed his hand on his
+shoulder; then he raised his baton, and the squadrons began to turn
+slowly one after another to the pine-woods.
+
+Just then the sun went down. In Yaroslav the bells sounded in the
+church; then all the regiments began to sing in one voice as they were
+riding away, "The Angel of the Lord announced to the Most Holy Virgin
+Mary;" and with that song they vanished from the eyes of the Swedes.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+That evening the Swedes lay down to sleep without putting food into
+their mouths, and without hope that they would have anything to
+strengthen themselves with on the morrow. They were not able to sleep
+from the torment of hunger. Before the second cock-crow the suffering
+soldiers began to slip out of the camp singly and in crowds to plunder
+villages adjoining Yaroslav. They went like night-thieves to Radzymno,
+to Kanchuya, to Tychyno, where they hoped to find food of some kind.
+Their confidence was increased by the fact that Charnyetski was on the
+other side of the river; but even had he been able to cross, they
+preferred death to hunger. There was evidently a great relaxation in
+the camp, for despite the strictest orders of the king about fifteen
+hundred men went out in this way.
+
+They fell to ravaging the neighborhood, burning, plundering, killing;
+but scarcely a man of them was to return. Charnyetski was on the other
+side of the San, it is true, but on the left bank were various
+"parties" of nobles and peasants; of these the strongest, that of
+Stjalkovski, formed of daring nobles of the mountains, had come that
+very night to Prohnik, as if led by the evil fate of the Swedes. When
+he saw the fire and heard the shots, Stjalkovski went straight to the
+uproar and fell upon the plunderers. They defended themselves fiercely
+behind fences; but Stjalkovski broke them up, cut them to pieces,
+spared no man. In other villages other parties did work of the same
+kind. Fugitives were followed to the very camp, and the pursuers spread
+alarm and confusion, shouting in Tartar, in Wallachian, in Hungarian,
+and in Polish; so that the Swedes thought that some powerful auxiliary
+of the Poles was attacking them, maybe the Khan with the whole horde.
+
+Confusion began, and--a thing without example hitherto--panic, which
+the officers put down with the greatest effort. The king, who remained
+on horseback till daylight, saw what was taking place; he understood
+what might come of that, and called a council of war at once in the
+morning.
+
+That gloomy council did not last long, for there were not two roads to
+choose from. Courage had fallen in the army, the soldiers had nothing
+to eat, the enemy had grown in power.
+
+The Swedish Alexander, who had promised the whole world to pursue the
+Polish Darius even to the steppes of the Tartars, was forced to think
+no longer of pursuit, but of his own safety.
+
+"We can return by the San to Sandomir, thence by the Vistula to Warsaw
+and to Prussia," said Wittemberg; "in that way we shall escape
+destruction."
+
+Douglas seized his own head: "So many victories, so many toils, such a
+great country conquered, and we must return."
+
+To which Wittemberg said: "Has your worthiness any advice?"
+
+"I have not," answered Douglas.
+
+The king, who had said nothing hitherto, rose, as a sign that the
+session was ended, and said,
+
+"I command the retreat!"
+
+Not a word further was heard from his mouth that day.
+
+Drums began to rattle, and trumpets to sound. News that the retreat was
+ordered ran in a moment from one end of the camp to the other. It was
+received with shouts of delight. Fortresses and castles were still in
+the hands of the Swedes; and in them rest, food, and safety were
+waiting.
+
+The generals and soldiers betook themselves so zealously to preparing
+for retreat that that zeal, as Douglas remarked, bordered on disgrace.
+
+The king sent Douglas with the vanguard to repair the difficult
+crossings and clear the forests. Soon after him moved the whole army in
+order of battle; the front was covered by artillery, the rear by
+wagons, at the flanks marched infantry. Military supplies and tents
+sailed down the river on boats.
+
+All these precautions were not superfluous; barely had the march begun,
+when the rearguard of the Swedes saw Polish cavalry behind, and
+thenceforth they lost it almost never from sight. Charnyetski assembled
+his own squadrons, collected all the "parties" of that region, sent to
+Yan Kazimir for reinforcements, and pursued. The first stopping-place,
+Pjevorsk, was at the same time the first place of alarm. The Polish
+divisions pushed up so closely that several thousand infantry with
+artillery had to turn against them. For a time the king himself thought
+that Charnyetski was really attacking; but according to his wont he
+only sent detachment after detachment. These attacked with an uproar
+and retreated immediately. All the night passed in these encounters,--a
+troublesome and sleepless night for the Swedes.
+
+The whole march, all the following nights and days were to be like this
+one.
+
+Meanwhile Yan Kazimir sent two squadrons of very well trained cavalry,
+and with them a letter stating that the hetmans would soon march with
+cavalry, and that he himself with the rest of the infantry and with the
+horde would hasten after them. In fact, he was detained only by
+negotiations with the Khan, with Rakotsy, and with the court of Vienna.
+Charnyetski was rejoiced beyond measure by this news; and when the day
+after the Swedes advanced in the wedge between the Vistula and the San,
+he said to Colonel Polyanovski,--
+
+"The net is spread, the fish are going in."
+
+"And we will do like that fisherman," said Zagloba, "who played on the
+flute to the fish so that they might dance, and when they would not, he
+pulled them on shore; then they began to jump around, and he fell to
+striking them with a stick, crying: 'Oh, such daughters! you ought to
+have danced when I begged you to do so.'"
+
+"They will dance," answered Charnyetski; "only let the marshal, Pan
+Lyubomirski, come with his army, which numbers five thousand."
+
+"He may come any time," remarked Volodyovski.
+
+"Some nobles from the foot-hills arrived to-day," said Zagloba; "they
+say that he is marching in haste; but whether he will join us instead
+of fighting on his own account is another thing."
+
+"How is that?" asked Charnyetski, glancing quickly at Zagloba.
+
+"He is a man of uncommon ambition and envious of glory. I have known
+him many years; I was his confidant and made his acquaintance when he
+was still a lad, at the court of Pan Krakovski. He was learning fencing
+at that time from Frenchmen and Italians. He fell into terrible anger
+one day when I told him that they were fools, not one of whom could
+stand before me. We had a duel, and I laid out seven of them one
+following the other. After that Lyubomirski learned from me, not only
+fencing, but the military art. By nature his wit is a little dull; but
+whatever he knows he knows from me."
+
+"Are you then such a master of the sword?" asked Polyanovski.
+
+"As a specimen of my teaching, take Pan Volodyovski; he is my second
+pupil. From that man I have real comfort."
+
+"True, it was you who killed Sweno."
+
+"Sweno? If some one of you, gentlemen, had done that deed, he would
+have had something to talk about all his life, and besides would invite
+his neighbors often to dinner to repeat the story at wine; but I do not
+mind it, for if I wished to take in all I have done, I could pave the
+road from this place to Sandomir with such Swenos. Could I not? Tell
+me, any of you who know me."
+
+"Uncle could do it," said Roh Kovalski.
+
+Charnyetski did not hear the continuation of this dialogue, for he had
+fallen to thinking deeply over Zagloba's words. He too knew of
+Lyubomirski's ambition, and doubted not that the marshal would either
+impose his own will on him, or would act on his own account, even
+though that should bring harm to the Commonwealth. Therefore his stern
+face became gloomy, and he began to twist his beard.
+
+"Oho!" whispered Zagloba to Pan Yan, "Charnyetski is chewing something
+bitter, for his face is like the face of an eagle; he will snap up
+somebody soon."
+
+Then Charnyetski said: "Some one of you, gentlemen, should go with a
+letter from me to Lyubomirski."
+
+"I am known to him, and I will go," said Pan Yan.
+
+"That is well," answered Charnyetski; "the more noted the messenger,
+the better."
+
+Zagloba turned to Volodyovski and whispered: "He is speaking now
+through the nose; that is a sign of great change."
+
+In fact, Charnyetski had a silver palate, for a musket-ball had carried
+away his own years before at Busha. Therefore whenever he was roused,
+angry, and unquiet, he always began to speak with a sharp and clinking
+voice. Suddenly he turned to Zagloba: "And perhaps you would go with
+Pan Skshetuski?"
+
+"Willingly," answered Zagloba. "If I cannot do anything, no man can.
+Besides, to a man of such great birth it will be more proper to send
+two."
+
+Charnyetski compressed his lips, twisted his beard, and repeated as if
+to himself: "Great birth, great birth--"
+
+"No one can deprive Lyubomirski of that," remarked Zagloba.
+
+Charnyetski frowned.
+
+"The Commonwealth alone is great, and in comparison with it no family
+is great, all of them are small; and I would the earth swallowed those
+who make mention of their greatness."
+
+All were silent, for he had spoken with much vehemence; and only after
+some time did Zagloba say,--
+
+"In comparison with the whole Commonwealth, certainly."
+
+"I did not grow up out of salt, nor out of the soil, but out of that
+which pains me," said Charnyetski; "and the Cossacks who shot this lip
+through pained me, and now the Swedes pain me; and either I shall cut
+away this sore with the sabre, or die of it myself, so help me God!"
+
+"And we will help you with our blood!" said Polyanovski.
+
+Charnyetski ruminated some time yet over the bitterness which rose in
+his heart, over the thought that the marshal's ambition might hinder
+him in saving the country; at last he grew calm and said,--
+
+"Now it is necessary to write a letter. I ask you, gentlemen, to come
+with me."
+
+Pan Yan and Zagloba followed him, and half an hour later they were on
+horseback and riding back toward Radymno; for there was news that the
+marshal had halted there with his army.
+
+"Yan," said Zagloba, feeling of the bag in which he carried
+Charnyetski's letter, "do me a favor; let me be the only one to talk to
+the marshal."
+
+"But, father, have you really known him, and taught him fencing?"
+
+"Hei! that came out of itself, so that the breath should not grow hot
+in my mouth, and my tongue become soft, which might easily happen from
+too long silence. I neither knew him nor taught him. Just as if I had
+nothing better to do than be a bear-keeper, and teach the marshal how
+to walk on hind legs! But that is all one; I have learned him through
+and through from what people tell of him, and I shall be able to bend
+him as a cook bends pastry. Only one thing I beg of you: do not say
+that we have a letter from Charnyetski, and make no mention of it till
+I give the letter myself."
+
+"How is that? Should I not do the work for which I was sent? In my life
+such a thing has not happened, and it will not happen! Even if
+Charnyetski should forgive me, I would not do that for ready treasure."
+
+"Then I will draw my sabre and hamstring your horse so that you cannot
+follow me. Have you ever seen anything miscarry that I invented with my
+own head? Tell me, have you ever come into evil plight yourself with
+Zagloba's stratagems? Did Pan Michael come out badly, or your Helena,
+or any of you, when I freed you all from Radzivill's hands? I tell you
+that more harm than good may come of that letter; for Charnyetski wrote
+it in such agitation that he broke three pens. Finally, you can speak
+of it when my plans fail. I promise to give it then, but not before."
+
+"If I can only deliver the letter, it is all one when."
+
+"I ask for no more. Now on, for there is a terrible road before us."
+
+They urged the horses, and went at a gallop. But they did not need to
+ride long, for the marshal's vanguard had not only passed Radymno, but
+Yaroslav; and Lyubomirski himself was at Yaroslav, and occupied the
+former quarters of the King of Sweden.
+
+They found him at dinner, with the most important officers. But when
+the envoys were announced, Lyubomirski gave orders to receive them at
+once; for he knew the names, since they were mentioned at that time in
+the whole Commonwealth.
+
+All eyes were turned on the envoys as they entered; the officers looked
+with especial admiration and curiosity at Pan Yan. When the marshal had
+greeted them courteously, he asked at once,--
+
+"Have I that famous knight before me who brought the letters from
+besieged Zbaraj to the king?"
+
+"I crept through," said Pan Yan.
+
+"God grant me as many such officers as possible! I envy Pan Charnyetski
+nothing so much; as to the rest, I know that even my small services
+will not perish from the memory of men."
+
+"And I am Zagloba," said the old knight, pushing himself forward.
+
+Here he passed his eye around the assembly; and the marshal, as he
+wished to attract every one to himself, exclaimed,--
+
+"Who does not know of the man who slew Burlai, the leader of the
+barbarians; of the man who raised Radzivill's army in rebellion--"
+
+"And I led Sapyeha's army, who, if the truth is told, chose me, not him
+for leader," added Zagloba.
+
+"And why did you wish, being able to have such a high office, to leave
+it and serve under Pan Charnyetski?"
+
+Here Zagloba's eye gleamed at Skshetuski, and he said: "Serene great
+mighty marshal, from your worthiness I as well as the whole country
+take example how to resign ambition and self-interest for the good of
+the Commonwealth."
+
+Lyubomirski blushed from satisfaction, and Zagloba, putting his hands
+on his hips, continued,--
+
+"Pan Charnyetski has sent us to bow to your worthiness in his name and
+that of the whole army, and at the same time to inform you of the
+considerable victory which God has permitted us to gain over
+Kanneberg."
+
+"I have heard of it already," said the marshal, dryly enough, in whom
+envy had now begun to move, "but gladly do I hear it again from an
+eyewitness."
+
+Zagloba began at once to relate, but with certain changes, for the
+forces of Kanneberg grew in his mouth to two thousand men. He did not
+forget either to mention Sweno or himself, and how before the eyes of
+the king the remnant of the cavalry were cut to pieces near the river;
+how the wagons and three hundred men of the guards fell into the hands
+of the fortunate conquerors; in a word, the victory increased in his
+narrative to the dimensions of an unspeakable misfortune for the
+Swedes.
+
+All listened with attention, and so did the marshal; but he grew
+gloomier and gloomier, his face was chilled as if by ice, and at last
+he said,--
+
+"I do not deny that Charnyetski is a celebrated warrior, but still he
+cannot devour all the Swedes himself; something will remain for others
+to gulp."
+
+"Serene great mighty lord," answered Zagloba, "it is not Pan
+Charnyetski who gained the victory."
+
+"But who?"
+
+"But Lyubomirski!"
+
+A moment of universal astonishment followed. The marshal opened his
+mouth, began to wink, and looked at Zagloba with such an astonished
+gaze, as if he wished to ask: "Is there not a stave lacking in your
+barrel?"
+
+Zagloba did not let himself be beaten from the track, but pouting his
+lips with great importance (he borrowed this gesture from Zamoyski),
+said,--
+
+"I heard Charnyetski say before the whole army: 'It is not our sabres
+that slay them; 'tis the name of Lyubomirski that cuts them down. Since
+they have heard that he is right here marching on, their courage has so
+gone out of them that they see in every one of our soldiers the army of
+the marshal, and they put their heads under the knife like sheep.'"
+
+If all the rays of the sun had fallen at once on the face of the
+marshal, that face could not have been more radiant.
+
+"How is that?" asked he; "did Charnyetski himself say that?"
+
+"He did, and many other things; but I do not know that 'tis proper for
+me to repeat them, for he told them only to intimates."
+
+"Tell! Every word of Pan Charnyetski deserves to be repeated a hundred
+times. He is an uncommon man, and I said so long ago."
+
+Zagloba looked at the marshal, half closing his one eye, and muttered:
+"You have swallowed the hook; I'll land you this minute."
+
+"What do you say?" asked the marshal.
+
+"I say that the army cheered your worthiness in such fashion that they
+could not have cheered the king better; and in Pjevorsk, where we
+fought all night with the Swedes, wherever a squadron sprang out the
+men cried: 'Lyubomirski! Lyubomirski!' and that had a better effect
+than 'Allah!' and 'Slay, kill!' There is a witness here too,--Pan
+Skshetuski, no common soldier, and a man who has never told a lie in
+his life."
+
+The marshal looked involuntarily at Pan Yan, who blushed to his ears,
+and muttered something through his nose. Meanwhile the officers of the
+marshal began to praise the envoys aloud,--
+
+"See, Pan Charnyetski has acted courteously, sending such polished
+cavaliers; both are famous knights, and honey simply flows from the
+mouth of one of them."
+
+"I have always understood that Pan Charnyetski was a well-wisher of
+mine, but now there is nothing that I would not do for him," cried the
+marshal, whose eyes were veiled with a mist from delight.
+
+At this Zagloba broke into enthusiasm: "Serene great mighty lord, who
+would not render homage to you, who would not honor you, the model of
+all civic virtues, who recall Aristides in justice, the Scipios in
+bravery! I have read many books in my time, have seen much, have
+meditated much, and my soul has been rent from pain; for what have I
+seen in this Commonwealth? The Opalinskis, the Radzeyovskis, the
+Radzivills, who by their personal pride, setting their own ambition
+above all things, were ready at every moment to desert the country for
+their own private gain. I thought further, this Commonwealth is lost
+through the viciousness of its own sons. But who has comforted me, who
+has consoled me in my suffering? Pan Charnyetski, for he said: 'The
+Commonwealth has not perished, since Lyubomirski has risen up in it.
+These others,' said he, 'think of themselves alone; he is only looking,
+only seeking how to make an offering of his own interests on the common
+altar. These are pushing themselves forward; he is pushing himself
+back, for he wants to illustrate by his example. Now,' said he, 'he is
+marching with a powerful conquering army, and I have heard,' said he,
+'that he wishes to give me the command over it, in order to teach
+others how they should sacrifice their ambition, though even just, for
+the country. Go, then,' said he, 'to Pan Lyubomirski, declare to him
+that I do not want the sacrifice, I do not desire it, since he is a
+better leader than I am; since, moreover, not only as leader, but--God
+grant our Kazimir a long life!--as king are we ready to choose him,
+and--we will choose him!'"
+
+Here Zagloba was somewhat frightened lest he had passed the measure,
+and really after the exclamation, "We will choose him!" followed
+silence; but before the magnate heaven opened; he grew somewhat pale at
+first, then red, then pale again, and laboring heavily with his breast,
+said, after the silence of a moment,--
+
+"The Commonwealth is and will ever remain in control of its own will,
+for on that ancient foundation do our liberties rest. But I am only a
+servant of its servants, and God is my witness that I do not raise my
+eyes to those heights at which a citizen should not gaze. As to command
+over the army, Pan Charnyetski must accept it. I demand it especially
+for this, to give an example to those who, having continually the
+greatness of their family in mind, are unwilling to recognize any
+authority whenever it is necessary to forget the greatness of their
+family for the good of the country. Therefore, though perhaps I am not
+such a bad leader, still I, Lyubomirski, enter willingly under the
+command of Charnyetski, praying to God only to send us victory over the
+enemy!"
+
+"Roman! Father of the country!" exclaimed Zagloba, seizing the
+marshal's hand and pressing it to his lips.
+
+But at the same moment the old rogue turned his eye on Pan Yan, and
+began to wink time after time.
+
+Thundering shouts were heard from the officers. The throng in the
+quarters increased with each moment.
+
+"Wine!" cried the marshal.
+
+And when they brought in goblets he raised at once a toast to the king,
+then to Charnyetski, whom he called his leader, and finally to the
+envoys. Zagloba did not remain behind with the toasts, and he so caught
+the hearts of all that the marshal himself conducted them to the
+threshold, and the knights to the gates of Yaroslav.
+
+At last Pan Yan and Zagloba were alone; then Zagloba stopped the road
+in front of Pan Yan, reined in his horse, and putting his hands on his
+hips, said,--
+
+"Well, Yan, what do you think?"
+
+"God knows," answered Pan Yan, "that if I had not seen it with my own
+eyes and heard it with my own ears, I would not believe, even if an
+angel had told me."
+
+"Ha! do you know? I will swear to you that Charnyetski himself at the
+most asked and begged Lyubomirski to go in company with him. And do you
+know what he would have done? Lyubomirski would have gone alone; for if
+Charnyetski has adjured in the letter by the love of country, or if he
+mentioned private interests, and I am sure that he has, the marshal
+would have been offended at once, and would have said: 'Does he want to
+be my preceptor, and teach me how to serve the country?' I know those
+men! Happily old Zagloba took the matter in hand, and hardly had he
+opened his mouth when Lyubomirski not only wanted to go with
+Charnyetski, but to go under his command. Charnyetski is killing
+himself with anxiety, but I will comfort him. Well, Yan, does Zagloba
+know how to manage the magnates?"
+
+"I tell you that I am not able to let the breath go from my lips from
+astonishment."
+
+"I know them! Show one of them a crown and a corner of the ermine robe,
+and you may rub him against the grain like a hound pup, and besides, he
+will bend up to you and present his back himself. No cat will so lick
+his chops, even if you hold before him a dinner of pure cheese. The
+eyes of the most honest of them will be bursting out from desire; and
+if a scoundrel happens, such as the voevoda of Vilna, he is ready to
+betray the country. Oh, the vanity of man! Lord Jesus! if Thou hadst
+given me as many thousands of ducats as Thou hast created candidates
+for this crown, I should be a candidate myself. For if any of them
+imagines that I hold myself inferior to him, then may his stomach burst
+from his own pride. Zagloba is as good as Lyubomirski; in fortune alone
+is the difference. This is true, Yan. Do you think that I really kissed
+him on the hand? I kissed my own thumb, and shoved his hand up to my
+nose. Certain it is that since he is alive no one has so fooled him. I
+have spread him like butter on toast for Charnyetski. God grant our
+king as long a life as possible; but in case of election, I would
+rather give a vote to myself than to Lyubomirski. Roh Kovalski would
+give me another, and Pan Michael would strike down my opponents. As God
+lives! I would make you grand hetman of the kingdom straightway, and
+Pan Michael, after Sapyeha, grand hetman of Lithuania,--but Jendzian,
+treasurer. He would punish the Jews with taxes! But enough; the main
+thing is that I have caught Lyubomirski on a hook and put the line in
+Charnyetski's hand. For whomsoever the flour, it will be ground on the
+Swedes; and whose is the merit? What do you think? Should the
+chroniclers inscribe it to some one else? But I have no luck. It will
+be well even if Charnyetski does not break out on the old man for not
+having given the letter. Such is human gratitude. This is not my first,
+not my first--others are sitting in starostaships, and are grown around
+with fat, like badgers; but do you, old man, shake your poor stomach on
+a horse as before."
+
+Here Zagloba waved his hand. "Human gratitude may go to the hangman!
+And whether in this or that position you must die, still it is pleasant
+to serve the country. The best reward is good company. As soon as a man
+is on horseback, then, with such comrades as you and Michael, he is
+ready to ride to the end of the world,--such is our Polish nature. If a
+German, a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a dark Spaniard is on horseback,
+he is ready at once to gallop into your eyes; but a Pole, having inborn
+patience, will endure much, and will permit even a Swedish fellow to
+pluck him; but when the limit is passed and the Pole whacks him in the
+snout, such a Swede will cover himself three times with his legs. For
+there is metal yet in the Poles, and while the metal lasts the
+Commonwealth will last. Beat that into yourself, Yan."
+
+And so spoke Zagloba for a long time, for he was very glad; and
+whenever he was very glad he was talkative beyond usual measure, and
+full of wise sentences.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+Charnyetski, in truth, did not even dare to think that the marshal of
+the kingdom would put himself under his command. He wished merely joint
+action, and he feared that even that would not be attained because of
+the great ambition of Lyubomirski; for the proud magnate had mentioned
+more than once to his officers that he wished to attack the Swedes
+independently, for thus he could effect something; but if he and
+Charnyetski won a victory together, the whole glory would flow to
+Charnyetski.
+
+Such was the case, in fact. Charnyetski understood the marshal's
+reasons, and was troubled. He was reading now, for the tenth time, the
+copy of the letter which he had sent from Pjevorsk, wishing to see if
+he had written anything to offend so irritable a man as Lyubomirski.
+
+He regretted certain phrases; finally he began to regret, on the whole,
+that he had sent the letter. Therefore he was sitting gloomy in his
+quarters, and every little while he approached the window and looked
+out on the road to see if the envoys were not returning. The officers
+saw him through the window, and divined what was passing in his mind,
+for evident trouble was on his forehead.
+
+"But look," said Polyanovski to Pan Michael, "there will be nothing
+pleasant, for the castellan's face has become spotted, and that is a
+bad sign."
+
+Charnyetski's face bore numerous traces of small-pox, and in moments of
+great emotion or disquiet it was covered with white and dark spots. As
+he had sharp features, a very high forehead and cloudy, Jupiter brows,
+a bent nose, and a glance cutting straight through, when in addition
+those spots appeared, he became terrible. The Cossacks in their time
+called him the spotted dog; but in truth, he was more like a spotted
+eagle, and when he led men to the attack and his burka spread out like
+great wings, the likeness struck both his own men and the enemy.
+
+He roused fear in these and those. During the Cossack wars leaders of
+powerful bands lost their heads when forced to act against Charnyetski.
+Hmelnitski himself feared him, but especially the counsels which he
+gave the king. They brought upon the Cossacks the terrible defeat of
+Berestechko. But his fame increased chiefly after Berestechko, when,
+together with the Tartars, he passed over the steppes like a flame,
+crushed the uprisen crowds, took towns and trenches by storm, rushing
+with the speed of a whirlwind from one end of the Ukraine to the other.
+
+With this same raging endurance was he plucking the Swedes now.
+"Charnyetski does not knock out my men, he steals them away," said Karl
+Gustav. But Charnyetski was tired of stealing away; he thought that the
+time had come to strike. But he lacked artillery and infantry
+altogether, without which nothing decisive could be done, nothing
+important effected; hence his eagerness for a junction with
+Lyubomirski, who had a small number of cannon, it is true, but brought
+with him infantry composed of mountaineers. These, though not over-much
+trained as yet, had still been under fire more than once, and might,
+for want of better, be used against the incomparable infantry legions
+of Karl Gustav.
+
+Charnyetski, therefore, was as if in a fever. Not being able to endure
+in the house, he went outside, and seeing Volodyovski and Polyanovski,
+he asked,--
+
+"Are the envoys not in sight?"
+
+"It is clear that they are glad to see them," answered Volodyovski.
+
+"They are glad to see them, but not glad to read my letter, or the
+marshal would have sent his answer."
+
+"Pan Castellan," said Polyanovski, whom Charnyetski trusted greatly,
+"why be careworn? If the marshal comes, well; if not, we will attack as
+of old. As it is, blood is flowing from the Swedish pot; and we know
+that when a pot once begins to leak, everything will run out of it."
+
+"There is a leak in the Commonwealth too," said Charnyetski. "If the
+Swedes escape this time, they will be reinforced, succor will come to
+them from Prussia, our chance will be lost." Then he struck his side
+with his hand in sign of impatience. Just then was heard the tread of
+horses and the bass voice of Zagloba singing,--
+
+
+           "Kaska to the bakehouse went her way,
+            And Stah said to her, 'Take me in, let me in,
+                                          My love.
+            For the snow is falling, and the wind is blowing;
+            Where shall I, poor fellow, put my head
+                                          Till morning?'"
+
+
+"It is a good sign! They are returning joyously," cried Polyanovski.
+
+That moment the envoys, seeing Charnyetski, sprang from their saddles,
+gave their horses to an attendant, and went quickly to the entrance.
+Zagloba threw his cap suddenly into the air, and imitating the voice of
+the marshal so excellently that whoever was not looking on might be
+deceived, cried,--
+
+"Vivat Pan Charnyetski, our leader!"
+
+The castellan frowned, and asked quickly: "Is there a letter for me?"
+
+"There is not," answered Zagloba; "there is something better. The
+marshal with his army passes voluntarily under command of your
+worthiness."
+
+Charnyetski pierced him with a look, then turned to Pan Yan, as if
+wishing to say: "Speak you, for this one has been drinking!"
+
+Zagloba was in fact a little drunk; but Skshetuski confirmed his words,
+hence astonishment was reflected on the face of the castellan.
+
+"Come with me," said he to the two. "I beg you also," said he to
+Polyanovski and Pan Michael.
+
+All entered his room. They had not sat down yet when Charnyetski asked:
+"What did he say to my letter?"
+
+"He said nothing," answered Zagloba, "and why he did not will appear at
+the end of my story; but now _incipiam_ (I will begin)."
+
+Here he told all as it had happened,--how he had brought the marshal to
+such a favorable decision. Charnyetski looked at him with growing
+astonishment, Polyanovski seized his own head, Pan Michael's mustaches
+were quivering.
+
+"I have not known you hitherto, as God is dear to me!" cried
+Charnyetski, at last. "I cannot believe my own ears."
+
+"They have long since called me Ulysses," said Zagloba, modestly.
+
+"Where is my letter?"
+
+"Here it is."
+
+"I must forgive you for not delivering it. He is a finished rogue! A
+vice-chancellor might learn from him how to make treaties. As God
+lives, if I were king, I would send you to Tsargrad."
+
+"If he were there, a hundred thousand Turks would be here now!" cried
+Pan Michael.
+
+To which Zagloba said: "Not one, but two hundred thousand, as true as I
+live."
+
+"And did the marshal hesitate at nothing?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"He? He swallowed all that I put to his lips, just as a fat gander
+gulps pellets; his eyes were covered with mist. I thought that from
+delight he would burst, as a Swedish bomb bursts. With flattery that
+man might be taken to hell."
+
+"If it can only be ground out on the Swedes, if it can only be ground
+out, and I have hope that it will be," said Charnyetski, delighted.
+"You are a man adroit as a fox; but do not make too much sport of the
+marshal, for another would not have done what he has to-day. Much
+depends on him. We shall march to Sandomir itself over the estates of
+the Lyubomirskis, and the marshal can raise with one word the whole
+region, command peasants to injure crossings, burn bridges, hide
+provisions in the forests. You have rendered a service which I shall
+not forget till death; but I must thank the marshal, for as I believe
+he has not done this from mere vanity."
+
+Then he clapped his hands and cried: "A horse for me at once! Let us
+forge the iron while it is hot!" Then he turned to the colonels: "Come,
+all of you gentlemen, with me, so that the suite may be the most
+imposing."
+
+"And must I go too?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"You have built the bridge between me and the marshal, it is proper
+that you be the first to pass over. Besides, I think that they will see
+you gladly. Come, come, lord brother, or I shall say that you wished to
+leave a half-finished work."
+
+"Hard to refuse. I must draw my belt tighter, however, lest I shake
+into nothing. Not much strength is left me, unless I fortify it with
+something."
+
+"But with what?"
+
+"Much has been told me of the castellan's mead which I have not tasted
+as yet, and I should like to know if it is better than the marshal's."
+
+"We will drink a stirrup cup now, but after our return we shall not
+limit the cups in advance. You will find a couple of decanters of it in
+your own quarters."
+
+Then the castellan commanded to bring goblets; they drank enough for
+brightness and good humor, mounted and rode away.
+
+The marshal received Charnyetski with open arms, entertained him with
+food and drink, did not let him go till morning; but in the morning the
+two armies were joined, and marched farther under command of
+Charnyetski.
+
+Near Syenyava the Poles attacked the Swedes again with such effect that
+they cut the rearguard to pieces and brought disorder into the main
+army. Only at daybreak did the artillery disperse them. At Lejaysk,
+Charnyetski attacked with still greater vigor. Considerable detachments
+of the Swedes were mired in soft places, caused by rains and
+inundations, and those fell into the hands of the Poles. The roads
+became of the worst for the Swedes. Exhausted, hungry, and tortured by
+desire of sleep, the regiments barely marched. More and more soldiers
+stopped on the way. Some were found so terribly reduced that they no
+longer wished to eat or drink, they only begged for death. Others lay
+down and died on hillocks; some lost presence of mind, and looked with
+the greatest indifference on the approaching pursuers. Foreigners, who
+were counted frequently in the ranks of the Swedes, began to disappear
+from the camp and go over to Charnyetski. Only the unbroken spirit of
+Karl Gustav held the remnant of its dying strength in the whole army.
+
+For not only did an enemy follow the army; various "parties" under
+unknown leaders and bands of peasants crossed its road continually.
+Those bodies, unformed and not very numerous, could not, it is true,
+strike it with offensive warfare, but they wearied it mortally. And
+wishing to instil into the Swedes the conviction that Tartars had
+already come with assistance, all the Polish troops gave forth the
+Tartar shout; therefore "Allah! Allah!" was heard night and day without
+a moment's cessation. The Swedish soldiers could not draw breath, could
+not put aside their armor for an instant. More than once a few men
+alarmed the whole camp. Horses fell by tens, and were eaten
+immediately; for the transport of provisions had become impossible.
+From time to time the Polish horsemen found Swedish corpses terribly
+disfigured; here they recognized at once the hands of peasants. The
+greater part of the villages in the triangle between the San and the
+Vistula belonged to the marshal and his relatives; therefore all the
+peasants in those parts rose up as one man, for the marshal, unsparing
+of his own fortune, had announced that whoever took up arms would be
+freed from subjection. Scarcely had this news gone the round of the
+region when the peasants put their scythes on staffs and began to bring
+Swedish heads into camp: they brought them in every day till
+Lyubomirski was forced to prohibit that custom as unchristian. Then
+they brought in gloves and boots. The Swedes, driven to desperation,
+flayed those who fell into their hands; and the war became more and
+more dreadful. Some of the Polish troops adhered yet to the Swedes, but
+they adhered only through fear. On the road to Lejaysk many of them
+deserted; those who remained made such tumults in the camp daily that
+Karl Gustav gave orders to shoot a number of officers. This was the
+signal for a general withdrawal, which was effected sabre in hand. Few,
+if any, Poles remained; but Charnyetski, gaining new strength, attacked
+with still greater vigor.
+
+The marshal gave most effectual assistance. During this period, which
+by the way was short, the nobler sides of Lyubomirski's nature gained,
+perhaps, the upper hand over his pride and self-love; therefore he
+omitted no toil, he spared neither his health nor his person, he led
+squadrons frequently, gave the enemy no rest; and as he was a good
+soldier he rendered good services. These, added to his later ones,
+would have secured him a glorious memory in the nation, were it not for
+that shameless rebellion which toward the end of his career he raised
+in order to hinder the reform of the Commonwealth.
+
+But at this time he did everything to win glory, and he covered himself
+with it as with a robe. Pan Vitovski, the castellan of Sandomir, an old
+and experienced soldier, vied with him. Vitovski wished to equal
+Charnyetski himself; but he could not, for God had denied him
+greatness.
+
+All three crushed the Swedes more and more, and with such effect that
+the infantry and cavalry regiments, to whom it came to form the
+rearguard on the retreat, marched with so much fear that a panic arose
+among them from the slightest cause. Then Karl Gustav decided to march
+always with the rearguard, so as to give courage by his presence.
+
+But in the very beginning he almost paid for this position with
+his life. It happened that having with him a detachment of the
+life-guards,--the largest of all the regiments, for the soldiers in it
+were selected from the whole Scandinavian people,--the king stopped for
+refreshment at the village of Rudnik. When he had dined with the parish
+priest he decided to sleep a little, since he had not closed his eyes
+the night preceding. The life-guards surrounded the house, to watch
+over the safety of the king. Meanwhile the priest's horse-boy stole
+away from the village, and coming up to a mare in the field, sprang
+upon her colt and raced off to Charnyetski.
+
+Charnyetski was ten miles distant at this time; but his vanguard,
+composed of the regiment of Prince Dymitri Vishnyevetski, was marching
+under Shandarovski, the lieutenant, about two miles behind the Swedes.
+Shandarovski was just talking to Roh Kovalski, who had ridden up that
+moment with orders from Charnyetski, when suddenly both saw the lad
+flying toward them at all horse speed.
+
+"What devil is that racing up so," asked Shandarovski, "and besides on
+a colt?"
+
+"Some village lad," said Kovalski.
+
+Meanwhile the boy had ridden to the front of the rank, and only stopped
+when the colt, frightened at horses and men, stood on his hind legs and
+dug his hoofs into the earth. The youth sprang off, and holding the
+colt by the mane, bowed to the knights.
+
+"Well, what have you to say?" asked the lieutenant, approaching him.
+
+"The Swedes are with us at the priest's house; they say that the king
+himself is among them!" said the youth, with sparkling eyes.
+
+"Many of them?"
+
+"Not more than two hundred horses."
+
+Shandarovski's eyes now flashed in their turn; but he was afraid of an
+ambush, therefore he looked threateningly at the boy and asked,--
+
+"Who sent you?"
+
+"Who was to send me? I jumped myself on the colt, I came near falling,
+and lost my cap. It is well that the Swedish carrion did not see me!"
+
+Truth was beating out of the sunburned face of the youth; he had
+evidently a great animosity against the Swedes,--he was panting, his
+cheeks were burning, he stood before the officers holding the mane of
+the colt with one hand, his hair disordered, the shirt open on his
+bosom.
+
+"Where is the rest of the Swedish army?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"At daybreak so many passed that we could not count them; those went
+farther, only cavalry remained. But there is one sleeping at the
+priest's, and they say that he is the king."
+
+"Boy," answered Shandarovski, "if you are lying, your head will fall;
+but if you speak the truth, ask what you please."
+
+"As true as I live! I want nothing unless the great mighty lord officer
+would command to give me a sabre."
+
+"Give him some blade," cried Shandarovski to his attendants, completely
+convinced now.
+
+The other officers fell to inquiring of the boy where the house was,
+where the village, what the Swedes were doing.
+
+"The dogs! they are watching. If you go straight they will see you; but
+I will take you behind the alder grove."
+
+Orders were given at once, and the squadron moved on, first at a trot
+and then at a gallop. The youth rode before the first rank bareback on
+his colt without a bridle. He urged the colt with his heels, and every
+little while looked with sparkling eyes on the naked sabre.
+
+When the village was in sight, he turned out of the willows and led by
+a somewhat muddy road to the alder grove, in which it was still
+muddier; therefore they slackened the speed of the horses.
+
+"Watch!" said the boy; "they are about ten rods on the right from the
+end of the alder grove."
+
+They advanced now very slowly, for the road was difficult and heavy;
+the cavalry horses sank frequently to their knees. At last the alder
+grove began to grow thinner, and they came to the edge of the open
+space.
+
+Not more than three hundred yards distant, they saw a broad square
+rising somewhat, and in it the priest's house surrounded by poplars,
+among which were to be seen the tops of straw beehives. On the square
+were two hundred horsemen in rimmed helmets and breastplates.
+
+The great horsemen sat on enormous lean horses, and were in
+readiness,--some with rapiers at their shoulders, others with muskets
+on their thighs; but they were looking in another direction toward the
+main road, from which alone they expected the enemy. A splendid blue
+standard with a golden lion was waving above their heads.
+
+Farther on, around the house stood guards by twos. One was turned
+toward the alder grove; but because the sun shone brightly and struck
+his eyes, and in the alders, which were already covered with thick
+leaves, it was almost dark, he could not see the Polish horsemen.
+
+In Shandarovski, a fiery horseman, the blood began to boil like water
+in a pot; but he restrained himself and waited till the ranks should be
+in order. Meanwhile Roh Kovalski put his heavy hand on the shoulder of
+the youth,--
+
+"Listen, horsefly!" said he; "have you seen the king?"
+
+"I saw him, great mighty lord!" whispered the lad.
+
+"How did he look? How can he be known?"
+
+"He is terribly black in the face, and wears red ribbons at his side."
+
+"Did you see his horse?"
+
+"The horse is black, with a white face."
+
+"Look out, and show him to me."
+
+"I will. But shall we go quickly?"
+
+"Shut your mouth!"
+
+Here they were silent; and Roh began to pray to the Most Holy Lady to
+permit him to meet Karl, and to direct his hand at the meeting.
+
+The silence continued still a moment, then the horse under Shandarovski
+himself snorted. At that the horseman on guard looked, quivered as if
+something had been thrown at his saddle, and fired his pistol.
+
+"Allah! Allah! Kill, slay! Uha-u, slay!" was heard in the alder grove;
+and the squadron, coming out of the shadow like lightning, rushed at
+the Swedes.
+
+They struck into the smoke before all could turn front to them, and a
+terrible hewing began; only sabres and rapiers were used, for no man
+had time to fire. In the twinkle of an eye the Poles pushed the Swedes
+to the fence, which fell with a rattle under the pressure of the
+horses' rumps, and the Poles began to slash them so madly that they
+were crowded and confused. Twice they tried to close, and twice torn
+asunder they formed two separate bodies which in a twinkle divided into
+smaller groups; at last they were scattered as peas thrown by a peasant
+through the air with a shovel.
+
+All at once were heard despairing voices: "The king, the king! Save the
+king!"
+
+But Karl Gustav, at the first moment of the encounter, with pistols in
+hand and a sword in his teeth, rushed out. The trooper who held the
+horse at the door gave him the beast that moment; the king sprang on,
+and turning the corner, rushed between the poplars and the beehives to
+escape by the rear from the circle of battle.
+
+Reaching the fence he spurred his horse, sprang over, and fell into the
+group of his men who were defending themselves against the right wing
+of the Poles, who had just surrounded the house and were fighting with
+the Swedes behind the garden.
+
+"To the road!" cried Karl Gustav. And overturning with the hilt of his
+sword the Polish horseman who was raising his sabre above him, with one
+spring he came out of the whirl of the fight; the Swedes broke the
+Polish rank and sprang after him with all their force, as a herd of
+deer hunted by dogs rush whither they are led by their leader.
+
+The Polish horsemen turned their horses after them, and the chase
+began. Both came out on the highroad from Rudnik to Boyanovka. They
+were seen from the front yard where the main battle was raging, and
+just then it was that the voices were heard crying,--
+
+"The king, the king! Save the king!"
+
+But the Swedes in the front yard were so pressed by Shandarovski that
+they could not think even of saving themselves; the king raced on then
+with a party of not more than twelve men, while after him were chasing
+nearly thirty, and at the head of them all Roh Kovalski.
+
+The lad who was to point out the king was involved somewhere in the
+general battle, but Roh himself recognized Karl Gustav by the knot of
+red ribbons. Then he thought that his opportunity had come; he bent in
+the saddle, pressed his horse with the spurs, and rushed on like a
+whirlwind.
+
+The pursued, straining the last strength from their horses, stretched
+along over the broad road. But the swifter and lighter Polish horses
+began soon to gain on them. Roh came up very quickly with the hindmost
+Swede; he rose in his stirrups for a better blow, and cut terribly;
+with one awful stroke he took off the arm and the shoulder, and rushed
+on like the wind, fastening his eyes again on the king.
+
+The next horseman was black before his eyes; he hurled him down. He
+split the head and the helmet of the third, and tore farther, having
+the king, and the king only, in his eye. Now the horses of the Swedes
+began to pant and fall; a crowd of Polish horsemen overtook them and
+cut down the riders in a twinkle.
+
+Roh had already passed horses and men, so as not to lose time; the
+distance between him and Karl Gustav began to decrease. There were only
+two men between him and the king.
+
+Now an arrow, sent from a bow by some one of the Poles, sang near the
+ear of Pan Roh, and sank in the loins of the rider rushing before him.
+The man trembled to the right and the left; at last he bent backward,
+bellowed with an unearthly voice, and fell from the saddle.
+
+Between Roh and the king there was now only one man. But that one,
+wishing evidently to save the king, instead of helping turned his
+horse. Kovalski came up, and a cannonball does not sweep a man from the
+saddle as he hurled him to the ground; then, giving a fearful shout, he
+rushed forward like a furious stag.
+
+The king might perhaps have met him, and would have perished
+inevitably; but others were flying on behind Roh, and arrows began to
+whistle; any moment one of them might wound his horse. The king,
+therefore, pressed his heels more closely, bent his head to the mane,
+and shot through the space in front of him like a sparrow pursued by a
+hawk.
+
+But Roh began not only to prick his own horse with the spurs, but to
+beat him with the side of the sabre; and so they sped on one after the
+other. Trees, stones, willows, flashed before their eyes; the wind
+whistled in their ears. The king's hat fell from his head; at last he
+threw down his purse, thinking that the pitiless rider might be tempted
+by it and leave the pursuit; but Kovalski did not look at the purse,
+and rolled his horse on with more and more power till the beast was
+groaning from effort.
+
+Roh had evidently forgotten himself altogether; for racing onward he
+began to shout in a voice in which besides threats there was also a
+prayer,--
+
+"Stop, for God's mercy!"
+
+Then the king's horse stumbled so violently that if the king had not
+held the bridle with all his power the beast would have fallen. Roh
+bellowed like an aurochs; the distance dividing him from Karl Gustav
+had decreased notably.
+
+After a while the steed stumbled a second time, and again before the
+king brought him to his feet Roh had approached a number of yards.
+
+Then he straightened himself in the saddle as if for a blow. He was
+terrible; his eyes were bursting out, his teeth were gleaming from
+under his reddish mustaches. One more stumble of the horse, another
+moment, and the fate of the Commonwealth, of all Sweden, of the entire
+war would have been decided. But the king's horse began to run again;
+and the king, turning, showed the barrels of two pistols, and twice did
+he fire.
+
+One of the bullets shattered the knee of Kovalski's horse; he reared,
+then fell on his forefeet, and dug the earth with his nose.
+
+The king might have rushed that moment on his pursuer and thrust him
+through with his rapier; but at the distance of two hundred yards other
+Polish horsemen were flying forward; so he bent down again in his
+saddle, and shot on like an arrow propelled from the bow of a Tartar.
+
+Kovalski freed himself from his horse. He looked for a while
+unconsciously at the fleeing man, then staggered like one drunk, sat on
+the road, and began to roar like a bear.
+
+But the king was each instant farther, farther, farther! He began to
+diminish, to melt, and then vanished in the dark belt of pine scrub.
+
+Meanwhile, with shouting and roaring, came on Kovalski's companions.
+There were fifteen of them whose horses held out. One brought the
+king's purse, another his hat, on which black ostrich feathers were
+fastened with diamonds. These two began to cry out,--
+
+"These are yours, comrade! they belong to you of right."
+
+Others asked: "Do you know whom you were chasing? That was Karl
+himself."
+
+"As God is true! In his life he has never fled before any man as before
+you. You have covered yourself with immense glory!"
+
+"And how many men did you put down before you came up with the king?"
+
+"You lacked only little of freeing the Commonwealth in one flash, with
+your sabre."
+
+"Take the purse!"
+
+"Take the hat!"
+
+"The horse was good, but you can buy ten such with these treasures."
+
+Roh gazed at his comrades with dazed eyes; at last he sprang up and
+shouted,--
+
+"I am Kovalski, and this is Pani Kovalski! Go to all the devils!"
+
+"His mind is disturbed!" cried they.
+
+"Give me a horse! I'll catch him yet," shouted Roh.
+
+But they took him by the arms, and though he struggled they brought him
+back to Rudnik, pacifying and comforting him along the road.
+
+"You gave him Peter!" cried they. "See what has come to this victor,
+this conqueror of so many towns and villages!"
+
+"Ha, ha! He has found out Polish cavaliers!"
+
+"He will grow tired of the Commonwealth. He has come to close
+quarters."
+
+"Vivat, Roh Kovalski!"
+
+"Vivat, vivat, the most manful cavalier, the pride of the whole army!"
+
+And they fell to drinking out of their canteens. They gave Roh one, and
+he emptied the bottle at a draught.
+
+During the pursuit of the king along the Boyanovka road the Swedes
+defended themselves in front of the priest's house with bravery worthy
+of their renowned regiment. Though attacked suddenly and scattered very
+quickly, they rallied as quickly around their blue standard, for the
+reason that they were surrounded by a dense crowd. Not one of them
+asked for quarter, but standing horse to horse, shoulder to shoulder,
+they thrust so fiercely with their rapiers that for a time victory
+seemed to incline to their side. It was necessary either to break them
+again, which became impossible since a line of Polish horsemen
+surrounded them completely, or to cut them to pieces. Shandarovski
+recognized the second plan as the better; therefore encircling the
+Swedes with a still closer ring, he sprang on them like a wounded
+falcon on a flock of long-billed cranes. A savage slaughter and press
+began. Sabres rattled against rapiers, rapiers were broken on the hilts
+of sabres. Sometimes a horse rose, like a dolphin above the sea waves,
+and in a moment fell in the whirl of men and horses. Shouts ceased;
+there were heard only the cry of horses, the sharp clash of steel,
+gasping from the panting breasts of the knights; uncommon fury had
+mastered the hearts of Poles and Swedes. They fought with fragments of
+sabres and rapiers; they closed with one another like hawks, caught one
+another by the hair, by mustaches, gnawed with their teeth; those who
+had fallen from their horses and were yet able to stand stabbed with
+their knives horses in the belly and men in the legs; in the smoke, in
+the steam from horses, in the terrible frenzy of battle, men were
+turned into giants and gave the blows of giants; arms became clubs,
+sabres lightning. Steel helmets were broken at a blow, like earthen
+pots; heads were cleft; arms holding sabres were swept away. They hewed
+without rest; they hewed without mercy, without pity. From under the
+whirl of men and horses blood began to flow along the yard in streams.
+
+The great blue standard was waving yet above the Swedish circle, but
+the circle diminished with each moment. As when harvesters attack grain
+from two sides, and the sickles begin to glitter, the standing grain
+disappears and the men see one another more nearly each moment, thus
+did the Polish ring become ever narrower, and those fighting on one
+side could see the bent sabres fighting on the opposite side.
+
+Pan Shandarovski was wild as a hurricane, and ate into the Swedes as a
+famished wolf buries his jaws in the flesh of a freshly killed horse;
+but one horseman surpassed him in fury, and that was the youth who had
+first let them know that the Swedes were in Rudnik, and now had sprung
+in with the whole squadron on the enemy. The priest's colt, three years
+old, which till that time had walked quietly over the land, shut in by
+the horses, could not break out of the throng; you would have said he
+had gone mad, like his master. With ears thrown back, with eyes
+bursting out of his bead, with erect mane, he pushed forward, bit, and
+kicked; but the lad struck with his sabre as with a flail; he struck at
+random, to the right, to the left, straight ahead; his yellow forelock
+was covered with blood, the points of rapiers had been thrust into his
+shoulders and legs, his face was cut; but these wounds only roused him.
+He fought with madness, like a man who has despaired of life and wishes
+only to avenge his own death.
+
+But now the Swedish body had decreased like a pile of snow on which men
+are throwing hot water from every side. At last around the king's
+standard less than twenty men remained. The Polish swarm had covered
+them completely, and they were dying gloomily, with set teeth; no hand
+was stretched forth, no man asked for mercy. Now in the crowd were
+heard voices: "Seize the standard! The standard!"
+
+When he heard this, the lad pricked his colt and rushed on like a
+flame. When every Swede had two or three Polish horsemen against him,
+the lad slashed the standard-bearer in the mouth; he opened his arms,
+and fell on the horse's mane. The blue standard fell with him.
+
+The nearest Swede, shouting terribly, grasped after the staff at once;
+but the boy caught the standard itself, and pulling, tore it off in a
+twinkle, wound it in a bundle, and holding it with both hands to his
+breast, began to shout to the sky,--
+
+"I have it, I won't give it! I have it, I won't give it!"
+
+The last remaining Swedes rushed at him with rage; one thrust the flag
+through, and cut his shoulder.
+
+Then a number of men stretched their bloody hands to the lad, and
+cried: "Give the standard, give the standard!"
+
+Shandarovski sprang to his aid, and commanded: "Let him alone! He took
+it before my eyes; let him give it to Charnyetski himself."
+
+"Charnyetski is coming!" cried a number of voices.
+
+In fact, from a distance trumpets were heard; and on the road from the
+side of the field appeared a whole squadron, galloping to the priest's
+house. It was the Lauda squadron; and at the head of it rode
+Charnyetski himself. When the men had ridden up, seeing that all was
+over, they halted; and Shandarovski's soldiers began to hurry toward
+them.
+
+Shandarovski himself hastened with a report to the castellan; but he
+was so exhausted that at first he could not catch breath, for he
+trembled as in a fever, and the voice broke in his throat every moment.
+
+"The king himself was here: I don't know--whether he has escaped!"
+
+"He has, he has!" answered those who had seen the pursuit.
+
+"The standard is taken! There are many killed!"
+
+Charnyetski, without saying a word, hurried to the scene of the
+struggle, where a cruel and woful sight presented itself. More than two
+hundred bodies of Swedes and Poles were lying like a pavement, one at
+the side of the other, and often one above the other. Sometimes one
+held another by the hair; some had died biting or tearing one another
+with their nails; and some again were closed as in a brotherly embrace,
+or they lay one with his head on the breast of his enemy. Many faces
+were so trampled that there remained nothing human in them; those not
+crushed by hoofs had their eyes open full of terror, the fierceness of
+battle, and rage. Blood spattered on the softened earth under the feet
+of Charnyetski's horse, which were soon red above the fetlocks; the
+odor of blood and the sweat of horses irritated the nostrils and
+stopped breath in the breast.
+
+The castellan looked on those corpses of men as the agriculturist looks
+on bound sheaves of wheat which are to fill out his stacks.
+Satisfaction was reflected on his face. He rode around the priest's
+house in silence, looked at the bodies lying on the other side, beyond
+the garden; then returned slowly to the chief scene.
+
+"I see genuine work here, and I am satisfied with you, gentlemen."
+
+They hurled up their caps with bloody hands.
+
+"Vivat Charnyetski!"
+
+"God grant another speedy meeting. Vivat! vivat!"
+
+And the castellan said: "You will go to the rear for rest. But who took
+the standard?"
+
+"Give the lad this way!" cried Shandarovski; "where is he?"
+
+The soldiers sprang for him, and found him sitting at the wall of the
+stable near the colt, which had fallen from wounds and was just
+breathing out his last breath. At the first glance it did not seem that
+the lad would last long, but he held the standard with both hands to
+his breast.
+
+They bore him away at once, and brought him before Charnyetski. The
+youth stood there barefoot, with disordered hair, with naked breast,
+his shirt and his jacket in shreds, smeared with Swedish blood and his
+own, tottering, bewildered, but with unquenched fire in his eyes.
+
+Charnyetski was astounded at sight of him. "How is this?" asked he.
+"Did he take the royal standard?"
+
+"With his own hand and his own blood," answered Shandarovski. "He was
+the first also to let us know of the Swedes; and afterward, in the
+thickest of the whirl, he did so much that he surpassed me and us all."
+
+"It is truth, genuine truth, as if some one had written it!" cried
+others.
+
+"What is thy name?" asked Charnyetski of the lad.
+
+"Mihalko."
+
+"Whose art thou?"
+
+"The priest's."
+
+"Thou hast been the priest's, but thou wilt be thy own!" said
+Charnyetski.
+
+Mihalko heard not the last words, for from his wounds and the loss of
+blood he tottered and fell, striking the castellan's stirrup with his
+head.
+
+"Take him and give him every care. I am the guaranty that at the first
+Diet he will be the equal of you all in rank, as to-day he is the equal
+in spirit."
+
+"He deserves it! he deserves it!" cried the nobles.
+
+Then they took Mihalko on a stretcher, and bore him to the priest's
+house.
+
+Charnyetski listened to the further report, which not Shandarovski
+gave, but those who had seen the pursuit of the king by Roh Kovalski.
+He was wonderfully delighted with that narrative, so that he caught his
+head, and struck his thighs with his hands; for he understood that
+after such an adventure the spirit must fall considerably in Karl
+Gustav.
+
+Zagloba was not less delighted, and putting his hands on his hips, said
+proudly to the knights,--
+
+"Ha! he is a robber, isn't he? If he had reached Karl, the devil
+himself could not have saved the king! He is my blood, as God is dear
+to me, my blood!"
+
+In course of time Zagloba believed that he was Roh Kovalski's uncle.
+
+Charnyetski gave orders to find the young knight; but they could not
+find him, for Roh, from shame and mortification, had crept into a barn,
+and burying himself in the straw, had fallen asleep so soundly that he
+came up with the squadron only two days later. But he still suffered
+greatly, and dared not show himself before the eyes of his uncle. His
+uncle, however, sought him out, and began to comfort him,--
+
+"Be not troubled, Roh!" said he. "As it is, you have covered yourself
+with great glory; I have myself heard the castellan praise you: 'To the
+eye a fool,' said he, 'so that he looks as though he could not count
+three, and I see that he is a fiery cavalier who has raised the
+reputation of the whole army.'"
+
+"The Lord Jesus has not blessed me," said Roh; "for I got drunk the day
+before, and forgot my prayers."
+
+"Don't try to penetrate the judgments of God, lest you add blasphemy to
+other deeds. Whatever you can take on your shoulders take, but take
+nothing on your mind; if you do, you will fail."
+
+"Rut I was so near that the sweat from his horse was flying to me. I
+should have cut him to the saddle! Uncle thinks that I have no reason
+whatever!"
+
+"Every creature," said Zagloba, "has its reason. You are a sprightly
+lad, Roh, and you will give me comfort yet more than once. God grant
+your sons to have the same reason in their fists that you have!"
+
+"I do not want that! I am Kovalski, and this is Pani Kovalski."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+After the affair at Rudnik the king advanced farther toward the point
+of the wedge between the San and the Vistula, and did not cease as
+before to march with the rearguard; for he was not only a famous
+leader, but a knight of unrivalled daring. Charnyetski, Vitovski, and
+Lyubomirski followed, and urged him on as a wild beast is urged to a
+trap. Detached parties made an uproar night and day around the Swedes.
+The retreating troops had less and less provisions; they were more and
+more wearied and drooping in courage, looking forward to certain
+destruction.
+
+At last the Swedes enclosed themselves in the very corner where the two
+rivers meet, and rested. On one side the Vistula defended them, on the
+other the San, both overflowed, as usual in springtime; the third side
+of the triangle the king fortified with strong intrenchments, in which
+cannons were mounted.
+
+That was a position not to be taken, but it was possible to die there
+from hunger. But even in that regard the Swedes gained better courage,
+for they hoped that the commandants would send them provisions by water
+from Cracow and other river fortresses. For instance, right there at
+hand was Sandomir, in which Colonel Schinkler had collected
+considerable supplies. He sent these in at once; therefore the Swedes
+ate, drank, slept; and when they woke they sang Lutheran psalms,
+praising God that he had saved them from such dire distress.
+
+But Charnyetski was preparing new blows for them.
+
+Sandomir in Swedish hands could always come to the aid of the main
+army. Charnyetski planned, therefore, to take the town with the castle
+at a blow, and cut off the Swedes.
+
+"We will prepare a cruel spectacle for them," said he, at a council of
+war. "They will look on from the opposite bank when we strike the town,
+and they will not be able to give aid across the Vistula; and when we
+have Sandomir we will not let provisions come from Wirtz in Cracow."
+
+Lyubomirski, Vitovski, and others tried to dissuade Charnyetski from
+that undertaking. "It would be well," said they, "to take such a
+considerable town, and we might injure the Swedes greatly; but how are
+we to take it? We have no infantry, siege guns we have not; it would be
+hard for cavalry to attack walls."
+
+"But do our peasants," asked Charnyetski, "fight badly as infantry? If
+I had two thousand such as Mihalko, I would take not only Sandomir, but
+Warsaw."
+
+And without listening to further counsel he crossed the Vistula. Barely
+had his summons gone through the neighborhood when a couple of thousand
+men hurried to him, one with a scythe, another with a musket, the third
+with carabine; and they marched against Sandomir.
+
+They fell upon the place rather suddenly, and in the streets a fierce
+conflict set in. The Swedes defended themselves furiously from the
+windows and the roofs, but they could not withstand the onrush. They
+were crushed like worms in the houses, and pushed entirely out of the
+town. Schinkler took refuge, with the remnant of his forces, in the
+castle; but the Poles followed him with the same impetuosity. A storm
+against the gates and the walls began, Schinkler saw that he could not
+hold out, even in the castle; so he collected what he could of men,
+articles and supplies of provisions, and putting them on boats, crossed
+to the king, who looked from the other bank on the defeat of his men
+without being able to succor them.
+
+The castle fell into the hands of the Poles; but the cunning Swede when
+departing put under the walls in the cellars kegs of powder with
+lighted matches.
+
+When he appeared before the king he told him of this at once, so as to
+rejoice his heart.
+
+"The castle," said he, "will fly into the air with all the men.
+Charnyetski may perish."
+
+"If that is true, I want myself to see how the pious Poles will fly to
+heaven," said the king; and he remained on the spot with all the
+generals.
+
+In spite of the commands of Charnyetski, who foresaw deceit, the
+volunteers and the peasants ran around through the whole castle to seek
+hidden Swedes and treasure. The trumpets sounded an alarm for every man
+to take refuge in the town; but the searchers in the castle did not
+hear the trumpets, or would not heed them.
+
+All at once the ground trembled under their feet, an awful thunder and
+a roar tore the air, a gigantic pillar of fire rose to the sky, hurling
+upward earth, walls, roofs, the whole castle, and more than five
+hundred bodies of those who had not been able to withdraw.
+
+Karl Gustav held his sides from delight, and his favor-seeking
+courtiers began at once to repeat his words: "The Poles are going to
+heaven, to heaven!"
+
+But that joy was premature; for none the less did Sandomir remain in
+Polish hands, and could no longer furnish food for the main army
+enclosed between the rivers.
+
+Charnyetski disposed his camp opposite the Swedes, on the other side
+of the Vistula, and guarded the passage.
+
+Sapyeha, grand hetman of Lithuania and voevoda of Vilna, came from the
+other side and took his position on the San.
+
+The Swedes were invested completely; they were caught as it were in a
+vise.
+
+"The trap is closed!" said the soldiers to one another in the Polish
+camps.
+
+For every man, even the least acquainted with military art, understood
+that inevitable destruction was hanging over the invaders, unless
+reinforcements should come in time and rescue them from trouble.
+
+The Swedes too understood this. Every morning officers and soldiers,
+coming to the shore of the Vistula, looked with despair in their eyes
+and their hearts at the legions of Charnyetski's terrible cavalry
+standing black on the other side.
+
+Then they went to the San; there again the troops of Sapyeha were
+watching day and night, ready to receive them with sabre and musket.
+
+To cross either the San or the Vistula while both armies stood near was
+not to be thought of. The Swedes might return to Yaroslav by the same
+road over which they come, but they knew that in that case not one of
+them would ever see Sweden.
+
+For the Swedes grievous days and still more grievous nights now began,
+for these days and nights were uproarious and quarrelsome. Again
+provisions were at an end.
+
+Meanwhile Charnyetski, leaving command of the army to Lyubomirski and
+taking the Lauda squadron as guard crossed the Vistula above the mouth
+of the San, to visit Sapyeha and take counsel with him touching the
+future of the war.
+
+This time the mediation of Zagloba was not needed to make the two
+leaders agree; for both loved the country more than each one himself,
+both were ready to sacrifice to it private interests, self-love, and
+ambition.
+
+The Lithuanian hetman did not envy Charnyetski, nor did Charnyetski
+envy the hetman, but each did homage to the other; so the meeting
+between them was of such character that tears stood in the eyes of the
+oldest soldiers.
+
+"The Commonwealth is growing, the dear country is rejoicing, when such
+sons of heroes take one another by the shoulders," said Zagloba to Pan
+Michael and Pan Yan. "Charnyetski is a terrible soldier and a true
+soul, but put Sapyeha to a wound and it will heal. Would there were
+more such men! The skin would fly off the Swedes, could they see this
+love of the greatest patriots. How did they conquer us, if not through
+the rancor and envy of magnates? Have they overcome us with force? This
+is how I understand! The soul jumps in a man's body at sight of such a
+meeting. I will guarantee, too, that it will not be dry; for Sapyeha
+loves a feast wonderfully, and with such a friend he will willingly let
+himself out."
+
+"God is merciful! the evil will pass," said Pan Yan.
+
+"Be careful that you do not blaspheme," said Zagloba; "every evil must
+pass, for should it last forever it would prove that the Devil governs
+the world, and not the Lord Jesus, who has mercy inexhaustible."
+
+Their further conversation was interrupted by the sight of Babinich,
+whose lofty form they saw from a distance over the wave of other heads.
+
+Pan Michael and Zagloba began to beckon to him, but he was so much
+occupied in looking at Charnyetski that he did not notice them at
+first.
+
+"See," said Zagloba, "how thin the man has grown!"
+
+"It must be that he has not done much against Boguslav," said
+Volodyovski; "otherwise he would be more joyful."
+
+"It is sure that he has not, for Boguslav is before Marienburg with
+Steinbock, acting against the fortress."
+
+"There is hope in God that he will do nothing."
+
+"Even if he should take Marienburg," said Zagloba, "we will capture
+Karl Gustav right away; we shall see if they will not give the fortress
+for the king."
+
+"See! Babinich is coming to us!" interrupted Pan Yan.
+
+He had indeed seen them, and was pushing the crowd to both sides; he
+motioned with his cap, smiling at them from a distance. They greeted
+one another as good friends and acquaintances.
+
+"What is to be heard? What have you done with the prince?" asked
+Zagloba.
+
+"Evil, evil! But there is no time to tell of it. We shall sit down to
+table at once. You will remain here for the night; come to me after the
+feast to pass the night among my Tartars. I have a comfortable cabin;
+we will talk at the cups till morning."
+
+"The moment a man says a wise thing it is not I who will oppose," said
+Zagloba. "But tell us why you have grown so thin?"
+
+"That hell-dweller overthrew me and my horse like an earthen pot,
+so that from that time I am spitting fresh blood and cannot recover.
+There is hope in the mercy of our Lord Christ that I shall let the
+blood out of him yet. But let us go now, for Sapyeha and Charnyetski
+are beginning to make declarations and to be ceremonious about
+precedence,--a sign that the tables are ready. We wait for you here
+with great pleasure, for you have shed Swedish pig-blood in plenty."
+
+"Let others speak of what I have done," said Zagloba; "it does not
+become me."
+
+Meanwhile whole throngs moved on, and all went to the square between
+the tents on which were placed tables. Sapyeha in honor of Charnyetski
+entertained like a king. The table at which Charnyetski was seated was
+covert with Swedish flags. Mead and wine flowed from vats, so that
+toward the end both leaders became somewhat joyous. There was no lack
+of gladsomeness, of jests, of toasts, of noise; though the weather was
+marvellous, and the sun warm beyond wonder. Finally the cool of the
+evening separated the feasters.
+
+Then Kmita took his guests to the Tartars. They sat down in his tent on
+trunks packed closely with every kind of booty, and began to speak of
+Kmita's expedition.
+
+"Boguslav is now before Marienburg," said Pan Andrei, "though some say
+that he is at the elector's, with whom he is to march to the relief of
+the king."
+
+"So much the better; then we shall meet! You young fellows do not know
+how to manage him; let us see what the old man will do. He has met with
+various persons, but not yet with Zagloba. I say that we shall meet,
+though Prince Yanush in his will advised him to keep far from Zagloba."
+
+"The elector is a cunning man," said Pan Yan; "and if he sees that it
+is going ill with Karl, he will drop all his promises and his oath."
+
+"But I tell you that he will not," said Zagloba. "No one is so venomous
+against us as the Prussian. When your servant who had to work under
+your feet and brush your clothes becomes your master by change of
+fortune, he will be sterner to you, the kinder you were to him."
+
+"But why is that?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"His previous condition of service will remain in his mind, and he will
+avenge himself on you for it, though you have been to him kindness
+itself."
+
+"What of that?" asked Pan Michael. "It often happens that a dog bites
+his master in the hand. Better let Babinich tell about his expedition."
+
+"We are listening," said Pan Yan.
+
+Kmita, after he had been silent awhile, drew breath and began to tell
+of the last campaign of Sapyeha against Boguslav, and the defeat of the
+latter at Yanov; finally how Prince Boguslav had broken the Tartars,
+overturned him with his horse, and escaped alive.
+
+"But," interrupted Volodyovski, "you said that you would follow him
+with your Tartars, even to the Baltic."
+
+"And you told me also in your time," replied Kmita, "how Pan Yan here
+present, when Bogun carried off his beloved maiden, forgot her and
+revenge because the country was in need. A man becomes like those with
+whom he keeps company; I have joined you, gentlemen, and I wish to
+follow your example."
+
+"May the Mother of God reward you, as she has Pan Yan!" said Zagloba.
+"Still I would rather your maiden were in the wilderness than in
+Boguslav's hands."
+
+"That is nothing!" exclaimed Pan Michael; "you will find her!"
+
+"I have to find not only her person, but her regard and love."
+
+"One will come after the other," said Pan Michael, "even if you had to
+take her person by force, as at that time--you remember?"
+
+"I shall not do such a deed again."
+
+Here Pan Andrei sighed deeply, and after a while he said, "Not only
+have I not found her, but Boguslav has taken another from me."
+
+"A pure Turk! as God is dear to me!" cried Zagloba.
+
+And Pan Yan inquired: "What other?"
+
+"Oh, it is a long story, a long story," said Kmita. "There was a maiden
+in Zamost, wonderfully fair, who pleased Pan Zamoyski. He, fearing
+Princess Vishnyevetski, his sister, did not dare to be over-bold before
+her; he planned, therefore, to send the maiden away with me, as if to
+Sapyeha, to find an inheritance in Lithuania, but in reality to take
+her from me about two miles from Zamost, and put her in some wilderness
+where no one could stand in his way. But I sounded his intention. You
+want, thought I to myself, to make a pander of me; wait! I flogged his
+men, and the lady in all maidenly honor I brought to Sapyeha. Well, I
+say to you that the girl is as beautiful as a goldfinch, but honest. I
+am now another man, and my comrades, the Lord light their souls! are
+long ago dust in the earth."
+
+"What sort of maiden was she?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"From a respectable house, a lady-in-waiting on Princess Griselda. She
+was once engaged to a Lithuanian, Podbipienta, whom you, gentlemen,
+knew."
+
+"Anusia Borzobogati!" shouted Volodyovski, springing from his place.
+
+Zagloba jumped up too from a pile of felt "Pan Michael, restrain
+yourself!"
+
+But Volodyovski sprang like a cat toward Kmita. "Is it you, traitor,
+who let Boguslav carry her off?"
+
+"Be not unjust to me," said Kmita. "I took her safely to the hetman,
+having as much care for her as for my own sister. Boguslav seized her,
+not from me, but from another officer with whom Pan Sapyeha sent her to
+his own family; his name was Glovbich or something, I do not remember
+well."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He is no longer living, he was slain; so at least Sapyeha's officers
+said. I was attacking Boguslav separately, with the Tartars; therefore
+I know nothing accurately save what I have told you. But noticing your
+changed face, I see that a similar thing has met us; the same man has
+wronged us, and since that is the case let us join against him to
+avenge the wrong and take vengeance in company. He is a great lord and
+a great knight, and still I think it will be narrow for him in the
+whole Commonwealth, if he has two such enemies."
+
+"Here is my hand!" said Volodyovski. "Henceforth we are friends for
+life and death. Whoever meets him first will pay him for both. God
+grant me to meet him first, for that I will let his blood out is as
+sure as that there is Amen in 'Our Father.'"
+
+Here Pan Michael began to move his mustaches terribly and to feel of
+his sabre. Zagloba was frightened, for he knew that with Pan Michael
+there was no joking.
+
+"I should not care to be Prince Boguslav now," said he, "even if some
+one should add Livonia to my title. It is enough to have such a wildcat
+as Kmita against one, but what will he do with Pan Michael? And that is
+not all; I will conclude an alliance with you. My head, your sabres! I
+do not know as there is a potentate in Christendom who could stand
+against such an alliance. Besides, the Lord God will sooner or later
+take away his luck, for it cannot be that for a traitor and a heretic
+there is no punishment; as it is, Kmita has given it to him terribly."
+
+"I do not deny that more than one confusion has met him from me," said
+Pan Andrei. And giving orders to fill the goblets, he told how he had
+freed Soroka from captivity. But he did not tell how he had cast
+himself first at the feet of Radzivill, for at the very thought of that
+his blood boiled.
+
+Pan Michael was rejoiced while hearing the narrative, and said at the
+end,--
+
+"May God aid you, Yendrek! With such a daring man one could go to hell.
+The only trouble is that we shall not always campaign together, for
+service is service. They may send me to one end of the Commonwealth and
+you to the other. It is not known which will meet him first."
+
+Kmita was silent a moment.
+
+"In justice I should reach him--if only I do not come out again with
+confusion, for I am ashamed to acknowledge that I cannot meet that
+hell-dweller hand to hand."
+
+"Then I will teach you all my secrets," said Pan Michael.
+
+"Or I!" said Zagloba.
+
+"Pardon me, your grace, I prefer to learn from Michael," said Kmita.
+
+"Though he is such a knight, still I and Pani Kovalski are not afraid
+of him, if only I had a good sleep," put in Roh.
+
+"Be quiet, Roh!" answered Zagloba; "may God not punish you through his
+hand for boasting."
+
+"Oh, tfu! nothing will happen to me from him."
+
+Poor Kovalski was an unlucky prophet, but it was steaming terribly from
+his forelock, and he was ready to challenge the whole world to single
+combat. Others too drank heavily to one another, and to the destruction
+of Boguslav and the Swedes.
+
+"I have heard," said Kmita, "that as soon as we rub out the Swedes here
+and take the king, we shall march straight to Warsaw. Then surely there
+will be an end of the war. After that will come the elector's turn."
+
+"Oh, that's it! that's it!" said Zagloba.
+
+"I heard Sapyeha say that once, and he, as a great man, calculates
+better than others; he said: 'There will be a truce with the Swedes;
+with the Northerners there is one already, but with the elector we
+should not make any conditions. Pan Charnyetski,' he says, 'will go
+with Lyubomirski to Brandenburg, and I with the treasurer of Lithuania
+to Electoral Prussia; and if after that we do not join Prussia to the
+Commonwealth, it is because in our chancellery we have no such head as
+Pan Zagloba, who in autograph letters threatened the elector.'"
+
+"Did Sapyeha say that?" asked Zagloba, flushing from pleasure.
+
+"All heard him. And I was terribly glad, for that same rod will flog
+Boguslav; and if not earlier, we will surely reach him at that time."
+
+"If we can finish with these Swedes first," said Zagloba. "Devil take
+them! Let them give up Livland and a million, I will let them off
+alive."'
+
+"The Cossack caught the Tartar, and the Tartar is holding him by the
+head!" said Pan Yan, laughing. "Karl is still in Poland; Cracow,
+Warsaw, Poznan, and all the most noted towns are in his hands, and
+father wants him to ransom himself. Hei, we shall have to work much at
+him yet before we can think of the elector."
+
+"And there is Steinbock's army, and the garrisons, and Wirtz," put in
+Pan Stanislav.
+
+"But why do we sit here with folded hands?" asked Roh Kovalski, on a
+sudden, with staring eyes; "cannot we beat the Swedes?"
+
+"You are foolish, Roh," said Zagloba.
+
+"Uncle always says one thing; but as I am alive, I saw a boat at the
+shore. We might go and carry off even the sentry. It is so dark that
+you might strike a man on the snout and he wouldn't know who did it;
+before they could see we should return and exhibit the courage of
+cavaliers to both commanders. If you do not wish to go, I will go
+myself."
+
+"The dead calf moved his tail, wonder of wonders!" said Zagloba,
+angrily.
+
+But Kmita's nostrils began to quiver at once. "Not a bad idea! not a
+bad idea!" said he.
+
+"Good for camp-followers, but not for him who regards dignity. Have
+respect for yourselves! You are colonels, but you wish to amuse
+yourselves with wandering thieves!"
+
+"True, it is not very becoming," added Volodyovski. "We would better go
+to sleep."
+
+All agreed with that idea; therefore they kneeled down to their prayers
+and repeated them aloud; after that they stretched themselves on the
+felt cloth, and were soon sleeping the sleep of the just.
+
+But an hour later all sprang to their feet, for beyond the river the
+roaring of guns was heard; while shouts and tumult rose in Sapyeha's
+whole camp.
+
+"Jesus! Mary!" exclaimed Zagloba. "The Swedes are coming!"
+
+"What are you talking about?" asked Volodyovski, seizing his sabre.
+
+"Roh, come here!" cried Zagloba, for in cases of surprise he was glad
+to have his sister's son near him.
+
+But Roh was not in the tent.
+
+They ran out on the square. Crowds were already before the tents, and
+all were making their way toward the river, for on the other side was
+to be seen flashing of fire, and an increasing roar was heard.
+
+"What has happened, what has happened?" was asked of the numerous
+guards disposed along the bank.
+
+But the guards had seen nothing. One of the soldiers said that he had
+heard as it were the plash of a wave, but as fog was hanging over the
+water he could see nothing; he did not wish therefore to raise the camp
+for a mere sound.
+
+When Zagloba heard this he caught himself by the head in desperation,--
+
+"Roh has gone to the Swedes! He said that he wished to carry off a
+sentry."
+
+"For God's sake, that may be!" cried Kmita.
+
+"They will shoot the lad, as God is in heaven!" continued Zagloba, in
+despair. "Worthy gentlemen, is there no help? Lord God, that boy was of
+the purest gold; there is not another such in the two armies! What shot
+that idea into his stupid head? Oh, Mother of God, save him in
+trouble!"
+
+"Maybe he will return; the fog is dense. They will not see him."
+
+"I will wait for him here even till morning. Mother of God, Mother of
+God!"
+
+Meanwhile shots on the opposite bank lessened, lights went out
+gradually, and after an hour dull silence set in. Zagloba walked along
+the bank of the river like a hen with ducklings, and tore out the
+remnant of hair in his forelock; but he waited in vain, he despaired in
+vain. The morning whitened the river, the sun rose, but Roh came not.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+Zagloba in unbroken despair betook himself to Charnyetski, with a
+request that he would send to the Swedes to see what had happened to
+Kovalski. Is he alive yet, is he groaning in captivity, or has he paid
+with his life for his daring?
+
+Charnyetski agreed to this willingly, for he loved Zagloba. Then
+comforting him in his suffering, he said,--
+
+"I think your sister's son must be alive, otherwise the water would
+have brought him ashore."
+
+"God grant that he is!" answered Zagloba; "still it would be hard for
+the water to raise him, for not only had he a heavy hand, but his wit
+was like lead, as is shown by his action."
+
+"You speak justly," answered Charnyetski. "If he is alive I ought to
+give orders to drag him with a horse over the square, for disregard of
+discipline. He might alarm the Swedish army, but he has alarmed both
+armies; besides, he was not free to touch the Swedes without command
+and my order. Is this a general militia or what the devil, that every
+man has a right to act on his own account?"
+
+"He has offended, I agree; I will punish him myself, if only the Lord
+will bring him back."
+
+"But I forgive him in remembrance of the Rudnik affair. I have many
+prisoners to exchange, and more distinguished officers than Kovalski.
+Do you go to the Swedes and negotiate about exchange; I will give two
+or three for him if need be, for I do not wish to make your heart
+bleed. Come to me for a letter to the king, and go quickly."
+
+Zagloba sprang with rejoicing to Kmita's tent, and told his comrades
+what had happened. Pan Andrei and Volodyovski exclaimed at once that
+they too would go with him, for both were curious to see the Swedes;
+besides Kmita might be very useful, since he spoke German almost as
+fluently as Polish.
+
+Preparations did not delay them long. Charnyetski, without waiting for
+the return of Zagloba, sent the letter by a messenger; then they
+provided a piece of white cloth fixed to a pole, took a trumpeter, sat
+in a boat, and moved on.
+
+At first they went in silence, nothing save the plash of oars was to be
+heard; at last Zagloba was somewhat alarmed and said,--
+
+"Lot the trumpeter announce us immediately, for those scoundrels are
+ready to fire in spite of the white flag."
+
+"What do you say?" answered Volodyovski; "even barbarians respect
+envoys, and this is a civilized people."
+
+"Let the trumpeter sound, I say. The first soldier who happens along
+will fire, make a hole in the boat, and we shall get into the water;
+the water is cold, and I have do wish to get wet through their
+courtesy."
+
+"There, a sentry is visible!" said Kmita.
+
+The trumpeter sounded. The boat shot forward quickly; on the other
+shore a hurried movement began, and soon a mounted officer rode up,
+wearing a yellow leather cap. When he had approached the edge of the
+water he shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look against the
+light. A few yards from the shore Kmita removed his cap in greeting;
+the officer bowed to him with equal politeness.
+
+"A letter from Pan Charnyetski to the Most Serene King of Sweden!"
+cried Pan Andrei, showing the letter.
+
+The guard standing on the shore presented arms. Pan Zagloba was
+completely reassured; presently he fixed his countenance in dignity
+befitting his position as an envoy, and said in Latin,--
+
+"The past night a certain cavalier was seized on this shore; I have
+come to ask for him."
+
+"I cannot speak Latin," answered the officer.
+
+"Ignoramus!" muttered Zagloba.
+
+The officer turned then to Pan Andrei,--
+
+"The king is in the farther end of the camp. Be pleased, gentlemen, to
+stay here; I will go and announce you." And he turned his horse.
+
+The envoys looked around. The camp was very spacious, for it embraced
+the whole triangle formed by the San and the Vistula. At the summit of
+the triangle lay Panyev, at the base Tarnobjeg on one side, and
+Rozvadov on the other. Apparently it was impossible to take in the
+whole extent at a glance; still, as far as the eye could reach, were to
+be seen trenches, embankments, earthworks, and fascines at which were
+cannons and men. In the very centre of the place, in Gojytsi, were the
+quarters of the king; there also the main forces of the army.
+
+"If hunger does not drive them out of this place, we can do nothing
+with them," said Kmita. "The whole region is fortified. There is
+pasture for horses."
+
+"But there are not fish for so many mouths," said Zagloba. "Lutherans
+do not like fasting food. Not long since they had all Poland, now they
+have this wedge; let them sit here in safety, or go back to Yaroslav."
+
+"Very skilful men made these trenches," added Volodyovski, looking with
+the eye of a specialist on the work. "We have more swordsmen, but fewer
+learned officers; and in military art we are behind others."
+
+"Why is that?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"Why? It does not beseem me as a soldier who has served all his life in
+the cavalry, to say this, but everywhere infantry and cannon are the
+main thing; hence those campaigns and military man[oe]uvres, marches,
+and countermarches. A man in a foreign army must devour a multitude of
+books and turn over a multitude of Roman authors before he becomes a
+distinguished officer; but there is nothing of that with us. Cavalry
+rushes into the smoke in a body, and shaves with its sabres; and if it
+does not shave off in a minute, then they shave it off."
+
+"You speak soundly, Pan Michael; but what nation has won so many famous
+victories?"
+
+"Yes, because others in old times warred in the same way, and not
+having the same impetus they were bound to lose; but now they have
+become wiser, and see what they are doing."
+
+"Wait for the end. Place for me now the wisest Swedish or German
+engineer, and against him I will put Roh, who has never turned over
+books, and let us see."
+
+"If you could put him," interrupted Kmita.
+
+"True, true! I am terribly sorry for him. Pan Andrei, jabber a little
+in that dog's language of those breeches fellows, and ask what has
+happened to Roh."
+
+"You do not know regular soldiers. Here no man will open his lips to
+you without an order; they are stingy of speech."
+
+"I know that they are surly scoundrels. While if to our nobles, and
+especially to the general militia, an envoy comes, immediately talk,
+talk, they will drink gorailka with him, and will enter into political
+discussion with him; and see how these fellows stand there like posts
+and bulge out their eyes at us! I wish they would smother to the last
+man!"
+
+In fact, more and more foot-soldiers gathered around the envoys,
+looking at them curiously. The envoys were dressed so carefully in
+elegant and even rich garments, that they made an imposing appearance.
+Zagloba arrested most attention, for he bore himself with almost
+senatorial dignity; Volodyovski was less considered, by reason of his
+stature.
+
+Meanwhile the officer who received them first on the bank returned with
+another of higher rank, and with soldiers leading horses. The superior
+officer bowed to the envoys and said in Polish,--
+
+"His Royal Grace asks you, gentlemen, to his quarters; and since they
+are not very near we have brought horses."
+
+"Are you a Pole?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"No, I am a Cheh,--Sadovski, in the Swedish service."
+
+Kmita approached him at once. "Do you know me?"
+
+Sadovski looked at him quickly. "Of course! At Chenstohova you blew up
+the largest siege gun, and Miller gave you to Kuklinovski. I greet you,
+greet you heartily as a famous knight."
+
+"And what is going on with Kuklinovski?" asked Kmita.
+
+"But do you not know?"
+
+"I know that I paid him with that with which he wanted to treat me, but
+I left him alive."
+
+"He died."
+
+"I thought he would freeze to death," said Pan Andrei, waving his hand.
+
+"Worthy Colonel," put in Zagloba, "have you not a certain Roh
+Kovalski?"
+
+Sadovski laughed: "Of course."
+
+"Praise be to God and the Most Holy Lady! The lad is alive and I shall
+get him. Praise be to God!"
+
+"I do not know whether the king will be willing to yield him up," said
+Sadovski.
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because he has pleased him greatly. He recognized him at once as the
+same man who had pushed after him with such vigor at Rudnik. We held
+our sides listening to the narrative of the prisoner. The king asked:
+'Why did you pick me out?' and he answered, 'I made a vow.' Then the
+king asked again, 'But will you do so again?' 'Of course!' answered the
+prisoner. The king began to laugh. 'Put away your vow,' said he, 'and I
+will give you your life and freedom.' 'Impossible!' 'Why?' 'For my
+uncle would proclaim me a fool.' 'And are you so sure that you could
+manage me in a hand-to-hand fight?' 'Oh, I could manage five men like
+you,' said he. Then the king asked again: 'And do you dare to raise
+your hand against majesty?' 'Yes,' said he, 'for you have a vile
+faith.' They interpreted every word to the king, and he was more and
+more pleased, and continued to repeat: 'This man has pleased me.' Then
+wishing to see whether in truth he had such strength, he gave orders to
+choose twelve of the strongest men in camp and bring them to wrestle in
+turn with the prisoner. But he is a muscular fellow! When I came away
+he had stretched out ten one after another, and not a man of them could
+rise again. We shall arrive just at the end of the amusement."
+
+"I recognize Roh, my blood!" said Zagloba. "We will give for him even
+three famous officers!"
+
+"You will find the king in good humor," said Sadovski, "which is a rare
+thing nowadays."
+
+"Oh, I believe that!" answered the little knight
+
+Meanwhile Sadovski turned to Kmita, and asked how he had not only freed
+himself from Kuklinovski, but put an end to him. Kmita told him in
+detail. Sadovski, while listening, seized his own head with amazement;
+at last he pressed Kmita's hand again, and said,--
+
+"Believe me, I am sincerely glad; for though I serve the Swedes, every
+true soldier's heart rejoices when a real cavalier puts down a ruffian.
+I must acknowledge to you that when a daring man is found among you,
+one must look with a lantern through the universe to find his equal."
+
+"You are a courteous officer," said Zagloba.
+
+"And a famous soldier, we know that," added Volodyovski.
+
+"I learned courtesy and the soldier's art from you," answered Sadovski,
+touching his cap.
+
+Thus they conversed, vying with one another in courtesy, till they
+reached Grojytsi, where the king's quarters were. The whole village was
+occupied by soldiers of various arms. Our envoys looked with curiosity
+at the groups scattered among the fences. Some, wishing to sleep away
+their hunger, were dozing around cottages, for the day was very clear
+and warm; some were playing dice on drums, drinking beer; some were
+hanging their clothes on the fences; others were sitting in front of
+the cottages singing Scandinavian longs, rubbing with brick-dust their
+breastplates and helmets, from which bright gleams went forth. In
+places they were cleaning horses, or leading them out; in a word, camp
+life was moving and seething under the bright sky. There were men, it
+is true, who bore signs of terrible toil and hunger, but the sun
+covered their leanness with gold; besides, days of rest were beginning
+for those incomparable warriors, therefore they took courage at once,
+and assumed a military bearing. Volodyovski admired them in spirit,
+especially the infantry regiments, famous through the whole world for
+endurance and bravery. Sadovski gave explanations as they passed,
+saying,--
+
+"This is the Smaland regiment of the royal guard. This is the infantry
+of Delekarlia, the very best."
+
+"In God's name, what little monsters are these?" cried Zagloba on a
+sudden, pointing to a group of small men with olive complexions and
+black hair hanging on both sides of their heads.
+
+"Those are Laplanders, who belong to the remotest Hyperboreans."
+
+"Are they good in battle? It seems to me that I might take three in
+each hand and strike with their heads till I was tired."
+
+"You could surely do so. They are useless in battle. The Swedes bring
+them for camp servants, and partly as a curiosity. But they are the
+most skilful of wizards; each of them has at least one devil in his
+service, and some have five."
+
+"How do they get such friendship with evil spirits?" asked Kmita,
+making the sign of the cross.
+
+"Because they wander in night, which with them lasts half a year or
+more; and you know that it is easier to hold converse with the Devil at
+night."
+
+"But have they souls?"
+
+"It is unknown; but I think that they are more in the nature of
+animals."
+
+Kmita turned his horse, caught one of the Laplanders by the shoulders,
+raised him up like a cat, and examined him curiously; then he put him
+on his feet, and said,--
+
+"If the king would give me one such, I would give orders to have him
+dried and hung up in the church in Orsha, where, among other
+curiosities, are ostrich eggs."
+
+"In Lubni, at the parish church, there were jaws of a whale or even of
+a giant," said Volodyovski.
+
+"Let us go on, for something evil will fall on us here," said Zagloba.
+
+"Let us go," repeated Sadovski. "To tell the truth, I ought to have had
+bags put on your heads, as is the custom; but we have nothing here to
+hide, and that you have looked on the trenches is all the better for
+us."
+
+They spurred on their horses, and after a while were before the castle
+at Gojytsi. In front of the gate they sprang from their saddles, and
+advanced on foot; for the King was before the house.
+
+They saw a large number of generals and very celebrated officers. Old
+Wittemberg was there, Douglas, Löwenhaupt, Miller, Erickson, and many
+others. All were sitting on the balcony, a little behind the king,
+whose chair was pushed forward; and they looked on the amusement which
+Karl Gustav was giving himself with the prisoner. Roh had just
+stretched out the twelfth cavalier, and was in a coat torn by the
+wrestlers, panting and sweating greatly. When he saw his uncle in
+company with Kmita and Volodyovski, he thought at once that they too
+were prisoners. He stared at them, opened his mouth, and advanced a
+couple of steps; but Zagloba gave him a sign with his hand to stand
+quietly, and the envoy stood himself with his comrades before the face
+of the king.
+
+Sadovski presented the envoys; they bowed low, as custom and etiquette
+demanded, then Zagloba delivered Charnyetski's letter.
+
+The king took the letter, and began to read; meanwhile the Polish
+envoys looked at him with curiosity, for they had never seen him
+before. He was a man in the flower of his age, as dark in complexion as
+though born an Italian or a Spaniard. His long hair, black as a raven's
+wing, fell behind his ears to his shoulders. In brightness and color
+his eyes brought to mind Yeremi Vishnyevetski; his brows were greatly
+elevated, as if he were in continual astonishment. In the place where
+the brows approached, his forehead was raised in a large protuberance,
+which made him resemble a lion; a deep wrinkle above his nose, which
+did not leave him even when he was laughing, gave his face a
+threatening and wrathful expression. His lower lip protruded like that
+of Yan Kazimir, but his face was heavier and his chin larger; he wore
+mustaches in the form of cords, brushed out somewhat at the ends. In
+general, his face indicated an uncommon man, one of those who when they
+walk over the earth press blood out of it. There was in him grandeur,
+the pride of a monarch, the strength of a lion, and the quickness of
+genius; but though a kindly smile never left his mouth, there was
+lacking that kindness of heart which illuminates a face from within
+with a mild light, as a lamp placed in the middle of an alabaster urn
+lights it. He sat in the arm-chair, with crossed legs, the powerful
+calves of which were indicated clearly from under the black stockings,
+and blinking as was his wont, he read with a smile the letter from
+Charnyetski. Raising his lids, he looked at Pan Michael, and said,--
+
+"I knew you at once; you slew Kanneberg."
+
+All eyes were turned immediately on Volodyovski, who, moving his
+mustaches, bowed and answered,--
+
+"At the service of your Royal Grace."
+
+"What is your office?" asked the king.
+
+"Colonel of the Lauda squadron."
+
+"Where did you serve before?"
+
+"With the voevoda of Vilna."
+
+"And did you leave him with the others? You betrayed him and me."
+
+"I was bound to my own king, not to your Royal Grace."
+
+The king said nothing; all foreheads were frowning, eyes began to bore
+into Pan Michael; but he stood calmly, merely moving his mustaches time
+after time.
+
+All at once the king said,--
+
+"It is pleasant for me to know such a famous cavalier. Kanneberg passed
+among us as incomparable in hand-to-hand conflict. You must be the
+first sabre in the kingdom?"
+
+"_In universo_ (In the universe)!" said Zagloba.
+
+"Not the last," answered Volodyovski.
+
+"I greet you, gentlemen, heartily. For Pan Charnyetski I have a real
+esteem as for a great soldier, though he broke his word to me, for he
+ought to be sitting quietly till now in Syevej."
+
+"Your Royal Grace," said Kmita, "Pan Charnyetski was not the first to
+break his word, but General Miller, who seized Wolf's regiment of royal
+infantry."
+
+Miller advanced a step, looked in the face of Kmita, and began to
+whisper something to the king, who, blinking all the time, listened
+attentively; looking at Pan Andrei, he said at last,--
+
+"I see that Pan Charnyetski has sent me chosen cavaliers. I know from
+of old that there is no lack of daring men among you; but there is a
+lack of faith in keeping promises and oaths."
+
+"Holy are the words of your Royal Grace," answered Zagloba.
+
+"How do you understand that?"
+
+"If it were not for this vice of our people, your Royal Grace would not
+be here."
+
+The king was silent awhile; the generals again frowned at the boldness
+of the envoys.
+
+"Yan Kazimir himself freed you from the oath," said Karl, "for he left
+you and took refuge abroad."
+
+"From the oath we can be freed only by the Vicar of Christ, who resides
+in Rome; and he has not freed us."
+
+"A truce to that!" said the king. "I have acquired the kingdom by
+this," here he struck his sword, "and by this I will hold it. I do not
+need your suffrages nor your oaths. You want war, you will have it. I
+think that Pan Charnyetski remembers Golembo yet."
+
+"He forgot it on the road from Yaroslav," answered Zagloba.
+
+The king, instead of being angry, smiled: "I'll remind him of it."
+
+"God rules the world."
+
+"Tell him to visit me; I shall be glad to receive him. But he must
+hurry, for as soon as my horses are in condition I shall march
+farther."
+
+"Then we shall receive your Royal Grace," said Zagloba, bowing and
+placing his hand slightly on his sabre.
+
+"I see," said the king, "that Pan Charnyetski has sent in the embassy
+not only the best sabres, but the best mouth. In a moment you parry
+every thrust. It is lucky that the war is not of words, for I should
+find an opponent worthy of my power. But I will come to the question.
+Pan Charnyetski asks me to liberate this prisoner, offering two
+officers of distinction in return. I do not set such a low price on my
+soldiers as you think, and I have no wish to redeem them too cheaply;
+that would be against my own and their ambition, but since I can refuse
+Pan Charnyetski nothing, I will make him a present of this cavalier."
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Zagloba, "Pan Charnyetski did not wish to
+show contempt for Swedish officers, but compassion for me; for this is
+my sister's son, and I, at the service of your Royal Grace, am Pan
+Charnyetski's adviser."
+
+"In truth," said the king, "I ought not to let the prisoner go, for he
+has made a vow against me, unless he will give up his vow in view of
+this favor."
+
+Here he turned to Roh, who was standing in front of the porch, and
+beckoned: "But come nearer, you strong fellow!"
+
+Roh approached a couple of steps, and stood erect.
+
+"Sadovski," said the king, "ask him if he will let me go in case I free
+him."
+
+Sadovski repeated the king's question.
+
+"Impossible!" cried Roh.
+
+The king understood without an interpreter, and began to clap his hands
+and blink.
+
+"Well, well! How can I set such a man free? He has twisted the necks of
+twelve horsemen, and promises me as the thirteenth. Good, good! the
+cavalier has pleased me. Is he Pan Charnyetski's adviser too? If he is,
+I will let him go all the more quickly."
+
+"Keep your mouth shut!" muttered Zagloba to Roh.
+
+"A truce to amusement!" said the king, suddenly. "Take him, and have
+still one more proof of my clemency. I can forgive, as the lord of this
+kingdom, since such is my will and favor; but I will not enter into
+terms with rebels."
+
+Here the king frowned, and the smile left his face: "Whoso raises his
+hand against me is a rebel, for I am his lawful king. Only from
+kindness to you have I not punished hitherto as was proper. I have been
+waiting for you to come to your minds; but the hour will strike when
+kindness will be exhausted and the day of punishment will rise. Through
+your self-will and instability the country is flaming with fire;
+through your disloyalty blood is flowing. But I tell you the last days
+are passing; you do not wish to hear admonitions, you do not wish to
+obey laws, you will obey the sword and the gallows!"
+
+Lightnings flashed in Karl's eyes. Zagloba looked on him awhile with
+amazement, unable to understand whence that storm had come after fair
+weather; finally he too began to grow angry, therefore he bowed and
+said only,--
+
+"We thank your Royal Grace."
+
+Then he went off, and after him Kmita, Volodyovski, and Roh Kovalski.
+
+"Gracious, gracious!" said Zagloba, "and before you can look around he
+bellows in your ear like a bear. Beautiful end to an embassy! Others
+give honor with a cup at parting, but he with the gallows! Let him hang
+dogs, not nobles! O my God! how grievously we have sinned against our
+king, who was a father, is a father, and will be a father, for there is
+a Yagyellon heart in him. And such a king traitors deserted, and went
+to make friendship with scarecrows from beyond the sea. We are served
+rightly, for we were not worthy of anything better. Gibbets! gibbets!
+He is fenced in, and we have squeezed him like curds in a bag, so that
+whey is coming out, and still he threatens with sword and gibbet. Wait
+awhile! The Cossack caught a Tartar, and the Tartar has him by the
+head. It will be closer for you yet.--Roh, I wanted to give you a slap
+on the face or fifty blows on a carpet, but I forgive you now since you
+acted so like a cavalier and promised to hunt him still farther. Let me
+kiss you, for I am delighted with you."
+
+"Uncle is still glad!" said Roh.
+
+"The gibbet and the sword! And he told that to my eyes," said Zagloba
+again, after a while. "You have protection! The wolf protects in the
+same fashion a sheep for his own eating. And when does he say that?
+Now, when there is goose skin on his own back. Let him take his
+Laplanders for counsellors, and with them seek Satan's aid. But the
+Most Holy Lady will help us, as she did Pan Bobola in Sandomir when
+powder threw him and his horse across the Vistula, and he was not hurt.
+He looked around to see where he was, and arrived in time to dine with
+the priest. With such help we will pull them all by the necks like
+lobsters out of a wicker trap."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+Almost twenty days passed. The king remained continually at the
+junction of the rivers, and sent couriers to fortresses and commands in
+every direction toward Cracow and Warsaw, with orders for all to hasten
+to him with assistance. They sent him also provisions by the Vistula in
+as great quantities as possible, but insufficient. After ten days the
+Swedes began to eat horse-flesh; despair seized the king and the
+generals at thought of what would happen when the cavalry should lose
+their horses, and when there would be no beasts to draw cannon. From
+every side too there came unpleasant news. The whole country was
+blazing with war, as if some one had poured pitch over it and set fire.
+Inferior commands and garrisons could not hasten to give aid, for they
+were not able to leave the towns and villages. Lithuania, held hitherto
+by the iron hand of Pontus do la Gardie, rose as one man. Great Poland,
+which had yielded first of all, was the first to throw off the yoke,
+and shone before the whole Commonwealth as an example of endurance,
+resolve, and enthusiasm. Parties of nobles and peasants rushed not only
+on the garrisons in villages, but even attacked towns. In vain did the
+Swedes take terrible vengeance on the country, in vain did they cut off
+the hands of prisoners, in vain did they send up villages in smoke, cut
+settlements to pieces, raise gibbets, bring instruments of torture from
+Germany to torture insurgents. Whoso had to suffer, suffered; whoso had
+to die, died; but if he was a noble, he died with a sabre; if a
+peasant, with a scythe in his hand. And Swedish blood was flowing
+throughout all Great Poland; the peasants were living in the forests,
+even women rushed to arms; punishments merely roused vengeance and
+increased rage. Kulesha, Jegotski, and the voevoda of Podlyasye moved
+through the country like flames, and besides their parties all the
+pine-woods were filled with other parties. The fields lay untilled,
+fierce hunger increased in the land; but it twisted most the entrails
+of the Swedes, for they were confined in towns behind closed gates, and
+could not go to the open country. At last breath was failing in their
+bosoms.
+
+In Mazovia the condition was the same. There the Barkshoe people
+dwelling in forest gloom came out of their wildernesses, blocked the
+roads, seized provisions and couriers. In Podlyasye a numerous small
+nobility marched in thousands either to Sapyeha or to Lithuania.
+Lyubelsk was in the hands of the confederates. From the distant Russias
+came Tartars, and with them the Cossacks constrained to obedience.
+
+Therefore all were certain that if not in a week in a month, if not in
+a month in two, that river fork in which Karl Gustav had halted with
+the main army of the Swedes would be turned into one great tomb to the
+glory of the nation; a great lesson for those who would attack the
+Commonwealth.
+
+The end of the war was foreseen already; there were some who said that
+one way of salvation alone remained to Karl,--to ransom himself and
+give Swedish Livland to the Commonwealth.
+
+But suddenly the fortune of Karl and the Swedes was bettered.
+Marienburg, besieged hitherto in vain, surrendered, March 20, to
+Steinbock. His powerful and valiant army had then no occupation, and
+could hasten to the rescue of the king.
+
+From another direction the Markgraf of Baden, having finished levies,
+was marching also to the river fork with ready forces, and soldiers yet
+unwearied.
+
+Both pushed forward, breaking up the smaller bands of insurgents,
+destroying, burning, slaying. Along the road they gathered in Swedish
+garrisons, took the smaller commands, and increased in power, as a
+river increases the more it takes streams to its bosom.
+
+Tidings of the fall of Marienburg, of the army of Steinbock, and the
+march of the Markgraf of Baden came very quickly to the fork of the
+river, and grieved Polish hearts. Steinbock was still far away; but the
+markgraf, advancing by forced marches, might soon come up and change
+the whole position at Sandomir.
+
+The Polish leaders then held a council in which Charnyetski, Sapyeha,
+Michael Radzivill, Vitovski, and Lyubomirski, who had grown tired of
+being on the Vistula, took part. At this council it was decided that
+Sapyeha with the Lithuanian army was to remain to watch Karl, and
+prevent his escape, Charnyetski was to move against the Markgraf of
+Baden and meet him as quickly as possible; if God gave him victory, he
+would return to besiege Karl Gustav.
+
+Corresponding orders were given at once. Next morning he trumpets
+sounded to horse so quietly that they were barely heard; Charnyetski
+wished to depart unknown to the Swedes. At his recent camp-ground a
+number of unoccupied parties of nobles and peasants took position at
+once. They kindled fires and made an uproar, so that the enemy might
+think that no one had left the place; but Charnyetski's squadrons moved
+out one after another. First marched the Lauda squadron, which by right
+should have remained with Sapyeha; but since Charnyetski had fallen
+greatly in love with this squadron, the hetman was loath to take it
+from him. After the Lauda went the Vansovich squadron, chosen men led
+by an old soldier half of whose life had been passed in shedding blood;
+then followed the squadron of Prince Dymitri Vishnyevetski, under the
+same Shandarovski who at Rudnik had covered himself with immeasurable
+glory; then two regiments of Vitovski's dragoons, two regiments of the
+starosta of Yavorov; the famed Stapkovski led one; then Charnyetski's
+own regiment, the king's regiment under Polyanovski, and Lyubomirski's
+whole force. No infantry was taken, because of haste; nor wagons, for
+the army went on horseback.
+
+All were drawn up together at Zavada in good strength and great
+willingness. Then Charnyetski himself went out in front, and after he
+had arranged them for the march, he withdrew his horse somewhat and let
+them pass so as to review well the whole force. The horse under him
+sniffed, threw up his head and nodded, as if wishing to greet the
+passing regiments; and the heart swelled in the castellan himself. A
+beautiful view was before him. As far as the eye reached a river of
+horses, a river of stern faces of soldiers, welling up and down with
+the movement of the horses; above them still a third river of sabres
+and lances, glittering and gleaming in the morning sun. A tremendous
+power went forth from them, and Charnyetski felt the power in himself;
+for that was not some kind of collection of volunteers, but men forged
+on the anvil of battle, trained, exercised, and in conflict so
+"venomous" that no cavalry on earth of equal numbers could withstand
+them. Therefore Charnyetski felt with certainty, without doubt, that he
+would bear asunder with sabres and hoofs the army of the Markgraf of
+Baden; and that victory, felt in advance, made his face so radiant that
+it gleamed on the regiments.
+
+"With God to victory!" cried he at last.
+
+"With God! We will conquer!" answered mighty voices.
+
+And that shout flew through all the squadrons like deep thunder through
+clouds. Charnyetski spurred his horse to come up with the Lauda
+squadron, marching in the van.
+
+The army moved forward.
+
+They advanced not like men, but like a flock of ravening birds which
+having wind of a battle from afar, fly to outstrip the tempest. Never,
+even among Tartars in the steppes, had any man heard of such a march.
+The soldiers slept in the saddles; they ate and drank without
+dismounting; they fed the horses from their hands. Rivers, forests,
+villages, were left behind them. Scarcely had peasants hurried out from
+their cottages to look at the army when the army had vanished behind
+clouds of dust in the distance. They marched day and night, resting
+only just enough to escape killing the horses.
+
+At Kozyenitsi they came upon eight Swedish squadrons under Torneskiold.
+The Lauda men, marching in the van, first saw the enemy, and without
+even drawing breath sprang at them straightway and into the fire. Next
+advanced Shandarovski, then Vansovich, and then Stapkovski.
+
+The Swedes, thinking that they had to deal with some mere common
+parties, met them in the open field, and two hours later there was not
+a living man left to go to the markgraf and tell him that Charnyetski
+was coming. Those eight squadrons were simply swept asunder on sabres,
+without leaving a witness of defeat. Then the Poles moved straight on
+to Magnushev, for spies informed them that the markgraf was at Varka
+with his whole army.
+
+Volodyovski was sent in the night with a party to learn how the army
+was disposed, and what its power was.
+
+Zagloba complained greatly of that expedition, for even the famed
+Vishnyevetski had never made such marches as this; therefore the old
+man complained, but he chose to go with Pan Michael rather than remain
+with the army.
+
+"It was a golden time at Sandomir," said he, stretching himself in the
+saddle; "a man ate, drank, and looked at the besieged Swedes in the
+distance; bat now there is not time even to put a canteen to your
+mouth. I know the military arts of the ancients, of the great Pompey
+and Cæsar; but Charnyetski has invented a new style. It is contrary to
+every rule to shake the stomach so many days and nights. The
+imagination begins to rebel in me from hunger, and it seems to me
+continually that the stars are buckwheat pudding and the moon cheese.
+To the dogs with such warfare! As God is dear to me, I want to gnaw my
+own horses' ears off from hunger."
+
+"To-morrow, God grant, we shall rest after finishing the Swedes."
+
+"I would rather have the Swedes than this tediousness! O Lord! O Lord!
+when wilt Thou give peace to this Commonwealth, and to Zagloba a warm
+place at the stove and heated beer, even without cream? Batter along,
+old man, on your nag, batter along, till you batter your body to death.
+Has any one there snuff? Maybe I could sneeze out this sleepiness
+through my nostrils. The moon is shining through my mouth, looking into
+my stomach, but I cannot tell what the moon is looking for there; it
+will find nothing. I repeat, to the dogs with such warfare!"
+
+"If Uncle thinks that the moon is cheese, then eat it, Uncle," said Roh
+Kovalski.
+
+"If I should eat you I might say that I had eaten beef; but I am afraid
+that after such a roast I should lose the rest of my wit."
+
+"If I am an ox and Uncle is my uncle, then what is Uncle?"
+
+"But, you fool, do you think that Althea gave birth to a firebrand
+because she sat by the stove?"
+
+"How does that touch me?"
+
+"In this way. If you are an ox, then ask about your father first, not
+about your uncle: for a bull carried off Europa, but her brother, who
+was uncle to her children, was a man for all that. Do you understand?"
+
+"To tell the truth, I do not; but as to eating I could eat something
+myself."
+
+"Eat the devil and let me sleep! What is it, Pan Michael? Why have we
+halted?"
+
+"Varka is in sight," answered Volodyovski. "See, the church tower is
+gleaming in the moonlight."
+
+"But have we passed Magnushev?"
+
+"Magnushev is behind on the right. It is a wonder to me that there is
+no Swedish party on this side of the river. Let us go to those thickets
+and stop; perhaps God may send us some informant."
+
+Pan Michael led his detachment to the thicket, and disposed it about a
+hundred yards from the road on each side, ordering the men to remain
+silent, and hold the bridles closely so the horses might not neigh.
+
+"Wait," said he. "Let us hear what is being done on the other side of
+the river, and perhaps we may see something."
+
+They stood there waiting; but for a long time nothing was to be heard.
+The wearied soldiers began to nod in the saddles. Zagloba dropped on
+the horse's neck and fell asleep; even the horses were slumbering. An
+hour passed. The accurate ear of Volodyovski heard something like the
+tread of a horse on a firm road.
+
+"Hold! silence!" said he to the soldiers.
+
+He pushed out himself to the edge of the thicket, and looked along the
+road. The road was gleaming in the moonlight like a silver ribbon;
+there was nothing visible on it, still the sound of horses came nearer.
+
+"They are coming surely!" said Volodyovski.
+
+All held their horses more closely, each one restraining his breath.
+Meanwhile on the road appeared a Swedish party of thirty horsemen. They
+rode slowly and carelessly enough, not in line, but in a straggling
+row. Some of the soldiers were talking, others were singing in a low
+voice; for the night, warm as in May, acted on the ardent souls of the
+soldiers. Without suspicion they passed near Pan Michael, who was
+standing so hard by the edge of the thicket that he could catch the
+odor of horses and the smoke of pipes which the soldiers had lighted.
+
+At last they vanished at the turn of the road. Volodyovski waited till
+the tramp had died in the distance; then only did he go to his men and
+say to Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav,--
+
+"Let us drive them now, like geese, to the camp of the castellan. Not a
+man must escape, lest he give warning."
+
+"If Charnyetski does not let us eat then and sleep," said Zagloba, "I
+will resign his service and return to Sapyo. With Sapyo, when there is
+a battle, there is a battle; but when there is a respite, there is a
+feast. If you had four lips, he would give each one of them enough to
+do. He is the leader for me! And in truth tell me by what devil are we
+not serving with Sapyo, since this regiment belongs to him by right?"
+
+"Father, do not blaspheme against the greatest warrior in the
+Commonwealth," said Pan Yan.
+
+"It is not I that blaspheme, but my entrails, on which hunger is
+playing, as on a fiddle--"
+
+"The Swedes will dance to the music," interrupted Volodyovski. "Now,
+gentlemen, let us advance quickly! I should like to come up with them
+exactly at that inn in the forest which we passed in coming hither."
+
+And he led on the squadron quickly, but not too quickly. They rode into
+a dense forest in which darkness enclosed them. The inn was less than
+two miles distant. When Volodyovski had drawn near, he went again at a
+walk, so as not to alarm the Swedes too soon. When not more than a
+cannon-shot away, the noise of men was heard.
+
+"They are there and making an uproar!" said Pan Michael.
+
+The Swedes had, in fact, stopped at the inn, looking for some living
+person to give information. But the place was empty. Some of the
+soldiers were shaking up the main building; others were looking in the
+cow-house, in the shed, or raising the thatch on the roof. One half of
+the men remained on the square holding the horses of those who were
+searching.
+
+Pan Michael's division approached within a hundred yards, and began to
+surround the inn with a Tartar crescent. Those of the Swedes standing
+in front heard perfectly, and at last saw men and horses; since,
+however, it was dark in the forest they could not see what kind of
+troops were coming; but they were not alarmed in the least, not
+admitting that others than Swedes could come from that point. At last
+the movement of the crescent astonished and disturbed them. They called
+at once to those who were in the buildings.
+
+Suddenly a shout of "Allah!" was heard, and the sound of shots, in one
+moment dark crowds of soldiers appeared as if they had grown out of the
+earth. Now came confusion, a flash of sabres, oaths, smothered shouts;
+but the whole affair did not last longer than the time needed to say
+the Lord's Prayer twice.
+
+There remained on the ground before the inn five bodies of men and
+horses; Volodyovski moved on, taking with him twenty-five prisoners.
+
+They advanced at a gallop, urging the Swedish horses with the sides of
+their sabres, and arrived at Magnushev at daybreak. In Charnyetski's
+camp no one was sleeping; all were ready. The castellan himself came
+out leaning on his staff, thin and pale from watching.
+
+"How is it?" asked he of Pan Michael. "Have you many informants?"
+
+"Twenty-five prisoners."
+
+"Did many escape?"
+
+"All are taken."
+
+"Only send you, soldier, even to hell! Well done! Take them at once to
+the torture, I will examine them."
+
+Then the castellan turned, and when departing said,--
+
+"But be in readiness, for perhaps we may move on the enemy without
+delay."
+
+"How is that?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"Be quiet!" said Volodyovski.
+
+The prisoners, without being burned, told in a moment what they knew of
+the forces of the markgraf,--how many cannons he had, what infantry
+and cavalry. Charnyetski grew somewhat thoughtful; for he learned that
+it was really a newly levied army, but formed of the oldest soldiers,
+who had taken part in God knows how many wars. There were also many
+Germans among them, and a considerable division of French; the whole
+force exceeded that of the Poles by several hundred. But it appeared
+from the statements of the prisoners that the markgraf did not even
+admit that Charnyetski was near, and believed that the Poles were
+besieging Karl Gustav with all their forces at Sandomir.
+
+The castellan had barely heard this when he sprang up and cried to his
+attendant: "Vitovski, give command to sound the trumpet to horse!"
+
+Half an hour later the army moved and marched in the fresh spring
+morning through forests and fields covered with dew. At last Varka--or
+rather its ruins, for the place had been burned almost to the ground
+six years before--appeared on the horizon.
+
+Charnyetski's troops were marching over an open flat; therefore they
+could not be concealed from the eyes of the Swedes. In fact they were
+seen; but the markgraf thought that they were various "parties" which
+had combined in a body with the intent of alarming the camp.
+
+Only when squadron after squadron, advancing at a trot, appeared from
+beyond the forest, did a feverish activity rise in the Swedish camp.
+Charnyetski's men saw smaller divisions of horsemen and single officers
+hurrying between the regiments. The bright-colored Swedish infantry
+began to pour into the middle of the plain; the regiments formed one
+after another before the eyes of the Poles and were numerous,
+resembling a flock of many-colored birds. Over their heads were raised
+toward the sun quadrangles of strong spears with which the infantry
+shielded themselves against attacks of cavalry. Finally, were seen
+crowds of Swedish armored cavalry advancing at a trot along the wings;
+the artillery was drawn up and brought to the front in haste. All the
+preparations, all the movements were as visible as something on the
+palm of the hand, for the sun had risen clearly, splendidly, and
+lighted up the whole country.
+
+The Pilitsa separated the two armies.
+
+On the Swedish bank trumpets and kettle-drums were heard, and the
+shouts of soldiers coming with all speed into line. Charnyetski ordered
+also to sound the crooked trumpets, and advanced with his squadrons
+toward the river.
+
+Then he rushed with all the breath of his horse to the Vansovich
+squadron, which was nearest the Pilitsa.
+
+"Old soldier!" cried he to Vansovich, "advance for me to the bridge,
+there dismount and to muskets! Let all their force be turned on you!
+Lead on!"
+
+Vansovich merely flushed a little from desire, and waved his baton. The
+men shouted and shot after him like a cloud of dust driven by wind.
+
+When they came within three hundred yards of the bridge, they slackened
+the speed of their horses; then two thirds of them sprang from the
+saddles and advanced on a run to the bridge.
+
+But the Swedes came from the other side; and soon muskets began to
+play, at first slowly, then every moment more briskly, as if a thousand
+flails were beating irregularly on a barn-floor. Smoke stretched over
+the river. Shouts of encouragement were thundering from one and the
+other command. The minds of both armies were bent to the bridge, which
+was wooden, narrow, difficult to take, but easy to defend. Still over
+this bridge alone was it possible to cross to the Swedes.
+
+A quarter of an hour later Charnyetski pushed forward Lyubomirski's
+dragoons to the aid of Vansovich.
+
+But the Swedes now attacked the opposite front with artillery. They
+drew up new pieces one after another, and bombs began to fly with a
+howl over the heads of Vansovich's men and the dragoons, to fall in the
+meadow and dig into the earth, scattering mud and turf on those
+fighting.
+
+The markgraf, standing near the forest in the rear of the army, watched
+the battle through a field-glass. From time to time he removed the
+glass from his eyes, looked at his staff, shrugged his shoulders and
+said with astonishment: "They have gone mad; they want absolutely to
+force the bridge. A few guns and two or three regiments might defend it
+against a whole army."
+
+Vansovich advanced still more stubbornly with his men; hence the
+defence grew still more resolute. The bridge became the central point
+of the battle, toward which the whole Swedish line was approaching and
+concentrating. An hour later the entire Swedish order of battle was
+changed, and they stood with flank to their former position. The bridge
+was simply covered with a rain of fire and iron. Vansovich's men were
+falling thickly; meanwhile orders came more and more urgent to advance
+absolutely.
+
+"Charnyetski is murdering those men!" cried Lyubomirski on a sudden.
+
+Vitovski, as an experienced soldier, saw that evil was happening, and
+his whole body quivered with impatience; at last he could endure no
+longer. Spurring his horse till the beast groaned piteously, he rushed
+to Charnyetski, who during all this time, it was unknown why, was
+pushing men toward the river.
+
+"Your grace," cried Vitovski, "blood is flowing for nothing; we cannot
+carry that bridge!"
+
+"I do not want to carry it!" answered Charnyetski.
+
+"Then what does your grace want? What must we do?"
+
+"To the river with the squadrons! to the river! And you to your place!"
+
+Here Charnyetski's eyes flashed such lightnings that Vitovski withdrew
+without saying a word.
+
+Meanwhile the squadrons had come within twenty paces of the bank, and
+stood in a long line parallel with the bed of the river. None of the
+officers or the soldiers had the slightest suspicion of what they were
+doing.
+
+In a flash Charnyetski appeared like a thunderbolt before the front of
+the squadrons. There was fire in his face, lightning in his eyes. A
+sharp wind had raised the burka on his shoulders so that it was like
+strong wings: his horse sprang and reared, casting fire from his
+nostrils. The castellan dropped his sword on its pendant, took the rap
+from his head, and with hair erect shouted to his division,--
+
+"Gentlemen! the enemy defends himself with this water, and jeers at us!
+He has sailed through the sea to crush our fatherland, and he thinks
+that we in defence of it cannot swim through this river!"
+
+Here he hurled his cap to the earth, and seizing his sabre pointed with
+it to the swollen waters. Enthusiasm bore him away, for he stood in the
+saddle and shouted more mightily still,--
+
+"To whom God, faith, fatherland, are all, follow me!"
+
+And pressing the horse with the spurs so that the steed sprang as it
+were into space, he rushed into the river. The wave plashed around him;
+man and horse were hidden under water, but they rose in the twinkle of
+an eye.
+
+"After my master!" cried Mihalko, the same who had covered himself with
+glory at Rudnik; and he sprang into the water.
+
+"After me!" shouted Volodyovski, with a shrill but thin voice; and he
+sprang in before he had finished shouting.
+
+"O Jesus! O Mary!" bellowed Zagloba, raising his horse for the leap.
+
+With that an avalanche of men and horses dashed into the river, so that
+it struck both banks with wild impetus. After the Lauda squadron went
+Vishnyevetski's, then Vitovski's, then Stapkovski's, after that all the
+others. Such a frenzy seized the men that the squadrons crowded one
+another in emulation; the shouts of command were mingled with the roar
+of the soldiers; the river overflowed the banks and foamed itself into
+milk in a moment. The current bore the regiments down somewhat; but the
+horses, pricked with spurs, swam like a countless herd of dolphins,
+snorting and groaning. They filled the river to such a degree that the
+mass of heads of horses and riders formed as it were a bridge on which
+a man might have passed with dry foot to the other bank.
+
+Charnyetski swam over first; but before the water had dropped from him
+the Lauda squadron had followed him to land; then he waved his baton,
+and cried to Volodyovski,--
+
+"On a gallop! Strike!"
+
+And to the Vishnyevetski squadron under Shandarovski,--
+
+"With them!"
+
+And so he sent the squadrons one after another, till he had sent all.
+He stood at the head of the last himself, and shouting, "In the name of
+God! with luck!" followed the others.
+
+Two regiments of Swedish cavalry posted in reserve saw what was
+happening; but such amazement had seized the colonels that before they
+could move from their tracks the Lauda men, urging their horses to the
+highest speed, and sweeping with irresistible force, struck the first
+regiment, scattered that, as a whirlwind scatters leaves, hurled it
+against the second, brought that to disorder; then Shandarovski came
+up, and a terrible slaughter began, but of short duration; after a
+while the Swedish ranks were broken, and a disordered throng plunged
+forward toward the main army.
+
+Charnyetski's squadron pursued them with a fearful outcry, slashing,
+thrusting, strewing the field with corpses.
+
+At last it was clear why Charnyetski had commanded Vansovich to carry
+the bridge, though he had no thought of crossing it. The chief
+attention of the whole army had been concentrated on that point;
+therefore no one defended, or had time to defend, the river itself.
+Besides nearly all the artillery and the entire front of the Swedish
+army was turned toward the bridge; and now when three thousand cavalry
+were rushing with all impetus against the flank of that army, it was
+needful to change the order of battle, to form a new front, to defend
+themselves even well or ill against the shock. Now rose a terrible
+haste and confusion; infantry and cavalry regiments turned with all
+speed to face the enemy, straining themselves in their hurry, knocking
+one against another, not understanding commands in the uproar, acting
+independently. In vain did the officers make superhuman efforts; in
+vain did the markgraf move straightway the regiments of cavalry posted
+at the forest; before they came to any kind of order, before the
+infantry could put the butt ends of their lances in the ground to hold
+the points to the enemy, the Lauda squadron fell, like the spirit of
+death, into the very midst of their ranks; after it a second, a third,
+a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth squadron. Then began the day of
+judgment! The smoke of musketry fire covered, as if with a cloud, the
+whole scene of conflict; and in that cloud screams, seething, unearthly
+voices of despair, shouts of triumph, the sharp clang of steel, as if
+in an infernal forge, the rattling of muskets; at times a flag shone
+and fell in the smoke; then the gilded point of a regimental banner,
+and again you saw nothing; but a roar was heard more and more terrible,
+as if the earth had broken on a sudden under the river, and its waters
+were tumbling down into fathomless abysses.
+
+Now on the flank other sounds were heard. This was Vansovich, who had
+crossed the bridge and was marching on the new flank of the enemy.
+After this the battle did not last long.
+
+From out that cloud large groups of men began to push, and run toward
+the forest in disorder, wild, without caps, without helmets, without
+armor. Soon after them burst out a whole flood of people in the most
+dreadful disorder. Artillery, infantry, cavalry mingled together fled
+toward the forest at random, in alarm and terror. Some soldiers cried
+in sky-piercing voices; others fled in silence, covering their heads
+with their hands. Some in their haste threw away their clothing; others
+stopped those running ahead, fell down themselves, trampled one
+another; and right there behind them, on their shoulders and heads,
+rushed a line of Polish cavaliers. Every moment you saw whole ranks of
+them spurring their horses and rushing into the densest throngs of men.
+No one defended himself longer; all went under the sword. Body fell
+upon body. The Poles hewed without rest, without mercy, on the whole
+plain; along the bank of the river toward the forest, as far as the eye
+could reach you saw merely pursued and pursuing; only here and there
+scattered groups of infantry offered an irregular, despairing
+resistance; the cannons were silent. The battle ceased to be a battle;
+it had turned into a slaughter.
+
+All that part of the army which fled toward the forest was cut to
+pieces; only a few squadrons of Swedish troopers entered it. After them
+the light squadrons of Poles sprang in among the trees.
+
+But in the forest peasants were waiting for that unslain remnant,--the
+peasants who at the sound of the battle had rushed together from all
+the surrounding villages.
+
+The most terrible pursuit, however, continued on the road to Warsaw,
+along which the main forces of the Swedes were fleeing. The young
+Markgraf Adolph struggled twice to cover the retreat; but beaten twice,
+he fell into captivity himself. His auxiliary division of French
+infantry, composed of four hundred men, threw away their arms; three
+thousand chosen soldiers, musketeers and cavalry, fled as far as
+Mnishev. The musketeers were cut down in Mnishev; the cavalry were
+pursued toward Chersk, until they were scattered completely through the
+forest, reeds, and brush; there the peasants hunted them out one by one
+on the morrow.
+
+Before the sun had set, the army of Friederich, Markgraf of Baden, had
+ceased to exist.
+
+On the first scene of battle there remained only the standard-bearers
+with their standards, for all the troops had followed the enemy. And
+the sun was well inclined to its setting when the first bodies of
+cavalry began to appear from the side of the forest and Mnishev. They
+returned with singing and uproar, hurling their caps in the air, firing
+from pistols. Almost all led with them crowds of bound prisoners. These
+walked at the sides of the horses they were without caps, without
+helmets, with heads drooping on their breasts, torn, bloody, stumbling
+every moment against the bodies of fallen comrades. The field of battle
+presented a terrible sight. In places, where the struggle had been
+fiercest, there lay simply piles of bodies half a spear-length in
+height. Some of the infantry still held in their stiffened hands long
+spears. The whole ground was covered with spears. In places they were
+sticking still in the earth; here and there pieces of them formed as it
+were fences and pickets. But on all sides was presented mostly a
+dreadful and pitiful mingling of bodies, of men mashed with hoofs,
+broken muskets, drums, trumpets, caps, belts, tin boxes which the
+infantry carried; hands and feet sticking out in such disorder from the
+piles of bodies that it was difficult to tell to what body they
+belonged. In those places specially where the infantry defended itself
+whole breastworks of corpses were lying.
+
+Somewhat farther on, near the river, stood the artillery, now cold,
+some pieces overturned by the onrush of men, others as it were ready to
+be fired. At the sides of them lay the cannoneers now held in eternal
+sleep. Many bodies were hanging across the guns and embracing them with
+their arms, as if those soldiers wished still to defend them after
+death. The brass, spotted with blood and brains, glittered with ill
+omen in the beams of the setting sun. The golden rays were reflected in
+stiffened blood, which here and there formed little lakes. Its
+nauseating odor was mingled over the whole field with the smell of
+powder, the exhalation from bodies, and the sweat of horses.
+
+Before the setting of the sun Charnyetski returned with the king's
+regiment, and stood in the middle of the field. The troops greeted him
+with a thundering shout. Whenever a detachment came up it cheered
+without end. He stood in the rays of the sun, wearied beyond measure,
+but all radiant, with bare head, his sword hanging on his belt, and he
+answered to every cheer,--
+
+"Not to me, gentlemen, not to me, but to the name of God!"
+
+At his side were Vitovski and Lyubomirski, the latter as bright as the
+sun itself, for he was in gilded plate armor, his face splashed with
+blood; for he had worked terribly and labored with his own hand as a
+simple soldier, but discontented and gloomy, for even his own regiments
+shouted,--
+
+"Vivat Charnyetski, _dux et victor_ (commander and conqueror)!"
+
+Envy began then to dive into the soul of the marshal.
+
+Meanwhile new divisions rolled in from every side of the field; each
+time an officer came up and threw a banner, captured from the enemy, at
+Charnyetski's feet. At sight of this rose new shouts, new cheers,
+hurling of caps into the air, and the firing of pistols.
+
+The sun was sinking lower and lower.
+
+Then in the one church that remained after the fire in Varka they
+sounded the Angelus; that moment all uncovered their heads. Father
+Pyekarski, the company priest, began to intone: "The Angel of the Lord
+announced unto the Most Holy Virgin Mary!" and a thousand iron breasts
+answered at once, with deep voices: "And she conceived of the Holy
+Ghost!"
+
+All eyes were raised to the heavens, which were red with the evening
+twilight; and from that bloody battle-field began to rise a pious hymn
+to the light playing in the sky before night.
+
+Just as they had ceased to sing, the Lauda squadron began to come up at
+a trot; it had chased the enemy farthest. The soldiers throw more
+banners at Charnyetski's feet. He rejoiced in heart, and seeing
+Volodyovski, urged his horse toward him and asked,--
+
+"Have many of them escaped?"
+
+Pan Michael shook his head as a sign that not many had escaped, but he
+was so near being breathless that he was unable to utter one word; he
+merely gasped with open mouth, time after time, so that his breast was
+heaving. At last he pointed to his lips, as a sign that he could not
+speak. Charnyetski understood him and pressed his head.
+
+"He has toiled!" said he; "God grant us more such."
+
+Zagloba hurried to catch his breath, and said, with chattering teeth
+and broken voice,--
+
+"For God's sake! The cold wind is blowing on me, and I am all in a
+sweat. Paralysis will strike me. Pull the clothes off some fat Swede
+and give them to me, for everything on me is wet,--wet, and it is wet
+in this place. I know not what is water, what is my own sweat, and what
+is Swedish blood. If I have ever expected in my life to cut down so
+many of those scoundrels, I am not fit to be the crupper of a saddle.
+The greatest victory of this war! But I will not spring into water a
+second time. Eat not, drink not, sleep not, and then a bath! I have had
+enough in my old years. My hand is benumbed; paralysis has struck me
+already; gorailka, for the dear God!"
+
+Charnyetski, hearing this, and seeing the old man really covered
+completely with the blood of the enemy, took pity on his age and gave
+him his own canteen.
+
+Zagloba raised it to his mouth, and after a while returned it empty;
+then he said,--
+
+"I have gulped so much water in the Pilitsa, that we shall soon see how
+fish will hatch in my stomach; but that gorailka is better than water."
+
+"Dress in other clothes, even Swedish," said Charnyetski.
+
+"I'll find a big Swede for Uncle!" said Roh.
+
+"Why should I have bloody clothes from a corpse?" said Zagloba; "take
+off everything to the shirt from that general whom I captured."
+
+"Have you taken a general?" asked Charnyetski, with animation.
+
+"Whom have I not taken, whom have I not slain?" answered Zagloba.
+
+Now Volodyovski recovered speech: "We have taken the younger markgraf,
+Adolph; Count Falckenstein, General Wegier, General Poter Benzij, not
+counting inferior officers."
+
+"But the Markgraf Friederich?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"If he has not fallen here, he has escaped to the forest; but if he has
+escaped, the peasants will kill him."
+
+Volodyovski was mistaken in his previsions. The Markgraf Friederich
+with Counts Schlippenbach and Ehrenhain, wandering through the forest,
+made their way in the night to Chersk; after sitting there in the
+ruined castle three days and nights in hunger and cold, they wandered
+by night to Warsaw. That did not save them from captivity afterward;
+this time, however, they escaped.
+
+It was night when Charnyetski came to Varka from the field. That was
+perhaps the gladdest night of his life, for such a great disaster the
+Swedes had not suffered since the beginning of the war. All the
+artillery, all the flags, all the officers, except the chief, were
+captured. The army was cut to pieces, driven to the four winds; the
+remnants of it were forced to fall victims to bands of peasants. But
+besides, it was shown that those Swedes who held themselves invincible
+could not stand before regular Polish squadrons in the open field.
+Charnyetski understood at last what a mighty result this victory would
+work in the whole Commonwealth,--how it would raise courage, how it
+would rouse enthusiasm; he saw already the whole Commonwealth, in no
+distant future, free from oppression, triumphant. Perhaps, too, he saw
+with the eyes of his mind the gilded baton of the grand hetman on the
+sky.
+
+He was permitted to dream of this, for he had advanced toward it as a
+true soldier, as a defender of his country, and he was of those who
+grow not from salt nor from the soil, but from that which pains them.
+
+Meanwhile he could hardly embrace with his whole soul the joy which
+flowed in upon him; therefore he turned to Lyubomirski, riding at his
+side, and said,--
+
+"Now to Sandomir! to Sandomir with all speed! Since the army knows now
+how to swim rivers, neither the San nor the Vistula will frighten us!"
+
+Lyubomirski said not a word; but Zagloba, riding a little apart in
+Swedish uniform, permitted himself to say aloud,--
+
+"Go where you like, but without me, for I am not a weathercock to turn
+night and day without food or sleep."
+
+Charnyetski was so rejoiced that he was not only not angry, but he
+answered in jest,--
+
+"You are more like the belfry than the weathercock, since, as I see,
+you have sparrows in your head. But as to eating and rest it belongs to
+all."
+
+To which Zagloba said, but in an undertone. "Whoso has a beak on his
+face has a sparrow on his mind."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+After that victory Charnyetski permitted at last the army to take
+breath and feed the wearied horses; then he was to return to Sandomir
+by forced marches, and bend the King of Sweden to his fall.
+
+Meanwhile Kharlamp came to the camp one evening with news from Sapyeha.
+Charnyetski was at Chersk, whither he had gone to review the general
+militia assembled at that town. Kharlamp, not finding the chief, betook
+himself at once to Pan Michael, so as to rest at his quarters after the
+long journey.
+
+His friends greeted him joyously; but he, at the very beginning, showed
+them a gloomy face and said,--
+
+"I have heard of your victory. Fortune smiled here, but bore down on us
+in Sandomir. Karl Gustav is no longer in the sack, for he got out, and,
+besides, with great confusion to the Lithuanian troops."
+
+"Can that be?" cried Pan Michael, seizing his head.
+
+Pan Yan, Pan Stanislav, and Zagloba were as if fixed to the earth.
+
+"How was it? Tell, by the living God, for I cannot stay in my skin!"
+
+"Breath fails me yet," said Kharlamp; "I have ridden day and night, I
+am terribly tired. Charnyetski will come, then I will tell all from the
+beginning. Let me now draw breath a little."
+
+"Then Karl has gone out of the sack. I foresaw that, did I not? Do you
+not remember that I prophesied it? Let Kovalski testify."
+
+"Uncle foretold it," said Roh.
+
+"And whither has Karl gone?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"The infantry sailed down in boats; but he, with cavalry, has gone
+along the Vistula to Warsaw."
+
+"Was there a battle?"
+
+"There was and there was not. In brief, give me peace, for I cannot
+talk."
+
+"But tell me one thing. Is Sapyeha crushed altogether?"
+
+"How crushed! He is pursuing the king; but of course Sapyeha will never
+come up with anybody."
+
+"He is as good at pursuit as a German at fasting," said Zagloba.
+
+"Praise be to God for even this, that the army is intact!" put in
+Volodyovski.
+
+"The Lithuanians have got into trouble!" said Zagloba. "Ah, it is a bad
+case! Again we must watch a hole in the Commonwealth together."
+
+"Say nothing against the Lithuanian army," said Kharlamp. "Karl Gustav
+is a great warrior, and it is no wonder to lose against him. And did
+not you, from Poland, lose at Uistsie, at Volbor, at Suleyov, and in
+ten other places? Charnyetski himself lost at Golembo. Why should not
+Sapyeha lose, especially when you left him alone like an orphan?"
+
+"But why did we go to a dance at Varka?" asked Zagloba, with
+indignation.
+
+"I know that it was not a dance, but a battle, and God gave you the
+victory. But who knows, perhaps it had been better not to go; for among
+us they say that the troops of both nations (Lithuanian and Poland) may
+be beaten separately, but together the cavalry of hell itself could not
+manage them."
+
+"That may be," said Volodyovski; "but what the leaders have decided is
+not for us to discuss. This did not happen, either, without your
+fault."
+
+"Sapyo must have blundered; I know him!" said Zagloba.
+
+"I cannot deny that," muttered Kharlamp.
+
+They were silent awhile, but from time to time looked at one another
+gloomily, for to them it seemed that the fortune of the Commonwealth
+was beginning to sink, and yet such a short time before they were full
+of hope and confidence.
+
+"Charnyetski is coming!" said Volodyovski; and he went out of the room.
+
+The castellan was really returning; Volodyovski went to meet him, and
+began to call from a distance,--
+
+"The King of Sweden has broken through the Lithuanian army, and escaped
+from the sack. There is an officer here with letters from the voevoda
+of Vilna."
+
+"Bring him here!" cried Charnyetski. "Where is he?
+
+"With me; I will present him at once."
+
+Charnyetski took the news so much to heart that he would not wait, but
+sprang at once from his saddle and entered Volodyovski's quarters.
+
+All rose when they saw him enter; he barely nodded and said,--
+
+"I ask for the letter!"
+
+Kharlamp gave him a sealed letter. The castellan went to the window,
+for it was dark in the cottage, and began to read with frowning brow
+and anxious face. From instant to instant anger gleamed on his
+countenance.
+
+"The castellan has changed," whispered Zagloba to Pan Yan; "see how his
+beak has grown red. He will begin to lisp right away, he always does
+when in anger."
+
+Charnyetski finished the letter. For a time he twisted his beard with
+his whole hand; at last he called out with a jingling, indistinct
+voice,--
+
+"Come this way, officer!"
+
+"At command of your worthiness!"
+
+"Tell me the truth," said Charnyetski, with emphasis, "for this
+narrative is so artfully put together that I am unable to get at the
+affair. But--tell me the truth, do not color it--is the army
+dispersed?"
+
+"Not dispersed at all, your grace."
+
+"How many days are needed to assemble it?"
+
+Here Zagloba whispered to Pan Yan: "He wants to come at him from the
+left hand as it were."
+
+But Kharlamp answered without hesitation,--
+
+"Since the army is not dispersed, it does not need to be assembled. It
+is true that when I was leaving, about five hundred horse of the
+general militia could not be found, were not among the fallen; but that
+is a common thing, and the army does not suffer from that; the hetman
+has even moved after the king in good order."
+
+"You have lost no cannon?"
+
+"Yes, we lost four, which the Swedes, not being able to take with them,
+spiked."
+
+"I see that you tell the truth; tell me then how everything happened."
+
+"_Incipiam_ (I will begin)," said Kharlamp. "When we were left alone,
+the enemy saw that there was no army on the Vistula, nothing but
+parties and irregular detachments. We thought--or, properly speaking,
+Pan Sapyeha thought--that the king would attack those, and he sent
+reinforcements, but not considerable, so as not to weaken himself.
+Meanwhile there was a movement and a noise among the Swedes, as in a
+beehive. Toward evening they began to come out in crowds to the San. We
+were at the voevoda's quarters. Pan Kmita, who is called Babinich now,
+a soldier of the first degree, came up and reported this. But Pan
+Sapyeha was just sitting down to a feast, to which a multitude of noble
+women from Krasnik and Yanov had assembled--for the voevoda is fond of
+the fair sex--"
+
+"And he loves feasting!" interrupted Charnyetski.
+
+"I am not with him; there is no one to incline him to temperance," put
+in Zagloba.
+
+"Maybe you will be with him sooner than you think; then you can both
+begin to be temperate," retorted Charnyetski. Then he turned to
+Kharlamp: "Speak on!"
+
+"Babinich reported, and the voevoda answered: 'They are only pretending
+to attack; they will undertake nothing! First,' said he, 'they will try
+to cross the Vistula; but I have an eye on them, and I will attack
+myself. At present,' said he, 'we will not spoil our pleasure, so that
+we may have a joyous time! We will eat and drink.' The music began to
+tear away, and the voevoda invited those present to the dance."
+
+"I'll give him dancing!" interrupted Zagloba.
+
+"Silence, if you please!" said Charnyetski.
+
+"Again men rush in from the bank saying that there is a terrible
+uproar. 'That's nothing!' the voevoda whispered to the page; 'do not
+interrupt me!' We danced till daylight, we slept till midday. At midday
+we see that the intrenchments are bristling, forty-eight pound guns on
+them; and the Swedes fire from time to time. When a ball falls it is
+the size of a bucket; it is nothing for such a one to fill the eyes
+with dust."
+
+"Give no embellishments!" interrupted Charnyetski; "you are not with
+the hetman."
+
+Kharlamp was greatly confused, and continued: "At midday the voevoda
+himself went out. The Swedes under cover of these trenches began to
+build a bridge. They worked till evening, to our great astonishment;
+for we thought that as to building they would build, but as to crossing
+they would not be able to do that. Next day they built on. The voevoda
+put the troops in order, for he expected a battle."
+
+"All this time the bridge was a pretext, and they crossed lower down
+over another bridge, and turned your flank?" interrupted Charnyetski.
+
+Kharlamp stared and opened his mouth, he was silent in amazement; but
+at last said,--
+
+"Then your worthiness has had an account already?"
+
+"No need of that!" said Zagloba; "our grandfather guesses everything
+concerning war on the wing, as if he had seen it in fact."
+
+"Speak on!" said Charnyetski.
+
+"Evening came. The troops were in readiness, but with the first star
+there was a feast again. This time the Swedes passed over the second
+bridge lower down, and attacked us at once. The squadron of Pan
+Koshyts, a good soldier, was at the edge. He rushed on them. The
+general militia which was next to him sprang to his aid; but when the
+Swedes spat at them from the guns, they took to their heels. Pan
+Koshyts was killed, and his men terribly cut up. Now the general
+militia, rushing back in a crowd on the camp, put everything in
+disorder. All the squadrons that were ready advanced; but we effected
+nothing, lost cannon besides. If the king had had  more cannon and
+infantry, our defeat would have been severe; but fortunately the
+greater number of the infantry regiments with the cannon had sailed
+away in boats during the night. Of this no one of us knew."
+
+"Sapyo has blundered! I knew it beforehand!" cried Zagloba.
+
+"We got the correspondence of the king," added Kharlamp, "which the
+Swedes dropped. The soldiers read in it that the king is to go to
+Prussia to return with the elector's forces, for, he writes, that with
+Swedish troops alone he cannot succeed."
+
+"I know of that," said Charnyetski. "Pan Sapyeha sent me that letter."
+Then he muttered quietly, as if speaking to himself: "We must follow
+him to Prussia."
+
+"That is what I have been saying this long time," put in Zagloba.
+
+Charnyetski looked at him for a while in thoughtfulness. "It is
+unfortunate," said he, aloud; "for if I had returned to Sandomir the
+hetman and I should not have let a foot of them out alive. Well! it has
+passed and will not return. The war will be longer; but death is fated
+to this invasion and to these invaders."
+
+"It cannot be otherwise!" cried the knights in chorus; and great
+consolation entered their hearts, though a short time before they had
+doubted.
+
+Meanwhile Zagloba whispered something in Jendzian's ear; he vanished
+through the door, and soon returned with a decanter. Seeing this,
+Volodyovski inclined to the knee of the castellan.
+
+"It would be an uncommon favor for a simple soldier," he began.
+
+"I will drink with you willingly," said Charnyetski; "and do you know
+why?--because we must part."
+
+"How is that?" cried the astonished Pan Michael.
+
+"Sapyeha writes that the Lauda squadron belongs to the Lithuanian army,
+and that he sent it only to assist the forces of the kingdom; that now
+he will need it himself, especially the officers, of whom he has a
+great lack. My Volodyovski, you know how much I love you; it is hard
+for me to part with you, but here is the order. It is true Pan Sapyeha
+as a courteous man leaves the order in my power and discretion. I might
+not show it to you.--Well, it is as pleasant to me as if the hetman had
+broken my best sabre. I give you the order precisely because it is left
+to my discretion, and do your duty. To your health, my dear soldier!"
+
+Volodyovski bowed again to the castellan's knees; but he was so
+distressed that he could not utter a word, and when Charnyetski
+embraced him tears ran in a stream over his yellow mustaches.
+
+"I would rather die!" cried he, pitifully. "I have grown accustomed to
+toil under you, revered leader, and there I know not how it will be."
+
+"Pan Michael, do not mind the order," cried Zagloba, with emotion. "I
+will write to Sapyo myself, and rub his ears for him fittingly."
+
+But Pan Michael first of all was a soldier; therefore he flew into a
+passion,--
+
+"But the old volunteer is ever sitting in you. You would better be
+silent when you know not the question. Service!"
+
+"That is it," said Charnyetski.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+Zagloba when he stood before the hetman did not answer his joyous
+greeting, but put his hands behind his back, pouted his lips, and
+looked on him like a just but stern judge. Sapyeha was pleased when he
+saw that mien, for he expected some pleasantry and said,--
+
+"How are you, old rogue? Why twist your nose as if you had found some
+unvirtuous odor?"
+
+"In the whole camp of Sapyeha it smells of hashed meat and cabbage."
+
+"Why? Tell me."
+
+"Because the Swedes have cut up a great many cabbage-heads!"
+
+"There you are! You are already criticising us. It is a pity they did
+not cut you up too."
+
+"I was with a leader under whom we are the cutters, not the cut."
+
+"The hangman take you! if they had even clipped your tongue!"
+
+"Then I should have nothing to proclaim Sapyeha's victory with."
+
+"Ah, lord brother, spare me! The majority already forget my service to
+the country, and belittle me altogether. I know too that there are many
+who make a great outcry against my person; still, had it not been for
+that rabble of a general militia, affairs might have gone differently.
+They say that I have neglected the enemy for night feasting; but the
+whole Commonwealth has not been able to resist that enemy."
+
+Zagloba was somewhat moved at the words of the hetman, and answered,--
+
+"Such is the custom with us, always to put the blame on the leader. I
+am not the man to speak evil of feasting, for the longer the day, the
+more needful the feast. Pan Charnyetski is a great warrior; still,
+according to my head, he has this defect,--that he gives his troops for
+breakfast, for dinner, and for supper nothing but Swedes' flesh. He is
+a better leader than cook; but he acts ill, for from such food war may
+soon become disgusting to the best cavaliers."
+
+"Was Charnyetski very much enraged at me?"
+
+"No, not very! In the beginning he showed a great change; but when he
+discovered that the army was unbroken, he said at once: 'The will of
+God, not the might of men! That is nothing! any general may lose a
+battle. If we had Sapyehas only in the land, we should have a country
+in which every man would be an Aristides.'"
+
+"For Pan Charnyetski I would not spare my blood!" answered Sapyeha.
+"Every other would have lowered me, so as to exalt himself and his own
+glory, especially after a fresh victory; but he is not that kind of
+man."
+
+"I will say nothing against him but this,--that I am too old for such
+service as he expects of soldiers, and especially for those baths which
+he gives the army."
+
+"Then are you glad to return to me?"
+
+"Glad and not glad, for I hear of feasting for an hour, but somehow I
+don't see it."
+
+"We will sit down to the table this minute. But what is Charnyetski
+undertaking now?"
+
+"He is going to Great Poland to help those poor people; from there he
+will march against Steinbock and to Prussia, hoping to get cannon and
+infantry from Dantzig."
+
+"The citizens of Dantzig are worthy people, and give a shining example
+to the whole Commonwealth. We shall meet Charnyetski at Warsaw, for I
+shall march there, but will stop a little first around Lublin."
+
+"Then have the Swedes besieged Lublin again?"
+
+"Unhappy place! I know not how many times it has been in the hands of
+the enemy. There is a deputation here now from Lubelsk, and they will
+appear with a petition asking me to save them. But as I have letters to
+despatch to the king and the hetmans, they must wait awhile."
+
+"I will go gladly to Lublin, for there the fair heads are comely beyond
+measure, and sprightly. When a woman of that place is cutting bread,
+and puts the loaf against herself, the crust on the lifeless bread
+blushes from delight."
+
+"Oh, Turk!"
+
+"Your worthiness, as a man advanced in years, cannot understand this;
+but I, like May, must let my blood out yet."
+
+"But you are older than I."
+
+"Only in experience, not in years. I have been able _conservare
+juventutem meam_ (to preserve my youth), and more than one man has
+envied me that power. Permit me, your worthiness, to receive the
+Lubelsk deputation. I will promise to aid them at once; let the poor
+men comfort themselves before we comfort the poor women."
+
+"That is well," said the hetman; "then I will write the letters." And
+he went out.
+
+Immediately after were admitted the deputies from Lubelsk, whom Zagloba
+received with uncommon dignity and seriousness. He promised assistance
+on condition that they would furnish the army with provisions,
+especially with every kind of drink. When the conditions were settled,
+he invited them in the name of the voevoda to supper. They were glad,
+for the army marched that night toward Lublin. The hetman himself was
+active beyond measure, for it was a question with him of effacing the
+memory of the Sandomir defeat by some military success.
+
+The siege began, but advanced rather slowly. During this time Kmita was
+learning from Volodyovski to work with the sabre, and made uncommon
+progress. Pan Michael, knowing that his art was to be used against
+Boguslav's neck, held back no secret. Often too they had better
+practice; for, approaching the castle, they challenged to single combat
+the Swedes, many of whom they slew. Soon Kmita had made such advance
+that he could meet Pan Yan on equal terms; no one in the whole army of
+Sapyeha could stand before him. Then such a desire to try Boguslav
+seized his soul that he was barely able to remain at Lublin, especially
+since the spring brought back to him strength and health. His wounds
+had healed, he ceased to spit blood, life played in him as of old, and
+fire gleamed in his eyes. At first the Lauda men looked at him
+frowningly; but they dared in not attack, for Volodyovski held them
+with iron hand; and later, when they considered his acts and his deeds,
+they were reconciled completely, and his most inveterate enemy, Yuzva
+Butrym, said,--
+
+"Kmita is dead; Babinich is living, let him live."
+
+The Lubelsk garrison surrendered at last, to the great delight of the
+army; then Sapyeha moved his squadrons toward Warsaw. On the road they
+received tidings that Yan Kazimir himself, with the hetmans and a fresh
+army, was advancing to aid them. News came too from Charnyetski, who
+was marching to the capital from Great Poland. The war, scattered
+through the whole country, was gathering at Warsaw, as a cloud
+scattered in the sky gathers and thickens to give birth to a storm with
+thunders and lightnings.
+
+Sapyeha marched through Jelehi, Garvolin, and Minsk to the Syedlets
+highway, to join the general militia of Podlyasye. Pan Yan took command
+of this multitude; for though living in Lubelsk, he was near the
+boundary of Podlyasye, and was known to all the nobles, and greatly
+esteemed by them as one of the most famous knights in the Commonwealth.
+In fact, he soon changed that nobility, gallant by nature, into a
+squadron second in no way to regular troops.
+
+Meanwhile they moved from Minsk forward to Warsaw very hastily, so as
+to stop at Praga one day. Fair weather favored the march. From time to
+time May showers sped past, cooling the ground and settling the dust;
+but on the whole the weather was marvellously fair,--not too hot, not
+too cold. The eye saw far through the transparent air. From Minsk they
+went mounted; the wagons and cannon were to follow next day. An immense
+eagerness reigned in the regiments; the dense forests on both sides of
+the whole road were ringing with echoes of military songs, the horses
+nodded as a good omen. The squadrons regularly and in order flowed on,
+one after the other, like a river shining and mighty; for Sapyeha led
+twelve thousand men, besides the general militia. The captains leading
+the regiments were gleaming in their polished cuirasses; the red flags
+waved like gigantic flowers above the heads of the knights.
+
+The sun was well toward its setting when the first squadron, that of
+Lauda, marching in advance, beheld the towers of the capital. At sight
+of this, a joyful shout tore from the breasts of the soldiers.
+
+"Warsaw! Warsaw!"
+
+That shout flew like thunder through all the squadrons, and for some
+time was to be heard over two miles of road the word, "Warsaw! Warsaw!"
+
+Many of Sapyeha's knights had never been in the capital; many of them
+had never seen it; therefore the sight made an uncommon impression on
+them. Involuntarily all reined in their horses; some removed their
+caps, others made the sign of the cross; tears streamed from the eyes
+of others, and they stood in silent emotion. All at once Sapyeha came
+out from the rear ranks on a white horse, and began to fly along the
+squadrons.
+
+"Gentlemen!" cried he, in a piercing voice, "we are here first! To us
+luck, to us honor! We will drive the Swedes out of the capital!"
+
+"We'll drive them! We'll drive them! We'll drive them!"
+
+And there rose a sound and a thunder. Some shouted continually, "We'll
+drive them!" Others cried, "Strike, whoso has manhood!" Others,
+"Against them, the dog-brothers!" The rattle of sabres was mingled with
+the shouts of the knights. Eyes flashed lightning, and from under
+fierce mustaches teeth were gleaming. Sapyeha himself was sputtering
+like a pine torch. All at once he raised his baton, and cried,--
+
+"Follow me!"
+
+Near Praga the voevoda restrained the squadron and commanded a slow
+march. The capital rose more and more clearly out of the bluish
+distance. Towers were outlined in a long line on the azure of the sky.
+The red many-storied roofs of the Old City were gleaming in the evening
+light. The Lithuanians had never seen anything more imposing in their
+lives than those white lofty walls pierced with multitudes of narrow
+windows; those walls standing like lofty swamp-reeds over the water.
+The houses seemed to grow some out of others, high and still higher;
+but above that dense and close mass of walls with windows and roofs,
+pointed towers pierced the sky. Those of the soldiers who had been in
+the capital previously, either at an election or on private affairs,
+explained to the others what each pile meant and what name it bore.
+Zagloba especially, as a person of experience, told all to the Lauda
+men, and they listened to him eagerly, wondering at his words and the
+city itself.
+
+"Look at that tower in the very centre of Warsaw! That is the citadel
+of the king. Oh that I could live as many years as I have eaten dinners
+at the king's table! I would twist Methuselah into a ram's horn. The
+king had no nearer confidant than me; I could choose among
+starostaships as among nuts, and give them away as easily as hob-nails.
+I have given promotion to multitudes of men, and when I came in
+senators used to bow to me to the girdle, in Cossack fashion. I fought
+duels also in presence of the king, for he loved to see me at work; the
+marshal of the palace had to close his eyes."
+
+"That is a tremendous building!" said Roh Kovalski: "and to think that
+these dogs have it all in hand!"
+
+"And they plunder terribly," added Zagloba. "I hear that they even take
+columns out of the walls and send them to Sweden; these columns are of
+marble and other valuable stones. I shall not recognize the dear
+corners; various writers justly describe this castle as the eighth
+wonder of the world. The King of France has a respectable palace, but
+it is a fool in comparison with this one."
+
+"And that other tower over there near it, on the right?"
+
+"That is St. Yan. There is a gallery from the castle to it. I had a
+vision in that church, for I remained behind once after vespers; I
+heard a voice from the arches, crying, 'Zagloba, there will be war with
+such a son the Swedish king, and great calamities will follow.' I was
+running with all my breath to the king to tell him what I had heard,
+when the primate caught me by the neck with his crosier. 'Don't tell
+follies,' said he; 'you were drunk!' That other church just at the side
+belongs to the Jesuit college; the third tower at a distance is the law
+courts; the fourth at the right is the marshals, and that green roof is
+the Dominicans. I could not name them all, even if I could wield my
+tongue as well as I do my sabre."
+
+"It must be that there is not another such city in the world," said one
+of the soldiers.
+
+"That is why all nations envy us!" answered Zagloba.
+
+"And that wonderful pile on the left of the castle?"
+
+"Behind the Bernardines?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is the Radzeyovski Palace, formerly the Kazanovski. It is
+considered the ninth wonder of the world; but there is a plague on it,
+for in those walls began the misfortune of the Commonwealth."
+
+"How is that?" asked a number of voices.
+
+"When the vice-chancellor Radzeyovski began to dispute and quarrel with
+his wife, the king took her part. You know, gentlemen, what people said
+of this; and it is true that the vice-chancellor thought that his wife
+was in love with the king, and the king with her; then afterward,
+through hatred, he fled to the Swedes, and war began. To tell the
+truth, I was in the country at the moment, and did not see the end of
+the affair, I got it from hearsay; but I know this, that she made sweet
+eyes, not at the king, but at some one else."
+
+"At whom?"
+
+Zagloba began to twirl his mustaches: "At him to whom all are hurrying
+like ants to honey; but it does not beseem me to mention his name, for
+I have always hated boastfulness. Besides, the man has grown old, and
+from sweeping out the enemy of the country, I am worn as a broom; but
+once there was no greater beauty and love maker than I. Let Rob
+Kovalski--"
+
+Here Zagloba saw that by no means could Roh remember those times;
+therefore he waved his hand, and said,--
+
+"But what does he know of this affair?"
+
+Then he pointed out the palaces of Ossolinski and Konyetspolski,
+palaces which were in size almost equal to the Radzeyovski; finally the
+splendid villa Regia; and then the sun went down, and the darkness of
+night began to fill the air.
+
+The thunder of guns was heard on the walls of Warsaw, and trumpets were
+sounded a considerable time and prolonged, in sign that the enemy was
+approaching.
+
+Sapyeha also announced his coming by firing from muskets, to give
+courage to the inhabitants; and that night he began to transport his
+army across the Vistula. First the Lauda squadron passed; second the
+squadron of Pan Kotvich; then Kmita's Tartars; then Vankovich's
+squadron; after that, eight thousand men. In this way the Swedes, with
+their accumulated plunder, were surrounded and deprived of
+communication; but nothing remained to Sapyeha except to wait till
+Charnyetski from one side, and from the other Yan Kazimir with the
+hetmans of the kingdom, marched up, and meanwhile to see that no
+reinforcements stole through to the city.
+
+The first news came from Charnyetski, but not overfavorable, for he
+reported that his troops and horses were so exhausted that at that
+moment he could not take part in the siege. From the time of the battle
+of Varka, they were under fire day after day; and from the first months
+of the year they had fought twenty-one great battles with the Swedes,
+not counting the engagements of scouting-parties and the attacks on
+smaller detachments. He had not obtained infantry in Pomerania, and had
+not been able to advance to Dantzig; he promised, at most, to hold in
+check with the rest of his forces that Swedish army which under the
+brother of the king, Radzivill, and Douglas, was stationed at Narev,
+and apparently was preparing to come to the aid of the besieged.
+
+The Swedes prepared for defence with the bravery and skill peculiar to
+them. They burned Praga before the arrival of Sapyeha; they had begun
+already to throw bombs into all the suburbs, such as the Cracow and the
+Novy-Sviat, and on the other side against the church of St. Yerzy and
+the Virgin Mary. Then houses, great buildings, and churches flamed up.
+In the daytime smoke rolled over the city like clouds, thick and dark.
+At night those clouds became red, and bundles of sparks burst forth
+from them toward the sky. Outside the walls, crowds of people were
+wandering, without roofs over their heads, without bread; women
+surrounded Sapyeha's camp, and cried for charity; people were seen as
+thin as pincers from hunger; children were dying for want of food, in
+the arms of emaciated mothers; the suburbs were turned into a vale of
+tears and misery.
+
+Sapyeha, having neither infantry nor cannon, waited and waited for the
+coming of the king. Meanwhile he aided the poor, sending them in groups
+to the less injured neighborhoods, in which they might survive in some
+way. He was troubled not a little when he foresaw the difficulties of
+the siege, for the skilled engineers of Sweden had turned Warsaw into a
+strong fortress. Behind the walls were three thousand trained soldiers,
+led by able and experienced generals; on the whole, the Swedes passed
+as masters in besieging and defending great fortresses. To solace this
+trouble, Sapyeha arranged daily feasts, during which the goblets
+circled freely; for that worthy citizen and uncommon warrior had this
+failing,--he loved company and the clatter of glasses above all things,
+and therefore neglected frequently service for pleasure.
+
+His diligence in the daytime he balanced by negligence at night. Till
+sunset he worked faithfully, sent out scouts, despatched letters,
+inspected pickets himself, examined the informants brought in; but with
+the first star even fiddles were heard in his quarters. And when once
+he felt joyous he permitted everything, sent for officers even though
+on guard or appointed to scouting expeditions, and was angry if any one
+failed to appear, since for him there was no feast without a throng. In
+the morning Zagloba reproached him seriously, but in the night the
+servants bore Zagloba himself without consciousness to Volodyovski's
+quarters.
+
+"Sapyeha would make a saint fall," he explained next day to his
+friends; "and what must happen to me, who have been always fond of
+sport? Besides, he has some kind of special passion to force goblets on
+me, and I, not wishing to seem rude, yield to his pressing; this I do
+to avoid offending the host. But I have made a vow that at the coming
+Advent I shall have my back well covered with discipline (stripes), for
+I understand myself that this yielding cannot remain without penance;
+but now I have to keep on good terms with him, out of fear that I might
+fall into worse company and indulge myself altogether."
+
+There were officers who without the eye of the hetman accomplished
+their service; but some neglected it terribly in the evenings, as
+ordinary soldiers do when they feel no iron hand above them.
+
+The enemy was not slow to take advantage of this. Two days before the
+coming of the king and the hetmans, Sapyeha arranged his most splendid
+feast, for he was rejoiced that all the troops were coming, and that
+the siege would begin in earnest. All the best known officers were
+invited; the hetman, ever in search of an opportunity, announced that
+that feast would be in honor of the king. To Kmita, Zagloba, Pan Yan,
+Pan Stanislav, and Kharlamp were sent special orders to come without
+fail, for the hetman wished to honor them particularly for their great
+services. Pan Andrei had just mounted his horse to go with a party, so
+that the orderly found the Tartars outside the gate.
+
+"You cannot show the hetman disrespect, and return rudeness for
+kindness," said the officer.
+
+Kmita dismounted and went to ask advice of his comrades.
+
+"This is dreadfully awkward for me," said he. "I have heard that a
+considerable body of cavalry has appeared near Babitsi. The hetman
+himself commanded me to learn absolutely who they are, and now he asks
+me to the feast. What must I do?"
+
+"The hetman has sent an order to let Akbah Ulan go with the
+scouting-party," answered the officer.
+
+"An order is an order!" said Zagloba, "and whoso is a soldier must
+obey. Be careful not to give an evil example; and besides it would not
+be well for you to incur the ill-will of the hetman."
+
+"Say that I will come," said Kmita to the orderly.
+
+The officer went out. The Tartars rode off under Akbah Ulan; and Kmita
+began to dress a little, and while dressing said to his comrades,--
+
+"To-day there is a feast in honor of his Royal Grace; to-morrow there
+will be one in honor of the hetmans of the kingdom, and so on to the
+end of the siege."
+
+"Only let the king come and this will be at an end," answered
+Volodyovski; "for though our gracious lord is fond of amusing himself
+in every trouble, still service must go on more diligently, since every
+man, and among others Pan Sapyeha, will endeavor to show his zeal."
+
+"We have had too much of this, too much! There is no question on that
+point," said Pan Yan. "Is it not a wonder to you that such a laborious
+leader, such a virtuous man, such a worthy citizen, has this weakness?"
+
+"Just let night come and straightway he is another person, and from a
+grand hetman turns into a reveller."
+
+"But do you know why these banquets are not to my taste?" asked Kmita.
+"It was the custom of Yanush Radzivill to have them almost every
+evening. Imagine that, as if by some wonder, whenever there was a
+banquet, either some misfortune happened, some evil tidings came, or
+some new treason of the hetman was published. I do not know whether it
+was blind chance or an ordinance of God; but it is enough that evil
+never came except in time of a banquet. I tell you that at last it went
+so far that whenever they were setting the table the skin began to
+creep on us."
+
+"True, as God is dear to me!" added Kharlamp. "But it came from this,
+that the prince hetman chose that time to announce his intrigues with
+the enemy of the country."
+
+"Well," said Zagloba, "at least we have nothing to fear from the honest
+Sapyeha. If he will ever be a traitor, I am of as much value as my
+boot-heel."
+
+"There is nothing to be said on that point. He is as honest as bread
+without a raw spot," put in Pan Michael.
+
+"And what he neglects in the evening he repairs in the day-time," added
+Kharlamp.
+
+"Then we will go," said Zagloba, "for to tell the truth I feel a void
+in my stomach."
+
+They went out, mounted their horses, and rode off; for Sapyeha was on
+the other side of the city and rather far away. When they arrived at
+the hetman's quarters they found in the yard a multitude of horses, and
+a crowd of grooms, for whom a keg of beer had been set out, and who, as
+is usual, drinking without measure, had begun to quarrel; they grew
+quiet, however, at sight of the approaching knights, especially when
+Zagloba fell to striking with the side of his sabre those who were in
+his way, and to crying with a stentorian voice: "To your horses,
+rascals, to your horses! You are not the persons invited to the
+banquet."
+
+Sapyeha received the officers as usual, with open arms; and since he
+had been drinking a little with his guests, he began at once to tease
+Zagloba.
+
+"With the forehead, Lord Commander!" said he.
+
+"With the forehead, Lord Kiper," answered Zagloba.
+
+"If you call me that," said Sapyeha, "I will give you wine which is
+working yet."
+
+"Very good, if it will make a tippler of a hetman!"
+
+Some of the guests, hearing this, were alarmed; but Zagloba, when he
+saw the hetman in good humor, permitted himself everything, and Sapyeha
+had such a weakness for Zagloba that he not only was not angry, but he
+held his sides, and called those present to witness what he endured
+from that noble.
+
+Then began a noisy and joyous banquet. Sapyeha drank to each guest
+separately, raised toasts to the king, the hetmans, the armies of both
+peoples (Poland and Lithuania), Pan Charnyetski, the whole
+Commonwealth. Pleasure increased, and with it noise and talk. From
+toasts it came to songs. The room was filled with steam from the heads
+of the guests, and the odor of mead and wines. From outside the windows
+came in no less of an uproar, and even the noise of steel. The servants
+had begun to fight with sabres. Some nobles rushed out to restore
+order, but they increased the confusion.
+
+Suddenly there rose a shout so great that the banqueters in the hall
+became silent.
+
+"What is that?" asked one of the colonels. "The grooms cannot make such
+an uproar as that."
+
+"Silence, gentlemen!" said the hetman, disturbed.
+
+"Those are not ordinary shouts!"
+
+All at once the windows shook from the thunder of cannon and discharges
+of musketry.
+
+"A sortie!" cried Volodyovski; "the enemy is advancing!"
+
+"To horse! To sabres!"
+
+All sprang to their feet. There was a throng at the door; then a crowd
+of officers rushed to the yard, calling to their grooms for horses.
+
+But in the disturbance it was not easy for each one to find his own.
+Meanwhile from beyond the yard alarmed voices began to shout in the
+darkness,--
+
+"The enemy is advancing! Pan Kotvich is under fire!"
+
+All rushed with what breath was in their horses to their squadrons,
+jumping over fences and breaking their necks in the darkness. An alarm
+began in the whole camp. Not all the squadrons had horses at hand, and
+those who had not began the uproar first of all. Throngs of soldiers on
+foot and on horseback struck against one another, not being able to
+come to order, not knowing who was a friend and who an enemy, shouting
+and roaring in the middle of the dark night. Some cried that the King
+of Sweden was advancing with his whole army.
+
+The Swedish sortie had really struck with a mighty impetus on Kotvich's
+men. Fortunately, being sick, he was not at the banquet, and therefore
+could offer some kind of immediate resistance; still it was not a long
+one, for he was attacked by superior numbers and covered with musketry
+fire, hence was forced to retreat. Oskyerko came first to his
+assistance with his dragoons. They answered musketry fire with musketry
+fire. But neither could Oskyerko's dragoons withstand the pressure, and
+in a moment they began to withdraw more and more hastily, leaving the
+ground covered with corpses. Twice did Oskyerko endeavor to bring them
+to order, and twice was he beaten back, so that the soldiers could only
+cover their retreat by firing in groups. At last they scattered
+completely; but the Swedes pressed on like an irrepressible torrent
+toward the hetman's quarters. More and more regiments issued from the
+city to the field; after the infantry came cavalry; they brought out
+even field-guns. It looked like a general battle, and it seemed as
+though the enemy sought one.
+
+Volodyovski, rushing from the hetman's quarters, met his own squadron,
+which was always in readiness, half way, going toward the sound of the
+alarm and the shots. It was led by Roh Kovalski, who, like Kotvich, was
+not at the banquet; but Roh was not there because he had not been
+invited. Volodyovski gave orders to set fire with all speed to a couple
+of sheds, so as to light up the field, and he hurried to the battle. On
+the road he was joined by Kmita with his terrible volunteers, and that
+half of the Tartars which had not gone on the scouting expedition. Both
+came just in time to save Kotvich and Oskyerko from utter disaster.
+
+The sheds had now blazed up so well that everything could be seen as at
+noontide. In this light the Lauda men, aided by Kmita, struck the
+infantry regiments, and passing through their fire took them on sabres.
+The Swedish cavalry sprang to assist their own men, and closed mightily
+with the Lauda squadron. For a certain time they struggled exactly like
+two wrestlers who seizing each other by the bodies use their last
+strength,--now this one bends the other, and now the other bends this;
+but men fell so frequently in their ranks that at last the Swedes began
+to be confused. Kmita with his fighters rushed into the thick of the
+struggle. Volodyovski as usual cleared an opening; near him the two
+gigantic Skshetuskis fought, and Kharlamp with Roh Kovalski; the Lauda
+men emulated Kmita's fighters,--some shouting terribly, others, as the
+Butryms, rolling on in a body and in silence.
+
+New regiments rushed forward to the aid of the broken Swedes; but
+Vankovich, whose quarters were near Volodyovski's and Kmita's, was a
+little later than they and supported them. At last the hetman led all
+the troops to the engagement, and began to advance in order. A fierce
+battle sprang up along the whole line from Mokotov to the Vistula.
+
+Then Akbah Ulan, who had gone with the scouts, appeared on a foaming
+horse before the hetman.
+
+"Effendi!" cried he; "a chambul of cavalry is marching from Babitsi to
+the city, and convoying wagons; they wish to enter the gates."
+
+Sapyeha understood in one moment what that sortie in the direction of
+Mokotov meant. The enemy wished to draw away troops on the meadow road,
+so that that auxiliary cavalry and a provision train might enter the
+gates.
+
+"Run to Volodyovski!" cried the hetman to Akbah Ulan; "let the Lauda
+squadron, Kmita, and Vankovich stop the road. I will send them
+reinforcements at once."
+
+Akbah Ulan put spurs to his horse; after him flew one, and a second,
+and a third orderly. All rushed to Volodyovski and repeated the order
+of the hetman.
+
+Volodyovski turned his squadron immediately; Kmita and the Tartars
+caught up with him; going across the field, they shot on together, and
+Vankovich after them.
+
+But they arrived too late. Nearly two hundred wagons had entered the
+gate; a splendid detachment of cavalry following them was almost within
+radius of the fortress. Only the rearguard, composed of about one
+hundred men, had not come yet under cover of the artillery. But these
+too were going with all speed. The officer, riding behind, urged them
+on.
+
+Kmita, seeing them by the light of the burning shed, gave forth such a
+piercing and terrible shout, that the horses at his side were
+frightened; he recognized Boguslav's cavalry, that same which had
+ridden over him and his Tartars at Yanov.
+
+Mindful of nothing, he rushed like a madman toward them, passed his own
+men, and fell first blindly among their ranks. Fortunately the two
+Kyemliches, Kosma and Damian, sitting on the foremost horses, rode with
+him. At that moment Volodyovski struck the flank like lightning, and
+with this one blow cut off the rearguard from the main body.
+
+Cannon began to thunder from the walls; but the main division,
+sacrificing their comrades, rushed in with all speed after the wagons.
+Then the Lauda men and Kmita's forces surrounded the rearguard as with
+a ring, and a merciless slaughter began.
+
+But it was of short duration. Boguslav's men, seeing that there was no
+rescue on any side, sprang from their horses in a moment, threw down
+their weapons, and shouted with sky-piercing voices, heard in the
+throng and the uproar, that they surrendered.
+
+Neither the volunteers nor the Tartars regarded their shouts, but hewed
+on. At this moment was heard the threatening and shrill voice of
+Volodyovski, who wanted informants,--
+
+"Stop! stop! take them alive!"
+
+"Take them alive!" cried Kmita.
+
+The biting of steel ceased. The Tartars were commanded to bind the
+enemy, and with the skill peculiar to them they did this in a twinkle;
+then the squadrons pushed back hastily from the cannon-fire. The
+colonels marched toward the sheds,--the Lauda men in advance, Vankovich
+in the rear, and Kmita, with the prisoners, in the centre, all in
+perfect readiness to repulse attack should it come. Some of the Tartars
+led prisoners on leashes; others of them led captured horses. Kmita,
+when he came near the sheds, looked carefully into the faces of the
+prisoners to see if Boguslav was among them; for though one of them had
+sworn under a sword-point that the prince was not in the detachment,
+still Kmita thought that perhaps they were hiding him purposely. Then
+some voice from under the stirrup of a Tartar cried to him,--
+
+"Pan Kmita! Colonel! Rescue an acquaintance! Give command to free me
+from the rope on parole."
+
+"Hassling!" cried Kmita.
+
+Hassling was a Scot, formerly an officer in the cavalry of the voevoda
+of Vilna, whom Kmita knew in Kyedani, and in his time loved much.
+
+"Let the prisoner go free!" cried he to the Tartar, "and down from the
+horse yourself!"
+
+The Tartar sprang from the saddle as if the wind had carried him off,
+for he knew the danger of loitering when the "bagadyr" commanded.
+
+Hassling, groaning, climbed into the Tartar's lofty saddle. Kmita then
+caught him above the palm, and pressing his hand as if he wished to
+crush it, began to ask insistently,--
+
+"Whence do you come? Tell me quickly, whence do you come? For God's
+sake, tell quickly!"
+
+"From Taurogi," answered the officer.
+
+Kmita pressed him still more.
+
+"But--Panna Billevich--is she there?"
+
+"She is."
+
+Pan Andrei spoke with still greater difficulty, for he pressed his
+teeth still more closely.
+
+"And--what has the prince done with her?"
+
+"He has not succeeded in doing anything."
+
+Silence followed; after a while Kmita removed his lynxskin cap, drew
+his hand over his forehead and said,--
+
+"I was struck in the battle; blood is leaving me, and I have grown
+weak."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+The sortie had attained its object only in part; though Boguslav's
+division had entered the city, the sortie itself had not done great
+things. It is true that Pan Kotvich's squadron and Oskyerko's dragoons
+had suffered seriously; but the Swedes too had strewn the field with
+many corpses, and one regiment of infantry, which Volodyovski and
+Vankovich had struck, was almost destroyed. The Lithuanians boasted
+that they had inflicted greater loss on the enemy than they had endured
+themselves. Pan Sapyeha alone suffered internally, because a new
+"confusion" had met him from which his fame might be seriously
+affected. The colonels attached to the hetman comforted him as well as
+they could; and to tell the truth this lesson was useful, for
+henceforward he had no more such wild banquets, and if there was some
+pleasure the greatest watchfulness was observed during the time of its
+continuance. The Swedes were caught the day after. Supposing that the
+hetman would not expect a repetition of the sortie so soon, they came
+outside the walls again; but driven from their ground and leaving a
+number of dead, they returned.
+
+Meanwhile they were examining Hassling in the hetman's quarters; this
+made Pan Andrei so impatient that he almost sprang out of his skin, for
+he wished to have the Scot to himself at the earliest, and talk with
+him touching Taurogi. He prowled about the quarters all day, went in
+every little while, listened to the statements, and sprang up whenever
+Boguslav's name was mentioned in the question.
+
+But in the evening he received an order to go on a scouting expedition.
+He said nothing, only set his teeth; for he had changed greatly
+already, and had learned to defer private affairs for public service.
+But he pushed the Tartars terribly during the expedition, burst out in
+anger at the least cause, and struck with his baton till the bones
+cracked. They said one to another that the "bagadyr" was mad, and
+marched silently, as silently as cowards, looking only to the eyes of
+the leader and guessing his thoughts on the wing.
+
+On returning he found Hassling in his quarters, but so ill that he
+could not speak, for his capture had affected him so cruelly that after
+the additional torture of a whole day's inquisition he had a fever, and
+did not understand what was said to him. Kmita therefore was forced to
+be satisfied with what Zagloba told of Hassling's statements; but they
+touched only public, not private affairs. Of Boguslav the young officer
+said only this,--that after his return from the expedition to Podlyasye
+and the defeat at Yanov he had become terribly ill from rage and
+melancholy; he fell into a fever, but as soon as he had recovered
+somewhat, he moved with his troops to Pomerania, whither Steinbock and
+the elector invited him most earnestly.
+
+"But where is he now?" asked Kmita.
+
+"According to what Hassling tells me, and he has no reason to lie, he
+is with the king's brother, at the fortified camp on the Narev and the
+Bug, where Boguslav is commanding a whole cavalry division," answered
+Zagloba.
+
+"Ha! and they think to come here with succor to the besieged. We shall
+meet, as God is in heaven, even if I had to go to him in disguise."
+
+"Do not grow angry for nothing! To Warsaw they would be glad to come
+with succor, but they cannot, for Charnyetski has placed himself in
+their way. Having neither infantry nor cannon, he cannot attack their
+camp, and they are afraid to go out against him, for they know that
+their soldiers could not withstand his in the field, and they know too
+that if they went out, they could not shield themselves with the river.
+If the king himself were there he would give battle, for under his
+command the soldiers fight better, being confident that he is a great
+warrior; but neither Douglas, nor the king's brother, nor Prince
+Boguslav, though all three are daring men, would venture against
+Charnyetski."
+
+"But where is the king?"
+
+"He has gone to Prussia. The king does not believe that we are before
+Warsaw already, and that we shall capture Wittemberg. But whether he
+believes or not, he had to go for two reasons,--first, because he must
+win over the elector, even at the price of all Great Poland; second,
+because the army, which he led out of the sack, is of no use until it
+has rested. Toil, watching, and continual alarms have so gnawed it that
+the soldiers are not able to hold muskets in their hands; and still
+they are the choicest regiments in the whole army, which through all
+the German and Danish regions have won famous victories."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the coming of Volodyovski.
+
+"How is Hassling?" asked he on the threshold.
+
+"He is sick and imagines every folly," answered Kmita.
+
+"And you, my dear Michael, what do you want of Hassling?" asked
+Zagloba.
+
+"Just as if you do not know!"
+
+"I could not know that it is a question with you of that cherry-tree
+which Prince Boguslav has planted in his garden. He is a diligent
+gardener; he does not need to wait a year for fruit."
+
+"I wish you were killed for such jokes!" cried the little knight.
+
+"Look at him, tell him the most innocent thing, and immediately his
+mustaches are quivering like the horns of a mad grasshopper. In what am
+I to blame? Seek vengeance on Boguslav, not on me."
+
+"God grant me to seek and to find!"
+
+"Just now Babinich has said the same! Before long I see that he will
+raise the whole army against the prince; but Boguslav is taking good
+care of himself, and without my stratagems you will not be able to
+succeed."
+
+Here both young men sprang to their feet and asked,--
+
+"Have you any stratagems?"
+
+"But do you think it is as easy to take a stratagem out of the head as
+a sabre out of the sheath? If Boguslav were here, surely I should find
+more than one; but at that distance, not only a stratagem, but a cannon
+will not strike. Pan Andrei, give orders to bring me a goblet of mead,
+for it is hot here to-day."
+
+"I'll give you a keg of it if you will invent something."
+
+"First, why do you stand over this Hassling like an executioner? He is
+not the only man captured; you can ask others."
+
+"I have already tortured others, but they are common soldiers; they
+know nothing, but he, as an officer, was at the court," answered Kmita.
+
+"That is a reason!" answered Zagloba. "I must talk with him too; from
+what he tells me of the person and ways of Prince Boguslav, stratagems
+may be important. Now the main thing is to finish the siege soon, for
+afterward we shall move surely against that army on the Narev. But
+somehow our gracious lord and the hetmans are a long time invisible."
+
+"How so?" asked Volodyovski. "I have returned this minute from the
+hetman, who has just received news that the king will take up position
+here this evening with the auxiliary divisions, and the hetmans with
+cavalry will come to-morrow. They are advancing from Sokal itself,
+resting but little, making forced marches. Besides, it has been known
+for two days that they are almost in sight."
+
+"Are they bringing many troops?"
+
+"Nearly five times as many as Sapyeha has, infantry Russian and
+Hungarian, very excellent; six thousand Tartars under Suba Gazi, but
+probably it is impossible to let them out for even a day, for they are
+very self-willed and plunder all around."
+
+"Better give them to Pan Andrei to lead," said Zagloba.
+
+"Yes," said Kmita, "I should lead them straightway from Warsaw, for
+they are of no use in a siege; I should take them to the Bug and the
+Narev."
+
+"They are of use," replied Volodyovski, "for none can see better than
+they that provisions do not enter the fortress."
+
+"Well, it will be warm for Wittemberg. Wait, old criminal!" cried
+Zagloba. "You have warred well, I will not deny that, but you have
+robbed and plundered still better; you had two mouths,--one for false
+oaths, the other for breaking promises,--but this time you will not beg
+off with both of them. The Gallic disease will dry up your skin, and
+doctors will tear it from you; but we will flay you better, Zagloba's
+head for that!"
+
+"Nonsense! he will surrender on conditions to the king, who will not do
+anything to him," answered Pan Michael; "and we shall have to give him
+military honors besides."
+
+"He will yield on conditions, will he? Indeed!" cried Zagloba. "We
+shall see!"
+
+Here he began to pound the table with such force that Roh Kovalski, who
+was coming in at the moment, was frightened and stood as if fixed to
+the threshold.
+
+"May I serve as a waiting-lad to Jews," shouted the old man, "if I let
+free out of Warsaw that blasphemer of the faith, that robber of
+churches, that oppressor of widows, that executioner of men and women,
+that hangman's assistant, that ruffian, that blood-spiller and
+money-grabber, that purse-gnawer, that flayer! All right! The king will
+let him out on conditions; but I, as I am a Catholic, as I am Zagloba,
+as I wish for happiness during life and desire God at death, will make
+such a tumult against him as no man has ever heard of in this
+Commonwealth before! Don't wave your hand, Pan Michael! I'll make a
+tumult! I repeat it, I'll make a tumult!"
+
+"Uncle will make a tumult!" thundered Roh Kovalski.
+
+Just then Akbah Ulan thrust in his beast-like face at the door.
+
+"Effendi!" said he to Kmita, "the armies of the king are visible beyond
+the Vistula."
+
+All sprang to their feet and rushed forth.
+
+The king had come indeed. First arrived the Tartar squadrons, under
+Suba Gazi, but not in such numbers as was expected; after them came the
+troops of the kingdom, many and well armed, and above all full of
+ardor. Before evening the whole army had passed the bridge freshly
+built by Oskyerko. Sapyeha was waiting for the king with squadrons
+drawn out as if ready for battle, standing one by the side of the
+other, like an immense wall, the end of which it was difficult to reach
+with the eye. The captains stood before the regiments; near them the
+standard-bearers, each with lowered ensign; the trumpets, kettle-drums,
+crooked trumpets, and drums made a noise indescribable. The squadrons
+of the kingdom, in proportion as they passed, stood just opposite the
+Lithuanians in line; between one and the other army was an interval of
+a hundred paces.
+
+Sapyeha with baton in hand went on foot to that open space; after him
+the chief civil and military dignitaries. On the other side, from the
+armies of the kingdom approached the king on a splendid Frisian horse,
+given him by Lyubomirski; he was arrayed as if for battle, in light
+armor of blue and gold, from under which was to be seen a black velvet
+kaftan, with a lace collar coming out on the breastplate, but instead
+of a helmet he wore the ordinary Swedish hat, with black feathers; but
+he wore military gloves, and long yellow boots coming far above his
+knees.
+
+After him rode the papal nuncio, the archbishop of Lvoff, the bishop of
+Kamenyets, the priest Tsyetsishovski, the voevoda of Cracow, the
+voevoda of Rus, Baron Lisola, Count Pöttingen, Pan Kamenyetski, the
+ambassador of Moscow, Pan Grodzitski, general of artillery, Tyzenhauz,
+and many others. Sapyeha advanced as marshal of the kingdom to hold the
+king's stirrup; but the king sprang lightly from the saddle, hurried to
+Sapyeha and without saying a word, seized him in his embrace.
+
+And Yan Kazimir held him a long time, in view of both armies; silent
+all the while, but tears flowed down his cheeks in a stream, for he
+pressed to his bosom the truest servant of the king and the country,--a
+man who, though he did not equal others in genius, though he even erred
+at times, still soared in honesty above all the lords of that
+Commonwealth, never wavered in loyalty, sacrificed without a moment's
+thought his whole fortune, and from the beginning of the war exposed
+his breast for his king and the country.
+
+The Lithuanians, who had whispered previously among themselves that
+perhaps reprimands would meet Pan Sapyeha because he had let Karl
+Gustav escape from near Sandomir and for the recent carelessness at
+Warsaw, or at least a cool reception, seeing this heartiness of the
+king, raised in honor of the kindly monarch a tremendous heaven-echoing
+shout. The armies of the kingdom answered it immediately with one
+thunder-roll, and for some time above the noise of the music, the
+rattle of drums, the roar of musketry, were heard only these shouts,--
+
+"Vivat Yoannes Casimirus!"
+
+"Long life to the armies of the crown!"
+
+"Long life to the Lithuanians!"
+
+So they greeted one another at Warsaw. The walls trembled, and behind
+the walls the Swedes.
+
+"I shall bellow, as God is dear to me!" cried Zagloba, with emotion; "I
+cannot restrain myself. See our king, our father!--gracious gentlemen,
+I am blubbering,--our father, our king! the other day a wanderer
+deserted by all; now here--now here are a hundred thousand sabres at
+call! merciful God! I cannot keep from tears; yesterday a wanderer,
+to-day the Emperor of Germany has not such good soldiers--"
+
+Here the sluices were opened in the eyes of Zagloba, and he began to
+sob time after time; then he turned suddenly to Roh,--
+
+"Be silent! what are you whimpering about?"
+
+"And is Uncle not whimpering?" answered Roh.
+
+"True, as God is dear to me!--I was ashamed, gracious gentlemen, of
+this Commonwealth. But now I would not change with any nation! A
+hundred thousand sabres,--let others show the like. God has brought
+them to their minds; God has given this, God has given it!"
+
+Zagloba had not made a great mistake, for really there were nearly
+seventy thousand men at Warsaw, not counting Charnyetski's division,
+which had not arrived yet, and not counting the armed camp attendants
+who rendered service when necessary, and who straggled after every camp
+in countless multitudes.
+
+After the greeting and a hurried review of the troops, the king thanked
+Sapyeha's men, amid universal enthusiasm, for their faithful services,
+and went to Uyazdov. The troops occupied the positions assigned them.
+Some squadrons remained in Praga; others disposed themselves around the
+city. A gigantic train of wagons continued to cross the Vistula till
+the following midday.
+
+Next morning the suburbs of the city were as white with tents as if
+they had been covered with snow. Countless herds of horses were
+neighing on the adjoining meadows. After the army followed a crowd of
+Armenians, Jews, Tartars; another city, more extensive and tumultuous
+than that which was besieged, grew up on the plain.
+
+The Swedes, amazed during the first days at the power of the King of
+Poland, made no sorties, so that Pan Grodzitski, general of artillery,
+could ride around the city quietly and form his plan of siege.
+
+On the following day the camp attendants began to raise intrenchments
+here and there, according to Grodzitski's plan; they placed on them at
+once the smaller cannon, for the larger ones were to appear only a
+couple of weeks later.
+
+Yan Kazimir sent a message to old Wittemberg summoning him to surrender
+the city and lay down his arms, giving favorable conditions, which,
+when known, roused discontent in the army. That discontent was spread
+mainly by Zagloba, who had a special hatred of the Swedish commander.
+
+Wittemberg, as was easy to foresee, rejected the conditions and
+resolved on a defence to continue till the last drop of blood was shed,
+and to bury himself in the ruins of the city rather than yield it to
+the king. The size of the besieging army did not frighten him a whit,
+for he knew that an excessive number was rather a hindrance than help
+in a siege. He was informed also in good season that in the camp of Yan
+Kazimir there was not one siege gun, while the Swedes had more than
+enough of them, not taking into consideration their inexhaustible
+supply of ammunition.
+
+It was in fact to be foreseen that they would defend themselves with
+frenzy, for Warsaw had served them hitherto as a storehouse for booty.
+All the immense treasures looted in castles, in churches, in cities, in
+the whole Commonwealth, came to the capital, whence they were
+despatched in parties to Prussia, and farther to Sweden. But at the
+present time, when the whole country had risen, and castles defended by
+the smaller Swedish garrisons did not insure safety, booty was brought
+to Warsaw all the more. The Swedish soldier was more ready to sacrifice
+his life than his booty. A poor people who had seized the treasures of
+a wealthy land had acquired the taste of them to such a degree that the
+world had never seen more grasping robbers. The king himself had grown
+famous for greed; the generals followed his example, and Wittemberg
+surpassed them all. When it was a question of gain, neither the honor
+of a knight nor consideration for the dignity of rank restrained
+officers. They seized, they extorted, they skinned everything that
+could be taken. In Warsaw itself colonels of high office and noble
+birth were not ashamed to sell spirits and tobacco to their own
+soldiers, so as to cram their purses with the pay of the army.
+
+This too might rouse the Swedes to fury in defence, that their foremost
+men were at that time in Warsaw. First was Wittemberg himself, next in
+command to Karl Gustav. He was the first who had entered the
+Commonwealth and brought it to decline at Uistsie. In return for that
+service a triumph was prepared for him in Sweden as for a conqueror. In
+the city was Oxenstiern, the chancellor, a statesman renowned
+throughout the world, respected for honesty even by his enemies. He was
+called the Minerva of the king. To his counsel Karl was indebted for
+all his victories in negotiation. In the capital was also Wrangel, the
+younger Horn, Erickson, the second Löwenhaupt, and many Swedish ladies
+of high birth, who had followed their husbands to the country as to a
+new Swedish colony.
+
+The Swedes had something to defend. Yan Kazimir understood, therefore,
+that the siege, especially through the lack of heavy guns on his side,
+would be long and bloody. The hetmans understood this also, but the
+army would not think of it. Barely had Grodzitski raised the
+intrenchments in some fashion, barely had he pushed forward somewhat to
+the walls, when deputations went from all the squadrons to ask the king
+to permit volunteers to storm the walls. The king had to explain to
+them a long time that fortresses were not taken with sabres, before he
+could restrain their ardor.
+
+Meanwhile the works were pushed forward as rapidly as possible. The
+troops, not being able to storm, took eager part with the camp servants
+in raising these works; men from the foremost regiments, nay, even
+officers brought earth in wheelbarrows, carried fascines, labored. More
+than once the Swedes tried to hinder, and not a day passed without
+sorties; but barely were the Swedish musketeers outside the gate, when
+the Poles, working at the intrenchments, throwing aside wheelbarrows,
+bundles of twigs, spades and pickaxes, ran with sabres into the smoke
+so furiously that the Swedes had to hide in the fortress with all
+haste. In these engagements bodies fell thickly; the fosses and the
+open space as far as the intrenchments were full of graves, in which
+were placed sometimes small bundles of the weapons of the dead. At last
+even time failed for burial, so that bodies lay on the ground spreading
+a terrible odor around the city and the besiegers.
+
+In spite of the greatest difficulty citizens stole forth to the king's
+camp every day, reporting what happened in the city, and imploring on
+their knees to hasten the storm. The Swedes, they said, had a plenty of
+provisions as yet, but the people were dying of hunger on the streets;
+they lived in want, in oppression under the terrible hand of the
+garrison. Every day echoes brought to the Polish camp sounds of
+musket-shots in the city, and fugitives brought intelligence that the
+Swedes were shooting citizens suspected of good-will to Yan Kazimir.
+The hair stood on end at the stories of the fugitives. They said that
+the whole population, sick women, newly born infants, old men, all
+lived at night on the streets, for the Swedes had driven them from
+their houses, and made passages from wall to wall, so that the
+garrison, in case Yan Kazimir's troops should enter, might withdraw and
+defend themselves. Rains fell on the people in their camping-places; on
+clear days the sun burned them, at night the cold pinched them.
+Citizens were not allowed to kindle fires; they had no means of
+preparing warm food. Various diseases spread more and more, and carried
+away hundreds of victims.
+
+Yan Kazimir's heart was ready to burst when he heard these narratives.
+He sent therefore courier after courier to hasten the coming of the
+heavy guns. Days and weeks passed; but it was impossible to undertake
+anything more important than the repulse of sorties. Still the
+besiegers were strengthened by the thought that the garrison must fail
+of provisions at last, since the roads were blocked in such fashion
+that a mouse could not reach the fortress. The besieged lost hope of
+assistance; the troops under Douglas, which were posted nearest, were
+not only unable to come to the rescue, but had to think of their own
+skin; for Yan Kazimir, having even too many men, was able to harass
+them.
+
+At last the Poles, even before the coming of the heavy guns, opened on
+the fortress with the smaller ones. Pan Grodzitski from the side of the
+Vistula, raised in front of himself, like a mole, earth defences,
+pushed to within six yards of the moat, and vomited a continual fire on
+the unfortunate city. The magnificent Kazanovski Palace was ruined; and
+the Poles did not regret it, for the building belonged to the traitor
+Radzeyovski. The shattered walls were barely standing, shining with
+their empty windows; day and night balls were dropping on the splendid
+terraces and in the gardens, smashing the beautiful fountains, bridges,
+arbors, and marble statues, terrifying the peacocks which with pitiful
+screams gave notice of their unhappy condition.
+
+Pan Grodzitski hurled fire on the Bernardine bell-tower, for he had
+decided to begin the assault on that side.
+
+Meanwhile the camp servants begged permission to attack the city, for
+they wished greatly to reach the Swedish treasures earliest. The king
+refused at first, but finally consented. A number of prominent officers
+undertook to lead them, and among others Kmita, who was imbittered by
+delay, and not only that, but in general he knew not what to do with
+himself; for Hassling, having fallen into a grievous fever, lay without
+consciousness for some weeks and could speak of nothing.
+
+Men therefore were summoned to the storm. Grodzitski opposed this to
+the last moment, insisting that until a breach was made the city could
+not be taken, even though the regular infantry were to go to the
+assault. But as the king had given permission, Grodzitski was forced to
+yield.
+
+June 15, about six thousand camp servants assembled; ladders, bundles
+of brush, and bags of sand were prepared. Toward evening a throng,
+barefoot and armed for the greater part only with sabres, began to
+approach the city where the trenches and earth defences came nearest
+the moat. When it had become perfectly dark, the men rushed, at a given
+signal, toward the moat with a terrible uproar, and began to fill it.
+The watchful Swedes received them with a murderous fire from muskets
+and cannons, and a furious battle sprang up along the whole eastern
+side of the city. Under cover of darkness the Poles filled the moat in
+a twinkle and reached the walls in an orderless mass. Kmita, with two
+thousand men, fell upon an earth fort, which the Poles called "the
+mole-hill," and which stood near the Cracow gate. In spite of a
+desperate defence he captured this place at a blow; the garrison was
+cut to pieces with sabres, not a man was spared. Pan Andrei gave
+command to turn the guns on the gate and some of them to the farther
+walls, so as to aid and cover somewhat those crowds who were striving
+to scale the walls.
+
+These men, however, were not so fortunate. They put the ladders in
+position, and ascended them so furiously that the best trained infantry
+could not have done better; but the Swedes, safe behind battlements,
+fired into their very faces, and hurled stones and blocks prepared for
+the purpose; under the weight of these the ladders were broken into
+pieces, and at last the infantry pushed down the assaulters with long
+spears, against which sabres had no effect.
+
+More than five hundred of the best camp servants were lying at the foot
+of the wall; the rest passed the moat under an incessant fire, and took
+refuge again in the Polish intrenchments.
+
+The storm was repulsed, but the little fort remained in the hands of
+the Poles. In vain did the Swedes roll at it all night from their
+heaviest guns; Kmita answered them in like manner from those cannon
+which he had captured. Only in the morning, when light came, were his
+guns dismounted to the last one. Wittemberg, for whom that intrenchment
+was as his head, sent infantry at once with the order not to dare
+return without retaking what had been lost; but Grodzitski sent
+reinforcements to Kmita, by the aid of which he not only repulsed the
+infantry, but fell upon and drove them to the Cracow gate.
+
+Grodzitski was so delighted that he ran in person to the king with the
+report.
+
+"Gracious Lord," said he, "I was opposed to yesterday's work, but now I
+see that it was not lost. While that intrenchment was in the enemy's
+hands I could do nothing against the gate; but now only let the heavy
+guns come, and in one night I will make a breach."
+
+The king, who was grieved that so many good men had fallen, was
+rejoiced at Grodzitski's words, and asked at once,--
+
+"But who has command in that intrenchment?"
+
+"Pan Babinich," answered a number of voices.
+
+The king clapped his hands. "He must be first everywhere! Worthy
+General, I know him. He is a terribly stubborn cavalier, and will not
+let himself be smoked out."
+
+"It would be a mistake beyond forgiveness, Gracious Lord, if we should
+permit that. I have already sent him infantry and small cannon; for
+that they will try to smoke him out is certain. It is a question of
+Warsaw! That cavalier is worth his weight in gold."
+
+"He is worth more; for this is not his first, and not his tenth
+achievement," said the king.
+
+Then Yan Kazimir gave orders to bring quickly a horse and a
+field-glass, and he rode out to look at the earthwork. But it was not
+to be seen from behind the smoke, for a number of forty-eight-pounders
+were blowing on it with ceaseless fire; they hurled long balls, bombs,
+and grape-shot. Still the intrenchment was so near the gate that
+musket-balls almost reached it; the bomb-shells could be seen perfectly
+when they flew up like cloudlets, and, describing a closely bent bow,
+fell into that cloud of smoke, bursting with terrible explosion. Many
+fell beyond the intrenchment, and they prevented the approach of
+reinforcements.
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" said the king.
+"Tyzenhauz, look! A pile of torn earth is all that remains. Tyzenhauz,
+do you know who is there?"
+
+"Gracious King, Babinich is there. If he comes out living, he will be
+able to say that he was in hell during life."
+
+"We must send him fresh men. Worthy General--"
+
+"The orders are already given, but it is difficult for them to go,
+since bombs pass over and fall very thickly on this side of the fort."
+
+"Turn all the guns on the walls so as to make a diversion," said the
+king.
+
+Grodzitski put spurs to his horse and galloped to the trenches. After a
+while cannonading was heard on the whole line, and somewhat later it
+was seen that a fresh division of Mazovian infantry went out of the
+nearest trenches, and on a run to the mole-hill.
+
+The king stood there, looking continually. At last he cried: "Babinich
+should be relieved in the command. And who, gentlemen, will volunteer
+to take his place?"
+
+Neither Pan Yan, Pan Stanislav, nor Volodyovski was near the king,
+therefore a moment of silence followed.
+
+"I!" said suddenly Pan Topor Grylevski, an officer of the light
+squadron of the primate.
+
+"I!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"I! I! I!" called at once a number of voices.
+
+"Let the man go who offered himself first," said the king.
+
+Pan Topor Grylevski made the sign of the cross, raised the canteen to
+his mouth, then galloped away.
+
+The king remained looking at the cloud of smoke with which the
+mole-hill was covered, and the smoke rose above it like a bridge up to
+the very wall. Since the fort was near the Vistula, the walls of the
+city towered above it, and therefore the fire was terrible.
+
+Meanwhile the thunder of cannon decreased somewhat, though the balls
+did not cease to describe arcs, and a rattle of musketry was given out
+as if thousands of men were beating threshing-floors with flails.
+
+"It is evident that they are going to the attack again," said
+Tyzenhauz. "If there were less smoke, we should see the infantry."
+
+"Let us approach a little," said the king, urging his horse.
+
+After him others moved on, and riding along the bank of the Vistula
+from Uyazdov they approached almost to the Solets itself; and since the
+gardens of the palaces and the cloisters coming down to the Vistula had
+been cleared by the Swedes in the winter for fuel, trees did not cover
+the view, they could see even without field-glasses that the Swedes
+were really moving again to the storm.
+
+"I would rather lose that position," said the king all at once, "than
+that Babinich should die."
+
+"God will defend him!" said the priest Tsyetsishovski.
+
+"And Pan Grodzitski will not fail to send him reinforcements," added
+Tyzenhauz.
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by some horseman who was
+approaching from the direction of the city at all speed. Tyzenhauz,
+having such sight that he saw better with the naked eye than others
+through field-glasses, caught his head at sight of him, and said,--
+
+"Grylevski is returning! It must be that Kmita has fallen, and the fort
+is captured."
+
+The king shaded his eyes with his hands. Grylevski rushed up, reined in
+his horse, and, panting for breath, exclaimed,--
+
+"Gracious Lord!"
+
+"What has happened? Is he killed?" asked the king.
+
+"Pan Babinich says that he is well, and does not wish any one to take
+his place; he begs only to send him food, for he has had nothing to eat
+since morning."
+
+"Is he alive then?" cried the king.
+
+"He says that he is comfortable there!" repeated Grylevski.
+
+But others, catching breath from wonder, began to cry: "That is
+courage! He is a soldier!"
+
+"But it was necessary to stay there and relieve him absolutely," said
+the king to Grylevski. "Is it not a shame to come back? Were you
+afraid, or what? It would have been better not to go."
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Grylevski, "whoso calls me a coward, him I
+will correct on any field, but before majesty I must justify myself. I
+was in the ant-hill itself, but Babinich flew into my face because of
+my errand: 'Go,' said he, 'to the hangman! I am at work here, I am
+almost creeping out of my skin, and I have no time to talk, but I will
+not share either my glory or command with any man. I am well here and I
+will stay here, but I'll give orders to take you outside the trench! I
+wish you were killed!' said he. 'We want to eat, and they send us a
+commandant instead of food!' What had I to do, Gracious Lord? I do not
+wonder at his temper, for their hands are dropping from toil."
+
+"And how is it?" asked the king; "is he holding the place?"
+
+"Desperately. What would he not hold? I forgot to tell besides that he
+shouted to me when I was going: 'I'll stay here a week and will not
+surrender, if I have something to eat!'"
+
+"Is it possible to hold out there?"
+
+"There, Gracious Lord, is the genuine day of judgment! Bomb is falling
+after bomb; pieces of shells are whistling, like devils, around the
+ear; the earth is dug out into ditches; it is impossible to speak from
+smoke. The balls hurl around sand and earth, so that every moment a man
+must shake himself to avoid being buried. Many have fallen, but those
+who are living lie in furrows in the intrenchments, and have made
+defences before their heads of stakes strengthened with earth. The
+Swedes constructed the place carefully, and now it serves against them.
+While I was there, infantry came from Grodzitski, and now there is
+fighting again."
+
+"Since we cannot attack the walls until a breach is made," said the
+king, "we will strike the palace on the Cracow suburbs to-day; that
+will be the best diversion."
+
+"The palace is wonderfully strengthened, almost changed into a
+fortress," remarked Tyzenhauz.
+
+"But they will not hurry from the city to give aid, for all their fury
+will be turned on Babinich," said the king. "So will it be, as I am
+here alive, so will it be! I will order the storm at once; but first I
+will bless Babinich."
+
+Then the king took from the priest a golden crucifix in which were
+splinters of the true cross, and raising it on high he began to bless
+the distant mound, covered with fire and smoke, saying,--
+
+"O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have mercy on Thy people, and give
+salvation to the dying! Amen! amen! amen!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+A bloody storm followed from the side of the Novy Svyat against the
+Cracow suburbs, not over-successful, but in so far effective that it
+turned the attention of the Swedes from the intrenchment defended by
+Kmita, and permitted the garrison enclosed in it to rest somewhat. The
+Poles pushed forward however, to the Kazimirovski Palace, but they
+could not hold that point.
+
+On the other side they stormed up to the Danillovich Palace and to
+Dantzig House, equally without result. A number of hundreds of people
+fell again. The king, however, had this consolation: he saw that even
+the general militia rushed to the walls with the greatest daring and
+devotion, and that after those attempts, more or less unsuccessful,
+their courage not only had not fallen, but on the contrary assurance of
+victory was growing strong in the army.
+
+The most fortunate event of the day was the arrival of Pan Yan Zamoyski
+and Pan Charnyetski. The first brought very excellent infantry and guns
+from Zamost, so heavy that the Swedes had nothing like them in Warsaw.
+The second, in agreement with Sapyeha, having besieged Douglas, and
+with some Lithuanian troops and the general militia of Podlyasye, under
+command of Pan Yan, had come to Warsaw to take part in the general
+storm. It was hoped by Charnyetski as well as others that this would be
+the last storm.
+
+Zamoyski's heavy guns were placed in the position taken by Kmita; they
+began work immediately against the walls and the gate, and forced the
+Swedish howitzers to silence at once. General Grodzitski himself
+occupied the "molehill," and Kmita returned to his Tartars.
+
+But he had not reached his quarters when he was summoned to Uyazdov.
+The king in presence of the whole staff applauded the young knight;
+neither Charnyetski, Sapyeha, Lyubomirski, nor the hetmans spared
+praises on him. He stood there in torn garments covered with earth, his
+face entirely discolored with powder smoke; without sleep, soiled, but
+joyous because he had held the place, had won so much praise, and
+gained immeasurable glory in both armies. Among other cavaliers Pan
+Michael and Pan Yan congratulated him.
+
+"You do not know indeed, Pan Andrei," said the little knight, "what
+great weight you have with the king. I was at the council of war
+yesterday, for Pan Charnyetski took me with him. They talked of the
+storm, and then of the news which had just come in from Lithuania, the
+war there, and the cruelties which Pontus de la Gardie and the Swedes
+permit. They were considering at the council how to strengthen
+resistance. Sapyeha said it was best to send thither a couple of
+squadrons and a man who could be there what Charnyetski was at the
+beginning of the war in Poland. To which the king answered: 'There is
+only one such man, Babinich.' The others confirmed this at once."
+
+"I would go most willingly to Lithuania, and especially to Jmud,"
+answered Kmita. "I resolved to ask of the king myself permission to go,
+but I am waiting till Warsaw is taken."
+
+"There will be a general storm to-morrow," said Zagloba.
+
+"I know, but how is Kettling?"
+
+"Who is that? Hassling?"
+
+"All one, for he has two names, as is the custom among the English, the
+Scots, and many other nations."
+
+"True," answered Zagloba, "and a Spaniard every day of the week has a
+new name for himself. Your servant told me that Hassling, or Kettling,
+is well; he has begun to talk, walks, the fever has left him, he calls
+for food every hour."
+
+"Have you been with him?" asked Kmita of Pan Michael.
+
+"I have not, for I have had no time. Who has a head for anything but
+the storm?"
+
+"Then let us go now."
+
+"Go to sleep first," said Zagloba.
+
+"True! true! I am barely standing on my feet."
+
+So when he came to his own quarters Pan Andrei followed Zagloba's
+advice, especially as he found Hassling asleep. But Zagloba and
+Volodyovski came to see him in the evening; they sat down in the broad
+summer-house which the Tartars had made for their "bagadyr." The
+Kyemliches poured out for them mead a hundred years old, which the king
+had sent to Kmita; and they drank it willingly, for the air was hot
+outside. Hassling, pale and emaciated, seemed to draw life and strength
+from the precious liquid. Zagloba clicked with his tongue, and wiped
+perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"Hei! how the great guns are thundering!" said the young Scot,
+listening. "To-morrow you will go to the storm--it is well!--for the
+healthy--God give you blessing! I am of foreign blood, and serve him
+whom it was my duty to serve, but you have my best wishes. Ah, what
+mead this is! Life enters me."
+
+Thus speaking, he threw back his golden hair and raised his blue eyes
+toward heaven; he had a wonderful face, half childlike as yet. Zagloba
+looked at him with a certain emotion.
+
+"You speak Polish as well as any of us," said he. "Become a Pole, love
+this our country, and you will do an honorable deed, and mead will not
+be lacking to you. It is not difficult for a soldier to receive
+naturalization with us."
+
+"All the more easy since I am a noble," answered Hassling. "My name is
+Hassling-Kettling of Elgin. My family come from England, though settled
+in Scotland."
+
+"Those countries beyond the sea are far away, and somehow it is more
+decent for a man to live here," said Zagloba.
+
+"It is pleasant for me here."
+
+"But unpleasant for us," said Kmita, who from the beginning was
+twisting impatiently on the bench, "for we are anxious to hear what is
+going on in Taurogi; but you are talking genealogies."
+
+"Ask me; I will answer."
+
+"Have you seen Panna Billevich often?"
+
+Over the pale face of Hassling blushes passed. "Every day!" said he.
+
+Kmita looked at him quickly. "Were you such a confidant? Why do you
+blush? Every day,--how every day?"
+
+"For she knew that I wished her well, and I rendered her some services.
+That will appear from the further narrative, but now it is necessary to
+commence at the beginning. You, gentlemen, know, perhaps, that I was
+not at Kyedani when Prince Boguslav came and took that lady to Taurogi?
+Therefore I will not repeat why that happened, for different people
+gave different accounts. I will only say that they had scarcely arrived
+when all saw at once that the prince was terribly in love--"
+
+"God punish him!" cried Kmita.
+
+"Amusements followed, such as had not been before,--tilting at the ring
+and tournaments. Any one would have thought it a time of the greatest
+peace; but letters were coming in every day, as well as envoys from the
+elector and from Prince Yanush. We knew that Prince Yanush was pushed
+by Sapyeha and the confederates; he implored for rescue by the mercy of
+God, for destruction was threatening him. We did nothing. On the
+elector's boundary troops were standing ready, captains were coming
+with letters; but we did not go with assistance, for the prince had no
+success with the lady."
+
+"Is that why Boguslav did not give aid to his cousin?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"It is. Patterson said the same, and all the persons nearest the
+prince. Some complained of this; others were glad that the Radzivills
+were falling. Sakovich conducted all public business for the prince,
+answered letters, and held council with the envoys; but the prince was
+laboring on one idea only, to contrive some kind of amusement, either a
+cavalcade or hunt. He, a miser, scattered money on every side. He gave
+orders to fell forests for whole miles, so that the lady might have a
+better view from her windows; in a word, he really scattered flowers
+under her feet, and received her in such fashion that had she been
+Queen of Sweden he could have invented nothing better. Many pitied her
+and said, 'All this is for her ruin; as to marrying, the prince will
+not marry, and if he can only catch her heart he will deceive her.' But
+it appeared that she was not a lady to be conducted whither virtue does
+not go. Oh!"
+
+"Well, what?" cried Kmita, springing up. "I know that better than
+others!"
+
+"How did Panna Billevich receive these royal homages?" asked Pan
+Michael.
+
+"At first with affable face, though it was evident that she was bearing
+some sorrow in her heart. She was present at the hunts, at the
+masquerades, cavalcades, and tournaments, thinking indeed that these
+were usual court amusements with the prince. It happened on a time that
+the prince, straining his imagination over various spectacles, wished
+to show the lady the counterfeit of war; he had a settlement burned
+near Taurogi, infantry defended it, the prince stormed the place.
+Evidently he gained a great victory, after which, being sated with
+praise, he fell at the lady's feet and begged for a return of his love.
+It is not known what he proposed to her, but from that time their
+friendship was at an end. She began to hold night and day to the sleeve
+of her uncle, the sword-bearer of Rossyeni; but the prince--"
+
+"Began to threaten her, did he?" cried Kmita.
+
+"What, threaten! He dressed himself as a Greek shepherd, as Philemon;
+special couriers were flying to Königsberg for patterns of shepherd's
+garments, for ribbons and wigs. He feigned despair, he walked under her
+windows, and played on a lute. And here I tell you, gentlemen, what I
+really think. He was a savage executioner of the virtue of ladies, and
+it may be boldly said of him, as is said in our country of such people,
+his sighs filled out the sails of more than one lady; but this time he
+fell in love in earnest,--which is no wonder, for the lady reminds one
+more of a goddess than a dweller in this earthly vale."
+
+Here Hassling blushed again, but Pan Andrei did not see it; for seizing
+his sides with satisfaction and pride, he looked with a triumphant
+glance at Zagloba and Volodyovski.
+
+"We know her, a perfect Diana; she needs only the moon in her hair!"
+said the little knight.
+
+"What, Diana! Diana's dogs would howl at Diana if they could see Panna
+Billevich."
+
+"Therefore I said it is 'no wonder,'" answered Hassling.
+
+"Well! But for that 'no wonder' I would burn him with a slow fire; for
+that 'no wonder' I would have him shod with hob-nails--"
+
+"Give us peace!" interrupted Zagloba. "Get him first, then play pranks;
+but now let this cavalier speak."
+
+"More than once I was on watch before the room in which he slept,"
+continued Hassling. "I know how he turned on his bed, sighed, talked to
+himself, and hissed, as if from pain; evidently desires were burning
+him. He changed terribly, dried up. It may be, too, that the illness
+under which he afterward fell was diving into him. Meanwhile news flew
+through the whole court that the prince had become so distracted that
+he wanted to marry. This came to Yanush's princess, who with her
+daughter was living at Taurogi. Then began anger and disputes; for, as
+you know, Boguslav, according to agreement, is to marry Yanush's
+daughter when she comes of age. But he forgot everything, so pierced
+was his heart. Yanush's princess, falling into a rage, went with her
+daughter to Courland. That same evening he made a proposal to Panna
+Billevich."
+
+"Did he make proposals?" cried Zagloba, Kmita, and Pan Michael, with
+astonishment.
+
+"He did. First to the sword-bearer of Rossyeni, who was no less
+astonished than you, and would not believe his own ears; but convinced
+at last he was barely able to control himself from delight, for it was
+no small splendor for the house of Billevich to be united with the
+Radzivills. It is true, as Patterson said, that there is some
+connection already, but it is old and forgotten."
+
+"Tell on!" said Kmita, trembling from impatience.
+
+"Both went to the lady with all ostentation, as is the custom on such
+occasions. The whole court was trembling. Evil tidings came from Prince
+Yanush. Sakovich alone read them, but no one paid attention to them,
+nor even to Sakovich, for he had fallen out of favor because he had
+proposed the marriage. But among us some said that it was no novelty
+for the Radzivills to marry ordinary noble women; that in the
+Commonwealth all nobles were equal, and that the house of Billevich
+went back to Roman times. And this was said by those who wished to gain
+for themselves the favor of the coming princess. Others asserted that
+this was a stratagem of the prince to come to great intimacy with the
+lady, which happens not infrequently between persons betrothed."
+
+"That was it! Nothing else," said Zagloba.
+
+"And so I think," said Hassling; "but listen further. When we were
+deliberating in the court among ourselves in this fashion, the report
+went out like a thunderbolt that the lady had cut all doubt as with a
+sabre, for she refused him directly."
+
+"God bless her!" cried Kmita.
+
+"She refused him directly," continued Hassling. "It was enough to look
+at the prince to know that. He, to whom princesses yielded, could not
+endure resistance, and almost went mad. It was dangerous to appear
+before him. We all saw that it would not remain long thus, and that the
+prince would use force sooner or later. In fact, the sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni was carried off the next day to Tyltsa, beyond the elector's
+boundary. That day the lady implored the officer keeping guard before
+her door to give her a loaded pistol. The officer did not refuse that,
+for being a noble and man of honor he felt compassion for the lady and
+homage for her beauty and resolution."
+
+"Who was that officer?" asked Kmita.
+
+"I," answered Hassling, dryly.
+
+Pan Andrei seized him by the shoulders, so that the young Scot, being
+weak, called out from pain.
+
+"That is nothing!" cried Kmita. "You are not a prisoner; you are my
+brother, my friend! Tell me what you wish! In God's name, tell me what
+you wish!"
+
+"To rest awhile," answered Hassling, breathing heavily; and he was
+silent. He merely pressed the hands which Pan Michael and Zagloba gave
+him. At last, seeing that all were burning with curiosity, he
+continued,--
+
+"I forewarned her too of what all knew, that the prince's physician was
+preparing some intoxicating drug. Meanwhile fears turned out to be
+groundless, for God interfered in the affair. He touched the prince
+with his finger, threw him on a bed of sickness, and kept him there a
+month. It is a marvel, gentlemen, but it happened as if he had been cut
+from his feet, as with a scythe, that same day, when he intended to
+attack the virtue of this lady. The hand of God, I say, nothing else!
+He thought that himself, and was afraid; may be too that during his
+sickness the desire left him, may be he was waiting to regain his
+strength; it is enough, that when he came to himself he left her in
+peace, and even permitted the sword-bearer to come from Tyltsa. It is
+true, also, that the sickness which confined him to his bed left him,
+but not the fever, which is, I believe, crushing him to this day. It is
+true, also, that soon after he left the bed he had to go on the
+expedition to Tykotsin, where defeat met him. He returned with a still
+greater fever; then the elector sent for him. But meanwhile a change
+took place at Taurogi, of which it is wonderful and laughable to tell;
+it is enough that the prince cannot count on the loyalty of any officer
+or any attendant, unless on very old ones, who neither hear nor see
+perfectly, and therefore guard nothing well."
+
+"What happened?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"During the Tykotsin campaign, before the defeat at Tanov, they
+captured a certain Panna Anusia Borzobogati, and sent her to Taurogi."
+
+"There, Grandmother, you have cakes!" exclaimed Zagloba.
+
+Pan Michael began to blink and move his mustaches; at last he said:
+"Say nothing bad of her, or when you recover you will have to meet me."
+
+"Even if I wished I could say nothing bad of that lady. But if she is
+your betrothed, I say that you take poor care of her; and if she is a
+relative, you know her too well to deny what I say. It is enough that
+in one week she made all in the company, old and young, in love with
+her, and only by using her eyes with the addition of some tricks of
+witchcraft, of which I can give no account."
+
+"She! I should know her in hell by this," muttered Zagloba.
+
+"It is a wonderful thing!" said Hassling. "Panna Billevich is equal to
+her in beauty, but has such dignity and unapproachableness that a man
+while admiring and doing homage to her does not dare to raise his eyes,
+much less to conceive any hope. You know yourselves, gentlemen, that
+there are different kinds of ladies: some are like ancient vestals;
+others, you have barely seen them and you wish--"
+
+"Worthy sir!" said Pan Michael, threateningly.
+
+"Don't make a fool of yourself, Michael, for he tells the truth," said
+Zagloba. "You go around like a young cockerel and show the whites of
+your eyes; but that she is a coquette we all know, and you have said so
+more than a hundred times."
+
+"Let us leave this matter," said Hassling. "I wished simply to explain
+to you, gentlemen, why only a few were in love with Panna Billevich,
+those who could really appreciate her unrivalled perfection [here he
+blushed again], and with Panna Borzobogati nearly all. As God is dear
+to me, I had to laugh, for it was just as if some plague had come upon
+hearts. Disputes and duels increased in the twinkle of an eye. And
+about what? For what? You must know that there was no one who could
+boast of the love of the lady; each one believed blindly in this alone,
+that earlier or later he would have some success--"
+
+"He has painted her, as it were!" muttered Pan Michael.
+
+"But these two young ladies became wonderfully fond of each other,"
+continued Hassling; "one would not move a step without the other, and
+Panna Borzobogati manages in Taurogi as it pleases her."
+
+"How is that?" asked the little knight.
+
+"For she rules everybody. Sakovich did not go on a campaign this time,
+because he is in love; and Sakovich is absolute master in all the
+possessions of Prince Boguslav. And Panna Anusia governs through him."
+
+"Is he so much in love with her?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"He is, and has the greatest confidence in himself, for he is a very
+rich man."
+
+"And his name is Sakovich?"
+
+"You wish, I see, to remember him well."
+
+"Certainly!" answered Pan Michael, as it were, carelessly, but at the
+same time he moved his mustaches so ominously that a shudder went
+through Zagloba.
+
+"I only wish to add," continued Hassling, "that if Panna Borzobogati
+should command Sakovich to betray the prince and lighten her escape and
+that of her friend, I think he would do it without hesitation; but so
+far as I know she wishes to do that without his knowledge, maybe to
+spite him, who knows? It is enough that an officer, a relative of mine,
+but not a Catholic, assured me that the departure of the sword-bearer
+with the ladies is arranged; officers are involved in the conspiracy,
+and it is to take place soon."
+
+Here Hassling began to breathe heavily, for he was weary and was using
+the last of his strength.
+
+"And this is the most important thing that I had to tell you," added
+he, hurriedly.
+
+Volodyovski and Kmita seized their heads.
+
+"Whither are they going to flee?"
+
+"To the forests and through the forests to Byalovyej."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Sapyeha's
+orderly, who delivered to Pan Michael and Kmita a quarter of a sheet of
+paper folded in four. Volodyovski had barely unfolded his when he
+said,--
+
+"The order to occupy positions for to-morrow's work."
+
+"Do you hear how the cannons are roaring?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"Well, to-morrow! to-morrow!"
+
+"Uf! hot!" said Zagloba, "a bad day for a storm,--may the devil take
+such heat! Mother of God! But more than one will grow cold in spite of
+the heat; but not those--not those who commend themselves to Thee, our
+Patroness-- But the cannons are thundering! I am too old for storms;
+the open field is something else."
+
+Another officer appeared in the door.
+
+"Is his grace Pan Zagloba here?" asked he.
+
+"I am here."
+
+"By the command of our Gracious King, you are to be near his person
+to-morrow."
+
+"Ha! he wishes to keep me from the storm, for he knows that the old man
+will move first, only let the trumpets sound. He is a kind lord,
+mindful; I should not like to annoy him; but whether I shall restrain
+myself I know not, for when the desire presses me I think of nothing,
+and roll straight into the smoke. Such is my nature! A kind lord! Do
+you hear how the trumpets are sounding for every one to take his place?
+Well, to-morrow, to-morrow. Saint Peter will have work; he must have
+his books ready. In hell too they have put fresh pitch in the kettles,
+a bath for the Swedes. Uf! uf! to-morrow!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+July 1, between Povanski and the settlement afterward called Marymont,
+was celebrated a great field Mass, which ten thousand men of the
+quarter-soldiers heard with attentive mind. The king made a vow that in
+case of victory he would build a church to the Most Holy Lady.
+Dignitaries, the hetmans, the knights made vows, and even simple
+soldiers, following the example, each according to his means, for this
+was to be the day of the final storm.
+
+After the Mass each of the leaders moved to his own command. Sapyeha
+took his position opposite the Church of the Holy Ghost, which at that
+time was outside the walls; but because it was the key to the walls, it
+was greatly strengthened by the Swedes, and occupied in fitting manner
+by the troops. Charnyetski was to capture Dantzig House, for the rear
+wall of that building formed a part of the city wall, and by passing
+through the building it was possible to reach the city. Pyotr
+Opalinski, the voevoda of Podlyasye, with men from Great Poland and
+Mazovia, was to attack from the Cracow suburbs and the Vistula. The
+quarter-regiments were to attack the gates of New City. There were so
+many men that they almost exceeded the approaches to the walls; the
+entire plain, all the neighboring suburban villages and the meadows
+were overflowed with a sea of soldiers. Beyond the men were white
+tents, after the tents wagons far away; the eye was lost in the blue
+distance before it could reach the end of that swarm.
+
+Those legions were standing in perfect readiness, with weapons point
+forward, and one foot in advance for the run; they were ready at any
+moment to rush to the breaches made by the guns of heavy calibre, and
+especially by Zamoyski's great guns. The guns did not cease to play for
+a moment; the storm was deferred only because they were waiting for the
+final answer of Wittemberg to the letter which the grand chancellor
+Korytsinski had sent him. When about midday the officer returned with a
+refusal, the ominous trumpets rang out around the city, and the storm
+began.
+
+The armies of the kingdom under the hetmans, Charnyetski's men, the
+regiments of the king, the infantry regiments of Zamoyski, the
+Lithuanians of Sapyeha, and the legions of the general militia rushed
+toward the walls like a swollen river. But from behind the walls
+bloomed out against them rolls of white smoke and darts of flame; heavy
+cannon, arquebuses, double-barrelled guns, muskets thundered
+simultaneously; the earth was shaken in its foundations. The balls
+broke into that throng of men, ploughed long furrows in it; but the men
+ran on and tore up to the fortress, regarding neither fire nor death.
+Clouds of powder smoke hid the sun.
+
+Each attacked furiously what was nearest him,--the hetmans the gates of
+New City; Charnyetski, Dantzig House; Sapyeha with the Lithuanians, the
+Church of the Holy Ghost; the Mazovians and men of Great Poland, the
+Cracow suburbs.
+
+The heaviest work fell to the last-mentioned men, for the palaces and
+houses along the Cracow suburbs were turned into fortresses. But that
+day such fury of battle had seized the Mazovians that nothing could
+stand before their onset. They took by storm house after house, palace
+after palace; they fought in windows, in doors, in passages.
+
+After the capture of one house, before the blood was dry on their hands
+and faces, they rushed to another; again a hand-to-hand battle, and
+again they rushed farther. The private regiments vied with the general
+militia, and the general militia with the infantry. They had been
+commanded before advancing to the storm to carry at their breasts
+bundles of unripe grain to ward off the bullets, but in the ardor and
+frenzy of battle they hurled aside every defence, and ran forward with
+bare bosoms. In the midst of a bloody struggle the chapel of the Tsar
+Shuiski and the lordly palace of the Konyetspolskis were captured. The
+Swedes were destroyed to the last man in the smaller buildings, in the
+stables of the magnates, in the gardens descending to the Vistula. Near
+the Kazanovski Palace the Swedish infantry tried to make a stand in the
+street, and reinforced from the walls of the palace, from the church
+and the bell-tower of the Bernardines, which was turned into a strong
+fortress, they received the attack with a cutting fire.
+
+But the hail of bullets did not stop the attack for a moment; and the
+nobles, with the cry of "Mazovians victorious!" rushed with sabres into
+the centre of the quadrangle; after them came the land infantry,
+servants armed with poles, pickaxes, and scythes. The quadrangle was
+broken in a twinkle, and hewing began. Swedes and Poles were so mingled
+together that they formed one gigantic mass, which squirmed, twisted,
+and rolled in its own blood between the Kazanovski Palace, the house of
+Radzeyovski, and the Cracow gate.
+
+But new legions of warriors breathing blood came on continually, like a
+foaming river, from the direction of the Cracow gate. The Swedish
+infantry was cut to pieces at last, and then began that famous storm of
+the Kazanovski Palace and the Bernardines' Church which in great part
+decided the fate of the day.
+
+Zagloba commanded, for he was mistaken the day before in thinking that
+the king called him to his person only to be present; for, on the
+contrary, he confided to him, as to a famous and experienced warrior,
+command over the camp servants, who with the quarter-soldiers and the
+general militia were to go as volunteers to storm from that side.
+Zagloba was willing, it is true, to go with these men in the rear, and
+content himself with occupying the palaces already captured; but when
+in the very beginning all vying with one another were mingled
+completely, the human current bore him on with the others. So he went;
+for although he had from nature great circumspection as a gift, and
+preferred, where it was possible, not to expose his life to danger, he
+had for so many years become accustomed to battles in spite of himself,
+had been present in so many dreadful slaughters, that when the
+inevitable came he fought with others, and even better than others, for
+he fought with desperation and rage in a manful heart.
+
+So at this time he found himself at the gate of the Kazanovski Palace,
+or rather in the hell which was raging dreadfully in front of that
+gate; that is, amid a whirlpool, heat, crushing, a storm of bullets,
+fire, smoke, groans and shouts of men. Thousands of scythes, picks, and
+axes were driven against the gate; a thousand arms pressed and pushed
+it furiously. Some men fell as if struck by lightning; others pushed
+themselves into their places, trampled their bodies, and forced
+themselves forward, as if seeking death of purpose. No one had seen or
+remembered a more stubborn defence, but also not a more resolute
+attack. From the highest stories bullets were rained and pitch poured
+down on the gate; but those who were under fire, even had they wished
+could not withdraw, so powerfully were they pressed from behind. You
+saw single men, wet from perspiration, black from smoke, with set
+teeth, with wild eyes, hurling at the gate beams of such size that at
+an ordinary time three strong men would not have been able to lift
+them. So their strength was trebled by frenzy. All the windows were
+stormed simultaneously, ladders were placed at the upper stories,
+lattices were hewn from the walls. But still from those lattices
+and windows, from openings cut in the walls, were sticking out
+musket-barrels, which did not cease to smoke for a moment. But at last
+such smoke ascended, such dust rose, that on that bright sunny day the
+assailants could scarcely recognize one another. In spite of that they
+did not desist from the struggle, but climbed ladders the more
+fiercely, attacked the gate the more wildly, because the sounds from
+the Church of the Bernardines announced that there other parties were
+storming with similar energy.
+
+Now Zagloba cried with a voice so piercing that it was heard amid the
+uproar and shots: "A box with powder under the gate!"
+
+It was brought to him in a twinkle; he gave command at once to cut just
+beneath the bolt an opening of such size that the box alone would find
+place in it. When the box was fitted in, Zagloba himself set fire to
+the sulphur thread, then commanded,--
+
+"Aside! Close to the wall!"
+
+Those standing near rushed to both sides, toward those who had placed
+the ladders at the farther windows. A moment of expectation followed.
+
+A mighty report shook the air, and new bundles of smoke rose toward the
+sky. Zagloba sprang forward with his men; they saw that the explosion
+had not rent the gate to small pieces, but had torn the hinges from the
+right side, wrested away a couple of strong beams, already partly cut,
+turned the handle, and pulled off one half of the lower part, so that a
+passage was open through which large men might enter easily.
+
+Sharpened stakes, axes, and scythes began to beat violently on the
+weakened door; a hundred arms pushed it with utmost effort, a sharp
+crash was heard, and all one half fell, uncovering the depth of the
+dark antechamber.
+
+In that darkness gleamed discharges of musketry; but the human river
+rushed forward with an irresistible torrent,--the palace was captured.
+
+At the same time they broke in through the windows, and a terrible
+battle with cold weapons began in the interior of the palace. Chamber
+was taken after chamber, corridor after corridor, story after story.
+The walls had been so shattered and weakened beforehand that the
+ceiling in many rooms fell with a crash, covering with their ruins
+Poles and Swedes. But the Mazovians advanced like a conflagration; they
+penetrated every place, overturning with their long knives, cutting and
+thrusting. No man of the Swedes asked for quarter, but neither was it
+given. In some corridors and passages the piles of bodies so blocked
+the way that the Swedes made barricades of them; the Poles pulled them
+out by the feet, by the hair, and hurled them through the windows.
+Blood flowed in streams through the passages. Groups of Swedes defended
+themselves yet here and there, and repelled with weakening hands the
+furious blows of the stormers. Blood had covered their faces, darkness
+was covering their eyes, more than one sank on his knees, and still
+fought; pressed on every side, suffocated by the throng of opponents,
+the Scandinavians died in silence, in accord with their fame, as
+beseemed warriors. The statues of divinities and ancient heroes,
+bespattered with blood, looked with lifeless eyes on that death.
+
+Roh Kovalski raged specially in the upper stories; but Zagloba rushed
+with his men to the terraces, and when he had cut to pieces the
+infantry defending themselves there, he hurried from the terraces to
+those wonderful gardens which were famed throughout Europe. The trees
+were already cut down, the rare plants destroyed by Polish balls, the
+fountains broken, the earth ploughed up by bombshells,--in a word,
+everywhere a desert and destruction, though the Swedes had not raised
+their robber hands against this place, out of regard for the person of
+Radzeyovski. A savage struggle set in there, too; but it lasted only a
+short time, for the Swedes gave but feeble resistance, and were cut to
+pieces under the personal command of Zagloba. The soldiers dispersed
+now through the garden, and the whole palace was plundered.
+
+Zagloba betook himself to a corner of the garden, to a place where the
+walls formed a strong "angle," and where the sun did not come, for the
+knight wished to rest somewhat; and he rubbed the sweat from his heated
+forehead. All at once he espied some strange monsters, looking at him
+with hostility through an iron grating.
+
+The cage was fixed in a corner of the wall, so that balls falling from
+the outside could not reach it. The door of the cage was wide open; but
+those meagre and ugly creatures did not think of taking advantage of
+this. Evidently terrified by the uproar, the whistling of bullets, and
+the fierce slaughter at which they had looked a moment before, they
+crowded into a corner of the cage, and hidden in the straw, gave note
+of their terror only by muttering.
+
+"Are those monkeys or devils?" said Zagloba to himself.
+
+Suddenly anger seized him, courage swelled in his breast, and raising
+his sabre he fell upon the cage.
+
+A terrible panic was the answer to the first blow of his sabre. The
+monkeys, which the Swedish soldiers had treated kindly and fed from
+their own slender rations, fell into such a fright that madness simply
+seized them; and since Zagloba stopped their exit, they began to rush
+through the cage with unnatural springs, hanging to the sides, to the
+top, screaming and biting. At last one in frenzy sprang on Zagloba's
+shoulder, and seizing him by the head, fastened to it with all his
+power; another hung to his right shoulder, a third caught him in front
+by the neck, the fourth hung to his long split sleeves which were tied
+together behind; and Zagloba, stifled, sweating, struggled in vain, in
+vain struck blindly toward the rear. Breath soon failed him, his eyes
+were standing out of his head, and he began to cry with despairing
+voice,--
+
+"Gracious gentlemen! save me!"
+
+The cry brought a number of men, who, unable to understand what was
+happening, rushed to his aid with blood-streaming sabres; but they
+halted at once in astonishment, they looked at one another, and as if
+under the influence of some spell they burst out in one great laugh.
+More soldiers ran up, a crowd was formed; but laughter was communicated
+to all as an epidemic. They staggered as if drunk, they held their
+sides; their faces, besmeared with the gore of men, were twisting
+spasmodically, and the more Zagloba struggled the more did they laugh.
+Now Roh Kovalski ran down from an upper story, scattered the crowd, and
+freed his uncle from the Simian embraces.
+
+"You rascals!" cried the panting Zagloba, "I would you were slain! You
+are laughing to see a Catholic in oppression from these African
+monsters. I would you were slain! Were it not for me you would be
+butting your heads to this moment against the gate, for you deserve
+nothing better. I wish you were dead, because you are not worth these
+monkeys."
+
+"I wish you were dead yourself, king of the monkeys!" cried the man
+standing nearest.
+
+"_Simiarum destructor_ (destroyer of monkeys)!" cried another.
+
+"Victor!" cried the third.
+
+"What, victor! he is _victus_ (conquered)!"
+
+Here Roh Kovalski came again to the aid of his uncle, and struck the
+nearest man in the breast with his fist; the man dropped to the earth
+that instant with blood coming from his mouth. Others retreated before
+the anger of Kovalski, some drew their sabres; but further disputes
+were interrupted by the uproar and shots coming from the Bernardines'
+Church. Evidently the storm continued there yet in full force, and
+judging from the feverish musketry-tire, the Swedes were not thinking
+of surrender.
+
+"With succor! to the church! to the church!" cried Zagloba.
+
+He sprang himself to the top of the palace; there, from the right wing,
+was to be seen the church, which seemed to be in flames. Crowds of
+stormers were circling around it convulsively, not being able to enter
+and perishing for nothing in a cross tire; for bullets were rained on
+them from the Cracow gate as thickly as sand.
+
+"Cannon to the windows!" shouted Zagloba.
+
+There were guns enough, large and small, in the Kazanovski Palace,
+therefore they were drawn to the windows; from fragments of costly
+furniture and pedestals of statues, platforms were constructed; and in
+the course of half an hour a number of guns were looking, out through
+the empty openings of the windows toward the church.
+
+"Roh!" said Zagloba, with uncommon irritation, "I must do something
+considerable, or my glory is lost through those monkeys,--would that
+the plague had stifled them! The whole army will ridicule me; and
+though there is no lack of words in my mouth, still I cannot meet the
+whole world. I must wipe away this confusion, or wide as this
+Commonwealth is they will herald me through it as king of the monkeys!"
+
+"Uncle must wipe away this confusion!" repeated Roh, with a thundering
+voice.
+
+"And the first means will be that, as I have captured the Kazanovski
+Palace,--for let any one say that it was not I who did it--"
+
+"Let any one say that it was not Uncle who did it!" repeated Roh.
+
+"I will capture that church, so help me the Lord God, amen!" concluded
+Zagloba.
+
+Then he turned to his attendants who were there at the guns,--
+
+"Fire!"
+
+Fear seized the Swedes, who were defending themselves with despair in
+the church, when the whole side wall began on a sudden to tremble.
+Bricks, rubbish, lime, fell on those who were sitting in the windows,
+at the port-holes, on the fragments of the inside cornices, at the
+pigeon-holes, through which they were firing at the besiegers. A
+terrible dust rose in the house of God, and mixed with the smoke began
+to stifle the wearied men. One man could not see another in the
+darkness. Cries of "I am suffocating, I am suffocating!" still
+increased the terror. The noise of balls falling through the windows,
+of leaden lattice falling to the floor, the heat, the exhalations from
+bodies, turned the retreat of God into a hell upon earth. The
+frightened soldiers stood aside from entrances, windows, and
+port-holes. The panic is changed into frenzy. Again terrified voices
+call: "I am suffocating! Air! Water!" Hundreds of voices begin to
+roar,--
+
+"A white flag! a white flag!"
+
+Erskine, who is commanding, seizes the flag with his own hand to
+display it outside. At that moment the entrance bursts, a line of
+stormers rush in like an avalanche of Satans, and a slaughter follows.
+There is sudden silence in the church; there is heard only the
+beast-like panting of the strugglers, the bite of steel on bones, and
+on the stone floor groans, the patter of blood; and at times some voice
+in which there is nothing human cries, "Quarter! Quarter!" After an
+hour's fighting the bell on the tower begins to thunder, and thunders,
+thunders,--to the victory of the Mazovians, to the funeral of the
+Swedes.
+
+The Kazanovski Palace, the cloister, and the bell-tower are captured.
+
+Pyotr Opalinski himself, the voevoda of Podlyasye, appeared in the
+blood-stained throng before the palace on his horse.
+
+"Who came to our aid from the palace?" cried he, wishing to outcry the
+sound and the roar of men.
+
+"He who captured the palace!" said a powerful man, appearing before the
+voevoda,--"I!"
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Zagloba."
+
+"Vivat Zagloba!" bellowed thousands of throats.
+
+But the terrible Zagloba pointed with his stained sabre toward the
+gate,--
+
+"We have not done enough yet. Turn the cannon toward the wall and
+against the gate. Advance! follow me!"
+
+The mad throng rush in the direction of the gate. Meanwhile, oh wonder!
+the fire of the Swedes instead of increasing is growing weak. At the
+same moment some voice unexpected and piercing cries from the top of
+the bell-tower,--
+
+"Charnyetski is in the city! I see our squadrons!"
+
+The Swedish fire was weakening more and more.
+
+"Halt! halt!" commanded the voevoda.
+
+But the throng did not hear him and rushed at random. That moment a
+white flag appeared on the Cracow gate.
+
+In truth, Charnyetski, having forced his way through Dantzig House,
+rushed like a hurricane into the precincts of the fortress; when the
+Danillovich Palace was taken, and when a moment later the Lithuanian
+colors glittered on the walls near the Church of the Holy Ghost,
+Wittemberg saw that further resistance was vain. The Swedes might
+defend themselves yet in the lofty houses of Old and New City; but the
+inhabitants had already taken arms, and the defence would end in a
+terrible slaughter of the Swedes without hope of victory.
+
+The trumpeters began then to sound on the walls and to wave white
+flags. Seeing this, the Polish commanders withheld the storm. General
+Löwenhaupt, attended by a number of colonels, went out through the gate
+of New City, and rushed with all breath to the king.
+
+Yan Kazimir had the city in his hands now; but the kind king wished to
+stop the flow of Christian blood, therefore he settled on the
+conditions offered to Wittemberg at first. The city was to be
+surrendered, with all the booty collected in it. Each Swede was
+permitted to take with him only what he had brought from Sweden. The
+garrison with all the generals and with arms in hand were to march out
+of the city, taking their sick and wounded and the Swedish ladies, of
+whom a number of tens were in Warsaw. To the Poles who were serving
+with the Swedes, amnesty was given, with the idea that surely none were
+serving of their own will. Boguslav Radzivill alone was excepted. To
+this Wittemberg agreed the more readily since the prince was at that
+moment with Douglas on the Bug.
+
+The conditions were signed at once. All the bells in the churches
+announced to the city and the world that the capital had passed again
+into the hands of its rightful monarch. An hour later a multitude of
+the poorest people came out from behind the walls, seeking charity and
+bread in the Polish camp; for all in the city except the Swedes were in
+want of food. The king commanded to give what was possible, and went
+himself to look at the departure of the Swedish garrison.
+
+He was surrounded by church and lay dignitaries, by a suite so splendid
+that it dazzled the people. Nearly all the troops--that is, the troops
+of the kingdom under the hetmans, Charnyetski's division, the
+Lithuanians under Sapyeha, and an immense crowd of general militia,
+together with the camp servants--assembled around his Majesty; or all
+were curious to see those Swedes with whom a few hours before they had
+fought so terribly and bloodily. Polish commissioners were posted at
+all the gates, from the moment of signing the conditions; these
+commissioners were intrusted with the duty of seeing that the Swedes
+bore off no booty. A special commission was occupied with receiving the
+booty in the city itself.
+
+In the van came the cavalry, which was not numerous, especially since
+Boguslav's men were excluded from the right of departure; next came the
+field artillery with light guns; the heavy pieces were given to the
+Poles. The men marched at the sides of the guns with lighted matches.
+Before them waved their unfurled flags, which as a mark of honor were
+lowered before the Polish king, recently a wanderer. The artillerists
+marched proudly, looking straight into the eyes of the Polish knights,
+as if they wished to say, "We shall meet again!" And the Poles wondered
+at their haughty bearing and courage unbent by misfortune. Then
+appeared the wagons with officers and wounded. In the first one lay
+Benedikt Oxenstiern the chancellor, before whom Yan Kazimir had
+commanded the infantry to present arms, wishing to show that he knew
+how to respect virtue even in an enemy.
+
+Then to the sound of drums, and with waving flags, marched the
+quadrangle of unrivalled Swedish infantry, resembling, according to the
+expression of Suba Gazi, moving castles. After them advanced a
+brilliant party of cavalry, armored from foot to head, and with a blue
+banner on which a golden lion was embroidered. These surrounded the
+chief of staff. At sight of them a murmur passed through the crowd,--
+
+"Wittemberg is coming! Wittemberg is coming!"
+
+In fact, the field-marshal himself was approaching; and with him the
+younger Wrangel, Horn, Erskine, Löwenhaupt, Forgell. The eyes of the
+Polish knights were turned with eagerness toward them, and especially
+toward the face of Wittemberg. But his face did not indicate such a
+terrible warrior as he was in reality. It was an aged face, pale,
+emaciated by disease. He had sharp features, and above his mouth a
+thin, small mustache turned up at the ends. The pressed lips and long,
+pointed nose gave him the appearance of an old and grasping miser.
+Dressed in black velvet and with a black hat on his head, he looked
+more like a learned astrologer or a physician; and only the gold chain
+on his neck, the diamond star on his breast, and a field-marshal's
+baton in his hand showed his high office of leader.
+
+Advancing, he cast his eyes unquietly on the king, on the king's staff,
+on the squadrons standing in rank; then his eyes took in the immense
+throngs of the general militia, and an ironical smile came out on his
+pale lips.
+
+But in those throngs a murmur was rising ever greater, and the word
+"Wittemberg! Wittemberg!" was in every mouth.
+
+After a while the murmur changed into deep grumbling, but threatening,
+like the grumbling of the sea before a storm. From instant to instant
+it was silent; and then far away in the distance, in the last ranks,
+was heard some voice in peroration. This voice was answered by others;
+greater numbers answered them; they were heard ever louder and spread
+more widely, like ominous echoes. You would swear that a storm was
+coming from a distance, and that it would burst with all power.
+
+The officers were anxious and began to look at the king with disquiet.
+
+"What is that? What does that mean?" asked Yan Kazimir.
+
+Then the grumbling passed into a roar as terrible as if thunders had
+begun to wrestle with one another in the sky. The immense throng of
+general militia moved violently, precisely like standing grain when a
+hurricane is sweeping around it with giant wing. All at once some tens
+of thousands of sabres were glittering in the sun.
+
+"What is that? What does that mean?" asked the king, repeatedly.
+
+No one could answer him. Then Volodyovski, standing near Sapyeha,
+exclaimed: "That is Pan Zagloba!"
+
+Volodyovski had guessed aright. The moment the conditions of surrender
+were published and had come to the ears of Zagloba, the old noble fell
+into such a terrible rage that speech was taken from him for a while.
+When he came to himself his first act was to spring among the ranks of
+the general militia and fire up the minds of the nobles. They heard him
+willingly; for it seemed to all that for so much bravery, for such
+toil, for so much bloodshed under the walls of Warsaw, they ought to
+have a better vengeance against the enemy. Therefore great circles of
+chaotic and stormy men surrounded Zagloba, who threw live coals by the
+handful on the powder, and with his speech fanned into greater
+proportions the fire which all the more easily seized their heads, that
+they were already smoking from the usual libations consequent on
+victory.
+
+"Gracious gentlemen!" said he, "behold these old hands have toiled
+fifty years for the country; fifty years have they been shedding the
+blood of the enemy at every wall of the Commonwealth; and to-day--I
+have witnesses--they captured the Kazanovski Palace and the
+Bernardines' Church! And when, gracious gentlemen, did the Swedes lose
+heart, when did they agree to capitulate? It was when we turned our
+guns from the Bernardines to the Old City. We have not spared our
+blood, brothers; it has been shed bountifully, and no one has been
+spared but the enemy. But we, brothers, have left our lands without
+masters, our servants without lords, our wives without husbands, our
+children without fathers,--oh, my dear children, what is happening to
+you now?--and we have come here with our naked breasts against cannon.
+And what is our reward for so doing? This is it: Wittemberg goes forth
+free, and besides, they give him honor for the road. The executioner of
+our country departs, the blasphemer of religion departs; the raging
+enemy of the Most Holy Lady, the burner of our houses, the thief of our
+last bit of clothing, the murderer of our wives and children,--oh, my
+children, where are you now?--the disgracer of the clergy and virgins
+consecrated to God! Woe to thee, country! Shame to you, nobles! A new
+agony is awaiting you. Oh, our holy faith! Woe to you, suffering
+churches! weeping to thee and complaint, O Chenstohova! for Wittemberg
+is departing in freedom, and will return soon to press out tears and
+blood, to finish killing those whom he has not yet killed, to burn that
+which he has not yet burned, to put shame on that which he has not yet
+put to shame! Weep, O Poland and Lithuania! Weep, ranks of people, as I
+weep,--an old soldier who, descending to the grave, must look on your
+agony! Woe to thee, Ilion, the city of aged Priam! Woe! woe! woe!"
+
+So spoke Zagloba; and thousands listened to him, and wrath raised the
+hair on the heads of the nobles; but he moved on farther. Again he
+complained, tore his clothing, and laid bare his breast. He entered
+also into the army, which gave a willing ear to his complaints; for, in
+truth, there was a terrible animosity in all hearts against Wittemberg.
+The tumult would have burst out at once; but Zagloba himself restrained
+it, lest, if it burst too early, Wittemberg might save himself somehow;
+but if it broke out when he was leaving the city and would show himself
+to the general militia, they would bear him apart on their sabres
+before any one could see what was done.
+
+And his reckoning was justified. At sight of the tyrant frenzy seized
+the brains of the chaotic and half-drunken nobles, and a terrible storm
+burst forth in the twinkle of an eye. Forty thousand sabres were
+flashing in the sun, forty thousand throats began to bellow,--
+
+"Death to Wittemberg! Give him here! Make mince-meat of him! make
+mince-meat of him!"
+
+To the throngs of nobles were joined throngs more chaotic still and
+made brutal by the recent shedding of blood, the camp servants; even
+the more disciplined regular squadrons began to murmur fiercely against
+the oppressor, and the storm began to fly with rage against the Swedish
+staff.
+
+At the first moment all lost their heads, though all understood what
+the matter was. "What is to be done?" cried voices near the king. "Oh,
+merciful Jesus!" "Rescue! defend! It is a shame not to observe the
+conditions!"
+
+Enraged crowds rush in among the squadrons, press upon them; the
+squadrons are confused, cannot keep their places. Around them are
+sabres, sabres, and sabres; under the sabres are inflamed faces,
+threatening eyes, howling mouths; uproar, noise, wild cries grow with
+amazing rapidity. In front are rushing camp servants, camp followers,
+and every kind of army rabble, more like beasts or devils than men.
+
+Wittemberg understood what was happening. His face grew pale as a
+sheet; sweat, abundant and cold, covered his forehead in a moment; and,
+oh wonder! that field-marshal who hitherto was ready to threaten the
+whole world, that conqueror of so many armies, that captor of so many
+cities, that old soldier was then so terribly frightened at the howling
+mass that presence of mind left him utterly. He trembled in his whole
+body, he dropped his hands and groaned, spittle began to flow from his
+mouth to the golden chain, and the field-marshal's baton dropped from
+his hand. Meanwhile the terrible throng was coming nearer and nearer;
+ghastly forms were surrounding already the hapless generals; a moment
+more, they would bear them apart on sabres, so that not a fragment of
+them would remain.
+
+Other Swedish generals drew their sabres, wishing to die weapon in
+hand, as beseemed knights; but the aged oppressor grew weak altogether,
+and half closed his eyes.
+
+At this moment Volodyovski, with his men, sprang to the rescue of the
+staff. Going wedge-form on a gallop, he split the mob as a ship moving
+with all sails bears apart the towering waves of the sea. The cry of
+the trampled rabble was mingled with the shouts of the Lauda squadron;
+but the horsemen reached the staff first, and surrounded it in the
+twinkle of an eye with a wall of horses, a wall of their own breasts
+and sabres.
+
+"To the king!" cried the little knight.
+
+They moved on. The throng surrounded them from every side, ran along
+the flanks and the rear, brandished sabres and clubs, howled more and
+more terribly; but the Lauda men pushed forward, thrusting out their
+sabres from moment to moment at the sides, as a strong stag thrusts
+with his antlers when surrounded by wolves.
+
+Then Voynillovich sprang to the aid of Volodyovski; after him
+Vilchkovski with a regiment of the king, then Prince Polubinski; and
+all together, defending themselves unceasingly, conducted the staff to
+the presence of Yan Kazimir.
+
+The tumult increased instead of diminishing. It seemed, after a time,
+that the excited rabble would try to seize the Swedish generals without
+regard to the king. Wittemberg recovered; but fear did not leave him in
+the least. He sprang from his horse then; and as a hare pressed by dogs
+or wolves takes refuge under a wagon in motion, so did he, in spite of
+his gout, throw himself at the feet of Yan Kazimir.
+
+Then he dropped on his knees, and seizing the king's stirrup, began to
+cry: "Save me, Gracious Lord, save me! I have your royal word; the
+agreement is signed. Save me, save me! Have mercy on us! Do not let
+them murder me!"
+
+The king, at sight of such abasement and such shame turned away his
+eyes with aversion and said,--
+
+"Field-marshal, pray be calm."
+
+But he had a troubled face himself, for he knew not what to do. Around
+them were gathering crowds ever greater, and approaching with more
+persistence. It is true that the squadrons stood as if for battle, and
+Zamoyski's infantry had formed a terrible quadrangle round about; but
+what was to be the end of it all?
+
+The king looked at Charnyetski; but Charnyetski only twisted his beard
+with rage, his soul was storming with such anger against the
+disobedience of the general militia. Then the chancellor, Korytsinski,
+said,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, we must keep the agreement."
+
+"We must!" replied the king.
+
+Wittemberg, who was looking carefully into their eyes, breathed more
+freely.
+
+"Gracious Lord," said he, "I believe in your words as in God."
+
+To which Pototski, the old hetman of the kingdom, cried,--
+
+"And why have you broken so many oaths, so many agreements, so many
+terms of surrender? With what any man wars, from that will he perish.
+Why did you seize, in spite of the terms of capitulation, the king's
+regiment commanded by Wolf?"
+
+"Miller did that, not I," answered Wittemberg.
+
+The hetman looked at him with disdain; then turned to the king,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, I do not say this to incite your Royal Grace to break
+agreements also, for let perfidy be on their side alone."
+
+"What is to be done?" asked the king. "If we send them to Prussia,
+fifty thousand nobles will follow and cut them to pieces before they
+reach Pultusk, unless we give them the whole regular army as a guard,
+and we cannot do that. Hear, your Royal Grace, how the militia are
+howling! In truth, there is a well-founded animosity against
+Wittemberg. It is needful first to safeguard his person, and then to
+send all away when the fire has cooled down."
+
+"There is no other way!" said Korytsinski.
+
+"But where are they to be kept? We cannot keep them here; for here,
+devil take it! civil war would break out," said the voevoda of Rus.
+
+Now Sobiepan Zamoyski appeared, and pouting his lips greatly, said with
+his customary spirit,--
+
+"Well, Gracious Lord, give them to me at Zamost; let them sit there
+till calm comes. I will defend Wittemberg there from the nobles. Let
+them try to get him from me!"
+
+"But on the road will your worthiness defend the field-marshal?" asked
+the chancellor.
+
+"I can depend on my servants yet. Or have I not infantry and cannon?
+Let any one take him from Zamoyski! We shall see."
+
+Here he put his hands on his hips, struck his thighs, and bent from one
+side of the saddle to the other.
+
+"There is no other way," said the chancellor.
+
+"I see no other," added Lantskoronski.
+
+"Then take them," said the king to Zamoyski.
+
+But Wittemberg, seeing that his life was threatened no longer,
+considered it proper to protest.
+
+"We did not expect this!" said he.
+
+"Well, we do not detain you; the road is open," said Pototski, pointing
+to the distance with his hand.
+
+Wittemberg was silent
+
+Meanwhile the chancellor sent a number of officers to declare to the
+nobles that Wittemberg would not depart in freedom, but would be sent
+to Zamost. The tumult, it is true, was not allayed at once; still the
+news had a soothing effect. Before night fell attention was turned in
+another direction. The troops began to enter the city, and the sight of
+the recovered capital filled all minds with the delight of triumph.
+
+The king rejoiced; still the thought that he was unable to observe the
+conditions of the agreement troubled him not a little, as well as the
+endless disobedience of the general militia.
+
+Charnyetski was chewing his anger. "With such troops one can never be
+sure of to-morrow," said he to the king. "Sometimes they fight badly,
+sometimes heroically, all from impulse; and at any outbreak rebellion
+is ready.
+
+"God grant them not to disperse," said the king, "for they are needed
+yet, and they think that they have finished everything."
+
+"The man who caused that outbreak should be torn asunder with horses,
+without regard to the services which he has rendered," continued
+Charnyetski.
+
+The strictest orders were given to search for Zagloba, for it was a
+secret to no man that he had raised the storm; but Zagloba had as it
+were dropped into water. They searched for him in the tents, in the
+tabor, even among the Tartars, all in vain. Tyzenhauz even said that
+the king, always kind and gracious, wished from his whole soul that
+they might not find him, and even undertook a nine days' devotion to
+that effect.
+
+But a week later, after some dinner when the heart of the monarch was
+big with joy, the following words were heard from the mouth of Yan
+Kazimir,--
+
+"Announce that Pan Zagloba is not to hide himself longer, for we are
+longing for his jests."
+
+When Charnyetski was horrified at this, the king said,--
+
+"Whoso in this Commonwealth should have justice without mercy in his
+heart would be forced to carry an axe in his bosom, and not a heart.
+Faults come easier here than anywhere, but in no land does repentance
+follow so quickly."
+
+Saying this, the king had Babinich more in mind than Zagloba; and he
+was thinking of Babinich because the young man had bowed down to the
+king's feet the day before with a petition that he would not hinder him
+from going to Lithuania. He said that he wished to freshen the war
+there, and attack the Swedes, as he had once attacked Hovanski. And as
+the king intended to send there a soldier experienced in partisan
+warfare, he permitted Babinich to go, gave him the means, blessed him,
+and whispered some wish in his ear, after which the young knight fell
+his whole length at his feet.
+
+Then, without loitering, Kmita moved briskly toward the east. Suoa
+Gazi, captured by a considerable present, permitted him to take five
+hundred fresh Dobrudja Tartars; fifteen hundred other good men marched
+with him,--a force with which it was possible to begin something. And
+the young man's head was fired with a desire for battle and warlike
+achievements. The hope of glory smiled on him; he heard already how all
+Lithuania was repeating his name with pride and wonder. He heard
+especially how one beloved mouth repeated it, and his soul gave him
+wings.
+
+And there was another reason why he rode forward so briskly. Wherever
+he appeared he was the first to announce the glad tidings: "The Swede
+is defeated, and Warsaw is taken!" Wherever his horse's hoofs sounded,
+the whole neighborhood rang with these words; the people along the
+roads greeted him with weeping; they rang bells in the church-towers
+and sang _Te Deum Laudamus!_ When he rode through the forest the dark
+pines, when through the fields the golden grain, rocked by the wind,
+seemed to repeat and sound joyously,--
+
+"The Swede is defeated! Warsaw is taken! Warsaw is taken!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+Though Kettling was near the person of Prince Boguslav, he did not know
+all, and could not tell of all that was done in Taurogi, for he was
+blinded himself by love for Panna Billevich.
+
+Boguslav had also another confidant, Pan Sakovich, the starosta of
+Oshmiana; and he alone knew how deeply the prince was involved by love
+for his charming captive, and what means he was using to gain her heart
+and her person.
+
+That love was merely a fierce desire, for Boguslav's heart was not
+capable of other feelings; but the desire was so violent that that
+experienced cavalier lost his head. And often in the evening, when
+alone with the starosta, he seized his own hair and cried,--
+
+"I am burning, Sakovich, I am burning!"
+
+Sakovich found means at once.
+
+"Whoso wishes to take honey must drug the bees," said he. "And has your
+physician few of such intoxicating herbs? Give him the word to-day, and
+to-morrow the affair will be over."
+
+But the prince did not like such a method, and that for various
+reasons. First, on a time, old Heraclius Billevich, the grandfather of
+Olenka, appeared to him in a dream, and standing at his pillow, looked
+with threatening eyes till the first crowing of the cocks. Boguslav
+remembered the dream; for that knight, without fear, was superstitious,
+dreaded charms, dream warnings, and supernatural apparitions so much
+that a shiver passed through him at thought of the terror and the shape
+in which that phantom might come a second time should he follow
+Sakovich's counsel. The starosta of Oshmiana himself, who did not
+believe greatly in God, but who, like the prince, dreaded dreams and
+enchantments, staggered somewhat in giving advice.
+
+The second reason of Boguslav's delay was that the "Wallachian woman"
+was living with her step-daughter in Taurogi. They called Princess
+Radzivill, the wife of Yanush, "the Wallachian woman." That lady,
+coming from a country in which her sex have rather free manners, was
+not, in truth, over-stern; nay, maybe she understood too well the
+amusements of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting; still she could not
+endure that at her side a man, the coming husband of her step-daughter,
+should do a deed calling to heaven for vengeance.
+
+But even later, when through the persuasions of Sakovich, and with the
+consent of the prince voevoda of Vilna, "the Wallachian woman" went
+with Yanush's daughter to Courland, Boguslav did not dare to do the
+deed. He feared the terrible outcry which would rise throughout all
+Lithuania. The Billeviches were wealthy people; they would not fail to
+crush him with a prosecution. The law punished such deeds with loss of
+property, honor, and life.
+
+The Radzivills, it is true, were powerful, and might trample on law;
+but when victory in war was inclining to the side of Yan Kazimir, the
+young prince might fall into serious difficulties, in which he would
+lack power, friends, and henchmen. And just then it was hard to foresee
+how the war would end. Forces were coming every day to Yan Kazimir; the
+power of Karl Gustav was decreasing absolutely by the loss of men and
+the exhaustion of money.
+
+Prince Boguslav, an impulsive but calculating man, reckoned with the
+position. His desires tormented him with fire, his reason advised
+restraint, superstitious fear bridled the outbursts of his blood. At
+the same time disease fell upon him; great and urgent questions rose,
+involving frequently the fate of the whole war; and all these causes
+rent the soul of the prince till he was mortally wearied.
+
+Still, it is unknown how the struggle might have ended had it not been
+for Boguslav's self-love. He was a man of immense self-esteem. He
+counted himself an unequalled statesman, a great leader, a great
+knight, and an invincible captor of the hearts of women. Was he to use
+force or intoxicating drugs,--he who carried around with him a bound
+casket filled with love-letters from various foreign ladies of
+celebrity? Were his wealth, his titles, his power almost royal, his
+great name, his beauty and courtliness not equal to the conquest of one
+timid noble woman?
+
+Besides, how much greater the triumph, how much greater the delight,
+when the resistance of the maiden drops, when she herself willingly,
+and with a heart beating like that of a seized bird, with burning face
+and eyes veiled with mist, falls into those arms which are stretched
+toward her!
+
+A quiver passed through Boguslav at thought of that moment, and he
+desired it as greatly as he did Olenka herself. He hoped always that
+that moment would come. He writhed, he was impatient, he deceived
+himself. At one time it seemed to him nearer, at another farther; and
+then he cried that he was burning. But he did not cease to work.
+
+To begin with, he surrounded the maiden with minute care, so that she
+must be thankful to him and think that he is kind; for he understood
+that the feeling of gratitude and friendship is that mild and warm
+flame which only needs to be fanned and it will turn into a great fire.
+Their frequent intercourse was to bring this about the more surely;
+hence Boguslav showed no insistence, not wishing to chill confidence or
+frighten it away.
+
+At the same time every look, every touch of the hand, every word was
+calculated; nothing passed in vain, everything was the drop wearing the
+stone. All that he did for Olenka might be interpreted as the
+hospitality of a host, that innocent friendly attraction which one
+person feels for another; but still it was done to create love. The
+boundary was purposely blurred and indefinite, so that to pass it would
+become easy in time; and thus the maiden might the more lightly wander
+into those labyrinths where each form might mean something or nothing.
+That play did not agree, it is true, with the native impulsiveness of
+Boguslav. Still he restrained himself, for he judged that that alone
+would lead to the object; and at the same time he found in it such
+satisfaction as the spider finds when weaving his web, the traitorous
+bird-catcher when spreading his net, or the hunter tracking patiently
+and with endurance the wild beast. His own penetration, subtlety, and
+quickness, developed by life at the French court, amused the prince.
+
+He entertained Panna Aleksandra as if she were a sovereign princess;
+but in such a way that again it was not easy for her to divine whether
+this was done exclusively for her, or whether it flowed from his innate
+and acquired politeness toward the fair sex in general. It is true that
+he made her the chief person in all the entertainments, plays,
+cavalcades, and hunting expeditious; but this came somewhat from the
+nature of things. After the departure of Yanush's princess to Courland,
+she was really first among the ladies at Taurogi. A multitude of noble
+ladies from all Jmud had taken refuge in Taurogi, as in a place lying
+near the boundary, so as to be protected by the Swedes under the
+guardianship of the prince; but they recognized Panna Billevich as
+first among all, since she was the daughter of the most noted family.
+And while the whole Commonwealth was swimming in blood, there was no
+end to entertainments. You would have said that the king's court with
+all the courtiers and ladies had gone to the country for leisure and
+entertainment.
+
+Boguslav ruled as an absolute monarch in Taurogi and in all adjoining
+Electoral Prussia, in which he was frequently a guest; therefore
+everything was at his orders. Towns furnished money and troops on his
+notes; the Prussian nobles came gladly, in carriages and on horseback,
+to his feasts, hunts, and tournaments. Boguslav even renewed, in honor
+of his lady, the conflicts of knights within barriers, which were
+already in disuse.
+
+On a certain occasion he took active part in them; dressed in silver
+armor, and girded with a silver sash which Panna Billevich had to bind
+on him, he hurled from their horses four of the first knights of
+Prussia, Kettling the fifth, and Sakovich the sixth, though the last
+had such gigantic strength that he stopped carriages in their course by
+seizing a hind wheel. And what enthusiasm rose in the crowd of
+spectators when afterward the silver-clad knight, kneeling before his
+lady, took from her hand the crown of victory! Shouts rang like the
+thunder of cannon, handkerchiefs were waving, flags were lowered; but
+he raised his visor and looked into her blushing face with his
+beautiful eyes, pressing at the same time her hand to his lips.
+
+Another time when in the enclosure a raging bear was fighting with dogs
+and had torn them all one after another, the prince, dressed only in
+light Spanish costume, sprang in with his spear, and pierced not only
+the savage beast, but also a soldier, who, seeing the moment of danger
+had sprung to his aid.
+
+Panna Aleksandra, the grand-daughter of an old soldier, reared in
+traditions of blood, war, and reverence for knightly superiority, could
+not restrain at sight of these deeds her wonder, and even homage; for
+she had been taught from childhood to esteem bravery as almost the
+highest quality of man.
+
+Meanwhile the prince gave daily proofs of daring almost beyond human,
+and always in honor of her. The assembled guests in their praises and
+enthusiasm for the prince, which were so great that even a deity might
+be satisfied with them, were forced involuntarily to connect in their
+conversations the name of Panna Billevich with the name of Boguslav. He
+was silent, but with his eyes he told her what he did not dare to utter
+with his lips. The spell surrounded her perfectly.
+
+Everything was so combined as to bring them together, to connect them,
+and at the same time to separate them from the throng of other people.
+It was difficult for any one to mention him without mentioning her.
+Into the thoughts of Olenka herself Boguslav was thrust with an
+irresistible force. Every moment of the day was so arranged as to lend
+power to the spell.
+
+In the evening, after amusements, the chambers were lighted by many
+colored lamps casting mysterious rays, as if from the land of splendid
+dreams transferred to reality; intoxicating eastern odors filled the
+air; the low sounds of invisible harps, lutes, and other instruments
+fondled the hearing; and in the midst of these odors, lights, sounds,
+he moved in the glory of universal homage, like an enchanted king's son
+in a myth-tale, beautiful, knightly, sun-bright from jewels, and as
+deeply in love as a shepherd.
+
+What maiden could resist these spells, what virtue would not grow faint
+amid such allurements? But to avoid the prince there was no possibility
+for one living with him under the same roof and enjoying his
+hospitality, which, though given perforce, was still dispensed with
+sincerity and in real lordly fashion. Besides, Olenka had gone without
+unwillingness to Taurogi, for she wished to be far from hideous
+Kyedani, as she preferred to Yanush, an open traitor, the knightly
+Boguslav, who feigned love for the deserted king and the country. Hence
+in the beginning of her visit at Taurogi she was full of friendly
+feeling for the young prince; and seeing soon how far he was striving
+for her friendship, she used her influence more than once to do good to
+people.
+
+During the third month of her stay a certain artillery officer, a
+friend of Kettling, was condemned by the prince to be shot; Panna
+Billevich, hearing of this from the young Scot, interceded for him.
+
+"A divinity may command, not implore," said Boguslav to her; and
+tearing the sentence of death he threw it at her feet. "Ordain,
+command! I will burn Taurogi, if at that price I can call forth on your
+face even a smile. I ask no other reward save this, that you be joyous
+and forget that which once pained you."
+
+She could not be joyous, having pain in her heart, pity and an
+unutterable contempt for the man whom she had loved with first love,
+and who at that time was in her eyes a worse criminal than a parricide.
+That Kmita, promising to sell the king for gold, as Judas sold Christ,
+became fouler and more repulsive in her eyes, till in the course of
+time he was turned into a human monster, a grief and reproach to her.
+She could not forgive herself for having loved him, and at the same
+time she could not forget him while she hated.
+
+In view of these feelings it was indeed difficult for her even to feign
+gladness; but still she had to be thankful to the prince even for this,
+that he would not put his hand to Kmita's crime, and for all that he
+had done for her. It was a wonder to her that the prince, such a knight
+and so full of noble feeling, did not hasten to the rescue of the
+country, since he had not consented to the intrigues of Yanush; but she
+judged that such a statesman knew what he was doing, and was forced by
+a policy which she, with her simple maiden's mind, could not sound.
+Boguslav told her also, explaining his frequent journeys to Prussian
+Tyltsa, which was near by, that his strength was failing him from
+overwork; that he was conducting negotiations between Yan Kazimir, Karl
+Gustav, and the elector, and that he hoped to bring the country out of
+difficulty.
+
+"Not for rewards, not for offices, do I do this," said he to her. "I
+will sacrifice my cousin Yanush, who was to me a father, for I know not
+whether I shall be able to implore his life for him from the animosity
+of Queen Ludvika; but I will do what my conscience and love for the
+dear mother, my country, demands."
+
+When he spoke thus with sadness on his delicate face, with eyes turned
+to the ceiling, he seemed to her as lofty as those heroes of antiquity
+of which Heraclius Billevich had told her, and of whom he himself had
+read in Cornelius Nepos. And the heart swelled within her with
+admiration and homage. By degrees it went so far that when thoughts of
+the hated Andrei Kmita had tortured her too much, she thought of
+Boguslav to cure and strengthen herself. Kmita became for her a
+terrible and gloomy darkness; Boguslav, light in which every troubled
+soul would gladly bathe itself. The sword-bearer and Panna Kulvyets,
+whom they had brought also from Vodokty, pushed Olenka still more along
+that incline by singing hymns of praise from morning till night in
+honor of Boguslav. The sword-bearer and the aunt wearied the prince, it
+is true, so that he had been thinking how to get rid of them politely;
+but he won them to himself, especially the sword-bearer, who though at
+first displeased and even enraged, still could not fight against the
+friendship and favors of Boguslav.
+
+If Boguslav had been merely a noble of noted stock, but not Radzivill,
+nor a prince, not a magnate invested with almost the majesty of a
+monarch, perhaps Panna Billevich might have loved him for life and
+death, in spite of the will of the old colonel, which left her a choice
+only between the cloister and Kmita. But she was a stern lady for her
+own self, and a very just soul; therefore she did not even admit to her
+head a dream of anything save gratitude and admiration so far as the
+prince was concerned.
+
+Her family was not so great that she could become the wife of
+Radzivill, and was too great for her to become his mistress; she looked
+on him, therefore, as she would on the king, were she at the king's
+court. In vain did Boguslav endeavor to give her other thoughts; in
+vain did he, forgetting himself in love, partly from calculation,
+partly from enthusiasm, repeat what he had said the first evening in
+Kyedani,--that the Radzivills had married ordinary noble women more
+than once; these thoughts did not cling to her, as water does not cling
+to the breast of a swan; and she remained as she had been, thankful,
+friendly, homage-giving, seeking consolation in the thought of a hero,
+but undisturbed in heart.
+
+He could not catch her through her feelings, though often it seemed to
+him that he was near his object. But he saw himself with shame and
+internal anger that he was not so daring with her as he had been with
+the first ladies in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Perhaps this was
+because he was really in love, and perhaps because in that lady, in her
+face, in her dark brows and stern eyes, there was that which enforced
+respect. Kmita was the one and only man who in his time did not submit
+to that influence and paid no regard, prepared boldly to kiss those
+proud eyes and stern lips; but Kmita was her betrothed.
+
+All other cavaliers, beginning with Pan Volodyovski and ending with the
+very vulgar Prussian nobles in Taurogi and the prince himself, were
+less confident with her than with other ladies in the same condition.
+Impulsiveness carried away the prince; but when once in a carriage he
+pressed against her feet, whispering at the same time, "Fear not!" she
+answered that she did fear to regret the confidence reposed in him,
+Boguslav was confused, and returned to his former method of conquering
+her heart by degrees.
+
+But his patience was becoming exhausted. Gradually he began to forget
+the terrible dream, he began to think more frequently of what Sakovich
+had counselled, and that the Billeviches would all perish in the war;
+his desires tormented him more powerfully, when a certain event changed
+completely the course of affairs in Taurogi.
+
+One day news came like a thunderbolt that Tykotsin was taken by Pan
+Sapyeha, and that Prince Yanush had lost his life in the ruins of the
+castle.
+
+Everything began to seethe in Taurogi. Boguslav himself sprang up and
+went off that same day to Königsberg, where he was to see the ministers
+of the King of Sweden and the elector.
+
+His stay there exceeded his original plan. Meanwhile bodies of Prussian
+and even of Swedish troops were assembling at Taurogi. Men began to
+speak of an expedition against Sapyeha. The naked truth was coming to
+the surface more and more clearly, that Boguslav was a partisan of the
+Swedes, as well as his cousin Yanush.
+
+It happened that at the same time the sword-bearer of Rossyeni received
+news of the burning of his native Billeviche by the troops of
+Löwenhaupt, who, after defeating the insurgents in Jmud, at Shavli,
+ravaged the whole country with fire and sword.
+
+The old noble sprang up and set out, wishing to see the damage with his
+own eyes; and Prince Boguslav did not detain him, but sent him off
+willingly, adding at parting,--
+
+"Now you will understand why I brought you to Taurogi; for, speaking
+plainly, you owe your life to me."
+
+Olenka remained alone with Panna Kulvyets. They shut themselves up in
+their own chambers at once, and received no one but a few women. When
+these women brought tidings that the prince was preparing an expedition
+against the Poles, Olenka would not believe them at first: but wishing
+to be certain, she gave orders to summon Kettling, for she knew that
+from her the young Scot would hide nothing.
+
+He appeared before her at once, happy that he was called, that for a
+time he could speak with her who had taken possession of his soul.
+
+"Cavalier," said Panna Billevich, "so many reports are circulating
+about Taurogi that we are wandering as in a forest. Some say that the
+prince voevoda died a natural death; others that he was borne apart on
+sabres. What was the cause of his death?"
+
+Kettling hesitated for a while. It was evident that he was struggling
+with innate indecision. At last he blushed greatly, and said,--
+
+"You are the cause of the fall and the death of Prince Yanush."
+
+"I?" asked Panna Billevich, with amazement.
+
+"You; for our prince chose to remain in Taurogi rather than go to
+relieve his cousin. He forgot everything near you, my lady."
+
+Now she blushed in her turn like a purple rose, and a moment of silence
+followed.
+
+The Scot stood, hat in hand, with downcast eyes, his head bent, in a
+posture full of homage and respect. At last he raised his head, shook
+his bright curls, and said,--
+
+"My lady, if these words have offended you, let me kneel down and beg
+forgiveness."
+
+"Do not," said she, quickly, seeing that the young knight was bending
+his knees already. "I know that what you have said was said with a
+clean heart; for I have long noticed that you wish me well."
+
+The officer raised his blue eyes, and putting his hand on his heart,
+with a voice as low as the whisper of a breeze and as sad as a sigh,
+replied,--
+
+"Oh, my lady! my lady!"
+
+At this moment he was frightened lest he had said too much, and again
+he bent his head toward his bosom, and took the posture of a courtier
+who is listening to the commands of a queen.
+
+"I am here among strangers, without a guardian," said Olenka; "and
+though I shall be able to watch over myself alone, and God will
+preserve me from harm, still I need the aid of men also. Do you wish to
+be my brother? Do you wish to warn me in need, so that I may know what
+to do, and avoid every snare?"
+
+As she said this, she extended her hand; but he kneeled, in spite of
+her prohibition, and kissed the tips of her fingers.
+
+"Tell me," said she, "what is happening around me."
+
+"The prince loves you," said Kettling. "Have you not seen that?"
+
+She covered her face with her hands. "I saw and I did not see. At times
+it seemed to me that he was only very kind."
+
+"Kind!" repeated Kettling, like an echo.
+
+"But when it came into my head that I, unfortunate woman, might rouse
+in him unhappy wishes, I quieted myself with this, that no danger
+threatened me from him. I was thankful to him for what he had done,
+though God sees that I did not look for new kindnesses, since I feared
+those he had already shown me."
+
+Kettling breathed more freely.
+
+"May I speak boldly?" asked he.
+
+"Speak."
+
+"The prince has only two confidants,--Pan Sakovich and Patterson; but
+Patterson is very friendly to me, for we come from the same country,
+and he carried me in his arms. What I know, I know from him. The prince
+loves you; desires are burning in him as pitch in a pine torch. All
+things done here--all these feasts, hunts, tournaments, through which,
+thanks to the princess hand, blood is flowing from my mouth yet--were
+arranged for you. The prince loves you, my lady, to distraction, but
+with an impure fire; for he wishes to disgrace, not to marry you. For
+though he could not find a worthier, even if he were king of the whole
+world, not merely a prince, still he thinks of another,--the princess,
+Yanush's daughter, and her fortune are predestined to him. I learned
+this from Patterson; and the great God, whose gospel I take here to
+witness, knows that I speak the pure truth. Do not believe the prince,
+do not trust his kindness, do not feel safe in his moderation. Watch,
+guard yourself; for they are plotting treason against you here at every
+step. The breath is stopping in my breast from what Patterson has told
+me. There is not a criminal in the world equal to Sakovich,--I cannot
+speak of him, I cannot. Were it not for the oath which I have taken to
+guard the prince, this hand and this sword would free you from
+continual danger. But I would slay Sakovich first. This is true. Him
+first, before all men,--even before those who in my own country shed my
+father's blood, took my fortune, made me a wanderer and a hireling."
+
+Here Kettling trembled from emotion. For a while he merely pressed the
+hilt of his sword with his hand, not being able to utter a word; then
+he recovered, and in one breath told what methods Sakovich had
+suggested to the prince.
+
+Panna Aleksandra, to his great surprise, bore herself calmly enough
+while looking at the threatening precipice before her; only her face
+grew pale and became still more serious. Unbending resolution was
+reflected in her stern look.
+
+"I shall be able to save myself," said she, "so help me God and the
+holy cross!"
+
+"The prince has not consented hitherto to follow Sakovich's counsel,"
+added Kettling. "But when he sees that the road he has chosen leads to
+nothing--" and he began to tell the reasons which restrained Boguslav.
+
+The lady listened with frowning brow, but not with superfluous
+attention, for she had already begun to ponder on means to wrest
+herself free of this terrible guardianship. But there was not a place
+in the whole country unsprinkled with blood, and plans of flight did
+not seem to her clear; hence she preferred not to speak of them.
+
+"Cavalier," said she at last, "answer me one question. Is Prince
+Boguslav on the side of the King of Sweden or the King of Poland?"
+
+"It is a secret to none of us," answered the young officer, "that the
+prince wishes the division of this Commonwealth, so as to make of
+Lithuania an independent principality for himself."
+
+Here Kettling was silent, and you would have thought that his mind was
+following involuntarily the thoughts of Olenka; for after a while he
+added,--
+
+"The elector and the Swedes are at the service of the prince; and since
+they will occupy the Commonwealth, there is no place in which to hide
+from him."
+
+Olenka made no answer.
+
+The young man waited awhile longer, to learn if she would ask him other
+questions; but when she was silent, occupied with her own thoughts, he
+felt that it was not proper for him to interrupt her; therefore he bent
+double in a parting bow, sweeping the floor with the feathers in his
+cap.
+
+"I thank you, cavalier," said Olenka, extending her hand to him.
+
+The officer, without turning, withdrew toward the door. All at once
+there appeared on her face a slight flush. She hesitated a moment, and
+then said,--
+
+"One word, cavalier."
+
+"Every word is for me a favor."
+
+"Did you know Pan Andrei Kmita?"
+
+"I made his acquaintance, my lady, in Kyedani. I saw him the last time
+in Pilvishki, when we were marching hither from Podlyasye."
+
+"Is what the prince says true, that Pan Kmita offered to do violence to
+the person of the King of Poland?"
+
+"I know not, my lady. It is known to me that they took counsel together
+in Pilvishki; then the prince went with Pan Kmita to the forest, and it
+was so long before he returned that Patterson was alarmed and sent
+troops to meet him. I led those troops. We met the prince. I saw that
+he was greatly changed, as if strong emotion had passed through his
+soul. He was talking to himself, which never happens to him. I heard
+how he said: 'The devil would have undertaken that--' I know nothing
+more. But later, when the prince mentioned what Kmita offered, I
+thought, 'If this was it, it must be true.'"
+
+Panna Billevich pressed her lips together.
+
+"I thank you," said she. And after a while she was alone.
+
+The thought of flight mastered her thoroughly. She determined at any
+price to tear herself from those infamous places, and from the power of
+that treacherous prince. But where was she to find refuge? The villages
+and towns were in Swedish hands, the cloisters were ruined, the castles
+levelled with the earth; the whole country was swarming with soldiers,
+and with worse than soldiers,--with fugitives from the army, robbers,
+all kinds of ruffians. What fate could be waiting for a maiden cast as
+a prey to that storm? Who would go with her? Her aunt Kulvyets, her
+uncle, and a few of his servants. Whose power would protect her?
+Kettling would go, perhaps; maybe a handful of faithful soldiers and
+friends might even be found who would accompany him. But as Kettling
+had fallen in love with her beyond question, then how was she to incur
+a debt of gratitude to him, which she would have to pay afterward with
+a great price? Finally, what right had she to close the career of that
+young man, scarcely more than a youth, and expose it to pursuit, to
+persecution, to ruin, if she could not offer him anything in return
+save friendship? Therefore, she asked herself, what was she to do,
+whither was she to flee, since here and there destruction threatened
+her, here and there disgrace?
+
+In such a struggle of soul she began to pray ardently; and more
+especially did she repeat one prayer with earnestness to which the old
+colonel had constant recourse in evil times, beginning with the
+words,--
+
+
+           "God saved Thee with Thy Infant
+              From the malice of Herod;
+            In Egypt he straightened the road
+              For Thy safe passage--"
+
+
+At this moment a great whirlwind rose, and the trees in the garden
+began to make a tremendous noise. All at once the praying lady
+remembered the wilderness on the borders of which she had grown up from
+infancy; and the thought that in the wilderness she would find the only
+safe refuge flew through her head like lightning.
+
+Then Olenka breathed deeply, for she had found at last what she had
+been seeking. To Zyelonka, to Rogovsk! There the enemy would not go,
+the ruffian would not seek booty. There a man of the place, if he
+forgot himself, might go astray and wander till death; what must it be
+to a stranger not knowing the road? There the Domasheviches, the Smoky
+Stakyans; and if they are gone, if they have followed Pan Volodyovski,
+it is possible to go by those forests far beyond and seek quiet in
+other wildernesses.
+
+The remembrance of Pan Volodyovski rejoiced Olenka. Oh, if she had such
+a protector! He was a genuine soldier; his was a sabre under which she
+might take refuge from Kmita and the Radzivills themselves. Now it
+occurred to her that he was the man who had advised, when he caught
+Kmita in Billeviche, to seek safety in the Byalovyej wilderness.
+
+And he spoke wisely! Rogovsk and Zyelonka are too near the Radzivills,
+and near Byalovyej stands that Sapyeha who rubbed from the face of the
+earth the most terrible Radzivill.
+
+To Byalovyej then, to Byalovyej, even to-day, to-morrow! Only let her
+uncle come, she would not delay.
+
+The dark depths of Byalovyej will protect her, and afterward, when the
+storm passes, the cloister. There only can be real peace and
+forgetfulness of all men, of all pain, sorrow, and contempt.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+The sword-bearer of Rossyeni returned a few days later. In spite of the
+safe-conduct of Boguslav, he went only to Rossyeni; to Billeviche
+itself he had no reason to go, for it was no longer in the world. The
+house, the buildings, the village, everything was burned to the ground
+in the last battle, which Father Strashevich, a Jesuit, had fought at
+the head of his own detachment against the Swedish captain Rossa. The
+inhabitants were in the forests or in armed parties. Instead of rich
+villages there remained only land and water.
+
+The roads were filled with "ravagers,"--that is, fugitives from various
+armies, who, going in considerable groups, were busied with robbery, so
+that even small parties of soldiers were not safe from them. The
+sword-bearer then had not even been able to convince himself whether
+the barrels filled with plate and money and buried in the garden were
+safe, and he returned to Taurogi, very angry and peevish, with a
+terrible animosity in his heart against the destroyers.
+
+He had barely put foot out of his carriage, when Olenka hurried him to
+her own room, and recounted all that Hassling-Kettling had told her.
+
+The old soldier shivered at the recital, since, not having children of
+his own, he loved the maiden as his daughter. For a while he did
+nothing but grasp his sword-hilt, repeating, "Strike, who has courage!"
+At last he caught himself by the head, and began to say,--
+
+"_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_ (It is my fault, my greatest fault); for
+at times it came into my head, and this and that man whispered that
+that hell-dweller was melting from love of you, and I said nothing, was
+even proud, thinking: 'Well, he will marry! We are relatives of the
+Gosyevskis, of the Tyzenhauzes; why should we not be relatives of the
+Radzivills?' For pride, God is punishing me. The traitor prepared a
+respectable relationship. That's the kind of relative he wanted to be.
+I would he were killed! But wait! this hand and this sabre will moulder
+first."
+
+"We must think of escape," said Olenka.
+
+"Well, give your plans of escape."
+
+The sword-bearer, having finished panting, listened carefully; at last
+he said,--
+
+"Better collect my subjects and form a party! I will attack the Swedes
+as Kmita did Hovanski. You will be safer in the forest and in the field
+than in the court of a traitor and a heretic."
+
+"That is well," answered the lady.
+
+"Not only will I not oppose," said the sword-bearer, "but I will say
+the sooner the better. And I lack neither subjects nor scythes. They
+burned my residence, never mind that! I will assemble peasants from
+other villages. All the Billeviches in the field will join us. We will
+show you relationship, young man,--we will show what it is to attack
+the Billevich honor. You are a Radzivill! What of that? There are no
+hetmans in the Billevich family, but there are also no traitors! We
+shall see whom all Jmud will follow! We will put you in Byalovyej and
+return ourselves," said he, turning to Olenka. "It cannot be otherwise!
+He must give satisfaction for that affair, for it is an injustice to
+the whole estate of nobles. Infamous is he who does not declare for us!
+God will help us, our brethren will help us, citizens will help us, and
+then fire and sword! The Billeviches will meet the Radzivills! Infamous
+he who is not with us! infamous he who will not flash his sword in the
+eyes of the traitor! The king is with us; so is the Diet, so is the
+whole Commonwealth."
+
+Here the sword-bearer, red as blood and with bristling forelock, fell
+to pounding the table with his fist.
+
+"This war is more urgent than the Swedish, for in us the whole order of
+knighthood, all laws, the whole Commonwealth is injured and shaken in
+its deepest foundations. Infamous is he who does not understand this!
+The land will perish unless we measure out vengeance and punishment on
+the traitor!"
+
+And the old blood played more and more violently, till Olenka was
+forced to pacify her uncle. He sat calmly, then, though he thought that
+not only the country, but the whole world was perishing when the
+Billeviches were touched; in this he saw the most terrible precipice
+for the Commonwealth, and began to roar like a lion.
+
+But the lady, who had great influence over him, was able at last to
+pacify her uncle, explaining that for their safety and for the success
+of their flight it was specially needful to preserve the profoundest
+secrecy, and not to show the prince that they were thinking of
+anything.
+
+He promised sacredly to act according to her directions; then they took
+counsel about the flight itself. The affair was not over-difficult, for
+it seemed that they were not watched at all. The sword-bearer decided
+to send in advance a youth, with letters to his overseers to assemble
+peasants at once from all the villages belonging to him and the other
+Billeviches, and to arm them.
+
+Six confidential servants were to go to Billeviche, as it were, for the
+barrels of money and silver, but really to halt in the Girlakol
+forests, and wait there with horses, bags, and provisions. They decided
+to depart from Taurogi in sleighs and accompanied by two servants, as
+if going merely to the neighboring Gavna; afterward they would mount
+horses and hurry on with all speed. To Gavna they used to go often to
+visit the Kuchuk-Olbrotovskis, where sometimes they passed the night;
+they hoped therefore that their journey would not attract the attention
+of any one, and that no pursuit would follow, unless two or three days
+later, at which time they would be in the midst of armed bands and in
+the depth of impenetrable forests. The absence of Prince Boguslav
+strengthened them in this hope.
+
+Meanwhile the sword-bearer was greatly busied with preparations. A
+messenger with letters went out on the following morning. The day after
+that, Pan Tomash talked in detail with Patterson of his buried money,
+which, as he said, exceeded a hundred thousand, and of the need of
+bringing it to safe Taurogi. Patterson believed easily; for Billevich
+was a noble and passed as a very rich man, which he was in reality.
+
+"Let them bring it as soon as possible," said the Scot; "if you need
+them, I will give you soldiers."
+
+"The fewer people who see what I am bringing the better. My servants
+are faithful, and I will order them to cover the barrels with hemp,
+which is brought often from our villages to Prussia, or with staves
+which no one will covet."
+
+"Better with staves," said Patterson; "for people could feel with a
+sabre or a spear through the hemp that there was something else in the
+wagon. But you would better give the coin to the prince on his
+recognition. I know, too, that he needs money, for his revenues do not
+come regularly."
+
+"I should like so to serve the prince that he would never need
+anything," answered the old man.
+
+The conversation ended there, and all seemed to combine most favorably,
+for the servants started at once, while the sword-bearer and Olenka
+were to go next morning. But in the evening Boguslav returned most
+unexpectedly at the head of two regiments of Prussian cavalry. His
+affairs seemed to advance not too favorably, for he was angry and
+fretful.
+
+That evening he summoned a council of war, which was composed of the
+representatives of the elector. Count Seydevitz, Patterson, Sakovich,
+and Kyritz, a colonel of cavalry. They sat till three in the morning;
+and the object of their deliberation was the campaign to Podlyasye
+against Sapyeha.
+
+"The elector and the King of Sweden have reinforced me in proportion
+to their strength," said the prince. "One of two things will
+happen,--either I shall find Sapyeha in Podlyasye, and in that event I
+must rub him out; or I shall not find him, and I shall occupy Podlyasye
+without resistance. For all this, however, money is needed; and money
+neither the elector nor the King of Sweden has given me, for they
+haven't it themselves."
+
+"Where is money to be found if not with your highness?" asked
+Seydevitz. "Through the whole world men speak of the inexhaustible
+wealth of the Radzivills."
+
+"Pan Seydevitz," answered Boguslav, "if I received all the income from
+my inherited estates, I should surely have more money than five of your
+German princes taken together. But there is war in the country;
+revenues do not come in, or are intercepted by rebels. Ready money
+might be obtained for notes from the Prussian towns; but you know best
+what is happening in them, and that purses are opened only for Yan
+Kazimir."
+
+"But Königsberg?"
+
+"I took what I could get, but that was little."
+
+"I think myself fortunate to be able to serve you with good counsel,"
+said Patterson.
+
+"I would rather you served me with ready money."
+
+"My counsel means ready money. Not longer ago than yesterday Pan
+Billevich told me that he had a good sum hidden in the garden of
+Billeviche, and that he wishes to bring it here for safety, and give it
+to your highness for a note."
+
+"Well, you have really fallen from heaven to me, and this noble as
+well!" cried Boguslav. "But has he much money?"
+
+"More than a hundred thousand, besides silver and valuables, which are
+worth perhaps an equal amount."
+
+"The silver and valuables he will not wish to turn into money, but they
+can be pawned. I am thankful to you, Patterson, for this comes to me in
+time. I must talk to Billevich in the morning."
+
+"Then I will forewarn him, for he is preparing to go to-morrow with the
+lady to Gavna to the Kuchuk-Olbrotovskis."
+
+"Tell him not to go till he sees me."
+
+"He has sent the servants already; I am only alarmed for their safety."
+
+"A whole regiment can be sent after them; but we will talk later. This
+is timely for me, timely! And it will be amusing if I rend Podlyasye
+from the Commonwealth with the money of this royalist and patriot."
+
+Then the prince dismissed the council, for he had to put himself yet in
+the hands of his chamber attendants, whose task it was every night
+before he went to rest to preserve his uncommon beauty with baths,
+ointments, and various inventions known only in foreign lands. This
+lasted usually an hour, and sometimes two; besides, the prince was
+road-weary and the hour late.
+
+Early in the morning Patterson detained Billevich and Olenka with the
+announcement that the prince wished to see them. It was necessary to
+defer their journey; but this did not disturb them over-much, for
+Patterson told what the question was.
+
+An hour later the prince appeared. In spite of the fact that Pan Tomash
+and Olenka had promised each other most faithfully to receive him in
+former fashion, they could not do so, though they tried with every
+effort.
+
+Olenka's countenance changed, and blood came to the face of the
+sword-bearer at sight of Prince Boguslav; for a time both stood
+confused, excited, striving in vain to regain their usual calmness.
+
+The prince, on the contrary, was perfectly at ease. He had grown a
+little meagre about the eyes, and his face was less colored than
+common; but that paleness of his was set off wonderfully by the
+pearl-colored morning dress, interwoven with silver. He saw in a moment
+that they received him somewhat differently, and were less glad than
+usual to see him. But he thought at once that those two royalists had
+learned of his relations with the Swedes; hence the coolness of the
+reception. Therefore he began at once to throw sand in their eyes, and,
+after the compliments of greeting, said,--
+
+"Lord Sword-bearer, my benefactor, you have heard, without doubt, what
+misfortunes have met me."
+
+"Does your highness wish to speak of the death of Prince Yanush?" asked
+the sword-bearer.
+
+"Not of his death alone. That was a cruel blow; still, I yielded to the
+will of God, Who, as I hope, has rewarded my cousin for all the wrongs
+done him; but He has sent a new burden to me, for I must be leader in a
+civil war; and that for every citizen who loves his country is a bitter
+portion."
+
+The sword-bearer said nothing; he merely looked a little askance at
+Olenka. But the prince continued,--
+
+"By my labor and toil, and God alone knows at what outlay, I had
+brought peace to the verge of realization. It was almost a question of
+merely signing the treaties. The Swedes were to leave Poland, asking no
+remuneration save the consent of the king and the estates that after
+the death of Yan Kazimir Karl Gustav would be chosen to the throne of
+Poland. A warrior so great and mighty would be the salvation of the
+Commonwealth. And what is more important, he was to furnish at once
+reinforcements for the war in the Ukraine and against Moscow. We should
+have extended our boundaries; but this was not convenient for Pan
+Sapyeha, for then he could not crush the Radzivills. All agreed to this
+treaty. He alone opposes it with armed hand. The country is nothing to
+him, if he can only carry out his personal designs. It has come to
+this, that arms must be used against him. This function has been
+confided to me, according to the secret treaty between Yan Kazimir and
+Karl Gustav. This is the whole affair! I have never shunned any
+service, therefore I must accept this; though many will judge me
+unjustly, and think that I begin a brother-killing war from pure
+revenge only."
+
+"Whoso knows your highness," said the sword-bearer, "as well as we do
+will not be deceived by appearances, and will always be able to
+understand the real intentions of your highness."
+
+Here the sword-bearer was so delighted with his own cunning and
+courtesy, and he muttered so expressively at Olenka, that she was
+alarmed lest the prince should notice those signs.
+
+And he did notice them. "They do not believe me," thought he. And
+though he showed no wrath on his face, Billevich had pricked him to the
+soul. He was convinced with perfect sincerity that it was an offence
+not to believe, a Radzivill, even when he saw fit to lie.
+
+"Patterson has told me," continued he, after a while, "that you wish to
+give me ready money for my paper. I agree to this willingly; for I
+acknowledge that ready money is useful to me at the moment. When peace
+comes, you can do as you like,--either take a certain sum, or I will
+give you a couple of villages as security, so that the transaction will
+be profitable for you.--Pardon," said the prince, turning to Olenka,
+"that in view of such material questions we are not speaking of sighs
+or ideals. This conversation is out of place; but the times are such
+that it is impossible to give their proper course to homage and
+admiration."
+
+Olenka dropped her eyes, and seizing her robe with the tips of her
+fingers, made a proper courtesy, not wishing to give an answer.
+Meanwhile the sword-bearer formed in his mind a project of unheard-of
+unfitness, but which he considered uncommonly clever.
+
+"I will flee with Olenka and will not give the money," thought he.
+
+"It will be agreeable to me to accommodate your highness. Patterson has
+not told of all, for there is about half a pot of gold ducats buried
+apart, so as not to lose all the money in case of accident. Besides,
+there are barrels belonging to other Billeviches; but these during my
+absence were buried under the direction of this young lady, and she
+alone is able to calculate the place, for the man who buried them is
+dead."
+
+Boguslav looked at him quickly. "How is that? Patterson said that you
+have already sent men; and since they have gone, they must know where
+the money is."
+
+"But of the other money no one knows, except her."
+
+"Still it must be buried in some definite place, which can be described
+easily in words or indicated on paper."
+
+"Words are wind; and as to pictures, the servants know nothing of them.
+We will both go; that is the thing."
+
+"For God's sake! you must know your own gardens. Therefore go alone.
+Why should Panna Aleksandra go?"
+
+"I will not go alone!" said Billevich, with decision.
+
+Boguslav looked at him inquiringly a second time; then he seated
+himself more comfortably, and began to strike his boots with a cane
+which he held in his hand.
+
+"Is that final?" asked he. "Well! In such an event I will give a couple
+of regiments of cavalry to take you there and bring you back."
+
+"We need no regiments. We will go and return ourselves. This is our
+country. Nothing threatens us here."
+
+"As a host, sensitive to the good of his guests, I cannot permit that
+Panna Aleksandra should go without armed force. Choose, then. Either go
+alone, or let both go with an escort."
+
+Billevich saw that he had fallen into his own trap; and that brought
+him to such anger that, forgetting all precautions, he cried,--
+
+"Then let your highness choose. Either we shall both go unattended, or
+I will not give the money!"
+
+Panna Aleksandra looked on him imploringly; but he had already grown
+red and begun to pant. Still, he was a man cautious by nature, even
+timid, loving to settle every affair in good feeling; but when once the
+measure was exceeded in dealing with him, when he was too much excited
+against any one, or when it was a question of the Billevich honor, he
+hurled himself with a species of desperate daring at the eyes of even
+the most powerful enemy. So that now he put his hand to his left side,
+and shaking his sabre began to cry with all his might,--
+
+"Is this captivity? Do they wish to oppress a free citizen, and trample
+on cardinal rights?"
+
+Boguslav, with shoulders leaning against the arms of the chair, looked
+at him attentively; but his look became colder each moment, and he
+struck the cane against his boots more and more quickly. Had the
+sword-bearer known the prince better, he would have known that he was
+bringing down terrible danger on his own head.
+
+Relations with Boguslav were simply dreadful. It was never known when
+the courteous cavalier, the diplomat accustomed to self-control, would
+be overborne by the wild and unrestrained magnate who trampled every
+resistance with the cruelty of an Eastern despot. A brilliant education
+and refinement, acquired at the first courts of Europe; reflection and
+studied elegance, which he had gained in intercourse with men,--were
+like wonderful and strong flowers under which was secreted a tiger.
+
+But the sword-bearer did not know this, and in his angry blindness
+shouted on,--
+
+"Your highness, dissemble no further, for you are known! And have a
+care, for neither the King of Sweden nor the elector, both of whom you
+are serving against your own country, nor your princely position, will
+save you before the law; and the sabres of nobles will teach you
+manners, young man!"
+
+Boguslav rose; in one instant he crushed the cane in his iron hands,
+and throwing the pieces at the feet of the sword-bearer, said with a
+terrible, suppressed voice,--
+
+"That is what your rights are for me! That your tribunals! That your
+privileges!"
+
+"Outrageous violence!" cried Billevich.
+
+"Silence, paltry noble!" cried the prince. "I will crush you into
+dust!" And he advanced to seize the astonished man and hurl him against
+the wall.
+
+Now Panna Aleksandra stood between them. "What do you think to do?"
+inquired she.
+
+The prince restrained himself. But she stood with nostrils distended,
+with flaming face, with fire in her eyes like an angry Minerva. Her
+breast heaved under her bodice like a wave of the sea, and she was
+marvellous in that anger, so that Boguslav was lost in gazing at her;
+all his desires crept into his face, like serpents from the dens of his
+soul.
+
+After a time his anger passed, presence of mind returned; he looked
+awhile yet at Olenka. At last his face grew mild; he bent his head
+toward his breast, and said,--
+
+"Pardon, angelic lady! I have a soul full of gnawing and pain,
+therefore I do not command myself." Then he left the room.
+
+Olenka began to wring her hands; and Billevich, coming to himself,
+seized his forelock, and cried,--
+
+"I have spoiled everything; I am the cause of your ruin!"
+
+The prince did not show himself the whole day. He even dined in his own
+room with Sakovich. Stirred to the bottom of his soul, he could not
+think so clearly as usual. Some kind of ague was wasting him. It was
+the herald of a grievous fever which was to seize him soon with such
+force that during its attacks he was benumbed altogether, so that his
+attendants had to rub him most actively. But at this time he ascribed
+his strange state to the power of love, and thought that he must either
+satisfy it or die. When he had told Sakovich the whole conversation
+with the sword-bearer, he said,--
+
+"My hands and feet are burning, ants are walking along my back, in my
+mouth are bitterness and fire; but, by all the horned devils, what is
+this? Never has this attacked me before!"
+
+"Your highness is as full of scruples as a baked capon of buckwheat
+grits. The prince is a capon, the prince is a capon. Ha, ha!"
+
+"You are a fool!"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"I don't need your ideas."
+
+"Worthy prince, take a lute and go under the windows of the maiden.
+Billevich may show you his fist. Tfu! to the deuce! is that the kind of
+bold man that Boguslav Radzivill is?"
+
+"You are an idiot!"
+
+"Very well. I see that your highness is beginning to speak with
+yourself and tell the truth to your own face. Boldly, boldly! Pay no
+heed to rank."
+
+"You see, Sakovich, that my Castor is growing familiar with me; as it
+is, I kick him often in the ribs, but a greater accident may meet you."
+
+Sakovich sprang up as if red with anger, like Billevich a little while
+before; and since he had an uncommon gift of mimicry, he began to cry
+in a voice so much like that of Billevich that any one not seeing who
+was talking, might have been deceived.
+
+"What! is this captivity? Do they wish to oppress a free citizen, to
+trample on cardinal rights?"
+
+"Give us peace! give us peace!" said the prince, fretfully. "She
+defended that old fool with her person, but here there is one to defend
+you."
+
+"If she defended him, she should have been taken in pawn!"
+
+"There must be some witchcraft in this place! Either she must have
+given me something, or the constellations are such that I am simply
+leaving my mind. If you could have seen her when she was defending that
+mangy old uncle of hers! But you are a fool! It is growing cloudy in my
+head. See how my hands are burning! To love such a woman, to gain
+her--with such a woman to--"
+
+"To have posterity!" added Sakovich.
+
+"That's so, that's so!--as if you knew that must be; otherwise I shall
+burst as a bomb. For God's sake! what is happening to me? Must I marry,
+or what, by all the devils of earth and hell?"
+
+Sakovich grew serious. "Your princely highness, you must not think of
+that!"
+
+"I am thinking of just that, precisely because I wish it. I will do
+that, though a regiment of Sakoviches repeated a whole day to me, 'Your
+princely highness must not think of that!'"
+
+"Oh, I see this is no joke."
+
+"I am sick, enchanted."
+
+"Why do you not follow my advice at last?"
+
+"I must follow it,--may the plague take all the dreams, all the
+Billeviches, all Lithuania with the tribunals, and Yan Kazimir to boot!
+I shall not succeed otherwise; I see that I shall not! I have had
+enough of this, have I not? A great question! And I, the fool, was
+considering both sides hitherto; was afraid of dreams, of Billeviches,
+of lawsuits, of the rabble of nobles, the fortune of Yan Kazimir. Tell
+me that I am a fool! Do you hear? I command you to tell me that I am a
+fool!"
+
+"But I will not obey, for now you are really Radzivill, and not a
+Calvinist minister. But in truth you must be ill, for I have never seen
+you so changed."
+
+"True! In the most difficult positions I merely waved my hand and
+whistled, but now I feel as if some one were thrusting spurs into my
+sides."
+
+"This is strange, for if that maiden has given you something
+designedly, she has not done so to run away afterward; but still, from
+what you say, it seems that they wish to flee in secret."
+
+"Ryff told me that this is the influence of Saturn, on which burning
+exhalations rise during this particular month."
+
+"Worthy prince, rather take Jove as a model, for he was happy without
+marriage. All will be well; only do not think of marriage, unless of a
+counterfeit one."
+
+All at once the starosta of Oshmiana struck his forehead.
+
+"But wait, your highness! I have heard of such a case in Prussia."
+
+"Is the Devil whispering something into your ear? Tell me!"
+
+But Sakovich was silent for a long time; at last his face brightened,
+and he said,--
+
+"Thank the fortune that gave you Sakovich as friend."
+
+"What news, what news?"
+
+"Nothing. I will be your highness's best man" (here Sakovich
+bowed),--"no small honor for such a poor fellow!"
+
+"Don't play the jester; speak quickly!"
+
+"There is in Tyltsa one Plaska, or something like that, who in his time
+was a priest in Nyevorani, but who falling away from the faith became a
+Lutheran, got married, took refuge under the elector, and now is
+dealing in dried fish with people of this region. Bishop Parchevski
+tried to lure him back to Jmud, where in good certainty there
+was a fire waiting for him; but the elector would not yield up a
+fellow-believer."
+
+"How does that concern me? Do not loiter."
+
+"How does that concern your highness? In this way it must concern you;
+for he will sew you and her together with stitches on the outside, you
+understand? And because he is a fool of a workman, and does not belong
+to the guild, it will be easy to rip the work after him. Do you see?
+The guild does not recognize this sewing as valid; but still there will
+be no violence, no outcry; you can twist the neck of the workman
+afterward, and you will complain that you were deceived, do you
+understand? But before that time _crescite et multiplicamini_. I'll be
+the first to give you my blessing."
+
+"I understand, and I don't understand," said the prince. "The devil I
+understand there perfectly. Sakovich, you must have been born, like a
+witch, with teeth in your mouth. The hangman is waiting for you; it
+cannot be otherwise, O Starosta! But while I live a hair will not fall
+from your head; a fitting reward will not miss you. I then--"
+
+"Your highness will make a formal proposal to Panna Billevich, to her
+and to her uncle. If they refuse, if they do not consent, then give
+command to tear the skin from me, make sandal strings out of it, and go
+on a pilgrimage of penance to--to Rome. It is possible to resist a
+Radzivill if he wishes simply to be a lover; but if he wishes to marry,
+he need not try to please any noble. You must only tell Billevich and
+the lady that out of regard for the elector and the King of Sweden, who
+want you to marry the Princess of Bipont, your marriage must remain
+secret till peace is declared. Besides, you will write the marriage
+contract as you like. Both churches will be forced to declare it
+invalid. Well, what do you think?"
+
+Boguslav was silent for a while, but on his face red fever-spots
+appeared under the paint; then he cried,--
+
+"There is no time in three days. I must move against Sapyeha."
+
+"That is just the position! Were there more time, it would be
+impossible to justify the pretext. Is not this true? Only through lack
+of time can you explain that the first priest at hand officiates, as
+happens in sudden emergencies, and marries on a bolting-cloth. They
+will think too, 'It is sudden, for it must be sudden!' She is a
+knightly maiden; you can take her with you to the field. Dear
+bridegroom, if Sapyeha conquers, even then you will have half the
+victories of the campaign."
+
+"That is well, that is well!" said the prince.
+
+But at that moment the first paroxysm seized him so that his jaws
+closed and he could not say another word. He grew rigid, and then began
+to quiver and flounder like a fish out of water. But before the
+terrified Sakovich could bring the physician, the paroxysm had passed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+After his conversation with Sakovich, Prince Boguslav betook himself on
+the afternoon of the morrow directly to Billevich.
+
+"My benefactor," said he, to begin with, "I was grievously to blame the
+last time we met, for I fell into anger in my own house. It is my
+fault, and all the more so that I gave this affront to a man of a
+family friendly to the Radzivills. But I come to implore forgiveness.
+Let a sincere confession be satisfaction to you, and my atonement. You
+know the Radzivills of old; you know that we are not in haste to beg
+pardon; still, since I was to blame before age and dignity, I come
+without considering who I am, with a penitent head. And you, old friend
+of our house, will not refuse me your hand, I am certain."
+
+Then he extended his hand; and Billevich, in whose soul the first
+outburst had passed, did not dare to refuse his own, though he gave it
+with hesitation.
+
+"Your highness, return to us our freedom; that will be the best
+satisfaction."
+
+"You are free, and may go, even to-day."
+
+"I thank your highness," said the astonished Billevich.
+
+"I interpose only one condition, which you, God grant, will not
+reject."
+
+"What is that?" asked Billevich, with fear.
+
+"That you listen patiently to what I am going to say."
+
+"If that is all, I will listen even till evening."
+
+"Do not give me your answer at once, but think an hour or two."
+
+"God sees that if I receive my freedom I wish peace."
+
+"You will receive your freedom; but I do not know whether you will use
+it, or whether you will be urgent to leave my threshold. I should be
+glad were you to consider my house and all Taurogi as your own; but
+listen to me now. Do you know, my benefactor, why I was opposed to the
+departure of Panna Billevich? This is why,--because I divined that you
+wished to flee simply; and I have fallen in love with your niece, so
+that to see her I should be ready to swim a Hellespont each day, like
+Leander."
+
+Billevich grew red again in a moment. "Does your highness dare to say
+that to me?"
+
+"To you especially, my benefactor."
+
+"Worthy prince, seek your fortune with court ladies, but touch not
+noble maidens. You may imprison her, you may confine her in a vault,
+but you may not disgrace her."
+
+"I may not disgrace her," said the prince; "but I may bow down to the
+old man Billevich, and say to him, 'Listen, father, give me your niece
+as wife, for I cannot live without her.'"
+
+The sword-bearer was so amazed that he could not utter a word; for a
+time he merely moved his mustaches, and his eyes were staring; then he
+began to rub his hands and look, now on the prince, now around the
+room; at last he said,--
+
+"Is this in a dream, or is it real?"
+
+"Do not hasten! To convince you still better, I will repeat with all
+the titles: I, Boguslav, Prince Radzivill, Marshal of the Grand
+Principality of Lithuania, ask you, Tomash Billevich, sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni, for the hand of your niece, Panna Aleksandra, chief-hunter's
+daughter."
+
+"Is this true? In God's name! have you considered the matter?"
+
+"I have considered; now do you consider, my benefactor, whether the
+cavalier is worthy of the lady."
+
+"My breath is stopped from wonder."
+
+"Now see if I had any evil intentions."
+
+"And would your highness not consider our small station?"
+
+"Are the Billeviches so cheap? Do you value your shield of nobility and
+the antiquity of your family thus? Does a Billevich say this?"
+
+"I know, gracious prince, that the origin of our family is to be sought
+in ancient Rome; but--"
+
+"But," interrupted the prince, "you have neither hetmans nor
+chancellors. That is nothing! You are soldiers, like my uncle in
+Brandenburg. Since a noble in our Commonwealth may be elected king,
+there are no thresholds too lofty for his feet. My sword-bearer and,
+God grant, my uncle, I was born of a Brandenburg princess; my father's
+mother was an Ostrogski; but my grandfather of mighty memory, Kryshtof
+I., he whom they called Thunder, grand hetman, chancellor, and voevoda
+of Vilna, was married the first time to Panna Sobek; but for this
+reason the coronet did not fall from his head, for Panna Sobek was a
+noble woman, as honorably born as others. When my late father married
+the daughter of the elector, they wondered why he did not remember his
+own dignity, though he allied himself with a reigning house. Such is
+the devilish pride of you nobles! But acknowledge, my benefactor, you
+do not think a Sobek better than a Billevich, do you?"
+
+Speaking thus, the prince began to tap the old man on the shoulder with
+great familiarity. The noble melted like wax, and answered,--
+
+"God reward your highness for honorable intentions! A weight has fallen
+from my heart! But now, if it were not for difference of faith!"
+
+"A Catholic priest will perform the ceremony. I do not want another
+myself."
+
+"I shall be thankful for this all my life, since here it is a question
+of the blessing of God, which certainly the Lord Jesus would withdraw
+if some vile--"
+
+Here the old man bit his tongue, for he saw that he was saying
+something disagreeable to the prince. But Boguslav did not notice it;
+he smiled graciously and said,--
+
+"And as to posterity, I shall not be stubborn; for there is nothing
+that I would not do for that beauty of yours."
+
+Billevich's face grew bright as if a ray of the sun had fallen on it;
+"Indeed, God has not been sparing of beauty to her, it is true. Oh!
+there will be a shout all over Jmud. And what will the Sitsinskis say
+when the Billeviches increase so? They would not leave the old colonel
+at rest, though he was a man of Roman mould, respected by the whole
+Commonwealth."
+
+"We will drive them out of Jmud, worthy Sword-bearer,"
+
+"O great God, merciful God! undiscoverable are Thy judgments; but if in
+them it lies that the Sitsinskis are to burst from envy, then let Thy
+will be done!"
+
+"Amen!" added Boguslav.
+
+"Your highness, do not take it ill that I do not clothe myself in
+dignity, as befits a person of whom a man asks a maiden, and that I
+show too evident rejoicing. But we have been here in vexation, not
+knowing what was awaiting us and interpreting everything for the worst.
+It came to this that we thought evil of your highness, until it turns
+out that our fears and judgments were not just, and that we may return
+to our previous homage. I say this as if some one had taken a burden
+from my shoulders."
+
+"And did Panna Aleksandra judge me thus?"
+
+"She? Even Cicero could not have described properly her previous
+admiration for your highness. I think that only virtue and a certain
+inborn timidity stood in the way of love. But when she hears of the
+sincere intentions of your highness, then I am sure she will at once
+give the reins to her heart."
+
+"Cicero could not have said that better!" said Boguslav.
+
+"With happiness comes eloquence. But since your highness has been
+pleased to listen to everything I have said, then I will be sincere to
+the last."
+
+"Be sincere, Pan Billevich."
+
+"Though this maiden is young, she is a woman with a man's cast of mind
+altogether; it is wonderful what a character she has. Where more than
+one man of experience would hesitate, she hesitates not a moment. What
+is evil she puts on the left, what is good on the right, and goes
+herself to the right as if it were sweet. When she has once chosen the
+road, even though there were cannon before her, that is nothing to her!
+She would not go aside for the cannon. She is like her grandfather and
+me. Her father was a born soldier, but mild; her mother, from the house
+of Voynillovich, was also strong-willed."
+
+"I am glad to hear this, Pan Billevich."
+
+"Your highness will not believe how incensed she is against the Swedes,
+and all enemies of the Commonwealth. If she held any one guilty of
+treason, she would feel an utter detestation of him, though he were an
+angel and not a human being. Your highness,--forgive an old man who
+might be your father in years, if not in dignity,--leave the Swedes;
+they are worse for the country than Tartars! Move your troops against
+such sons, and not only I, but she, will follow you to the field.
+Pardon me, your highness, pardon me. Now I have said what I had on my
+mind."
+
+Boguslav mastered himself after a moment's silence, and said: "My
+benefactor, you might have supposed yesterday, but you may not suppose
+to-day that I wish merely to throw sand in your eyes, when I say that I
+am on the side of the king and the country. Here under oath to you as a
+relative I repeat that what I stated touching peace and its conditions
+was the pure truth. I, too, should prefer to march to the field, for my
+nature draws me thither; but because I saw that salvation was not in
+the field, I was forced through simple devotion to seize another
+method. And I can say that I have accomplished an unheard of thing; for
+after a last war to conclude a peace of such kind that the conquering
+power serves the conquered,--of this Mazarin, the most cunning of men,
+need not be ashamed. Not Panna Aleksandra alone, but I equally with
+her, bear hatred to the enemy. But what is to be done? How save this
+country? Not even Hercules against many can conquer. Therefore I
+thought thus, 'Instead of destroying, which would be easier and more
+amusing, it is needful to save.' And since I had practised in affairs
+of this kind with great statesmen, since I am a relative of the
+elector, and since, by reason of my cousin Yanush, I am well considered
+by the Swedes, I began negotiations; and what their course was and what
+the benefit to the Commonwealth was, that you know,--an end of the war,
+freedom from oppression for your Catholic faith, for churches, for
+clergy, for the estate of nobles, and for the common people; the
+assistance of the Swedes in the war against Moscow and the Cossacks;
+and, God grant, an extension of boundary. And this all on one
+condition,--that Karl Gustav be king after Yan Kazimir. Whoso has done
+more for his country in these times, let him stand before my eyes."
+
+"True, a blind man could see that; but it will be very sad for the
+nobles that a free election will cease."
+
+"And which is more important,--an election or the country?"
+
+"They are the same, your highness; for an election is the main basis of
+the Commonwealth. And what is the country, if not a collection of laws,
+privileges, and liberties serving the nobles? A king can be found even
+in a foreign land."
+
+Anger and disgust flew like lightning over Boguslav's face.
+
+"Karl Gustav," said he, "will sign the _pacta conventa_, as his
+predecessors have signed it; and after his death we will elect whom we
+choose, even that Radzivill who will be born of your niece."
+
+The sword-bearer stood for a while as if dazzled by the thought; at
+last he raised his hand and cried with great enthusiasm,--
+
+"_Consentior_ (I agree)!"
+
+"I think, too, that you would agree, even if the throne should become
+hereditary in our family. Such are you all! But that is a later
+question. Now it is necessary that the stipulations come to reality.
+You understand, my uncle?"
+
+"As true as life, it is necessary!" repeated Billevich, with deep
+conviction.
+
+"They must for this reason,--that I am a mediator agreeable to his
+Swedish Majesty, and do you know for what reasons? Karl Gustav has one
+sister married to De la Gardie, and another, Princess Bipont, still
+unmarried; and he wishes to give her to me, so as to be allied to our
+house and have a party in Lithuania. Hence his favor toward me, to
+which my uncle, the elector, inclines him."
+
+"How is that?" asked the disquieted sword-bearer.
+
+"I would give all the princesses of Bipont[7] for your dove, together
+with the principalities, not only of the two, but of all the bridges in
+the world. But I may not anger the Swedish beast, therefore I give
+willing ear to their discussions; but only let them sign the treaty,
+then we shall see."
+
+"Would they be ready then not to sign if they should discover that you
+were married?"
+
+"Worthy sword-bearer," said the prince, with seriousness, "you have
+condemned me of crookedness toward the country; but I, as a true
+citizen, ask you, have I a right to sacrifice public affairs to my
+private interests?"
+
+Pan Tomash listened. "What will happen then?"
+
+"Think to yourself what must happen."
+
+"As God is true, I see already that the marriage must be deferred; and
+the proverb says; 'What is deferred, escapes.'"
+
+"I will not change my heart, for I have fallen in love for life. You
+must know that for faithfulness I could put to shame the most enduring
+Penelope."
+
+Billevich was alarmed still more; for he had an entirely opposite
+opinion touching the prince's constancy, confirmed as it was by
+Boguslav's general reputation. But the prince added, as if for a
+finishing stroke,--
+
+"You are right, that no one is sure of his to-morrow. I may fall ill;
+nay, some kind of sickness is coming on me even now, for yesterday I
+grew so rigid that Sakovich barely saved me. I may fall in a campaign
+against Sapyeha; and what delays, what troubles and vexations there
+will be, could not be written on an ox-hide."
+
+"By the wounds of God, give advice, your highness."
+
+"What advice can I give?" asked the prince. "Though I should be glad
+myself to have the latch fall as soon as possible."
+
+"Well, let it fall. Marry, and then what will be, will be."
+
+Boguslav sprang to his feet.
+
+"By the holy Gospel! With your wit you should be chancellor of
+Lithuania. Another man would not have thought out in three days what
+has come to your mind in a twinkle. That is it! marry, and remain
+quiet. There is sense in that! As it is, I shall march in two days
+against Sapyeha, for I must. During that time secret passages to the
+lady's chamber can be made; and then to the road! That is the head of a
+statesman! We will let two or three confidants into the secret, and
+take them as witnesses, so that the marriage may be formal. I will
+write a contract, secure the jointure, to which I will add a bequest;
+and let there be silence for the time. My benefactor, I thank you; from
+my heart, I thank you. Come to my arms, and then go to my beauty. I
+will wait for her answer, as if on coals. Meanwhile I will send
+Sakovich for the priest. Be well, father, and, God grant soon, the
+grandfather of a Radzivill."
+
+When he had said this, he let the astonished noble go from his embrace,
+and rushed out of the room.
+
+"For God's sake!" said the sword-bearer, recovering himself. "I gave
+such wise advice that Solomon himself would not be ashamed of it, and I
+should prefer to do without it. A secret is a secret; but break your
+head, crush your forehead against a wall, it cannot be otherwise. A
+blind man can see that! Would that the frost might oppress and kill
+those Swedes to the last! If it were not for those negotiations, the
+marriage would take place with ceremony, and all Jmud would come to the
+wedding. But here a husband must walk to his wife on felt, so as not to
+make noise. Tfu, to the deuce! The Sitsinskis will not burst so soon.
+Yet, praise be to God! that bursting will not miss them."
+
+When he had said this, he went to Olenka. Meanwhile the prince was
+taking further counsel with Sakovich.
+
+"The old man danced on two paws like a bear," said the prince; "but he
+tormented the life out of me. Uf! but I squeezed him so that I thought
+that the boots and straw would fly off his feet. And when I called him
+'Uncle,' his eyes stuck out, as if a keg of cabbage hash were choking
+him. Tfu! tfu! wait! I will make you uncle; but I have scores upon
+scores of such uncles throughout the whole world. Sakovich, I see how
+she is waiting for me in her room; and she will receive me with her
+eyes closed and her hands crossed. Wait, I will kiss those eyes for
+you--Sakovich, you will receive for life the estate of Prudy, beyond
+Oshmiana. When can Plaska be here?"
+
+"Before evening. I thank your highness for Prudy."
+
+"That is nothing! Before evening? That means any moment. If the
+ceremony could be performed to-day, even before midnight! Have you the
+contract ready?"
+
+"I have. I was liberal in the name of your highness. I assigned Birji
+as the jointure of the lady. The sword-bearer will howl like a dog when
+it is taken from him afterward."
+
+"He will sit in a dungeon, then he will be quiet."
+
+"Even that will not be needed. As soon as the marriage is invalid, all
+will be invalid. But did I not tell you that they would agree?"
+
+"He did not make the least difficulty. I am curious to know what she
+will say. I care nothing about him!"
+
+"Oh, they have fallen each into the arms of the other, are weeping from
+emotion, are blessing your highness, and are carried away by your
+kindness and beauty."
+
+"I don't know that they are by my beauty; for in some way I look
+wretched. I am all the time out of health, and I am afraid that
+yesterday's numbness will come again."
+
+"No; you will take something warm."
+
+The prince was already before the mirror.
+
+"It is blue under my eyes. And that fool, Fouret, darkened my eyebrows
+crooked. See if they are not crooked! I'll give orders to thumbscrew
+him, and make a monkey my body-servant. Why does the old man not come?
+I should like to go to the lady now, for she will permit me to kiss her
+before the marriage. How quickly it grows dark to-day! If Plaska
+flinches, we must put pincers into the fire."
+
+"Plaska will not flinch. He is a scoundrel from under a dark star."
+
+"And he will perform the marriage in scoundrel fashion?"
+
+"A scoundrel will perform the marriage for a scoundrel in scoundrel
+fashion."
+
+The prince fell into good humor, and said,--
+
+"When there is a pander for best man, there cannot be another kind of
+marriage."
+
+For a while they were silent; then both began to laugh. But their
+laughter sounded with marvellous ill-omen through the dark room. Night
+fell deeper and deeper.
+
+The prince began to walk through the room, striking audibly with his
+hammer-staff, on which he leaned heavily, for his feet did not serve
+him well after the last numbness.
+
+Now the servants brought in candelabra with candles, and went out; but
+the rush of air bent the flames of the candles, so that for a long time
+they did not burn straight upward, melting meanwhile much wax.
+
+"See how the caudles are burning!" said the prince. "What do you
+prophesy from that?"
+
+"That one virtue will melt to-day like wax."
+
+"It is wonderful how long that talk lasts."
+
+"Maybe the spirit of old Billevich is flying over the flames."
+
+"You are a fool!" answered Boguslav, abruptly. "You have chosen a time
+to talk of spirits!"
+
+Silence followed.
+
+"They say in England," said the prince, "that when there is a spirit in
+the room every light burns blue; but see, now they are burning yellow,
+as usual."
+
+"Trash!" answered Sakovich. "There are people in Moscow--"
+
+"But be still!" interrupted Boguslav. "The sword-bearer is coming. No!
+that is the wind moving the shutters. The devils have brought that old
+maid of an aunt, Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus! Has any one ever heard of the
+like? And she looks like a chimera."
+
+"If you wish, your highness, I'll marry her; then she will not be in
+the way, Plaska will solder us while you are waiting."
+
+"Well, I will give her a maple spade as a marriage present, and you a
+lantern, so as to have something to light her way."
+
+"I will not be your uncle--Bogus."
+
+"Remember Castor," answered the prince.
+
+"Do not stroke Castor, my Pollux, against the grain, for he can bite."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the sword-bearer and Panna
+Kulvyets. The prince stepped up to him quickly, leaning on his hammer.
+Sakovich rose.
+
+"Well, what? May I go to Olenka?" asked the prince.
+
+The sword-bearer spread out his arms and dropped his head on his
+breast.
+
+"Your highness, my niece says that Colonel Billevich's will forbids her
+to decide her own fate; and even if it did not forbid, she would not
+marry your highness, not having the heart to do so."
+
+"Sakovich, do you hear?" said Boguslav, with a terrible voice.
+
+"I too knew of that will," continued the sword-bearer, "but at the
+first moment I did not think it an invincible impediment."
+
+"I jeer at the wills of you nobles," said the prince; "I spit on your
+wills! Do you understand?"
+
+"But we do not jeer at them," said the aroused Pan Tomash; "and
+according to the will the maiden is free to enter the cloister or marry
+Kmita."
+
+"Whom, you sorry fellow? Kmita? I'll show you Kmita! I'll teach you!"
+
+"Whom do you call sorry fellow,--a Billevich?"
+
+And the sword-bearer caught at his side in the greatest fury; but
+Boguslav, in one moment, struck him on the breast with his hammer, so
+that Billevich groaned and fell to the floor. The prince then kicked
+him aside, to open a way to the door, and rushed from the room without
+a hat.
+
+"Jesus! Mary! Joseph!" cried Panna Kulvyets.
+
+But Sakovich, seizing her by the shoulder, put a dagger to her breast,
+and said,--
+
+"Quiet, my little jewel, quiet, dearest dove, or I will cut thy sweet
+throat, like that of a lame hen. Sit here quietly, and go not upstairs
+to thy niece's wedding."
+
+But in Panna Kulvyets there was knightly blood too; therefore she had
+barely heard the words of Sakovich, when straightway her terror passed
+into despair and frenzy.
+
+"Ruffian! bandit! pagan!" cried she; "slay me, for I will shout to the
+whole Commonwealth. The brother killed, the niece disgraced, I do not
+wish to live! Strike, slay, robber! People, come see!"
+
+Sakovich stifled further words by putting his powerful hand over her
+month.
+
+"Quiet, crooked distaff, dried rue!" said he; "I will not cut thy
+throat, for why should I give the Devil that which is his anyhow? But
+lest thou scream like a peacock before roosting, I will tie up thy
+pretty mouth with thy kerchief, and take a lute and play to thee of
+'sighs.' It cannot be but thou wilt love me."
+
+So saying, the starosta of Oshmiana, with the dexterity of a genuine
+pickpocket, encircled the head of Panna Kulvyets with her handkerchief,
+tied her hands in the twinkle of an eye, and threw her on the sofa;
+then he sat by her, and stretching himself out comfortably, asked her
+as calmly as though he had begun an ordinary conversation,--
+
+"Well, what do you think? I suppose Bogus will get on as easily as I
+have."
+
+With that he sprang to his feet, for the door opened, and in it
+appeared Panna Aleksandra. Her face was as white as chalk, her hair was
+somewhat dishevelled, her brows were frowning, and threat was in her
+eyes. Seeing her uncle on the floor, she knelt near him and passed her
+hand over his head and breast.
+
+The sword-bearer drew a deep breath, opened his eyes, half raised
+himself, and began to look around in the room, as if roused from sleep;
+then resting his hand on the floor, he tried to rise, which he did
+after a while with the help of the lady; then he came with tottering
+step to a chair, into which he threw himself. Only now did Olenka see
+Panna Kulvyets lying on the sofa.
+
+"Have you murdered her?" asked she of Sakovich.
+
+"God preserve me!" answered the starosta of Oshmiana.
+
+"I command you to unbind her!"
+
+There was such power in that voice that Sakovich said not a word, as if
+the command had come from Princess Radzivill herself, and began to
+unbind the unconscious Panna Kulvyets.
+
+"And now," said the lady, "go to your master, who is lying up there."
+
+"What has happened?" cried Sakovich, coming to himself. "You will
+answer for him!"
+
+"Not to thee, serving-man! Be off!"
+
+Sakovich sprang out of the chamber as if possessed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+Sakovich did not leave Boguslav's bedside for two days, the second
+paroxysm being worse than the first. The prince's jaws closed so firmly
+that attendants had to open them with a knife to pour medicine into his
+mouth. He regained consciousness immediately after; but he trembled,
+quivered, floundered in the bed, and stretched himself like a wild
+beast mortally wounded. When that had passed, a wonderful weakness
+came; he gazed all night at the ceiling without saying a word. Next
+day, after he had taken drugs, he fell into a sound sleep, and about
+midday woke covered with abundant perspiration.
+
+"How does your highness feel?" asked Sakovich.
+
+"I am better. Have any letters come?"
+
+"Letters from the elector and Steinbock are lying on the table; but the
+reading must be put off till later, for you have not strength enough
+yet."
+
+"Give them at once!--do you hear?"
+
+Sakovich brought the letters, and Boguslav read them twice; then he
+thought awhile and said,--
+
+"We will move for Podlyasye to-morrow."
+
+"You will be in bed to-morrow, as you are to-day."
+
+"I will be on horseback as well as you. Be silent, no interference!"
+
+The starosta ceased, and for a while silence continued, broken only by
+the tick-tick of the Dantzig clock.
+
+"The advice was stupid, the idea was stupid, and I too was stupid to
+listen."
+
+"I knew that if it did not succeed the blame would fall on me,"
+answered Sakovich.
+
+"For you blundered."
+
+"The counsel was clever; but if there is some devil at their service
+who gives warning of everything, I am not to blame."
+
+The prince rose in the bed. "Do you think that they employ a devil?"
+asked he, looking quickly at Sakovich.
+
+"But does not your highness know the Papists?"
+
+"I know, I know! And it has often come into my head that there might be
+enchantment. Since yesterday I am certain. You have struck my idea;
+therefore I asked if you really think so. But which of them could enter
+into company with unclean power? Not she, for she is too virtuous; not
+the sword-bearer, for he is too stupid."
+
+"But suppose the aunt?"
+
+"That may be."
+
+"To make certain I bound her yesterday, and put a dagger to her throat;
+and imagine,--I look to-day, the dagger is as if melted in fire."
+
+"Show it."
+
+"I threw it into the river, though there was a good turquoise in the
+hilt. I preferred not to touch it again."
+
+"Then I'll tell you what happened to me yesterday. I ran into her room
+as if mad. What I said I do not remember; but I know this,--that she
+cried, 'I'll throw myself into the fire first.' You know what an
+enormous chimney there is there; she sprang right into it, I after her.
+I dragged her out on the floor. Her clothes were already on fire. I had
+to quench the fire and hold her at the same time. Meanwhile dizziness
+seized me, my jaws became fixed,--you would have said that some one had
+torn the veins in my neck; then it seemed to me that the sparks flying
+near us were turned into bees, were buzzing like bees. And this is as
+true as that you see me here."
+
+"And what came later?"
+
+"I remember nothing, but such terror as if I were flying into an
+immense well, into some depth without bottom. What terror! I tell you
+what terror! Even now the hair is standing on my head. And not terror
+alone, but--how can I explain it?--an emptiness, a measureless
+weariness and torment beyond understanding. Luckily the powers of
+heaven were with me, or I should not be speaking with you this day."
+
+"Your highness had a paroxysm. Sickness itself often brings visions
+before the eye; but for safety's sake we may have a hole cut in the
+river ice, and let the old maid float down."
+
+"Oh, devil take her! We will march to-morrow in any event, and
+afterward spring will come; there will soon be other stars, and the
+nights will be short, weakening every unclean power."
+
+"If we must march to-morrow, then you would better let the girl go."
+
+"Even if I wished not, I must. All desire has fallen away from me."
+
+"Never mind them; let them go to the devil!"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"The old man has confessed that he has a tremendous lot of money buried
+in Billeviche. If I let them alone, they will dig up the money and go
+to the forests. I prefer to keep them here, and take the money in
+requisition. There is war now, and this is permissible. Besides, he
+offered it himself. We shall give orders to dig up the whole garden,
+foot by foot; we must find the money. While Billevich is sitting here,
+at least, he will not make a noise and shout over all Lithuania that he
+is plundered. Rage seizes me when I think how much I have spent on
+those amusements and tournaments,--and all for nothing, for nothing!"
+
+"Rage against that maiden seized me long ago. And I tell your highness
+that when she came yesterday and said to me, as to the last camp
+follower, 'Be off, serving-man! go up, for thy master is lying there!'
+I came near twisting her head like a starling; for I thought that she
+had stabbed you with a knife or shot you from a pistol."
+
+"You know that I do not like to have any one manage in my house like a
+gray goose. It is well that you did not do as you say, for I should
+have given orders to nip you with those pincers which were heated for
+Plaska. Keep away from her!"
+
+"I sent Plaska back. He was terribly astonished, not knowing why he was
+brought nor why he was sent home. He wanted something for his fatigue,
+'because this,' said he, 'is loss in my trade;' but I told him, 'You
+bear home a sound skin as reward.' Do we really march to-morrow for
+Podlyasye?"
+
+"As God is in heaven. Are the troops sent off according to my orders?"
+
+"The cavalry has gone already to Kyedani, whence it is to march to
+Kovno and wait there. Our Polish squadrons are here yet; I did not like
+to send them in advance. The men seem reliable; still they might meet
+the confederates. Glovbich will go with us; also the Cossacks under
+Vrotynski. Karlström marches with the Swedes in the vanguard. He has
+orders to exterminate rebels, and especially peasants on the way."
+
+"That is well."
+
+"Kyritz with infantry is to march slowly, so that we may have some one
+to fall back upon in difficulty. If we are to advance like a
+thunderbolt,--and our entire calculation lies in swiftness,--I do not
+know whether the Prussian and Swedish cavalry will be useful. It is a
+pity that the Polish squadrons are not reliable; for between us, there
+is nothing superior to Polish cavalry."
+
+"Has the artillery gone?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"And Patterson too?"
+
+"No, Patterson is here; he is nursing Kettling, of whom he is very
+fond, and who wounded himself rather badly with his own sword. If I did
+not know Kettling to be a daring officer, I should think that he had
+cut himself of purpose to avoid the campaign."
+
+"It will be needful to leave about a hundred men here, also in Rossyeni
+and in Kyedani. The Swedish garrisons are small, and De la Gardie, as
+it is, is asking men every day from Löwenhaupt. Besides, when we march
+out, the rebels, forgetting the defeat of Shavli, will raise their
+heads."
+
+"They are growing strong as it is. I have heard again that the Swedes
+are cut down in Telshi."
+
+"By nobles or peasants?"
+
+"By peasants under the leadership of a priest; but there are parties of
+nobles, particularly near Lauda."
+
+"The Lauda men have gone out under Volodyovski."
+
+"There is a multitude of youths and old men at home. These have taken
+arms, for they are warriors by blood."
+
+"The rebellion can do nothing without money."
+
+"But we shall get a supply of that in Billeviche."
+
+"A man must be a genius like your highness to find means in
+everything."
+
+"There is more esteem in this country," said Boguslav, with a bitter
+smile, "for the man who can please the queen and the nobles. Neither
+genius nor virtue has value. It is lucky that I am also a prince of the
+Empire, and therefore they will not tie me by the legs to a pine-tree.
+If I could only have the revenues regularly from my estates, I should
+not care for the Commonwealth."
+
+"But will they not confiscate these estates?"
+
+"We will first confiscate Podlyasye, if not all Lithuania. Now summon
+Patterson."
+
+Sakovich went out, and returned soon with Patterson. At Boguslav's
+bedside a council was held, at which it was determined to move before
+daylight next morning and go to Podlyasye by forced marches. The prince
+felt so much better in the evening that he feasted with the officers
+and amused himself with jests till late, listening with pleasure to the
+neighing of horses and the clatter of arms in the squadrons preparing
+to march. At times he breathed deeply, and stretched himself in the
+chair.
+
+"I see that this campaign will bring back my health," said he to the
+officers, "for amid all these negotiations and amusements I have
+neglected the field notably. But I hope in God that the confederates
+and our ex-cardinal (the king) in Poland will feel my hand."
+
+To this Patterson made bold to answer: "It is lucky that Delilah did
+not clip Samson's hair."
+
+Boguslav looked at him for a while with a strange expression, from
+which the Scot was growing confused; but after a time the countenance
+of the prince grew bright with a threatening smile, and he said,--
+
+"If Sapyeha is my pillar, I will shake him so that the whole
+Commonwealth will fall on his head."
+
+The conversation was carried on in German; therefore all the foreign
+officers understood it perfectly, and answered in chorus,--
+
+"Amen!"
+
+The column, with Boguslav at the head of it, marched before daybreak
+next morning. The Prussian nobles whom the brilliant court attracted,
+began at the same time to return to their homes. After them marched to
+Tyltsa those who in Taurogi had sought refuge from the terrors of war,
+and to whom now Tyltsa seemed safer. Only Billevich, Olenka, and Panna
+Kulvyets remained, not counting Kettling and the old officer Braun, who
+held command over the slender garrison.
+
+Billevich, after that blow of the hammer, lay for some days bleeding
+from the mouth at intervals; but since no bone was broken, he recovered
+by degrees and began to think of flight.
+
+Meanwhile an official came from Billeviche with a letter from Boguslav
+himself. The sword-bearer did not wish at first to read the letter, but
+soon changed his mind, following in this the advice of Olenka, who
+thought it better to know all the plans of the enemy.
+
+
+VERY GRACIOUS PAN BILLEVICH!--_Concordia res parvæ crescunt; discordia
+maximæ dillabuntar_ (By concord small things grow great; by discord the
+greatest are ruined)! The fates brought it about that we did not part
+in such harmony as my love for you and your charming niece demands, in
+which God knows I am not to blame, for you know yourself that you fed
+me with ingratitude in return for my sincere intentions. But for
+friendship's sake what in done in anger should not be remembered; I
+think, therefore, that you will excuse my deeds of impulse, because of
+the injustice which I experienced at your hands. I, too, forgive you
+from my heart, as Christian charity enjoins, and I wish to return to a
+good understanding. To give you a proof that no offence has remained in
+my heart, I have not thought it proper to refuse the service which you
+have asked of me, and I accept your money.
+
+
+Here Billevich stopped reading, struck the table with his fist, and
+cried,--
+
+"He will see me in dreams rather than receive one coin from my
+caskets!"
+
+"Read on!" said Olenka.
+
+Billevich raised the letter again to his eyes.
+
+
+"Not wishing to trouble you and expose your health to hazard in the
+present stormy times while getting this money, we have ordered
+ourselves to get it and count it."
+
+
+At this point Billevich's voice failed, and the letter fell from his
+hands to the floor. For a while it seemed that speech was taken from
+the noble, for he only caught after his hair and pulled it with all his
+power.
+
+"Strike, whoso believes in God!" cried he at last.
+
+"One injustice the more, the punishment of God nearer; for the measure
+will soon be filled," said Olenka.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+The despair of the sword-bearer was so great that Olenka had to comfort
+him, and give assurance that the money was not to be looked on as lost,
+for the letter itself would serve as a note; and Radzivill, the master
+of so many estates in Lithuania and Russia, had something from which to
+recover.
+
+But since it was difficult to foresee what might still meet them,
+especially if Boguslav returned to Taurogi victorious, they began to
+think of flight the more eagerly.
+
+Olenka advised to defer everything till Kettling's recovery; for Braun
+was a gloomy and surly old soldier, carrying out commands blindly, and
+it was impossible to influence him.
+
+As to Kettling, the lady knew well that he had wounded himself to
+remain in Taurogi; hence her deep faith that he would do everything to
+aid her. It is true that conscience disturbed her incessantly with the
+question whether for self-safety she had the right to sacrifice the
+career, and perhaps the life, of another; but the terrors hanging over
+her in Taurogi were so dreadful that they surpassed a hundredfold the
+dangers to which Kettling could be exposed.
+
+Kettling, as an excellent officer, might find service, and a more noble
+service, elsewhere, and with it powerful protectors, such as the king.
+Pan Sapyeha, or Pan Charnyetski; and he would, besides, serve a just
+cause, and would find a career grateful to that country which had
+received him as an exile. Death threatened him only in case he fell
+into Boguslav's hands; but Boguslav did not command yet the whole
+Commonwealth.
+
+Olenka ceased to hesitate; and when the health of the young officer had
+improved, she sent for him.
+
+Kettling stood before her, pale, emaciated, without a drop of blood in
+his face, but always full of respect, homage, and submission. At sight
+of him tears came to Olenka's eyes; for he was the only friendly soul
+in Taurogi, and at the same time so thin and suffering that when Olenka
+asked how his health was, he answered,--
+
+"Alas, my lady, health is returning, and it would be so pleasant to
+die."
+
+"You should leave this service," said she, looking at him with
+sympathy; "for such an honorable man needs assurance that he is serving
+a just cause and a worthy master."
+
+"Alas!" repeated the officer.
+
+"When will your service end?"
+
+"In half a year."
+
+Olenka was silent awhile; then she raised her wonderful eyes, which at
+that moment had ceased to be stern, and said,--
+
+"Listen to me. I will speak to you as to a brother, as to a sincere
+confidant. You can, and you should resign."
+
+When she had said this, she confessed to him everything,--both their
+plans of escape, and that she relied on his assistance. She represented
+to him that he could find service everywhere, and a service as good as
+was his spirit, and honorable as knightly honor could obtain. At last
+she finished with the following words:--
+
+"I shall be grateful to you till death. I wish to take refuge under the
+guardianship of God, and to make a vow to the Lord in a cloister. But
+wherever you may be, far or near, in war or in peace, I shall pray for
+you. I will implore God to give peace and happiness to my brother and
+benefactor; for I can give him nothing save gratitude and prayer."
+
+Here her voice trembled; and the officer listened to her words, growing
+pale as a kerchief. At last he knelt, put both hands to his forehead,
+and said, in a voice like a groan,--
+
+"I cannot, my lady; I cannot!"
+
+"Do you refuse me?" asked Olenka, with amazement.
+
+"O great, merciful God!" said he. "From childhood no lie has risen on
+my lips, no unjust deed has ever stained me. While still a youth, I
+defended with this weak hand my king and country. Why, Lord, dost Thou
+punish me so grievously, and send on me suffering for which, as Thou
+seest, strength fails me?" Here he turned to Olenka: "My lady, you do
+not know what an order is for a soldier. In obedience is not only his
+duty, but his honor and reputation. An oath binds me, my lady,--and
+more than an oath, the word of a knight,--that I shall not throw up my
+service before the time, and that I will fulfil what belongs to it
+blindly. I am a soldier and a noble; and, so help me God, never in my
+life will I follow the example of those who betray honor and service.
+And I will not break my word, even at your command, at your prayer,
+though I say this in suffering and pain. If, having an order not to let
+any one out of Taurogi, I were on guard at the gate, and if you
+yourself wished to pass against the order, you would pass only over my
+corpse. You did not know me, my lady; and you were mistaken in me. But
+have pity on me; understand that I cannot aid you to escape. I ought
+not to hear of such a thing. The order is express, for Braun and the
+five remaining officers of us here have received it. My God, my God! if
+I had foreseen such an order, I should have preferred to go on the
+campaign. I shall not convince you; you will not believe me. And still
+God sees--let God judge me after death whether it is true--that I would
+give my life without hesitation. But my honor--I cannot, I cannot!"
+
+Then Kettling wrung his hands, was silent from exhaustion, and began to
+breathe quickly.
+
+Olenka had not recovered yet from her amazement. She had not time to
+pause, or estimate properly that spirit, exceptional in its nobleness.
+She felt only that the last plank of salvation was slipping from her
+hands, the only means of escape from hated captivity was failing her.
+But still she tried to resist.
+
+"I am," said she, after a while, "the granddaughter and the daughter of
+a soldier. My grandfather and father also valued honor above life; but,
+precisely for that reason, they would not let themselves be used
+blindly for every service."
+
+Kettling drew, with trembling hand, from his coat a letter, gave it to
+Olenka, and said,--
+
+"Judge, my lady, if this command does not concern service."
+
+Olenka cast her eyes over the letter, and read as follows:--
+
+
+"Since it has come to our knowledge that Billevich, the sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni, intends to leave our residence in secret, with plans hostile
+to us,--namely, to excite his acquaintances, connections, relatives,
+and clients to rebellion against his Swedish Majesty and us,--we
+recommend to the officers remaining in garrison at Taurogi to guard
+Billevich and his niece as hostages and prisoners of war, and not to
+permit their flight under pain of loss of honor and court-martial,"
+etc.
+
+
+"The order came from the first stopping-place after the departure of
+the prince," said Kettling; "therefore it is in writing."
+
+"The will of God be done!" said Olenka, after a while. "It is
+accomplished!"
+
+Kettling felt that he ought to go; still he did not stir. His pale lips
+moved from moment to moment, as if he wished to say something and could
+not get the voice.
+
+He was oppressed by the desire to fall at her feet and implore
+forgiveness; but on the other hand he felt that she had enough of her
+own misfortune, and he found a certain wild delight in this,--that he
+was suffering and would suffer without complaint.
+
+At last he bowed and went out in silence; but in the corridor he tore
+the bandages from his fresh wound, and fell fainting to the floor. When
+an hour later the palace guard found him lying near the staircase and
+took him to the barracks, he became seriously ill and did not leave his
+bed for a fortnight.
+
+Olenka, after the departure of Kettling, remained some time as if
+dazed. Death had seemed to her more likely to come than that refusal;
+and therefore, at first, in spite of all her firm temper of spirit,
+strength, energy failed her; she felt weak, like an ordinary woman, and
+though she repeated unconsciously, "Let the will of God be done!"
+sorrow for the disappointment rose above her resignation, copious and
+bitter tears flowed from her eyes.
+
+At that moment her uncle entered, and looking at his niece, divined at
+once that she had evil news to impart; hence he asked quickly,--
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?"
+
+"Kettling refuses!"
+
+"All here are ruffians, scoundrels, arch-curs! How is this? And he will
+not help?"
+
+"Not only will he not help," answered she, complaining like a little
+child, "but he says that he will prevent, even should it come to him to
+die."
+
+"Why? by the Lord's wounds, why?"
+
+"For such is our fate! Kettling is not a traitor; but such is our fate,
+for we are the most unhappy of all people."
+
+"May the thunderbolts crush all those heretics!" cried Billevich. "They
+attack virtue, plunder, steal, imprison. Would that all might perish!
+It is not for honest people to live in such times!"
+
+Here he began to walk with hurried step through the chamber,
+threatening with his fists; at last he said, gritting his teeth,--
+
+"The voevoda of Vilna was better; I prefer a thousand times even Kmita
+to these perfumed ruffians without honor and conscience."
+
+When Olenka said nothing, but began to cry still more, Billevich grew
+mild, and after a while said,--
+
+"Do not weep. Kmita came to my mind only because that he at least would
+have been able to wrest us out of this Babylonian captivity. He would
+have given it to all the Brauns, Kettlings, Pattersons, to Boguslav
+himself! But they are all the same type of traitors. Weep not! You can
+do nothing with weeping; here it is necessary to counsel. Kettling will
+not help,--may he be twisted! We will do without him. You have as it
+were a man's courage in you, but in difficulty you are only able to
+sob. What does Kettling say?"
+
+"He says that the prince has given orders to guard us as prisoners of
+war, fearing, Uncle, that you would collect a party and go to the
+confederates."
+
+Billevich put his hands on his hips: "Ha, ha, ha! he is afraid, the
+scoundrel! And he is right, for I will do so, as God is in heaven."
+
+"Having a command relating to service, Kettling must carry it out on
+his honor."
+
+"Well! we shall get on without the assistance of heretics."
+
+Olenka wiped her eyes. "And does my uncle think it is possible?"
+
+"I think it is necessary; and if it is necessary it is possible, though
+we had to let ourselves down by ropes from these windows."
+
+"It was wrong for me to shed tears; let us make plans as quickly as we
+can."
+
+Her tears were dry, her brows contracted again from thought and her
+former endurance and energy.
+
+It appeared, in fact, that Billevich could find no help, and that the
+imagination of the lady was much richer in means. But it was difficult
+for her, since it was clear that they were guarded carefully.
+
+They determined, therefore, not to try before the first news came from
+Boguslav. In this they placed all their hope, trusting that the
+punishment of God would come on the traitor and the dishonorable man.
+Besides, he might fall, he might be confined to his bed, he might be
+killed by Sapyeha, and then without fail there would rise in all
+Taurogi a panic, and the gate would not be guarded so carefully.
+
+"I know Sapyeha," said Billevich, comforting himself and Olenka; "he is
+a slow warrior, but accurate and wonderfully stubborn. An example of
+this, his loyalty to the king and country. He pledged and sold
+everything, and thus has gained a power before which Boguslav is as
+nothing. One is a dignified senator, the other a fop; one a true
+Catholic, the other a heretic; one is cleverness itself, the other a
+water-burner. With whom may victory and the blessing of God be? This
+Radzivill might well yield to Sapyeha's day. Just as if there are not
+punishment and justice in this world! We will wait for news, and pray
+for Sapyeha's success."
+
+Then they began to wait; but a month passed--long, wearisome for
+afflicted hearts--before the first courier came; and he was sent not to
+Taurogi, but to Steinbock in Royal Prussia.
+
+Kettling, who from the time of the last conversation dared not appear
+before Olenka's eyes, sent her at once a card with the following
+announcement:--
+
+
+"Prince Boguslav has defeated Pan Kryshtof Sapyeha near Bransk; some
+squadrons of cavalry and infantry are cut to pieces. He is marching on
+Tykotsin, where Horotkyevich is stationed."
+
+
+For Olenka this was simply a thunderbolt. The greatness of a leader and
+the bravery of a knight meant for her the same thing. Since she had
+seen Boguslav, at Taurogi, overcoming the most valiant knights with
+ease, she imagined him to herself, especially after that news, as an
+evil but invincible power, against which no one could stand.
+
+The hope that Boguslav might be defeated died in her completely. In
+vain did her uncle quiet her and comfort her with this,--that the
+prince had not yet met Sapyeha; in vain did he guarantee to her that
+the very dignity of hetman with which the king had invested him
+recently, must give positive preponderance over Boguslav; she did not
+believe this, she dared not.
+
+"Who can conquer Boguslav; who can meet him?" asked she, continually.
+
+Further news seemed to confirm her fears.
+
+A few days later Kettling sent another card with information touching
+the defeat of Horotkyevich and the capture of Tykotsin. "All
+Podlyasye," writes he, "is in the hands of the prince, who, without
+waiting for Sapyeha, is moving against him with forced marches."
+
+"And Sapyeha will be routed!" thought the maiden.
+
+Meanwhile news from other directions flew to them, like a swallow
+heralding spring-time. To that seashore of the Commonwealth this news
+came late; but because of its lateness it was decked in all the rainbow
+gleams of wonderful legend from the first ages of Christianity, when
+saints proclaiming truth and justice still travelled over the earth.
+
+"Chenstohova! Chenstohova!" was repeated by every mouth.
+
+Ice thawed from hearts which bloomed like flowers in the earth warmed
+by the sun of spring. "Chenstohova has defended itself. Men had seen
+the Queen of Poland Herself (the Virgin Mary) shielding the walls with
+Her heavenly mantle; the bombs of the robbers at Her holy feet,
+crouching like house-dogs; the hands of the Swedes were withered, their
+muskets grew fast to their faces, till they retreated in terror and
+shame."
+
+Men, strangers to one another, when they heard these tidings fell the
+one into the embraces of the other, weeping from delight. Others
+complained that the tidings came too late.
+
+"But we were here in weeping," said they, "we were in pain, we lived in
+torment so long, when we should have been rejoicing."
+
+Then it began to roar through the whole Commonwealth, and terrible
+thunders were heard from the Euxine to the Baltic, so that the waves of
+both seas were trembling; then faithful people, pious people rose up
+like a storm in defence of their queen. Consolation entered all hearts,
+all eyes were flashing with fire; what hitherto had seemed terrible and
+invincible grew small in their eyes.
+
+"Who will finish him?" said Billevich. "Who will be his equal? Now do
+you know who? The Most Holy Lady."
+
+The old man and his niece lay for whole days in the form of a cross,
+thanking God for his mercy on the Commonwealth, and doubting their own
+rescue no longer.
+
+But for a long period there was silence concerning Boguslav, as if he
+with all his forces had fallen into water. The officers remaining in
+Taurogi began to be disquieted and to think of their uncertain future.
+They would have preferred defeat to that deep silence. But no news
+could come, for just then the terrible Babinich was rushing with his
+Tartars in front of the prince and stopping all couriers.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+But a certain day Panna Anusia Borzobogati arrived at Taurogi with a
+convoy of some tens of soldiers.
+
+Braum received her very politely, for he had to do so, since he was
+thus commanded by a letter from Sakovich, signed by Boguslav himself,
+enjoining him to have every regard for this lady-in-waiting of Princess
+Griselda Vishnyevetski. The young lady herself was full of vivacity;
+from the first moment she began to pierce Braun with her eyes, so that
+the sullen German moved about as if some one were touching him with
+fire; she began also to command other officers,--in a word, to manage
+in Taurogi as in her own house. In the evening of the same day she made
+the acquaintance of Olenka, who received her with distrust, it is true,
+but politely, in the hope that she would get news from her.
+
+In fact, Anusia had news in plenty. Her conversation began with
+Chenstohova, since the prisoners in Taurogi were most eager for that
+news. The sword-bearer listened with special diligence; he held his
+hands behind his ears so as to lose no word, merely interrupting
+Anusia's narrative from time to time with the exclamation,--
+
+"Praise be to God on high!"
+
+"It is a wonder to me," said Anusia, at last, "that news of these
+miracles of the Most Holy Lady have only just reached you, for that is
+an old story. I was still in Zamost, and Pan Babinich had not come for
+me--ai! how many weeks was it before that? Then they began to beat the
+Swedes everywhere, in Great Poland and with us; but most of all Pan
+Charnyetski, before whose very name they fly."
+
+"Oh, Charnyetski!" cried the sword-bearer, rubbing his hands; "he will
+give them pepper! I heard of him even from the Ukraine, as of a great
+warrior."
+
+Anusia merely shook her dress, and exclaimed to herself with aversion,
+as if it were a question of the smallest matter: "Oh, it is all over
+with the Swedes!"
+
+Old Pan Tomash could not restrain himself. Seizing her small hand, he
+buried the little thing entirely in his enormous mustaches and kissed
+it eagerly; at last he cried,--
+
+"Oh, my beauty! honey flows from your mouth, as God is dear to me! It
+cannot be but an angel has come to Taurogi."
+
+Anusia began at once to twist the ends of her tresses, tied with rosy
+ribbons, and cutting with her eyes from under her brows, said,--
+
+"Oh, it is far from me to the angels! But the hetmans of the kingdom
+have begun to beat the Swedes, and all the quarter soldiers with them,
+and the knights; and they have formed a confederation in Tyshovtsi. The
+king has joined it, and they have given out manifestoes; even the
+peasants are beating the Swedes, and the Most Holy Lady gives Her
+blessing."
+
+She spoke as if a bird were warbling, but from that warbling
+Billevich's heart grew soft, though some of the news was already known
+to him. He bellowed at last like an aurochs from delight; tears, too,
+began to flow over the face of Olenka, silent and many.
+
+Seeing this, Anusia, having a good heart from nature, sprang to her at
+once, and putting her arms around her neck, began to say quickly,--
+
+"Do not cry; I am sorry for you, and cannot see you shed tears. Why do
+you weep?"
+
+There was so much sincerity in her voice that Olenka's distrust
+vanished at once; but the poor girl wept still more.
+
+"You are so beautiful," said Anusia, comforting her. "Why do you cry?"
+
+"From joy," answered Olenka, "but also from suffering; for we are here
+in grievous captivity, knowing neither the day nor the hour."
+
+"How is that? Are you not with Prince Boguslav?"
+
+"That traitor! that heretic!" roared Billevich.
+
+"The same has happened to me," said Anusia; "but I do not cry for that
+reason. I do not deny that the prince is a traitor and a heretic; but
+he is a courteous cavalier, and respects our sex."
+
+"God grant that in hell they will respect him in the same fashion!
+Young lady, you know him not, for he has not attacked you as he has
+this maiden. He is an arch-ruffian, and that Sakovich is another. God
+give Sapyeha to defeat them both!"
+
+"As to defeating, he will defeat them. Prince Boguslav is terribly
+sick, and he has not a great force. It is true that he advanced
+quickly, scattered some squadrons, and took Tykotsin and me; but it is
+not for him to measure with the forces of Pan Sapyeha. You may trust
+me, for I saw both armies. With Pan Sapyeha are the greatest cavaliers,
+who will be able to manage Prince Boguslav."
+
+"Well, do you see! have I not told you?" asked the old man, turning to
+Olenka.
+
+"I know Prince Boguslav from of old," continued Anusia, "for he is a
+relative of the Vishnyevetskis and Zamoyski; he came once to us at
+Lubni, when Prince Yeremi himself was campaigning against the Tartars
+in the Wilderness. He remembered that I was at home there and nearest
+the princess. I was such a little thing then, not as I am to-day. My
+God! who could think at that time that he would be a traitor? But
+grieve not; for either he will fail to return, or we shall escape from
+this place in some way."
+
+"We have tried that already," said Olenka.
+
+"And you did not succeed?"
+
+"How could we?" asked Billevich. "We told the secret to an officer whom
+we thought ready to aid us; but it turned out that he was ready to
+hinder, not to help. Seniority over all here is with Braun,--the Devil
+himself could not win that man."
+
+Anusia dropped her eyes.
+
+"Maybe I can. If Pan Sapyeha would only come, so that we might have
+some one with whom to take refuge."
+
+"God give him at the earliest," answered Pan Tomash, "for among his men
+we have many relatives, acquaintances, and friends. Among them, too,
+are former officers of the great Yeremi,--Volodyovski, Skshetuski,
+Zagloba,--I know them."
+
+"But they are not with Sapyeha. Oh, if they were, especially
+Volodyovski, for Shshetuski is married, I should not be here, for Pan
+Volodyovski would not let himself be picked up as Pan Kotchyts did."
+
+"He is a great cavalier," said Billevich.
+
+"The glory of the whole Commonwealth," added Olenka.
+
+"Have they not fallen, since you did not see them?"
+
+"Oh, no!" answered Anusia, "for the loss of such knights would be
+spoken of; but nothing was said. You do not know them, they will never
+yield; only a bullet will kill them, for no man can stand before
+Skshetuski, Zagloba, or Pan Michael. Though Pan Michael is small, I
+remember what Prince Yeremi said of him,--that if the fate of the whole
+Commonwealth depended on a battle between one man and another, he would
+choose Pan Michael for the battle. He was the man who conquered Bogun.
+Oh, no, Pan Michael will help himself always."
+
+Billevich, satisfied that he had some one with whom to talk, began to
+walk with long strides through the room, asking,--
+
+"Well, well! Then do you know Pan Volodyovski so intimately?"
+
+"Yes; for we lived in the same place so many years."
+
+"Indeed! Then certainly not without love!"
+
+"I'm not to blame for that," answered Anusia, taking a timid posture;
+"but before this time surely Pan Michael is married."
+
+"And he is just not married."
+
+"Even if he were, it is all one to me."
+
+"God grant you to meet! But I am troubled because you say that they are
+not with the hetman, for with such soldiers victory would be easier."
+
+"There is some one there who is worth them all."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Pan Babinich from Vityebsk. Have you heard of him?"
+
+"Not a word; which is a wonder to me."
+
+Anusia began to relate the history of her departure from Zamost, and
+everything that happened on the road. Babinich grew in her narrative to
+such a mighty hero that the sword-bearer was at a loss to know who he
+was.
+
+"I know all Lithuania," said he. "There are houses, it is true, with
+similar names, such as Babonaubek, Babill, Babinovski, Babinski, and
+Babiski. Babinich I have not heard, and I think it must be an assumed
+name; for many who are in parties take such names, so that their
+property and relatives may not suffer from the enemy. Hm! Babinich! He
+is some fiery cavalier, since he was able to settle Zamoyski in that
+fashion."
+
+"Oh, how fiery!" cried Anusia.
+
+The old man fell into good humor. "How is that?" asked he, stopping
+before Anusia and putting his hands on his hips.
+
+"If I tell you, you'll suppose God knows what"
+
+"God preserve me, I will suppose nothing."
+
+"Barely had we come out of Zamost when Pan Babinich told me that some
+one else had occupied his heart, and though he received no rent, still
+he did not think of changing the tenant."
+
+"And do you believe that?"
+
+"Of course I believe it," answered Anusia, with great vivacity;
+"he must be in love to his ears, since after so long a
+time--since--since--"
+
+"Oh, there is some 'since he would not,'" said the old man, laughing.
+
+"But I say that," repeated Anusia, stamping her foot, "since-- Well, we
+shall soon hear of him."
+
+"God grant it!"
+
+"And I will tell you why. As often as Pan Babinich mentioned Prince
+Boguslav, his face grew white, and his teeth squeaked like doors."
+
+"He will be our friend!" said the sword-bearer,
+
+"Certainly! And we will flee to him, if he shows himself."
+
+"If I could escape from this place, I would have my own party, and you
+would see that war is no novelty to me either, and that this old hand
+is good for something yet."
+
+"Go under command of Pan Babinich."
+
+"You have a great wish to go under his command."
+
+They chatted yet for a long time in this fashion, and always more
+joyously; he that Olenka, forgetting her grief, became notably more
+cheerful, and Anusia began at last to laugh loudly at the sword-bearer.
+She was well rested; for at the last halting-place in Rossyeni she had
+slept soundly; she left them then only late in the evening.
+
+"She is gold, not a maiden!" said Billevich, after she had gone.
+
+"A sincere sort of heart, and I think we shall soon come to
+confidence," answered Olenka.
+
+"But you looked at her frowningly at first."
+
+"For I thought that she was some one sent here. Do I know anything
+surely? I fear every one in Taurogi."
+
+"She sent? Perhaps by good spirits! But she is as full of tricks as a
+weasel. If I were younger I don't know to what it might come; even as
+it is a man is still desirous."
+
+Olenka was delighted, and placing her hands on her knees, she put her
+head on one side, mimicking Anusia, and looking askance at her uncle.
+
+"So, dear uncle! you wish to bake an aunt for me out of that flour?"
+
+"Oh, be quiet, be quiet!" said the sword-bearer.
+
+But he laughed and began to twist his mustache with his whole hand;
+after a time he added,--
+
+"Still she roused such a staid woman as you; I am certain that great
+friendship will spring up between you."
+
+In truth, Pan Tomash was not deceived, for in no long time a very
+lively friendship was formed between the maidens; and it grew more and
+more, perhaps just for this reason,--that the two were complete
+opposites. One had dignity in her spirit, depths of feeling, invincible
+will, and reason; the other, with a good heart and purity of thought,
+was a tufted lark. One, with her calm face, bright tresses, and an
+unspeakable repose and charm in her slender form, was like an ancient
+Psyche; the other, a real brunette, reminded one rather of an _ignis
+fatuus_, which in the night hours entices people into pathless places
+and laughs at their vexation. The officers in Taurogi, who looked at
+both every day, were seized with the desire to kiss Olenka's feet, but
+Anusia's lips.
+
+Kettling, having the soul of a Scottish mountaineer, hence full of
+melancholy, revered and adored Olenka; but from the first glance he
+could not endure Anusia, who paid him in kind, making up for her losses
+on Braun and others, not excepting the sword-bearer of Rossyeni
+himself.
+
+Olenka soon won great influence over her friend, who with perfect
+sincerity of heart said to Pan Tomash,--
+
+"She can say more in two words than I in a whole day."
+
+But the dignified lady could not cure her vain friend of one defect,
+coquetry; for let Anusia only hear the rattle of spurs in the corridor,
+immediately she would pretend that she had forgotten something, that
+she wanted to see if there were tidings from Sapyeha; would rush into
+the corridor, fly like a whirlwind, and coming up against an officer,
+cry out,--
+
+"Oh, how you frightened me!"
+
+Then a conversation would begin, intermingled with twisting of her
+skirts, glancing from under her brows, and various artful looks,
+through the aid of which the hardest heart may be conquered.
+
+This coquetry Olenka took ill of her, all the more that Anusia after a
+few days confessed to a secret love for Babinich. They discussed this
+among themselves more than once.
+
+"Others beg like minstrels," said Anusia; "but this dragon chose to
+look at his Tartars rather than at me, and he never spoke otherwise
+than in command,--'Come out, my lady! eat, my lady! drink, my lady!'
+And if he had been rude at the same time, but he was not; if he had not
+been painstaking, but he was! In Krasnystav I said to myself, 'Do not
+look at me--wait!' And in Lanchna I was so overcome that it was
+terrible. I tell you that when I looked into his blue eyes, and when he
+laughed, gladness seized me, such a prisoner was I."
+
+Olenka dropped her head, for blue eyes came to her memory too; and that
+one spoke in the same way, and he had command ever on his lips,
+activity ever in his face, but neither conscience nor the fear of God.
+
+Anusia, following her own thoughts, continued,--
+
+"When he flew over the field on his horse, with his baton, I thought,
+That is an eagle or some hetman. The Tartars feared him more than fire.
+When he came, there had to be obedience; and when there was a battle,
+fires were striking him from desire of blood. I saw many worthy
+cavaliers in Lubni, but one such that fear seized me in his presence I
+have never seen."
+
+"If the Lord God has predestined him to you, you will get him; but that
+he did not love you, I cannot believe."
+
+"As to love, he loves me a little, but the other more. He told me
+himself more than once, 'It is lucky that I am not able to forget or
+cease loving, for it would be better to confide a kid to a wolf than
+such a maiden as you are to me."
+
+"What did you say to that?"
+
+"I said, 'How do you know that I would return your love?' And he
+answered, 'I should not have asked you.' Now, what are you to do with
+such a man? That other woman is foolish not to love him, and she must
+have callousness in her heart. I asked what her name is, but he would
+not tell me. 'Better,' said he, 'not to touch that, for it is a sore;
+and another sore,' said he, 'is the Radzivills,--the traitors!' And
+then he made such a terrible face that I would have hidden in a
+mouse-hole. I simply feared him. But what is the use in talking? He is
+not for me!"
+
+"Ask Saint Michael for him; I know from Aunt Kulvyets that he is the
+best aid in such cases. Only be careful not to offend the saint by
+duping more men."
+
+"I never will, except so much,--the least little bit."
+
+Here Anusia showed on her finger how much; and she indicated at most
+about half the length of the nail, so as not to anger Saint Michael.
+
+"I do not act so from waywardness," explained she to Billevich, who
+also had begun to take her frivolity to heart; "but I must, for if
+these officers do not help us we shall never escape."
+
+"Braun will not let us out."
+
+"Braun is overcome!" replied Anusia, with a thin voice, dropping her
+eyes.
+
+"But Fitz-Gregory?"
+
+"He is overcome too!" with a voice still thinner.
+
+"And Ottenhagen?"
+
+"Overcome!"
+
+"And Von Irhen?"
+
+"Overcome!"
+
+"May the forest surround you! I see that Kettling is the only man whom
+you could not manage."
+
+"I cannot endure him! But some one else will manage him. Besides, we
+can go without his permission."
+
+"And you think that when we wish to flee they will not hinder?"
+
+"They will go with us!" said Anusia, stretching her neck and blinking.
+
+"For God's sake! then why do we stay here? I should like to be far away
+this day."
+
+But from the consultation which followed at once, it appeared needful
+to await the decision of Boguslav's fate and Pan Sapyeha's arrival in
+the neighborhood of Jmud. Otherwise they would be threatened by
+terrible destruction from even their own people. The society of foreign
+officers not only would not be a defence, but would add to their
+danger; for the peasants were so terribly envenomed against foreigners
+that they murdered without mercy every one who did not wear a Polish
+dress. Even Polish dignitaries wearing foreign costume, not to speak of
+Austrian and French diplomats, could not travel save under the
+protection of powerful bodies of troops.
+
+"You will believe me, for I have passed through the whole country,"
+said Anusia. "In the first village, in the first forest, ravagers would
+kill us without asking who we are. It is impossible to flee except to
+an army."
+
+"But I shall have my own party."
+
+"Before you could collect it, before you could reach a village where
+you are known, you would lose your life. News from Prince Boguslav must
+come soon. I have ordered Braun to inform me at once."
+
+But Braun reported nothing for a long time.
+
+Kettling, however, began to visit Olenka; for she, meeting him on a
+certain day, extended her hand to him. The young officer prophesied
+evil from this profound silence. According to him the prince, out of
+regard for the elector and the Swedes, would not hold silence touching
+the least victory, and would rather exaggerate by description than
+weaken by silence the significance of real successes.
+
+"I do not suppose that he is cut to pieces," said the young officer;
+"but he is surely in such a difficult position that it is hard to find
+a way out."
+
+"All tidings arrive here so late," said Olenka, "and the best proof is
+that we learned first from Panna Borzobogati, the particulars of the
+miraculous defence of Chenstohova."
+
+"I, my lady, knew of that long ago, but, as a foreigner, not knowing
+the value which that place has for Poles, I did not mention it. That in
+a great war some small castle defends itself for a time, and repulses a
+number of storms, happens always, and importance is not attached to it
+usually."
+
+"But still for me that would have been the most welcome news!"
+
+"I see in truth that I did ill; for from what has happened since the
+defence, as I hear now, I know that to be an important event, which may
+influence the whole war. Still, returning to the campaign of the prince
+in Podlyasye, it is different. Chenstohova is far away, Podlyasye is
+nearer. And when the prince succeeded at first, you remember how
+quickly news came. Believe me, my lady, I am a young man, but from the
+fourteenth year of my life I am a soldier, and experience tells me that
+this silence, is prophetic of evil."
+
+"Rather good," said the lady,
+
+"Let it be good!" answered Kettling. "In half a year my service will be
+ended. In half a year my oath will cease."
+
+A few days after this conversation news came at last. It was brought by
+Pan Byes of the shield Kornie; called, at Boguslav's court,
+Cornutus.[8] He was a Polish noble, but altogether foreignized; for
+serving in foreign armies almost from years of boyhood, he had wellnigh
+forgotten Polish, or at least spoke it like a German. He had also a
+foreignized soul, hence was greatly attached to Prince Boguslav. He was
+going on an important mission to Königsberg, and stopped in Taurogi
+merely to rest.
+
+Braun and Kettling brought him at once to Olenka and Anusia, who at
+that time lived and slept together.
+
+Braun stood like a soldier before Anusia; then turned to Byes and
+said,--
+
+"This lady is a relative of Pan Zamoyski, therefore of the prince our
+lord, who has commanded to show her every attention; and she wishes to
+hear news from the mouth of an eyewitness."
+
+Pan Byes in his turn stood erect, as if on service, and awaited the
+questions.
+
+Anusia did not deny relationship with Boguslav, for the homage of the
+military pleased her; therefore she motioned to Pan Byes to sit down.
+When he had taken his place she asked,--
+
+"Where is the prince at present?"
+
+"The prince is retreating on Sokolka, God grant successfully," said the
+officer.
+
+"Tell the pure truth: how is it with him?"
+
+"I will tell the pure truth and hide nothing, thinking that your
+worthiness will find strength in your soul to hear news less
+favorable."
+
+"I will!" said Anusia, striking one heel against the other under her
+robe, with satisfaction that she was called "worthiness," and that the
+news was "less favorable."
+
+"At first everything went well with us," said Byes. "We rubbed out on
+the road several bands of peasants; we scattered the forces of the
+younger Sapyeha, and cut up two squadrons of cavalry with a regiment of
+good infantry, sparing no one. Then we defeated Pan Horotkyevich, so
+that he barely escaped, and some say that he was killed. After that we
+occupied the ruins of Tykotsin."
+
+"We know all this. Tell us quickly the unfavorable news," interrupted
+Anusia, on a sudden.
+
+"Be pleased, my lady, to listen calmly. We came to Drohichyn, and there
+the map was unfolded. We had news that Sapyeha was still far away;
+meanwhile two of our scouting parties were as if they had sunk through
+the earth. Not a witness returned from the slaughter. Then it appeared
+that some troops were marching in front of us. A great confusion rose
+out of that. The prince began to think that all preceding information
+was false, and that Sapyeha had not only advanced, but had cut off the
+road. Then we began to retreat, for in that way it was possible to
+catch the enemy and force him to a general battle, which the prince
+wished absolutely. But the enemy did not give the field; he attacked
+and attacked without ceasing. From that everything began to melt in our
+hands; we had rest neither day nor night. The roads were ruined before
+us, the dams cut, provisions intercepted. Reports were soon circulated
+that Charnyetski himself was crushing us. The soldiers did not eat, did
+not sleep; their courage fell. Men perished in the camp itself, as if
+the ground were swallowing them. In Byalystok the enemy seized a whole
+party again, camp-chests, the prince's carriages and guns. I have never
+seen anything like it. It was not seen in former wars, either. The
+prince was changed. He wanted nothing but a general battle, and he had
+to fight ten small ones every day, and lose them. Order became relaxed.
+And how can our confusion and alarm be described when we learned that
+Sapyeha himself had not come up yet, and that in front of us was merely
+a strong party which had caused so many disasters? In this party were
+Tartar troops."
+
+Further words of the officer were interrupted by a scream from Anusia,
+who, throwing herself suddenly on Olenka's neck, cried,--
+
+"Pan Babinich!"
+
+The officer was surprised when he heard the name; but he judged that
+terror and hatred had wrested this cry from the breast of the worthy
+lady; so only after a while did he continue his narrative:--
+
+"To whomsover God has given greatness, he has given also strength to
+bear grievous misfortunes; be pleased, therefore, my lady, to calm
+yourself. Such indeed is the name of this hell-dweller who has
+undermined the success of the whole expedition, and become the cause of
+other immense evils. His name, which your worthiness has divined with
+such wonderful quickness, is repeated now with fear and rage by every
+mouth in our camp."
+
+"I saw that Babinich at Zamost," said Anusia, hastily; "and could I
+have guessed--"
+
+Here she was silent, and no one knew what would have happened in such
+an event. The officer, after a moment's silence, continued,--
+
+"Thaws and heat set in, despite, it may be said, the regular order of
+nature; for we had news that in the south of the Commonwealth there was
+still severe winter; but we were wading in spring mud, which fastened
+our heavy cavalry to the earth. But he, having light troops, advanced
+with more ease. We lost wagons and cannon at every step, and were
+forced at last to go on horseback. The inhabitants round about, in
+their blind venom, favored the attackers. What God gives will happen;
+but I left the whole camp in a desperate condition, as well as the
+prince himself, whom a malignant fever does not leave, and who loses
+his power for whole days. A general battle will come quickly; but how
+it will end, God knows. If He favors, we may hope for wonders."
+
+"Where did you leave the prince?"
+
+"A day's journey from Sokolka. The prince intends to intrench himself
+at Suhovola or Yanov and receive battle. Sapyeha is two days distant.
+When I came away, we had a little more freedom; for from a captured
+informant we learned that Babinich himself had gone to the main camp;
+without him the Tartars dare not attack, satisfying themselves with
+annoying scouting parties. The prince, who is an incomparable leader,
+places all his hopes on a general battle, but, of course, when he is
+well; if the fever seizes him, he must think of something else, the
+best proof of which is that he has sent me to Prussia."
+
+"Why do you go?"
+
+"Either the prince will win the battle or lose it. If he loses it, all
+Electoral Prussia will be defenceless, and it may happen easily that
+Sapyeha will pass the boundaries, force the elector to a decision,--I
+say this, for it is no secret, I go to forewarn them to have some
+defence prepared for those provinces; for the unbidden guests may come
+in too great numbers. That is the affair of the elector and the Swedes,
+with whom the prince is in alliance, and from whom he has the right to
+expect rescue."
+
+The officer finished.
+
+Anusia heaped a multitude of other questions on him, preserving with
+difficulty dignity sufficient. When he went out, she gave way to
+herself completely. She fell to striking her skirts with her hands,
+turning on her heels like a top, kissing Olenka on the eyes, pulling
+Billevich by the sleeves, and crying,--
+
+"Well, now, what did I say? Who has crushed Prince Boguslav? Maybe Pan
+Sapyeha? A fig for Sapyeha! Who will crush the Swedes in the same
+style? Who will exterminate traitors? Who is the greatest cavalier, who
+is the greatest knight? Pan Andrei, Pan Andrei!"
+
+"What Andrei?" asked Olenka, growing pale suddenly.
+
+"Have I not told you that his name is Andrei? He told me that himself.
+Pan Babinich! Long life to Babinich! Volodyovski could not have done
+better!--What is the matter, Olenka?"
+
+Panna Billevich shook herself as if wishing to throw off a burden of
+grievous thoughts. "Nothing! I was thinking that traitors themselves
+bear that name. For there was one who offered to sell the king,
+dead or alive, to the Swedes or to Boguslav; and he had the same
+name,--Andrei."
+
+"May God condemn him!" roared Billevich. "Why mention traitors at
+night? Let us be glad when we have reason."
+
+"Only let Pan Babinich come here!" added Anusia. "That's what is
+needed! I will fool Braun still more. I will, I will, of purpose to
+raise the whole garrison, and go over with men and horses to Pan
+Babinich."
+
+"Do that, do that!" cried Billevich, delighted.
+
+"And afterward--a fig for all those Germans! Maybe he will forget that
+good-for-nothing woman, and give me his lo--"
+
+Then again her thin voice piped; she covered her face with her hands.
+All at once an angry thought must have come to her, for she clapped her
+hands, and said,--
+
+"If not, I will marry Volodyovski!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+Two weeks later it was boiling in all Taurogi. On a certain evening
+disorderly parties of Boguslav's troops came in,--thirty or forty
+horsemen in a body, reduced, torn, more like spectres than men,--and
+brought news of the defeat of Boguslav at Yanov. Everything had
+been lost,--arms, horses, cannon, the camp. Six thousand choice men
+went out on that expedition with the prince; barely four hundred
+returned,--these the prince himself led out of the ruin.
+
+Of the Poles no living soul came back save Sakovich; for all who had
+not fallen in battle, all whom the terrible Babinich had not destroyed
+in his attacks, went over to Sapyeha. Many foreign officers chose of
+their own will to stand at the chariot of the conqueror. In one word,
+no Radzivill had ever yet returned from an expedition more crushed,
+ruined, and beaten.
+
+And as formerly court adulation knew no bounds in exalting Boguslav as
+a leader, so now all mouths sounded loudly an unceasing complaint
+against the incompetent management of the war. Among the remaining
+soldiers there was endless indignation, which in the last days of the
+retreat brought complete disorder, and rose to that degree that the
+prince considered it wiser to remain somewhat in the rear.
+
+The prince and Sakovich halted in Rossyeni. Kettling, hearing of this
+from soldiers, went immediately with the news to Olenka.
+
+"The main thing," said she, when the news came, "is whether Sapyeha and
+that Babinich are pursuing the prince, and whether they intend to bring
+the war to this region."
+
+"I could learn nothing from the statements of the soldiers," answered
+Kettling, "for fear exaggerates every danger. Some say even that
+Babinich is here; but since the prince and Sakovich have remained
+behind, I infer that the pursuit cannot be rapid."
+
+"Still it must come, for it is difficult to think otherwise. Who after
+victory would not pursue the defeated enemy?"
+
+"That will be shown. I wished to speak of something else. The prince by
+reason of illness and defeat must be irritated, therefore inclined to
+deeds of violence. Do not separate now from your aunt and Panna
+Borzobogati. Do not consent to the journey of your uncle to Tyltsa, as
+the last time, before the campaign."
+
+Olenka said nothing. Her uncle had, in fact, not been sent to Tyltsa;
+he had merely been ill for some days after the hammer-stroke given by
+Prince Boguslav. Sakovich, to hide the prince's deed from the people,
+spread the report that the old man had gone to Tyltsa. Olenka preferred
+to be silent on this before Kettling, for the proud maiden was ashamed
+to confess that any man living had struck a Billevich.
+
+"I thank you for the warning," said she, after a moment's silence.
+
+"I considered it my duty."
+
+But her heart swelled with bitterness; for not long before Kettling
+might have enabled her to avoid this new danger. If he had consented to
+the flight, she would have been far away, free of Boguslav forever.
+
+"It is really fortunate for me," said she, "that this warning does not
+touch your honor, that the prince has not issued an order for you not
+to warn me."
+
+Kettling understood the reproach, and uttered a speech which Olenka did
+not expect of him:--
+
+"As to what touches my military service, to guard which my honor
+commands, I will accomplish that or forfeit my life. Other choice I
+have not, and do not wish to have. Outside my service I am free to
+provide against lawlessness. Therefore, as a private man, I leave with
+you this pistol, and I say, Defend yourself, for danger is near; in
+case of need, kill! Then my oath will be at an end, and I will hasten
+to save you."
+
+He bowed and turned toward the door, but Olenka detained him.
+
+"Cavalier, free yourself from that service! Defend a good cause; defend
+the injured, for you are worthy to do so; you are honorable. It is a
+pity that you should be lost on a traitor!"
+
+"I should have freed myself long since, and resigned," said Kettling,
+"had I not thought that by remaining I might serve you. Now it is too
+late. If the prince had returned victorious, I should not have
+hesitated a moment; but when he is coming back conquered,--when,
+perhaps, the enemy is pursuing him,--it would be cowardice to ask for
+dismissal before the end of the term itself will free me. You will see
+sufficiently how people of small heart desert in crowds a defeated man.
+This pistol will send a ball even through armor with ease."
+
+Kettling went out, leaving on the table the weapon, which Olenka
+secreted at once. Fortunately the previsions of the young officer and
+her own fear proved groundless.
+
+The prince arrived in the evening with Sakovich and Patterson, but so
+crushed and ill that he was barely able to hold himself on his feet.
+Besides, he did not know well whether Sapyeha was advancing or had sent
+Babinich in pursuit with the light squadrons. Boguslav had overthrown,
+it is true, the latter in his attack, together with his horse; but he
+dared not hope that he had killed him, since it seemed to him that the
+double-handed sword had turned in the blow on Babinich's helmet.
+Besides, he had fired before from a pistol straight into his face, and
+that had not taken effect.
+
+The prince's heart was aching at the thought of what such a Babinich
+would do with his estates should he reach them with his Tartars,--and
+he had nothing with which to defend them; and not only his estates, but
+his own person. Among his hirelings there were not many like Kettling,
+and it was just to suppose that at the first news of the coming of
+Sapyeha's troops they would desert him to a man.
+
+The prince did not purpose to remain in Taurogi longer than two or
+three days, for he had to hasten to Royal Prussia to the elector and
+Steinbock, who might furnish him with new forces, and employ him either
+in capturing Prussian towns, or send him to aid the king himself, who
+intended an expedition to the heart of the Commonwealth.
+
+In Taurogi he had to leave some one of the officers to bring order into
+the remnant of the army, ward off patriot peasants and nobles, defend
+the property of the two Radzivills, and continue the understanding with
+Löwenhaupt, commander-in-chief of the Swedes in Jmud.
+
+With this object, after he had come to Taurogi, and after a night's
+rest, the prince summoned to council Sakovich, the only man whom he
+could trust, and to whom alone he could open his heart.
+
+That first "good day" in Taurogi was wonderful, when the two friends
+saw each other after the ill-starred campaign. For some time they gazed
+on each other without a word. The prince broke the silence first,--
+
+"Well, the devils! they carried the day."
+
+"They carried the day!" repeated Sakovich.
+
+"It must have been so with such weather. If I had had more light
+squadrons, or if some devil had not brought that Babinich,--twice the
+same man! The gallow's bird changed his name. Do not tell any one of
+him, so as not to increase his glory."
+
+"I will not tell. But will not the officers trumpet it, for you
+presented him before your boots as Banneret of Orsha?"
+
+"The German officers know nothing of Polish names. It is all one to
+them,--Kmita or Babinich. But by the horns of Lucifer, if I could get
+him! I had him; and the scoundrel brought my men into rebellion,
+besides leading off Glovbich's troops. He must be some bastard of our
+blood; it cannot be otherwise! I had him, and he escaped,--that gnaws
+me more than the whole lost campaign."
+
+"You had him, Prince, but at the price of my head."
+
+"I tell you sincerely that I would let them flay you, if I might make a
+drum out of Kmita's skin!"
+
+"Thank you, Bogus; I could not expect less from your friendship."
+
+The prince laughed: "But you would have squirmed on Sapyeha's gridiron.
+All your scoundrelism would have been fried out of you. I should have
+been glad to see that!"
+
+"I should be glad to see you in the hands of Kmita, your dear relative.
+You have a different face, but in form you are like each other, and you
+have feet of the same size; you are sighing for the same maiden, only
+she without experience divines that he is stronger, and that he is a
+better soldier."
+
+"I could manage two such as you, and I rode over his breast. If I had
+had two minutes' time, I should be able to give you my word now that my
+cousin is not living. You have always been rather dull, hence I took a
+fancy to you; but in these recent days your wit has left you
+completely."
+
+"You have always had your wit in your heels, and therefore you swept
+away in such fashion before Sapyeha that I have lost all fancy for you,
+and am ready myself to go to Sapyeha."
+
+"On a rope?"
+
+"On that with which they will bind Radzivill."
+
+"Enough!"
+
+"At the service of your highness!"
+
+"It would be well to shoot some of the noisiest of those horsemen, and
+introduce order."
+
+"I commanded this morning to hang six of them. They are cold now, and
+are dancing stubbornly on the ropes, for the wind is fierce."
+
+"You have done well. But listen! Do you wish to remain in the garrison
+at Taurogi, for I must leave some one here?"
+
+"I do, and I ask for that office. No one can manage better. The
+soldiers fear me more than others, for they know that with me there is
+no trifling. With respect to Löwenhaupt, it is necessary that some one
+be here more important than Patterson."
+
+"Can you manage the rebels?"
+
+"I assure your highness that the pine-trees of Jmud will bear weightier
+fruit than the cones of last year. I will form about two regiments of
+infantry out of the peasants, and train them in my fashion. I will have
+my eyes on the estates; and if the rebels attack one of them, I will
+throw suspicion immediately on some rich noble and squeeze him like
+cheese in a bag. At first I shall need merely money to pay wages and
+equip the infantry."
+
+"I will leave what I can."
+
+"From the dowry money?"
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"That means from the Billevich money which you took out of the dowry
+for yourself in advance."
+
+"If you could only twist the neck of old Billevich in some polite way,
+it would be well; for it could be done easily, and he has my letter."
+
+"I will try. But the point is in this,--has he not sent the note
+somewhere, or has the maiden not sewed it into her shift? Would you not
+like to discover?"
+
+"It will come to that; but now I must go, and besides that cursed fever
+has taken all my strength."
+
+"Your highness, envy me for staying in Taurogi."
+
+"You have a strange kind of wish; but if you meanwhile-- I should have
+you torn apart with hooks. Why do you insist on this office?"
+
+"For I want to marry."
+
+"Whom?" asked the prince, sitting up in bed. "Panna Borzobogati."
+
+"That is a good idea, an excellent idea!" said Boguslav. "I have heard
+of some will."
+
+"There is a will from Pan Longin Podbipienta. Your highness knows what
+a powerful family that is, and the estates of Pan Longin are in a
+number of districts. It is true that the Moscow troops have occupied
+some; there will be lawsuits, fights, disputes, and attacks without
+number; but I will help myself, and will not yield one point to any
+man. Besides, the girl has pleased me greatly; she is pretty and
+enticing. I noticed in a moment when we captured her that she feigned
+terror, and shot at me with her eyes at the same time. Only let me stay
+here as commandant, and from idleness alone the love-making will
+begin."
+
+"One thing I tell you. I will not forbid you to marry; but listen
+well,--no excesses, you understand? That maiden is from the
+Vishnyevetskis; she is a confidant of Princess Griselda herself; and
+because of my esteem for the princess, I do not wish to offend her, nor
+do I wish to offend Pan Zamoyski."
+
+"There is no need of warning," answered Sakovich; "for since I wish to
+marry regularly, I must make regular approaches."
+
+"I wish you might get a refusal."
+
+"-I know a man who got a refusal, though he is a prince; but I think
+that that will not come to me. That eye-cutting gives me great
+consolation."
+
+"Don't tell that man who got a refusal not to give you horns! I will
+give an addition to your shield, or you will receive a surname,
+Sakovich Rogaty.[9] She is Borzobogaty, and he is Bardzorogaty. You
+will be a chosen pair. But marry, yes, marry, and let me know of the
+wedding. I will be your best man."
+
+Fierce anger appeared on Sakovich's face, terrible without that. His
+eyes were covered for a moment as if by smoke; but he soon recovered,
+and turning the prince's words into a jest, he said,--
+
+"Poor man! you are not able to go downstairs alone, and you make
+threats. You have your Panna Billevich here; go your way, skeleton! go
+your way! You'll nurse Babinich's children yet!"
+
+"God break your tongue, such a son! You are making sport of the
+sickness which came within a hair of killing me. I would you were
+enchanted as I was."
+
+"What enchantments are there here? At times, when I see how everything
+goes in the natural world, I think enchantment is stupid."
+
+"You are stupid yourself! Be silent! do not summon the Devil. You
+disgust me more and more."
+
+"Would that I were not the last Pole who has remained faithful to your
+highness! For my loyalty you feed me with ingratitude. I will return to
+my dens at home, and sit quietly awaiting the end of the war."
+
+"Oh, give us peace! You know that I love you."
+
+"It is grievous for me to see that. The Devil thrust this love for your
+highness on me. If there is enchantment in anything, it is in that."
+
+The starosta told the truth; for he loved Boguslav really. The prince
+knew this, and therefore paid him, if not with strong attachment, with
+gratitude, which vain people ever have for those who do them homage.
+Therefore Boguslav agreed willingly to Sakovich's plans touching
+Anusia, and determined to aid him in person. In view of this, about
+midday, when he felt better, he had himself dressed and went to Anusia.
+
+"I have come because of old acquaintance," said he, "to inquire after
+your health and ask if the visit to Taurogi has pleased you."
+
+"In captivity one must be pleased with all things," answered Anusia,
+sighing.
+
+The prince laughed. "You are not in captivity. You were taken together
+with Sapyeha's soldiers, that is true; and I gave orders to send you
+here, but only for safety. Not a hair will fall from your head. Be
+convinced that there are few people whom I respect as I do Princess
+Griselda, to whose heart you are near; and the Vishnyevetskis and
+Zamoyskis are connections of mine. You will find here every freedom and
+every care. I come to you as a well-wishing friend, and I say if you
+wish to go I will give you an escort, though I have few soldiers
+myself. I advise you to stay. You, as I have heard, were sent here to
+seek property willed to you. Be assured that this is not the time to
+think of such business; and even in time of peace the aid of Sapyeha
+would not avail in these regions, for he could act only in Vityebsk;
+here he can do nothing. I shall not touch that affair personally, but
+through an agent. You need a friendly man, and adroit, esteemed, and
+feared. If such a man were to take up this matter, surely he would not
+let people thrust straw instead of grain into his hand."
+
+"Where shall I, an orphan, find such a protector?" asked Anusia.
+
+"Precisely in Taurogi."
+
+"Your highness would be pleased yourself--"
+
+Here Anusia put her hands together, and looked so prettily into
+Boguslav's eyes that if the prince had not been wearied and broken, he
+would surely have begun to think less sincerely of Sakovich's cause;
+but since he had no gallantry in his head at that moment, he said
+quickly,--
+
+"Could I do it myself, I should not intrust such a pleasant office to
+any man; but I am going away, for I must go. I leave in my place, as
+commandant of Taurogi, the starosta of Oshmiana, Pan Sakovich, a great
+cavalier, a famous soldier, and a man so adroit that there is not
+another such in all Lithuania. So I repeat: Stay in Taurogi, for you
+have no place to go to, since every point is full of ravagers and
+ruffians, while rebels infest all the roads. Sakovich will protect you
+here; Sakovich will defend you. Sakovich will see what can be done to
+obtain those estates; and once he undertakes the affair, I guarantee
+that no man on earth could bring it to a favorable issue sooner. He is
+my friend, therefore I know him, and I will say only this: if I had
+taken those estates from you, and afterward learned that Sakovich was
+coming to oppose me, I would give them up of my own will, for it is
+dangerous to struggle with him."
+
+"If Pan Sakovich would be ready to come to the aid of an orphan--"
+
+"Only be not unjust to him, and he will do anything for you, for your
+beauty has touched his heart deeply. He is going around sighing now--"
+
+"How could I touch the heart of any man?"
+
+"She is a rascal, the maiden!" thought the prince. But he added aloud:
+"Let Sakovich explain how that happened. Only do him no wrong; for he
+is a worthy man and of a noted family, therefore I do not wish that
+disdain should be shown such a person."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+Next morning the prince received a summons from the elector to go with
+all speed to Konigsberg to take command of the newly levied troops
+which were to march to Marienburg or Dantzig. The letter contained also
+news of the daring campaign of Karl Gustav through the whole length of
+the Commonwealth to Russian regions. The elector foresaw a disastrous
+end to the campaign; but just for that reason he desired to be at the
+head of as many troops as possible, that he might in case of need be
+indispensable to one side or the other, sell himself dearly, and decide
+the fate of the war. For those reasons he enjoined on the young prince
+all possible haste, so greatly was he concerned about avoiding delay;
+but after the first courier he sent a second, who arrived twelve hours
+later.
+
+The prince, therefore, had not a moment to lose, and not time enough to
+rest, for the fever returned with its previous violence. Still he had
+to go. So when he had delegated his authority to Sakovich, he said,--
+
+"Perhaps we shall have to transport Billevich and the maiden to
+Königsberg. There it will be easier in quiet to handle a hostile man
+firmly; but the girl I will take to the camp, for I have had enough of
+these ceremonies."
+
+"It is well, and the cavalry may be increased," answered Sakovich at
+parting.
+
+An hour later the prince was no longer in Taurogi. Sakovich remained,
+an unlimited despot, recognizing no power above himself but that of
+Anusia. And he began to blow away the dust from before her feet, as on
+a time the prince had before the feet of Olenka. Restraining his wild
+nature, he was courteous, anticipating her wishes, divining her
+thoughts, and at the same time he held himself at a distance, with all
+the respect which a polished cavalier should have toward a lady for
+whose hand and heart he is striving.
+
+It must be confessed that this reigning in Taurogi pleased Anusia; it
+was grateful to her to think that when evening came, in the lower
+halls, in the corridors, in the barracks, in the garden still covered
+with winter frost, the sighs of old and young officers were heard; that
+the astrologer was sighing while looking at the stars from his tower;
+that even old Billevich interrupted his evening rosary with sighs.
+
+While the best of maidens, she was still glad that those swift
+affections went not to Olenka, but to her. She was glad also with
+respect to Babinich; for she felt her power, and it came to her head
+that if no man had resisted her anywhere, she must have burned on his
+heart also permanent marks with her eyes.
+
+"He will forget that woman, it cannot be otherwise, for she feeds him
+with ingratitude; and when he forgets her he knows where to seek
+me,--and he will seek me, the robber!"
+
+Then she threatened him in her soul: "Wait! I will pay you before I
+console you."
+
+Meanwhile, though not in real truth caring much for Sakovich, she saw
+him with pleasure. It is true that he justified himself in her eyes
+from reproaches of treason in the same way in which Boguslav had
+explained himself to the sword-bearer. He said, therefore, that peace
+was already concluded with the Swedes; that the Commonwealth might
+recover and flourish, had not Pan Sapyeha ruined everything for his own
+private ends.
+
+Anusia, not knowing over-much of these matters, let the words pass her
+ears; but she was struck by something else in Sakovich's narrative.
+
+"The Billeviches," said he, "scream in heaven-piercing voices of
+injustice and captivity; but nothing has happened to them here, and
+nothing will happen. The prince has not let them go from Taurogi, it is
+true; but that is for their good, for three furlongs beyond the gate
+they would perish from ravagers or forest bandits. He has not let them
+go also, because he loves Panna Billevich, and that also is true. But
+who will not justify him? Who would act otherwise, who had a feeling
+heart and a breast burdened with sighs? If he had had less honorable
+intentions, being such a powerful man, he might have given rein to
+himself; but he wanted to marry her, he wanted to elevate that stubborn
+lady to his princely estate, to cover her with happiness, place the
+coronet of the Radzivills on her head; and these thankless people are
+hurling invectives at him, thus trying to diminish his honor and fame."
+
+Anusia, not believing this greatly, asked Olenka that same day if the
+prince wished to marry her. Olenka could not deny; and because they had
+become intimate, she explained her reasons for refusal. They seemed
+just and sufficient to Anusia; but still she thought to herself that it
+was not so grievous for the Billeviches in Taurogi, and that the prince
+and Sakovich were not such criminals as Pan Tomash had proclaimed.
+
+Then, also, came news that Sapyeha and Babinich were not only not
+approaching Taurogi, but had gone with forced marches against the King
+of Sweden, faraway toward Lvoff. Anusia fell into a rage at first, and
+then began to understand that if the hetman and Babinich had gone,
+there was no reason to flee from Taurogi, for they might lose their
+lives, or in the most favorable event change a quiet existence into a
+captivity full of dangers.
+
+For this reason it came to disputes between her on one side, and Olenka
+and Billevich on the other; but even they were forced to admit that the
+departure of Sapyeha rendered their flight very difficult, if not quite
+impossible, especially since the country was growing more and more
+excited, and no inhabitant could be certain of the morrow. Finally,
+even should they not accept Anusia's reason, flight without her aid was
+impossible, in view of the watchfulness of Sakovich and the other
+officers. Kettling alone was devoted to them, but he would not let
+himself be involved in any plot against his service; besides, he was
+absent often, for Sakovich was glad to employ him against armed bands
+of confederates and ravagers, since he was an experienced soldier and a
+good officer, therefore he sent him frequently from Taurogi.
+
+But it was pleasanter and pleasanter for Anusia. Sakovich made a
+declaration to her a month after the departure of the prince; but, the
+deceiver! she answered cunningly that she did not know him, that men
+spoke variously concerning him, that she had not time yet to love, that
+without permission of Princess Griselda she could not marry, and
+finally, that she wished to subject him to a year's trial.
+
+The starosta gnawed his anger, gave orders that day to give three
+thousand stripes to a cavalry soldier for a trifling offence,--after
+this the poor soldier was buried; but the starosta had to agree to
+Anusia's conditions. She told the lordling that if he would serve still
+more faithfully, diligently, and obediently, in a year he would receive
+whatever love she had.
+
+In this way she played with the bear; and she so succeeded in mastering
+him that he stifled even his growling. He merely said,--
+
+"With the exception of treason to the prince, ask anything of me, even
+ask me to walk on my knees."
+
+If Anusia had seen what terrible results of Sakovich's impatience were
+falling on the whole neighborhood, she would not have teased him so
+greatly. Soldiers and residents in Taurogi trembled before him, for he
+punished grievously and altogether without cause, punished beyond every
+measure. Prisoners died in chains from hunger, or were burned with hot
+iron.
+
+More than once it seemed that the wild starosta wished to cool in the
+blood of men his spirit, at once raging and burning with love, for he
+started up suddenly and went on an expedition. Victory followed him
+nearly everywhere. He cut to pieces parties of rebels, and ordered, as
+an example, that the right hands be cut from captured peasants, who
+were then sent home free.
+
+The terror of his name girded Taurogi as with a wall; even the most
+considerable bodies of patriots did not dare to go beyond Rossyeni.
+Peace was established in all parts, and he formed new regiments of
+German vagrants and the local peasants with the money extorted from
+neighboring citizens and nobles, and increased in power so as to
+furnish men to the prince in case of urgent necessity.
+
+A more loyal and terrible servant Boguslav could not have found.
+
+But Sakovich gazed more and more tenderly at Anusia with his terrible,
+pale-blue eyes, and played to her on a lute. Life, therefore, in
+Taurogi passed for Anusia joyously and with amusement; for Olenka it
+was sore and monotonous. From one there went gleams of gladness, like
+that light which issues at night from the firefly; the face of the
+other grew paler and paler, more serious, sterner; her dark brows were
+contracted more resolutely on her white forehead, so that finally they
+called her a nun. And she had something in her of the nun; she began to
+accept the thought that she would become one,--that God himself would
+through suffering and disappointment lead her to peace behind the
+grating. She was no longer that maiden with beautiful bloom on her face
+and happiness in her eyes; not that Olenka who on a time while riding
+in a sleigh with her betrothed, Andrei Kmita, cried, "Hei! hei!" to the
+pine woods and forests.
+
+Spring appeared in the world. A wind strong and warm shook the
+waters of the Baltic, now liberated from ice; later on, trees bloomed,
+flowers shot out from their harsh leafy enclosures; then the sun grew
+hot, and the poor girl was waiting in vain for the end of Taurogi
+captivity,--for Anusia did not wish to flee, and in the country it was
+ever more terrible.
+
+Fire and sword were raging as though the pity of God were never to be
+manifest. Nay more, whoso had not seized the sabre or the lance in
+winter, seized it in spring; snow did not betray his tracks, the pine
+wood gave better concealment, and warmth made war the easier.
+
+News flew swallow-like to Taurogi,--sometimes terrible, sometimes
+comforting; and to these and to those the maiden devoted her prayers,
+and shed tears of sorrow or joy.
+
+Previous mention had been made of a terrible uprising of the whole
+people. As many as the trees in the forests of the Commonwealth, as
+many as the ears of grain waving on its fields, as many as the stars
+shining on it at night between the Carpathians and the Baltic, were the
+warriors who rose up against the Swedes. These men, being nobles, were
+born to the sword and to war by God's will and nature's order; those
+who cut furrows with the plough, sowed land with grain; those who were
+occupied with trade and handicraft in towns; those who lived in the
+wilderness, from bee-keeping, from pitch-making, who lived with the axe
+or by hunting; those who lived on the rivers and labored at fishing;
+those who were nomads in the steppes with their cattle,--all seized
+their weapons to drive out the invader.
+
+The Swede was now drowning in that multitude as in a swollen river.
+
+To the wonder of the whole world, the Commonwealth, powerless but a
+short time before, found more sabres in its defence than the Emperor of
+Germany or the King of France could have.
+
+Then came news of Karl Gustav,--how he was marching ever deeper into
+the Commonwealth, his feet in blood, his head in smoke and flames, his
+lips blaspheming. It was hoped any moment to hear of his death and the
+destruction of all the Swedish armies.
+
+The name of Charnyetski was heard with increasing force from boundary
+to boundary, transfixing the enemy with terror, pouring consolation
+into the hearts of the Poles.
+
+"He routed them at Kozyenitsi!" was said one day. "He routed them at
+Yaroslav!" was repeated a few weeks later; a distant echo repeated: "He
+has beaten them at Sandomir!" The only wonder was where so many Swedes
+could still come from after so many defeats.
+
+Finally a new flock of swallows flew in, and with them the report of
+the imprisonment of the king and the whole Swedish army in the fork of
+the rivers. It seemed that the end was right there. Sakovich stopped
+his expeditions; he merely wrote letters at night and sent them in
+various directions.
+
+Billevich seemed bewildered. He rushed in every evening with news to
+Olenka. Sometimes he gnawed his hands, when he remembered that he had
+to sit in Taurogi. The old soldier soul was yearning for the field. At
+last he began to shut himself up in his room, and to ponder over
+something for hours at a time. Once he seized Olenka in his arms, burst
+out into great weeping, and said,--"You are a dear girl, my only
+daughter, but the country is dearer." And next day he vanished, as if
+he had fallen through the earth. Olenka found merely a letter, and in
+it the following words:--
+
+
+"God bless thee, beloved child! I understood well that they are
+guarding thee and not me, and that it would be easier for me to escape
+alone. Let God judge me, thou poor orphan, if I did this from hardness
+of heart and lack of fatherly love for thee. But the torment surpassed
+my endurance. I swear, by Christ's wounds, that I could endure no
+longer. For when I thought that the best Polish blood was flowing in a
+river _pro patria el libertate_ (for the country and liberty), and in
+that river there was not one drop of my blood, it seemed to me that the
+angels of heaven were condemning me. If I had not been born in our
+sacred Jmud, where love of country and bravery are cherished, if I had
+not been born a noble, a Billevich, I should have remained with thee
+and guarded thee. But thou, if a man, wouldst have done as I have;
+therefore thou'lt forgive me for leaving thee alone, like Daniel in the
+lions' den, whom God in His mercy preserved; so I think that the
+protection of our Most Holy Lady the Queen will be better over thee
+than mine."
+
+
+Olenka covered the letter with tears: but she loved her uncle still
+more because of this act, for her heart rose with pride. Meanwhile no
+small uproar was made in Taurogi. Sakovich himself rushed to the maiden
+in great fury, and without removing his cap asked,--
+
+"Where is your uncle?"
+
+"Where all, except traitors, are,--in the field!"
+
+"Did you know of this?" cried he.
+
+But she, instead of being abashed, advanced some steps and measuring
+him with her eyes, said with inexpressible contempt,--
+
+"I knew--and what?"
+
+"Ah, if it were not for the prince! You will answer to the prince!"
+
+"Neither to the prince nor to his serving-lad. And now I beg you--" And
+she pointed to the door.
+
+Sakovich gnashed his teeth and went out.
+
+That same day news of the victory at Varka was ringing through Taurogi,
+and such fear fell on all partisans of the Swedes that Sakovich himself
+dared not punish the priests who sang publicly in the neighboring
+churches _Te Deum_.
+
+A great burden fell from his heart, when a few weeks later a letter
+came from Boguslav, who was before Marienburg, with information that
+the king had escaped from the river sack. But the other news was very
+disagreeable. The prince asked reinforcements, and directed to leave in
+Taurogi no more troops than were absolutely needed for defence.
+
+All the cavalry ready marched the next day, and with it Kettling,
+Oettingen, Fitz-Gregory,--in a word, all the best officers, except
+Braun, who was indispensable to Sakovich.
+
+Taurogi was still more deserted than after the prince's departure.
+Anusia grew weary, and annoyed Sakovich all the more. The starosta
+thought of removing to Prussia; for parties, made bold by the departure
+of the troops, began again to push beyond Rossyeni. The Billeviches
+themselves had collected about five hundred horse, small nobles and
+peasants. They had inflicted a sensible defeat on Bützov, who had
+marched against them, and they ravaged without mercy all villages
+belonging to Radzivill.
+
+Men rallied to them willingly; for no family, not even the Hleboviches,
+enjoyed such general honor and respect. Sakovich was sorry to leave
+Taurogi at the mercy of the enemy; he knew that in Prussia it would be
+difficult for him to get money and reinforcements, that he managed here
+as he liked, there his power must decrease; still he lost hope more and
+more of being able to maintain himself.
+
+Bützov, defeated, took refuge under him; and the tidings which he
+brought of the power and growth of the rebellion made Sakovich decide
+at last on the Prussian journey.
+
+As a positive man, and one loving to bring into speedy effect that
+which he had planned, he finished his preparations in ten days, issued
+orders, and was ready to march.
+
+Suddenly he met with an unlooked for resistance, and from a side from
+which he had least expected it,--from Anusia Borzobogati.
+
+Anusia did not think of going to Prussia. She was comfortable in
+Taurogi. The advances of confederate "parties" did not alarm her in the
+least; and if the Billeviches had attacked Taurogi itself, she would
+have been glad. She understood also that in a strange place, among
+Germans, she would be at Sakovich's mercy completely, and that she
+might the more easily be brought there to obligation, for which she had
+no desire; therefore she resolved to insist on remaining. Olenka, to
+whom she explained her reasons, not only confirmed the justness of
+them, but implored with all her power, with tears in her eyes, to
+oppose the journey.
+
+"Here," said she, "salvation may come,--if not to-day, to-morrow; there
+we should both be lost utterly."
+
+"But see, you almost abused me because I wanted to conquer the
+starosta, though I knew of nothing; as I love Princess Griselda, it
+only came somehow of itself. But now would he regard my resistance were
+he not in love? What do you think?"
+
+"True, Anusia, true," responded Olenka.
+
+"Do not trouble yourself, my most beautiful flower! We shall not stir a
+foot out of Taurogi; besides, I shall annoy Sakovich terribly."
+
+"God grant you success!"
+
+"Why should I not have it? I shall succeed, first, because he cares for
+me, and second, as I think he cares for my property. It is easy for him
+to get angry with me; he can even wound me with his sabre; but then all
+would be lost."
+
+And it turned out that she was right. Sakovich came to her joyful and
+confident; but she greeted him with disdainful mien.
+
+"Is it possible," asked she, "that you wish to flee to Prussia from
+dread of the Billeviches?"
+
+"Not before the Billeviches," answered he, frowning; "not from fear;
+but I go there from prudence, so as to act against those robbers with
+fresh forces."
+
+"Then a pleasant journey to you."
+
+"How is that? Do you think that I will go without you, my dearest
+hope?"
+
+"Whoso is a coward may find hope in flight, not in me."
+
+Sakovich was pale from anger. He would have punished her; but seeing
+before whom he was standing, he restrained himself, softened his fierce
+face with a smile, and said, as if jesting,--
+
+"Oh, I shall not ask. I will seat you in a carriage and take you
+along."
+
+"Will you?" asked she. "Then I see that I am held here in captivity
+against the will of the prince. Know then, sir, that if you do that, I
+shall not speak another word to you all my life, so help me the Lord
+God! for I was reared in Lubni, and I have the greatest contempt for
+cowards. Would that I had not fallen into such hands! Would that Pan
+Babinich had carried me off for good into Lithuania, for he was not
+afraid of any man!"
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Sakovich. "Tell me at least why you are
+unwilling to go to Prussia."
+
+But Anusia feigned weeping and despair.
+
+"Tartars as it were have taken me into captivity, though I was reared
+by Princess Griselda, and no one had a right to me. They seize me,
+imprison me, take me beyond the sea by force, will condemn me to exile.
+It is soon to be seen how they will tear me with pincers! O my God! my
+God!"
+
+"Have the fear of that God on whom you are calling!" cried the
+starosta. "Who will tear you with pincers?"
+
+"Oh, save me, all ye saints!" cried Anusia, sobbing.
+
+Sakovich knew not what to do; he was choking with rage. At times he
+thought that he would go mad, or that Anusia had gone mad. At last he
+threw himself at her feet and said that he would stay in Taurogi. Then
+she began to entreat him to go away, if he was afraid; with which she
+brought him to final despair, so that, springing up and going out, he
+said,--
+
+"Well! we shall remain in Taurogi, and whether I fear the Billeviches
+will soon be seen."
+
+And collecting that very day the remnant of Bützov's defeated troops
+and his own, he marched, but not to Prussia, only to Rossyeni, against
+the Billeviches, who were encamped in the forests of Girlakol. They did
+not expect an attack, for news of the intended withdrawal of the troops
+from Taurogi had been repeated in the neighborhood for several days.
+The starosta struck them while off their guard, cut them to pieces, and
+trampled them. The sword-bearer himself, under whose leadership the
+party was, escaped from the defeat; but two Billeviches of another line
+fell, and with them a third part of the soldiers; the rest fled to the
+four points of the world. The starosta brought a number of tens of
+prisoners to Taurogi, and gave orders to slay every one, before Anusia
+could intercede in their defence.
+
+There was no further talk of leaving Taurogi; and the starosta had no
+need of doing so, for after this victory parties did not go beyond the
+Dubisha.
+
+Sakovich put on airs and boasted beyond measure, saying that if
+Löwenhaupt would send him a thousand good horse he would rub out the
+rebellion in all Jmud. But Löwenhaupt was not in those parts then.
+Anusia gave a poor reception to this boasting.
+
+"Oh, success against the sword-bearer was easy," said she; "but if he
+before whom both you and the prince fled had been there, of a certainty
+you would have left me and fled to Prussia beyond the sea."
+
+These words pricked the starosta to the quick.
+
+"First of all, do not imagine to yourself that Prussia is beyond the
+sea, for beyond the sea is Sweden; and second, before whom did the
+prince and I flee?"
+
+"Before Pan Babinich!" answered she, courtesying with great ceremony.
+
+"Would that I might meet him at a sword's length!"
+
+"Then you would surely lie a sword's depth in the ground; but do not
+call the wolf from the forest."
+
+Sakovich, in fact, did not call that wolf with sincerity; for though he
+was a man of incomparable daring, he felt a certain, almost
+superstitious, dread of Babinich,--so ghastly were the memories that
+remained to him after the recent campaign. He did not know, besides,
+how soon he would hear that terrible name.
+
+But before that name rang through all Jmud, there came in time other
+news,--for some the most joyful of joyful, but for Sakovich most
+terrible,--which all mouths repeated in three words throughout the
+whole Commonwealth,--
+
+"Warsaw is taken!"
+
+It seemed that the earth was opening under the feet of traitors; that
+the whole Swedish heaven was falling on their heads, together with all
+the deities which had shone in it hitherto like suns. Ears would not
+believe that the chancellor Oxenstiern was in captivity; that in
+captivity were Erskine, Löwenhaupt, Wrangel; in captivity the great
+Wittemberg himself, who had stained the whole Commonwealth with blood,
+who had conquered one half of it before the coming of Karl Gustav; that
+the king, Yan Kazimir, was triumphing, and after the victory would pass
+judgment on the guilty.
+
+And this news flew as if on wings; roared like a bomb through the
+Commonwealth; went through villages, for peasant repeated it to
+peasant; went through the fields, for the wheat rustled it; went
+through the forest, for pine-tree told it to pine-tree; the eagles
+screamed it in the air; and all living men still the more seized their
+weapons.
+
+In a moment the defeat of Girlakol was forgotten around Taurogi. The
+recently terrible Sakovich grew small in everything, even in his own
+eyes. Parties began again to attack bodies of Swedes; the Billeviches,
+recovering after their last defeat, passed the Dubisha again, at the
+head of their own men and the remainder of the Lauda nobles.
+
+Sakovich knew not himself what to begin, whither to turn, from what
+side to look for salvation. For a long time he had no news from Prince
+Boguslav, and he racked his head in vain. Where was he, with what
+troops could he be? And at times a mortal terror seized him: had not
+the prince too fallen into captivity? He called to mind the prince's
+saying that he would turn his tabor toward Warsaw, and that if they
+would make him commandant over the garrison in the capital, he would
+prefer to be there, for he could look more easily on every side.
+
+There were not wanting also people who asserted that the prince must
+have fallen into the hands of Yan Kazimir.
+
+"If the prince were not in Warsaw," said they, "why should our gracious
+lord the king exclude him alone from amnesty, which he extended in
+advance to all Poles in the garrison? He must be already in the power
+of the king; and since it is known that Prince Yanush's head was
+destined for the block, it is certain that Prince Boguslav's will
+fall."
+
+In consequence of these thoughts Sakovich came to the same conviction,
+and wrestled with despair,--first, because he loved the prince; second,
+because he saw that if this powerful protector were dead, the wildest
+beast would more easily find a place to hide its head in the
+Commonwealth than he, the right hand of the traitor.
+
+All that seemed left to him was to flee to Prussia without regard to
+Anusia's opposition, and seek there bread, service.
+
+"But what would happen?" asked the starosta of himself more than once,
+"if the elector, fearing the anger of Yan Kazimir, should give up all
+fugitives?"
+
+There was no issue but to seek safety beyond the sea, in Sweden itself.
+
+Fortunately, after a week of this torment and doubt, a courier came
+from Prince Boguslav with a long autograph letter.
+
+
+"Warsaw is taken from the Swedes," wrote the prince. "My tabor and
+effects are lost. It is too late for me to recede, for the king's
+advisers are so envenomed against me that I was excepted from amnesty.
+Babinich harassed my troops at the very gates of Warsaw. Kettling is in
+captivity. The King of Sweden, the elector, and I, with Steinbock and
+all forces, are marching to the capital, where there will be a general
+battle soon. Karl Gustav swears that he will win it, though the skill
+of Yan Kazimir in leading armies confounds him not a little. Who could
+have foreseen in that ex-Jesuit such a strategist? But I recognized him
+as early as Berestechko, for there everything was done with his head
+and Vishnyevetski's. We have hope in this,--that the general militia,
+of which there are several tens of thousands with Yan Kazimir, will
+disperse to their homes, or that their first ardor will cool and they
+will not fight as at first. God grant some panic in that rabble; then
+Karl Gustav can give them a general defeat, though what will come later
+is unknown, and the generals themselves tell one another in secret that
+the rebellion is a hydra on which new heads are growing every moment.
+First of all, 'Warsaw must be taken a second time.' When I heard this
+from the mouth of Karl, I asked, 'What next?' He said nothing. Here our
+strength is crumbling, theirs is increasing. We have nothing with which
+to begin a new war. And courage is not the same; no Poles will join the
+Swedes as at first. My uncle the elector is silent as usual; but I see
+well that if we lose a battle, he will begin to-morrow to beat the
+Swedes, so as to buy himself into Yan Kazimir's favor. It is bitter to
+bow down, but we must. God grant that I be accepted, and come out whole
+without losing my property. I trust only in God; but it is hard to
+escape fear, and we must foresee evil. Therefore what property you can
+sell or mortgage for ready money, sell and mortgage; even enter into
+relations with confederates in secret. Go yourself with the whole tabor
+to Birji, as from there to Courland is nearer. I should advise you to
+go to Prussia; but soon it will not be safe from fire and sword in
+Prussia, for immediately after the taking of Warsaw Babinich was
+ordered to march through Prussia to Lithuania, to excite the rebellion
+and burn and slay on the road. And you know that he will carry out that
+order. We tried to catch him at the Bug; and Steinbock himself sent a
+considerable force against him, of which not one man returned to give
+news of the disaster. Do not try to measure yourself with Babinich, for
+you will not be able, but hasten to Birji.
+
+"The fever has left me entirely; here there are high and dry plains,
+not such swamps as in Jmud. I commit you to God, etc."
+
+
+The starosta was as much grieved at the news as he was rejoiced that
+the prince was alive and in health; for if the prince foresaw that the
+winning of a general battle could not much better the shattered fortune
+of Sweden, what could be hoped for in future? Perhaps the prince might
+save himself from ruin under the robe of the crafty elector, and he,
+Sakovich, under the prince; but what could be done in the mean while?
+Go to Prussia?
+
+Pan Sakovich did not need the advice of the prince to restrain him from
+meeting Babinich. Power and desire to do that were both lacking. Birji
+remained, but too late for that also. On the road was a Billevich
+party; then a second party,--nobles, peasants, people of the prince,
+and God knows what others,--who at a mere report would assemble and
+sweep him away as a whirlwind sweeps withered leaves; and even if they
+did not assemble, even if he could anticipate them by a swift and bold
+march, it would be needful to fight on the road with others; at every
+village, at every swamp, in every field and forest, a new battle. What
+forces should he have to take even thirty horses to Birji? Was he to
+remain in Taurogi? That was bad, for meanwhile the terrible Babinich
+would come at the head of a powerful Tartar legion; all the parties
+would fly to him; they would cover Taurogi as with a flood, and wreak a
+vengeance such as man had not heard of till that day.
+
+For the first time in his life the hitherto insolent starosta felt that
+he lacked counsel in his head, strength in undertaking, and decision in
+danger; and the next day he summoned to counsel Bützov, Braun, and some
+of the most important officers.
+
+It was decided to remain in Taurogi and await tidings from Warsaw.
+
+But Braun from that council went straight to another, to one with
+Anusia.
+
+Long, long did they deliberate together. At last Braun came out with
+face greatly moved; but Anusia rushed like a storm to Olenka,--
+
+"Olenka, the time has come!" cried she, on the threshold. "We must
+flee!"
+
+"When?" asked the valiant girl, growing a little pale, but rising at
+once in sign of immediate readiness.
+
+"To-morrow, to-morrow! Braun has the command, and Sakovich will sleep
+in the town, for Pan Dzyeshuk has invited him to a banquet. Pan
+Dzyeshuk was long ago prepared, and he will put something in Sakovich's
+wine. Braun says that he will go himself and take fifty horse. Oh,
+Olenka, how happy I am! how happy!"
+
+Here Anusia threw herself on Panna Billevich's neck, and began to press
+her with such an outburst of joy that she asked,--
+
+"What is the matter, Anusia? You might have brought Braun to this long
+ago."
+
+"I might, I might. I have told you nothing yet! O my God! my God! Have
+you heard of nothing? Pan Babinich is marching hither! Sakovich and all
+of them are dying of fear! Pan Babinich is marching, burning, and
+slaying. He has destroyed one party, has beaten Steinbock himself, and
+is advancing with forced marches, so as to hurry. And to whom can he
+hurry hither? Tell me, am I not a fool?"
+
+Here tears glistened in Anusia's eyes. Olenka placed her hands together
+as if in prayer, and raising her eyes said,--
+
+"To whomsoever he is hastening, may God straighten his paths, bless
+him, and guard him!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+
+Kmita, wishing to pass from Warsaw to Royal Prussia and Lithuania, had
+really no easy task in the very beginning, for not farther from Warsaw
+than Serotsk was a great Swedish force. Karl Gustav in his time had
+commanded it to take position there purposely to hinder the siege of
+the capital. But since Warsaw was captured, that army had nothing
+better to do than stop the divisions which Yan Kazimir might send to
+Lithuania or Prussia. At the head of the Swedish force were two Polish
+traitors, Radzeyovski and Radzivill, with Douglas, a skilful warrior,
+trained as no other of the Swedish generals in sudden warfare; with
+them were two thousand chosen infantry and cavalry, with artillery of
+equal number. When the leaders heard of Kmita's expedition, since it
+was necessary for them in every event to approach Lithuania to save
+Tykotsin, besieged anew by Mazovians and men of Podlyasye, they spread
+widely their nets for Pan Andrei in the triangle on the Bug, between
+Serotsk on one side and Zlotorya on the other, and Ostrolenko at the
+point.
+
+Kmita had to pass through that triangle, for he was hurrying, and there
+lay his nearest road. He noticed in good season that he was in a net,
+but because he was accustomed to that method of warfare he was not
+disconcerted. He counted on this,--that the net was too greatly
+extended, and therefore the meshes in it were so widely stretched that
+he would be able to pass through them. What is more, though they hunted
+him diligently, not only did he double back, not only did he escape,
+but he hunted them. First, he passed the Bug behind Serotsk, pushed
+along the bank of the river to Vyshkov in Branshchyk; he cut to pieces
+three hundred horse sent on a reconnoissance, so that, as the prince
+had written, not a man returned to give account of the disaster.
+Douglas himself pushed him into Dlugosyodle; but Kmita, dispersing the
+cavalry, turned back, and instead of fleeing with all his might, went
+straight to the eyes of the enemy as far as the Narev, which he crossed
+by swimming. Douglas stood on the bank waiting for boats; but before
+they were brought Kmita returned in the dark through the river, and
+striking the vanguard of the Swedes brought panic and disorder to
+Douglas's whole division.
+
+The old general was amazed at this movement; but next day his amazement
+was greater, when he learned that Kmita had gone around the whole army,
+and doubling back to the spot from which they had started him like a
+wild beast, had seized at Branshchyk Swedish wagons following the army,
+together with booty and money, cutting down at the same time fifty men
+of the infantry convoy.
+
+Sometimes the Swedes saw Kmita's Tartars for whole days with the naked
+eye on the edge of the horizon, but could not reach them. Still Pan
+Andrei carried off something every moment. The Swedish soldiers were
+wearied, and the Polish squadrons which held yet with Radzeyovski,
+though formed of dissenters, served unwillingly. But the population
+served Kmita with enthusiasm. He knew every movement of the smallest
+scouting-party, of each wagon which went forward or remained in the
+rear. Sometimes it seemed that he was playing with the Swedes, but that
+was tiger-play. He spared no prisoners; he ordered the Tartars to hang
+them, for the Swedes did the same. At times you would say that
+irrepressible fury had come upon him, for he hurled himself with blind
+insolence on superior forces.
+
+"An insane man leads that division!" said Douglas.
+
+"Or a mad dog!" said Radzeyovski.
+
+Boguslav thought he was one and the other, but underneath both a
+consummate soldier. The prince related boastingly to the generals that
+he had hurled that cavalier twice to the earth, with his own hand.
+
+In fact, Babinich attacked Boguslav most furiously. He sought him
+evidently; the pursued became himself the pursuer.
+
+Douglas divined that there must be some personal hatred in the matter.
+
+The prince did not deny this, though he gave no explanations. He paid
+Babinich with the same coin; for following the example of Hovanski, he
+put a price on his head; and when that availed nothing, he thought to
+take advantage of Kmita's hatred and through it bring him into a trap.
+
+"It is a shame for us to bother so long with this robber," said he to
+Douglas and Radzeyovski; "he is prowling around us like a wolf around a
+sheepfold. I will go against him with a small division as a decoy; and
+when he strikes me I will detain him till you come up; then we will not
+let the craw-fish out of the net."
+
+Douglas, whom this chase had long since annoyed, made only small
+opposition, asserting that he could not and should not expose the life
+of such a great dignitary and relative of kings to the chance of being
+seized by one marauder. But when Boguslav insisted, he agreed.
+
+It was determined that the prince should go with a detachment of five
+hundred troopers, that each man should have behind him a foot soldier
+with a musket. This stratagem was to lead Babinich into error.
+
+"He will not restrain himself when he hears of only five hundred
+horsemen, and he will attack undoubtedly," said the prince. "When the
+infantry spit in his eyes, his Tartars will scatter like sand; he will
+fall himself, or we shall take him alive."
+
+This plan was carried out quickly and with great accuracy. First, news
+was sent out, two days in advance, that a party of five hundred horse
+was to march under Prince Boguslav. The generals calculated with
+certainty that the local inhabitants would inform Babinich of this. In
+fact, they did inform him.
+
+The prince marched in the deep and dark night toward Vansosh and
+Yelonka, passed the river at Cherevino, and leaving his cavalry in the
+open field, stationed his infantry in the neighboring groves, whence
+they might issue unexpectedly. Meanwhile Douglas was to push along by
+the bank of the Narev, feigning to march on Ostrolenko. Radzeyovski was
+in advance, with the lighter cavalry from Ksyenjopole.
+
+Neither of the three leaders knew well where Babinich was at that
+moment, for it was impossible to learn anything from the peasants, and
+the cavalry were not able to seize Tartars. But Douglas supposed that
+Babinich's main forces were in Snyadovo, and he wished to surround
+them, so that if Babinich should move on Boguslav, he would intercept
+him on the side of the Lithuanian boundary and cut off his retreat.
+
+Everything seemed to favor the Swedish plans. Kmita was really in
+Snyadovo; and barely had the news of Boguslav's approach reached him,
+when he fell at once into the forest, so as to come out unexpectedly
+near Cherevino.
+
+Douglas, turning aside from the Narev, struck in a few days upon the
+traces of the Tartar march, and advanced by the same road, therefore
+from the rear after Babinich. Heat tormented the horses greatly, as
+well as the men encased in iron armor; but the general advanced without
+regard to those hindrances, absolutely certain that he would come upon
+Babinich's army unexpectedly and in time of battle.
+
+Finally, after two days' march he came so near Cherevino that the smoke
+of the cottages was visible. Then he halted, and occupying all the
+passages and narrow pathways, waited.
+
+Some officers wished to advance as a forlorn hope and strike at once;
+but Douglas restrained them, saying,--
+
+"Babinich, after attacking the prince, when he sees that he has to do
+not with cavalry alone, but also with infantry, will be obliged to
+retreat; and as he can retreat only by the old road, he will fall as it
+were into our open arms."
+
+In fact, it seemed that all they had to do was to listen, and soon
+Tartar howling would be heard, and the first discharges of musketry.
+
+Meanwhile one day passed, and in the forests of Cherevino it was as
+silent as if a soldier's foot had never been in it.
+
+Douglas grew impatient, and toward night sent forward a small party to
+the field, enjoining on them the utmost caution.
+
+The party returned in the depth of the night, without having seen or
+done anything. At daylight Douglas himself advanced with his whole
+force. After a march of some hours he reached a place filled with
+traces of the presence of soldiers. His men found remnants of biscuits,
+broken glass, bits of clothing, and a belt with cartridges such as the
+Swedish infantry use; it became certain that Boguslav's infantry had
+stopped in that place, but they were not visible anywhere. Farther on
+in the damp forest Douglas's vanguard found many tracks of heavy
+cavalry horses, but on the edge tracks of Tartar ponies; still farther
+on lay the carcass of a horse, from which the wolves had recently torn
+out the entrails. About a furlong beyond they found a Tartar arrow
+without the point, but with the shaft entire. Evidently Boguslav was
+retreating, and Babinich was following him.
+
+Douglas understood that something unusual must have happened. But what
+was it? To this there was no answer. Douglas fell to pondering.
+Suddenly his meditation was interrupted by an officer from the
+vanguard.
+
+"Your worthiness!" said the officer, "through the thicket about a
+furlong away are some men in a crowd. They do not move, as if they were
+on watch. I have brought the guard to a halt, so as to report to you."
+
+"Cavalry or infantry?" asked Douglas.
+
+"Infantry. There are four or five of them in a group; it was not
+possible to count them accurately, for the branches hide them. But they
+seem yellow, like our musketeers."
+
+Douglas pressed his horse with his knees, pushed forward quickly to the
+vanguard, and advanced with it. Through the thickets, now thinner, were
+to be seen in the remoter deep forest a group of soldiers perfectly
+motionless, standing under a tree.
+
+"They are ours, they are ours!" said Douglas. "The prince must be in
+the neighborhood."
+
+"It is a wonder to me," said the officer; "they are on watch, and none
+of them calls, though we march noisily."
+
+Here the thickets ended, and the forest was clean of undergrowth. The
+men approached and saw four persons standing in a group, one at the
+side of the other, as if they were looking at something on the ground.
+From the head of each one rose a dark strip directly upward.
+
+"Your worthiness!" said the officer at once, "these men are hanging."
+
+"That is true!" answered Douglas.
+
+They sprang forward, and stood for a while near the corpses. Four
+foot-soldiers were hanging together by ropes, like a bunch of thrushes,
+their feet barely an inch above the ground, for they were on the lower
+branches.
+
+Douglas looked at them indifferently enough; then said as if to
+himself, "Now we know that the prince and Babinich have passed this
+way."
+
+Then he fell to thinking again, for he did not know well whether to
+continue on by the forest path or go out on the Ostrolenko highway.
+
+Half an hour later they found two other corpses. Evidently they were
+marauders or sick men whom Babinich's Tartars had seized while pursuing
+the prince.
+
+"But why did the prince retreat?"
+
+Douglas knew him too well--that is, both his daring and his military
+experience--to admit even for a moment that the prince had not
+sufficient reasons. Therefore something must have intervened.
+
+Only next day was the affair explained. Pan Byes Kornie had come from
+Prince Boguslav, with a party of thirty horse, to report that Yan
+Kazimir had sent beyond the Bug against Douglas the full hetman Pan
+Gosyevski, with six thousand Lithuanians and Tartar horse.
+
+"We learned this," said Pan Byes, "before Babinich came up; for he
+advanced very carefully and attacked frequently, therefore annoyingly.
+Gosyevski is twenty or twenty-five miles distant. When the prince
+received the tidings, he was forced to retreat in haste, so as to join
+Radzeyovski, who might be cut to pieces easily. But by marching quickly
+we made the junction. The prince sent out at once parties of a few tens
+of men in every direction, with a report to your worthiness. Many of
+them will fall into Tartar or peasant hands, but in such a war it
+cannot be otherwise."
+
+"Where are the prince and Radzeyovski?"
+
+"Ten miles from here, at the river."
+
+"Did the prince bring back all his forces?"
+
+"He was forced to leave the infantry, which is coming through the
+thickest forest, so as to escape the Tartars."
+
+"Such cavalry as the Tartar is made to go through the densest forests.
+I do not expect to see that infantry again. But no one is to blame, and
+the prince acted like an experienced leader."
+
+"The prince threw out one party the most considerable to Ostrolenko, to
+lead Gosyevski into error. He will go to Ostrolenko at once, thinking
+that our whole force is there."
+
+"That is well!" said Douglas, comforted. "We will manage Gosyevski."
+
+And he marched without delay to join Boguslav and Radzeyovski. They met
+that same day, to the great delight, especially, of Radzeyovski, who
+feared captivity more than death, for he knew that as a traitor and the
+originator of all the misfortunes of the Commonwealth he would have to
+give a terrible answer. But now, after the junction with Douglas, the
+Swedish army had more than four thousand men; therefore it was able to
+offer an effective resistance to the forces of the full hetman. He had,
+it is true, six thousand cavalry; but Tartars--except those of
+Babinich, who were trained--could not be used in offensive battle, and
+Pan Gosyevski himself, though a skilled and learned warrior, was not
+able, like Charnyetski, to inspire men with an enthusiasm which nothing
+could resist.
+
+But Douglas was at a loss to understand why Yan Kazimir should send the
+full hetman beyond the Bug. The Swedish king with the elector was
+marching on Warsaw; a general battle must therefore follow, sooner or
+later. And though Yan Kazimir was at the head of a force superior in
+numbers to the Swedes and the Brandenburgers, still six thousand men
+formed too great a force for the King of Poland to set aside
+voluntarily.
+
+It is true that Gosyevski had saved Babinich from trouble, but still
+the king did not need to send out a whole division to the rescue of
+Babinich. Hence there was in this expedition some secret object, which
+the Swedish general, despite all his penetration, could not divine.
+
+In the letter of the King of Sweden sent a week later great alarm was
+evident, and as it were astonishment caused by that expedition, but a
+few words explained the reasons of this. According to the opinion of
+Karl Gustav, the hetman was not sent to attack Douglas's army, nor to
+go to Lithuania to aid the uprising there, for in Lithuania the Swedes,
+as it was, were not able to do anything but to threaten Royal Prussia,
+namely, the eastern part of it, which was completely stripped of
+troops.
+
+"The calculation is," wrote the king, "to make the elector waver in
+faithfulness to the treaty of Marienburg and to us; which may easily
+happen, since the elector is ready to enter into alliance with Christ
+against the Devil and at the same time with the Devil against Christ,
+so as to win something from both."
+
+The letter ended by enjoining on Douglas to strive with all his forces
+not to let the hetman go to Prussia, "who if he cannot reach there in
+the course of a few weeks, will be forced beyond doubt to return to
+Warsaw."
+
+Douglas saw that the task given him did not surpass his powers at all.
+Not so long before he had met with a certain success in opposing
+Charnyetski himself; therefore Gosyevski was not terrible. The Swedish
+general did not hope, it is true, to crush Gosyevski's division, but he
+felt certain that he would be able to stop him and curb all his
+movements.
+
+In fact, from that moment began very skilful approaches of the two
+armies, which, avoiding on both sides a general battle, endeavored each
+to flank the other. Both leaders emulated each other; but the
+experienced Douglas was in so far superior that he did not let
+Gosyevski advance beyond Ostrolenko. But Babinich, saved from
+Boguslav's attack, did not hasten to join the Lithuanian division, for
+he occupied himself with great zeal on that infantry which Boguslav in
+his hurried march to Radzeyovski was forced to leave behind. Babinich's
+Tartars, guided by local woodmen, pursued night and day, finishing
+every moment the incautious or those who dropped into the rear. Lack of
+provisions forced the Swedes at last to separate into small detachments
+which could find food more easily; this was all that Babinich was
+waiting for.
+
+He divided his forces into three commands, under lead of Akbah Ulan,
+Soroka, and himself, and in a few days he destroyed the greater part of
+that infantry. It was an untiring hunt after men in forest thickets, in
+willows, in reeds,--a hunt full of noise, uproar, shouting, shooting,
+and death.
+
+Widely did it spread the glory of Babinich's name among the Mazovians.
+Bands collected and joined Gosyevski at Ostrolenko itself, when the
+full hetman, whose march was only a demonstration, received a command
+from the king to march back to Warsaw. For a short period only could
+Babinich rejoice with his acquaintances; namely, with Zagloba and
+Volodyovski, who at the head of the Lauda squadron attended the hetman.
+But they greeted one another very cordially, for great friendship and
+intimacy existed already between them. The young colonels were sharply
+annoyed that they could not act now against Boguslav; but Zagloba
+consoled them by pouring frequently into their glasses, and saying,--
+
+"That is nothing! My head has been working since May over stratagems,
+and I have never racked it over anything in vain. I have a number
+ready,--very excellent stratagems; but there is no time to apply them,
+unless at Warsaw, whither we are all marching."
+
+"I must go to Prussia," said Babinich, "and cannot be at Warsaw."
+
+"Can you reach Prussia?" asked Volodyovski.
+
+"As God is in heaven, I shall spring through; and I promise you
+sacredly to make not the worst cabbage-hash, for I shall say to my
+Tartars, 'Riot, my soul!' They would be glad even here to draw the
+knife across people's throats; but I have told them that pay for every
+violence is the rope. But in Prussia I will give way even to my own
+will. Why should I not spring through? You were not able; but that is
+another thing, for it is easier to stop a large force than such a party
+as mine, with which it is easy to hide. More than once was I sitting in
+the rushes, and Douglas's men passed right there, knowing nothing of
+me. Douglas too will surely follow you, and leave the field free to
+me."
+
+"But, as we hear, you have wearied him out too," said Pan Michael, with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Ah, the scoundrel!" added Zagloba. "He had to change his shirt every
+day, he sweated so. You never stole up to Hovanski better than to him,
+and I must acknowledge that I could not have done better myself,
+though, in his time, Konyetspolski said that Zagloba in partisan
+warfare was unsurpassed."
+
+"It seems to me," said Pan Michael to Kmita, "that if Douglas returns
+he will leave Boguslav here to attack you."
+
+"God grant it! I have the same hope," answered Kmita, quickly. "Were I
+to seek him, and he me, we should find each other. He will not pass
+through me a third time; and if he does, then I shall not rise again. I
+remember your secrets well; and all the Lubni thrusts I have in memory
+like 'Our Father.' Every day, too, I try them with Soroka, so as to
+train my hand."
+
+"What are stratagems good for?" exclaimed Pan Michael; "the sabre is
+the main thing."
+
+This maxim touched Zagloba somewhat; therefore he said at once: "Every
+windmill thinks that the main thing is to whirl its wings. Do you know
+why, Michael? Because it has chaff under its roof; that is, in its
+head. Military art rests on stratagems; if not, Roh Kovalski might be
+grand hetman and you full hetman."
+
+"And what is Pan Kovalski doing?" asked Kmita.
+
+"Pan Kovalski has now an iron helmet on his head, and justly, for
+cabbage is best out of a pot. He has grown rich on plunder in Warsaw,
+has come into good repute, and gone to the hussars, to Prince
+Polubinski, and all so as to be able to put a spear into Karl Gustav.
+He comes every day to our tent, and stares to see if the neck of the
+decanter is sticking out of the straw. I cannot break that lad of
+drinking. Good example goes for nothing; but I prophesied to him that
+this desertion of the Lauda squadron would turn out evil. The rogue!
+the thankless fellow! in return for all the benefits which I have shown
+him, such a son for a lance!"
+
+"But did you rear him?"
+
+"My dear sir, do not make me a bear-trainer! To Sapyeha, who asked me
+the same question. I answered that he and Roh had the same preceptor,
+but not me; for I in youthful years was a cooper, and knew how to set
+staves very well."[10]
+
+"To begin with, you would not dare to tell that to Sapyeha," said
+Volodyovski; "and secondly, though you grumble at Kovalski, you love
+him as the apple of your eye."
+
+"I prefer him to you, Pan Michael; for I could never endure May-bugs,
+nor soapy little fellows who at the sight of the first woman who comes
+along play antics like German dogs."
+
+"Or like those monkeys in the Kazanovski Palace, with which you were
+carrying on war."
+
+"Oh, laugh, laugh! You can take Warsaw without me next time."
+
+"Was it you, then, who took Warsaw?"
+
+"But who captured the Cracow Gate? Who invented captivity for the
+generals? They are sitting now on bread and water in Zamost; and when
+Wittemberg looks at Wrangel, he says, 'Zagloba put us here!' and both
+fall to weeping. If Sapyeha were not ill, and if he were present, he
+would tell you who first drew the Swedish claw from the skin of
+Warsaw."
+
+"For God's sake!" said Kmita, "do this for me,--send news of that
+battle for which they are preparing at Warsaw. I shall be counting the
+days and nights on my fingers till I know something certain."
+
+Zagloba put his finger to his forehead. "Listen to my forecast," said
+he, "for what I tell you will be accomplished as surely as that this
+glass is standing before me-- Is it not standing before me?"
+
+"It is, it is! Speak on."
+
+"We shall either lose this general battle, or we shall win it--"
+
+"Every man knows that!" put in Volodyovski.
+
+"You might be silent, Michael, and learn something. Supposing that we
+lose this battle, do you know what will happen? You see you do not
+know, for you are moving those little awls under your nose like a
+rabbit. Well, I will tell you that nothing will happen--"
+
+Kmita, who was very quick, sprang up, struck his glass on the table,
+and said,--
+
+"You are beating around the bush!"
+
+"I say nothing will happen!" repeated Zagloba. "You are young,
+therefore you do not know. As affairs now stand, our king, our dear
+country, our armies may lose fifty battles one after another, and the
+war will go on in the old fashion,--the nobles will assemble, and with
+them the lower ranks. But if they do not succeed one time, they will
+another, until the enemy's force has melted away. But when the Swedes
+lose one great battle, the Devil will take them without salvation, and
+with them the elector to boot."
+
+Here Zagloba grew animated, emptied his glass, struck it on the table,
+and continued,--
+
+"Listen,--for you will not hear this from every mouth, for not
+every one knows how to take a general view of things. Many a man is
+thinking, 'What is waiting for us now? how many battles, how many
+defeats,'--which, in warring with Karl, are not unlikely,--'how many
+tears, how much bloodshed, how many grievous paroxysms?' And many a one
+will doubt and blaspheme against the mercy of God and the Most Holy
+Mother. But I tell you this: do you know what is waiting for those
+vandal enemies?--destruction; do you know what is waiting for
+us?--victory! If they beat us one hundred times, very well; but we will
+beat them the hundred and first time, and that will be the end."
+
+When he had said this, Zagloba closed his eyes for a moment, but soon
+opened them. He looked ahead with gleaming vision, and suddenly shouted
+with the whole force of his breast: "Victory! victory!"
+
+Kmita was flushed from delight: "In God's name, he is right, he speaks
+justly. It cannot be otherwise! Such an end has to come!"
+
+"It must be acknowledged that you are not lacking here," said
+Volodyovski, putting his finger on his forehead. "The Commonwealth may
+be occupied; but to stay in it is impossible, so at last the Swedes
+will have to go out."
+
+"Well, is that it? I am not lacking!" said Zagloba, rejoiced at the
+praise. "If that is true, then I will prophesy further. God is with the
+just!" Here he turned to Kmita. "You will finish the traitor Radzivill;
+you will go to Taurogi, recover the maiden, marry her, rear posterity.
+May I have the pip on my tongue if this will not happen as I say! But
+for God's sake, don't smother me!"
+
+Zagloba was rightfully cautious, for Kmita seized him in his arms,
+raised him, and began to hug him so that the old man's eyes were
+bursting out. He had barely come to his feet and recovered breath, when
+Pan Michael, greatly delighted, seized him by the hand,--
+
+"It is my turn! Tell what awaits me."
+
+"God bless you, Michael! your pretty tufted lark will hatch out a whole
+brood,--never fear. Uf!"
+
+"Vivat!" cried Volodyovski.
+
+"But first, we will make an end of the Swedes," added Zagloba.
+
+"We will, we will!" cried the young colonels, shaking their sabres.
+
+"Vivat! victory!"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER L.
+
+
+A Week later Kmita crossed the boundaries of Electoral Prussia at
+Raygrod. It came to him easily enough; for before the departure of the
+full hetman he disappeared in the woods so secretly that Douglas felt
+sure that his party too had marched with the whole Tartar-Lithuanian
+division to Warsaw, and he left merely small garrisons in the castles
+for the defence of those parts.
+
+Douglas, with Radzeyovski and Radzivill, followed Gosyevski.
+
+Kmita heard of this before passing the boundary, and grieved greatly
+that he could not meet his mortal enemy eye to eye, and lest punishment
+might come to Boguslav from other hands,--namely, from Volodyovski, who
+also had made a vow against him.
+
+Hence, not being able to wreak vengeance on the person of the traitor
+for the wrongs done the Commonwealth and himself, he wreaked it in
+terrible fashion on the lands of the elector.
+
+That very night in which the Tartars had passed the boundary pillar,
+the heavens grew red from flames. An uproar was heard, with the weeping
+of people trampled by the foot of war. Whoso was able to beg for mercy
+in the Polish tongue was spared at command of the leader; but German
+settlements, colonies, villages, and hamlets were turned into a river
+of fire, and the terrified inhabitants went under the knife.
+
+And not so swiftly does oil spread over the sea when the sailor pours
+it to pacify the waves, as that chambul of Tartars and volunteers
+spread over quiet and hitherto safe regions. It seemed that every
+Tartar was able to double and treble himself, to be at the same time in
+a number of places, to burn, to slay. They spared not even grain in the
+field, nor trees in the gardens.
+
+Kmita had held his Tartars so long in the leash that at last, when he
+let them free like a flock of birds of prey, they grew almost wild in
+the midst of slaughter and destruction. One surpassed the other; and
+since they could not take captives, they swam from morning till evening
+in blood.
+
+Kmita himself, having in his heart no little fierceness, gave it full
+freedom, and though he did not steep his own hands in the blood of
+defenceless people, he looked with pleasure on the flow of blood. In
+his soul he was at rest, and conscience reproached him with nothing;
+for this was not Polish blood, and besides it was the blood of
+heretics; therefore he judged that he was doing a work pleasing to God,
+and especially to the saints of the Lord.
+
+The elector, a vassal, therefore a servant of the Commonwealth and
+living from its bounties, was the first to raise his sacrilegious hand
+against it; therefore punishment was his due, and Kmita was purely an
+instrument of God's vengeance.
+
+For this reason, when in the evening he was repeating his Litany in
+peace by the blaze of burning German settlements, and when the screams
+of the murdered interrupted the tally of his prayers, he began again
+from the beginning, so as not to burden his soul with the sin of
+inattention to the service of God.
+
+But he did not cherish in his heart savage feelings alone; for,
+besides piety, various other feelings moved it, connected by memory
+with distant years. Therefore those times came frequently to his
+mind when he attacked Hovanski with such glory, and his former
+comrades stood as if alive before his eyes,--Kokosinski; the gigantic
+Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus; the spotted Ranitski, with senatorial blood in
+his veins; Uhlik, playing on the flageolet; Rekuts, on whom human blood
+was not weighing; and Zend, imitating birds and every kind of beast.
+
+They all, save perhaps Rekuts alone, were burning in hell; and behold,
+if they were living now, they might wallow in blood without bringing
+sin on their souls, and with profit to the Commonwealth.
+
+Here Pan Andrei sighed at the thought of how destructive a thing
+license is, since in the morning of youth it stops the road for the
+ages of ages to beautiful deeds.
+
+But he sighed more than all for Olenka. The deeper he entered the
+Prussian country, the more fiercely did the wounds of his heart burn
+him, as if those fires which he kindled roused at the same time his old
+love. Almost every day then he said in his heart to the maiden,--
+
+"Dearest dove, you may have forgotten me, or if you remember, disgust
+fills your heart; but I, at a distance or near, in the night or the
+day-time, in labor for the country and toils, am thinking ever of you,
+and my soul flies to you over pine-woods and waters, like a tired bird,
+to drop down at your feet. Only to the country and to you would I give
+all my blood; but woe is me, if in your heart you proclaim me an outlaw
+forever."
+
+Thus meditating, he went ever farther to the north along the boundary
+belt. He burned and slew, sparing no one. Sadness throttled him
+terribly. He would like to be in Taurogi on the morrow; but the road
+was still long and difficult, for at last they began to ring all the
+bells in the province of Prussia.
+
+Every one living seized arms to resist the dreadful destroyers;
+garrisons were brought in from towns the remotest, regiments were
+formed of even village youths, and soon they were able to place twenty
+men against every Tartar.
+
+Kmita rushed at these commands like a thunderbolt, beat them, hanged
+men, escaped, hid, and again sailed out on a wave of fire; but still he
+could not advance so swiftly as at first. More than once it was
+necessary to attack in Tartar fashion, and hide for whole weeks in
+thickets or reeds at the banks of a lake. The inhabitants rushed forth
+more and more numerously, as if against a wolf; and he bit too like a
+wolf,--with one snap of his jaws he gave death, and not only defended
+himself, but did not desist from attack.
+
+Loving genuine work, he did not leave a given district, in spite of
+pursuit, until he had annihilated it for miles around with fire and
+sword. His name reached, it is unknown by what means, the mouths of the
+people, and bearing terror and fright, thundered on to the shores of
+the Baltic.
+
+Babinich might, it is true, return within the boundaries of the
+Commonwealth, and in spite of Swedish detachments, move quickly to
+Taurogi; but he did not wish to do so, for he desired to serve not only
+himself but the country.
+
+Now came news which gave courage for defence and revenge to the people
+in Prussia, but pierced the heart of Babinich with savage sorrow. News
+came like a thunderclap of a great battle at Warsaw, which the King of
+Poland had lost. "Karl Gustav and the elector have beaten all the
+troops of Yan Kazimir," people repeated to one and another with delight
+throughout Prussia. "Warsaw is recaptured!" "This is the greatest
+victory of the war, and now comes the end of the Commonwealth!" All men
+whom the Tartars seized and put on the coals to obtain information,
+repeated the same; there was also exaggerated news, as is common in
+time of war and uncertainty. According to this news the Poles were cut
+to pieces, the hetmans had fallen, and Yan Kazimir was captured.
+
+Was all at an end, then? Was that rising and triumphing Commonwealth
+naught but an empty illusion? So much power, so many troops, so many
+great men and famous warriors; the hetmans, the king, Charnyetski with
+his invincible division, the marshal of the kingdom, other lords with
+their attendants,--had all perished, had all rolled away like smoke?
+And are there no other defenders of this hapless country, save detached
+parties of insurgents who certainly at news of the disaster will pass
+away like a fog?
+
+Kmita tore the hair from his head and wrung his hands; he seized the
+wet earth, pressed palms-full of it to his burning head.
+
+"I shall fall too," said he; "but first this land will swim in blood."
+
+And he began to fight like a man in despair. He did not hide longer, he
+did not attack in the forest and reeds, he sought death; he rushed like
+a madman on forces three times greater than his own, and cut them to
+pieces with sabres and hoofs. In his Tartars all traces of human
+feeling died out, and they were turned into a herd of wild beasts. A
+predatory people, but not over-much fitted for fighting in the open
+field, without losing their genius for surprises and ambush, they, by
+continual exercise, by continual conflict, had trained themselves so
+that breast to breast they could hold the field against the first
+cavalry, and scatter quadrangles even of the Swedish guard. In their
+struggles with the armed mob of Prussia, a hundred of those Tartars
+scattered with ease two and even three hundred sturdy men armed with
+spears and muskets.
+
+Kmita weaned them from weighting themselves with plunder; they took
+only money and gold, which they sewed up in their saddles, so that when
+one of them fell the survivors fought with rage for his horse and his
+saddle. Growing rich in this manner, they lost none of their swiftness,
+well-nigh superhuman. Recognizing that under no leader on earth could
+they find such rich harvests, they grew attached to Babinich, as hounds
+to the hunter, and with real Mohammedan honesty placed after battle in
+the hands of Soroka and the Kyemliches the lion's share of the plunder
+which belonged to the "bagadyr."
+
+"Allah!" said Akbah Ulan, "few of them will see Bagche-Serai, but all
+who go back will be murzas."
+
+Babinich, who from of old knew how to live upon war, collected great
+riches; but death, which he sought more than gold, he found not.
+
+A month passed again in battles and labors surpassing belief. The
+Tartar horses, though fed with barley and Prussian wheat, needed
+absolutely even a couple of days' rest; therefore the young colonel,
+wishing also to gain news and fill the gaps in his ranks with fresh
+volunteers, withdrew, near Dospada, to the Commonwealth.
+
+News soon came, and so joyful that Kmita almost lost his wits. It
+turned out to be true that the equally valiant and unfortunate Yan
+Kazimir had lost a great three-days' battle at Warsaw, but for what
+reason?
+
+The general militia in an immense majority had gone home, and the part
+which remained did not fight with such spirit as at the taking of
+Warsaw, and on the third day of the battle a panic set in. But for the
+first two days the victory was inclining to the side of Poland. The
+regular troops, not in sudden partisan warfare, but in a great battle
+with the most highly trained soldiers of Europe, exhibited such skill
+and endurance that amazement seized the Swedish and Brandenburg
+generals themselves.
+
+Yan Kazimir had won immortal glory. It was said that he had shown
+himself a leader equal to Karl Gustav, and that if all his commands had
+been carried out the enemy would have lost the general battle, and the
+war would have been ended.
+
+Kmita received these tidings from eye-witnesses, for he had stumbled
+upon nobles who, serving in the general militia, had taken part in the
+battle. One of them told him of the brilliant attack of the hussars,
+during which Karl himself, who, despite the entreaties of his generals,
+would not withdraw, came near perishing. All showed the falsehood of
+the report that the army had been routed or the hetmans had fallen. On
+the contrary, the whole force, except the general militia, remained
+intact, and withdrew in good order along the country.
+
+From the bridge of Warsaw which was giving way cannon had fallen; but
+they were pulled through the Vistula in a breath. The army swore by
+everything that under such a leader as Yan Kazimir they would, in the
+coming battle, conquer Karl Gustav, the elector, and whomsoever it
+might be necessary to conquer. As to the recent battle it was only a
+trial, though unfavorable, but full of solace for the future.
+
+Kmita was at a loss to know how the first news could have been so
+terrible. They explained to him that Karl Gustav had sent out
+exaggerated reports purposely; in fact, he did not know well what to
+do. The Swedish officers whom Pan Andrei seized a week later confirmed
+this opinion.
+
+He learned also from them that beyond others the elector lived in fear,
+and was thinking more and more of his own safety; for a multitude of
+his men had fallen at Warsaw, and disease had seized those remaining so
+terribly that it was destroying them more quickly than battles. At the
+same time the men of Great Poland, eager to make good Uistsie and all
+wrongs, had attacked the monarchy of Brandenburg itself, burning and
+slaying, leaving nothing behind them but land and water. According to
+the officers, the hour was near in which the elector would abandon the
+Swedes, and join the more powerful.
+
+"It is needful to touch him with fire somewhat," thought Kmita, "so
+that he may do this the more quickly."
+
+And since his horses were rested already, and he had made good the
+losses among his men, he passed the boundary again at Dospada, and
+rushed on the German settlements like a spirit of destruction.
+
+Various "parties" followed his example. He found a weaker defence;
+hence he accomplished more. News came ever more joyful, more
+gladdening, so that it was difficult to believe it.
+
+First of all, it was said that Karl Gustav, who, after the Warsaw
+battle, had pushed on to Radom, was retreating at breakneck speed to
+Royal Prussia. What had happened? Why was he retreating? There was no
+answer to this for a time, till at last the name of Charnyetski
+thundered again through the Commonwealth. He was victorious at Lipets,
+victorious at Stjemeshno; at Rava itself he had cut to pieces the
+rearguard of the retreating Karl; then, learning that two thousand
+cavalry were returning from Cracow, he attacked that body, and did not
+let one man escape to announce the defeat. Colonel Forgell, brother of
+the general, thirteen captains, and twenty-four lieutenants went into
+captivity. Others gave the numbers as twice greater; some insisted in
+their enthusiasm that Yan Kazimir had not suffered a defeat, but had
+won a victory at Warsaw, and that his march along the country was only
+a stratagem for the destruction of the enemy.
+
+Kmita himself began to think the same; for being a soldier from
+youthful years, he understood war, but had never heard of a victory
+after which the victor was in a worse condition than before. The Swedes
+were evidently in a worse condition, and just after the battle at
+Warsaw.
+
+Pan Andrei called to mind at that moment the words of Zagloba, when at
+their last meeting he said that victories would not improve the Swedish
+cause, but that one defeat might destroy it.
+
+"That is a chancellor's head," pondered Kmita, "which reads in the
+future as in a book."
+
+Here he remembered the further predictions,--how he, Kmita or Babinich,
+would go to Taurogi, find his Olenka, persuade her, marry her, and have
+descendants to the glory of the Commonwealth. When he remembered this,
+fire entered his veins; he wished not to lose a moment, but to leave
+Prussians and slaughter for a time, and fly to Taurogi.
+
+On the eve of his starting there came to him a noble of Lauda, of
+Volodyovski's squadron, with a letter from the little knight.
+
+
+"We are going with Sapyeha and Prince Michael Radzivill against
+Boguslav and Waldeck," wrote Pan Michael. "Join us, since a field for
+just vengeance will be found, and it is proper to pay the Prussians for
+harm done the Commonwealth."
+
+
+Pan Andrei could not believe his own eyes, and for some time he
+suspected the noble of being sent by some Prussian or Swedish
+commandant of purpose to lead him with the chambul into ambush. Had
+Gosyevski come a second time to Prussia? It was impossible not to
+believe. The handwriting was Volodyovski's, the arms Volodyovski's, and
+Pan Andrei remembered the noble too. Then he inquired where Gosyevski
+was, and to what point he intended to go.
+
+The noble was rather dull. It was not for him to know whither the
+hetman was marching; he knew only that he was two days distant, and
+that the Lauda squadron was with him. Charnyetski had borrowed it for a
+while, but had sent it back long ago, and now it was marching under
+lead of the hetman. "They say," concluded the noble, "that we must go
+to Prussia, and the soldiers are greatly delighted. But our work is to
+obey and to strike."
+
+Kmita, when he had heard the narrative, did not hesitate long. He
+turned his chambul, went with forced marches to the hetman, and after
+two days fell late at night into the arms of Volodyovski, who, pressing
+him, said at once,--
+
+"Count Waldeck and Prince Boguslav are in Prostki, making intrenchments
+to secure themselves with a fortified camp. We shall march on them."
+
+"To-day?" asked Kmita.
+
+"To-morrow before daybreak,--that is, in two or three hours."
+
+Here they embraced each other again. "Something tells me that God will
+give him into our hands!" exclaimed Kmita, with emotion. "And I think
+so too."
+
+"I have made a vow to fast till death on the day in which I meet him."
+
+"The protection of God will not fail you," said Volodyovski. "I shall
+not be envious, either, if this lot falls to you, for your wrong is
+greater. Yendrek, let me look at you! You have grown perfectly black
+from the weather; but you have acquitted yourself. The whole division
+looks with the greatest esteem on your labor. Nothing behind you but
+ruins and corpses! You are a born soldier; and it would go hard with
+Zagloba himself, were he here, to invent in self-praise deeds better
+than those you have done."
+
+"But where is Zagloba?"
+
+"He remained with Sapyeha; for he fell into weeping and despair after
+Kovalski."
+
+"Then has Kovalski fallen?"
+
+Volodyovski pressed his lips. "Do you know who killed him?"
+
+"Whence should I know? Tell me!"
+
+"Prince Boguslav!"
+
+Kmita turned in his place, as if thrust with a point, and began to draw
+in air with a hiss; at last he gritted his teeth, and casting himself
+on the bench, rested his head on his palms in silence.
+
+Volodyovski clapped his hands, and ordered the attendant to bring
+drink; then he sat near Kmita, filled a cup for him, and began,--
+
+"Ron Kovalski died such a cavalier's death that God grant any man of us
+to die no worse. It is enough to inform you that Karl Gustav himself
+after the battle celebrated his funeral, and a whole regiment of the
+guards fired a salute over his coffin."
+
+"If only not at those hands, at those hellish hands!" exclaimed Kmita.
+
+"Yes, at the hands of Boguslav; we know that from hussars who with
+their own eyes saw the sad end."
+
+"Were you not there then?"
+
+"In battle places are not chosen, but a man stands where he is ordered.
+If I had been there, either I should not be here now, or Boguslav would
+not be making trenches at Prostki."
+
+"Tell me how it all happened. It will only increase the anger."
+
+Pan Michael drank, wiped his yellow mustaches, and began:--
+
+"Of a certainty you are not lacking in narratives of the Warsaw battle,
+for every one is speaking of it; therefore I shall not dwell on it too
+long. Our gracious lord--God give him health and long years! for under
+another king the country would have perished amid disasters--has shown
+himself a famous leader. Had there been such obedience as there was
+command, had we been worthy of the king, the chroniclers would have to
+describe a new Polish victory at Warsaw equal to those at Grünwald and
+Berestechko. Speaking briefly, on the first day we beat the Swedes; on
+the second, fortune inclined now to one, now to the other, but still we
+were uppermost. At that time the Lithuanian hussars, in which Kovalski
+served under Prince Polubinski, a great soldier, went to the attack.
+When they were passing I saw them as I see you this moment, for I was
+with the Lauda men on a height near the intrenchments. They were twelve
+hundred strong,--men and horses such as the world had not seen. They
+passed twenty rods distant from our flank; and I tell you that the
+earth trembled under them. We saw the Brandenburg infantry planting
+their pikes in the ground in a hurry, to meet the first onrush. Then
+began firing from muskets, till the smoke covered them entirely. We
+looked. The hussars had given rein to their horses. O God, what a
+sweep! They fell into the smoke,--disappeared! My soldiers began to
+shout, 'They will break them, they will break them!' For a while the
+hussars were invisible; then something thundered, and there was a sound
+as if in a thousand forges men were beating anvils with hammers. We
+look. Jesus! Mary! The elector's men are lying like stones on a street,
+like wheat through which a tempest has passed; and the hussars far away
+beyond, their streamers glittering. They are bearing down on the
+Swedes! They struck cavalry; the cavalry were down like a pavement!
+They struck a second regiment; they left that like a pavement! There
+was a roar, cannon were thundering; we saw them when the wind bore the
+smoke aside. They were smashing Swedish infantry. Everything was
+fleeing, rolling, opening; they went on as if over a highway. They had
+passed almost through the whole army, when they struck a regiment of
+the horse-guard, in which was Karl Gustav himself; and like a whirlwind
+they scattered the horse-guard."
+
+Here Pan Michael stopped, for Kmita had closed his eyes with his fists
+and was exclaiming,--
+
+"O Mother of God! To see such a thing once and then die!"
+
+"Such an attack my eyes will never see again," continued the little
+knight. "We too were commanded to spring forward. I saw no more, but
+what I tell I heard from the mouth of a Swedish officer who was at the
+side of Karl and saw with his own eyes the end. That Forgell who fell
+into our hands afterward at Rava, rushed up to Karl. 'O King,' cried
+he, 'save Sweden! save yourself! Aside, aside! Nothing can stop them!'
+But Karl answered: 'No use to yield; we must meet them or perish.'
+Other generals rush up, implore, entreat, in vain. The king moved
+forward; they strike. The Swedes are broken more quickly than you can
+count ten. One fell, another was trampled, others were scattered like
+peas. The king defended himself single-handed. Kovalski rode up and
+knew Karl Gustav, for he had seen him twice before. A horseman shielded
+the king; but those who were present said that lightning does not kill
+more quickly than Kovalski cut him in two. Then the king rushed at Pan
+Roh."
+
+Volodyovski again interrupted his narrative and breathed deeply; but
+Kmita cried at once,--
+
+"Oh, finish, or the soul will go out of me!"
+
+"They rushed at each other so that the breasts of the horses struck.
+They raged. 'I look,' said the officer; 'the king with his horse is on
+the ground.' He freed himself, touched the trigger of his pistol,
+missed. The king's hat had fallen. Roh then made for the head of Karl
+Gustav,--had his sword raised; the Swedes were weak from terror, for
+there was no time to save Karl, when Boguslav rose as if from under the
+earth, fired into the very ear of Kovalski, broke his head and his
+helmet."
+
+"O my God! he had not time to bring down the sword?" screamed Pan
+Andrei, tearing his hair.
+
+"God did not grant him that grace," said Pan Michael. "Zagloba and I
+talked of what had happened. The man had served with the Radzivills
+from years of youth; he considered them his masters, and at sight of
+Radzivill it must be that he was confused. Perhaps the thought had
+never come to his head to raise a hand on Radzivill. It happens that
+way! Well, he paid with his life. Zagloba is a wonderful man, for he is
+not Roh's uncle at all, and not his relative; still another man would
+not have been in such despair for a son. And, to tell the truth, there
+was no reason, for one might envy Kovalski such a glorious death; a
+noble and a soldier is born to give his life, if not on the present day
+then on the morrow; men will write of Kovalski, and posterity will
+celebrate his name."
+
+Pan Michael was silent; after a while he made the sign of the cross and
+said,--
+
+"Eternal rest give him, O Lord, and may light shine on him forever!"
+
+"For the ages of ages!" said Kmita.
+
+Both whispered prayers for a certain time, maybe asking for themselves
+a similar death, if only not at the hands of Prince Boguslav. At last
+Pan Michael said,--
+
+"Father Pyekarski assured us that Roh went straight to heaven."
+
+"Of course he did, and our prayers are not needed for him."
+
+"Prayers are always needed; for they are inscribed to the credit of
+others, and maybe to our own."
+
+"My hope is in the mercy of God," said Kmita, sighing. "I trust that
+for what I have done in Prussia, even a couple of years will be taken
+from me in purgatory."
+
+"Everything there is reckoned. What a man works out here with his
+sabre, the heavenly secretary records."
+
+"I too served with Radzivill," said Kmita, "but I shall not be confused
+at sight of Boguslav. My God, my God! Prostki is not far away!
+Remember, O Lord, that he is Thy enemy too, for he is a heretic who
+more than once has blasphemed Thy true faith."
+
+"And is an enemy of the country," added Pan Michael. "We have hope that
+his end is approaching. Zagloba, speaking in grief and in tears and as
+if inspired, foretold the same after that attack of the hussars. He
+cursed Boguslav so that the hair stood on the head of every man
+listening. Prince Michael Radzivill, who is marching with us against
+him, saw also in a dream two golden trumpets, which the Radzivills have
+on their shield, gnawed by a bear, and he said at once next day,
+'Misfortune will meet me or some other Radzivill.'"
+
+"By a bear?" asked Kmita, growing pale.
+
+"By a bear."
+
+Pan Andrei's face became clear as if a gleam of the morning dawn had
+fallen on it; he raised his eyes, stretched his hands toward heaven and
+said with a solemn voice,--
+
+"I have a bear on my shield. Praise to Thee, O Lord on high! Praise to
+Thee, Most Holy Mother! O Lord, O Lord! I am not worthy of this grace."
+
+When he heard this Pan Michael was greatly moved, for he recognized at
+once that that was an omen from heaven.
+
+"Yendrek!" cried he, "to make sure, press the feet of Christ before the
+battle; and I will implore him against Sakovich."
+
+"Prostki! Prostki!" repeated Kmita, as in a fever. "When do we move?"
+
+"Before day, and soon it will begin to dawn."
+
+Kmita approached the broken window of the cottage and cried: "The stars
+are paling already. _Ave, Maria_."
+
+Then came the distant crowing of a cock, and with it low trumpeting. A
+few "Our Fathers" later, movement began in the whole village. The
+clatter of steel was heard, and the snorting of horses. Dark masses of
+cavalry assembled on the highway.
+
+The air began to be filled with light; a pale gleam was silvering the
+points of the spears, twinkling on the naked sabres, bringing out of
+the shade mustached threatening faces, helmets, kolpaks, Tartar
+sheepskin caps, fur cloaks, quivers. At last the advance with Kmita in
+the vanguard was moving toward Prostki; the troops stretched in a long
+line over the road, and marched quickly.
+
+The horses in the first ranks fell to snorting greatly, after them
+others, as a good portent for the soldiers.
+
+White mists hid the meadows yet, and the fields.
+
+Round about was silence; only land-rails were playing in the grass, wet
+with dew.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LI.
+
+
+September 6, the Polish troops arrived at Vansosh and disposed
+themselves for rest, so that before battle horses and men might gain
+strength. Pan Gosyevski, the hetman, decided to halt there four or five
+days; but events interfered with his reckoning.
+
+Babinich, as a man knowing the boundary well, was sent on a
+reconnoissance; he was given two light Lithuanian squadrons and a fresh
+chambul of Tartars, for his own Tartars were over-much wearied.
+
+Gosyevski enjoined on him earnestly, before starting, to obtain an
+informant and not to return empty-handed. But Babinich merely laughed,
+thinking to himself that he needed no urging, and that he would bring
+prisoners, even if he had to find them in the intrenchments of Prostki.
+
+In fact, he returned in forty-eight hours, bringing a number of
+Prussians and Swedes, and among them an officer of note, Von Rössel,
+captain in a Prussian regiment under Boguslav.
+
+The party was received in the camp with great applause. There was no
+need of torturing the captain, for Babinich had already done that on
+the road by putting the sword-point to his throat. From his statements
+it transpired that not only the Prussian regiments of Count Waldeck
+were in Prostki, but also six Swedish regiments under command of
+Major-General Israel; of these, four were of cavalry under Peters,
+Frytjotson, Tauben, and Ammerstein, with two of infantry under the
+brothers Engel. Of Prussian regiments, which were very well equipped,
+besides that of Count Waldeck himself, there were four,--those of the
+Prince of Wismar, Bruntsl, Konnaberg, General Wahlrat,--with four
+squadrons of Boguslav's command, two being of Prussian nobles, and two
+of his own men.
+
+Supreme command was held by Count Waldeck; in reality, however, he
+obeyed in everything Prince Boguslav, to whose influence the Swedish
+general Israel also yielded.
+
+But the most important intelligence given by Rössel was this,--that two
+thousand chosen infantry of Pomerania were hastening from Elko to
+reinforce Prostki; but Count Waldeck, fearing lest these men might be
+taken by the horde, wished to leave the fortified camp, join the
+Pomeranians, and then make intrenchments a second time. Boguslav,
+according to Rössel, was so far rather strongly opposed to leaving
+Prostki, and only during the last days began to incline toward this
+action. Gosyevski on hearing this news was greatly rejoiced, for he was
+certain that victory would not miss him. The enemy might defend
+themselves for a long time in the intrenchments, but neither the
+Swedish nor the Prussian cavalry could resist the Poles in the open
+field.
+
+Prince Boguslav seemed to understand this fact as well as Gosyevski,
+and for this special reason he did not much approve Waldeck's plans.
+But he was too vain not to yield before even the reproach of excessive
+caution. Besides, he was not distinguished for patience. It might be
+reckoned almost with certainty that he would grow weary of waiting in
+trenches, and would seek fame and victory in the open field. Gosyevski
+had simply to hasten his advance on the enemy at the moment when they
+were leaving the intrenchments.
+
+So thought he; so thought other colonels, such as Hassan Bey, who led
+the horde; Voynillovich, who led the king's regiment; Korsak, a
+light-horse colonel; Volodyovski, Kotvich, and Babinich. All agreed on
+one point,--that it was necessary to give up further rest, and march in
+the night; that is, in a few hours. Meanwhile Korsak sent his banneret,
+Byeganski, to Prostki to inform the advancing army every hour of what
+was taking place in the camp. Volodyovski and Babinich took Rössel to
+their quarters to learn something more of Boguslav. The captain was
+greatly alarmed at first, for he felt still at his throat Kmita's
+sabre-point, but wine soon loosened his tongue. Since he had served
+once in the Commonwealth in a foreign command, he had learned Polish;
+therefore he was able to answer the questions of the little knight, who
+did not know German.
+
+"Have you been long in the service of Prince Boguslav?" asked
+Volodyovski.
+
+"I do not serve in his army," answered Rössel, "but in the elector's
+regiment, which was put under his command."
+
+"Then do you know Pan Sakovich?"
+
+"I have seen him in Königsberg."
+
+"Is he with the prince?"
+
+"He is not; he remained in Taurogi."
+
+Volodyovski sighed and moved his mustaches. "I have no luck, as usual,"
+said he.
+
+"Be not grieved, Michael," said Babinich. "You will find him; if not, I
+shall."
+
+Then he turned to Rössel: "You are an old soldier; you have seen both
+armies, and you know our cavalry of old: what do you think,--on whose
+side will be victory?"
+
+"If they meet you outside the trenches, on yours; but you cannot take
+the trenches without infantry and cannon, especially since everything
+is done there with Radzivill's head."
+
+"Then do you consider him such a great leader?"
+
+"Not only is that my opinion, but it is the general opinion in both
+armies. They say that at Warsaw the Most Serene King of Sweden followed
+his advice, and therefore won a great battle. The prince, as a Pole,
+has a better knowledge of your method of warfare and can manage more
+quickly. I saw myself that the King of Sweden after the third day of
+battle embraced him in front of the army and kissed him. It is true
+that he owed his life to him; for had it not been for the shot of the
+prince-- But it is a terror to think of it! He is besides an
+incomparable knight, whom no man can meet with any weapon."
+
+"H'm!" said Volodyovski, "maybe there is such a man."
+
+When he had said this, his mustaches trembled threateningly. Rössel
+looked at him, and grew suddenly red. For a time it seemed that either
+he would burst a blood-vessel or break into laughter; but at last he
+remembered that he was in captivity, and controlled himself quickly.
+But Kmita with his steel eyes looked at him steadily and said,--
+
+"That will be shown to-morrow."
+
+"But is Boguslav in good health?" asked Volodyovski; "for the fever
+shook him a long time, and must have weakened him."
+
+"He is, and has been this long time, as healthy as a fish, and takes no
+medicine. The doctor at first wanted to give him many preservatives,
+but immediately after the first came a paroxysm. Prince Boguslav gave
+orders to toss that doctor up from sheets; and that helped him, for the
+doctor himself got a fever from fright."
+
+"To toss him up from sheets?" asked Volodyovski.
+
+"I saw it myself," answered Rössel. "Two sheets were placed one above
+the other, and the doctor put in the centre of them. Four strong
+soldiers took the sheets by the corners, and threw up the poor doctor.
+I tell you, gentlemen, that he went nearly ten ells into the air, and
+he had hardly come down when they hurled him up again. General Israel,
+Count Waldeck, and the prince were holding their sides from laughter.
+Many of the officers too were looking at the spectacle, till the doctor
+fainted. Then the prince was free of his fever, as if some hand had
+removed it."
+
+Though Pan Michael and Babinich hated Boguslav, still they could not
+restrain themselves from laughter when they heard of this joke.
+Babinich struck his knees and cried,--
+
+"Ah, the scoundrel! how he helped himself!"
+
+"I must tell Zagloba of this medicine," said Pan Michael.
+
+"It cured him of the fever," said Rössel; "but what is that, when the
+prince does not restrain sufficiently the impulses of his blood, and
+therefore will not live to ripe age?"
+
+"I think so too," muttered Babinich. "Such as he do not live long."
+
+"Does he give way to himself in the camp?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"Of course," answered Rössel. "Count Waldeck laughed, saying that his
+princely grace takes with him waiting-maids. I saw myself two handsome
+maidens; his attendants told me that they were there to iron his
+lace--but God knows."
+
+Babinich, when he heard this, grew red and pale; then he sprang up, and
+seizing Rössel by the arm began to shake him violently.
+
+"Are they Poles or Germans?"
+
+"Not Poles," said the terrified Rössel. "One is a Prussian noblewoman;
+the other is a Swede, who formerly served the wife of General Israel."
+
+Babinich looked at Pan Michael and drew a deep breath; the little
+knight was relieved too, and began to move his mustaches.
+
+"Gentlemen, permit me to rest," said Rössel. "I am dreadfully tired,
+for the Tartar led me ten miles with a lariat."
+
+Kmita clapped his hands for Soroka, and committed the prisoner to him;
+then he turned with quick step to Pan Michael.
+
+"Enough of this!" said he. "I would rather perish a hundred times than
+live in this ceaseless alarm and uncertainty. When Rössel mentioned
+those women just now, I thought that some one was going at my temple
+with a club."
+
+"It is time to finish!" said Volodyovski, shaking his sabre.
+
+At that moment trumpets sounded at the hetman's quarters; soon trumpets
+answered in all the Lithuanian squadrons, and pipes in the chambuls.
+
+The troops began to assemble, and an hour later were on the march.
+
+Before they had gone five miles a messenger hurried up from Byeganski
+of Korsak's squadron, with intelligence for the hetman that a number of
+troopers had been seized from a considerable body occupied in
+collecting on that side of the river all the wagons and horses of the
+peasants. Interrogated on the spot, they acknowledged that the tabor of
+the whole army was to leave Prostki about eight o'clock in the morning,
+and that commands were issued already.
+
+"Let us praise God and urge on our horses," said Gosyevski. "Before
+evening that army will be no longer in existence."
+
+He sent the horde neck and head to push with utmost endeavor between
+Waldeck's troops and the Pomeranian infantry hastening to aid them.
+After the horde went Lithuanians; being mainly of the light squadrons,
+they came right after the horde.
+
+Kmita was in the front rank of the Tartars, and urged on his men till
+the horses were steaming. On the road he bowed down on the saddle,
+struck his forehead on the neck of his horse, and prayed with all the
+powers of his soul,--
+
+"Grant me, O Christ, to take vengeance, not for my own wrongs, but for
+the insults wrought on the country! I am a sinner; I am not worthy of
+Thy grace; but have mercy on me! Permit me to shed the blood of
+heretics, and for Thy praise I will fast and scourge myself every week
+on this day till the end of my life."
+
+Then to the Most Holy Lady of Chenstohova, whom he had served with his
+blood, and to his own patron besides, did he commit himself; and strong
+with such protection, he felt straightway that an immense hope was
+entering his soul, that an uncommon power was penetrating his limbs,--a
+power before which everything must fall in the dust. It seemed to him
+that wings were growing from his shoulders; joy embraced him like a
+whirlwind, and he flew in front of his Tartars, so that sparks were
+scattered from under the hoofs of his steed. Thousands of wild warriors
+bent forward to the necks of their ponies, and shot along after him.
+
+A river of pointed caps rose and fell with the rush of the horses; bows
+rattled behind the men's shoulders; in front went the sound from the
+tramp of iron hoofs; from behind flew the roar of the oncoming
+squadrons, like the deep roar of a great swollen river.
+
+And thus they flew on in the rich starry night which covered the roads
+and the fields. They were like a mighty flock of ravening birds which
+had smelled blood in the distance. Fields, oak-groves, meadows, sped
+past, till at last the waning moon became pale and inclined in the
+west. Then they reined in their beasts, and halted for final
+refreshment. It was not farther now than two miles from Prostki.
+
+The Tartars fed their horses with barley from their hands, so that the
+beasts might gain strength before battle; but Kmita sat on a fresh pony
+and rode farther to look at the camp of the enemy.
+
+After half an hour's ride he found in the willows the light-horse party
+which Korsak had sent to reconnoitre.
+
+"Well," asked Kmita, "what is to be heard?"
+
+"They are not sleeping, they are bustling like bees in a hive,"
+answered the banneret. "They would have started already, but have not
+wagons sufficient."
+
+"Can the camp be seen from some point near at hand?"
+
+"It can from that height which is covered with bushes. The camp lies
+over there in the valley of the river. Does your grace wish to see it?"
+
+"Lead on."
+
+The banneret put spurs to his horse, and they rode to the height. Day
+was already in the sky, and the air was filled with a golden light; but
+along the river on the opposite low bank there lay still a dense fog.
+Hidden in the bushes, they looked at that fog growing thinner and
+thinner.
+
+At last about two furlongs distant a square earthwork was laid bare.
+Kmita's glance was fixed on it with eagerness; but at the first moment
+he saw only the misty outlines of tents and wagons standing in the
+centre along the intrenchments. The blaze of fires was not visible; he
+saw only smoke rising in lofty curls to the sky in sign of fine
+weather. But as the fog vanished Pan Andrei could distinguish through
+his field-glass blue Swedish and yellow Prussian banners planted on the
+intrenchments; then masses of soldiers, cannon, and horses.
+
+Around there was silence, broken only by the rustle of bushes moved by
+the breeze, and the glad morning twitter of birds; but from the camp
+came a deep sound.
+
+Evidently no one was sleeping, and they were preparing to march, for in
+the centre of the intrenchment was an unusual stir. Whole regiments
+were moving from place to place; some went out in front of the
+intrenchments; around the wagons there was a tremendous bustle. Cannon
+also were drawn from the trenches.
+
+"It cannot be but they are preparing to march," said Kmita.
+
+"All the prisoners said: 'They wish to make a junction with the
+infantry; and besides they do not think that the hetman can come up
+before evening; and even if he were to come up, they prefer a battle in
+the open field to yielding that infantry to the knife.'"
+
+"About two hours will pass before they move, and at the end of two
+hours the hetman will be here."
+
+"Praise be to God!" said the banneret.
+
+"Send to tell our men not to feed too long."
+
+"According to order."
+
+"But have they not sent away parties to this side of the river?"
+
+"To this side they have not sent one. But they have sent some to their
+infantry, marching from Elko."
+
+"It is well!" said Kmita.
+
+And he descended the height, and commanding the party to hide longer in
+the rushes, moved back himself with all the breath in his horse to the
+squadron.
+
+Gosyevski was just mounting when Babinich arrived. The young knight
+told quickly what he had seen and what the position was; the hetman
+listened with great satisfaction, and urged forward the squadrons
+without delay.
+
+Babinich's party went in advance; after it the Lithuanian squadrons;
+then that of Voynillovich, that of Lauda, the hetman's own, and others.
+The horde remained behind; for Hassan Bey begged for that with
+insistence, fearing that his men might not withstand the first onset of
+the heavy cavalry. He had also another reckoning.
+
+He wished, when the Lithuanians struck the enemy's front, to seize the
+camp with his Tartars; in the camp he expected to find very rich
+plunder. The hetman permitted this, thinking justly that the Tartars
+would strike weakly on the cavalry, but would fall like madmen on the
+tabor and might raise a panic, especially since the Prussian horses
+were less accustomed to their terrible howling.
+
+In two hours, as Kmita had predicted, they halted in front of that
+elevation from which the scouting-party had looked into the
+intrenchments, and which now concealed the march of all the troops. The
+banneret, seeing the troops approaching, sprang forward like lightning
+with intelligence that the enemy, having withdrawn the pickets from
+this side of the river, had already moved, and that the rear of the
+tabor was just leaving the intrenchments.
+
+When he heard this, Gosyevski drew his baton from the holsters of the
+saddle, and said,--
+
+"They cannot return now, for the wagons block the way. In the name of
+the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! There is no reason to hide longer!"
+
+He beckoned to the bunchuk-bearer; and he, raising the horse-tail
+standard aloft, waved it on every side. At this sign all the horse-tail
+standards began to wave, trumpets thundered, Tartar pipes squeaked, six
+thousand sabres were gleaming in the air, and six thousand throats
+shouted,--
+
+"Jesus! Mary!"
+
+"Allah uh Allah!"
+
+Then squadron after squadron rose in a trot from behind the height. In
+Waldeck's camp they had not expected guests so soon, for a feverish
+movement set in. The drums rattled uninterruptedly; the regiments
+turned with front to the river.
+
+It was possible to see with the naked eye generals and colonels flying
+between the regiments; they hurried to the centre with the cannon, so
+as to bring them forward to the river.
+
+After a while both armies were not farther than a thousand yards from
+each other. They were divided only by a broad meadow, in the centre of
+which a river flowed. Another moment, and the first streak of white
+smoke bloomed out from the Prussian side toward the Poles.
+
+The battle had begun.
+
+The hetman himself sprang toward Kmita's troops,--
+
+"Advance, Babinich! advance in God's name against that line!" And he
+pointed with his baton to the gleaming regiment of cavalry.
+
+"Follow me!" commanded Pan Andrei. And pressing his horse with spurs,
+he moved at a gallop toward the river.
+
+More swiftly than an arrow from a bow did they shoot forward. The
+horses had gained their highest speed, and were running with ears
+dropped back, and bodies stretched out like the bodies of hounds. The
+riders bent forward to the manes of their horses, and howling, lashed
+onward the beasts, which now did not seem to touch earth; they rushed
+with that impetus into the river. The water did not restrain them, for
+they came upon a broad ford, level and sandy; they reached the other
+bank, and sprang on in a body.
+
+Seeing this, the regiment of armored cavalry moved toward them, first
+at a walk, then at a trot, and did not go faster; but when Kmita's
+front had come within twenty yards, the command "Fire!" was heard, and
+a thousand arms with pistols were stretched forward.
+
+A line of smoke ran from one end of the rank to the other; then the two
+bodies struck each other with a crash. The horses reared at the first
+blow; over the heads of the combatants glittered sabres through the
+whole length of the line. A serpent as it were of lightning flew from
+end to end. The ominous clang of blades against helmets and
+breastplates was heard to the other side of the river. It seemed as if
+hammers were ringing in forges on plates of steel. The line bent in one
+moment into a crescent; for since the centre of the German cavalry
+yielded, pushed back by the first onset, the wings, against which less
+force was directed, kept their places. But the armored soldiers did not
+let the centre be broken, and a terrible slaughter began. On one side
+enormous men covered with armor resisted with the whole weight of
+horses; on the other the gray host of Tartars pushed with the force of
+accumulated impetus, cutting and thrusting with an inconceivable
+rapidity which only uncommon activity and ceaseless practice can give.
+As when a host of woodcutters rush at a forest of pine-trees there is
+heard only the sound of axes, and time after time some lofty tree falls
+to the ground with a fearful crash, so every moment some one of the
+cavalry bent his shining head and rolled under his horse. The sabres of
+Kmita's men glittered in their eyes, cut around their faces, eyes,
+hands. In vain does a sturdy soldier raise his heavy sword; before he
+can bring it down, he feels a cold point entering his body; then the
+sword drops from his hand, and he falls with bloody face on the neck of
+his horse. When a swarm of wasps attack in an orchard him who is
+shaking down fruit, vainly does the man ward them off with his hands,
+try to free himself, dodge aside; they reach his face skilfully, reach
+his neck, and each one drives into him a sharp sting. So did Kmita's
+raging men, trained in so many battles, rush forward, hew, cut, thrust,
+spread terror and death more and more stubbornly, surpassing their
+opponents as much as a skilful craftsman surpasses the sturdiest
+apprentice who is wanting in practice. Therefore the German cavalry
+began to fall more quickly; and the centre, against which Kmita himself
+was fighting, became so thin that it might break at any moment.
+Commands of officers, summoning soldiers to shattered places, were lost
+in the uproar and wild shouting; the line did not come together quickly
+enough, and Kmita pressed with increasing power. Wearing chain-mail, a
+gift from Sapyeha, he fought as a simple soldier, having with him the
+young Kyemliches and Soroka. Their office was to guard their master;
+and every moment some one of them turned to the right or the left,
+giving a terrible blow; but Kmita rushed on his chestnut horse to the
+thickest of the fight, and having all the secrets of Pan Michael, and
+gigantic strength, he quenched men's lives quickly. Sometimes he struck
+with his whole sabre; sometimes he barely reached with the point;
+sometimes he described a small circle merely, but quick as lightning,
+and a horseman flew head downward under his beast, as if a thunderbolt
+had hurled him from the saddle. Others withdrew before the terrible
+man.
+
+At last Pan Andrei slashed the standard-bearer in the temple; he gave
+forth a sound like that which a cock gives if his throat is cut, and
+dropped the standard from his hand. At that moment the centre broke,
+and the disordered wings forming two chaotic bodies fled swiftly to the
+farther lines of the Prussian army.
+
+Kmita looked through the broken centre into the depth of the field, and
+saw at once a regiment of red dragoons flying like wind to the aid of
+the broken cavalry.
+
+"That is nothing!" thought he; "Volodyovski will cross the ford in a
+moment to aid me."
+
+At that instant was heard the thunder of cannon so loud that the earth
+trembled in its foundations; musketry rattled from the intrenchment to
+those ranks of the Poles who had pushed forward most. The whole field
+was covered with smoke, and in that smoke Kmita's volunteers and
+Tartars closed with the dragoons.
+
+But from the side of the river no one came with assistance.
+
+The enemy had let Kmita pass the ford purposely, and then covered the
+ford with such a dreadful shower from cannons and muskets that no
+living foot could pass through it.
+
+The troops of Pan Korsak tried first, and turned back in disorder; next
+the squadron of Voynillovich went to the middle of the ford, and turned
+back,--slowly, it is true, for that was the king's regiment, one of the
+most valiant in the army, but with a loss of twelve noted nobles and
+nineteen soldiers.
+
+The water in the ford which was the only passage through the river was
+plashing under the blows of balls as under a dense pouring rain.
+Cannon-balls flew to the other bank, casting around clouds of sand.
+
+Gosyevski himself rode up on a gallop, and when he had seen this, he
+knew that it was impossible for one living man to reach the opposite
+bank.
+
+And still that might decide the fate of the battle. Then the forehead
+of the hetman frowned sternly. For a while he looked through his glass
+along the whole line of the enemy's troops, and cried to the orderly,--
+
+"Rush to Hassan Bey; let the horde pass the deep bank as it can, and
+strike the tabor. What they find in the wagons will be theirs! There
+are no cannon there; it will be only hand to hand."
+
+The horseman sprang forward with what breath was in his horse; but the
+hetman advanced to where under willows on the meadow stood the Lauda
+squadron, and halted before it.
+
+Volodyovski was at the head of the squadron, gloomy and silent; but he
+looked in the eyes of the hetman, and his mustaches quivered.
+
+"What do you think?" asked the hetman; "will the Tartars cross?"
+
+"The Tartars will cross, but Kmita will perish!" answered the little
+knight.
+
+"As God lives!" cried the hetman, suddenly; "this Kmita, if he had a
+head on his shoulders, might win the battle, not perish!"
+
+Volodyovski said nothing; still he thought: "It was necessary either
+not to send any regiment across the river, or to send five."
+
+The hetman looked awhile yet through his glass at the distant confusion
+which Kmita was making beyond the river; but the little knight, not
+being able to endure any longer, drew near him, and holding his
+sabre-point upward, said,--
+
+"Your worthiness, if there were an order, I would try the ford again."
+
+"Stop!" said Gosyevski, rather sharply; "it is enough that those will
+perish."
+
+"They are perishing already," replied Volodyovski.
+
+And in truth the uproar was becoming more definite and greater every
+moment. Evidently Kmita was retreating to the river.
+
+"As God lives, I wanted that!" cried the hetman, suddenly; and he
+sprang like a thunderbolt to Voynillovich's squadron.
+
+In fact, Kmita was retreating. After they had met the red dragoons, his
+men fought with their last strength; but the breath was already failing
+in their breasts, their wearied hands were drooping, and bodies were
+falling faster and faster; only hope that aid might come any moment
+from beyond the river kept courage in them yet.
+
+Half an hour more passed, and the cry of "Strike!" was heard no longer;
+but to the aid of the red dragoons sprang Boguslav's regiment of heavy
+cavalry.
+
+"Death is coming!" thought Kmita, seeing them approaching from the
+flank.
+
+But he was a soldier who never had a doubt, for a moment, not only of
+his life, but of victory. Long and hazardous practice had given him
+also great knowledge of war; therefore lightning at dusk does not flash
+and then die out so quickly as the following thought flashed to the
+head of Pan Andrei: Evidently the Poles could not cross the ford to the
+enemy; and since they could not, he would lead the enemy to them.
+
+Boguslav's regiment was coming on at full sweep, and not more than a
+hundred yards distant; in a moment they could strike and scatter his
+Tartars. Pan Andrei raised the pipe to his mouth, and whistled so
+shrilly that the nearest dragoon horses rose on their haunches.
+
+That instant other pipes of the Tartar leaders repeated the whistle;
+and not so swiftly does the whirlwind twist the sand as that chambul
+turned its horses in flight.
+
+The remnant of the mailed cavalry, the red dragoons, and Boguslav's
+regiment sprang after them with all speed.
+
+The shouts of the officers--"Naprzod (Forward)!" and "Gott mit uns (God
+with us)!"--rang like a storm, and a marvellous sight was seen then.
+Over the broad meadow rushed the disordered and confused chambul of
+Tartars, straight to the ford, which was rained on with bullets and
+balls; and they tore onward, as if carried with wings. Every Tartar lay
+on the horse, flattened himself, hid himself in the mane and the neck,
+in such fashion that had it not been for the cloud of arrows flying
+back toward the cavalry, it might be said that the horses were rushing
+on riderless; after them, with roaring, shouting, and trampling,
+followed gigantic men, with upraised swords gleaming in their right
+hands.
+
+The ford was nearer and nearer; there was half a furlong left yet, and
+evidently the Tartar horses were using their last strength, for the
+distance between them and the cavalry was quickly decreasing.
+
+A few moments later the front ranks of the pursuers began to cut with
+their swords the Tartars closing the rear. The ford was right there; it
+seemed that in a few springs the horses would be in it.
+
+Suddenly something wonderful happened.
+
+Behold, when the chambul had run to the ford, a shrill whistle of pipes
+was heard again on the wings, and the whole body, instead of rushing
+into the river to seek safety on the other bank, opened in two, and
+with the speed of swallows sprang to the right and left, with and
+against the flow of the river.
+
+But the heavy regiments, rushing right on their shoulders with the
+highest horse-speed, raced into the ford with the same force, and only
+when in the water did the horsemen begin to hold in their furious
+beasts.
+
+The cannon, which up to that moment had been showering a rain of iron
+on the gravel, were silent in a second; the gunners had to spare their
+own army.
+
+But Gosyevski was waiting for precisely that instant as for salvation.
+
+The cavalry were hardly in the water when the terrible royal squadron
+of Voynillovich rushed at it like a hurricane; then the Lauda, the
+Korsak, the two squadrons of the hetman, and the volunteer squadron;
+after that, the armored squadron of Prince Michael Radzivill.
+
+A terrible shout, "Kill, slay!" thundered in the air; and before the
+Prussian regiments could halt, concentrate, use their swords, the
+Voynillovich squadron had scattered them as a whirl of air scatters
+leaves; they crushed the red dragoons, pushed back Boguslav's regiment,
+cut it in two, and drove it over the field toward the main army of
+Prussia.
+
+In one moment the river was red with blood. The cannon began to play
+again; but too late, for eight squadrons of Lithuanian cavalry were
+sweeping with thunder and roar over the meadow, and the whole battle
+was transferred to the other side of the river.
+
+The hetman was flying with one of his own squadrons, his face radiant
+with joy, and with fire in his eyes; for once he had the cavalry beyond
+the river, he was certain of victory.
+
+The squadrons, emulating one another in slashing and thrusting, drove
+before them the remnant of the dragoons and the cavalry, which fell in
+a dense body; for the heavy horses were not able to flee swiftly, and
+merely covered the pursuers against missiles from the front.
+
+Meanwhile Waldeck, Boguslav, Radzivill, and Israel sent forward all
+their cavalry to restrain the onset, and hastened themselves to put the
+infantry in line. Regiment after regiment ran out of the tabor, and
+took their places on the plain. They thrust the butts of their heavy
+spears into the earth, with the heads pointing forward, inclined like a
+fence to the enemy.
+
+In the next rank musketeers stretched forward the barrels of their
+muskets. Between the quadrangles of regiments they placed cannon in hot
+haste. Neither Boguslav nor Waldeck nor Israel flattered themselves
+that their cavalry could restrain that of the Poles very long, and
+their whole hope was in the artillery and the infantry. Meanwhile in
+front of the infantry the mounted regiments struck breast against
+breast. But that happened which the Prussian leaders foresaw.
+
+The pressure of the Lithuanian cavalry was so terrible that their
+opponents could not restrain them for one moment, and the first hussar
+regiments split them as a wedge splits wood, and went without breaking
+a lance through the dense mass, as a ship driven by strong wind goes
+through waves. The streamers were visible nearer and nearer; at times
+the heads of the hussar horses rose above the throng of the Prussians.
+
+"On your guard!" cried the officers, standing in the quadrangle of
+infantry.
+
+At this word the Prussian soldiers braced themselves more firmly on
+their feet, and strained their arms holding the spears; and all hearts
+were beating violently, for the terrible hussars had come wholly in
+sight, and were bearing down straightway against them.
+
+"Fire!" was the word of command.
+
+Muskets rattled in the second and third ranks of the quadrangle. Smoke
+covered the men. A moment later the roar of the coming squadron was
+nearer. They are right there! All at once, amid the smoke, the first
+rank of infantry see there above them, almost over their heads,
+thousands of horses' hoofs, wide nostrils, inflamed eyes; a crash of
+broken spears is heard; a fearful shout rends the air; Polish voices
+shouting, "Slay!" and German voices, "Gott erbarme Dich meiner (God
+have mercy on me)!"
+
+That regiment is broken, crushed; but in the spaces between other
+regiments cannon begin to play. Other squadrons come up. Each one
+strikes after a moment on a forest of lances; but perhaps not every one
+will break the forest which it strikes, for none has such terrible
+force as Voynillovich's squadron. Shouting increases on the whole field
+of battle. Nothing can be seen; but from the mass of combatants groups
+of yellow infantry escape in disorder, fleeing from some regiment which
+evidently was also beaten.
+
+Horsemen in gray colors pursue, cut, and trample these men, and
+shout,--
+
+"Lauda! Lauda!"
+
+That was Volodyovski, who with his squadron had fought against a second
+quadrangle.
+
+But others were "sticking" yet; victory might still incline to the
+Prussians, especially as at the tabor stood two regiments intact,
+which, since the tabor was safe, might be summoned at any moment.
+
+Waldeck had in truth lost his head. Israel was not present, for he had
+been sent with the cavalry; but Boguslav was watching and managing
+everything. He led the whole battle, and seeing the increase of great
+peril, sent Pan Byes for those regiments.
+
+Byes urged on his horse, and half an hour later returned bareheaded,
+with terror and despair in his face.
+
+"The horde is in the tabor!" shouted he, hurrying up to Boguslav.
+
+At that moment unearthly howling was heard on the right wing; this
+howling came nearer and nearer.
+
+Suddenly appeared crowds of Swedish horsemen approaching in terrible
+panic; after them were fleeing weaponless, bareheaded infantry; after
+the infantry, in confusion and disorder, came wagons drawn by wild and
+terrified horses. All this mass was rushing at random from the tabor
+toward the infantry in the meadow. In a moment they fell on the
+infantry, put them into disorder, scattered them, especially when in
+front they were pressed by Lithuanian cavalry.
+
+"Hassan Bey has reached the tabor!" cried Gosyevski, with ecstasy; and
+he let out his last two squadrons like falcons from their rest.
+
+At the same moment that these two squadrons strike the infantry in
+front, their own wagons rush against them on the flank. The last
+quadrangles burst as if under the stroke of a hammer. Of the whole
+brilliant Swedish-Prussian army there is formed one gigantic mass, in
+which the cavalry are mingled with the infantry. Men are overturning,
+trampling, and suffocating one another; they throw off their clothing,
+cast away their arms. The cavalry press them, cut them, crush them,
+mash them. It is no longer a battle lost; it is a ruin, one of the most
+ghastly of the war.
+
+Boguslav, seeing that all was lost, resolved to save at least himself
+and some of the cavalry. With superhuman exertion he collected a few
+hundred horsemen, and was fleeing along the left wing in the direction
+of the river's course.
+
+He had already escaped from the main whirl, when Prince Michael
+Radzivill, leading his own hussars, struck him on the flank and
+scattered his whole detachment at a blow. After this Boguslav's men
+fled singly or in small groups. They could be saved only by the speed
+of their horses.
+
+In fact, the hussars did not pursue, but struck on the main body of
+infantry, which all the other squadrons were cutting to pieces. The
+broken detachment fled over the field like a scattered herd of deer.
+
+Boguslav, on Kmita's black steed, is rushing like the wind, striving in
+vain by cries to gather around him even a few tens of men. No one obeys
+him; each man flees on his own account, glad that he has escaped from
+the disaster, and that he has no enemy in front of him. But rejoicing
+was vain. They had not gone a thousand yards when howling was heard in
+front, and a gray host of Tartars sprang forth from the river, near
+which they had been lurking till then.
+
+This was Kmita with his men. Leaving the field, after he had brought
+the enemy to the ford, he turned so as to cut off retreat to the
+fugitives.
+
+The Tartars, seeing the cavalry scattered, scattered themselves in a
+moment to catch them more easily, and a murderous pursuit began. Two or
+three Tartars cut off one trooper, and he rarely defended himself; more
+frequently he seized his rapier by the point, and extended the hilt to
+the Tartars, calling for mercy. But the Tartars, knowing that they
+could not lead these prisoners home, took only officers who could give
+ransom; the common soldiers received a knife in the throat, and died,
+unable to say even "God!" Those who fled to the last were stabbed in
+the back and shoulders; those under whom the horses did not fall were
+caught with lariats.
+
+Kmita rushed for a time over the field, hurling down horsemen and
+seeking Boguslav with his eyes; at last he beheld him, and knew him at
+once by the horse, by the blue ribbon, and the hat with black ostrich
+feathers.
+
+A cloud of white steam surrounded the prince; for just the moment
+before two Nogais had attacked him. One he killed with a pistol-shot,
+and the other he thrust through with a rapier; then seeing a larger
+party rushing from one side, and Kmita from the other, he pressed his
+horse with spurs, and shot on like a hunted deer followed by hounds.
+
+More than fifty men rushed in a body after him; but not all the horses
+ran equally, so that soon the fifty formed a long serpent, the head of
+which was Boguslav and the neck Kmita.
+
+The prince bent forward in his saddle; the black horse appeared not to
+touch the earth with his feet, but was black over the green grass, like
+a swallow sweeping close to the ground; the chestnut stretched his neck
+like a crane, put back his ears, and seemed as if trying to spring from
+his skin. Single willows, clumps of them, groups of alder, shot past;
+the Tartars were behind, a furlong, two, three furlongs, but they ran
+and ran. Kmita threw his pistols from the holsters to lighten the
+horse's burden; with eyes fastened on Boguslav, with fixed lips, he
+almost lay on the neck of the horse, pricked his foaming sides with
+spurs, till soon the foam falling to the earth became rose-colored.
+
+But the distance between him and the prince not only did not decrease a
+single inch, but began to increase.
+
+"Woe!" thought Pan Andrei, "no horse on earth can overtake that one."
+
+And when after a few springs the distance increased still more, he
+straightened himself in the saddle, let the sword drop on its pendant,
+and putting his hands around his mouth, shouted in a trumpet-like
+voice: "Flee, traitor, flee before Kmita! I will get you, if not
+to-day, to-morrow."
+
+These words had barely sounded in the air, when on a sudden the prince,
+who heard them, looked around, and seeing that Kmita alone was
+pursuing, instead of fleeing farther described a circle, and with
+rapier in hand rushed upon him.
+
+Pan Andrei gave forth a terrible cry of joy, and without lessening
+speed raised his sabre for a blow.
+
+"Corpse! corpse!" shouted the prince; and wishing to strike the more
+surely, he restrained his horse.
+
+Kmita, when he had come up, held in his own beast till his hoofs sank
+in the earth, and rapier met sabre.
+
+They closed in such fashion that the two horses formed almost one body.
+A terrible sound of steel was heard, quick as thought; no eye could
+catch the lightning-like movement of rapier and sabre, nor distinguish
+the prince from Kmita. At times Boguslav's hat appeared black, at times
+Kmita's steel morion gleamed. The horses whirled around each other. The
+swords clinked more and more terribly.
+
+Boguslav, after a few strokes, ceased to despise his opponent. All the
+terrible thrusts which he had learned from French masters were parried.
+Sweat was now flowing freely from his face with the rouge and white; he
+felt weariness in his right arm already. Wonder seized him, then
+impatience, then rage; therefore he determined to finish, and he thrust
+so terribly that the hat fell from his head.
+
+Kmita warded with such force that the prince's rapier flew to the side
+of the horse; and before Boguslav could defend himself again, Kmita cut
+him with the very end of the sabre in the forehead.
+
+"Christ!" cried the prince in German, rolling to the earth.
+
+He fell on his back.
+
+Pan Andrei was as if stunned for the moment, but recovered quickly. He
+dropped his sabre on its pendant, made the sign of the cross, sprang
+from his horse, and seizing the hilt, again approached the prince.
+
+He was terrible; for pale as a sheet from emotion, his lips were
+pressed, and inexorable hatred was in his face.
+
+Behold his mortal enemy, and such a powerful one, lying now at his feet
+in blood, still alive and conscious, but conquered, and not with
+foreign weapons nor with foreign aid.
+
+Boguslav looked at him with widely opened eyes, watching carefully
+every move of the victor; and when Kmita stood there above him, he
+cried quickly,--
+
+"Do not kill me! Ransom!"
+
+Kmita, instead of answering, stood with his foot on Boguslav's breast,
+and pressed with all his power; then he placed the point of his sabre
+on the prince's throat so that the skin yielded under the point,--he
+only needed to move his hand, to press more firmly. But he did not kill
+him at once. He wished to sate himself yet with the sight, and make the
+death of his enemy more grievous. He transfixed Boguslav's eyes with
+his own eyes, and stood above him, as a lion stands above an overthrown
+buffalo.
+
+The prince, from whose forehead blood was flowing more and more
+copiously, so that the whole upper part of his head was as if in a
+pool, spoke again, but now with a greatly stifled voice, for the foot
+of Pan Andrei was crushing his breast,--
+
+"The maiden--listen--"
+
+Barely had Pan Andrei heard these words when he took his foot from
+Boguslav's breast, and raised his sword. "Speak!" said he.
+
+But Boguslav only breathed deeply for a time; at last, with a voice now
+stronger, he said,--
+
+"The maiden will die, if you kill me. The orders are given."
+
+"What have you done with her?" asked Kmita. "Spare me, and I will give
+her to you. I swear on the Gospel."
+
+Pan Andrei struck his forehead with his fist. It was to be seen for a
+time that he was struggling with himself and with his thoughts; then he
+said,--
+
+"Hear me, traitor! I would give a hundred such degenerate ruffians for
+one hair of hers. But I do not believe you, you oath-breaker!"
+
+"On the Gospel!" repeated the prince. "I will give you a safe-conduct
+and an order in writing."
+
+"Let it be so. I will give you your life, but I will not let you out of
+my hands. You will give me the letter; but meanwhile I will give you to
+the Tartars, with whom you will be in captivity."
+
+"Agreed," answered Boguslav.
+
+"Remember," said Pan Andrei, "your princely rank did not preserve you
+from my hand, nor your army, nor your fencing. And be assured that as
+many times as you cross my path, or do not keep word, nothing will save
+you,--even though you were made Emperor of Germany. Recognize me! Once
+I had you in my hands, now you are lying under my feet!"
+
+"Consciousness is leaving me," said the prince. "Pan Kmita, there must
+be water near by. Give me to drink, and wash my wound."
+
+"Die, parricide!" answered Kmita.
+
+But the prince, secure of life, recovered all his self-command, and
+said,--
+
+"You are foolish, Pan Kmita. If I die, she too--" Here his lips grew
+pale.
+
+Kmita ran to see if there was not some ditch near at hand, or even some
+pool. The prince fainted, but for a short time; he revived, happily for
+himself, when the first Tartar, Selim, son of Gazi Aga, the banneret
+among Kmita's Tartars, was coming up, and seeing the enemy weltering in
+blood, determined to pin him to the earth with the spear-point of the
+banner. The prince in that terrible moment still had strength
+sufficient to seize the point, which, being loosely fastened, fell from
+the staff.
+
+The sound of that short struggle brought back Pan Andrei.
+
+"Stop! son of a dog!" cried he, running from a distance.
+
+The Tartar, at the sound of the familiar voice, pushed up to his horse
+with fear. Kmita commanded him to go for water, and remained himself
+with the prince; for from afar were to be seen approaching at a gallop
+the Kyemliches, Soroka, and the whole chambul, who, after they had
+caught all the horsemen, came to seek their leader.
+
+Seeing Pan Andrei, the faithful Nogais threw up their caps with loud
+shouts.
+
+Akbah Ulan sprang from his horse and began to bow to him, touching with
+his hand his forehead, his mouth, and his breast. Others smacking their
+lips, in Tartar fashion, looked with greediness into the eyes of the
+conquered; some rushed to seize the two horses, the chestnut and the
+black, which were running at a distance each with flying mane.
+
+"Akbah Ulan," said Kmita, "this is the leader of the army which we
+conquered this morning, Prince Boguslav Radzivill. I give him to you;
+and do you keep him, for dead or alive they will pay you for him
+liberally. Now take care of him; put on him a lariat, and lead him to
+camp."
+
+"Allah! Allah! We thank the leader! We thank the conqueror!" cried all
+the Tartars in one voice; and again was heard the smacking of a
+thousand lips.
+
+Kmita mounted and went with a part of the Tartars to the field of
+battle. From a distance he saw the standard-bearers with their
+standards, but of the squadrons there were only a few men present; the
+rest had gone in pursuit of the enemy. Crowds of camp servants were
+busy on the battle-field, plundering the corpses and fighting here and
+there with the Tartars, who were plundering also. The latter looked
+specially terrible, with knives in their hands, and with arms stained
+to the elbows. You would have said that a flock of crows had dropped
+from the clouds to the battle-plain. Their wild laughter and shouts
+were heard over the whole meadow.
+
+Some holding in their lips knives still steaming drew with both hands
+dead men by the feet; others in sport threw at one another severed
+heads. Some were filling bags; others, as in a bazaar, were holding up
+bloody garments, praising their value, or examining the weapons which
+they had taken.
+
+Kmita passed over the field where he had first met the cavalry. Bodies
+of men and horses, cut with swords, lay scattered there; but where
+squadrons had cut infantry, there were whole piles of corpses, and
+pools of stiffened blood plashed under foot like muddy water in a
+swamp.
+
+It was difficult to advance through the fragments of broken lances,
+muskets, corpses, overturned wagons, and troops of Tartars pushing
+around.
+
+Gosyevski was still on the intrenchment of the fortified camp, and with
+him were Prince Michael Radzivill, Voynillovich, Volodyovski, Korsak,
+and a number of men. From this height they took in with their eyes the
+field far away to its uttermost edges, and were able to estimate the
+whole extent of the victory and the enemy's defeat.
+
+Kmita, on beholding these gentlemen, hastened his pace; and Gosyevski,
+since he was not only a fortunate warrior but an honorable man without
+a shadow of envy in his heart, had barely seen Pan Andrei, when he
+cried,--
+
+"Here comes the real victor! He is the cause of winning the day. I
+first declare this in public. Gracious gentlemen, thank Pan Babinich;
+for had it not been for him we could not have crossed the river."
+
+"Vivat Babinich!" cried a number of voices. "Vivat, vivat!"
+
+"Where did you learn war, O soldier," cried the hetman, with
+enthusiasm, "that you know what to do in a moment?"
+
+Kmita did not answer, for he was too tired. He merely bowed on every
+side, and passed his hand over his face, soiled with sweat and with
+powder-smoke. His eyes gleamed with an uncommon light, and still the
+vivats sounded incessantly. Division after division returned from the
+field on foaming horses; and those who came joined their voices from
+full breasts in honor of Babinich. Caps flew into the air; whoso had a
+pistol still loaded gave fire.
+
+Suddenly Kmita stood in the saddle, and raising both hands high,
+shouted,--
+
+"Vivat Yan Kazimir, our lord and gracious father!"
+
+Here there was such a shout as if anew battle had begun. Unspeakable
+enthusiasm seized all. Prince Michael ungirded his sabre, which had a
+hilt set with diamonds, and gave it to Kmita. The hetman threw his
+own costly cloak on the shoulders of the hero, who again raised his
+hands,--
+
+"Vivat our hetman, victorious leader!"
+
+"May he increase and flourish!" answered all, in a chorus.
+
+Then they brought together the captured banners, and thrust them into
+the embankment at the feet of the leaders. The enemy had not taken one
+of theirs. There were Prussian, Prussian of the general militia,
+nobles', Swedish, and Boguslav flags; the whole rainbow of them was
+waving at the embankment.
+
+"One of the greatest victories of this war!" cried the hetman. "Israel
+and Waldeck are in captivity, the colonels have fallen or are in
+captivity, the army is cut to pieces." Here he turned to Kmita: "Pan
+Babinich, you were on that side, you must have met Boguslav; what has
+happened to him?"
+
+Here Pan Michael looked diligently into Kmita's eyes, but Kmita said
+quickly,--
+
+"God has punished Boguslav with this hand." Then he stretched forth his
+right hand; but at that moment the little knight threw himself into his
+arms.
+
+"Yendrek," cried he, "I am not envious! May God bless you!"
+
+"You formed my hand!" answered Pan Andrei, with effusion.
+
+But a further expression of brotherly feeling was stopped by Pan
+Michael Radzivill.
+
+"Is my cousin killed?" asked he, quickly.
+
+"Not killed," answered Kmita, "for I granted him life; but he is
+wounded and captive, and over there my Nogais are bringing him."
+
+At these words astonishment was depicted on Volodyovski's face, and the
+eyes of the knight were turned to the plain, on which appeared a party
+of some tens of Tartars approaching slowly; at last, when they had
+passed a group of broken wagons, they came within some tens of yards of
+the intrenchment.
+
+The hetman and the officers saw that the Tartar riding in advance was
+leading a prisoner; all recognized Boguslav, but in what a change of
+fortune!
+
+He, one of the most powerful lords in the Commonwealth; he, who even
+yesterday was dreaming of independent rule; he, a prince of the German
+Empire,--was walking now with a lariat around his neck, at the side of
+a Tartar horse, without a hat, with bloody head bound in a filthy rag!
+But such was the venom in the hearts of the knights against this
+magnate that his terrible humiliation did not excite the pity of any,
+and nearly all mouths shouted at the same moment,--
+
+"Death to the traitor! Bear him apart on sabres! Death, death!"
+
+Prince Michael covered his eyes with his hand, for still that was a
+Radzivill led with such humiliation. Suddenly he grew red and
+shouted,--
+
+"Gracious gentlemen! that is my cousin, that is my blood, and I have
+spared neither life nor property for the country. He is my enemy who
+will raise a hand against that ill-fated man."
+
+The knights were silent at once.
+
+Prince Michael was universally beloved for his bravery, liberality, and
+devotion to the country. Even when all Lithuania fell into the hands of
+the Northerners, he alone defended himself in Nyesvyej, and in the time
+of the Swedish wars he contemned the persuasions of Prince Yanush, and
+was one of the first to join the confederacy of Tyshovtsi. His voice
+therefore found hearing at once. Finally, it may be that no one wished
+to oppose so powerful a man; it is enough that the sabres were placed
+at once in the scabbards, and even some officers, clients of the
+Radzivills, exclaimed,--
+
+"Take him from the Tartars! Let the Commonwealth judge him, but let not
+honorable blood be insulted by Pagans."
+
+"Take him from the Tartars!" repeated the prince; "we will find surety,
+and he will pay the ransom himself. Pan Voynillovich, move your men and
+let them take him by force, if it is impossible otherwise."
+
+"I offer myself as a surety to the Tartars," said Pan Gnoinski.
+
+Then Volodyovski pushed up to Kmita and said: "Yendrek, what have you
+done? He will go safely out of this trouble!"
+
+Kmita sprang forward like a wounded wild-cat.
+
+"With the permission of your highness," cried he. "This is my prisoner!
+I granted him life, but under conditions to which he swore by his
+heretical gospel; and may I fall dead here if he will go out of the
+hands into which I gave him before he fulfils everything!"
+
+When he had said this, he struck his horse, blocked the road, and his
+inborn impulsiveness had almost carried him away; for his face began to
+writhe, he distended his nostrils, and his eyes began to cast
+lightning.
+
+Meanwhile Voynillovich pressed him with his horse. "Aside, Pan
+Babinich!" cried he.
+
+"Aside, Pan Voynillovich!" roared Kmita, and struck with the hilt of
+his sabre Voynillovich's horse with such force that the steed tottered
+on his legs as if struck by a ball and dug the ground with his
+nostrils. Then there rose a fierce shout among the knights, so that
+Gosyevski pushed forward and cried,--
+
+"Silence, gentlemen! Gracious prince, in virtue of my authority as
+hetman, I declare that Pan Babinich has a right to the prisoner, and
+that whoso wishes to free him from Tartar hands must give guarantee to
+his conqueror."
+
+Prince Michael mastered his indignation, calmed himself, and said,
+directing his speech to Pan Andrei,--
+
+"Say what you wish."
+
+"That he observe the conditions with me before he leaves captivity."
+
+"But he will keep them when he is free."
+
+"Impossible! I do not believe him."
+
+"Then I swear for him, by the Most Holy Mother, whom I recognize, and
+on the word of a knight, that all will be observed to you. In the
+opposite case you may make demand on my honor and property."
+
+"That is sufficient for me!" said Kmita. "Let Pan Gnoinski go as
+hostage, for otherwise the Tartars will make resistance. I will give
+way on your word."
+
+"I thank you, Cavalier!" answered Prince Michael. "Do not fear, either,
+that he will receive his freedom at once, for I will give him to the
+hetman by right, and he will remain a prisoner until the king
+pronounces sentence."
+
+"That will be so!" answered the hetman; and ordering Voynillovich to
+sit on a fresh horse, for that one was hardly able to stand, he sent
+him with Pan Gnoinski for the prince.
+
+But the affair did not pass easily yet; for Hassan Bey made a terrible
+resistance, and only the sight of Pan Gnoinski and the promise of a
+ransom of a hundred thousand thalers could pacify him.
+
+In the evening Prince Boguslav found himself in the tents of Gosyevski.
+He was cared for with attention; two physicians did not leave him for a
+moment, and both guaranteed his life, for the wound, since it had been
+given with the very end of the sabre, was not too serious.
+
+Volodyovski could not forgive Kmita for having granted the prince his
+life, and from sorrow avoided him all day. It was only in the evening
+that Pan Andrei himself went to Pan Michael's tent.
+
+"Fear the wounds of God!" cried the little knight, at sight of him; "I
+should have expected this of any other than of you, to let that traitor
+go alive!"
+
+"Listen to me, Michael, before you condemn me," said Kmita, gloomily.
+"I had him under my foot and held my sabre point at his throat, and
+then do you know what the traitor said? That there were commands given
+to kill Olenka in Taurogi if he should be slain. What had I,
+unfortunate man, to do? I purchased her life with his life. What had I
+to do? By the cross of Christ, what had I to do?"
+
+Here Pan Andrei began to pull his hair, to stamp, from bewilderment;
+and Volodyovski thought for awhile, then said,--
+
+"I understand your despair; but still--you see, you have let go a
+traitor who may bring grievous suffering to the country. There is no
+denying, Yendrek, that you have rendered wonderful service to-day; but
+at last you sacrificed the public good to your own private ends."
+
+"And what would you have done if you were told that there was a knife
+at the throat of Panna Anusia?"
+
+Pan Michael's mustaches quivered fiercely. "I do not offer myself as an
+example. H'm! what would I have done? But Pan Yan, who has a Roman
+soul, would not have let him live; and besides, I am certain that God
+would not have let innocent blood flow for the reason he mentioned."
+
+"Let me do penance. Punish me, O God, not according to my heavy sin,
+but according to Thy mercy; for to sign a sentence against that dove--"
+Here Kmita closed his eyes. "Angels forefend! Never, never!"
+
+"It is passed," said Volodyovski.
+
+Here Pan Andrei took a paper out of his bosom. "See, Michael, what I
+obtained. This is a command to Sakovich, to all the officers of
+Radzivill, and to the Swedish commandants. We forced him to write it,
+though he could barely move his hand. Prince Michael himself saw to
+that. This is freedom for her, safety for her. I will lie in the form
+of a cross every day for a year, I will have myself scourged, I will
+build a church, but I will not sacrifice her life. I have not a Roman
+soul. Well, I am not a Cato like Pan Yan, true! But I will not
+sacrifice her; no, by a hundred thunders, I will not, even if at last I
+am roasted in hell on a spit--"
+
+Kmita did not finish, for Pan Michael sprang up to him and stopped his
+mouth with his hand, crying in a terrified voice,--
+
+"Do not blaspheme, for you will draw the vengeance of God on her. Beat
+your breast, quickly, quickly!"
+
+And Pan Andrei began to beat his breast: "Mea culpa! mea culpa! mea
+maxima culpa!" At last the poor soldier burst into loud weeping, for he
+did not know himself what to do.
+
+Pan Michael let him have his cry out; then he pacified him, and
+asked,--
+
+"And what will you undertake now?"
+
+"I will go with my men whither I am sent, as far as Birji. Only let the
+men and horses draw breath first. On the road I will shed as much
+heretical blood as I can, to the glory of God."
+
+"And you will have your merit. Do not lose heart, Yendrek. God is
+merciful!"
+
+"I will go directly ahead. All Prussia is open at present; only here
+and there shall I light upon small garrisons."
+
+Pan Michael sighed: "Oh, I would go with you as gladly as to paradise.
+But I must keep my command. You are fortunate to lead volunteers.
+Yendrek, listen, brother! and when you find both, take care of that
+one, so that no evil befall her. God knows, she may be predestined to
+me."
+
+When he had said this, the little knight cast himself into the arms of
+Pan Andrei.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LII.
+
+
+Olenka and Anusia, having freed themselves from Taurogi, under the
+protection of Braun, came successfully to the sword-bearer's party,
+which at that time was near Olsha, therefore not very far from Taurogi.
+
+The old noble when he saw them both in good health would not believe
+his eyes at first; then he fell to weeping from delight, and finally
+came to such military enthusiasm that for him danger existed no longer.
+Let not only Boguslav appear, but the King of Sweden himself with all
+his power, Pan Billevich was ready to defend his maidens against every
+enemy.
+
+"I will fall," said he, "before a hair shall drop from your heads. I am
+no longer the man whom you knew in Taurogi, and I think that the Swedes
+will long remember Girlakole, Yasvoynya, and those beatings which I
+gave them at Rossyeni itself. It is true that the traitor Sakovich
+attacked us unawares and routed us, but you see several hundred sabres
+on service."
+
+Pan Billevich did not exaggerate greatly, for in truth it was difficult
+to recognize in him the former prisoner of Taurogi fallen in courage.
+He had another mind now; his energy had revived in the field, on his
+horse; he found himself in his element, and being a good soldier, he
+had really handled the Swedes several times roughly. And since he had
+great authority in the neighborhood, the nobles and common people
+flocked to him willingly, and even from some remote districts a
+Billevich brought him now between ten and twenty horsemen, now some
+tens of horsemen.
+
+Pan Tomash's party was composed of three hundred peasant infantry and
+about five hundred horsemen. It was rare that any man in the infantry
+had a gun; the greater number were armed with scythes and forks. The
+cavalry was a collection of the wealthier nobles, who betook themselves
+to the forest with their attendants, and of the poorer nobles from
+villages. Their arms were better than those of the infantry, but
+greatly varied. Hop-poles served as lances for many; some carried rich
+family weapons, but frequently of a past age; the horses, of various
+breeds and quality, were not fitted for one rank.
+
+With such troops the sword-bearer could block the road to Swedish
+patrols, he might cut off even detachments of cavalry, he might clear
+forests and villages of plunderers, whose numerous bands, composed of
+Swedish fugitives, Prussian and local ruffians, were busied with
+robbery; but he could not attack any town.
+
+The Swedes had grown wiser. Immediately after the outbreak of the
+rebellion those who were scattered in quarters in the villages were cut
+down throughout Jmud and Lithuania; but now those who had survived
+remained mostly in fortified towns, which they left only for short
+expeditions. Therefore the fields, forests, hamlets, and smaller towns
+were in Polish hands; but the larger towns were held by Swedes, and
+there was no power to dislodge them.
+
+The sword-bearer's party was one of the best; others could effect still
+less than he. On the boundary of Livonia the insurgents had grown so
+bold, it is true, that they besieged Birji twice, and at the second
+attack it was forced to surrender; but that temporary preponderance
+came from this,--that Pontus de la Gardie had assembled to the defence
+of Riga against the forces of the Tsar all the troops from the
+neighboring districts of Livonia.
+
+His brilliant victories, rarely equalled in history, caused the belief,
+however, that war in that quarter would soon be at an end, and that he
+would bring to Jmud new Swedish troops intoxicated with triumphs. Still
+there was safety enough in the forests at that time; and numerous
+parties of insurgents capable of undertaking little alone might still
+be certain that the enemy would not seek them in deep wildernesses.
+
+Therefore Pan Billevich rejected the thought of hiding in Byalovyej;
+for the road to it was very long, and on the way were many considerable
+places with large garrisons.
+
+"The Lord God has given a dry autumn," said he to the maidens,
+"therefore it is easier to live _sub Jove_ (in the open air). I will
+have a regular tent made for you; I will find a woman to wait on you,
+and you will stay in the camp. In these times there is no safer refuge
+than the forest. My Billeviche is burned to the ground; country houses
+are infested by ravagers and sometimes even by Swedish parties. Where
+could you incline your heads more safely than with me, who have several
+hundred sabres at my command? Rains will come later, then some cabin
+will be found for you in the forest."
+
+This idea pleased Panna Anusia greatly; for in the party were many
+young Billeviches, polite cavaliers, and besides it was said
+continually that Pan Babinich was marching in that direction.
+
+Anusia hoped that when he came he would drive out the Swedes in a
+twinkle, and then--then would be what God would give. Olenka judged
+also that it was safest with the party; but she wished to retreat far
+from Taurogi, fearing the pursuit of Sakovich.
+
+"Let us go to Vodokty," said she; "there we shall be among our own
+people. Although it is burned, Mitruny and all the neighboring villages
+are there. It is impossible that the whole country is turned into a
+desert. Lauda will defend us in case of danger."
+
+"But all the Lauda men have gone with Volodyovski," said Yur Billevich,
+in opposition.
+
+"The old men and the youths have remained, and even the women there are
+able to defend in case of need. Besides, forests are greater there than
+here; the Domasheviches, the hunters, or the Smoky Gostyeviches will
+take us to Rogovsk, where no enemy will find us."
+
+"And when I have secured the camp and you, I will attack the Swedes,
+and cut to pieces those who dare to touch the rim of the wilderness,"
+said Pan Billevich. "This is an excellent idea! We have nothing to do
+here; it is possible to render greater service."
+
+Who knows whether the sword-bearer did not seize that idea of Olenka so
+quickly because he too in his soul was somewhat afraid of Sakovich, who
+brought to despair, might be terrible?
+
+The advice, however, was wise in itself; therefore it pleased all
+immediately. The sword-bearer sent out infantry that very day under
+command of Yur Billevich, so as to push forward by the forest in the
+direction of Krakinov; but he went forward himself with the cavalry two
+days later, obtaining in advance reliable intelligence as to whether
+there had not gone out from Kyedani or Rossyeni, between which he had
+to march, some considerable bodies of Swedish troops.
+
+Pan Billevich marched slowly and carefully. The ladies travelled in
+peasants' wagons, and sometimes on ponies which the sword-bearer had
+provided.
+
+Anusia, who had received as a gift from Yur Billevich a light sabre,
+hung it bravely at her side, and in a cap, placed jauntily on her head,
+brought up the squadron like some captain. The march amused her, the
+sabres glittering in the sun, and the fires disposed around at night.
+Young officers and soldiers were greatly pleased with the lady, and she
+shot her eyes around in every direction on the march; she let her
+tresses fall so as to braid them three times daily over the banks of
+bright brooks, which for her took the place of a mirror. She said often
+that she wished to see a battle, so as to give an example of bravery;
+but in very truth she did not want a battle at all. She wanted only to
+subdue the hearts of all the young warriors; in fact, she did subdue an
+unreckoned number of them.
+
+Olenka too revived again, as it were, after leaving Taurogi. There the
+uncertainty of her future and continual fear were killing her; now in
+the depths of the forest she felt safer. The wholesome air brought back
+her strength. The sight of soldiers, of weapons, the movement and
+bustle of camp life, acted like balsam on her wearied soul. And the
+march of troops acted agreeably on her also; possible dangers did not
+alarm her in the least, for knightly blood was in her veins. Appearing
+less frequently before the soldiers, not permitting herself to gallop
+on a pony in front of the ranks, she attracted fewer glances, but
+general respect surrounded her. The mustached faces of the soldiers
+were laughing at sight of Anusia; heads were uncovered when Olenka drew
+near the fires. That was changed later to homage. But it did not pass
+without this,--that some heart beat for her in a youthful breast; but
+eyes did not dare to gaze at her so directly as at that brunette of the
+Ukraine.
+
+They advanced through forests and thickets, often sending scouts ahead;
+and only on the seventh day did they arrive late at night in Lyubich,
+which, lying on the border of the Lauda region, formed as it were the
+entrance to it. The horses were so tired that in spite of Olenka's
+opposition it was impossible to go farther; Billevich therefore
+forebade the lady to find fault, and disposed his party for the halt.
+He himself with the young ladies occupied the house, for the night was
+foggy and very cold. By a marvellous chance the house had not been
+burned. The enemy had spared it probably through the command of Prince
+Yanush Radzivill, because it was Kmita's; and though the prince learned
+later of Pan Andrei's secession, he forgot or had not time to give a
+new order. The insurgents considered the estate as belonging to the
+Billeviches; the ravagers did not dare to plunder near Lauda. Therefore
+nothing had changed in it. Olenka went under that roof with a terrible
+feeling of bitterness and pain. She knew every corner there, but almost
+with each one was bound up some memory of Kmita's betrayal. Before her
+is the dining-hall ornamented with the portraits of the Billeviches and
+with skulls of wild beasts of the forest; the skulls cracked with
+bullets are still on the nails; the portraits slashed with sabres are
+gazing from the walls, as if wishing to say, "Behold, O maiden! behold,
+our granddaughter! it was he who slashed with sacrilegious hand the
+pictures of our earthly forms, now resting long in their graves."
+
+Olenka felt that she could not close an eye in that branded house. It
+seemed to her that in the dark corners of the rooms were prowling
+around yet the ghosts of those terrible comrades breathing fire from
+their nostrils. And how quickly that man, so loved by her, had passed
+from violence to transgression, from transgression to crimes, from the
+slashing of portraits to profligacy, to the burning of Upita and
+Volmontovichi, to carrying her off from Vodokty; further to the service
+of Radzivill, to treason, crowned with the promise of raising his hand
+against the king, against the father of the whole Commonwealth!
+
+The night went on swiftly, but sleep did not seize the lids of unhappy
+Olenka. All the wounds of her soul were reopened and began to burn
+painfully. Shame again was scorching her cheeks; her eyes dropped no
+tears in that time, but immeasurable grief surrounded her heart,
+because it could not find place within that poor heart. Grief for what?
+For what might have been had he been other,--if with his bad habits,
+wildness, and violence, he had even had an honest heart; if finally he
+had even a measure in his crimes, if there existed some boundary over
+which he was incapable of passing? And her heart would have forgiven so
+much.
+
+Anusia saw the suffering of her companion, and understood the cause;
+for the old sword-bearer had detailed the whole history to her
+previously. Since she had a kind heart, she came up to Panna Billevich,
+and throwing her arms around her neck, said,--
+
+"Olenka, you are writhing from pain in this house."
+
+Olenka at first did not wish to speak; then her whole body trembled
+like an aspen leaf, and at last a terrible, despairing cry burst from
+her bosom. Seizing Anusia's hand convulsively, she rested her bright
+head on that maiden's shoulder; sobbing now tore her as a whirlwind
+tears a thicket.
+
+Anusia had to wait long before it passed; at last she whispered when
+Olenka was pacified somewhat, "Let us pray for him."
+
+Olenka covered her eyes with both hands. "I--cannot," said she, with an
+effort.
+
+After a while, gathering back feverishly the hair which had fallen on
+her forehead, she began to speak with a gasping voice,--
+
+"You see--I cannot-- You are happy; your Babinich is honorable, famous,
+before God and the country. You are happy; I am not free even to
+pray-- Here, everywhere, is the blood of people, and here are burned
+ruins. If at least he had not betrayed the country, if he had not
+undertaken to sell the king! I had forgiven everything before, in
+Kyedani; for I thought--for I loved him with my whole heart. But now I
+cannot--O merciful God! I cannot! I could wish not to live myself, and
+that he were not living."
+
+"It is permitted to pray for every soul," said Anusia; "for God is more
+merciful than men, and knows reasons which often men do not know."
+
+When she had said this, Anusia knelt down to pray, and Olenka threw
+herself on the floor in the form of a cross, and lay thus till
+daybreak.
+
+Next morning the news thundered through the neighborhood that Pan
+Billevich was in Lauda. At that news all who were living came forth
+with greeting. Therefore out of the neighboring forests issued decrepit
+old men, and women with small children. For two years no one had sowed
+any seed, no one had ploughed any land. The villages were partly burned
+and were deserted. The people lived in the forests. Men in the vigor of
+life had gone with Volodyovski or to various parties; only youths
+watched and guarded the remnant of cattle, and guarded well, but under
+cover of the wilderness.
+
+They greeted the sword-bearer then as a savior, with a great cry of
+joy; for to those simple people it seemed that if the sword-bearer had
+come and the "lady" was returning to the ancient nest, then there must
+be an end to war and disasters. In fact, they began at once to return
+to the villages, and to drive out the half-wild cattle from the deepest
+forest inclosures.
+
+The Swedes, it is true, were not far away, defended by intrenchments in
+Ponyevyej; but in presence of Billevich's forces and other neighboring
+parties which might be summoned in case of need, less attention was
+paid to them.
+
+Pan Tomash even intended to attack Ponyevyej, so as to clear out the
+whole district; but he was waiting for more men to rally to his banner,
+and waiting especially till guns were brought to his infantry. These
+guns the Domasheviches had secreted in considerable number in the
+forest; meanwhile he examined the neighborhood, passing from village to
+village.
+
+But that was a gloomy review at Vodokty. The mansion was burned, and
+half the village; Mitruny in like manner; Volmontovichi of the Butryms,
+which Kmita had burned in his time, and which had been rebuilt after
+the fire, by a marvellous chance was untouched; but Drojeykani and
+Mozgi of the Domasheviches was burned to the ground; Patsuneli was half
+consumed, and Morezi altogether. Goshchuni experienced the harshest
+fate; for half the people were cut to pieces, and all the men to boys
+of a few years had their hands cut off by command of Colonel Rossa.
+
+So terribly had war trampled those neighborhoods! such were the results
+of the treason of Yanush Radzivill!
+
+But before Billevich had finished his review and stationed his
+infantry, fresh tidings came, at once joyful and terrible, which rang
+with thousand-fold echo from cottage to cottage.
+
+Yurek Billevich, who had gone with a few tens of horses on a
+reconnoissance to Ponyevyej and had seized some Swedes, was the first
+to learn of the battle at Prostki. Then every report brought more
+details, so wondrous that they resembled a fable.
+
+Pan Gosyevski, it was said, had routed Count Waldeck, Israel, and
+Prince Boguslav. The army was cut to pieces, the leaders in captivity.
+All Prussia was blazing in one conflagration.
+
+A few weeks later the mouths of men began to repeat one terrible
+name,--the name of Babinich.
+
+Babinich, said they, was the main cause of the victory at Prostki.
+Babinich cut down with his own hand and captured Prince Boguslav. The
+next news was: "Babinich is burning Electoral Prussia, is advancing
+like death toward Jmud, slaying, leaving behind only earth and sky."
+
+Then came the end: "Babinich has burned Taurogi. Sakovich has fled
+before him, and is hiding in forests." The last event had happened too
+near to remain long in doubt. In fact, the news was verified perfectly.
+
+Anusia during the whole time that news was arriving lived as if dazed;
+she laughed and wept in turn, stamped her feet when no one believed,
+and repeated to every one, whether that one would listen or not,--
+
+"I know Pan Babinich. He brought me from Zamost to Pan Sapyeha. He is
+the greatest warrior in the world. I do not know whether Pan
+Charnyetski is his equal. He is the man who serving under Sapyeha
+crushed Boguslav utterly in the first campaign. He--I am sure that it
+is no other--conquered him at Prostki. Yes, he can finish Sakovich and
+ten like Sakovich; and he will sweep out the Swedes in a month from all
+Jmud."
+
+In fact, her assurances began to be justified speedily. There was not
+the least doubt that the terrible warrior called Babinich had moved
+forward from Taurogi toward the northern country.
+
+At Koltyni he defeated Colonel Baldon and cut his troops to pieces; at
+Varni he scattered the Swedish infantry, which retreated before him at
+Telshi; at Telshi he won a greater victory over two colonels, Norman
+and Hudenskiöld, in which the latter fell, and Norman with the
+survivors did not halt till he reached Zagori, on the very boundary of
+Jmud.
+
+From Telshi Babinich marched to Kurshani, driving before him smaller
+divisions of Swedes, who took refuge in haste with the more important
+garrisons.
+
+From Taurogi and Polangi to Birji and Vilkomir the name of the victor
+was ringing. They told of the cruelties which he permitted himself
+against the Swedes. It was said that his forces, composed at first of a
+small chambul of Tartars and little squads of volunteers, increased day
+after day; for all who were living rushed to him, all parties joined
+him, but he bound them in bonds of iron and led them against the enemy.
+
+Minds were so far occupied by his victories that tidings of the defeat
+which Pan Gosyevski had sustained from Steinbock at Filipovo passed
+almost without an echo. Babinich was nearer, and with Babinich they
+were more occupied.
+
+Anusia implored Billevich daily to advance and join the great warrior.
+Olenka supported her; all the officers and nobles urged, excited by
+curiosity alone.
+
+But to join the warrior was not easy. First, Babinich was in another
+district; second, he often disappeared, and was not heard of for weeks,
+and then appeared again with news of a new victory; third, all the
+Swedish soldiers and garrisons, protecting themselves from him, had
+stopped the road with large forces; finally, beyond Rossyeni a
+considerable body of troops had appeared under Sakovich, of whom
+tidings were brought saying that he was destroying everything before
+him, and torturing people terribly while questioning them concerning
+Billevich's party.
+
+The sword-bearer not only could not march to Babinich, but he feared
+that it would soon be too narrow for him near Lauda. Not knowing
+himself what to begin, he confided to Yurek Billevich that he intended
+to withdraw to the forest of Rogovsk on the east. Yurek immediately
+gave this information to Anusia, and she went straight to the
+sword-bearer.
+
+"Dearest uncle," said she, for she always called him uncle when she
+wanted to gain something from him, "I hear that we have to flee. Is it
+not a shame for so celebrated a warrior to flee at the mere report of
+an enemy?"
+
+"Your ladyship must thrust your three coppers into everything," said
+the anxious sword-bearer. "This is not your affair."
+
+"Very well, then, retreat, but I will stay here."
+
+"So that Sakovich will catch you,--you'll see!"
+
+"Sakovich will not catch me, for Pan Babinich will defend me."
+
+"Especially when he knows where you are. I have said already that we
+are unable to go to him."
+
+"But he can come to us. I am his acquaintance; if I could only send a
+letter to him, I am certain he would come here, after he had beaten
+Sakovich. He loved me a little, and he would come to rescue me."
+
+"But who will undertake to carry a letter?"
+
+"It can be sent through the first peasant that comes."
+
+"It will do no harm, it will do no harm; in no case will it do harm.
+Olenka has quick wit, but neither are you without it. Even if we had to
+retreat to the woods this moment before superior force, it would still
+be well to have Babinich come to these parts, for we can then join him
+more easily. Try! Messengers will be found, and trusty men."
+
+The delighted Anusia began to try so well that that same day she found
+two messengers,--and not peasants; for one was Yurek Billevich, the
+other Braun. Each was to take a letter of the same contents as that
+which the other carried, so that if one failed the other might deliver
+the missive to Babinich. With the letter itself Anusia had more
+trouble; but at last she wrote it in the following words:--
+
+
+"In the last extremity I write to you. If you remember me, though I
+doubt if you do, come to rescue me. By the kindness which you showed me
+on the road from Zamost, I dare to hope that you will not leave me in
+misfortune. I am in the party of Pan Billevich, the sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni, who gave me refuge because I brought his relative, Panna
+Billevich, out of captivity in Taurogi. And him and us both the enemy,
+namely, the Swedes, have surrounded on every side, and a certain Pan
+Sakovich, before whose sinful importunities I had to flee and seek
+safety in the camp. I know that you did not love me, though God sees
+that I did you no harm. I wished you well, and I shall wish you well
+from my whole heart. But though you do not love, rescue a poor orphan
+from the savage hand of the enemy. God will reward you for it a hundred
+fold, and I will pray for you, whom to-day I call only my good
+protector, but hereafter my savior."
+
+
+When the messengers were leaving the camp, Anusia, considering to what
+dangers they were exposed, was alarmed, and at last wished to stop
+them. Even with tears in her eyes she began to implore the sword-bearer
+not to permit them to go; for peasants might carry the letters, and it
+would be easier for the peasants to deliver them.
+
+But Braun and Yurek Billevich were so stubborn that no remonstrance
+could avail. One wished to surpass the other in readiness to serve, but
+neither foresaw what was awaiting him. A week later Braun fell into the
+hands of Sakovich, who gave command to flay him; but poor Yurek was
+shot beyond Ponyevyej while fleeing before a Swedish party.
+
+Both letters fell into the hands of the enemy.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER LIII.
+
+
+Sakovich, after he had seized and flayed Braun, arranged at once a
+joint attack on the Billevich party with Hamilton, the commandant of
+Ponyevyej, an Englishman in the Swedish service.
+
+Babinich had just disappeared somewhere in the forest, and for a number
+of days no report of him had come. But Sakovich would not have regarded
+him, even had he been in the neighborhood. He had, it is true, in spite
+of all his daring, a certain instinctive dread of Babinich; but this
+time he was ready to perish himself, if he could accomplish his
+vengeance. From the time of Anusia's flight rage had not ceased for a
+moment to tear his soul. Deceived calculations, and wounded love
+especially, brought him to frenzy; and besides the heart was suffering
+in him. At first he wished to marry Anusia only for the property willed
+her by her first betrothed, Pan Podbipienta; but later he fell in love
+with her blindly, and to the death, as only such a man can fall in
+love. And it went so far that he who feared no one on earth save
+Boguslav, he before whose glance alone people grew pale, gazed like a
+dog into the eyes of that maiden, yielded to her, endured her caprices,
+carried out all her wishes, strove to divine her thoughts.
+
+She used and abused her influence, deluding him with words, with a
+look; used him as a slave, and finally betrayed him.
+
+Sakovich was of those men who consider that only as good and virtuous
+which is good for them, and as evil and criminal that which brings them
+harm. In his eyes, therefore, Anusia had committed the most terrible
+crime, and there was no punishment sufficiently great for her. If the
+mishap had met another, the starosta would have laughed and jeered at
+the man; but when it touched his own person, he roared as a wounded
+wild beast, and thought only of vengeance. He wished to get the guilty
+woman into his hands, dead or alive. He would have preferred her alive,
+for then he could exercise a cavalier's vengeance before her death; but
+if the maiden had to fall in time of attack, he cared little, if only
+she did not come into possession of another.
+
+Wishing to act with certainty, he sent a bribed man to the sword-bearer
+with a letter as if from Babinich, in which he announced, in the name
+of the latter, that he would be in Volmontovichi in the course of a
+week.
+
+Billevich believed easily, trusting therefore in the invincible power
+of Babinich; and he made no secret of the arrangement. He not only took
+up his headquarters for good in Volmontovichi, but by the announcement
+of the news he attracted almost all the population of Lauda. What
+remained of it assembled from the forests,--first, because the end of
+autumn had come, and there were heavy frosts; and second, through pure
+curiosity alone to see the great warrior.
+
+Meanwhile, from the direction of Ponyevyej marched toward Volmontovichi
+Hamilton's Swedes, and from the direction of Kyedani was stealing
+forward in wolf-fashion Sakovich.
+
+But Sakovich had no suspicion that on his tracks was advancing in
+wolf-fashion also a third man, who without invitation had the habit of
+coming where people expected him least.
+
+Kmita knew not that Olenka was with the Billevich party. In Taurogi,
+which he ruined with fire and sword, he learned that she had gone with
+Anusia; but he supposed that they had gone to Byalovyej, where Pan
+Yan's wife was in hiding as well as many other noble women. He might
+the more easily suppose this, since he knew that Billevich had long
+intended to take his niece to those impassable forests.
+
+It tortured Pan Andrei immensely that he had not found her in Taurogi,
+but at the same time he was glad that she had escaped from the hands of
+Sakovich, and would find safe refuge till the end of the war. Not being
+able to go for her at once to the wilderness, he determined to attack
+and destroy the enemy in Jmud, until he had crushed them completely.
+And fortune went with him. For a month and a half victory followed
+victory; armed men rushed to him in such numbers that soon his chambul
+was barely one fourth of his force. Finally, he drove the enemy out of
+all western Jmud; but hearing of Sakovich, and having old scores to
+settle with the starosta, he set out for his own former district, and
+followed him. In this way both were now drawing near Volmontovichi.
+
+Billevich, who at first had taken a position not far from the village,
+had been living there a week, and the thought did not even come to his
+head that he would soon have such terrible guests. One evening the
+youthful Butryms, herding horses beyond Volmontovichi, informed him
+that troops had issued from the forest, and were advancing from the
+south. Billevich was too old and experienced a soldier not to take
+precautions. Some of his infantry, partly furnished with fire-arms by
+the Domasheviches, he placed in the houses recently rebuilt, and some
+he stationed at the gate; with the cavalry he took possession himself
+of a broad pasture somewhat in the rear, beyond the fences, and which
+touched with one side the river. He did this mainly to gain the praise
+of Babinich, who must understand skilful dispositions; the place he had
+chosen was really a strong one.
+
+After Kmita had burned Volmontovichi, in vengeance for the slaughter of
+his comrades, the village was rebuilt by degrees; but as later on the
+Swedish war had stopped work on it, a multitude of beams, planks, and
+boards were lying on the principal street. Whole piles of them rose up
+near the gate; and infantry, even slightly trained, might make a
+protracted defence from behind them.
+
+In every case the infantry protected the cavalry from the first onset.
+Billevich was so eager to exhibit his military skill to Babinich, that
+he sent forward a small party to reconnoitre.
+
+What was his amazement, and at the first moment alarm, when from a
+distance and beyond the grove there came to him the sound of musketry;
+then his party appeared on the road, but coming at a gallop, with a
+crowd of enemies at its shoulders.
+
+The sword-bearer sprang at once to the infantry to give final orders;
+but from the grove rushed forth dense groups of the enemy, and advanced
+locust-like toward Volmontovichi, with arms glittering in the setting
+sun.
+
+The grove was near. When they had approached somewhat, the cavalry
+pushed forward at once on a gallop, wishing to pass the gate at a blow;
+but the sudden fire of the infantry stopped them on the spot. The first
+ranks fell back, and even in considerable disorder; only a few brought
+their horses' breasts to the defences.
+
+The sword-bearer recovered meanwhile, and galloping to the cavalry
+ordered all who had pistols or guns to advance to the aid of the
+infantry.
+
+Evidently the enemy were equally provided with muskets; for after the
+first onset they began a very violent, though irregular fire.
+
+From both sides it thundered now more quickly, now more slowly; the
+balls whistling came up to the cavalry, struck on the houses, fence,
+piles of timber; the smoke rose over Volmontovichi, the smell of powder
+filled the street.
+
+Anusia had what she wanted,--a battle. Both ladies mounted ponies at
+the first moment, by command of Billevich, so that at a given signal
+they might retreat with the party should the enemy's forces turn out
+too great. They were stationed therefore in the rear ranks of the
+cavalry.
+
+But though Anusia had a small sabre at her side and a lynx-skin cap on
+her head, her soul fled at once into her arms. She who knew so well how
+to take counsel in peace with officers, had not one pinch of energy
+when she had to stand eye to eye with the sons of Bellona in the field.
+The whistle and knocking of balls terrified her; the uproar, the racing
+of orderlies, the rattle of muskets, and the groans of the wounded took
+away her presence of mind, and the smell of powder stopped the breath
+in her breast. She grew faint and weak, her face became pale as a
+kerchief, and she squirmed and whimpered like a little child, till
+young Pan Olesha from Kyemnar had to hold her by the arms. He held her
+firmly, more firmly than was needed; and he was ready to hold her in
+that way to the end of the world.
+
+The soldiers around her began to laugh. "A knight in petticoats!"
+called voices. "Better set hens and pluck feathers!" Others cried: "Pan
+Olesha, that shield has come to your arm; but Cupid will shoot you all
+the more easily through it!" And good-humor seized the soldiers.
+
+But others preferred to look at Olenka, who bore herself differently.
+At first, when bullets flew past at some distance she grew pale too,
+not being able to forbear inclining her head and closing her eyes; but
+later knightly blood began to act in her, then with face flushed like a
+rose she reared her head and looked forward with fearless eye. Her
+distended nostrils drew in as it were with pleasure the smell of
+powder. Since the smoke grew thicker and thicker at the gate and
+decreased the view greatly, the daring lady, seeing that the officers
+were advancing, went with them, to follow more accurately the course of
+battle, not even thinking of what she was doing.
+
+In the throng of cavalry there rose a murmur of praise.
+
+"Oh, that is blood! that is the wife for a soldier; she is the right
+kind of volunteer!"
+
+"Vivat Panna Billevich!"
+
+"Let us hasten, gracious gentlemen, for it is worth while before such
+eyes."
+
+"The Amazons did not meet muskets better!" cried one of the younger
+men, forgetting in his enthusiasm that the Amazons lived before the
+invention of powder.
+
+"It is time to finish. The infantry have borne themselves well, and the
+enemy are seriously shattered!"
+
+In fact, the enemy could do nothing with their cavalry. Every moment
+they urged on their horses, attacked the gate, but after a salvo drew
+back in disorder. And as a wave which has fallen upon the flat shore
+leaves behind mussels, stones, and dead fish, so after each attack a
+number of bodies of horses and men were left on the road before the
+gate.
+
+At last the onsets ceased. Only volunteers came up, firing in the
+direction of the village with pistols and guns rather thickly, so as to
+occupy the attention of Billevich's men. But the sword-bearer, coming
+out along the gutter of the house, saw a movement in the rear ranks of
+the enemy toward the fields and thickets extending along the left side
+of Volmontovichi.
+
+"They will try from that side!" cried he; and sent immediately a part
+of the cavalry between the houses so as to give resistance to the enemy
+from the gardens.
+
+In half an hour a new battle was begun on the left wing of the party
+and also with fire-arms. The fenced gardens rendered difficult a
+hand-to-hand struggle, and equally difficult for both sides.
+
+The enemy, however, being extended over a longer line, were less
+exposed to bullets.
+
+The battle was becoming more stubborn and more active, and the enemy
+did not cease to attack the gate.
+
+Billevich was growing uneasy. On the right flank he had a field behind
+him still free, ending with a stream not very wide, but deep and
+swampy, through which a passage, especially if in haste, might be
+difficult. In one place only was there a trodden road to a flat shore
+along which villagers drove cattle to the forest.
+
+The sword-bearer began to look around oftener toward that side. All at
+once among willows which could be seen through, for they had lost their
+leaves, he saw in the evening light glittering weapons and a dark cloud
+of soldiers.
+
+"Babinich is coming!" thought he.
+
+But at that moment Pan Hjanstovski, who led the cavalry, rushed up to
+him.
+
+"Swedish infantry are visible from the river!" cried he, in terror.
+
+"Some treason!" cried Pan Tomash. "By Christ's wounds, gallop with your
+cavalry against that infantry; otherwise it will attack us on the
+flank."
+
+"There is a great force!" answered Hjanstovski.
+
+"Oppose it even for an hour, and we will escape in the rear to the
+forests."
+
+The officer galloped away, and was soon rushing over the field at the
+head of two hundred men; seeing which the enemy's infantry began to
+form in the willows to receive the Poles. The squadron urged the
+horses, and in the willow-bushes a musketry fire was soon rattling.
+
+Billevich had doubts, not only of victory, but of saving his own
+infantry. He might withdraw to the rear with a part of the cavalry with
+the ladies, and seek safety in the forest; but such a withdrawal would
+be a great defeat, for it meant leaving to the enemy's sword most of
+the party and the remnant of the population of Lauda, which had
+collected in Volmontovichi to see Billevich. Volmontovichi itself would
+be levelled to the ground. There remained still the lone hope that
+Hjanstovski would break the infantry. Meanwhile it was growing dark in
+the sky; but in the village the light increased every moment, for the
+chips, splinters, and shavings, lying in a heap at the first house near
+the gate, had caught fire. The house itself caught fire from them, and
+a red conflagration was rising.
+
+By the light of the burning Billevich saw Hjanstovski's cavalry
+returning in disorder and panic; after it the Swedish infantry were
+rushing from the willows, advancing to the attack on a run.
+
+He understood then that he must retreat by the only road open. He
+rushed to the rest of the cavalry, waved his sword and cried,--
+
+"To the rear, gentlemen, and in order, in order!"
+
+Suddenly shots were heard in the rear also, mingled with shouts of
+soldiery.
+
+Billevich saw then that he was surrounded, that he had fallen as it
+were into a trap from which there was neither issue nor rescue. It
+remained for him only to perish with honor; therefore he sprang out
+before the line of cavalry, and cried,--
+
+"Let us fall one upon the other! Let us not spare our blood for the
+faith and the country!"
+
+Meanwhile the fire of the infantry defending the gate and the left side
+of the village had grown weak, and the increasing shout of the enemy
+announced their near victory.
+
+But what mean those hoarse trumpet sounds in the ranks of Sakovich's
+party, and the rattle of drums in the ranks of the Swedes?
+
+Outcries shriller and shriller are heard, in some way wonderful,
+confused, as if not triumph but terror rings through them.
+
+The fire at the gate stops in a moment, as if some one had cut it off
+with a knife. Groups of Sakovich's cavalry are flying at break-neck
+speed from the left flank to the main road. On the right flank the
+infantry halt, and then, instead of advancing, begin to withdraw to the
+willows. "What is this?" cried Billevich.
+
+Meanwhile the answer comes from that grove out of which Sakovich had
+issued; and now emerge from it men, horses, squadrons, horsetail
+standards, sabres, and march--no, they fly like a storm, and not like a
+storm,--like a tempest! In the bloody gleams of the fire they are as
+visible as a thing on the hand. They are hastening in thousands! The
+earth seems to flee from beneath them, and they speed on in dense
+column; one would say that some monster had issued from the oak-grove,
+and is sweeping across the fields to the village to swallow it. The air
+flies before them, driven by the impetus; with them go terror and ruin.
+They are almost there! Now the attack! Like a whirlwind they scatter
+Sakovich's men.
+
+"O God! O great God!" cries Billevich, in bewilderment; "these are
+ours! That must be Babinich!"
+
+"Babinich!" roared every throat after him.
+
+"Babinich! Babinich!" called terrified voices in Sakovich's party.
+
+And all the enemy's cavalry wheel to the right, to escape toward the
+infantry. The fence is broken with a sharp crash, under the pressure
+of horses' breasts. The pasture is filled with the fleeing; but the
+new-comers, on their shoulders already, cut, slash,--cut without
+resting, cut without pity. The whistling of sabres, cries, groans, are
+heard. Pursuers and pursued fall upon the infantry, overturn, break,
+and scatter them. At last the whole mass rolls on toward the river,
+disappears in the brush, clambers out on the opposite bank. Men are
+visible yet; the chasing continues, with cutting and cutting. They
+recede. Their sabres flash once again; then they vanish in bushes, in
+space, and in darkness.
+
+Billevich's infantry began to withdraw from the gate and the houses,
+which needed no further defence. The cavalry stood for a time in such
+wonder that deep silence reigned in the ranks; and only when the
+flaming house had fallen with a crash was some voice heard on a
+sudden,--
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the storm has gone
+by!"
+
+"Not a foot will come out alive from that hunt!" said another voice.
+
+"Gracious gentlemen!" cried the sword-bearer, suddenly, "shall we not
+spring at those who came at us in the rear? They are retreating, but we
+will come up."
+
+"Kill, slay!" answered a chorus of voices.
+
+All the cavalry wheeled around and urged their horses after the last
+division of the enemy. In Volmontovichi remained only old men, women,
+children, and "the lady" with her friend.
+
+They quenched the fire in a twinkle; joy inconceivable seized all
+hearts. Women with weeping and sobbing raised their hands heavenward,
+and turning to the point where Babinich had rushed away, cried,--
+
+"God bless thee, invincible warrior! savior who rescued us, with our
+children and houses, from ruin!"
+
+The ancient, decrepit Butryms repeated in chorus,--
+
+"God bless thee, God guide thee! Without thee this would have been the
+end of Volmontovichi."
+
+Ah, had they known in that crowd that the very same hand that had now
+saved the village from fire and the people from steel had two years
+before brought fire and the sword to that Volmontovichi!
+
+After the fire was quenched, all began to collect in Billevich's
+wounded; the youths in a rage ran through the battle-field, and killed,
+with poles from wagon-racks, the wounded left by the Swedes and
+Sakovich's ravagers.
+
+Olenka took command of the nursing. Ever keeping her presence of mind,
+full of energy and power, she did not cease her labor till every
+wounded man was resting in a cottage, with dressed wounds. Then all the
+people followed her example in repeating at the cross a litany for the
+dead. Through the whole night no one closed an eye in Volmontovichi;
+all were waiting for the return of the sword-bearer and Babinich,
+hurrying around at the same time to prepare for the victors a fitting
+reception. Oxen and sheep, herded in the forests, went under the knife;
+and fires were roaring till morning.
+
+Anusia alone could take no part in anything; for at first fear deprived
+her of power, and later her joy was so great that it had the seeming of
+madness. Olenka had to care for her; she was laughing and weeping in
+turn, and again she threw herself in the arms of her friend, repeating
+without system or order,--
+
+"Well, what? Who saved Billevich and the party and all Volmontovichi?
+Before whom did Sakovich flee; who overwhelmed him, and the Swedes with
+him? Pan Babinich! Well, now! I knew he would come, for I wrote to him.
+But he did not forget! I knew, I knew he would come. It was I who
+brought him! Olenka, Olenka! I am happy. Have I not told you that no
+one could conquer him? Charnyetski is not his equal. O my God, my God!
+Is it true that he will return? Will it be to-day? If he was not going
+to return, he would not have come, is it not true? Do you hear, Olenka?
+Horses are neighing in the distance!"
+
+But in the distance nothing was neighing. Only toward morning a tramp
+was heard, shouting, singing, and Billevich came back. The cavalry on
+foaming horses filled the whole village. There was no end to the songs,
+to the shouts, to the stories.
+
+The sword-bearer, covered with blood, panting, but joyful, related till
+sunrise how he had broken a body of the enemy's cavalry, how he had
+followed them ten miles, and cut them almost to pieces.
+
+Billevich, as well as the troops and all the Lauda people, were
+convinced that Babinich might return at any moment. The forenoon came;
+then the sun went to the other half of the sky, and was descending; but
+Babinich came not.
+
+Anusia toward evening had sunburned spots on her face. "If he cared
+only for the Swedes, and not for me!" thought she, in her soul; "still,
+he got the letter, for he came to the rescue!"
+
+Poor woman! she knew not that the souls of Yurek Billevich and Braun
+were long since in the other world, and that Babinich had received no
+letter; for if he had received the letter he would have returned like a
+lightning-flash to Volmontovichi,--but not for thee, Anusia.
+
+Another day passed. Billevich did not lose hope yet, and did not leave
+the village. Anusia held stubborn silence.
+
+"He has belittled me terribly! But it is good for me, for my giddiness
+and my sins!" said she to herself.
+
+On the third day Billevich sent some men on a reconnoissance. They
+returned four days later with information that Babinich had taken
+Ponyevyej, and spared not a Swede. Then he marched on, it was unknown
+whither, for tidings of him had ceased.
+
+"I shall not find him till he comes up again," said Billevich.
+
+Anusia became a nettle; whoever of the nobles or younger officers
+touched her drew back quickly. But the fifth day she said to Olenka,--
+
+"Pan Volodyovski is just as good a soldier, but less rude."
+
+"And maybe," answered Olenka, meditatively, "maybe Pan Babinich has
+retained his constancy for that other woman, of whom he spoke to you on
+the road from Zamost."
+
+"Well, all one to me!" said Anusia.
+
+But she told not the truth; for it was not all one to her yet, by any
+means.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LIV.
+
+
+Sakovich's forces were cut up to such a degree that he was barely able
+himself to take refuge in the forests near Ponyevyej with four other
+men. Then he wandered through the forests disguised as a peasant for a
+whole month, not daring to put his head out into the open light.
+
+But Babinich rushed upon Ponyevyej, cut down the infantry posted there
+as a garrison, and pursued Hamilton, who was unable to flee to Livonia
+because of the considerable Polish forces assembled in Shavli, and
+farther on, near Birji, turned toward the east in hope of being able to
+break through to Vilkomir. He had doubts about saving his own regiment,
+but did not wish to fall into the hands of Babinich; for the report was
+spread everywhere that that stern warrior, not to burden himself, gave
+orders to slay every prisoner.
+
+The ill-fated Englishman therefore fled like a deer hunted by wolves,
+and Babinich hunted him all the more venomously. Hence he did not
+return to Volmontovichi, and he did not even inquire what party it was
+that he had saved.
+
+The first hoar-frosts had begun to cover the earth in the morning;
+escape became more difficult thereby, for the tracks of hoofs remained
+on the earth. In the forest there was no pasture, in the field the
+horses suffered stern hunger. The foreign cavalry did not dare to
+remain longer in villages, lest the stubborn enemy might reach them any
+moment.
+
+At last their misery surpassed all bounds; they lived only on leaves,
+bark, and those of their own horses which fell from fatigue. After a
+week they began to implore their colonel to turn, face Babinich, and
+give him battle, for they chose to die by the sword rather than by
+hunger. Hamilton yielded, and drew up for battle in Andronishki. The
+Swedish forces were inferior to that degree that the Englishman could
+not even think of victory, especially against such an opponent. But he
+was himself greatly wearied, and wanted to die. The battle, begun at
+Andronishki, ended near Troüpi, where fell the last of the Swedes.
+
+Hamilton died the death of a hero, defending himself at a cross by the
+roadside against a number of Tartars, who wished at first to take him
+alive, but infuriated by his resistance bore him apart on their sabres
+at last.
+
+But Babinich's squadrons were so wearied too that they had neither the
+strength nor the wish to advance even to the neighboring Troüpi; but
+wherever one of them stood during battle there it prepared at once for
+the night's rest, kindling fires in the midst of the enemy's corpses.
+After they had eaten, all fell asleep with the sleep of stones. Even
+the Tartars themselves deferred till next morning the plunder of
+corpses.
+
+Kmita, who was concerned mainly about the horses, did not oppose that
+rest. But next morning he rose rather early, so as to count his own
+loss after the stubborn conflict and divide the spoils justly.
+Immediately after eating he stood on the eminence, at that same cross
+under which Hamilton had died; the Polish and Tartar officers came to
+him in their turn, with the loss of their men notched on staffs, and
+made reports. He listened as a country proprietor listens in summer to
+his overseers, and rejoices in his heart at the plentiful harvest.
+
+Then Akbah Ulan came up, more like a fright than a human being, for his
+nose had been broken at Volmontovichi by the hilt of a sabre; he bowed,
+gave Kmita a bloody paper, and said,--
+
+"Effendi, some papers were found on the Swedish leader, which I give
+according to order."
+
+Kmita had indeed given a rigorous order that all papers discovered on
+corpses should be brought to him straightway after battle, for often he
+was able to learn from them the plans of the enemy, and act
+accordingly.
+
+But at this time he was not so urgent; therefore he nodded and put the
+paper in his bosom. But Akbah Ulan he sent to the chambul with the
+order to move at once to Troüpi, where they were to have a longer rest.
+
+The squadrons then passed before him, one after the other. In advance
+marched the chambul, which now did not number five hundred completely;
+the rest had been lost in continual battles; but each Tartar had so
+many Swedish riks thalers, Prussian thalers and ducats sewed up in his
+saddle, in his coat, and in his cap, that he was worth his own weight.
+They were in no wise like common Tartars, for whoso of them was weaker
+had perished from hardship; there remained only men beyond praise,
+broad-shouldered, of iron endurance, and venomous as hornets. Continual
+practice had so trained them that in hand-to-hand conflict they could
+meet even the regular cavalry of Poland; on the heavy cavalry or
+dragoons of Prussia, when equal in number, they rushed like wolves upon
+sheep. In battle they defended with terrible fierceness the bodies of
+their comrades, so as to divide afterward their booty. They passed now
+before Kmita with great animation, sounding their trumpets, blowing
+their pipes, and shaking their horse-tail standard; they went in such
+order that regular troops could not have marched better.
+
+Next came the dragoons, formed with great pains by Pan Andrei from
+volunteers of every description, armed with rapiers and muskets. They
+were led by the old sergeant, Soroka, now raised to the dignity of
+officer, and even to that of captain. The regiment, dressed in one
+fashion in captured uniforms taken from Prussian dragoons, was composed
+chiefly of men of low station; but Kmita loved specially that kind of
+people, for they obeyed blindly and endured every toil without uttering
+a murmur.
+
+In the two following squadrons of volunteers only smaller and higher
+nobles served. They were stormy spirits and restive, who under another
+leader would have been turned into a herd of robbers, but in Kmita's
+iron hands they had become like regular squadrons, and gladly called
+themselves "light horsemen." These were less steady under fire than the
+dragoons, but were more terrible in their first fury, and were more
+skilful in hand-to-hand conflict, for they knew every point of fencing.
+
+After these marched, finally, about a thousand fresh volunteers,--good
+men, but over whom it was needful to work yet to make them like regular
+troops.
+
+Each of these squadrons in passing raised a shout, saluting meanwhile
+Pan Andrei with their sabres. And he was more and more rejoiced. That
+was a considerable and not a poor force. He had accomplished much with
+it, had shed much of the enemy's blood, and God knows how much he might
+do yet. His former offences were great, but his recent services were
+not slight. He had risen from his fall, from his sin; and had gone to
+repent, not in the church, but in the field.--not in ashes, but in
+blood. He had defended the Most Holy Lady, the country, and the king;
+and now he felt that it was easier in his soul and more joyous. Nay,
+the heart of the young man swelled with pride, for not every one would
+have been able to make head as he had.
+
+For how many fiery nobles are there, how many cavaliers in that
+Commonwealth! and why does no one of them stand at the head of such
+forces,--not even Volodyovski, nor Pan Yan? Besides, who defended
+Chenstohova, who defended the king in the pass, who slashed down
+Boguslav, who first brought fire and sword into Electoral Prussia? And
+behold even now in Jmud there is hardly an enemy.
+
+Here Pan Andrei felt what the falcon feels, when, stretching his wings,
+he rises higher and higher. The passing squadrons greeted him with a
+thundering shout, and he raised his head and asked himself, "Whither
+shall I fly?" And his face flushed, for in that moment it seemed to him
+that within himself he bore a hetman. But that baton, if it comes to
+him, will come from the field, from wounds, from service, from praise.
+No traitor will flash it before his eyes as in his time Prince Yanush
+had done, but a thankful country will place it in his hand, with the
+will of the king. But it is not for him to think when it will come, but
+to fight, and to fight to-morrow as he fought yesterday!
+
+Here the excited imagination of the cavalier returned to reality.
+Whither should he march from Troüpi, in what new place strike the
+Swedes?
+
+Then he remembered the letter given him by Akbah Ulan and found on the
+body of Hamilton. He put his hand in his bosom, took it out and looked,
+and astonishment at once was reflected on his face; for on the letter
+was written plainly, in a woman's hand: "To his Grace Pan Babinich,
+Colonel of Tartar forces and volunteers."
+
+"For me!" said Pan Andrei.
+
+The seal was broken; therefore he opened the letter quickly, struck the
+paper with the back of his hand, and began to read. But he had not
+finished when his hands began to quiver, his face changed, and he
+cried,--
+
+"Praised be the name of the Lord! O merciful God, the reward comes to
+me from Thy hand!"
+
+Here he seized the foot of the cross with both hands, and began to beat
+his yellow hair against the wood. In another manner he was not able to
+thank God at that moment; he found no other words for prayer, because
+delight like a whirlwind had seized him and borne him far, far away to
+the sky.
+
+That letter was from Anusia. The Swedes had found it on the body of
+Yurek Billevich, and now it had come to Kmita's hands through a second
+corpse. Through Pan Andrei's head thousands of thoughts were flying
+with the speed of Tartar arrows.
+
+Therefore Olenka was not in the wilderness, but in Billevich's party;
+and he had just saved her, and with her that Volmontovichi which on a
+time he had sent up in smoke in avenging his comrades. Evidently the
+hand of God had directed his steps, so that with one blow he had made
+good all wrongs done Olenka and Lauda. Behold, his offences are washed
+away! Can she refuse now to forgive him, or can that grave brotherhood
+of Lauda? Can they refuse to bless him? And what will she say, that
+beloved maiden who holds him a traitor, when she learns that that
+Babinich who brought down Radzivill, who waded to his girdle in German
+and Swedish blood, who crushed the enemy out of Jmud, destroyed them,
+drove them to Prussia and Livonia, was he,--was Kmita; no longer,
+however, the disorderly, the outlaw, the traitor, but the defender of
+the faith, of the king, of the country?
+
+Immediately after he had crossed the boundary of Jmud, Pan Andrei
+wished to proclaim to the four sides of the world who that far-famed
+Babinich was; and if he did not do so, it was only because he feared
+that at the very sound of his real name all would turn from him, all
+would suspect him, would refuse him aid and confidence. Two years had
+barely passed, since bewildered by Radzivill he had cut down those
+squadrons which were not willing to rise with Radzivill against king
+and country. Barely two years before, he had been the right hand of the
+traitor.
+
+Now all was changed. Now, after so many victories, in such glory, he
+had a right to come to the maiden and say, "I am Kmita, but your
+savior." He had a right to shout to all Jmud, "I am Kmita, but thy
+savior!"
+
+Besides, Volmontovichi was not distant. Kmita had followed Hamilton a
+week; but Kmita would be at the feet of Olenka in less time than a
+week. Here Pan Andrei stood up, pale with emotion, with flaming eyes,
+with gleaming face, and cried to his attendant,--
+
+"My horse quickly! Be alive, be alive!" The attendant brought the black
+steed, and sprang down to hold the stirrup; but when he had reached the
+ground he said,--
+
+"Your grace, some strange men are approaching from Troüpi with Pan
+Soroka, and they are coming at a trot."
+
+"I do not care for them!" answered Pan Andrei.
+
+Now both horsemen approached to within some yards; then one of them
+with Soroka pushed forward on a gallop, arrived, and removing his
+panther-skin cap, uncovered a head red as fire.
+
+"I see that I am standing before Pan Babinich!" said he; "I am glad
+that I have found you."
+
+"With whom have I the honor to speak?" asked Kmita, impatiently.
+
+"I am Vyershul, once captain of the Tartar squadron with Prince Yeremi
+Vishnyevetski. I come to my native place to make levies for a new war;
+and besides I bring you a letter from the grand hetman, Sapyeha."
+
+"For a new war?" asked Kmita, frowning. "What do you say?"
+
+"This letter will explain better than I," replied Vyershul, giving the
+letter of the hetman. Kmita opened the letter feverishly. It read as
+follows:--
+
+
+My Very Dear Pan Babinich,--A new deluge is on the country. A league of
+Sweden with Rakotsy has been concluded, and a division of the
+Commonwealth agreed upon. Eighty thousand Hungarians, Transylvanians,
+Wallachians, and Cossacks may cross the southern boundary at any
+moment. And since in these last straits it is necessary for us to exert
+all our forces so as to leave even a glorious name after our people for
+coming ages, I send to your grace this order, according to which you
+are to turn straight to the south without losing a moment of time, and
+come to us by forced marches. You will find us in Brest, whence we will
+send you farther without delay. This time _periculum in mora_ (there is
+danger in delay). Prince Boguslav is freed from captivity; but Pan
+Gosyevski is to have an eye on Prussia and Jmud. Enjoining haste on you
+once more, I trust that love for the perishing country will be your
+best spur.
+
+
+When Kmita had finished reading, he dropped the letter to the earth,
+and began to pass his hands over his moistened face; at last he looked
+wanderingly on Vyershul, and inquired in a low, stifled voice,--
+
+"Why is Pan Gosyevski to remain in Jmud, and why must I go to the
+south?"
+
+Vyershul shrugged his shoulders: "Ask the hetman in Brest for his
+reason; I answer nothing."
+
+All at once terrible anger seized Pan Andrei by the throat. His eyes
+flashed, his face was blue, and he cried with a shrieking voice: "I
+will not go from here! Do you understand?"
+
+"Is that true?" asked Vyershul. "My office was to deliver the order;
+the rest is your affair. With the forehead, with the forehead! I wished
+to beg your company for a couple of hours, but after what I have heard
+I prefer to look for another."
+
+Then he wheeled his horse and rode off. Pan Andrei sat again under the
+cross, and began to look around on the sky, as if wishing to take note
+of the weather. The attendant drew back some distance with the horses,
+and stillness set in all around.
+
+The morning was clear, pale, half autumnal, half wintry. The wind was
+not blowing, but from the birch bushes growing at the foot of the
+crucifix the last leaves were dropping noiselessly, yellow and
+shrivelled from frost. Countless flocks of crows and jackdaws were
+flying over the forest; some were letting themselves down with mighty
+cawing right there near the crucifix, for the field and the road were
+covered with corpses of Swedes still unburied. Pan Andrei looked at
+those dark birds, blinking his eyes; you would say that he wanted to
+count them. Then he closed his lids and sat long without motion; at
+last he shuddered, frowned; presence of mind came back to his face, and
+he began to speak thus to himself,--
+
+"It cannot be otherwise! I will go in two weeks, but not now. Let
+happen what may. It was not I who brought Rakotsy. I cannot! What is
+too much is too much! Have I hammered and pounded but little, passed
+sleepless nights in the saddle, shed my own blood and that of other
+men? What reward for this? If I had not received the first letter, I
+should have gone; but both have come in one hour, as if for the greater
+pain, the greater sorrow. Let the world perish, I will not go! The
+country will not be lost in two weeks; and besides the anger of God is
+evidently on it, and it is not in the might of man to oppose that. O
+God! the Hyperboreans [Northern Russians], the Swedes, the Prussians,
+the Hungarians, the Transylvanians, the Wallachians, the Cossacks, and
+all of them at once! Who can resist? O Lord, in what has this
+unfortunate land offended, in what this pious king, that Thou hast
+turned from them Thy face, and givest neither mercy nor rescue, and
+sendest new lashes? Is the bloodshed yet too little, the tears too few?
+People here have forgotten to rejoice,--so the wind does not blow here,
+it groans; so the rains do not fall, they weep,--and Thou art lashing
+and lashing! Mercy, O Lord! Salvation, O Father! We have sinned, but
+still repentance has come. We have yielded our fortunes, we have
+mounted our horses, we are fighting and fighting. We have abandoned
+violence, we have abjured private ends. Why not pardon us? Why not
+comfort us?"
+
+Here conscience seized him by the hair suddenly, and shook him till he
+screamed; for at the same time it seemed to him that he heard some
+strange voice from the whole dome of heaven, saying,--
+
+"Have you abandoned private ends? But, unfortunate, what are you doing
+at this moment? You are exalting your services; and when the first
+moment of trial comes, you rise like a wild horse, and shout, 'I will
+not go!' The mother is perishing; new swords are piercing her breast,
+and you turn away from her. You do not wish to support her with your
+arm; you are running after your own fortune, and crying, 'I will not
+go!' She is stretching forth bleeding hands; she is just falling, just
+fainting, just dying, and with her last voice cries, 'Rescue me,
+children!' But you answer, 'I will not go!' Woe to you! Woe to such
+people, woe to the Commonwealth!"
+
+Here terror raised the hair on Pan Andrei's head, and his whole body
+began to tremble as if fever had seized it; and that moment he fell
+with his face to the earth, and began not to cry, but to scream in
+terror,--
+
+"O Jesus, do not punish! Jesus, have mercy! Thy will be done! I will
+go, I will go!"
+
+Then he lay some time without speaking, and sobbed; and when he rose at
+last, he had a face full of resignation and perfectly calm; and thus he
+prayed further,--
+
+"Wonder not, O Lord, that I grieve, for I was on the eve of my
+happiness; but let it be as Thou hast ordained. I understand now that
+Thou didst wish to try me, and therefore didst place me as it were on
+the parting of the roads. Let Thy will be done. Once more I will not
+look behind. To Thee, O Lord, I offer this my terrible sorrow, this my
+yearning, this my grievous suffering. Let it all be accounted to me in
+punishment because I spared Prince Boguslav, at which the country wept.
+Thou seest now, O Lord, that that was my last work for self-interest.
+There will be no other. O merciful Father! But now I will kiss once
+more this beloved earth; yes, I will press Thy bleeding feet again, and
+I go, O Christ! I go--"
+
+And he went.
+
+In the heavenly register in which are written the evil and good deeds
+of men, his sins were at that moment all blotted out, for he was
+completely corrected.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LV.
+
+
+It is written in no book how many battles the armies, the nobles, and
+the people of the Commonwealth fought with the enemy. They fought in
+forests, in fields, in villages, in hamlets, in towns; they fought in
+Prussia, in Mazovia, in Great Poland, in Little Poland, in Russia, in
+Lithuania, in Jmud; they fought without resting, in the day or the
+night.
+
+Every clod of earth was drenched in blood. The names of knights, their
+glorious deeds, their great devotion, perished from the memory; for the
+chronicler did not write them down, and the lute did not celebrate
+them. But under the force of these exertions the power of the enemy
+bent at last. And as when a lordly lion, pierced the moment before with
+missiles, rises suddenly, and shaking his kingly mane, roars mightily,
+pale terror pierces straightway the hunters, and their feet turn to
+flight; so that Commonwealth rose ever more terrible, filled with anger
+of Jove, ready to meet the whole world. Into the bones of the
+aggressors there entered weakness and fear; not of plunder were they
+thinking then, but of this only,--to bear away home from the jaws of
+the lion sound heads.
+
+New leagues, new legions of Hungarians, Transylvanians, Wallachians,
+and Cossacks were of no avail. The storm passed once more, it is true,
+between Brest, Warsaw, and Cracow; but it was broken against Polish
+breasts, and soon was scattered like empty vapor.
+
+The King of Sweden, being the first to despair of his cause, went home
+to the Danish war; the traitorous elector, humble before the strong,
+insolent to the weak, beat with his forehead before the Commonwealth,
+and fell upon the Swedes; the robber legions of Rakotsy's
+"slaughterers" fled with all power to their Transylvanian reed-fields,
+which Pan Lyubomirski ruined with fire and sword.
+
+But it was easier for them to break into the Commonwealth than to
+escape without punishment; therefore when they were attacked at the
+passage, the Counts of Transylvania, kneeling before Pototski,
+Lyubomirski, and Charnyetski, begged for mercy in the dust.
+
+"We will surrender our weapons, we will give millions!" cried they;
+"only let us go!"
+
+And receiving the ransom, the hetmans took pity on that army of
+unfortunate men; but the horde trampled them under hoofs at the very
+thresholds of their homes.
+
+Peace began to return gradually to the plains of Poland. The king was
+still taking Prussian fortresses; Charnyetski was to take the Polish
+sword to Denmark, for the Commonwealth did not wish to limit itself to
+driving out the enemy.
+
+Villages and towns were rebuilt on burned ruins; the people returned
+from the forests; ploughs appeared in the fields.
+
+In the autumn of 1657, immediately after the Hungarian war, it was
+quiet in the greater part of the provinces and districts; it was quiet
+especially in Jmud.
+
+Those of the Lauda men who in their time had gone with Volodyovski,
+were still somewhere far off in the field; but their return was
+expected.
+
+Meanwhile in Morezi, in Volmontovichi, in Drojeykani, Mozgi, Goshchuni,
+and Patsuneli, women, boys, and girls, with old men, were sowing the
+winter grain, building with joint efforts houses in those
+"neighborhoods" through which fire had passed, so that the warriors on
+their return might find at least roofs over their heads, and not be
+forced to die of hunger.
+
+Olenka had been living for some time at Vodokty, with Anusia and the
+sword-bearer. Pan Tomash did not hasten to his Billeviche,--first,
+because it was burned, and second, because it was pleasanter for him
+with the maidens than alone. Meanwhile, with the aid of Olenka, he
+managed Vodokty.
+
+The lady wished to manage Vodokty in the best manner, for it was to be
+with Mitruny her dowry for the cloister; in other words, it was to
+become the property of the Benedictine nuns, with whom on the very day
+of the coming New Year poor Olenka intended to begin her novitiate.
+
+For after she had considered everything that had met her,--those
+changes of fortune, disappointments, and sufferings,--she came to the
+conviction that thus, and not otherwise, must be the will of God. It
+seemed to her that some all-powerful hand was urging her to the cell,
+that some voice was saying to her,--
+
+"In that place is the best pacification, and the end of all earthly
+anxiety."
+
+She had determined therefore to follow that voice. Feeling, however, in
+the depth of her conscience that her soul had not been able yet to tear
+itself from the earth with completeness, she desired first to prepare
+it with ardent piety, with good works and labor. Frequently also in
+those efforts echoes from the world hindered her.
+
+For example, people began to buzz around that that famous Babinich was
+Kmita. Some contradicted excitedly; others repeated the statement with
+stubbornness.
+
+Olenka believed not. All Kmita's deeds, Kmita and his service with
+Yanush Radzivill, were too vividly present in her memory to let her
+suppose for one instant that he was the crusher of Boguslav, and such a
+trusty worker for the king, such an ardent patriot. Still her peace was
+disturbed, and sorrow with pain rose up afresh in her bosom.
+
+This might be remedied by a hurried entrance to the cloister; but the
+cloisters were scattered. The nuns who had not perished from the
+violence of soldiers during wartime were only beginning to assemble.
+
+Universal misery reigned in the land, and whoso wished to take refuge
+behind the walls of a convent had not only to bring bread for personal
+use, but also to feed the whole convent.
+
+Olenka wished to come with bread to the cloister,--to become not merely
+a sister, but a nourisher of nuns.
+
+The sword-bearer, knowing that his labor was to go to the glory of God,
+labored earnestly.
+
+He went around the fields and the buildings, carrying out the labors of
+the autumn which with the coming spring were to bear fruit. Sometimes
+he was accompanied by Anusia, who, unable to endure the affront which
+Babinich had put upon her, threatened also to enter the cloister, and
+said she was merely waiting for Volodyovski to bring back the Lauda
+men, for she wished to bid adieu to her old friend. But more frequently
+the sword-bearer went with Olenka only on these circuits, for land
+management was irksome to Anusia.
+
+A certain time both rode out on ponies to Mitruny, where they were
+rebuilding barns and cow-houses burned in time of war.
+
+On the road they were to visit the church; for that was the anniversary
+of the battle of Volmontovichi, in which they were saved from the last
+straits by the coming of Babinich. The whole day had passed for them in
+various occupations, so that only toward evening could they start from
+Mitruny. In going there they went by the church-road, but in returning
+they had to pass through Lyubich and Volmontovichi. Panna Aleksandra
+had barely looked at the first smoke of Lyubich when she turned aside
+her eyes and began to repeat prayers to drive away painful thoughts;
+but the sword-bearer rode on in silence, and only looked around. At
+last, when they had passed the gate, he said,--
+
+"That is land for a senator! Lyubich is worth two like Mitruny."
+
+Olenka continued to say her prayers.
+
+But in Pan Tomash was roused the old landlord by nature, and perhaps
+also he was given somewhat to lawsuits; for after a while he said
+again, as if to himself,--
+
+"And yet it is ours by right,--old Billevich property, our sweat, our
+toil. That unfortunate man must have perished long since, for he has
+not announced himself; and if he had, the right is with us." Here he
+turned to Olenka: "What do you think?"
+
+"That is a cursed place," answered she. "Let happen with it what may!"
+
+"But you see the right is with us. The place was cursed in bad hands,
+but it will be blessed in good ones. The right is with us."
+
+"Never! I do not wish to know anything of it. My grandfather willed it
+without restriction; let Kmita's relatives take it."
+
+Then she urged on the pony. Billevich put spurs also to his beast, and
+they did not slacken speed till they were in the open field. Meanwhile
+night had fallen; but there was perfect light, for an enormous red moon
+had risen from behind the forest of Volmontovichi and lighted up the
+whole region with a golden shining.
+
+"Well! God has given a beautiful night," said the sword-bearer, looking
+at the circle of the moon.
+
+"How Volmontovichi gleams from a distance!" said Olenka.
+
+"For the wood in the houses has not become black."
+
+Their further conversation was interrupted by the squeaking of a wagon,
+which they could not see at first, for the road was undulating; soon,
+however, they saw a pair of horses, and following behind them a pair at
+a pole, and at the end of the pole a wagon surrounded by a number of
+horsemen.
+
+"What kind of people can these be?" asked the sword-bearer; and he held
+in his horse. Olenka stopped at his side.
+
+"Halt!" cried Billevich. "Whom are you carrying there?"
+
+One of the horsemen turned to them and said,--
+
+"We are bringing Pan Kmita, who was shot by the Hungarians at
+Magyerovo."
+
+"The word has become flesh!" said Billevich.
+
+The whole world went around suddenly in Olenka's eyes; the heart died
+within her, breath failed her breast. Certain voices were calling in
+her soul: "Jesus! Mary! that is he!" Then consciousness of where she
+was or what was happening left her entirely.
+
+But she did not drop from the horse to the ground, for she seized
+convulsively with her hand the wagon-rack; and when she came to herself
+her eyes fell on the motionless form of a man lying in the wagon. True,
+that was he,--Pan Andrei Kmita, the banneret of Orsha; and he was lying
+on his back in the wagon. His head was bound in a cloth, but by the
+ruddy light of the moon his pale and calm face was perfectly visible.
+His eyes were deeply sunk and closed; life did not discover itself by
+the least movement.
+
+"With God!" said Billevich, removing his cap.
+
+"Stop!" cried Olenka. And she asked with a low but quick voice, as in a
+fever: "Is he alive or dead?"
+
+"He is alive, but death is over him."
+
+Here the sword-bearer, looking at Kmita's face, said: "You will not
+take him to Lyubich?"
+
+"He gave orders to take him to Lyubich without fail, for he wants to
+die there."
+
+"With God! hasten forward."
+
+"We beat with the forehead!"
+
+The wagon moved on; and Olenka with Billevich galloped in the opposite
+direction with what breath was in their horses. They flew through
+Volmontovichi like two night phantoms, and came to Vodokty without
+speaking a word on the road; only when dismounting, Olenka turned to
+her uncle,--
+
+"It is necessary to send a priest to him," said she, with a panting
+voice; "let some one go this moment to Upita."
+
+The sword-bearer went quickly to carry out her wish; she rushed into
+her room, and threw herself on her knees before the image of the Most
+Holy Lady.
+
+A couple of hours after, in the late evening, a bell was heard beyond
+the gate at Vodokty. That was the priest passing on his way with the
+Lord Jesus to Lyubich.
+
+Panna Aleksandra was on her knees continually. Her lips were repeating
+the litany for the dying. And when she had finished she struck the
+floor three times with her head, repeating: "Reckon to him, O God, that
+he dies at the hands of the enemy; forgive him, have mercy on him!"
+
+In this way the whole night passed for her. The priest remained in
+Lyubich till morning, and on his way home called at Vodokty. Olenka ran
+out to meet him.
+
+"Is it all over?" asked she; and could say no more, for breath failed
+her.
+
+"He is alive yet," answered the priest.
+
+During each of the following days a number of messengers flew from
+Vodokty to Lyubich, and each returned with the answer that the banneret
+was "alive yet." At last one brought the intelligence, which he had
+heard from the barber brought from Kyedani, that he was not only alive,
+but would recover; for the wounds were healing successfully, and
+strength was coming back to the knight.
+
+Panna Aleksandra sent bountiful offerings to Upita for a thanksgiving
+Mass; but from that day messengers ceased to visit Lyubich, and a
+wonderful thing took place in the maiden's heart. Together with peace,
+the former pity for Kmita began to rise. His offences came to her mind
+again every moment, so grievous that they were not to be forgiven.
+Death alone could cover them with oblivion. If he returned to health,
+they weighed on him anew. But still everything that could be brought to
+his defence Olenka repeated to herself daily.
+
+So much had she suffered in these days, so many conflicts were there in
+her soul, that she began to fail in health. This disturbed Pan Tomash
+greatly; hence on a certain evening when they were alone, he said,--
+
+"Olenka, tell me sincerely, what do you think of the banneret of
+Orsha?"
+
+"It is known to God that I do not wish to think of him."
+
+"For see, you have grown thin-- H'm! Maybe that you still-- I insist on
+nothing, but I should be glad to know what is going on in your mind. Do
+you not think that the will of your grandfather should be
+accomplished?"
+
+"Never!" answered Olenka. "My grandfather left me this door open, and I
+will knock at it on the New Year. Thus will his will be accomplished."
+
+"Neither do I believe at all," answered Billevich, "what some buzz
+around here,--that Babinich and Kmita are one; but still at Magyerovo
+he was with the country, fought against the enemy, and shed his blood.
+The reform is late, but still it is a reform."
+
+"Even Prince Boguslav is serving the king and the country now,"
+answered the lady, with sorrow. "Let God forgive both, and especially
+him who shed his blood; but people will always have the right to say
+that in the moment of greatest misfortune, in the moment of disaster
+and fall, he rose against the country, and returned to it only when the
+enemy's foot was tottering, and when his personal profit commanded him
+to hold to the victor. That is their sin! Now there are no traitors,
+for there is no profit from treason! But what is the merit? Is it not a
+new proof that such men are always ready to serve the stronger? Would
+to God it were otherwise, but Magyerovo cannot redeem such
+transgression."
+
+"It is true! I cannot deny it," answered Billevich. "It is a bitter
+truth, but still true. All the former traitors have gone over in a
+chambul to the king."
+
+"On the banneret of Orsha," continued the lady, "there rests a still
+more grievous reproach than on Boguslav, for Pan Kmita offered to raise
+his hand against the king, at which act the prince himself was
+terrified. Can a chance shot remove that? I would let this hand be cut
+off had that not happened; but it has, and it will never drop away. It
+seems clear that God has left him life of purpose for penance. My
+uncle, my uncle! we should be tempting our souls if we tried to beat
+into ourselves that he is innocent. And what good would come of this?
+Will conscience let itself be tempted? Let the will of God be done.
+What is broken cannot be bound again, and should not. I am happy that
+the banneret is alive, I confess; for it is evident that God has not
+yet turned from him His favor altogether. But that is sufficient for
+me. I shall be happy when I hear that he has effaced his fault; but I
+wish for nothing more, I desire nothing more, even if my soul had to
+suffer yet. May God assist him!"
+
+Olenka was not able to speak longer, for a great and pitiful weeping
+overpowered her; but that was her last weeping. She had told all that
+she carried in her heart, and from that time forth peace began to
+return to her anew.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LVI.
+
+
+The horned, daring soul in truth was unwilling to go out of its bodily
+enclosure, and did not go out. In a month after his return to Lyubich
+Pan Andrei's wounds began to heal; but still earlier he regained
+consciousness, and looking around the room, he saw at once where he
+was. Then he called the faithful Soroka.
+
+"Soroka," said he, "the mercy of God is upon me. I feel that I shall
+not die."
+
+"According to order!" answered the old soldier, brushing away a tear
+with his fist.
+
+And Kmita continued as if to himself: "The penance is over,--I see that
+clearly. The mercy of God is upon me!"
+
+Then he was silent for a moment; only his lips were moving in prayer.
+
+"Soroka!" said he again, after a time.
+
+"At the service of your grace!"
+
+"Who are in Vodokty?"
+
+"The lady and the sword-bearer of Rossyeni."
+
+"Praised be the name of the Lord! Did any one come here to inquire
+about me?"
+
+"They sent from Vodokty until we told them that you would be well."
+
+"And did they stop then?"
+
+"Then they stopped."
+
+"They know nothing yet, but they shall know from me," said Kmita. "Did
+you tell no one that I fought as Babinich?"
+
+"There was no order," answered the soldier.
+
+"And the Lauda men with Pan Volodyovski have not come home yet?"
+
+"Not yet; but they may come any day."
+
+With this the conversation of the first day was at an end. Two weeks
+later Kmita had risen and was walking on crutches; the following week
+he insisted on going to church.
+
+"We will go to Upita," said he to Soroka; "for it is needful to begin
+with God, and after Mass we will go to Vodokty."
+
+Soroka did not dare to oppose; therefore he merely ordered straw to be
+placed in the wagon. Pan Andrei arrayed himself in holiday costume, and
+they drove away.
+
+They arrived at an hour when there were few people yet in the church.
+Pan Andrei, leaning on Soroka's arm, went to the high altar itself, and
+knelt in the collator's seat; his face was very thin, emaciated, and
+besides he wore a long beard which had grown during the war and his
+sickness. Whoever looked at him thought that he was some passing
+personage who had come in to Mass; for there was movement everywhere,
+the country was full of passing nobles who were going from the field to
+their own estates.
+
+The church filled slowly with people and with neighboring nobles; then
+owners of inherited land from a distance began to arrive, for in many
+places churches had been burned, and it was necessary to come to Mass
+as far as Upita.
+
+Kmita, sunk in prayer, saw no one. He was roused first from his pious
+meditation by the squeaking of footstools under the tread of persons
+entering the pew. Then he raised his head, looked, and saw right there
+above him the sweet, sad face of Olenka.
+
+She also saw him, and recognized him that moment; for she drew back
+suddenly, as if frightened. First a flush, and then a deathly pallor
+came out on her face; but with the greatest exercise of will she
+overcame her emotion, and knelt there near him; the third place was
+occupied by the sword-bearer.
+
+And Kmita and she bowed their heads, and rested their faces on their
+hands; they knelt there in silence side by side, and their hearts beat
+so that both heard them perfectly. At last Pan Andrei spoke,--
+
+"May Jesus Christ be praised!"
+
+"For the ages of ages," answered Olenka, in an undertone. And they said
+no more. Now the priest came out to preach. Kmita listened to him; but
+in spite of his efforts he could not distinguish the words, he could
+not understand the preacher. Here she is, the desired one, for whom he
+had yearned during years, who had not left his mind nor his heart; she
+was here now at his side. He felt her near; and he dared not turn his
+eyes to her, for he was in the church, but closing his lids, he caught
+her breathing with his ear.
+
+"Olenka! Olenka is near me!" said he to himself, "see, God has
+commanded us to meet in the church after absence." Then his thoughts
+and his heart repeated without ceasing: "Olenka, Olenka, Olenka!"
+
+And at moments a weeping joy caught him by the throat, and again he was
+carried away by such an enthusiasm of thankful prayer that he lost
+consciousness of what was happening to him.
+
+She knelt continually, with her face hidden in her hands.
+
+The priest had finished the sermon, and descended from the pulpit.
+
+All at once a clatter of arms was heard in front of the church, and a
+tramp of horses' hoofs. Some one cried before the threshold of the
+church, "Lauda returning!" and suddenly in the sanctuary itself were
+heard murmurs, then a bustle, then a still louder calling,--
+
+"Lauda! Lauda!"
+
+The crowd began to sway; all heads were turned at once toward the door.
+
+With that there was a throng in the door, and a body of armed men
+appeared in the church. At the head of them marched with a clatter of
+spurs Volodyovski and Zagloba. The crowd opened before them; they
+passed through the whole church, knelt before the altar, prayed a short
+time, and then entered the vestry.
+
+The Lauda men halted half-way, not greeting any one, out of respect for
+the place.
+
+Ah, what a sight! Grim faces, swarthy from winds, grown thin from toils
+of war, cut with sabres of Swedes, Germans, Hungarians, and
+Wallachians! The whole history of the war and the glory of God-fearing
+Lauda was written on them with swords. There were the gloomy Butryms,
+the Stakyans, the Domasheviches, the Gostsyeviches, a few of all; but
+hardly one fourth returned of those who on a time had left Lauda.
+
+Many women are seeking in vain for their husbands, many old men are
+searching in vain for their sons; therefore the weeping increases, for
+those too who find their own are weeping from joy. The whole church is
+filled with sobbing. From time to time some one cries out a beloved
+name, and is silent; and they stand in glory, leaning on their sabres,
+but over their deep scars tears too are falling on their mustaches.
+
+Now a bell, rung at the door of the vestry, quieted the weeping and the
+murmur. All knelt; the priest came to finish Mass, and after him
+Volodyovski and Zagloba.
+
+But the priest was so moved that when he turned to the people, saying,
+"_Dominus vobiscum!_" his voice trembled. When he came to the Gospel,
+and all the sabres were drawn at once from the scabbards, as a sign
+that Lauda was ever ready to defend the faith, and in the church it was
+bright from steel, the priest had barely strength to finish the Gospel.
+
+Then amid universal emotion the concluding prayer was sung, and Mass
+was ended; but the priest, when he had placed the sacrament in the
+tabernacle, turned, after the last Gospel, to the people, in sign that
+he wished to say something.
+
+There was silence, therefore, and the priest with cordial words greeted
+first the returning soldiers; then he gave notice that he would read a
+letter from the king, brought by the colonel of the Lauda squadron.
+
+The silence grew deeper, and after a while the voice from the altar was
+heard through the whole church,--
+
+
+"We, Yan Kazimir, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Mazovia,
+Prussia, etc., etc., etc. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
+Ghost, Amen!
+
+"Since wicked people must receive punishment in this temporal life for
+their crimes against king and country before they stand in presence of
+the heavenly tribunal, it is equally just that virtue receive a reward,
+which should add the lustre of glory to virtue itself, and give
+posterity the desire to follow its examples.
+
+"Therefore we make it known to the whole order of knighthood, namely,
+to men of arms and civilians having office, together with all the
+inhabitants of the Grand Principality of Lithuania and our Starostaship
+of Jmud, that whatever accusations have rested on Pan Andrei Kmita, the
+banneret of Orsha, who is greatly beloved by us, are to vanish from the
+memory of men, in view of the following services and merit, and are to
+detract in nowise from the honor and glory of the said banneret of
+Orsha."
+
+
+Here the priest ceased to read, and looked toward the bench on which
+Pan Andrei was sitting. Kmita rose for a moment, and sitting down
+again, rested his haggard head on the railing and closed his lids, as
+if in a faint.
+
+But all eyes were turned to him; all lips began to whisper,--
+
+"Pan Kmita! Kmita! There, near the Billeviches."
+
+But the priest beckoned, and began to read on amid deep silence,--
+
+
+"Which banneret of Orsha, though in the beginning of this unfortunate
+Swedish invasion he declared himself on the side of the prince voevoda,
+did it not from any selfishness, but from the purest good-will to the
+country, brought to this error by Prince Yanush Radzivill, who
+persuaded him that no road of safety remained to the Commonwealth save
+that which the prince himself took.
+
+"But when he visited Prince Boguslav, who, thinking him a traitor,
+discovered to him clearly all the hostile intrigues against the
+country, the said banneret of Orsha not only did not promise to raise
+his hand against our person, but with armed force carried away Prince
+Boguslav himself, so as to avenge us and the suffering country."
+
+
+"O God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" cried the voice of a woman right
+there near Pan Andrei; and in the church there broke out anew a murmur
+of amazement.
+
+The priest read on,--
+
+
+"He was shot by Boguslav, but had barely recovered when he went to
+Chenstohova, and there defended with his own breast that most sacred
+Retreat, giving an example of endurance and valor to all; there, in
+danger of his life and health, he blew up with powder the greatest
+siege-gun. Seized after that daring deed, he was condemned to death by
+cruel enemies, and tortured with living fire."
+
+
+With this the weeping of women was heard here and there through the
+church. Olenka was trembling as in a paroxysm of fever.
+
+
+"But rescued by the power of the Queen of the Angels from those
+terrible straits, he came to us in Silesia, and on our return to this
+dear country, when the treacherous enemy prepared an ambush for us, the
+said banneret of Orsha rushed himself, with his three attendants, on
+the whole power of the enemy, to save our person. There, cut down and
+thrust through with rapiers, swimming in his own blood, he was borne
+from the field as if lifeless--"
+
+
+Olenka placed both her hands on her temples, and raising her head,
+began to catch the air into her parted lips. From her bosom came out
+the groan,--
+
+"O God! O God! O God!"
+
+And again the voice of the priest sounded, also more and more moved:--
+
+
+"And when with our endeavors he returned to health, he did not rest,
+but continued the war, standing forth with immeasurable praise in every
+necessity, held up as a model to knighthood by the hetmans of both
+people, till the fortunate capture of Warsaw, after which he was sent
+to Prussia under the assumed name of Babinich--"
+
+
+When that name was heard in the church, the noise of the people changed
+as it were into the roar of a river.
+
+"Then he is Babinich? Then he is that crusher of the Swedes, the savior
+of Volmontovichi, the victor in so many battles,--that is Kmita?"
+
+The murmur increased still more; throngs began to push toward the altar
+to see him more closely.
+
+"God bless him! God bless him!" said hundreds of voices.
+
+The priest turned to the seat and blessed Pan Andrei, who, leaning
+continually against the railing, was more like a dead than a living
+man, for the soul had gone out of him with happiness and had risen
+toward the sky.
+
+The priest read on,--
+
+
+"He visited the enemy's country with fire and sword, was the main cause
+of the victory at Prostki; with his own hand he overthrew and captured
+Prince Boguslav. Called late to our starostaship of Jmud, what immense
+service he rendered there, how many towns and villages he saved from
+the hands of the enemy, must be known to the inhabitants of that
+starostaship better than to others."
+
+
+"It is known, it is known, it is known!" was thundered through the
+whole church.
+
+"Silence!" said the priest, raising the king's letter.
+
+
+"Therefore we, considering all his services to us and the country, so
+many that a son could not have done more for his father and his mother,
+have determined to publish them in this our letter, so that so great a
+cavalier, so great a defender of the faith, of king and Commonwealth,
+should no longer be pursued by the ill-will of men, but go clothed with
+the praise and universal love proper to the virtuous. Before then the
+next Diet, confirming these our wishes, shall remove from him every
+stain, and before we shall reward him with the starostaship of Upita,
+which is vacant, we ask earnestly of the inhabitants dear to us of our
+starostaship of Jmud to retain in their hearts and thoughts these our
+words, which justice itself, the foundation of States, has commanded us
+to put into their memory."
+
+
+Here the priest concluded, and turning to the altar began to pray; but
+Pan Andrei felt on a sudden that a soft hand was seizing his hand. He
+looked. It was Olenka; and before he had time to come to himself, to
+withdraw his hand, she had raised it and pressed it to her lips in
+presence of all, before the altar and the people.
+
+"Olenka!" cried the astonished Kmita.
+
+But she had arisen, and covering her face with a veil, said to old
+Billevich,--
+
+"Uncle, let us go, let us go from here quickly!"
+
+And they went out through the door of the vestry.
+
+Pan Andrei tried to rise to follow her, but he could not. His strength
+left him entirely.
+
+But a quarter of an hour later he was in front of the church, supported
+on one side by Pan Volodyovski, on the other by Zagloba.
+
+The throng of people, small nobles and common men, crowded around.
+Women, some barely able to tear away from the breast of a husband
+returned from the war, led by curiosity special to the sex, ran to look
+at that Kmita, once terrible, now the savior of Lauda and the coming
+starosta. The throng became greater every instant, till the Lauda men
+had at last to surround him and protect him from the crush.
+
+"Pan Andrei!" cried Zagloba, "see, we have brought you a present. You
+did not expect such a one. Now to Vodokty, to Vodokty, to the betrothal
+and the wedding!"
+
+Further words of Zagloba were lost in the thundering shout raised at
+once by the Lauda men, under the leadership of Yuzva Footless,--
+
+"Long life to Pan Kmita!"
+
+"Long life!" repeated the crowd. "Long life to our starosta of Upita!
+Long life!"
+
+"All to Vodokty!" roared Zagloba, again.
+
+"To Vodokty! to Vodokty!" shouted a thousand throats. "As best men to
+Vodokty with Pan Kmita, with our savior! To the lady! to Vodokty!"
+
+And an immense movement began. Lauda mounted its horses; every man
+living rushed to wagons, carts, ponies. People on foot began to run
+across field and forest. The shout "To Vodokty!" rang through the whole
+place. The roads were thronged with many-colored crowds.
+
+Kmita rode in his little wagon between Volodyovski and Zagloba, and
+time after time he embraced one or the other of them. He was not able
+to speak yet, he was too much excited; but they pushed on as if Tartars
+were attacking Upita. All the wagons and carts rushed in like manner
+around them.
+
+They were well outside the place, when Pan Michael suddenly bent to
+Kmita's ear. "Yendrek," asked he, "but do you not know where the other
+is?"
+
+"In Vodokty."
+
+Then, whether it was the wind or excitement that began to move the
+mustaches of Pan Michael, is unknown; it is enough that during the
+whole way they did not cease to thrust forward like two awls, or like
+the feelers of a Maybug.
+
+Zagloba was singing with delight in such a terrible bass voice that he
+frightened the horses,--
+
+
+           "There were two of us, Kasyenko, two in this world;
+            But methinks, somehow, that three are now riding."
+
+
+Anusia was not at church that Sunday, for she had in her turn to stay
+with the weakly Panna Kulvyets, with whom she and Olenka remained on
+alternate days.
+
+The whole morning she had been occupied with watching and taking care
+of the sick woman, so that it was late when she could go to her
+prayers. Barely had she said the last "Amen," when there was a
+thundering before the gate, and Olenka rushed into the room like a
+storm.
+
+"Jesus! Mary! What has happened?" screamed Anusia, looking at her.
+
+"Anusia, you do not know who Pan Babinich is? He is Pan Kmita!"
+
+Anusia sprang to her feet: "Who told you?"
+
+"The king's letter was read--Pan Volodyovski brought it--the Lauda
+men--"
+
+"Has Pan Volodyovski returned?" screamed Anusia; and she threw herself
+into Olenka's arms.
+
+Olenka took this outburst of feeling as a proof of Anusia's love for
+her; for she had become feverish, was almost unconscious. On her face
+were fiery spots, and her breast rose and fell as if from great pain.
+
+Then Olenka began to tell without order and in a broken voice
+everything which she had heard in the church, running at the same time
+through the room as if demented, repeating every moment, "I am not
+worthy of him!" reproaching herself terribly, saying that she had done
+him more injustice than all others, that she had not even been willing
+to pray for him, when he was swimming in his own blood in defence of
+the Holy Lady, the country, and the king.
+
+In vain did Anusia, while running after her through the room, endeavor
+to comfort her. She repeated continually one thing,--that she was not
+worthy of him, that she would not dare to look in his eyes; then again
+she would begin to speak of the deeds of Babinich, of the seizure of
+Boguslav, of his revenge, of saving the king, of Prostki,
+Volmontovichi, and Chenstohova; and at last of her own faults, of her
+stubbornness, for which she must do penance in the cloister.
+
+Further reproaches were interrupted by Pan Tomash, who, falling into
+the room like a bomb, cried,--
+
+"In God's name, all Upita is rolling after us! They are already in the
+village, and Babinich is surely with them!"
+
+Indeed, a distant shout at that moment announced the approach of the
+crowds. The sword-bearer, seizing Olenka, conducted her to the porch;
+Anusia rushed after them.
+
+At that moment the throng of men and horses looked black in the
+distance; and as far as the eye could reach the whole road was packed
+with them. At last they reached the yard. Those on foot were storming
+over ditches and fences; the wagons rolled in through the gates, and
+all were shouting and throwing up their caps.
+
+At last appeared the crowd of armed Lauda men, and the wagon, in which
+sat three persons,--Kmita, Volodyovski, and Zagloba.
+
+The wagon stopped at some distance, for so many people had crowded up
+before the entrance that it was impossible to approach. Zagloba and
+Volodyovski sprang out first, and helping Kmita to descend, took him at
+once by the arms.
+
+"Give room!" cried Zagloba.
+
+"Give room!" repeated the Lauda men.
+
+The people pushed back at once, so that in the middle of the crowd
+there was an open road along which the two knights led Kmita to the
+porch. He was very pale, but walked with head erect, at once confused
+and happy.
+
+Olenka leaned against the door-post, and dropped her arms without
+control at her sides; but when he was near she looked into the face of
+the emaciated man,--who after such a time of separation approached,
+like Lazarus, without a drop of blood in his face,--then sobbing, rent
+her breast again. He, from weeping, from happiness, and from confusion,
+did not know himself what to say,--
+
+"What, Olenka, what?"
+
+But she dropped suddenly to his knees,--
+
+"Yendrek!" cried she, "I am not worthy to kiss thy wounds!"
+
+At that moment strength came back to the knight; he seized her from the
+ground like a feather, and pressed her to his bosom.
+
+One immense shout, from which the walls of the house trembled and the
+last of the leaves fell from the trees, dinned every ear. The Lauda men
+began to fire from pistols; caps flew into the air; around nothing was
+to be seen but faces carried away by joy, gleaming eyes, and open
+mouths shouting,--
+
+"Vivat Kmita! vivat Panna Billevich! vivat the young couple!"
+
+"Vivat two couples!" roared Zagloba; but his voice was lost in the
+general storm.
+
+Vodokty was turned as it were into a camp. All day they were
+slaughtering oxen and sheep at command of the sword-bearer, and digging
+out of the ground barrels of mead and beer. In the evening all sat down
+to a feast,--the oldest and most noted in the rooms, the younger in the
+servants' hall; the simple people rejoiced equally at fires in the
+yard.
+
+At the chief table the cup went around in honor of two happy pairs; but
+when good feeling had reached the highest degree, Zagloba raised the
+following toast:--
+
+"To thee I return, worthy Pan Andrei, and to thee old friend, Pan
+Michael! It was not enough to expose your breasts, to shed blood, to
+cut down the enemy! Your work is not finished; for since a multitude of
+people have fallen in time of this terrible war, you must now give new
+inhabitants, new defenders to this Commonwealth. For this I think you
+will not lack either in manhood or good will. Worthy gentlemen! to the
+honor of those coming generations! May God bless them, and permit them
+to guard this legacy which we leave them, restored by our toil, by our
+sweat, by our blood. When grievous times come, let them remember us and
+never despair, considering that there are no straits out of which it is
+impossible to rise, with united forces and the help of God."
+
+
+Pan Andrei not long after his marriage served in a new war which broke
+out on the eastern side of the Commonwealth; but the thundering victory
+of Charnyetski and Sapyeha over Hovanski and Dolgoruki, and the hetmans
+of the kingdom over Sheremetyeff, soon brought it to an end. Then Kmita
+returned, covered with fresh glory, and settled down permanently in
+Vodokty. After him his cousin Yakub became banneret of Orsha,--Yakub,
+who afterward belonged to the unfortunate confederation of the army;
+but Pan Andrei, standing soul and heart with the king, rewarded with
+the starostaship of Upita, lived long in exemplary harmony and love
+with Lauda, surrounded by universal respect. His ill-wishers--for who
+has them not?--said, it is true, that he listened over-much to his wife
+in everything. He was not ashamed of that, however, but acknowledged
+himself that in every important affair he sought her advice.
+
+
+
+                               FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: This name is derived from _baba_ an old woman.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Sapyeha.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Lvoff.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Self-lord Zamoyski.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Zamoyski was starosta of Kaluj.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Strachy na Lachy" (Terror on Poles) is a Polish saying,
+about equivalent to "impossible."]
+
+[Footnote 7: "Two-bridged" or "of two bridges," from _bis_ and _pons_.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Byes means "devil," so Byes Cornutus is "horned devil."]
+
+[Footnote 9: Rogaty means "horned." Borzobogaty means "quickly rich."
+Bardzorogaty means "greatly horned."]
+
+[Footnote 10: This means that if Zagloba had been preceptor to the
+hetman or Kovalski, they would have had better wit. "Having a stave
+loose or lacking in his barrel," means, in Polish, that a man's mind is
+not right.]
+
+
+
+                                THE END.
+
+
+
+                         _THE ZAGLOBA ROMANCES_
+                _by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from
+                    the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin_.
+
+                          WITH FIRE AND SWORD
+An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+$1.50 _net_.
+
+The first of the famous trilogy of historical romances of Poland,
+Russia, and Sweden. Their publication has been received as an event in
+literature. Charles Dudley Warner, in  _Harper's Magazine_,  affirms
+that the Polish author has in Zagloba  _given a new creation to
+literature_.
+
+_A capital story_.  The only modern romance with which it can be
+compared for fire, sprightliness, rapidity of action, swift changes,
+and absorbing interest is "The Three Musketeers" of Dumas.--_New York
+Tribune_.
+
+
+                               THE DELUGE
+
+An Historical Novel  of  Poland, Sweden, and Russia. A Sequel to "With
+Fire and Sword." With map. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. $3.00 _net_.
+
+Marvellous in its grand descriptions.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean_.
+
+Has the humor of a Cervantes and the grim vigor of Defoe.--_Boston
+Gazette_.
+
+
+                              PAN MICHAEL
+
+An Historical Novel of Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine. A Sequel to
+"With Fire and Sword" and "The Deluge." Crown 8vo. $1.50 _net_.
+
+The interest of the trilogy, both historical and romantic, is
+splendidly sustained.--_The Dial_,  Chicago.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+                  LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers
+                         Boston, Massachusetts
+
+
+                               QUO VADIS
+
+A Narrative of the Time of Nero. By Henryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from
+the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. $1.50 _net_.
+
+One of the most remarkable books of the decade. It burns upon the brain
+the struggles and triumphs of the early Church.--_Boston Daily
+Advertiser_.
+
+It will become recognized by virtue of its own merits as the one heroic
+monument built by the modern novelist above the ruins of decadent Rome,
+and in honor of the blessed martyrs  of  the early Church.--_Brooklyn
+Eagle_.
+
+Our debt to Sienkiewicz is not less than our debt to his translator
+and friend, Jeremiah Curtin. The diversity of the language, the rapid
+flow of thought, the picturesque imagery of the descriptions are all
+his.--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+
+                          _By the same Author_
+
+                        THE KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS
+
+An Historical Romance of Poland and Germany. Translated from the Polish
+by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. $1.75 _net_.
+
+The construction of the story is beyond praise. It is difficult
+to conceive of any one who will not pick the book up with
+eagerness.--_Chicago Evening Post_.
+
+A book that holds your almost breathless attention as in a vise from
+the very beginning, for in it love and strife, the most thrilling of
+all worldly subjects, are described masterfully.--_The Boston Journal_.
+
+Another remarkable book. His descriptions are tremendously effective;
+one can almost hear the sound of the carnage; to the mind's eye the
+scene of battle is unfolded by a master artist.--_The Hartford
+Courant_.
+
+Thrillingly dramatic, full of strange local color and very faithful to
+its period, besides having that sense of the mysterious and weird that
+throbs in the Polish blood and infects alike their music and
+literature.--_The St. Paul Globe_.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+                  LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers
+                         Boston, Massachusetts
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Deluge, Vol. II. (of 2), by Henryk Sienkiewicz
+
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+Project Gutenberg's The Deluge, Vol. II. (of 2), by Henryk Sienkiewicz
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: The Deluge, Vol. II. (of 2)
+       An Historical Novel of Poland, Sweden, and Russia.
+
+Author: Henryk Sienkiewicz
+
+Translator: Jeremiah Curtin
+
+Release Date: September 3, 2011 [EBook #37308]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DELUGE, VOL. II. (OF 2) ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by the Web Archive
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+Transcriber's Notes:
+
+   1. Page scan source:
+      http://www.archive.org/details/delugeanhistori05siengoog
+
+   2. The diphthong oe is represented by [oe].
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE DELUGE.
+
+
+                                Vol. II.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                              THE DELUGE.
+
+
+                          An Historical Novel
+
+                                   OF
+
+                      POLAND, SWEDEN, AND RUSSIA.
+
+                              A SEQUEL TO
+
+                         "WITH FIRE AND SWORD."
+
+
+
+                                   BY
+
+                          HENRYK SIENKIEWICZ.
+
+
+              _AUTHORIZED AND UNABRIDGED TRANSLATION FROM
+                             THE POLISH BY_
+
+                            JEREMIAH CURTIN.
+
+
+
+
+                            IN TWO VOLUMES.
+
+                                Vol. II.
+
+
+
+
+                                BOSTON:
+                       LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY
+                                 1915.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                 _Copyright, 1891_, by Jeremiah Curtin.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+
+                                Printers
+                  S. J. Parkhill & Co., Boston, U.S.A.
+
+
+
+
+
+
+                               THE DELUGE
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER I.
+
+
+The war with cannon was no bar to negotiations, which the fathers
+determined to use at every opportunity. They wished to delude the enemy
+and procrastinate till aid came, or at least severe winter. But Miller
+did not cease to believe that the monks wished merely to extort the
+best terms.
+
+In the evening, therefore, after that cannonading, he sent Colonel
+Kuklinovski again with a summons to surrender. The prior showed
+Kuklinovski the safeguard of the king, which closed his mouth at once.
+But Miller had a later command of the king to occupy Boleslav,
+Vyelunie, Kjepits, and Chenstohova.
+
+"Take this order to them," said he to Kuklinovski; "for I think that
+they will lack means of evasion when it is shown them." But he was
+deceived.
+
+The prior answered: "If the command includes Chenstohova, let the
+general occupy the place with good fortune. He may be sure that the
+cloister will make no opposition; but Chenstohova is not Yasna Gora, of
+which no mention is made in the order."
+
+When Miller heard this answer he saw that he had to deal with diplomats
+more adroit than himself; reasons were just what he lacked,--and there
+remained only cannon.
+
+A truce lasted through the night. The Swedes worked with vigor at
+making better trenches; and on Yasna Gora they looked for the damages
+of the previous day, and saw with astonishment that there were none.
+Here and there roofs and rafters were broken, here and there plaster
+had dropped from the walls,--that was all. Of the men, none had fallen,
+no one was even maimed. The prior, going around on the walls, said with
+a smile to the soldiers,--
+
+"But see, this enemy with his bombarding is not so terrible as
+reported. After a festival there is often more harm done. God's care is
+guarding you; God's hand protects you; only let us endure, and we shall
+see greater wonders."
+
+Sunday came, the festival of the offering of the Holy Lady. There was
+no hindrance to services, since Miller was waiting for the final
+answer, which the monks had promised to send after midday.
+
+Mindful meanwhile of the words of Scripture, how Israel bore the ark of
+God around the camp to terrify the Philistines, they went again in
+procession with the monstrance.
+
+The letter was sent about one o'clock, not to surrender; but to repeat
+the answer given Kuklinovski, that the church and the cloister are
+called Yasna Gora, and that the town Chenstohova does not belong to the
+cloister at all. "Therefore we implore earnestly his worthiness," wrote
+the prior Kordetski, "to be pleased to leave in peace our Congregation
+and the church consecrated to God and His Most Holy Mother, so that God
+may be honored therein during future times. In this church also we
+shall implore the Majesty of God for the health and success of the Most
+Serene King of Sweden. Meanwhile we, unworthy men, while preferring our
+request, commend ourselves most earnestly to the kindly consideration
+of your worthiness, confiding in your goodness, from which we promise
+much to ourselves in the future."
+
+There were present at the reading of the letter, Sadovski; Count
+Veyhard; Horn, governor of Kjepitsi; De Fossis, a famous engineer; and
+the Prince of Hesse, a man young and very haughty, who though
+subordinate to Miller, was willing to show his own importance. He
+laughed therefore maliciously, and repeated the conclusion of the
+letter with emphasis,--
+
+"They promise much to themselves from your kindness; General, that is a
+hint for a contribution. I put one question, gentlemen: Are the monks
+better beggars or better gunners?"
+
+"True," said Horn, "during these first days we have lost so many men
+that a good battle would not have taken more."
+
+"As for me," continued the Prince of Hesse, "I do not want money; I am
+not seeking for glory, and I shall freeze off my feet in these huts.
+What a pity that we did not go to Prussia, a rich country, pleasant,
+one town excelling another."
+
+Miller, who acted quickly but thought slowly, now first understood the
+sense of the letter; he grew purple and said,--
+
+"The monks are jeering at us, gracious gentlemen."
+
+"They had not the intention of doing so, but it comes out all the
+same," answered Horn.
+
+"To the trenches, then! Yesterday the fire was weak, the balls few."
+
+The orders given flew swiftly from end to end of the Swedish line. The
+trenches were covered with blue clouds; the cloister answered quickly
+with all its energy. But this time the Swedish guns were better
+planted, and began to cause greater damage. Bombs, loaded with powder,
+were scattered, each drawing behind it a curl of flame. Lighted torches
+were hurled too, and rolls of hemp steeped in rosin.
+
+As sometimes flocks of passing cranes, tired from long flying, besiege
+a high cliff, so swarms of these fiery messengers fell on the summit of
+the church and on the wooden roofs of the buildings. Whoso was not
+taking part in the struggle, was near a cannon, was sitting on a roof.
+Some dipped water from wells, others drew up the buckets with ropes,
+while third parties put out fire with wet cloths. Balls crashing
+rafters and beams fell into garrets, and soon smoke and the odor of
+burning filled all the interior of buildings. But in garrets, too,
+defenders were watching with buckets of water. The heaviest bombs burst
+even through ceilings. In spite of efforts more than human, in spite of
+wakefulness, it seemed that, early or late, flames would embrace the
+whole cloister. Torches and bundles of hemp pushed with hooks from the
+roofs formed burning piles at the foot of the walls. Windows were
+bursting from heat, and women and children confined in rooms were
+stifling from smoke and exhalations. Hardly were some missiles
+extinguished, hardly was the water flowing in broken places, when there
+came new flocks of burning balls, flaming cloths, sparks, living fire.
+The whole cloister was seized with it. You would have said that heaven
+had opened on the place, and that a shower of thunders was falling;
+still it burned, but was not consumed; it was flaming, but did not fall
+into fragments; what was more, the besieged began to sing like those
+youths in the fiery furnace; for, as the day previous, a song was now
+heard from the tower, accompanied by trumpets. To the men standing on
+the walls and working at the guns, who at each moment might think that
+all was blazing and falling to ruins behind their shoulders, that song
+was like healing balsam, announcing continually that the church was
+standing, that the cloister was standing, that so far flames had not
+vanquished the efforts of men. Hence it became a custom to sweeten with
+such harmony the suffering of the siege, and to keep removed from the
+ears of women the terrible shouts of raging soldiery.
+
+But in the Swedish camp that singing and music made no small
+impression. The soldiers in the trenches heard it at first with wonder,
+then with superstitious dread.
+
+"How is it," said they to one another, "we have cast so much fire and
+iron at that hen-house that more than one powerful fortress would have
+flown away in smoke and ashes, but they are playing joyously? What does
+this mean?"
+
+"Enchantment!" said others.
+
+"Balls do not harm those walls. Bombs roll down from the roofs as if
+they were empty kegs! Enchantment, enchantment!" repeated they.
+"Nothing good will meet us in this place."
+
+The officers in fact were ready to ascribe some mysterious meaning to
+those sounds. But others interpreted differently, and Sadovski said
+aloud, so that Miller might hear: "They must feel well there, since
+they rejoice; or are they glad because we have spent so much powder for
+nothing?"
+
+"Of which we have not too much," added the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"But we have as leader Poliorcetes," said Sadovski, in such a tone that
+it could not be understood whether he was ridiculing or flattering
+Miller. But the latter evidently took it as ridicule, for he bit his
+mustache.
+
+"We shall see whether they will be playing an hour later," said he,
+turning to his staff.
+
+Miller gave orders to double the fire, but these orders were carried
+out over-zealously. In their hurry, the gunners pointed the cannons too
+high, and the result was they carried too far. Some of the balls,
+soaring above the church and the cloister, went to the Swedish trenches
+on the opposite side, smashing timber works, scattering baskets,
+killing men.
+
+An hour passed; then a second. From the church tower came solemn music
+unbroken.
+
+Miller stood with his glass turned on Chenstohova. He looked a long
+time. Those present noticed that the hand with which he held the glass
+to his eyes trembled more and more; at last he turned and cried,--
+
+"The shots do not injure the church one whit!" And anger, unrestrained,
+mad, seized the old warrior. He hurled the glass to the earth, and it
+broke into pieces. "I shall go wild from this music!" roared he.
+
+At that moment De Fossis, the engineer, galloped up. "General," said
+he, "it is impossible to make a mine. Under a layer of earth lies rock.
+There miners are needed."
+
+Miller used an oath. But he had not finished the imprecation when
+another officer came with a rush from the Chenstohova entrenchment, and
+saluting, said,--
+
+"Our largest gun has burst. Shall we bring others from Lgota?"
+
+Fire had slackened somewhat; the music was heard with more and more
+solemnity. Miller rode off to his quarters without saying a word. But
+he gave no orders to slacken the struggle; he determined to worry the
+besieged. They had in the fortress barely two hundred men as garrison;
+he had continual relays of fresh soldiers.
+
+Night came, the guns thundered unceasingly; but the cloister guns
+answered actively,--more actively indeed than during the day, for the
+Swedish camp-fires showed them ready work. More than once it happened
+that soldiers had barely sat around the fire and the kettle hanging
+over it, when a ball from the cloister flew to them out of the
+darkness, like an angel of death. The fire was scattered to splinters
+and sparks, the soldiers ran apart with unearthly cries, and either
+sought refuge with other comrades, or wandered through the night,
+chilled, hungry, and frightened.
+
+About midnight the fire from the cloister increased to such force that
+within reach of a cannon not a stick could be kindled. The besieged
+seemed to speak in the language of cannons the following words: "You
+wish to wear us out,--try it! We challenge you!"
+
+One o'clock struck, and two. A fine rain began to fall in the form of
+cold mist, but piercing, and in places thickened as if into pillars,
+columns and bridges seeming red from the light of the fire. Through
+these fantastic arcades and pillars were seen at times the threatening
+outlines of the cloister, which changed before the eye; at one time it
+seemed higher than usual, then again it fell away as if in an abyss.
+From the trenches to its walls stretched as it were ill-omened arches
+and corridors formed of darkness and mist, and through those corridors
+flew balls bearing death; at times all the air above the cloister
+seemed clear as if illumined by a lightning flash; the walls, the lofty
+works, and the towers were all outlined in brightness, then again they
+were quenched. The soldiers looked before them with superstitious and
+gloomy dread. Time after time one pushed another and whispered,--
+
+"Hast seen it? This cloister appears and vanishes in turn. That is a
+power not human."
+
+"I saw something better than that," answered the other. "We were aiming
+with that gun that burst, when in a moment the whole fortress began to
+jump and quiver, as if some one were raising and lowering it. Fire at
+such a fortress; hit it!"
+
+The soldier then threw aside the cannon brush, and after a while
+added,--
+
+"We can win nothing here! We shall never smell their treasures. Brr, it
+is cold! Have you the tar-bucket there? Set fire to it; we can even
+warm our hands."
+
+One of the soldiers started to light the tar by means of a sulphured
+thread. He ignited the sulphur first, then began to let it down slowly.
+
+"Put out that light!" sounded the voice of an officer. But almost the
+same instant was heard the noise of a ball; then a short cry, and the
+light was put out.
+
+The night brought the Swedes heavy losses. A multitude of men perished
+at the camp-fires; in places regiments fell into such disorder that
+they could not form line before morning. The besieged, as if wishing to
+show that they needed no sleep, fired with increasing rapidity.
+
+The dawn lighted tired faces on the walls, pale, sleepless, but
+enlivened by feverishness. Kordetski had lain in the form of a cross in
+the church all night; with daylight he appeared on the walls, and his
+pleasant voice was heard at the cannon, in the curtains, and near the
+gates.
+
+"God is forming the day, my children," said he. "Blessed be His light.
+There is no damage in the church, none in the buildings. The fire is
+put out, no one has lost his life. Pan Mosinski, a fiery ball fell
+under the cradle of your little child, and was quenched, causing no
+harm. Give thanks to the Most Holy Lady; repay her."
+
+"May Her name be blessed," said Mosinski; "I serve as I can."
+
+The prior went farther.
+
+It had become bright day when he stood near Charnyetski and Kmita. He
+did not see Kmita; for he had crawled to the other side to examine the
+woodwork, which a Swedish ball had harmed somewhat. The prior asked
+straightway,--
+
+"But where is Babinich? Is he not sleeping?"
+
+"I, sleep in such a night as this!" answered Pan Andrei, climbing up on
+the wall. "I should have no conscience. Better watch as an orderly of
+the Most Holy Lady."
+
+"Better, better, faithful servant!" answered Kordetski.
+
+Pan Andrei saw at that moment a faint Swedish light gleaming, and
+immediately he cried,--
+
+"Fire, there, fire! Aim! higher! at the dog-brothers!"
+
+Kordetski smiled, seeing such zeal, and returned to the cloister to
+send to the wearied men a drink made of beer with pieces of cheese
+broken in it.
+
+Half an hour later appeared women, priests, and old men of the church,
+bringing steaming pots and jugs. The soldiers seized these with
+alacrity, and soon was heard along all the walls eager drinking. They
+praised the drink, saying,--
+
+"We are not forgotten in the service of the Most Holy Lady. We have
+good food."
+
+"It is worse for the Swedes," added others. "It was hard for them to
+cook food the past night; it will be worse the night coming."
+
+"They have enough, the dog-faiths. They will surely give themselves and
+us rest during the day. Their poor guns must be hoarse by this time
+from roaring continually."
+
+But the soldiers were mistaken, for the day was not to bring rest When,
+in the morning, officers coming with the reports informed Miller that
+the result of the night's cannonading was nothing, that in fact the
+night had brought the Swedes a considerable loss in men, the general
+was stubborn and gave command to continue cannonading. "They will grow
+tired at last," said he to the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"This is an immense outlay of powder," answered that officer.
+
+"But they burn powder too?"
+
+"They must have endless supplies of saltpetre and sulphur, and we shall
+give them charcoal ourselves, if we are able to burn even one booth. In
+the night I went near the walls, and in spite of the thunder, I heard a
+mill clearly, that must be a powder-mill."
+
+"I will give orders to cannonade as fiercely as yesterday, till sunset.
+We will rest for the night. We shall see if an embassy does not come
+out."
+
+"Your worthiness knows that they have sent one to Wittemberg?"
+
+"I know; I will send too for the largest cannons. If it is impossible
+to frighten the monks or to raise a fire inside the fortress, we must
+make a breach."
+
+"I hope, your worthiness, that the field-marshal will approve the
+siege."
+
+"The field-marshal knows of my intention, and he has said nothing,"
+replied Miller, dryly. "If failure pursues me still farther, the
+field-marshal will give censure instead of approval, and will not fail
+to lay all the blame at my door. The king will say he is right,--I know
+that. I have suffered not a little from the field-marshal's sullen
+humor, just as if 'tis my fault that he, as the Italians state, is
+consumed by _mal francese_."
+
+"That they will throw the blame on you I doubt not, especially when it
+appears that Sadovich is right."
+
+"How right? Sadovich speaks for those monks as if he were hired by
+them. What does he say?"
+
+"He says that these shots will be heard through the whole country, from
+the Carpathians to the Baltic."
+
+"Let the king command in such case to tear the skin from Count Veyhard
+and send it as an offering to the cloister; for he it is who instigated
+to this siege."
+
+Here Miller seized his head.
+
+"But it is necessary to finish at a blow. It seems to me, something
+tells me, that in the night they will send some one to negotiate;
+meanwhile fire after fire!"
+
+The day passed then as the day previous, full of thunder, smoke, and
+flames. Many such were to pass yet over Yasna Gora. But the defenders
+quenched the conflagrations and cannonaded no less bravely. One half
+the soldiers went to rest, the other half were on the walls at the
+guns.
+
+The people began to grow accustomed to the unbroken roar, especially
+when convinced that no great damage was done. Faith strengthened the
+less experienced; but among them were old soldiers, acquainted with
+war, who performed their service as a trade. These gave comfort to the
+villagers.
+
+Soroka acquired much consideration among them; for, having spent a
+great part of his life in war, he was as indifferent to its uproar as
+an old innkeeper to the shouts of carousers. In the evening when the
+guns had grown silent he told his comrades of the siege of Zbaraj. He
+had not been there in person, but he knew of it minutely from soldiers
+who had gone through that siege and had told him.
+
+"There rolled on Cossacks, Tartars, and Turks, so many that there were
+more under-cooks there than all the Swedes that are here. And still our
+people did not yield to them. Besides, evil spirits have no power here;
+but there it was only Friday, Saturday, and Sunday that the devils did
+not help the ruffians; the rest of the time they terrified our people
+whole nights. They sent Death to the breastworks to appear to the
+soldiers and take from them courage for battle. I know this from a man
+who saw Death himself."
+
+"Did he see her?" asked with curiosity peasants gathering around the
+sergeant.
+
+"With his own eyes. He was going from digging a well; for water was
+lacking, and what was in the ponds smelt badly. He was going, going,
+till he saw walking in front of him some kind of figure in a black
+mantle."
+
+"In a black, not in a white one?"
+
+"In black; in war Death dresses in black. It was growing dark, the
+soldier came up. 'Who is here?' inquired he--no answer. Then he pulled
+the mantle, looked, and saw a skeleton. 'But what art thou here for?'
+asked the soldier. 'I am Death,' was the answer; 'and I am coming for
+thee in a week.' The soldier thought that was bad. 'Why,' asked he, 'in
+a week, and not sooner? Art thou not free to come sooner?' The other
+said: 'I can do nothing before a week, for such is the order.'"
+
+"The soldier thought to himself: 'That is hard; but if she can do
+nothing to me now, I'll pay her what I owe.' Winding Death up in the
+mantle, he began to beat her bones on the pebbles; but she cried and
+begged: 'I'll come in two weeks!' 'Impossible.' 'In three, four, ten,
+when the siege is over; a year, two, fifteen--' 'Impossible.' 'I'll
+come in fifty years.' The soldier was pleased, for he was then fifty,
+and thought: 'A hundred years is enough; I'll let her go.' The man is
+living this minute, and well; he goes to a battle as to a dance, for
+what does he care?"
+
+"But if he had been frightened, it would have been all over with him?"
+
+"The worst is to fear Death," said Soroka, with importance. "This
+soldier did good to others too; for after he had beaten Death, he hurt
+her so that she was fainting for three days, and during that time no
+one fell in camp, though sorties were made."
+
+"But we never go out at night against the Swedes."
+
+"We haven't the head for it," answered Soroka.
+
+The last question and answer were heard by Kmita, who was standing not
+far away, and he struck his head. Then he looked at the Swedish
+trenches. It was already night. At the trenches for an hour past deep
+silence had reigned. The wearied soldiers were seemingly sleeping at
+the guns.
+
+At two cannon-shots' distance gleamed a number of fires; but at the
+trenches themselves was thick darkness.
+
+"That will not enter their heads, nor the suspicion of it, and they
+cannot suppose it," whispered Kmita to himself.
+
+He went straight to Charnyetski, who, sitting at the gun-carriage, was
+reading his rosary, and striking one foot against the other, for both
+feet were cold.
+
+"Cold," said he, seeing Kmita; "and my head is heavy from the thunder
+of two days and one night. In my ears there is continual ringing."
+
+"In whose head would it not ring from such uproars? But to-day we shall
+rest. They have gone to sleep for good. It would be possible to
+surprise them like a bear in a den; I know not whether guns would rouse
+them."
+
+"Oh," said Charnyetski, raising his head, "of what are you thinking?"
+
+"I am thinking of Zbaraj, how the besieged inflicted with sorties more
+than one great defeat on the ruffians."
+
+"You are thinking of blood, like a wolf in the night."
+
+"By the living God and his wounds, let us make a sortie! We will cut
+down men, spike guns! They expect no attack."
+
+Charnyetski sprang to his feet.
+
+"And in the morning they will go wild. They imagine, perhaps, that they
+have frightened us enough and we are thinking of surrender; they will
+get their answer. As I love God, 'tis a splendid idea, a real knightly
+deed! That should have come to my head too. But it is needful to tell
+all to Kordetski, for he is commander."
+
+They went.
+
+Kordetski was taking counsel in the chamber with Zamoyski. When he
+heard steps, he raised his voice and pushing a candle to one side,
+inquired,--
+
+"Who is coming? Is there anything new?"
+
+"It is I, Charnyetski," replied Pan Pyotr, "with me is Babinich;
+neither of us can sleep. We have a terrible odor of the Swedes. This
+Babinich, father, has a restless head and cannot stay in one place. He
+is boring me, boring; for he wants terribly to go to the Swedes beyond
+the walls to ask them if they will fire to-morrow also, or give us and
+themselves time to breathe."
+
+"How is that?" inquired the prior, not concealing his astonishment
+"Babinich wants to make a sortie from the fortress?"
+
+"In company, in company," answered Charnyetski, hurriedly, "with me and
+some others. They, it seems, are sleeping like dead men at the
+trenches; there is no fire visible, no sentries to be seen. They trust
+over much in our weakness."
+
+"We will spike the guns," said Kmita.
+
+"Give that Babinich this way!" exclaimed Zamoyski; "let me embrace him!
+The sting is itching, O hornet! thou wouldst gladly sting even at
+night. This is a great undertaking, which may have the finest results.
+God gave us only one Lithuanian, but that one an enraged and biting
+beast. I applaud the design; no one here will find fault with it. I am
+ready to go myself."
+
+Kordetski at first was alarmed, for he feared bloodshed, especially
+when his own life was not exposed; after he had examined the idea more
+closely, he recognized it as worthy of the defenders.
+
+"Let me pray," said he. And kneeling before the image of the Mother of
+God, he prayed a while, with outspread arms, and then rose with serene
+face.
+
+"Pray you as well," said he; "and then go."
+
+A quarter of an hour later the four went out and repaired to the walls.
+The trenches in the distance were sleeping. The night was very dark.
+
+"How many men will you take?" asked Kordetski of Kmita.
+
+"I?" answered Pan Andrei, in surprise. "I am not leader, and I do not
+know the place so well as Pan Charnyetski. I will go with my sabre, but
+let Charnyetski lead the men, and me with the others; I only wish to
+have my Soroka go, for he can hew terribly."
+
+This answer pleased both Charnyetski and the prior, for they saw in it
+clear proof of submission. They set about the affair briskly. Men were
+selected, the greatest silence was enjoined, and they began to remove
+the beams, stones, and brick from the passage in the wall.
+
+This labor lasted about an hour. At length the opening was ready, and
+the men began to dive into the narrow jaws. They had sabres, pistols,
+guns, and some, namely peasants, had scythes with points downward,--a
+weapon with which they were best acquainted.
+
+When outside the wall they organized; Charnyetski stood at the head of
+the party, Kmita at the flank; and they moved along the ditch silently,
+restraining the breath in their breasts, like wolves stealing up to a
+sheepfold.
+
+Still, at times a scythe struck a scythe, at times a stone gritted
+under a foot, and by those noises it was possible to know that they
+were pushing forward unceasingly. When they had come down to the plain,
+Charnyetski halted, and, not far from the enemy's trenches, left some
+of his men, under command of Yanich, a Hungarian, an old, experienced
+soldier; these men he commanded to lie on the ground. Charnyetski
+himself advanced somewhat to the right, and having now under foot soft
+earth which gave out no echo, began to lead forward his party more
+swiftly. His plan was to pass around the intrenchment, strike on the
+sleeping Swedes from the rear, and push them toward the cloister
+against Yanich's men. This idea was suggested by Kmita, who now
+marching near him with sabre in hand, whispered,--
+
+"The intrenchment is extended in such fashion that between it and the
+main camp there is open ground. Sentries, if there are any, are before
+the trenches and not on this side of it, so that we can go behind
+freely, and attack them on the side from which they least expect
+attack."
+
+"That is well," said Charnyetski; "not a foot of those men should
+escape."
+
+"If any one speaks when we enter," continued Pan Andrei, "let me
+answer; I can speak German as well as Polish; they will think that some
+one is coming from Miller, from the camp."
+
+"If only there are no sentries behind the intrenchments."
+
+"Even if there are, we shall spring on in a moment; before they can
+understand who and what, we shall have them down."
+
+"It is time to turn, the end of the trench can be seen," said
+Charnyetski; and turning he called softly, "To the right, to the
+right!"
+
+The silent line began to bend. That moment the moon lighted a bank of
+clouds somewhat, and it grew clearer. The advancing men saw an empty
+space in the rear of the trench.
+
+As Kmita had foreseen, there were no sentries whatever on that space;
+for why should the Swedes station sentries between their trenches and
+their own army, stationed in the rear of the trenches. The most
+sharp-sighted leader could not suspect danger from that side.
+
+At that moment Charnyetski said in the lowest whisper; "Tents are
+now visible. And in two of them are lights. People are still awake
+there,--surely officers. Entrance from the rear must be easy."
+
+"Evidently," answered Kmita. "Over that road they draw cannon, and by
+it troops enter. The bank is already at hand. Have a care now that arms
+do not clatter."
+
+They had reached the elevation raised carefully with earth dug from so
+many trenches. A whole line of wagons was standing there, in which
+powder and balls had been brought.
+
+But at the wagons, no man was watching; passing them, therefore, they
+began to climb the embankment without trouble, as they had justly
+foreseen, for it was gradual and well raised.
+
+In this manner they went right to the tents, and with drawn weapons
+stood straight in front of them. In two of the tents lights were
+actually burning; therefore Kmita said to Charnyetski,--
+
+"I will go in advance to those who are not sleeping. Wait for my
+pistol, and then on the enemy!" When he had said this, he went forward.
+
+The success of the sortie was already assured; therefore he did not try
+to go in very great silence. He passed a few tents buried in darkness;
+no one woke, no one inquired, "Who is there?"
+
+The soldiers of Yasna Gora heard the squeak of his daring steps and the
+beating of their own hearts. He reached the lighted tent, raised the
+curtain and entered, halted at the entrance with pistol in hand and
+sabre down on its strap.
+
+He halted because the light dazzled him somewhat, for on the camp table
+stood a candlestick with six arms, in which bright lights were burning.
+
+At the table were sitting three officers, bent over plans. One of them,
+sitting in the middle, was poring over these plans so intently that his
+long hair lay on the white paper. Seeing some one enter, he raised his
+head, and asked in a calm voice,--
+
+"Who is there?"
+
+"A soldier," answered Kmita.
+
+That moment the two other officers turned their eyes toward the
+entrance.
+
+"What soldier, where from?" asked the first, who was De Fossis, the
+officer who chiefly directed the siege.
+
+"From the cloister," answered Kmita. But there was something terrible
+in his voice.
+
+De Fossis rose quickly and shaded his eyes with his hand. Kmita was
+standing erect and motionless as an apparition; only the threatening
+face, like the head of a predatory bird, announced sudden danger.
+
+Still the thought, quick as lightning, rushed through the head of De
+Fossis, that he might be a deserter from Yasna Gora; therefore he asked
+again, but excitedly,--
+
+"What do you want?"
+
+"I want this!" cried Kmita; and he fired from a pistol into the very
+breast of De Fossis.
+
+With that a terrible shout and a salvo of shots was heard on the
+trench. De Fossis fell as falls a pine-tree struck by lightning;
+another officer rushed at Kmita with his sword, but the latter slashed
+him between the eyes with his sabre, which gritted on the bone; the
+third officer threw himself on the ground, wishing to slip out under
+the side of the tent, but Kmita sprang at him, put his foot on his
+shoulder, and nailed him to the earth with a thrust.
+
+By this time the silence of night had turned into the day of judgment.
+Wild shouts: "Slay, kill!" were mingled with howls and shrill calls of
+Swedish soldiers for aid. Men bewildered from terror rushed out of the
+tents, not knowing whither to turn, in what direction to flee. Some,
+without noting at once whence the attack came, ran straight to the
+enemy, and perished under sabres, scythes, and axes, before they had
+time to cry "Quarter!" Some in the darkness stabbed their own comrades;
+others unarmed, half-dressed, without caps, with hands raised upward,
+stood motionless on one spot; some at last dropped on the earth among
+the overturned tents. A small handful wished to defend themselves; but
+a blinded throng bore them away, threw them down, and trampled them.
+
+Groans of the dying and heart-rending prayers for quarter increased the
+confusion.
+
+When at last it grew clear from the cries that the attack had come, not
+from the side of the cloister, but from the rear, just from the
+direction of the Swedish army, then real desperation seized the
+attacked. They judged evidently that some squadrons, allies of the
+cloister, had struck on them suddenly.
+
+Crowds of infantry began to spring out of the intrenchment and run
+toward the cloister, as if they wished to find refuge within its walls.
+But soon new shouts showed that they had come upon the party of the
+Hungarian, Yanich, who finished them under the very fortress.
+
+Meanwhile the cloister-men, slashing, thrusting, trampling, advanced
+toward the cannons. Men with spikes ready, rushed at them immediately;
+but others continued the work of death. Peasants, who would not have
+stood before trained soldiers in the open field, rushed now a handful
+at a crowd.
+
+Valiant Colonel Horn, governor of Kjepitsi, endeavored to rally the
+fleeing soldiers; springing into a corner of the trench, he shouted in
+the darkness and waved his sword. The Swedes recognized him and began
+at once to assemble; but in their tracks and with them rushed the
+attackers, whom it was difficult to distinguish in the darkness.
+
+At once was heard a terrible whistle of scythes, and the voice of Horn
+ceased in a moment. The crowd of soldiers scattered as if driven apart
+by a bomb. Kmita and Charnyetski rushed after them with a few people,
+and cut them to pieces.
+
+The trench was taken.
+
+In the main camp of the Swedes trumpets sounded the alarm. Straightway
+the guns of Yasna Gora gave answer, and fiery balls began to fly from
+the cloister to light up the way for the home-coming men. They came
+panting, bloody, like wolves who had made a slaughter in a sheepfold;
+they were retreating before the approaching sound of musketeers.
+Charnyetski led the van, Kmita brought up the rear.
+
+In half an hour they reached the party left with Yanich; but he did not
+answer their call; he alone had paid for the sortie with his life, for
+when he rushed after some officer, his own soldiers shot him.
+
+The party entered the cloister amid the thunder of cannon and the gleam
+of flames. At the entrance the prior was waiting, and he counted them
+in order as the heads were pushed in through the opening. No one was
+missing save Yanich.
+
+Two men went out for him at once, and half an hour later they brought
+his body; for Kordetski wished to honor him with a fitting burial.
+
+But the quiet of night, once broken, did not return till white day.
+From the walls cannon were playing; in the Swedish positions the
+greatest confusion continued. The enemy not knowing well their own
+losses, not knowing whence the aggressor might come, fled from the
+trenches nearest the cloister. Whole regiments wandered in despairing
+disorder till morning, mistaking frequently their own for the enemy,
+and firing at one another. Even in the main camp were soldiers and
+officers who abandoned their tents and remained under the open sky,
+awaiting the end of that ghastly night. Alarming news flew from mouth
+to mouth. Some said that succor had come to the fortress, others
+asserted that all the nearer intrenchments were captured.
+
+Miller, Sadovski, the Prince of Hesse, Count Veyhard, and other
+superior officers, made superhuman exertions to bring the terrified
+regiments to order. At the same time the cannonade of the cloister was
+answered by balls of fire, to scatter the darkness and enable fugitives
+to assemble. One of the balls struck the roof of the chapel, but
+striking only the edge of it, returned with rattling and crackling
+toward the camp, casting a flood of flame through the air.
+
+At last the night of tumult was ended. The cloister and the Swedish
+camp became still. Morning had begun to whiten the summits of the
+church, the roofs took on gradually a ruddy light, and day came.
+
+In that hour Miller, at the head of his staff, rode to the captured
+trench. They could, it is true, see him from the cloister and open
+fire; but the old general cared not for that. He wished to see with his
+own eyes all the injury, and count the slain. The staff followed him;
+all were disturbed,--they had sorrow and seriousness in their faces.
+When they reached the intrenchment, they dismounted and began to
+ascend. Traces of the struggle were visible everywhere; lower down than
+the guns were the overthrown tents; some were still open, empty,
+silent. There were piles of bodies, especially among the tents;
+half-naked corpses, mangled, with staring eyes, and with terror
+stiffened in their dead eyeballs, presented a dreadful sight. Evidently
+all these men had been surprised in deep sleep; some of them were
+barefoot; it was a rare one who grasped his rapier in his dead hand;
+almost no one wore a helmet or a cap. Some were lying in tents,
+especially at the side of the entrance; these, it was apparent, had
+barely succeeded in waking; others, at the sides of tents, were caught
+by death at the moment when they were seeking safety in flight.
+Everywhere there were many bodies, and in places such piles that it
+might be thought some cataclysm of nature had killed those soldiers;
+but the deep wounds in their faces and breasts, some faces blackened by
+shots, so near that all the powder had not been burned, testified but
+too plainly that the hand of man had caused the destruction.
+
+Miller went higher, to the guns; they were standing dumb, spiked, no
+more terrible now than logs of wood; across one of them lay hanging on
+both sides the body of a gunner, almost cut in two by the terrible
+sweep of a scythe. Blood had flowed over the carriage and formed a
+broad pool beneath it. Miller observed everything minutely, in silence
+and with frowning brow. No officer dared break that silence. For how
+could they bring consolation to that aged general, who had been beaten
+like a novice through his own want of care? That was not only defeat,
+but shame; for the general himself had called that fortress a
+hen-house, and promised to crush it between his fingers, for he had
+nine thousand soldiers, and there were two hundred men in the garrison;
+finally, that general was a soldier, blood and bone, and against him
+were monks.
+
+That day had a grievous beginning for Miller.
+
+Now the infantry came up and began to carry out bodies. Four of them,
+bearing on a stretcher a corpse, stopped before the general without
+being ordered.
+
+Miller looked at the stretcher and closed his eyes.
+
+"De Fossis," said he, in a hollow voice.
+
+Scarcely had they gone aside when others came, this time Sadovski moved
+toward them and called from a distance, turning to the staff,--
+
+"They are carrying Horn!"
+
+But Horn was alive yet, and had before him long days of atrocious
+suffering. A peasant had cut him with the very point of a scythe; but
+the blow was so fearful that it opened the whole framework of his
+breast. Still the wounded man retained his presence of mind. Seeing
+Miller and the staff, he smiled, wished to say something, but instead
+of a sound there came through his lips merely rose-colored froth; then
+he began to blink, and fainted.
+
+"Carry him to my tent," said Miller, "and let my doctor attend to him
+immediately."
+
+Then the officers heard him say to himself,--
+
+"Horn, Horn,--I saw him last night in a dream,--just in the evening. A
+terrible thing, beyond comprehension!"
+
+And fixing his eyes on the ground, he dropped into deep thought; all at
+once he was roused from his revery by the voice of Sadovski, who cried:
+"General! look there, there--the cloister!"
+
+Miller looked and was astonished. It was broad day and clear, only fogs
+were hanging over the earth; but the sky was clear and blushing from
+the light of the morning. A white fog hid the summit itself of Yasna
+Gora, and according to the usual order of things ought to hide the
+church, but by a peculiar phenomenon the church, with the tower,
+was raised, not only above the cliff, but above the fog, high,
+high,--precisely as if it had separated from its foundations and was
+hanging in the blue under the dome of the sky. The cries of the
+soldiers announced that they too saw the phenomenon.
+
+"That fog deceives the eye!" said Miller.
+
+"The fog is lying under the church," answered Sadovski.
+
+"It is a wonderful thing; but that church is ten times higher than it
+was yesterday, and hangs in the air," said the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"It is going yet! higher, higher!" cried the soldiers. "It will vanish
+from the eye!"
+
+In fact the fog hanging on the cliff began to rise toward the sky in
+the form of an immense pillar of smoke; the church planted, as it were,
+on the summit of that pillar, seemed to rise higher each instant; at
+the same time when it was far up, as high as the clouds themselves, it
+was veiled more and more with vapor; you would have said that it was
+melting, liquefying; it became more indistinct, and at last vanished
+altogether.
+
+Miller turned to the officers, and in his eyes were depicted
+astonishment and a superstitious dread.
+
+"I acknowledge, gentlemen," said he, "that I have never seen such a
+thing in my life, altogether opposed to nature: it must be the
+enchantment of papists."
+
+"I have heard," said Sadovski, "soldiers crying out, 'How can you fire
+at such a fortress?' In truth I know not how."
+
+"But what is there now?" cried the Prince of Hesse. "Is that church in
+the fog, or is it gone?"
+
+"Though this were an ordinary phenomenon of nature, in any event it
+forebodes us no good. See, gentlemen, from the time that we came here
+we have not advanced one step."
+
+"If," answered Sadovski, "we had only not advanced; but to tell the
+truth, we have suffered defeat after defeat, and last night was the
+worst. The soldiers losing willingness lose courage, and will begin to
+be negligent. You have no idea of what they say in the regiments.
+Besides, wonderful things take place; for instance, for a certain time
+no man can go alone, or even two men, out of the camp; whoever does so
+is as if he had fallen through the earth, as if wolves were prowling
+around Chenstohova. I sent myself, not long since, a banneret and three
+men to Vyelunie for warm clothing, and from that day, no tidings of
+them."
+
+"It will be worse when winter comes; even now the nights are
+unendurable," added the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"The mist is growing thinner!" said Miller, on a sudden.
+
+In fact a breeze rose and began to blow away the vapors. In the bundles
+of fog something began to quiver; finally the sun rose and the air grew
+transparent. The walls of the cloister were outlined faintly, then out
+came the church and the cloister. Everything was in its old place. The
+fortress was quiet and still, as if people were not living in it.
+
+"General," said the Prince of Hesse, with energy, "try negotiations
+again, it is needful to finish at once."
+
+"But if negotiations lead to nothing, do you, gentlemen, advise to give
+up the siege?" asked Miller, gloomily.
+
+The officers were silent. After a while Sadovski said,--
+
+"Your worthiness knows best that it will come to that."
+
+"I know," answered Miller, haughtily, "and I say this only to you, that
+I curse the day and the hour in which I came hither, as well as the
+counsellor who persuaded me to this siege [here he pierced Count
+Veyhard with his glance]. You know, however, after what has happened,
+that I shall not withdraw until I turn this cursed fortress into a heap
+of ruins, or fall myself."
+
+Displeasure was reflected in the face of the Prince of Hesse. He had
+never respected Miller over-much; hence he considered this mere
+military braggadocio ill-timed, in view of the captured trenches, the
+corpses, and the spiked cannon. He turned to him then and answered with
+evident sarcasm,--
+
+"General, you are not able to promise that; for you would withdraw in
+view of the first command of the king, or of Marshal Wittemberg.
+Sometimes also circumstances are able to command not worse than kings
+and marshals."
+
+Miller wrinkled his heavy brows, seeing which Count Veyhard said
+hurriedly,--
+
+"Meanwhile we will try negotiations. They will yield; it cannot be
+otherwise."
+
+The rest of his words were drowned by the rejoicing sound of bells,
+summoning to early Mass in the church of Yasna Gora. The general with
+his staff rode away slowly toward Chenstohova; but had not reached
+headquarters when an officer rushed up on a foaming horse.
+
+"He is from Marshal Wittemberg!" said Miller.
+
+The officer handed him a letter. The general broke the seal hurriedly,
+and running over the letter quickly with his eyes, said with confusion
+in his countenance,--
+
+"No! This is from Poznan. Evil tidings. In Great Poland the nobles are
+rising, the people are joining them. At the head of the movement is
+Krishtof Jegotski, who wants to march to the aid of Chenstohova."
+
+"I foretold that these shots would be heard from the Carpathians to the
+Baltic," muttered Sadovski. "With this people change is sudden. You do
+not know the Poles yet; you will discover them later."
+
+"Well! we shall know them," answered Miller. "I prefer an open enemy to
+a false ally. They yielded of their own accord, and now they are taking
+arms. Well! they will know our weapons."
+
+"And we theirs," blurted out Sadovski. "General, let us finish
+negotiations with Chenstohova; let us agree to any capitulation. It is
+not a question of the fortress, but of the rule of his Royal Grace in
+this country."
+
+"The monks will capitulate," said Count Veyhard. "Today or to-morrow
+they will yield."
+
+So they conversed with one another; but in the cloister after early
+Mass the joy was unbounded. Those who had not gone out in the sortie
+asked those who had how everything had happened. Those who had taken
+part boasted greatly, glorifying their own bravery and the defeat they
+had given the enemy.
+
+Among the priests and women curiosity became paramount. White habits
+and women's robes covered the wall. It was a beautiful and gladsome
+day. The women gathered around Charnyetski, crying "Our deliverer! our
+guardian!" He defended himself particularly when they wanted to kiss
+his hands, and pointing to Kmita, said,--
+
+"Thank him too. He is Babinich,[1] but no old woman. He will not let
+his hands be Kissed, for there is blood on them yet; but if any of the
+younger would like to kiss him on the lips, I think that he would not
+flinch."
+
+The younger women did in fact cast modest and at the same time enticing
+glances at Pan Andrei, admiring his splendid beauty; but he did not
+answer with his eyes to those dumb questions, for the sight of these
+maidens reminded him of Olenka.
+
+"Oh, my poor girl!" thought he, "if you only knew that in the service
+of the Most Holy Lady I am opposing those enemies whom formerly I
+served to my sorrow!"
+
+And he promised himself that the moment the siege was over he would
+write to her in Kyedani, and hurry off Soroka with the letter. "And I
+shall send her not empty words and promises; for now deeds are behind
+me, which without empty boasting, but accurately, I shall describe in
+the letter. Let her know that she has done this, let her be comforted."
+
+And he consoled himself with this thought so much that he did not even
+notice how the maidens said to one another, in departing,--
+
+"He is a good warrior; but it is clear that he looks only to battle,
+and is an unsocial grumbler."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER II.
+
+
+According to the wish of his officers, Miller began negotiations again.
+There came to the cloister from the Swedish camp a well-known Polish
+noble, respected for his age and his eloquence. They received him
+graciously on Yasna Gora, judging that only in seeming and through
+constraint would he argue for surrender, but in reality would add to
+their courage and confirm the news, which had broken through the
+besieged wall, of the rising in Great Poland; of the dislike of the
+quarter troops to Sweden; of the negotiations of Yan Kazimir with the
+Cossacks, who, as it were, seemed willing to return to obedience;
+finally, of the tremendous declaration of the Khan of the Tartars, that
+he was marching with aid to the vanquished king, all of whose enemies
+he would pursue with fire and sword.
+
+But how the monks were mistaken! The personage brought indeed a large
+bundle of news,--but news that was appalling, news to cool the most
+fervent zeal, to crush the most invincible resolution, stagger the most
+ardent faith.
+
+The priests and the nobles gathered around him in the council chamber,
+in the midst of silence and attention; from his lips sincerity itself
+seemed to flow, and pain for the fate of the country. He placed his
+hand frequently on his white head as if wishing to restrain an outburst
+of despair; he gazed on the crucifix; he had tears in his eyes, and in
+slow, broken accents, he uttered the following words:--
+
+"Ah, what times the suffering country has lived to! All help is past:
+it is incumbent to yield to the King of the Swedes. For whom in reality
+have you, revered fathers, and you lords brothers, the nobles, seized
+your swords? For whom are you sparing neither watching nor toil, nor
+suffering nor blood? For whom, through resistance,--unfortunately
+vain,--are you exposing yourselves and holy places to the terrible
+vengeance of the invincible legions of Sweden? Is it for Yan Kazimir?
+But he has already disregarded our kingdom. Do you not know that he has
+already made his choice, and preferring wealth, joyous feasts; and
+peaceful delights to a troublesome throne, has abdicated in favor of
+Karl Gustav? You are not willing to leave him, but he has left you, you
+are unwilling to break your oath, he has broken it; you are ready to
+die for him, but he cares not for you nor for any of us. Our lawful
+king now is Karl Gustav! Be careful, then, lest you draw on your heads,
+not merely anger, vengeance, and ruin, but sin before heaven, the
+cross, and the Most Holy Lady; for you are raising insolent hands, not
+against invaders, but against your own king."
+
+These words were received in silence, as though death were flying
+through that chamber. What could be more terrible than news of the
+abdication of Yan Kazimir? It was in truth news monstrously improbable;
+but that old noble gave it there in presence of the cross, in presence
+of the image of Mary, and with tears in his eyes.
+
+But if it were true, further resistance was in fact madness. The nobles
+covered their eyes with their hands, the monks pulled their cowls over
+their heads, and silence, as of the grave, continued unbroken; but
+Kordetski, the prior, began to whisper earnest prayer with his pallid
+lips, and his eyes, calm, deep, clear, and piercing, were fixed on the
+speaker immovably.
+
+The noble felt that inquiring glance, was ill at ease and oppressed by
+it; he wished to preserve the marks of importance, benignity,
+compassionate virtue, good wishes, but could not; he began to cast
+restless glances on the other fathers, and after a while he spoke
+further:--
+
+"It is the worst thing to inflame stubbornness by a long abuse of
+patience. The result of your resistance will be the destruction of this
+holy church, and the infliction on you--God avert it!--of a terrible
+and cruel rule, which you will be forced to obey. Aversion to the world
+and avoidance of its questions are the weapons of monks. What have you
+to do with the uproar of war,--you, whom the precepts of your order
+call to retirement and silence? My brothers, revered and most beloved
+fathers! do not take on your hearts, do not take on your consciences,
+such a terrible responsibility. It was not you who built this sacred
+retreat, not for you alone must it serve! Permit that it flourish, and
+that it bless this land for long ages, so that our sons and grandsons
+may rejoice in it."
+
+Here the traitor opened his arms and fell into tears. The nobles were
+silent, the fathers were silent; doubt had seized all. Their hearts
+were tortured, and despair was at hand; the memory of baffled and
+useless endeavors weighed on their minds like lead.
+
+"I am waiting for your answer, fathers," said the venerable traitor,
+dropping his head on his breast.
+
+Kordetski now rose, and with a voice in which there was not the least
+hesitation or doubt, spoke as if with the vision of a prophet,--
+
+"Your statement that Yan Kazimir has abandoned us, has abdicated and
+transferred his rights to Karl Gustav, is a calumny. Hope has entered
+the heart of our banished king, and never has he toiled more zealously
+than he is toiling at this moment to secure the salvation of the
+country, to secure his throne, and bring us aid in oppression."
+
+The mask fell in an instant from the face of the traitor; malignity and
+deceit were reflected in it as clearly as if dragons had crept out at
+once from the dens of his soul, in which till that moment they had held
+themselves hidden.
+
+"Whence this intelligence, whence this certainty?" inquired he.
+
+"Whence?" answered the prior, pointing to a great crucifix hanging on
+the wall. "Go! place your finger on the pierced feet of Christ, and
+repeat what you have told us."
+
+The traitor began to bend as if under the crushing of an iron hand, and
+a new dragon, terror, crawled forth to his face.
+
+Kordetski, the prior, stood lordly, terrible as Moses; rays seemed to
+shoot from his temples.
+
+"Go, repeat!" said he, without lowering his hand, in a voice so
+powerful that the shaken arches of the council chamber trembled and
+echoed as if in fear,--"Go, repeat!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; at last the stifled voice of the visitor
+was heard,--
+
+"I wash my hands--"
+
+"Like Pilate!" finished Kordetski.
+
+The traitor rose and walked out of the room. He hurried through the
+yard of the cloister, and when he found himself outside the gate, he
+began to run, almost as if something were hunting him from the cloister
+to the Swedes.
+
+Zamoyski went to Charnyetski and Kmita, who had not been in the hall,
+to tell them what had happened.
+
+"Did that envoy bring any good?" asked Charnyetski; "he had an
+honest face."
+
+"God guard us from such honest men!" answered Zamoyski; "he brought
+doubt and temptation."
+
+"What did he say?" asked Kmita, raising a little the lighted match
+which he was holding in his hand.
+
+"He spoke like a hired traitor."
+
+"That is why he hastens so now, I suppose," said Charnyetski. "See! he
+is running with almost full speed to the Swedish camp. Oh, I would send
+a ball after him!"
+
+"A good thing!" said Kmita, and he put the match to the cannon.
+
+The thunder of the gun was heard before Zamoyski and Charnyetski could
+see what had happened. Zamoyski caught his head.
+
+"In God's name!" cried he, "what have you done?--he was an envoy."
+
+"I have done ill!" answered Kmita; "for I missed. He is on his feet
+again and hastens farther. Oh! why did it go over him?" Here he turned
+to Zamoyski. "Though I had hit him in the loins, they could not have
+proved that we fired at him purposely, and God knows I could not hold
+the match in my fingers; it came down of itself. Never should I have
+fired at an envoy who was a Swede, but at sight of Polish traitors my
+entrails revolt."
+
+"Oh, curb yourself; for there would be trouble, and they would be ready
+to injure our envoys."
+
+But Charnyetski was content in his soul; for Kmita heard him mutter,
+"At least that traitor will be sure not to come on an embassy again."
+
+This did not escape the ear of Zamoyski, for he answered: "If not this
+one, others will be found; and do you, gentlemen, make no opposition to
+their negotiations, do not interrupt them of your own will; for the
+more they drag on, the more it results to our profit. Succor, if God
+sends it, will have time to assemble, and a hard winter is coming,
+making the siege more and more difficult. Delay is loss for the enemy,
+but brings profit to us."
+
+Zamoyski then went to the chamber, where, after the envoy's departure,
+consultation was still going on. The words of the traitor had startled
+men; minds and souls were excited. They did not believe, it is true, in
+the abdication of Yan Kazimir; but the envoy had held up to their
+vision the power of the Swedes, which previous days of success had
+permitted them to forget. Now it confronted their minds with all that
+terror before which towns and fortresses not such as theirs had been
+frightened,--Poznan, Warsaw, Cracow, not counting the multitude of
+castles which had opened their gates to the conqueror; how could Yasna
+Gora defend itself in a general deluge of defeats?
+
+"We shall defend ourselves a week longer, two, three," thought to
+themselves some of the nobles and some of the monks; "but what farther,
+what end will there be to these efforts?"
+
+The whole country was like a ship already deep in the abyss, and that
+cloister was peering up like the top of a mast through the waves. Could
+those wrecked ones, clinging to the mast, think not merely of saving
+themselves, but of raising that vessel from under the ocean?
+
+According to man's calculations they could not, and still, at the
+moment when Zamoyski re-entered the hall, Kordetski was saying,--
+
+"My brothers! if you sleep not, neither do I sleep. When you are
+imploring our Patroness for rescue, I too am praying. Weariness, toil,
+weakness, cling to my bones as well as to yours; responsibility in like
+manner weighs upon me--nay, more perhaps, than upon you. Why have I
+faith while you seem in doubt? Enter into yourselves; or is it that
+your eyes, blinded by earthly power, see not a power greater than the
+Swedes? Or think you that no defence will suffice, that no hand can
+overcome that preponderance? If that is the case your thoughts are
+sinful, and you blaspheme against the mercy of God, against the
+all-might of our Lord, against the power of that Patroness whose
+servants you call yourselves. Who of you will dare to say that that
+Most Holy Queen cannot shield us and send victory? Therefore let us
+beseech her, let us implore night and day, till by our endurance, our
+humility, our tears, our sacrifice of body and health, we soften her
+heart, and pray away our previous sins."
+
+"Father," said one of the nobles, "it is not a question for us of our
+lives or of our wives and children; but we tremble at the thought of
+the insults which may be put on the image, should the enemy capture the
+fortress by storm."
+
+"And we do not wish to take on ourselves the responsibility," added
+another.
+
+"For no one has a right to take it, not even the prior," added a third.
+
+And the opposition increased, and gained boldness, all the more since
+many monks maintained silence. The prior, instead of answering
+directly, began to pray.
+
+"O Mother of Thy only Son!" said he, raising his hands and his eyes
+toward heaven, "if Thou hast visited us so that in Thy capital we
+should give an example to others of endurance, of bravery, of
+faithfulness to Thee, to the country, to the king,--if Thou hast chosen
+this place in order to rouse by it the consciences of men and save the
+whole country, have mercy on those who desire to restrain, to stop the
+fountain of Thy grace, to hinder Thy miracles, and resist Thy holy
+will." Here he remained a moment in ecstasy, and then turned to the
+monks and nobles: "What man will take on his shoulders this
+responsibility,--the responsibility of stopping the miracles of Mary
+Her grace. Her salvation for this kingdom and the Catholic faith?"
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" answered a number of
+voices, "God preserve us from that!"
+
+"Such a man will not be found!" cried Zamoyski.
+
+And those of the monks in whose hearts doubt had been plunging began to
+beat their breasts, for no small fear had now seized them; and none of
+the councillors thought of surrender that evening.
+
+But though the hearts of the older men were strengthened, the
+destructive planting of that hireling had given forth fruits of poison.
+
+News of the abdication of Yan Kazimir and the improbability of succor
+went from the nobles to the women, from the women to the servants; the
+servants spread it among the soldiers, on whom it made the very worst
+impression. The peasants were astonished least of all; but experienced
+soldiers, accustomed to calculate the turns of war in soldier fashion
+only, began to assemble and explain to one another the impossibility of
+further defence, complaining of the stubbornness of monks, who did not
+understand the position; and, finally, to conspire and talk in secret.
+
+A certain gunner, a German of suspected fidelity, proposed that the
+soldiers themselves take the matter in hand, and come to an
+understanding with the Swedes touching the surrender of the fortress.
+Others caught at this idea; but there were those who not only opposed
+the treason resolutely, but informed Kordetski of it without delay.
+
+Kordetski, who knew how to join with the firmest trust in the powers of
+heaven the greatest earthly adroitness and caution, destroyed the
+secretly spreading treason in its inception.
+
+First of all he expelled from the fortress the leaders of the treason,
+and at the head of them that gunner, having no fear whatever of what
+they could inform the Swedes regarding the state of the fortress and
+its weak sides; then, doubling the monthly wages of the garrison, he
+took from them an oath to defend the cloister to the last drop of their
+blood.
+
+But he redoubled also his watchfulness, resolving to look with more
+care to the paid soldiers, as well as the nobles, and even his own
+monks. The older fathers were detailed to the night choirs; the
+younger, besides the service of God, were obliged to render service on
+the walls.
+
+Next day a review of the infantry was held. To each bastion one noble
+with his servants, ten monks and two reliable gunners were detailed.
+All these were bound to watch, night and day, the places confided to
+them.
+
+Pan Mosinski took his place at the northeastern bastion; he was a good
+soldier, the man whose little child had survived in a miraculous
+manner, though a bomb fell near its cradle. With him Father Hilary
+Slavoshevski kept guard. On the western bastion was Father Myeletski,
+of the nobles Pan Mikolai Kryshtoporski, a man surly and abrupt in
+speech, but of unterrified valor. The southeastern bastion was occupied
+by Charnyetski and Kmita, and with them was Father Adam Stypulski, who
+had formerly been a hussar. He, when the need came, tucked up his
+habit, aimed cannon, and took no more heed of the balls flying over his
+head than did the old sergeant Soroka. Finally, to the southwestern
+bastion were appointed Pan Skorjevski and Father Daniel Ryhtalski, who
+were distinguished by this, that both could abstain from sleep two and
+three nights in succession without harm to their health or their
+strength.
+
+Fathers Dobrosh and Malahovski were appointed over the sentries.
+Persons unfitted for fighting were appointed to the roofs. The armory
+and all military implements Father Lyassota took under his care; after
+Father Dobrosh, he took also the office of master of the fires. In the
+night he had to illuminate the walls so that infantry of the enemy
+might not approach them. He arranged sockets and iron-holders on the
+towers, on which flamed at night torches and lights.
+
+In fact, the whole tower looked every night like one gigantic torch. It
+is true that this lightened cannonading for the Swedes; but it might
+serve as a sign that the fortress was holding out yet, if, perchance,
+some army should march to relieve the besieged.
+
+So then not only had designs of surrender crept apart into nothing, but
+the besieged turned with still greater zeal to defence. Next morning
+the prior walked along the walls, like a shepherd through a sheepfold,
+saw that everything was right, smiled kindly, praised the chiefs and
+the soldiers, and coming to Charnyetski, said with radiant face,--
+
+"Our beloved leader, Pan Zamoyski, rejoices equally with me, for he
+says that we are now twice as strong as at first. A new spirit has
+entered men's hearts, the grace of the Most Holy Lady will do the rest;
+but meanwhile I will take to negotiations again. We will delay and put
+off, for by such means the blood of people will be spared."
+
+"Oh, revered father!" said Kmita, "what good are negotiations? Loss of
+time! Better another sortie to-night, and we will cut up those dogs."
+
+Kordetski (for he was in good humor) smiled as a mother smiles at a
+wayward child; then he raised a band of straw lying near the gun, and
+pretended to strike Pan Andrei with it on the shoulders: "And you will
+interfere here, you Lithuanian plague; you will lap blood as a wolf,
+and give an example of disobedience; here it is for you, here it is for
+you!"
+
+Kmita, delighted as a schoolboy, dodged to the right and to the left,
+and as if teasing purposely, repeated: "Kill the Swedes! kill, kill,
+kill!"
+
+And so they gave comfort to one another, having ardent souls devoted to
+the country. But Kordetski did not omit negotiations, seeing that
+Miller desired them earnestly and caught after every pretext. This
+desire pleased Kordetski, for he divined, without trouble, that it
+could not be going well with the enemy if he was so anxious to finish.
+
+Days passed then, one after another, in which guns and muskets were not
+indeed silent, but pens were working mainly. In this way the siege was
+prolonged, and winter was coming harsher and harsher. On the Carpathian
+summits clouds hatched in their precipitous nests storms, frost, and
+snows, and then came forth on the country, leading their icy
+descendants. At night the Swedes cowered around fires, choosing to die
+from the balls of the cloister rather than freeze.
+
+A hard winter had rendered difficult the digging of trenches and the
+making of mines. There was no progress in the siege. In the mouths
+not merely of officers, but of the whole army, there was only one
+word,--"negociations."
+
+The priests feigned at first a desire to surrender. Father Dobrosh and
+the learned priest Sebastyan Stavitski came to Miller as envoys. They
+gave him some hope of agreement. He had barely heard this when he
+opened his arms and was ready to seize them with joy to his embraces.
+It was no longer a question of Chenstohova, but of the whole country.
+The surrender of Yasna Gora would have removed the last hope of the
+patriots, and pushed the Commonwealth finally into the arms of the King
+of Sweden; while, on the contrary, resistance, and that a victorious
+resistance, might change hearts and call out a terrible new war. Signs
+were not wanting. Miller knew this, felt what he had undertaken, what a
+terrible responsibility was weighing on him; he knew that either the
+favor of the king, with the baton of a marshal, honors, a title, were
+waiting for him, or final fall. Since he had begun to convince himself
+that he could not crack this "nut," he received the priests with
+unheard-of honor, as if they were embassadors from the Emperor of
+Germany or the Sultan. He invited them to a feast, he drank to their
+honor, and also to the health of the prior and Pan Zamoyski; he gave
+them fish for the cloister; finally, he offered conditions of surrender
+so gracious that he did not doubt for a moment that they would be
+accepted in haste.
+
+The fathers thanked him humbly, as beseemed monks; they took the paper
+and went their way. Miller promised the opening of the gates at eight
+of the following morning. Joy indescribable reigned in the camp of the
+Swedes. The soldiers left the trenches, approached the walls, and began
+to address the besieged.
+
+But it was announced from the cloister that in an affair of such weight
+the prior must consult the whole Congregation; the monks therefore
+begged for one day's delay. Miller consented without hesitation.
+Meanwhile they were counselling in the chamber till late at night.
+
+Though Miller was an old and trained warrior, though there was not,
+perhaps, in the whole Swedish army a general who had conducted more
+negotiations with various places than that Poliorcetes, still his heart
+beat unquietly when next morning he saw two white habits approaching
+his quarters.
+
+They were not the same fathers. First walked Father Bleshynski, a
+reader of philosophy, bearing a sealed letter; after him came Father
+Malahovski, with hands crossed on his breast, with drooping head and a
+face slightly pale.
+
+The general received them surrounded by his staff and all his noted
+colonels; and when he had answered politely the submissive bow of
+Father Bleshynski, he took the letter from his hand hastily and began
+to read.
+
+But all at once his face changed terribly: a wave of blood flew to his
+head; his eyes were bursting forth, his neck grew thick, and terrible
+anger raised the hair under his wig. For a while speech was taken from
+him; he only indicated with his hand the letter to the Prince of Hesse,
+who ran over it with his eyes, and turning to the colonels, said
+calmly,--
+
+"The monks declare only this much, that they cannot renounce Yan
+Kazimir before the primate proclaims a new king; or speaking in other
+words, they will not recognize Karl Gustav."
+
+Here the Prince of Hesse laughed. Sadovski fixed a jeering glance on
+Miller, and Count Veyhard began to pluck his own beard from rage. A
+terrible murmur of excitement rose among those present.
+
+Then Miller struck his palms on his knees and cried,--
+
+"Guards, guards!"
+
+The mustached faces of four musketeers showed themselves quickly in the
+door.
+
+"Take those shaven sticks," cried the general, "and confine them! And
+Pan Sadovski, do you trumpet for me under the cloister, that if they
+open fire from one cannon on the walls, I will hang these two monks the
+next moment."
+
+The two priests were led out amid ridicule and the scoffing of
+soldiers. The musketeers put their own caps on the priests' heads, or
+rather on their faces to cover their eyes, and led them of purpose to
+various obstacles. When either of the priests stumbled or fell, an
+outburst of laughter was heard in the crowds; but the fallen man they
+raised with the butts of muskets, and pretending to support, they
+pushed him by the loins and the shoulders. Some threw horse-dung at the
+priests; others took snow and rubbed it on their shaven crowns, or let
+it roll down on their habits. The soldiers tore strings from trumpets,
+and tying one end to the neck of each priest, held the other, and
+imitating men taking cattle to a fair, called out the prices.
+
+Both fathers walked on in silence, with hands crossed on their breasts
+and prayers on their lips. Finally, trembling from cold and insulted,
+they were enclosed in a barn; around the place guards armed with
+muskets were stationed.
+
+Miller's command, or rather his threat, was trumpeted under the
+cloister walls.
+
+The fathers were frightened, and the troops were benumbed from the
+threat. The cannon were silent; a council was assembled, they knew not
+what to do. To leave the fathers in cruel hands was impossible; and if
+they sent others, Miller would detain them as well. A few hours later
+he himself sent a messenger, asking what the monks thought of doing.
+
+They answered that until the fathers were freed no negotiations could
+take place; for how could the monks believe that the general would
+observe conditions with them if, despite the chief law of nations, he
+imprisoned envoys whose sacredness even barbarians respect?
+
+To this declaration there was no ready answer; hence terrible
+uncertainty weighed on the cloister and froze the zeal of its
+defenders.
+
+The Swedish army dug new trenches in haste, filled baskets with earth,
+planted cannon; insolent soldiers pushed forward to within half a
+musket-shot of the walls. They threatened the church, the defenders;
+half-drunken soldiers shouted, raising their hands toward the walls,
+"Surrender the cloister, or you will see your monks hanging!"
+
+Others blasphemed terribly against the Mother of God and the Catholic
+faith. The besieged, out of respect to the life of the fathers, had to
+listen with patience. Rage stopped the breath in Kmita's breast. He
+tore the hair on his head, the clothing on his breast, and wringing his
+hands, said to Charnyetski,--
+
+"I asked, 'Of what use is negotiation with criminals?' Now stand and
+suffer, while they are crawling into our eyes and blaspheming! Mother
+of God, have mercy on me, and give me patience! By the living God, they
+will begin soon to climb the walls! Hold me, chain me like a murderer,
+for I shall not contain myself."
+
+But the Swedes came ever nearer, blaspheming more boldly.
+
+Meanwhile a fresh event brought the besieged to despair. Stefan
+Charnyetski in surrendering Cracow had obtained the condition of going
+out with all his troops, and remaining with them in Silesia till the
+end of the war. Seven hundred infantry of those troops of the royal
+guard, under command of Colonel Wolf, were near the boundary, and
+trusting in stipulations, were not on their guard. Count Veyhard
+persuaded Miller to capture those men.
+
+Miller sent Count Veyhard himself, with two thousand cavalry, who
+crossing the boundary at night attacked those troops during sleep, and
+captured them to the last man. When they were brought to the Swedish
+camp, Miller commanded to lead them around the wall, so as to show the
+priests that that army from which they had hoped succor would serve
+specially for the capture of Chenstohova.
+
+The sight of that brilliant guard of the king dragged along the walls
+was crushing to the besieged, for no one doubted that Miller would
+force them first to the storm.
+
+Panic spread again among the troops of the cloister; some of the
+soldiers began to break their weapons and exclaim that there was help
+no longer, that it was necessary to surrender at the earliest. Even the
+hearts of the nobles had fallen; some of them appeared before Kordetski
+again with entreaties to take pity on their children, on the sacred
+place, on the image, and on the Congregation of monks. The courage of
+the prior and Pan Zamoyski was barely enough to put down this movement.
+
+But Kordetski had the liberation of the imprisoned fathers on his mind
+first of all, and he took the best method; for he wrote to Miller that
+he would sacrifice those brothers willingly for the good of the church.
+Let the general condemn them to death; all would know in future what to
+expect from him, and what faith to give his promises.
+
+Miller was joyful, for he thought the affair was approaching its end.
+But he did not trust the words of Kordetski at once, nor his readiness
+to sacrifice the monks. He sent therefore one of them, Father
+Bleshynski, to the cloister, binding him first with an oath to explain
+the power of the Swedes and the impossibility of resistance. The monk
+repeated everything faithfully, but his eyes spoke something else, and
+concluding he said,--
+
+"But prizing life less than the good of the Congregation, I am waiting
+for the will of the council; and whatsoever you decide I will lay
+before the enemy most faithfully."
+
+They directed him to say: "The monks are anxious to treat, but cannot
+believe a general who imprisons envoys." Next day the other envoy of
+the fathers came to the cloister, and returned with a similar answer.
+
+After this both heard the sentence of death. The sentence was read at
+Miller's quarters in presence of the staff and distinguished officers.
+All observed carefully the faces of the monks, curious to learn what
+impression the sentence would make; and with the greatest amazement
+they saw in both a joy as great, as unearthly, as if the highest
+fortune had been announced to them. The pale faces of the monks flushed
+suddenly, their eyes were filled with light, and Father Malahovski said
+with a voice trembling from emotion,--
+
+"Ah! why should we not die to-day, since we are predestined to fall a
+sacrifice for our Lord and the king?"
+
+Miller commanded to lead them forth straightway. The officers looked at
+one another. At last one remarked; "A struggle with such fanaticism is
+difficult."
+
+The Prince of Hesse added: "Only the first Christians had such faith.
+Is that what you wish to say?" Then he turned to Count Veyhard. "Pan
+Veyhard," said he, "I should be glad to know what you think of these
+monks?"
+
+"I have no need to trouble my head over them," answered he, insolently;
+"the general has already taken care of them."
+
+Then Sadovski stepped forward to the middle of the room, stood before
+Miller, and said with decision: "Your worthiness, do not command to
+execute these monks."
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because there will be no talk of negotiations after that; for the
+garrison of the fortress will be flaming with vengeance, and those men
+will rather fall one upon the other than surrender."
+
+"Wittemberg will send me heavy guns."
+
+"Your worthiness, do not do this deed," continued Sadovski, with force;
+"they are envoys who have come here with confidence."
+
+"I shall not have them hanged on confidence, but on gibbets."
+
+"The echo of this deed will spread through the whole country, will
+enrage all hearts, and turn them away from us."
+
+"Give me peace with your echoes; I have heard of them already a hundred
+times."
+
+"Your worthiness will not do this without the knowledge of his Royal
+Grace?"
+
+"You have no right to remind me of my duties to the king."
+
+"But I have the right to ask for permission to resign from service, and
+to present my reasons to his Royal Grace. I wish to be a soldier, not
+an executioner."
+
+The Prince of Hesse issued from the circle in the middle of the room,
+and said ostentatiously,--
+
+"Give me your hand. Pan Sadovski; you are a gentleman, a noble, and an
+honest man."
+
+"What does this mean?" roared Miller, springing from his seat.
+
+"General," answered the Prince of Hesse, "I permit myself to remark
+that Pan Sadovski is an honorable man, and I judge that there is
+nothing in this against discipline."
+
+Miller did not like the Prince of Hesse; but that cool, polite, and
+also contemptuous manner of speaking, special to men of high rank,
+imposed on him, as it does on many persons of low birth. Miller made
+great efforts to acquire this manner, but had no success. He restrained
+his outburst, however, and said calmly,--
+
+"The monks will be hanged to-morrow."
+
+"That is not my affair," answered the Prince of Hesse; "but in that
+event let your worthiness order an attack on those two thousand Poles
+who are in our camp, for if you do not they will attack us. Even now it
+is less dangerous for a Swedish soldier to go among a pack of wolves
+than among their tents. This is all I have to say, and now I permit
+myself to wish you success." When he had said this he left the
+quarters.
+
+Miller saw that he had gone too far. But he did not withdraw his
+orders, and that same day gibbets wore erected in view of the whole
+cloister. At the same time the soldiers, taking advantage of the truce,
+pushed still nearer the walls, not ceasing to jeer, insult, blaspheme,
+and challenge. Whole throngs of them climbed the mountain, stood as
+closely together as if they intended to make an assault.
+
+That time Kmita, whom they had not chained as he had requested, did not
+in fact restrain himself, and thundered from a cannon into the thickest
+group, with such effect that he laid down in a row all those who stood
+in front of the shot. That was like a watchword; for at once, without
+orders, and even in spite of orders, all the cannons began to play,
+muskets and guns thundered.
+
+The Swedes, exposed to fire from every side, fled from the fortress
+with howling and screaming, many falling dead on the road.
+
+Charnyetski sprang to Kmita: "Do you know that for that the reward is a
+bullet in the head?"
+
+"I know, all one to me. Let me be--"
+
+"In that case aim surely,"
+
+Kmita aimed surely; soon, however, he missed. A great movement rose
+meanwhile in the Swedish camp, but it was so evident that the Swedes
+were the first to violate the truce, that Miller himself recognized in
+his soul that the besieged were in the right.
+
+What is more, Kmita did not even suspect that with his shots he had
+perhaps saved the lives of the fathers; but Miller, because of these
+shots, became convinced that the monks in the last extremity were
+really ready to sacrifice their two brethren for the good of the church
+and the cloister.
+
+The shots beat into his head this idea also, that if a hair were to
+fall from the heads of the envoys, he would not hear from the cloister
+anything save similar thunders; so next day he invited the two
+imprisoned monks to dinner, and the day after he sent them to the
+cloister.
+
+Kordetski wept when he saw them, all took them in their arms and were
+astonished at hearing from their mouths that it was specially owing to
+those shots that they were saved. The prior, who had been angry at
+Kmita, called him at once and said,--
+
+"I was angry because I thought that you had destroyed the two fathers;
+but the Most Holy Lady evidently inspired you. This is a sign of Her
+favor, be rejoiced."
+
+"Dearest, beloved father, there will be no more negotiations, will
+there?" asked Kmita, kissing Kordetski's hands.
+
+But barely had he finished speaking, when a trumpet was heard at the
+gates, and an envoy from Miller entered the cloister.
+
+This was Pan Kuklinovski, colonel of the volunteer squadron attached
+to the Swedes. The greatest ruffians without honor or faith served in
+that squadron, in part dissidents such as Lutherans, Arians,
+Calvinists,--whereby was explained their friendship for Sweden; but a
+thirst for robbery and plunder attracted them mainly to Miller's army.
+That band, made up of nobles, outlaws, fugitives from prison and from
+the hands of a master, of attendants, and of gallows-birds snatched
+from the rope, was somewhat like Kmita's old party, save in this, that
+Kmita's men fought as do lions, and those preferred to plunder, offer
+violence to noble women, break open stables and treasure chests. But
+Kuklinovski himself had less resemblance to Kmita. Age had mixed gray
+with his hair. He had a face dried, insolent, and shameless. His eyes,
+which were unusually prominent and greedy, indicated violence of
+character. He was one of those soldiers in whom, because of a turbulent
+life and continuous wars, conscience had been burned out to the bottom.
+A multitude of such men strolled about in that time, after the Thirty
+Years' War, through all Germany and Poland. They were ready to serve
+any man, and more than once a mere simple incident determined the side
+on which they were to stand.
+
+Country and faith, in a word all things sacred, were thoroughly
+indifferent to them. They recognized nothing but war, and sought in it
+pleasure, dissipation, profit, and oblivion of life. But still when
+they had chosen some side they served it loyally enough, and that
+through a certain soldier-robber honor, so as not to close the career
+to themselves and to others. Such a man was Kuklinovski. Stern daring
+and immeasurable stubbornness had won for him consideration among the
+disorderly. It was easy for him to find men. He had served in various
+arms and services. He had been ataman in the Saitch; he had led
+regiments in Wallachia; in Germany he had enlisted volunteers in the
+Thirty Years' War, and had won a certain fame as a leader of cavalry.
+His crooked legs, bent in bow fashion, showed that he had spent the
+greater part of his life on horseback. He was as thin as a splinter,
+and somewhat bent from profligacy. Much blood, shed not in war only,
+weighed upon him. And still he was not a man wholly wicked by nature;
+he felt at times nobler influences. But he was spoiled to the marrow of
+his bones, and insolent to the last degree. Frequently had he said in
+intimate company, in drink; "More than one deed was done for which the
+thunderbolt should have fallen, but it fell not."
+
+The effect of this impunity was that he did not believe in the justice
+of God, and punishment, not only during life, but after death. In other
+words, he did not believe in God; still, he believed in the devil, in
+witches, in astrologers, and in alchemy. He wore the Polish dress, for
+he thought it most fitting for cavalry; but his mustache, still black,
+he trimmed in Swedish fashion, and spread at the ends turned upward. In
+speaking he made every word diminutive, like a child; this produced a
+strange impression when heard from the mouth of such a devil incarnate
+and such a cruel ruffian, who was ever gulping human blood. He talked
+much and boastingly; clearly he thought himself a celebrated personage,
+and one of the first cavalry colonels on earth.
+
+Miller, who, though on a broader pattern, belonged himself to a similar
+class, valued him greatly, and loved specially to seat him at his own
+table. At that juncture Kuklinovski forced himself on the general as an
+assistant, guaranteeing that he would with his eloquence bring the
+priests to their senses at once.
+
+Earlier, when, after the arrest of the priests, Pan Zamoyski was
+preparing to visit Miller's camp and asked for a hostage, Miller sent
+Kuklinovski; but Zamoyski and the prior would not accept him, as not
+being of requisite rank.
+
+From that moment, touched in his self-love, Kuklinovski conceived a
+mortal hatred for the defenders of Yasna Gora, and determined to
+injure them with all his power. Therefore he chose himself as an
+embassy,--first for the embassy itself, and second so as to survey
+everything and cast evil seed here and there. Since he was long known
+to Charnyetski he approached the gate guarded by him; but Charnyetski
+was sleeping at the time,--Kmita, taking his place, conducted the guest
+to the council hall.
+
+Kuklinovski looked at Pan Andrei with the eye of a specialist, and at
+once he was pleased not only with the form but the bearing of the young
+hero, which might serve as a model.
+
+"A soldier," said he, raising his hand to his cap, "knows at once a
+real soldier. I did not think that the priests had such men in their
+service. What is your rank, I pray?"
+
+Id Kmita, who had the zeal of a new convert, the soul revolted at sight
+of Poles who served Swedes; still, he remembered the recent anger of
+Kordetski at his disregard of negotiations; therefore he answered
+coldly, but calmly,--
+
+"I am Babinich, former colonel in the Lithuanian army, but now a
+volunteer in the service of the Most Holy Lady."
+
+"And I am Kuklinovski, also colonel, of whom you must have heard; for
+during more than one little war men mentioned frequently that name and
+this sabre [here he struck at his side], not only here in the
+Commonwealth, but in foreign countries."
+
+"With the forehead," said Kmita, "I have heard."
+
+"Well, so you are from Lithuania, and in that land are famous soldiers.
+We know of each other, for the trumpet of fame is to be heard from one
+end of the world to the other. Do you know there, worthy sir, a certain
+Kmita?"
+
+The question fell so suddenly that Pan Andrei was as if fixed to the
+spot. "But why do you ask of him?"
+
+"Because I love him, though I know him not, for we are alike as two
+boots of one pair; and I always repeat this, with your permission,
+'There are two genuine soldiers in the Commonwealth,--I in the kingdom,
+and Kmita in Lithuania,'--a pair of dear doves, is not that true? Did
+you know him personally?"
+
+"Would to God that you were killed!" thought Kmita; but, remembering
+Kuklinovski's character of envoy, he answered aloud: "I did not know
+him personally. But now come in, for the council is waiting."
+
+When he had said this, he indicated the door through which a priest
+came out to receive the guest. Kuklinovski entered the chamber with him
+at once, but first he turned to Kmita: "It would please me," said he,
+"if at my return you and none other were to conduct me out."
+
+"I will wait here," answered Kmita. And he was left alone. After a
+while he began to walk back and forth with quick steps; his whole soul
+was roused within him, and his heart was filled with blood, black from
+anger.
+
+"Pitch does not stick to a garment like evil fame to a man," muttered
+he. "This scoundrel, this wretch, this traitor calls me boldly his
+brother, and thinks he has me as a comrade. See to what I have come!
+All gallows-birds proclaim me their own, and no decent man calls me to
+mind without horror. I have done little yet, little! If I could only
+give a lesson to this rascal! It cannot be but that I shall put my
+score on him."
+
+The council lasted long in the chamber. It had grown dark. Kmita was
+waiting yet.
+
+At last Kuklinovski appeared. Pan Andrei could not see the colonel's
+face, but he inferred from his quick panting, that the mission had
+failed, and had been also displeasing, for the envoy had lost desire
+for talk. They walked on then for some time in silence. Kmita
+determined meanwhile to get at the truth, and said with feigned
+sympathy,--
+
+"Surely, you are coming with nothing.--Our priests are stubborn; and,
+between you and me, they act ill, for we cannot defend ourselves
+forever."
+
+Kuklinovski halted and pulled him by the sleeve. "And do you think that
+they act ill? You have your senses; these priests will be ground into
+bran,--I guarantee that! They are unwilling to obey Kuklinovski; they
+will obey his sword."
+
+"You see, it is not a question of the priests with me," said Kmita,
+"but of this place, which is holy, that is not to be denied, but which
+the later it is surrendered the more severe must the conditions be. Is
+what men say true, that through the country tumults are rising, that
+here and there they are slashing the Swedes, and that the Khan is
+marching with aid? If that is true, Miller must retreat."
+
+"I tell you in confidence, a wish for Swedish broth is rising in the
+country, and likely in the army as well; that is true. They are talking
+of the Khan also. But Miller will not retreat; in a couple of days
+heavy artillery will come. We'll dig these foxes out of their hole, and
+then what will be will be!--But you have sense."
+
+"Here is the gate!" said Kmita; "here I must leave you, unless you wish
+me to attend you down the slope?"
+
+"Attend me, attend me! A couple of days ago you fired after an envoy."
+
+"Indeed! What do you mean?"
+
+"Maybe unwillingly. But better attend me; I have a few words to say to
+you."
+
+"And I to you."
+
+"That is well."
+
+They went outside the gate and sank in the darkness. Here Kuklinovski
+stopped, and taking Kmita again by the sleeve, began to speak,--
+
+"You, Sir Cavalier, seem to me adroit and foreseeing, and besides I
+feel in you a soldier, blood and bone. What the devil do you stick to
+priests for, and not to soldiers? Why be a serving lad for priests?
+There is a better and a pleasanter company with us,--with cups, dice,
+and women. Do you understand?"
+
+Here he pressed Kmita's arm with his fingers. "This house," continued
+he, pointing with his finger to the fortress, "is on fire, and a fool
+is he who flees not from a house when 'tis burning. Maybe you fear the
+name of traitor? Spit on those who would call you that! Come to our
+company; I, Kuklinovski, propose this. Obey, if you like; if you don't
+like, obey not--there will be no offence. General Miller will receive
+you well, I guarantee that; you have touched my heart, and I speak thus
+from good wishes. Ours is a joyous company, joyous! A soldier's freedom
+is in this,--to serve whom he likes. Monks are nothing to you! If a bit
+of virtue hinders you, then cough it out. Remember this also, that
+honest men serve with us. How many nobles, magnates, hetmans! What can
+be better? Who takes the part of our little Kazimir? No man save
+Sapyeha alone, who is bending Radzivill."
+
+Kmita grew curious; "Did you say that Sapyeha is bending Radzivill?"
+
+"I did. He is troubling him terribly there in Podlyasye, and is
+besieging him now in Tykotsin. But we do not disturb him."
+
+"Why is that?"
+
+"Because the King of Sweden wants them to devour one another. Radzivill
+was never reliable; he was thinking of himself. Besides, he is barely
+breathing. Whoever lets himself be besieged is in a fix, he is
+finished."
+
+"Will not the Swedes go to succor him?"
+
+"Who is to go? The king himself is in Prussia, for there lies the great
+question. The elector has wriggled out hitherto; he will not wriggle
+out this time. In Great Poland is war, Wittemberg is needed in Cracow,
+Douglas has work with the hill-men; so they have left Radzivill to
+himself. Let Sapyeha devour him. Sapyeha has grown, that is true, but
+his turn will come also. Our Karl, when he finishes with Prussia, will
+twist the horns of Sapyeha. Now there is no power against him, for all
+Lithuania stands at his side."
+
+"But Jmud?"
+
+"Pontus de la Gardie holds that in his paws, and heavy are the paws, I
+know him."
+
+"How is it that Radzivill has fallen, he whose power was equal to that
+of kings?"
+
+"It is quenching already, quenching--"
+
+"Wonderful are the ordinances of God!"
+
+"The wheel of war changes. But no more of this. Well, what? Do you make
+up your mind to my proposition? You'll not be sorry! Come to us. If it
+is too hurried to-day, think till to-morrow, till the day after, before
+the heavy artillery comes. These people here trust you evidently, since
+you pass through the gate as you do now. Or come with letters and go
+back no more."
+
+"You attract others to the Swedish side, for you are an envoy of
+Sweden," said Kmita; "it does not beseem you to act otherwise, though
+in your soul who knows what you think? There are those who serve the
+Swedes, but wish them ill in their hearts."
+
+"Word of a cavalier!" answered Kuklinovski, "that I speak sincerely,
+and not because I am filling the function of an envoy. Outside the gate
+I am no longer an envoy; and if you wish I will remove the office of
+envoy of my own will, and speak to you as a private man. Throw that
+vile fortress to the devil!"
+
+"Do you say this as a private man?"
+
+"Yes,"
+
+"And may I give answer to you as to a private man?"
+
+"As true as life I propose it myself."
+
+"Then listen, Pan Kuklinovski," Here Kmita inclined and looked into the
+very eyes of the ruffian. "You are a rascal, a traitor, a scoundrel, a
+crab-monger, an arch-cur! Have you enough, or shall I spit in your eyes
+yet?"
+
+Kuklinovski was astounded to such a degree that for a time there was
+silence.
+
+"What is this? How is this? Do I hear correctly?"
+
+"Have you enough, you cur? or do you wish me to spit in your eyes?"
+
+Kuklinovski drew his sabre; but Kmita caught him with his iron hand by
+the wrist, twisted his arm, wrested the sabre from him, then slapped
+him on the cheek so that the sound went out in the darkness; seized him
+by the other side, turned him in his hand like a top, and kicking him
+with all his strength, cried,--
+
+"To a private man, not to an envoy!"
+
+Kuklinovski rolled down like a stone thrown from a ballista. Pan Andrei
+went quietly to the gate.
+
+The two men parted on the slope of the eminence; hence it was difficult
+to see them from the walls. But Kmita found waiting for him at the gate
+Kordetski, who took him aside at once, and asked,--
+
+"What were you doing so long with Kuklinovski."
+
+"I was entering into confidence with him," answered Pan Andrei.
+
+"What did he say?"
+
+"He said that it was true concerning the Khan."
+
+"Praise be to God, who can change the hearts of pagans and make friends
+out of enemies."
+
+"He told me that Great Poland is moving."
+
+"Praise be to God!"
+
+"That the quarter soldiers are more and more unwilling to remain with
+the Swedes; that in Podlyasye, the voevoda of Vityebsk, Sapyeha, has
+beaten the traitor Radzivill, and that he has all honest people with
+him. As all Lithuania stands by him, except Jmud, which De la Gardie
+has taken."
+
+"Praise be to God! Have you had no other talk with each other?"
+
+"Yes; Kuklinovski tried afterward to persuade me to go over to the
+Swedes."
+
+"I expected that," said the prior; "he is a bad man. And what did you
+answer?"
+
+"You see he told me, revered father, as follows: 'I put aside my office
+of envoy, which without that is finished beyond the gates, and I
+persuade you as a private man.' And I to make sure asked, 'May I answer
+as to a private man?' He said, 'Yes'--then--"
+
+"What then?"
+
+"Then I gave it to him in the snout, and he rolled down hill."
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
+
+"Be not angry, father; I acted very carefully, and that he will not say
+a word about the matter to any man is certain."
+
+The priest was silent for a time, then said; "That you acted honestly,
+I know. I am only troubled at this, that you have gained a new enemy.
+He is a terrible man."
+
+"One more, one less!" said Kmita. Then he bent to the ear of the
+priest. "But Prince Boguslav, he at least is an enemy! What is such a
+Kuklinovski? I don't even look back at him."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER III.
+
+
+Now the terrible Arwid Wittemberg made himself heard. A famous officer
+brought his stern letter to the cloister, commanding the fathers to
+surrender the fortress to Miller. "In the opposite event," wrote
+Wittemberg, "if you do not abandon resistance, and do not yield to the
+said general, you may be sure that a punishment awaits you which will
+serve others as an example. The blame for your suffering lay to
+yourselves."
+
+The fathers after receiving this letter determined in old fashion to
+procrastinate, and present new difficulties daily. Again days passed
+during which the thunder of artillery interrupted negotiations, and the
+contrary.
+
+Miller declared that he wished to introduce his garrison only to insure
+the cloister against bands of freebooters. The fathers answered that
+since their garrison appeared sufficient against such a powerful leader
+as the general himself, all the more would it suffice against bands of
+freebooters. They implored Miller, therefore, by all that was sacred,
+by the respect which the people had for the place, by God and by Mary,
+to go to Vyelunie, or wherever it might please him. But the patience of
+the Swedes was exhausted. That humility of the besieged, who implored
+for mercy while they were firing more and more quickly from cannons,
+brought the chief and the army to desperation.
+
+At first Miller could not get it into his head why, when the whole
+country had surrendered, that one place was defending itself; what
+power was upholding them; in the name of what hopes did these monks
+refuse to yield, for what were they striving, for what were they
+hoping?
+
+But flowing time brought more clearly the answer to that question. The
+resistance which had begun there was spreading like a conflagration. In
+spite of a rather dull brain, the general saw at last what the question
+with Kordetski was; and besides, Sadovski had explained
+incontrovertibly that it was not a question of that rocky nest, nor of
+Yasna Gora, nor of the treasures gathered in the cloister, nor of the
+safety of the Congregation, but of the fate of the whole Commonwealth.
+Miller discovered that that silent priest knew what he was doing, that
+he had knowledge of his mission, that he had risen as a prophet to
+enlighten the land by example,--to call with a mighty voice to the east
+and the west, to the north and the south, _Sursum corda!_ (Raise your
+hearts) in order to rouse, either by his victory or his death and
+sacrifice, the sleeping from their slumber, to purify the sinful, to
+bring light into darkness.
+
+When he had discovered this, that old warrior was simply terrified at
+that defender and at his own task. All at once that "hen-house" of
+Chenstohova seemed to him a giant mountain defended by a Titan, and the
+general seemed small to himself; and on his own army he looked, for the
+first time in his life, as on a handful of wretched worms. Was it for
+them to raise hands against that mysterious and heaven-touching power?
+Therefore Miller was terrified, and doubt began to steal into his
+heart. Seeing that the fault would be placed upon him, he began himself
+to seek the guilty, and his anger fell first on Count Veyhard. Disputes
+rose in the camp, and dissensions began to inflame hearts against one
+another; the works of the siege had to suffer therefrom.
+
+Miller had been too long accustomed to estimate men and events by the
+common measure of a soldier, not to console himself still at times with
+the thought that at last the fortress would surrender. And taking
+things in human fashion, it could not be otherwise. Besides, Wittemberg
+was sending him six siege guns of the heaviest calibre, which had shown
+their force at Cracow.
+
+"Devil take it!" thought Miller; "such walls will not stand against
+guns like these, and if that nest of terrors, of superstitions, of
+enchantment, winds up in smoke, then things will take another turn, and
+the whole country will be pacified."
+
+While waiting for the heavier guns, he commanded to fire from the
+smaller. The days of conflict returned. But in vain did balls of fire
+fall on the roofs, in vain did the best gunners exert superhuman power.
+As often as the wind blew away the sea of smoke, the cloister appeared
+untouched, imposing as ever, lofty, with towers piercing calmly the
+blue of the sky. At the same time things happened which spread
+superstitious terror among the besiegers. Now balls flew over the whole
+mountain and struck soldiers on the other side; now a gunner, occupied
+in aiming a gun, fell on a sudden; now smoke disposed itself in
+terrible and strange forms; now powder in the boxes exploded all at
+once, as if fired by some invisible hand.
+
+Besides, soldiers were perishing continually who alone, in twos or in
+threes, went out of the camp. Suspicion fell on the Polish auxiliary
+squadrons, which, with the exception of Kuklinovski's regiment, refused
+out and out every cooperation in the siege, and showed daily more
+menacing looks. Miller threatened Colonel Zbrojek with a court-martial,
+but he answered in presence of all the officers: "Try it, General."
+
+Officers from the Polish squadrons strolled purposely through the
+Swedish camp, exhibiting contempt and disregard for the soldiers, and
+raising quarrels with the officers. Thence it came to duels, in which
+the Swedes, as less trained in fencing, fell victims more frequently.
+Miller issued a severe order against duels, and finally forbade the
+Poles entrance to the camp. From this it came that at last both armies
+were side by side like enemies, merely awaiting an opportunity for
+battle.
+
+But the cloister defended itself ever better. It turned out that the
+guns sent by Pan Myaskovski were in no wise inferior to those which
+Miller had, and the gunners through constant practice arrived at such
+accuracy that each shot threw down an enemy. The Swedes attributed this
+to enchantment. The gunners answered the officers that with that power
+which defended the cloister it was no business of theirs to do battle.
+
+A certain morning a panic began in the southwestern trench, for the
+soldiers had seen distinctly a woman in a blue robe shielding the
+church and the cloister. At sight of this they threw themselves down on
+their faces. In vain did Miller ride up, in vain did he explain that
+mist and smoke had disposed themselves in that form, in vain besides
+was his threat of court-martial and punishment. At the first moment no
+one would hear him, especially as the general himself was unable to
+hide his amazement.
+
+Soon after this the opinion was spread through the whole army that no
+one taking part in the siege would die his own death. Many officers
+shared this belief, and Miller was not free from fears; for he brought
+in Lutheran ministers and enjoined on them to undo the enchantment.
+They walked through the camp whispering, and singing psalms; fear,
+however, had so spread that more than once they heard from the mouths
+of the soldiers: "Beyond your power, beyond your strength!"
+
+In the midst of discharges of cannon a new envoy from Miller entered
+the cloister, and stood before the face of Kordetski and the council.
+
+This was Pan Sladkovski, chamberlain of Rava, whom Swedish parties had
+seized as he was returning from Prussia. They received him coldly and
+harshly, though he had an honest face and his look was as mild as the
+sky; but the monks had grown accustomed to see honest faces on
+traitors. He was not confused a whit by such a reception; combing
+briskly his yellow forelock with his fingers, he began:--
+
+"Praised be Jesus Christ!"
+
+"For the ages of ages!" answered the Congregation, in a chorus.
+
+And Kordetski added at once; "Blessed be those who serve him."
+
+"I serve him," answered Sladkovski, "and that I serve him more
+sincerely than I do Miller will be shown soon. H'm! permit me,
+worthy and beloved fathers, to cough, for I must first spit out
+foulness. Miller then--tfu! sent me, my good lords, to you to persuade
+you--tfu!--to surrender. But I accepted the office so as to say to you:
+Defend yourselves, think not of surrender, for the Swedes are spinning
+thin, and the Devil is taking them by the eye."
+
+The monks and the laity were astonished at sight of such an envoy. Pan
+Zamoyski exclaimed at once: "As God is dear to me, this is an honest
+man!" and springing to him began to shake his hand; but Sladkovski,
+gathering his forelock into one bunch, said,--
+
+"That I am no knave will be shown straightway. I have become Miller's
+envoy so as to tell you news so favorable that I could wish, my good
+lords, to tell it all in one breath. Give thanks to God and His Most
+Holy Mother who chose you as instruments for changing men's hearts. The
+country, taught by your example and by your defence, is beginning to
+throw off the yoke of the Swedes. What's the use in talking? In Great
+Poland and Mazovia the people are beating the Swedes, destroying
+smaller parties, blocking roads and passages. In some places they have
+given the enemy terrible punishment already. The nobles are mounting
+their horses, the peasants are gathering in crowds, and when they seize
+a Swede they tear straps out of him. Chips are flying, tow is flying!
+This is what it has come to. And whose work is this?--yours."
+
+"An angel, an angel is speaking!" cried monks and nobles, raising their
+hands toward heaven.
+
+"Not an angel, but Sladkovski, at your service. This is
+nothing!--Listen on. The Khan, remembering the kindness of the brother
+of our rightful king, Yan Kazimir, to whom may God give many years! is
+marching with aid, and has already passed the boundary of the
+Commonwealth. The Cossacks who were opposed he has cut to pieces, and
+is moving on with a horde of a hundred thousand toward Lvoff, and
+Hmelnitski _nolens volens_ is coming with him."
+
+"For God's sake, for God's sake!" repeated people, overcome as it were
+by happiness.
+
+But Pan Sladkovski, sweating and waving his hand, with still more vigor
+cried,--
+
+"That is nothing yet! Pan Stefan Charnyetski, with whom the Swedes
+violated faith, for they carried captive his infantry under Wolf, feels
+free of his word and is mounting. Yan Kazimir is collecting troops, and
+may return any day to the country and the hetmans. Listen further, the
+hetmans, Pototski and Lantskoronski, and with them all the troops, are
+waiting only for the coming of the king to desert the Swedes and raise
+sabres against them. Meanwhile they are coming to an understanding with
+Sapyeha and the Khan. The Swedes are in terror; there is fire in the
+whole country, war in the whole country--whosoever is living is going
+to the field!"
+
+What took place in the hearts of the monks and the nobles is difficult
+of description. Some wept, some fell on their knees, other repeated,
+"It cannot be, it cannot be!" Hearing this, Sladkovski approached the
+great crucifix hanging on the wall and said,--
+
+"I place my hands on these feet of Christ pierced with a nail, and
+swear that I declare the pure and clean truth. I repeat only: Defend
+yourselves, fail not; trust not the Swedes; think not that by
+submission and surrender you could insure any safety for yourselves.
+They keep no promises, no treaties. You who are closed in here know not
+what is passing in the whole country, what oppression has come, what
+deeds of violent are done,--murdering of priests, profanation of
+sanctuaries, contempt of all law. They promise you everything, they
+observe nothing. The whole kingdom is given up as plunder to a
+dissolute soldiery. Even those who still adhere to the Swedes are
+unable to escape injustice. Such is the punishment of God on traitors,
+on those who break faith with the king. Delay!--I, as you see me here,
+if only I survive, if I succeed in slipping away from Miller, will move
+straightway to Silesia, to our king. I will fall at his feet and say:
+Gracious King, save Chenstohova and your most faithful servants! But,
+most beloved fathers, stand firm, for the salvation of the whole
+Commonwealth is depending upon you."
+
+Here Sladkovski's voice trembled, tears appeared on his eyelids, but he
+spoke further. "You will have grievous times yet: siege guns are coming
+from Cracow, which two hundred infantry are bringing. One is a
+particularly dreadful cannon. Terrible assaults will follow. But these
+will be the last efforts. Endure yet these, for salvation is coming
+already. By these red wounds of God, the king, the hetmans, the army,
+the whole Commonwealth will come to rescue its Patroness. This is what
+I tell you: rescue, salvation, glory is right here--not distant."
+
+The worthy noble now burst into tears, and sobbing became universal.
+
+Ah! still better news was due to that wearied handful of defenders, to
+that handful of faithful servants, and a sure consolation from the
+country.
+
+The prior rose, approached Sladkovski, and opened wide his arms.
+Sladkovski rushed into them, and they embraced each other long; others
+following their example began to fall into one another's arms, embrace,
+kiss, and congratulate one another as if the Swedes had already
+retreated. At last the prior said,--
+
+"To the chapel, my brethren, to the chapel!"
+
+He went in advance, and after him the others. All the candles were
+lighted, for it was growing dark outside; and the curtains were drawn
+aside from the wonder-working image, from which sweet abundant rays
+were scattered at once round about. Kordetski knelt on the steps,
+farther away the monks, the nobles, and common people; women with
+children were present also. Pale and wearied faces and eyes which had
+wept were raised toward the image; but from behind the tears was
+shining on each face a smile of happiness. Silence continued for a
+time; at last Kordetski began,--
+
+"Under thy protection we take refuge, Holy Mother of God--"
+
+Further words stopped on his lips, weariness, long suffering, hidden
+alarms, together with the gladsome hope of rescue, rose in him like a
+mighty wave; therefore sobbing shook his breast, and that man, who bore
+on his shoulders the fate of the whole country, bent like a weak child,
+fell on his face, and with weeping immeasurable had strength only to
+cry: "O Mary, Mary, Mary!"
+
+All wept with him, but the image from above cast brightest rays.
+
+It was late at night when the monks and the nobles went each his own
+way to the walls; but Kordetski remained all night lying in the chapel
+in the form of a cross. There were fears in the cloister that weariness
+might overpower him; but next morning he appeared on the bastions, went
+among the soldiers and the garrison, glad and refreshed, and here and
+there he repeated,--
+
+"Children, the Most Holy Lady will show again that she is mightier than
+siege guns, and then will come the end of your sorrows and torments."
+
+That morning Yatsek Bjuhanski, an inhabitant of Chenstohova, disguised
+as a Swede, approached the walls to confirm the news that great guns
+were coming from Cracow, but also that the Khan with the horde was
+approaching. He delivered a letter from Father Anton Pashkovski, of the
+monastery at Cracow, who, describing the terrible cruelty and robbery
+of the Swedes, incited and implored the fathers of Yasna Gora to put no
+trust in the promises of the enemy, but to defend the sacred place
+patiently against the insolence of the godless.
+
+"There is no faith in the Swedes," wrote Father Pashkovski, "no
+religion. Nothing divine or human is sacred and inviolate for them. It
+is not their custom to respect anything, though guarded by treaties or
+public declarations."
+
+That was the day of the Immaculate Conception. Some tens of officers
+and soldiers of the allied Polish squadrons besought with most urgent
+requests Miller's permission to go to the fortress for divine service.
+Perhaps Miller thought that they would become friendly with the
+garrison, carry news of the siege guns and spread alarm; perhaps he did
+not wish by refusing to cast sparks on inflammable elements, which
+without that made relations between the Poles and the Swedes more and
+more dangerous: 'tis enough that he gave the permission.
+
+With these quarter soldiers went a certain Tartar of the Polish
+Mohammedan Tartars. He, amid universal astonishment, encouraged the
+monks not to yield their holy place to vile enemies, considering with
+certainty that the Swedes would soon go away with shame and defeat. The
+quarter soldiers repeated the same, confirming completely the news
+brought by Sladkovski. All this taken together raised the courage of
+the besieged to such a degree that they had no fear of those gigantic
+cannons, and the soldiers made sport of them among themselves.
+
+After services firing began on both sides. There was a certain Swedish
+soldier who had come many times to the wall, and with a trumpet-like
+voice had blasphemed against the Mother of God. Many a time had the
+besieged fired at him, but always without result. Kmita aimed at him
+once, but his bow-string broke; the soldier became more and more
+insolent, and roused others by his daring. It was said that he had
+seven devils in his service who guarded and shielded him.
+
+He came this day again to blaspheme; but the besieged, trusting that on
+the day of the Immaculate Conception enchantments would have less
+effect, determined to punish him without fail. They fired a good while
+in vain; at last a cannon ball, rebounding from an ice wall, and
+tripping along the snow like a bird, struck him straight in the breast
+and tore him in two. The defenders comforted themselves with this and
+cried out: "Who will blaspheme against Her another time?" Meanwhile the
+revilers had rushed down to the trenches, in panic.
+
+The Swedes fired at the walls and the roofs; but the balls brought no
+terror to the besieged.
+
+The old beggarwoman, Konstantsia, who dwelt in a cranny of the cliff,
+used to go, as if in ridicule of the Swedes, along the whole slope,
+gathering bullets in her apron, and threatening from time to time the
+soldiers with her staff. They, thinking her a witch, were afraid she
+would injure them, especially when they saw that bullets did not touch
+her.
+
+Two whole days passed in vain firing. They hurled on the roof ship
+ropes very thickly steeped in pitch; these flew like fiery serpents;
+but the guards, trained in a masterly manner, met the danger in time. A
+night came with such darkness that, in spite of the fires, tar barrels,
+and the fireworks of Father Lyassota, the besieged could see nothing.
+
+Meanwhile some uncommon movement reigned among the Swedes. The squeak
+of wheels was heard, men's voices, at times the neighing of horses, and
+various other kinds of uproar. The soldiers on the walls guessed the
+cause easily.
+
+"The guns have come surely," said some.
+
+The officers were deliberating on a sortie which Charnyetski advised;
+but Zamoyski opposed, insisting, with reason, that at such important
+works the enemy must have secured themselves sufficiently, and must
+surely hold infantry in readiness. They resolved merely to fire toward
+the north and south, whence the greatest noise came. It was impossible
+to see the result in the darkness.
+
+Day broke at last, and its first rays exposed the works of the Swedes.
+North and south of the fortress were intrenchments, on which some
+thousands of men were employed. These intrenchments stood so high that
+to the besieged the summits of them seemed on a line with the walls of
+the fortress. In the openings at the top were seen great jaws of guns,
+and the soldiers standing behind them looked at a distance like swarms
+of yellow wasps.
+
+The morning Mass was not over in the church when unusual thunder shook
+the air; the window-panes rattled; some of them dropped out of the
+frames from shaking alone, and were broken with a sharp shiver on the
+stone floor; and the whole church was filled with dust which rose from
+fallen plaster.
+
+The great siege guns had spoken.
+
+A terrible fire began, such as the besieged had not experienced. At the
+end of Mass all rushed out on the walls and roofs. The preceding storms
+seemed innocent play in comparison with this terrible letting loose of
+fire and iron.
+
+The smaller pieces thundered in support of the siege guns. Great bombs,
+pieces of cloth steeped in pitch, torches, and fiery ropes were flying.
+Balls twenty-six pounds in weight tore out battlements, struck the
+walls of buildings; some settled in them, others made great holes,
+tearing off plaster and bricks. The walls surrounding the cloister
+began to shake here and there and lose pieces, and struck incessantly
+by new balls threatened to fall. The buildings of the cloister were
+covered with fire.
+
+The trumpeters on the tower felt it totter under them. The church
+quaked from continuous pounding, and candles fell out of the sockets at
+some of the altars.
+
+Water was poured in immense quantities on the fires that had begun, on
+the blazing torches, on the walls, on the fire balls; and formed,
+together with the smoke and the dust, rolls of steam so thick that
+light could not be seen through them. Damage was done to the walls and
+buildings. The cry, "It is burning, it is burning!" was heard oftener
+amid the thunder of cannon and the whistle of bullets. At the northern
+bastion the two wheels of a cannon were broken, and one injured cannon
+was silent. A ball had fallen into a stable, killed three horses, and
+set fire to the building. Not only balls, but bits of grenades, were
+falling as thickly as rain on the roofs, the bastions, and the walls.
+
+In a short time the groans of the wounded were heard. By a strange
+chance three young men fell, all named Yan. This amazed other defenders
+bearing the same name; but in general the defence was worthy of the
+storm. Even women, children, and old men came out on the walls.
+Soldiers stood there with unterrified heart, in smoke and fire, amid a
+rain of missiles, and answered with determination to the fire of the
+enemy. Some seized the wheels and rolled the cannon to the most exposed
+places; others thrust into breaches in the walls stones, beams, dung,
+and earth.
+
+Women with dishevelled hair and inflamed faces gave an example of
+daring, and some were seen running with buckets of water after bombs
+which were still springing and ready to burst right there, that moment.
+Ardor rose every instant, as if that smell of powder, smoke, and steam,
+that thunder, those streams of fire and iron, had the property of
+rousing it. All acted without command, for words died amid the awful
+noise. Only the supplications which were sung in the chapel rose above
+the voices of cannon.
+
+About noon firing ceased. All drew breath; but before the gate a drum
+was sounded, and the drummer sent by Miller, approaching the gate,
+inquired if the fathers had had  enough, and if they wished to
+surrender at once. Kordetski answered that they would deliberate over
+the question till morning. The answer had barely reached Miller when
+the attack began anew, and the artillery fire was redoubled.
+
+From time to time deep ranks of infantry pushed forward under fire
+toward the mountain, as if wishing to try an assault; but decimated by
+cannon and muskets, they returned each time quickly and in disorder
+under their own batteries. As a wave of the sea covers the shore and
+when it retreats leaves on the sand weeds, mussels, and various
+fragments broken in the deep, so each one of those Swedish waves when
+it sank back left behind bodies thrown here and there on the slope.
+
+Miller did not give orders to fire at the bastions, but at the wall
+between them, where resistance was least. Indeed, here and there
+considerable rents were made, but not large enough for the infantry to
+rush through.
+
+Suddenly a certain event checked the storm.
+
+It was well toward evening when a Swedish gunner about to apply a
+lighted match to one of the largest guns was struck in the very breast
+by a ball from the cloister. The ball came not with the first force,
+but after a third bound from the ice piled up at the intrenchment; it
+merely hurled the gunner a number of yards. He fell on an open box
+partly filled with powder. A terrible explosion was heard that instant,
+and masses of smoke covered the trench. When the smoke fell away it
+appeared that five gunners had lost their lives; the wheels of the
+cannon were injured, and terror seized the soldiers. It was necessary
+to cease fire for the time from that intrenchment, since a heavy fog
+had filled the darkness; they also stopped firing in other places.
+
+The next day was Sunday. Lutheran ministers held services in the
+trenches, and the guns were silent. Miller again inquired if the
+fathers had had  enough. They answered that they could endure more.
+
+Meanwhile the damage in the cloister was examined and found to be
+considerable. People were killed and the wall was shaken here and
+there. The most formidable gun was a gigantic culverin standing on the
+north. It had broken the wall to such a degree, torn out so many stones
+and bricks, that the besieged could foresee that should the fire
+continue two days longer a considerable part of the wall would give
+away.
+
+A breach such as the culverin would make could not be filled with beams
+or earth. The prior foresaw with an eye full of sorrow the ruin which
+he could not prevent.
+
+Monday the attack was begun anew, and the gigantic gun widened the
+breach. Various mishaps met the Swedes, however. About dusk that day a
+Swedish gunner killed on the spot Miller's sister's son, whom the
+general loved as though he had been his own, and intended to leave him
+all that he had,--beginning with his name and military reputation and
+ending with his fortune. But the heart of the old warrior blazed up
+with hatred all the more from this loss.
+
+The wall at the northern bastion was so broken that preparations were
+made in the night for a hand-to-hand assault. That the infantry might
+approach the fortress with less danger, Miller commanded to throw up in
+the darkness a whole series of small redoubts, reaching the very slope.
+But the night was clear, and white light from the snow betrayed the
+movements of the enemy. The cannons of Yasna Gora scattered the men
+occupied in making those parapets formed of fascines, fences, baskets,
+and timbers.
+
+At daybreak Charnyetski saw a siege machine which they had already
+rolled toward the walls. But the besieged broke it with cannon fire
+without difficulty; so many men were killed on that occasion that the
+day might have been called a day of victory for the besieged, had it
+not been for that great gun which shook the wall incessantly with
+irrestrainable power.
+
+A thaw came on the following days, and such dense mists settled down
+that the fathers attributed them to the action of evil spirits. It was
+impossible to see either the machines of war, the erection of parapets,
+or the work of the siege. The Swedes came near the very walls of the
+cloister. In the evening Charnyetski, when the prior was making his
+usual round of the walls, took him by the side and said in a low
+voice,--
+
+"Bad, revered father! Our wall will not hold out beyond a day."
+
+"Perhaps these fogs will prevent them from firing," answered Kordetski;
+"and we meanwhile will repair the rents somehow."
+
+"The fogs will not prevent the Swedes, for that gun once aimed may
+continue even in darkness the work of destruction; but here the ruins
+are falling and falling."
+
+"In God and in the Most Holy Lady is our hope."
+
+"True! But if we make a sortie? Even were we to lose men, if they could
+only spike that dragon of hell."
+
+Just then some form looked dark in the fog, and Babinich appeared near
+the speakers.
+
+"I saw that some one was speaking; but faces cannot be distinguished
+three yards away," said he. "Good evening, revered father! But of what
+is the conversation?"
+
+"We are talking of that gun. Pan Charnyetski advises a sortie. These
+fogs are spread by Satan; I have commanded an exorcism."
+
+"Dear father," said Pan Andrei, "since that gun has begun to shake the
+wall, I am thinking of it, and something keeps coming to my head. A
+sortie is of no use. But let us go to some room; there I will tell you
+my plans."
+
+"Well," said the prior, "come to my cell."
+
+Soon after they were sitting at a pine table in Kordetski's modest
+cell. Charnyetski and the priest were looking carefully into the
+youthful face of Babinich, who said,--
+
+"A sortie is of no use in this case. They will see it and repulse it.
+Here one man must do the work."
+
+"How is that?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"One man must go and burst that cannon with powder; and he can do it
+during such fogs. It is best that he go in disguise. There are jackets
+here like those worn by the enemy. As it will not be possible to do
+otherwise, he will slip in among the Swedes; but if at this side of the
+trench from which the gun is projecting there are no soldiers, that
+will be better still."
+
+"For God's sake! what will the man do?"
+
+"It is only necessary to put a box of powder into the mouth of the gun,
+with a hanging fuse and a thread to be ignited. When the powder
+explodes, the gun--devil I wanted to say--will burst."
+
+"Oh, my son! what do you say? Is it little powder that they thrust into
+it every day, and it does not burst?"
+
+Kmita laughed, and kissed the priest on the sleeve of his habit.
+"Beloved father, there is a great heart in you, heroic and holy--"
+
+"Give peace now!" answered the prior.
+
+"And holy," repeated Kmita; "but you do not understand cannon. It is
+one thing when powder bursts in the butt of the cannon, for then it
+casts forth the ball and the force flies out forward, but another if
+you stop the mouth of a gun with powder and ignite it,--no cannon can
+stand such a trial. Ask Pan Charnyetski. The same thing will take place
+if you fill the mouth of a cannon with snow and fire it; the piece will
+burst. Such is the villanous power of powder. What will it be when a
+whole box of it explodes at the mouth? Ask Pan Charnyetski."
+
+"That is true. These are no secrets for soldiers," answered
+Charnyetski.
+
+"You see if this gun is burst," continued Kmita, "all the rest are a
+joke."
+
+"This seems impossible to me," said Kordetski; "for, first, who will
+undertake to do it?"
+
+"A certain poor fellow," said Kmita; "but he is resolute, his name is
+Babinich."
+
+"You!" cried the priest and Charnyetski together.
+
+"Ai, father, benefactor! I was with you at confession, and acknowledged
+all my deeds in sincerity; among them were deeds not worse than the one
+I am now planning; how can you doubt that I will undertake it? Do you
+not know me?"
+
+"He is a hero, a knight above knights," cried Charnyetski. And seizing
+Kmita by the neck, he continued: "Let me kiss you for the wish alone;
+give me your mouth."
+
+"Show me another remedy, and I will not go," said Kmita; "but it seems
+to me that I shall manage this matter somehow. Remember that I speak
+German as if I had been dealing in staves, wainscots, and wall plank in
+Dantzig. That means much, for if I am disguised they will not easily
+discover that I am not of their camp. But I think that no one is
+standing before the mouth of the cannon; for it is not safe there, and
+I think that I shall do the work before they can see me."
+
+"Pan Charnyetski, what do you think of this?" asked the prior, quickly.
+
+"Out of one hundred men one might return from such an undertaking; but
+_audaces fortuna juvat_ [fortune favors the bold]."
+
+"I have been in hotter places than this," said Kmita: "nothing will
+happen to me, for such is my fortune. Ai, beloved father, and what a
+difference! Ere now to exhibit myself, and for vainglory, I crawled
+into danger; but this undertaking is for the Most Holy Lady. Even
+should I have to lay down my head, which I do not foresee, say yourself
+could a more praiseworthy death be wished to any man than down there in
+this cause?"
+
+The priest was long silent, and then said at last,--
+
+"I should try to restrain you with persuasion, with prayers and
+imploring, if you wished to go for mere glory; but you are right: this
+is a question affecting the honor of the Most Holy Lady, this sacred
+place, the whole country! And you, my son, whether you return safely or
+win the palm of glory, you will gain the supreme happiness,--salvation.
+Against my heart then I say, Go; I do not detain you. Our prayers, the
+protection of God, will go with you."
+
+"In such company I shall go boldly and perish with joy."
+
+"But return, soldier of God, return safely; for you are loved with
+sincerity here. May Saint Raphael attend you and bring you back,
+cherished son, my dear child!"
+
+"Then I will begin preparations at once," said Pan Andrei, joyfully
+pressing the priest. "I will dress in Swedish fashion with a jacket and
+wide-legged boots. I will fill in the powder, and do you, father, stop
+the exorcisms for this night; fog is needful to the Swedes, but also to
+me."
+
+"And do you not wish to confess before starting?"
+
+"Of course, without that I should not go; for the devil would have
+approach to me."
+
+"Then begin with confession."
+
+Charnyetski went out of the cell, and Kmita knell down near the priest
+and purged himself of his sins. Then, gladsome as a bird, he began to
+make preparations.
+
+An hour or two later, in the deep night, he knocked again at the
+prior's cell, where Pan Charnyetski also was waiting.
+
+The two scarcely knew Pan Andrei, so good a Swede had he made himself.
+He had twirled his mustaches to his eyes and brushed them out at the
+ends; he had put his hat on one side of his head, and looked precisely
+like some cavalry officer of noted family.
+
+"As God lives, one would draw a sabre at sight of him," said
+Charnyetski.
+
+"Put the light at a distance," said Kmita; "I will show you something."
+
+When Father Kordetski had put the light aside quickly, Pan Andrei
+placed on a table a roll, a foot and a half long and as thick as the
+arm of a sturdy man, sewn up in pitched linen and filled firmly with
+powder. From one end of it was hanging a long string made of tow
+steeped in sulphur.
+
+"Well," said he, "when I put this flea-bane in the mouth of the cannon
+and ignite the string, then its belly will burst."
+
+"Lucifer would burst!" cried Pan Charnyetski. But he remembered that it
+was better not to mention the name of the foul one, and he slapped his
+own mouth.
+
+"But how will you set fire to the string?" asked Kordetski.
+
+"In that lies the whole danger, for I must strike fire. I have good
+flint, dry tinder, and steel of the best; but there will be a noise,
+and they may notice something. The string I hope will not quench, for
+it will hang at the beard of the gun, and it will be hard to see it,
+especially as it will hide itself quickly in burning; but they may
+pursue me, and I cannot flee straight toward the cloister."
+
+"Why not?" asked the priest.
+
+"For the explosion would kill me. The moment I see the spark on the
+string I must jump aside with all the strength in my legs, and when I
+have run about fifty yards, must fall to the ground under the
+intrenchment. After the explosion I shall rush toward the cloister."
+
+"My God, my God, how many dangers!" said the prior, raising his eyes to
+heaven.
+
+"Beloved father, so sure am I of returning that even emotion does not
+touch me, which on an occasion like this ought to seize me. This is
+nothing! Farewell, and pray the Lord God to give me luck. Only conduct
+me to the gate."
+
+"How is that? Do you want to go now?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"Am I to wait till daylight, or till the fog rises? Is not my head dear
+to me?"
+
+But Pan Andrei did not go that night, for just as they came to the
+gate, darkness, as if out of spite, began to grow light. Some movement
+too was heard around the great siege gun.
+
+Next morning the besieged were convinced that the gun was transferred
+to another place.
+
+The Swedes had received apparently some report of a great weakness in
+the wall a little beyond the bend near the southern bastion, and they
+determined to direct missiles to that spot. Maybe too the prior was not
+a stranger to the affair, for the day before they had seen old Kostuha
+(Konstantsia) going out of the cloister. She was employed chiefly when
+there was need of giving false reports to the Swedes. Be that as it
+may, it was a mistake on their part; for the besieged could now repair
+in the old place the wall so greatly shaken, and to make a new breach a
+number of days would be needed.
+
+The nights were clear in succession, the days full of uproar. The
+Swedes fired with terrible energy. The spirit of doubt began again to
+fly over the fortress. Among the besieged were nobles who wished to
+surrender; some of the monks too had lost heart. The opposition gained
+strength and importance. The prior made head against it with
+unrestrained energy, but his health began to give way. Meanwhile came
+reinforcements to the Swedes and supplies from Cracow, especially
+terrible explosive missiles in the form of iron cylinders filled with
+powder and lead. These caused more terror than damage to the besieged.
+
+Kmita, from the time that he had conceived the plan of bursting the
+siege gun, secreted himself in the fortress. He looked every day at the
+roll, with heart-sickness. On reflection he made it still larger, so
+that it was almost an ell long and as thick as a boot-leg. In the
+evening he cast greedy looks toward the gun, then examined the sky like
+an astrologer. But the bright moon, shining on the snow continually,
+baffled his plan.
+
+All at once a thaw came; clouds covered the horizon, and the night was
+dark,--so dark that even strain your eyes you could see nothing. Pan
+Andrei fell into such humor as if some one had given him the steed of
+the Sultan; and midnight had barely sounded when he stood before
+Charnyetski in his cavalry dress, the roll under his arm.
+
+"I am going!" said he.
+
+"Wait, I will speak to the prior."
+
+"That is well. Kiss me. Pan Pyotr, and go for the prior."
+
+Charnyetski kissed him with feeling, and turned away. He had hardly
+gone thirty steps when Kordetski stood before him in white. He had
+guessed that Kmita was going, and had come there to bless him.
+
+"Babinich is ready; he is only waiting for your reverence."
+
+"I hurry, I hurry!" answered the priest. "O Mother of God, save him and
+aid him!"
+
+After a while both were standing at the opening where Charnyetski left
+Kmita, but there was no trace of him.
+
+"He has gone!" said the prior, in amazement.
+
+"He has gone!" repeated Charnyetski.
+
+"But, the traitor!" said the prior, with emotion, "I intended to put
+this little scapular on his neck."
+
+Both ceased to speak; there was silence around, and as the darkness was
+dense there was firing from neither side. On a sudden Charnyetski
+whispered eagerly,--
+
+"As God is dear to me, he is not even trying to go in silence! Do you
+hear steps crushing the snow?"
+
+"Most Holy Lady, guard thy servant!" said the prior.
+
+Both listened carefully for a time, till the brisk steps and the noise
+on the snow had ceased.
+
+"Do you know, your reverence, at moments I think that he will succeed,
+and I fear nothing for him. The strange man went as if he were going to
+an inn to drink a glass of liquor. What courage he has in him! Either
+he will lay down his head untimely, or he will be hetman. H'm! if I did
+not know him as a servant of Mary, I should think that he has--God give
+him success, God grant it to him! for such another cavalier there is
+not in the Commonwealth."
+
+"It is so dark, so dark!" said Kordetski; "but they are on their guard
+since the night of your sortie. He might come upon a whole rank before
+he could see it."
+
+"I do not think so. The infantry are watching, that I know, and watch
+carefully; but they are in the intrenchment, not before the muzzles of
+their own cannon. If they do not hear the steps, he can easily push
+under the intrenchment, and then the height of it alone will cover
+him--Uf!"
+
+Here Charnyetski puffed and ceased speaking; for his heart began to
+beat like a hammer from expectation and alarm, and breath failed him.
+
+Kordetski made the sign of the cross in the darkness.
+
+A third person stood near the two. This was Zamoyski.
+
+"What is the matter?" asked he.
+
+"Babinich has gone to blow up the siege gun."
+
+"How is that? What is that?"
+
+"He took a roll of powder, cord, and flint, and went."
+
+Zamoyski pressed his head between his hands.
+
+"Jesus, Mary! Jesus, Mary! All alone?"
+
+"All alone."
+
+"Who let him go? That's an impossible deed!"
+
+"I. For the might of God all things are possible, even his safe
+return," said Kordetski.
+
+Zamoyski was silent. Charnyetski began to pant from emotion.
+
+"Let us pray," said the prior.
+
+The three knelt down and began to pray. But anxiety raised the hair on
+the heads of both knights. A quarter of an hour passed, half an hour,
+an hour as long as a lifetime.
+
+"There will be nothing now!" said Charnyetski, sighing deeply.
+
+All at once in the distance a gigantic column of flame burst forth, and
+a roar as if all the thunders of heaven had been hurled to the earth;
+it shook the walls, the church, and the cloister.
+
+"He has burst it, he has burst it!" shouted Charnyetski.
+
+New explosions interrupted further speech of his.
+
+Kordetski threw himself on his knees, and raising his hands, cried to
+heaven, "Most Holy Mother, Guardian, Patroness, bring him back safely!"
+
+A noise was made on the walls. The garrison, not knowing what had
+happened, seized their arms. The monks rushed from their cells. No one
+was sleeping. Even women sprang forth. Questions and answers crossed
+one another like lightnings.
+
+"What has happened?"
+
+"An assault!"
+
+"The Swedish gun has burst!" cried one of the cannoneers.
+
+"A miracle, a miracle!"
+
+"The largest gun is burst!"
+
+"That great one!"
+
+"Where is the prior?"
+
+"On the wall. He is praying; he did this."
+
+"Babinich burst the gun!" cried Charnyetski.
+
+"Babinich, Babinich! Praise to the Most Holy Lady! They will harm us no
+longer."
+
+At the same time sounds of confusion rose from the Swedish camp. In all
+the trenches fires began to shine. An increasing uproar was heard. By
+the light of the fires masses of soldiers were seen moving in various
+directions without order, trumpets sounded, drums rolled continually;
+to the walls came shouts in which alarm and amazement were heard.
+
+Kordetski continued kneeling on the wall.
+
+At last the night began to grow pale, but Babinich came not to the
+fortress.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+What had happened to Pan Andrei, and in what way had he been able to
+carry out his plan?
+
+After leaving the fortress he advanced some time with a sure and wary
+step. At the very end of the slope he halted and listened. It was
+silent around,--so silent in fact that his steps were heard clearly on
+the snow. In proportion as he receded from the walls, he stepped more
+carefully. He halted again, and again listened. He was somewhat afraid
+of slipping and falling, and thus dampening his precious roll; he drew
+out his rapier therefore and leaned on it. That helped him greatly.
+Thus feeling his way, after the course of half an hour he heard a
+slight sound directly in front.
+
+"Ah! they are watching. The sortie has taught them wariness," thought
+he.
+
+And he went farther now very slowly. He was glad that he had not gone
+astray, for the darkness was such that he could not see the end of the
+rapier.
+
+"Those trenches are considerably farther: I am advancing well then!"
+whispered he to himself.
+
+He hoped also not to find men before the intrenchment; for, properly
+speaking, they had nothing to do there, especially at night. It might
+be that at something like a hundred or fewer yards apart single
+sentries were stationed; but he hoped to pass them in such darkness. It
+was joyous in his soul.
+
+Kmita was not only daring but audacious. The thought of bursting the
+gigantic gun delighted him to the bottom of his soul,--not only as
+heroism, not only as an immortal service to the besieged, but as a
+terrible damage to the Swedes. He imagined how Miller would be
+astounded, how he would gnash his teeth, how he would gaze in
+helplessness on those walls; and at moments pure laughter seized him.
+
+And as he had himself said, he felt no emotion, no fear, no unquiet. It
+did not even enter his head to what an awful danger he was exposing
+himself. He went on as a school-boy goes to an orchard to make havoc
+among apples. He recalled other times when he harried Hovanski, stole
+up at night to a camp of thirty thousand with two hundred such fighters
+as himself.
+
+His comrades stood before his mind: Kokosinski, the gigantic
+Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus, the spotted Ranitski, of senatorial stock, and
+others; then for a moment he sighed after them. "If they were here
+now," thought he, "we might blow up six guns." Then the feeling of
+loneliness oppressed him somewhat, but only for a short while; soon
+memory brought before his eyes Olenka. Love spoke in him with
+immeasurable power. He was moved to tenderness. If she could see him,
+the heart would rejoice in her this time. Perhaps she thinks yet that
+he is serving the Swedes. He is serving them nicely! And soon he will
+oblige them! What will happen when she learns of all these perils? What
+will she think? She will think surely, "He is a whirlwind, but when it
+comes to a deed which no other can do, he will do it; where another
+dares not go, he will go. Such a man is that Kmita!"
+
+"Another such deed I shall never accomplish," said Pan Andrei; and
+boastfulness seized him completely. Still, in spite of these thoughts
+he did not forget where he was, whither he was going, what he intended
+to do; and he began to advance like a wolf on a night pasture. He
+looked behind once and a second time. No church, no cloister! All was
+covered with thick, impenetrable gloom. He noted, however, by the time,
+that he must have advanced far already, and that the trench might be
+right there.
+
+"I am curious to know if there are sentries," thought he.
+
+But he had not advanced two steps after giving himself this question,
+when, in front of him, was heard the tramp of measured steps and a
+number of voices inquired at various distances,--
+
+"Who goes?"
+
+Pan Andrei stood as if fixed to the earth. He felt hot.
+
+"Ours," answered a number of voices.
+
+"The watchword!"
+
+"Upsala."
+
+"The counter-sign!"
+
+"The crown."
+
+Kmita saw at this moment that there was a change of sentries. "I'll
+give you Upsala and a crown!" And he rejoiced. This was really for him
+a very favorable circumstance, for he might pass the line of guards at
+the moment of changing sentries, when the tramp of the soldiers drowned
+his own steps.
+
+In fact, he did so without the least difficulty, and went after the
+returning soldiers rather boldly up to the trench itself. There they
+made a turn to go around it; but he pushed quickly into the ditch and
+hid in it.
+
+Meanwhile objects had become somewhat more visible; Pan Andrei thanked
+Heaven, for in the previous darkness he could not by feeling have found
+the gun sought for. Now, by throwing back his head and straining his
+vision, he saw above him a black line, indicating the edge of the
+trench, and also the black outlines of the baskets between which stood
+the guns.
+
+He could indeed see their jaws thrust out a little above the trench.
+Advancing slowly in the ditch, he discovered the great gun at last. He
+halted and began to listen. From the intrenchment a noise came,--a
+murmur; evidently the infantry were near the guns, in readiness. But
+the height of the intrenchment concealed Kmita; they might hear him,
+they could not see him. Now he had only to rise from below to the mouth
+of the gun, which was high above his head.
+
+Fortunately the sides of the ditch were not too steep; and besides the
+embankment freshly made, or moist with water, had not frozen, since for
+some time there had been a thaw.
+
+Taking note of all this, Kmita began to sink holes quietly in the slope
+of the intrenchment and to climb slowly to the gun. After fifteen
+minutes' work he was able to seize the opening of the culverin. Soon he
+was hanging in the air, but his uncommon strength permitted him to hold
+himself thus till he pushed the roll into the jaws of the cannon.
+
+"Here's dog sausage for thee!" muttered he, "only don't choke with it!"
+
+Then he slipped down and began to look for the string, which, fastened
+to the inner side of the roll, was hanging to the ditch. After a while
+he felt it with his hand. But then came the greatest difficulty, for he
+had to strike fire and ignite the string.
+
+Kmita waited for a moment, thinking that the noise would increase
+somewhat among the soldiers in the breastworks. At last he began to
+strike the flint lightly with the steel. But that moment above his head
+was heard in German the question,--
+
+"Who is there in the ditch?"
+
+"It is I, Hans!" answered Kmita, without hesitation; "the devils have
+taken my ramrod into the ditch, and I am striking fire to find it."
+
+"All right, all right," said the gunner. "It is your luck there is no
+firing, for the wind would have taken your head off."
+
+"Ah!" thought Kmita, "the gun besides my charge has still its own,--so
+much the better."
+
+At that moment the sulphur-string caught, and delicate little sparks
+began to run upward along its dry exterior.
+
+It was time to disappear. Kmita hurried along the ditch with all the
+strength in his legs, not losing an instant, not thinking overmuch of
+the noise he was making. But when he had run twenty yards, curiosity
+overcame in him the feeling of his terrible danger.
+
+"The string has gone out, there is moisture in the air!" thought he;
+and he stopped. Casting a look behind, he saw a little spark yet, but
+much higher than he had left it.
+
+"Eh, am I not too near?" thought he; and fear hurried him forward.
+
+He pushed on at full speed; all at once he struck a stone and fell. At
+that moment a terrible roar rent the air; the earth trembled, pieces of
+wood, iron, stones, lumps of ice and earth, whistled about his ears,
+and here his sensations ended.
+
+After that were heard new explosions in turn. These were powder-boxes
+standing near the cannon which exploded from the shock.
+
+But Kmita did not hear these; he lay as if dead in the ditch. He did
+not hear also how, after a time of deep silence, the groans of men were
+heard, cries and shouts for help; how nearly half the army, Swedish and
+allied, assembled.
+
+The confusion and uproar lasted long, till from the chaos of testimony
+the Swedish general reached the fact that the siege-gun had been blown
+up of purpose by some one. Search was ordered immediately. In the
+morning the searching soldiers found Kmita lying in the ditch.
+
+It appeared that he was merely stunned from the explosion. He had lost,
+to begin with, control of his hands and feet. His powerlessness lasted
+the whole ensuing day. They nursed him with the utmost care. In the
+evening he had recovered his power almost completely.
+
+He was brought then by command before Miller, who occupied the middle
+place at the table in his quarters; around him sat the Prince of Hesse,
+Count Veyhard, Sadovski, all the noted officers of the Swedes, of the
+Poles, Zbrojek, Kalinski, and Kuklinovski. The last at sight of Kmita
+became blue, his eyes burned like two coals, and his mustaches began to
+quiver. Without awaiting the question of the general, he said,--
+
+"I know this bird. He is from the Chenstohova garrison. His name is
+Babinich."
+
+Kmita was silent; pallor and weariness were evident on his face, but
+his glance was bold and his countenance calm.
+
+"Did you blow up the siege-gun?" asked Miller.
+
+"I did."
+
+"How did you do it?"
+
+Kmita stated all briefly, concealed nothing. The officers looked at one
+another in amazement.
+
+"A hero!" whispered the Prince of Hesse to Sadovski.
+
+But Sadovski inclined to Count Veyhard. "Count Veyhard," asked he, "how
+are we to take a fortress with such defenders? What do you think, will
+they surrender?"
+
+"There are more of us in the fortress ready for such deeds," said
+Kmita. "You know not the day nor the hour."
+
+"I too have more than one halter in the camp," said Miller.
+
+"We know that. But you will not take Yasna Gora while there is one man
+alive there."
+
+A moment of silence followed. Then Miller inquired,--
+
+"Is your name Babinich?"
+
+Pan Andrei thought that after what he had done, and in presence of
+death, the time had come in which he had no need to conceal his name.
+Let people forget the faults and transgressions bound up with it; let
+glory and devotion shine over them.
+
+"My name is not Babinich," said he, with a certain pride, "my name is
+Andrei Kmita; I was colonel of my own personal squadron in the
+Lithuanian contingent."
+
+Hardly had Kuklinovski heard this when he sprang up as if possessed,
+stuck out his eyes, opened his mouth, and began to strike his sides
+with his hands. At last he cried,--
+
+"General, I beg for a word without delay, without delay."
+
+A murmur rose at the same time among the Polish officers, which the
+Swedes heard with wonder, since for them the name Kmita meant nothing.
+They noted at once that this must be no common soldier, for Zbrojek
+rose, and approaching the prisoner said,--
+
+"Worthy colonel, in the straits in which you are I cannot help you; but
+give me your hand, I pray."
+
+Kmita raised his head and began to snort.
+
+"I will not give a hand to traitors who serve against their country!"
+
+Zbrojek's face flushed. Kalinski, who stood right behind him, withdrew.
+The Swedish officers surrounded them at once, asking what man this
+Kmita was whose name had made such an impression. During this time
+Kuklinovski had squeezed Miller up to the window, and said,--
+
+"For your worthiness the name Kmita is nothing; but he is the first
+soldier, the first colonel, in the whole Commonwealth. All know of him,
+all know that name; once he served Radzivill and the Swedes; now it is
+clear that he has gone over to Yan Kazimir. There is not his equal
+among soldiers, save me. He was the only man who could go alone and
+blow up that gun. From this one deed you may know him. He fought
+Hovanski, so that a reward was put on his head. He with two or three
+hundred men kept up the whole war after the defeat at Shklov, until
+others were found who, imitating him, began to tear at the enemy. He is
+the most dangerous man in all the country--"
+
+"Why do you sing his praises to me?" inquired Miller. "That he is
+dangerous I know to my own irreparable loss."
+
+"What does your worthiness think of doing with him?"
+
+"I should give orders to hang him; but being a soldier myself, I know
+how to value daring and bravery. Besides, he is a noble of high
+birth,--I will order him shot, and that to-day."
+
+"Your worthiness, it is not for me to instruct the most celebrated
+soldier and statesman of modern times; but I permit myself to say that
+that man is too famous. If you shoot him, Zbrojek's squadron and
+Kalinski's will withdraw at the latest this very day, and go over to
+Yan Kazimir."
+
+"If that is true, I'll have them cut to pieces before they go!" cried
+Miller.
+
+"Your worthiness, a terrible responsibility! for if that becomes
+known,--and the cutting down of two squadrons is hard to hide,--the
+whole Polish army will leave Karl Gustav; at present their loyalty is
+tottering, as you know. The hetmans are not reliable. Pan Konyetspolski
+with six thousand of the best cavalry is at the side of our king. That
+force is no trifle. God defend us if these too should turn against us,
+against the person of his Royal Grace! Besides, this fortress defends
+itself; and to cut down the squadrons of Zbrojek and Kalinski is no
+easy matter, for Wolf is here too with his infantry. They might come to
+an agreement with the garrison of the fortress."
+
+"A hundred horned devils!" cried Miller; "what do you want,
+Kuklinovski? do you want me to give Kmita his life? That cannot be."
+
+"I want," answered Kuklinovski, "you to give him to me."
+
+"What will you do with him?"
+
+"Ah, I--will tear him alive from his skin."
+
+"You did not know even his real name, you do not know him. What have
+you against him?"
+
+"I made his acquaintance first in the fortress, where I have been twice
+as an envoy to the monks."
+
+"Have you reasons for vengeance?"
+
+"Your worthiness, I wished privately to bring him to our camp. He,
+taking advantage of the fact that I laid aside my office of envoy,
+insulted me, Kuklinovski, as no man in life has insulted me."
+
+"What did he do to you?"
+
+Kuklinovski trembled and gnashed his teeth. "Better not speak of it.
+Only give him to me. He is doomed to death anyhow, and I would like
+before his end to have a little amusement with him,--all the more
+because he is the Kmita whom formerly I venerated, and who repaid me in
+such fashion. Give him to me; it will be better for you. If I rub him
+out, Zbrojek and Kalinski and with them all the Polish knighthood will
+fall not upon you, but upon me, and I'll help myself. There will not be
+anger, wry faces, and mutiny. It will be my private matter about
+Kmita's skin, of which I shall have a drum made."
+
+Miller fell to thinking; a sudden suspicion flashed over his face.
+
+"Kuklinovski," said he, "maybe you wish to save him?"
+
+Kuklinovski smiled quietly, but that smile was so terrible and sincere
+that Miller ceased to doubt.
+
+"Perhaps you give sound advice," said he.
+
+"For all my services I beg this reward only."
+
+"Take him, then."
+
+Now both returned to the room where the rest of the officers were
+assembled. Miller turned to them and said,--
+
+"In view of the services of Pan Kuklinovski I place at his absolute
+disposal this prisoner."
+
+A moment of silence followed; then Pan Zbrojek put his hands on his
+sides, and asked with a certain accent of contempt,--
+
+"And what does Pan Kuklinovski think to do with the prisoner?"
+
+Kuklinovski bent, straightened himself quickly, his lips opened with an
+ill-omened smile, and his eyes began to quiver.
+
+"Whoso is not pleased with what I do to the prisoner, knows where to
+find me." And he shook his sabre.
+
+"Your promise, Pan Kuklinovski," said Zbrojek.
+
+"Promise, promise!"
+
+When he had said this he approached Kmita. "Follow me, little worm;
+come after me, famous soldier. Thou'rt a trifle weak; thou needst
+swathing,--I'll swathe thee."
+
+"Ruffian!" said Kmita.
+
+"Very good, very good, daring soul! Meanwhile step along."
+
+The officers remained in the room; Kuklinovski mounted his horse before
+the quarters. Having with him three soldiers, he commanded one of them
+to lead Kmita by a lariat; and all went together toward Lgota, where
+Kuklinovski's regiment was quartered.
+
+On the way Kmita prayed ardently. He saw that death was approaching,
+and he committed himself with his whole soul to God. He was so sunk in
+prayer and in his own doom that he did not hear what Kuklinovski said
+to him; he did not know even how long the road was.
+
+They stopped at last before an empty, half-ruined barn, standing in the
+open field, at some distance from the quarters of Kuklinovski's
+regiment. The colonel ordered them to lead Kmita in, and turning
+himself to one of the soldiers, said,--
+
+"Hurry for me to the camp, bring ropes and a tar bucket!"
+
+The soldier galloped with all the breath in his horse, and in quarter
+of an hour returned at the same pace, with a comrade. They had brought
+the requisite articles.
+
+"Strip this spark naked!" ordered Kuklinovski; "tie his hands and feet
+behind him with a rope, and then fasten him to a beam."
+
+"Ruffian!" said Kmita.
+
+"Good, good! we can talk yet, we have time!"
+
+Meanwhile one of the soldiers climbed up on the beam, and the others
+fell to dragging the clothes from Kmita. When he was naked the three
+executioners placed Pan Andrei with his face to the ground, bound his
+hands and feet with a long rope, then passing it still around his waist
+they threw the other end to the soldier sitting on the beam.
+
+"Now raise him, and let the man on the beam pull the rope and tie it!"
+said Kuklinovski.
+
+In a moment the order was obeyed.
+
+"Let him go!"
+
+The rope squeaked. Pan Andrei was hanging parallel with the earth, a
+few ells above the threshing-floor. Then Kuklinovski dipped tow in the
+burning tar-bucket, walked up to him, and said,--
+
+"Well, Pan Kmita, did not I say that there are two colonels in the
+Commonwealth?--only two, I and thou! And thou didst not wish to join
+company with Kuklinovski, and kicked him! Well, little worm, thou art
+right! Not for thee is the company of Kuklinovski, for Kuklinovski is
+better. Hei! a famous colonel is Pan Kmita, and Kuklinovski has him in
+his hand, and Kuklinovski is roasting his sides!"
+
+"Ruffian!" repeated Kmita, for the third time.
+
+"This is how he will roast his sides!" finished Kuklinovski, and he
+touched Kmita's side with the burning tow; then he said,--
+
+"Not too much at first; we have time."
+
+Just then the tramp of horses was heard near the barn-door.
+
+"Whom are the devils bringing?" asked Kuklinovski.
+
+The door squeaked and a soldier entered. "General Miller wishes to see
+your grace at once!"
+
+"Ah! that is thou, old man?" asked Kuklinovski. "What business? What
+devil?"
+
+"The general asks your grace to come to him straightway."
+
+"Who came from the general?"
+
+"There was a Swedish officer; he has ridden off already. He had almost
+driven the breath out of his horse."
+
+"I'll go," said Kuklinovski. Then he turned to Kmita: "It was hot for
+thee; cool off now, little worm. I'll come again soon, we'll have
+another talk."
+
+"What shall be done with the prisoner?" asked one of the soldiers.
+
+"Leave him as he is. I shall return directly. Let one go with me."
+
+The colonel went out, and with him that soldier who had sat on the beam
+at first. There remained only three, but soon three new ones entered
+the barn.
+
+"You may go to sleep," said he who had reported Miller's order to
+Kuklinovski, "the colonel has left the guard to us."
+
+"We prefer to remain," replied one of the first three soldiers, "to see
+the wonder; for such a--"
+
+Suddenly he stopped. A certain unearthly sound was wrested from his
+throat like the call of a strangled cock. He threw out his arms and
+fell as if struck by lightning.
+
+At the same moment the cry of "Pound" was heard through the barn, and
+two of the newly arrived rushed like leopards on the two remaining
+soldiers. A terrible, short struggle surged up, lighted by the gleams
+of the burning tar-bucket. After a moment two bodies fell in the straw,
+for a moment longer were heard the gasps of the dying, then that voice
+rose which at first seemed familiar to Kmita.
+
+"Your grace, it is I, Kyemlich, and my sons. We have been waiting since
+morning for a chance, we have been watching since morning." Then
+he turned to his sons: "Now out, rogues, free the colonel in a
+breath,--quickly!"
+
+And before Kmita was able to understand what was taking place there
+appeared near him the two bushy forelocks of Kosma and Damian, like two
+gigantic distaffs. The ropes were soon cut, and Kmita stood on his
+feet. He tottered at first; his stiffened lips were barely able to
+say,--
+
+"That is you?--I am thankful."
+
+"It is I!" answered the terrible old man. "Mother of God! Oh--let his
+grace dress quickly. You rogues--" And he began to give Kmita his
+clothes.
+
+"The horses are standing at the door," said he. "From here the way is
+open. There are guards; maybe they would let no one in, but as to
+letting out, they will let out. We know the password. How does your
+grace feel?"
+
+"He burned my side, but only a little. My feet are weak--"
+
+"Drink some gorailka."
+
+Kmita seized with eagerness the flask the old man gave him, and
+emptying half of it said,--
+
+"I was stiff from the cold. I shall be better at once."
+
+"Your grace will grow warm on the saddle. The horses are waiting."
+
+"In a moment I shall be better," repeated Kmita. "My side is smarting a
+little--that's nothing!--I am quite well." And he sat on the edge of a
+grain-bin.
+
+After a while he recovered his strength really, and looked with perfect
+presence of mind on the ill-omened faces of the three Kyemliches,
+lighted by the yellowish flame of the burning pitch. The old man stood
+before him.
+
+"Your grace, there is need of haste. The horses are waiting."
+
+But in Pan Andrei the Kmita of old times was roused altogether.
+
+"Oh, impossible!" cried he, suddenly; "now I am waiting for that
+traitor."
+
+The Kyemliches looked amazed, but uttered not a word,--so accustomed
+were they from former times to listen blindly to this leader.
+
+The veins came out on his forehead; his eyes were burning in the dark,
+like two stars, such was the hate and the desire of vengeance that
+gleamed in them. That which he did then was madness, he might pay for
+it with his life; but his life was made up of a series of such
+madnesses. His side pained him fiercely, so that every moment he seized
+it unwittingly with his hand; but he was thinking only of Kuklinovski,
+and he was ready to wait for him even till morning.
+
+"Listen!" said he; "did Miller really call him?"
+
+"No," answered the old man. "I invented that to manage the others here
+more easily. It would have been hard for us three against five, for
+some one might have raised a cry."
+
+"That was well. He will return alone or in company. If there are any
+people with him, then strike at once on them. Leave him to me. Then to
+horse! Has any one pistols?"
+
+"I have," said Kosma.
+
+"Give them here! Are they loaded, is there powder in the pan?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Very well. If he comes back alone, when he enters spring on him and
+shut his mouth. You can stuff his own cap into it."
+
+"According to command," said the old man. "Your grace permits us now to
+search these? We are poor men."
+
+He pointed to the corpses lying on the straw.
+
+"No! Be on the watch. What you find on Kuklinovski will be yours."
+
+"If he returns alone," said the old man, "I fear nothing. I shall stand
+behind the door; and even if some one from the quarters should come, I
+shall say that the colonel gave orders not to admit."
+
+"That will do. Watch!"
+
+The tramp of a horse was heard behind the barn. Kmita sprang up and
+stood in the shadow at the wall. Kosma and Damian took their places
+near the door, like two cats waiting for a mouse.
+
+"He is alone," said the old man.
+
+"Alone," repeated Kosma and Damian.
+
+The tramp approached, was right there and halted suddenly.
+
+"Come out here, some one,--hold the horse!"
+
+The old man jumped out quickly. A moment of silence followed, then to
+those waiting in the barn came the following conversation,--
+
+"Is that you, Kyemlich? What the thunder! art mad, or an idiot? It is
+night, Miller is asleep. The guard will not give admission; they say
+that no officer went away. How is that?"
+
+"The officer is waiting here in the barn for your grace. He came right
+away after you rode off; he says that he missed your grace."
+
+"What does all this mean? But the prisoner?"
+
+"Is hanging."
+
+The door squeaked, and Kuklinovski pushed into the barn; but before he
+had gone a step two iron hands caught him by the throat, and smothered
+his cry of terror. Kosma and Damian, with the adroitness of genuine
+murderers, hurled him to the ground, put their knees on his breast,
+pressed him so that his ribs began to crack, and gagged him in the
+twinkle of an eye.
+
+Kmita came forward, and holding the pitch light to his eyes, said,--
+
+"Ah! this is Pan Kuklinovski! Now I have something to say to you!"
+
+Kuklinovski's face was blue, the veins were so swollen that it seemed
+they might burst any moment; but in his eyes, which were coming out of
+his head and bloodshot, there was quite as much wonder as terror.
+
+"Strip him and put him on the beam!" cried Kmita.
+
+Kosma and Damian fell to stripping him as zealously as if they wished
+to take the skin from him together with his clothing.
+
+In a quarter of an hour Kuklinovski was hanging by his hands and feet,
+like a half goose, on the beam. Then Kmita put his hands on his hips
+and began to brag terribly.
+
+"Well, Pan Kuklinovski," said he, "who is better, Kmita or Kuklinovski?"
+Then he seized the burning tow and took a step nearer. "Thy camp is
+distant one shot from a bow, thy thousand ruffians are within call,
+there is thy Swedish general a little beyond, and thou art hanging here
+from this same beam from which 'twas thy thought to roast me.--Learn to
+know Kmita! Thou hadst the thought to be equal to Kmita, to belong to
+his company, to be compared with him? Thou cut-purse, thou low ruffian,
+terror of old women, thou offscouring of man. Lord Scoundrel of
+Scoundrelton! Wry-mouth, trash, slave! I might have thee cut up like a
+kid, like a capon; but I choose to roast thee alive as thou didst think
+to roast me."
+
+Saying this, he raised the tow and applied it to the side of the
+hanging, hapless man; but he held it longer, until the odor of the
+burned flesh began to spread through the barn.
+
+Kuklinovski writhed till the rope was swinging with him. His eyes,
+fastened on Kmita, expressed terrible pain and a dumb imploring for
+pity; from his gagged lips came woful groans; but war had hardened the
+heart of Pan Andrei, and there was no pity in him, above all, none for
+traitors.
+
+Removing at last the tow from Kuklinovski's side, he put it for a while
+under his nose, rubbed with it his mustaches, his eyelashes, and his
+brows; then he said,--
+
+"I give thee thy life to meditate on Kmita. Thou wilt hang here till
+morning, and now pray to God that people find thee before thou art
+frozen."
+
+Then he turned to Kosma and Damian. "To horse!" cried he, and went out
+of the barn.
+
+Half an hour later around the four riders were quiet hills, silent and
+empty fields. The fresh breeze, not filled with smoke of powder,
+entered their lungs. Kmita rode ahead, the Kyemliches after him. They
+spoke in low voices. Pan Andrei was silent, or rather he was repeating
+in silence the morning "Our Father," for it was not long before dawn.
+
+From time to time a hiss or even a low groan was rent from his lips,
+when his burned side pained him greatly. But at the same time he felt
+on horseback and free; and the thought that he had blown up the
+greatest siege gun, and besides that had torn himself from the hands of
+Kuklinovski and had wrought vengeance on him, filled Pan Andrei with
+such consolation that in view of it the pain was nothing.
+
+Meanwhile a quiet dialogue between the father and the sons turned into
+a loud dispute.
+
+"The money belt is good," said the greedy old man; "but where are the
+rings? He had rings on his fingers; in one was a stone worth twenty
+ducats."
+
+"I forgot to take it," answered Kosma.
+
+"I wish you were killed! Let the old man think of everything, and these
+rascals haven't wit for a copper! You forgot the rings, you thieves?
+You lie like dogs!"
+
+"Then turn back, father, and look," muttered Damian.
+
+"You lie, you thieves! You hide things. You wrong your old
+father,--such sons! I wish that I had not begotten you. You will die
+without a blessing."
+
+Kmita reined in his horse somewhat. "Come this way!" called he.
+
+The dispute ceased, the Kyemliches hurried up, and they rode farther
+four abreast.
+
+"And do you know the road to the Silesian boundary?"
+asked Pan Andrei.
+
+"O Mother of God! we know, we know," answered the old man.
+
+"There are no Swedish parties on the road?"
+
+"No, for all are at Chenstohova, unless we might meet a single man; but
+God give us one!"
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"Then you served with Kuklinovski?" asked Kmita.
+
+"We did, for we thought that being near we might serve the holy monks
+and your grace, and so it has happened. We did not serve against the
+fortress,--God save us from that! we took no pay unless we found
+something on Swedes."
+
+"How on Swedes?"
+
+"For we wanted to serve the Most Holy Lady even outside the walls;
+therefore we rode around the camp at night or in the daytime, as the
+Lord God gave us; and when any of the Swedes happened alone, then
+we--that is--O Refuge of sinners!--we--"
+
+"Pounded him!" finished Kosma and Damian.
+
+Kmita laughed. "Kuklinovski had good servants in you. But did he know
+about this?"
+
+"He received a share, an income. He knew, and the scoundrel commanded
+us to give a thaler a head. Otherwise he threatened to betray us. Such
+a robber,--he wronged poor men! And we have kept faith with your grace,
+for not such is service with you. Your grace adds besides of your own;
+but he, a thaler a head, for our toil, for our labor. On him may God--"
+
+"I will reward you abundantly for what you have done," said Kmita. "I
+did not expect this of you."
+
+The distant sound of guns interrupted further words. Evidently the
+Swedes had begun to fire with the first dawn. After a while the roar
+increased. Kmita stopped his horse; it seemed to him that he
+distinguished the sound of the fortress cannon from the cannon of the
+Swedes, therefore he clinched his fist, and threatening with it in the
+direction of the enemies' camp said,--
+
+"Fire away, fire away! Where is your greatest gun now?"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER V.
+
+
+The bursting of the gigantic culverin had really a crushing effect upon
+Miller, for all his hopes had rested hitherto on that gun. Infantry
+were ready for the assault, ladders and piles of fascines were
+collected; but now it was necessary to abandon all thought of a storm.
+
+The plan of blowing up the cloister by means of mines came also to
+nothing. Miners brought in previously from Olkush split, it is true,
+the rock, and approached on a diagonal to the cloister; but work
+progressed slowly. The workmen, in spite of every precaution, fell
+frequently from the guns of the church, and labored unwillingly. Many
+of them preferred to die rather than aid in the destruction of a sacred
+place.
+
+Miller felt a daily increasing opposition. The frost took away the
+remnant of courage from his unwilling troops, among whom terror was
+spreading from day to day with a belief that the capture of the
+cloister did not lie within human power.
+
+Finally Miller himself began to lose hope, and after the bursting of
+the gun he was simply in despair; a feeling of helplessness and
+impotence took possession of him. Next morning he called a council, but
+he called it with the secret wish to hear from officers encouragement
+to abandon the fortress.
+
+They began to assemble, all wearied and gloomy. In silence they took
+their places around a table in an enormous and cold room, in which the
+steam from their breaths stood before their faces, and they looked from
+behind it as from behind a cloud. Each one felt in his soul exhaustion
+and weariness; each one said to himself: "There is no counsel to give
+save one, which it is better for no man to be the first to give." All
+waited for what Miller would say. He ordered first of all to bring
+plenty of heated wine, hoping that under the influence of warm drink it
+would be easier to obtain a real thought from those silent figures, and
+encouragement to retreat from the fortress.
+
+At last, when he supposed that the wine had produced its effect, he
+spoke in the following words--
+
+"Have you noticed, gentlemen, that none of the Polish colonels have
+come to this council, though I summoned them all?"
+
+"It is known of course to your worthiness that servants of the Polish
+squadron have, while fishing, found silver belonging to the cloister,
+and that they fought for it with our soldiers. More than ten men have
+been cut down."
+
+"I know; I succeeded in snatching a part of that silver from their
+hands, indeed the greater part. It is here now, and I am thinking what
+to do with it."
+
+"This is surely the cause of the anger of the Polish colonels. They say
+that if the Poles found the silver, it belongs to the Poles."
+
+"That's a reason!" cried Count Veyhard.
+
+"For my mind, it is a strong reason," said Sadovski; "and I think that
+if you had found the silver you would not feel bound to divide it, not
+only with the Poles, but even with me, a Cheh."
+
+"First of all, my dear sir, I do not share your good will for the
+enemies of our king," answered the count, with a frown.
+
+"But we, thanks to you, must share with you shame and disgrace, not
+being able to succeed against a fortress to which you have brought us."
+
+"Then have you lost all hope?"
+
+"But have you any yourself to give away?"
+
+"Just as if you knew; and I think that these gentlemen share more
+willingly with me in my hope, than with you in your fear."
+
+"Do you make me a coward, Count Veyhard?"
+
+"I do not ascribe to you more courage than you show."
+
+"And I ascribe to you less."
+
+"But I," said Miller, who for some time had looked on the count with
+dislike as the instigator of the ill-starred undertaking, "shall have
+the silver sent to the cloister. Perhaps kindness and graciousness will
+do more with these surly monks than balls and cannon. Let them
+understand that we wish to possess the fortress, not their treasures."
+
+The officers looked on Miller with wonder, so little accustomed were
+they to magnanimity from him. At last Sadovski said,--
+
+"Nothing better could be done, for it will close at once the mouths of
+the Polish colonels who lay claim to the silver. In the fortress it
+will surely make a good impression."
+
+"The death of that Kmita will make the best impression," answered Count
+Veyhard. "I hope that Kuklinovski has already torn him out of his
+skin."
+
+"I think that he is no longer alive," said Miller. "But that name
+reminds me of our loss, which nothing can make good. That was the
+greatest gun in the whole artillery of his grace. I do not hide from
+you, gentlemen, that all my hopes were placed on it. The breach was
+already made, terror was spreading in the fortress. A couple of days
+longer and we should have moved to a storm. Now all our labor is
+useless, all our exertions vain. They will repair the wall in one day.
+And the guns which we have now are no better than those of the
+fortress, and can be easily dismounted. No larger ones can be had
+anywhere, for even Marshal Wittemberg hasn't them. The more I ponder
+over it, the more the disaster seems dreadful. And to think that one
+man did this,--one dog! one Satan! I shall go mad! To all the horned
+devils!"
+
+Here Miller struck the table with his fist, for unrestrained anger had
+seized him, the more desperately because he was powerless. After a
+while he cried,--
+
+"But what will the king say when he hears of this loss?" After a while
+he added: "And what shall we do? We cannot gnaw away that cliff with
+our teeth. Would that the plague might strike those who persuaded me to
+come to this fortress!"
+
+Having said this, he took a crystal goblet, and in his excitement
+hurled it to the floor so that the crystal was broken into small bits.
+
+This unbecoming frenzy, more befitting a peasant than a warrior holding
+such a high office, turned all hearts from him, and soured good-humor
+completely.
+
+"Give counsel, gentlemen!" cried Miller.
+
+"It is possible to counsel, but only in calmness," answered the Prince
+of Hesse.
+
+Miller began to puff and blow out his anger through his nostrils. After
+a time he grew calm, and passing his eyes over those present as if
+encouraging them with a glance, he said,--
+
+"I ask your pardon, gentlemen, but my anger is not strange. I will not
+mention those places which, when I had taken command after Torstenson,
+I captured, for I do not wish, in view of the present disaster, to
+boast of past fortune. All that is done at this fortress simply passes
+reason. But still it is necessary to take counsel. For that purpose I
+have summoned you. Deliberate, then, and what the majority of us
+determine at this council will be done."
+
+"Let your worthiness give us the subject for deliberation," said the
+Prince of Hesse. "Have we to deliberate only concerning the capture of
+the fortress, or also concerning this, whether it is better to
+withdraw?"
+
+Miller did not wish to put the question so clearly, or at least he did
+not wish the "either--or," to come first from his mouth; therefore he
+said,--
+
+"Let each speak clearly what he thinks. It should be a question for us
+of the profit and praise of the king."
+
+But none of the officers wished more than Miller to appear first with
+the proposition to retreat, therefore there was silence again.
+
+"Pan Sadovski," said Miller after a while, in a voice which he tried to
+make agreeable and kind, "you say what you think more sincerely than
+others, for your reputation insures you against all suspicion."
+
+"I think, General," answered the colonel, "that Kmita was one of the
+greatest soldiers of this age, and that our position is desperate."
+
+"But you were in favor of withdrawing from the fortress?"
+
+"With permission of your worthiness, I was only in favor of not
+beginning the siege. That is a thing quite different."
+
+"Then what do you advise now?"
+
+"Now I give the floor to Count Veyhard."
+
+Miller swore like a pagan.
+
+"Count Veyhard will answer for this unfortunate affair," said he.
+
+"My counsels have not all been carried out," answered the count,
+insolently. "I can boldly cast responsibility from myself. There were
+men who with a wonderful, in truth an inexplicable, good-will for the
+priests, dissuaded his worthiness from all severe measures. My advice
+was to hang those envoy priests, and I am convinced that if this had
+been done terror would have opened to us before this time the gates of
+that hen-house."
+
+Here the count looked at Sadovski; but before the latter had answered,
+the Prince of Hesse interfered: "Count, do not call that fortress a
+hen-house, for the more you decrease its importance the more you
+increase our shame."
+
+"Nevertheless I advised to hang the envoys. Terror and always terror,
+that is what I repeated from morning till night; but Pan Sadovski
+threatened resignation, and the priests went unharmed."
+
+"Go, Count, to-day to the fortress," answered Sadovski, "blow up with
+powder their greatest gun as Kmita did ours, and I guarantee that, that
+will spread more terror than a murderous execution of envoys."
+
+The count turned directly to Miller: "Your worthiness I thought we had
+come here for counsel and not for amusement."
+
+"Have you an answer to baseless reproaches?" asked Miller.
+
+"I have, in spite of the joyousness of these gentlemen, who might save
+their humor for better times."
+
+"Oh, son of Laertes, famous for stratagems!" exclaimed the Prince of
+Hesse.
+
+"Gentlemen," answered the count, "it is universally known that not
+Minerva but Mars is your guardian deity; but since Mars has not favored
+you, and you have renounced your right of speech, let me speak."
+
+"The mountain is beginning to groan, and soon we shall see the small
+tail of a mouse," said Sadovski.
+
+"I ask for silence!" said Miller, severely. "Speak, Count, but keep in
+mind that up to this moment your counsels have given bitter fruit."
+
+"Which, though it is winter, we must eat like mouldy biscuits," put in
+the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"This explains why your princely highness drinks so much wine," said
+Count Veyhard; "and though it does not take the place of native wit, it
+helps you to a happy digestion of even disgrace. But no matter! I know
+well that there is a party in the fortress which is long desirous of
+surrender, and that only our weakness on one side and the superhuman
+stubbornness of the prior on the other keep it in check. New terror
+will give this party new power; for this purpose we should show that we
+make no account of the loss of the gun, and storm the more vigorously."
+
+"Is that all?"
+
+"Even if it were all, I think that such counsel is more in accordance
+with the honor of Swedish soldiers than barren jests at cups, or than
+sleeping after drinking-bouts. But that is not all. We should spread
+the report among our soldiers, and especially among the Poles, that the
+men at work now making a mine have discovered the old underground
+passage leading to the cloister and the church."
+
+"That is good counsel," said Miller.
+
+"When this report is spread among the soldiers and the Poles, the Poles
+themselves will persuade the monks to surrender, for it is a question
+with them as with the monks, that that nest of superstitions should
+remain intact."
+
+"For a Catholic that is not bad!" muttered Sadovski.
+
+"If he served the Turks he would call Rome a nest of superstitions,"
+said the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"Then, beyond doubt, the Poles will send envoys to the priests,"
+continued Count Veyhard,--"that party in the cloister, which is long
+anxious for surrender will renew its efforts under the influence of
+fear; and who knows but its members will force the prior and the
+stubborn to open the gates?"
+
+"The city of Priam will perish through the cunning of the divine son of
+Laertes," declaimed the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"As God lives, a real Trojan history, and he thinks he has invented
+something new!" said Sadovski.
+
+But the advice pleased Miller, for in very truth it was not bad. The
+party which the count spoke of existed really in the cloister. Even
+some priests of weaker soul belonged to it. Besides, fear might extend
+among the garrison, including even those who so far were ready to
+defend it to the last drop of blood.
+
+"Let us try, let us try!" said Miller, who like a drowning man seized
+every plank, and from despair passed easily to hope. "But will
+Kuklinovski or Zbrojek agree to go again as envoys to the cloister, or
+will they believe in that passage, and will they inform the priests of
+it?"
+
+"In every case Kuklinovski will agree," answered the count; "but it is
+better that he should believe really in the existence of the passage."
+
+At that moment they heard the tramp of a horse in front of the
+quarters.
+
+"There, Pan Zbrojek has come!" said the Prince of Hesse, looking
+through the window.
+
+A moment later spurs rattled, and Zbrojek entered, or rather rushed
+into the room. His face was pale, excited, and before the officers
+could ask the cause of his excitement the colonel cried,--
+
+"Kuklinovski is no longer living!"
+
+"How? What do you say? What has happened?" exclaimed Miller.
+
+"Let me catch breath," said Zbrojek, "for what I have seen passes
+imagination."
+
+"Talk more quickly. Has he been murdered?" cried all.
+
+"By Kmita," answered Zbrojek.
+
+The officers all sprang from their seats, and began to look at Zbrojek
+as at a madman; and he, while blowing in quick succession bunches of
+steam from his nostrils, said,--
+
+"If I had not seen I should not have believed, for that is not a human
+power. Kuklinovski is not living, three soldiers are killed, and of
+Kmita not a trace. I know that he was a terrible man. His reputation is
+known in the whole country. But for him, a prisoner and bound, not only
+to free himself, but to kill the soldiers and torture Kuklinovski to
+death,--that a man could not do, only a devil!"
+
+"Nothing like that has ever happened; that's impossible of belief!"
+whispered Sadovski.
+
+"That Kmita has shown what he can do," said the Prince of Hesse. "We
+did not believe the Poles yesterday when they told us what kind of bird
+he was; we thought they were telling big stories, as is usual with
+them."
+
+"Enough to drive a man mad," said the count.
+
+Miller seized his head with his hands, and said nothing. When at last
+he raised his eyes, flashes of wrath were crossing in them with flashes
+of suspicion.
+
+"Pan Zbrojek," said he, "though he were Satan and not a man, he could
+not do this without some treason, without assistance. Kmita had his
+admirers here; Kuklinovski his enemies, and you belong to the number."
+
+Zbrojek was in the full sense of the word an insolent soldier;
+therefore when he heard an accusation directed against himself, he grew
+still paler, sprang from his place, approached Miller, and halting in
+front of him looked him straight in the eyes.
+
+"Does your worthiness suspect me?" inquired he.
+
+A very oppressive moment followed. The officers present had not the
+slightest doubt were Miller to give an affirmative answer something
+would follow terrible and unparalled in the history of camps. All hands
+rested on their rapier hilts. Sadovski even drew his weapon altogether.
+
+But at that moment the officers saw before the window a yard filled
+with Polish horsemen. Probably they also had come with news of
+Kuklinovski, but in case of collision they would stand beyond doubt on
+Zbrojek's side. Miller too saw them, and though the paleness of rage
+had come on his face, still he restrained himself, and feigning to see
+no challenge in Zbrojek's action, he answered in a voice which he
+strove to make natural,--
+
+"Tell in detail how it happened."
+
+Zbrojek stood for a time yet with nostrils distended, but he too
+remembered himself; and then his thoughts turned in another direction,
+for his comrades, who had just ridden up, entered the room.
+
+"Kuklinovski is murdered!" repeated they, one after another.
+"Kuklinovski is killed! His regiment will scatter! His soldiers are
+going wild!"
+
+"Gentlemen, permit Pan Zbrojek to speak; he brought the news first,"
+cried Miller.
+
+After a while there was silence, and Zbrojek spoke as follows,--
+
+"It is known to you, gentlemen, that at the last council I challenged
+Kuklinovski on the word of a cavalier. I was an admirer of Kmita, it is
+true; but even you, though his enemies, must acknowledge that no common
+man could have done such a deed as bursting that cannon. It behooves us
+to esteem daring even in an enemy; therefore I offered him my hand, but
+he refused his, and called me a traitor. Then I thought to myself, 'Let
+Kuklinovski do what he likes with him.' My only other thought was this:
+'If Kuklinovski acts against knightly honor in dealing with Kmita, the
+disgrace of his deed must not fall on all Poles, and among others on
+me.' For that very reason I wished surely to fight with Kuklinovski,
+and this morning taking two comrades, I set out for his camp. We come
+to his quarters; they say there, 'He is not at home.' I send to this
+place,--he is not here. At his quarters they tell us, 'He has not
+returned the whole night.' But they are not alarmed, for they think
+that he has remained with your worthiness. At last one soldier says,
+'Last evening he went to that little barn in the field with Kmita, whom
+he was going to burn there.' I ride to the barn; the doors are wide
+open. I enter; I see inside a naked body hanging from a beam. 'That is
+Kmita,' thought I; but when my eyes have grown used to the darkness, I
+see that the body is some thin and bony one, and Kmita looked like a
+Hercules. It is a wonder to me that he could shrink so much in one
+night. I draw near--Kuklinovski!"
+
+"Hanging from the beam?" asked Miller.
+
+"Exactly! I make the sign of the cross,--I think, 'Is it witchcraft, an
+omen, deception, or what?' But when I saw three corpses of soldiers,
+the truth stood as if living before me. That terrible man had killed
+these, hung Kuklinovski, burned him like an executioner, and then
+escaped."
+
+"It is not far to the Silesian boundary," said Sadovski.
+
+A moment of silence followed. Every suspicion of Zbrojek's
+participation in the affair was extinguished in Miller's soul. But the
+event itself astonished and filled him with a certain undefined fear.
+He saw dangers rising around, or rather their terrible shadows, against
+which he knew not how to struggle; he felt that some kind of chain of
+failures surrounded him. The first links were before his eyes, but
+farther the gloom of the future was lying. Just such a feeling mastered
+him as if he were in a cracked house which might fall on his head any
+moment. Uncertainty crushed him with an insupportable weight, and he
+asked himself what he had to lay hands on.
+
+Meanwhile Count Veyhard struck himself on the forehead. "As God lives,"
+said he, "when I saw this Kmita yesterday it seemed as if I had known
+him somewhere. Now again I see before me that face. I remember the
+sound of his voice. I must have met him for a short time and in the
+dark, in the evening; but he is going through my head,--going--" Here
+he began to rub his forehead with his hand.
+
+"What is that to us?" asked Miller; "you will not mend the gun, even
+should you remember; you will not bring Kuklinovski to life."
+
+Here he turned to the officers. "Gentlemen, come with me, whoso wishes,
+to the scene of this deed."
+
+All wished to go, for curiosity was exciting them. Horses were brought,
+and they moved on at a trot, the general at the head. When they came to
+the little barn they saw a number of tens of Polish horsemen scattered
+around that building, on the road, and along the field.
+
+"What men are they?" asked Miller of Zbrojek.
+
+"They must be Kuklinovski's; I tell your worthiness that those
+ragamuffins have simply gone wild."
+
+Zbrojek then beckoned to one of the horsemen,--
+
+"Come this way, come this way. Quickly!"
+
+The soldier rode up.
+
+"Are you Kuklinovski's men?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is the rest of the regiment?"
+
+"They have run away. They refused to serve longer against Yasna Gora."
+
+"What does he say?" asked Miller.
+
+Zbrojek interpreted the words.
+
+"Ask him where they went to."
+
+Zbrojek repeated the question.
+
+"It is unknown," said the soldier. "Some have gone to Silesia. Others
+said that they would serve with Kmita, for there is not another such
+colonel either among the Poles or the Swedes."
+
+When Zbrojek interpreted these words to Miller, he grew serious. In
+truth, such men as Kuklinovski had were ready to pass over to the
+command of Kmita without hesitation. But then they might become
+terrible, if not for Miller's army, at least for his supplies and
+communication. A river of perils was rising higher and higher around
+the enchanted fortress.
+
+Zbrojek, into whose head this idea must have come, said, as if in
+answer to these thoughts of Miller: "It is certain that everything is
+in a storm now in our Commonwealth. Let only such a Kmita shout,
+hundreds and thousands will surround him, especially after what he has
+done."
+
+"But what can he effect?" asked Miller.
+
+"Remember, your worthiness, that that man brought Hovanski to
+desperation, and Hovanski had, counting the Cossacks, six times as
+many men as we. Not a transport will come to us without his permission,
+the country houses are destroyed, and we are beginning to feel hunger.
+Besides, this Kmita may join with Jegotski and Kulesha; then he will
+have several thousand sabres at his call. He is a grievous man, and may
+become most harmful."
+
+"Are you sure of your soldiers?"
+
+"Surer than of myself," answered Zbrojek, with brutal frankness.
+
+"How surer?"
+
+"For, to tell the truth, we have all of us enough of this siege."
+
+"I trust that it will soon come to an end."
+
+"Only the question is: How? But for that matter to capture this
+fortress is at present as great a calamity as to retire from it."
+
+Meanwhile they had reached the little barn. Miller dismounted, after
+him the officers, and all entered. The soldiers had removed Kuklinovski
+from the beam, and covering him with a rug laid him on his back on
+remnants of straw. The bodies of three soldiers lay at one side, placed
+evenly one by the other.
+
+"These were killed with knives."
+
+"But Kuklinovski?"
+
+"There are no wounds on Kuklinovski, but his side is roasted and his
+mustaches daubed with pitch. He must have perished of cold or
+suffocation, for he holds his own cap in his teeth to this moment."
+
+"Uncover him."
+
+The soldier raised a corner of the rug, and a terrible face was
+uncovered, swollen, with eyes bursting out. On the remnants of his
+pitched mustaches were icicles formed from his frozen breath and mixed
+with soot, making as it were tusks sticking out of his mouth. That face
+was so revolting that Miller, though accustomed to all kinds of
+ghastliness, shuddered and said,--
+
+"Cover it quickly. Terrible, terrible!"
+
+Silence reigned in the barn.
+
+"Why have we come here?" asked the Prince of Hesse, spitting. "I shall
+not touch food for a whole day."
+
+All at once some kind of uncommon exasperation closely bordering on
+frenzy took possession of Miller. His face became blue, his eyes
+expanded, he began to gnash his teeth, a wild thirst for the blood of
+some one had seized him; then turning to Zbrojek, he screamed,--
+
+"Where is that soldier who saw that Kuklinovski was in the barn? He
+must be a confederate!"
+
+"I know not whether that soldier is here yet," answered Zbrojek. "All
+Kuklinovski's men have scattered like oxen let out from the yoke."
+
+"Then catch him!" bellowed Miller, in fury.
+
+"Catch him yourself!" cried Zbrojek, in similar fury.
+
+And again a terrible outburst hung as it were on a spider-web over the
+heads of the Swedes and the Poles. The latter began to gather around
+Zbrojek, moving their mustaches threateningly and rattling their
+sabres.
+
+During this noise the echoes of shots and the tramp of horses were
+heard, and into the barn rushed a Swedish officer of cavalry.
+
+"General!" cried he. "A sortie from the cloister! The men working at
+the mine have been cut to pieces! A party of infantry is scattered!"
+
+"I shall go wild!" roared Miller, seizing the hair of his wig. "To
+horse!"
+
+In a moment they were all rushing like a whirlwind toward the cloister,
+so that lumps of snow fell like hail from the hoofs of their horses. A
+hundred of Sadovski's cavalry, under command of his brother, joined
+Miller and ran to assist. On the way they saw parties of terrified
+infantry fleeing in disorder and panic, so fallen were the hearts of
+the Swedish infantry, elsewhere unrivalled. They had left even trenches
+which were not threatened by any danger. The oncoming officers and
+cavalry trampled a few, and rode finally to within a furlong of the
+fortress, but only to see on the height as clearly as on the palm of
+the hand, the attacking party returning safely to the cloister; songs,
+shouts of joy, and laughter came from them to Miller's ears.
+
+Single persons stood forth and threatened with bloody sabres in the
+direction of the staff. The Poles present at the side of the Swedish
+general recognized Zamoyski himself, who had led the sortie in person,
+and who, when he saw the staff, stopped and saluted it solemnly with
+his cap. No wonder he felt safe under cover of the fortress cannon.
+
+And, in fact, it began to smoke on the walls, and iron flocks of cannon
+balls were flying with terrible whistling among the officers. Troopers
+tottered in their saddles, and groans answered whistles.
+
+"We are under fire. Retreat!" commanded Sadovski.
+
+Zbrojek seized the reins of Miller's horse. "General, withdraw! It is
+death here!"
+
+Miller, as if he had become torpid, said not a word, and let himself be
+led out of range of the missiles. Returning to his quarters, he locked
+himself in, and for a whole day would see no man. He was meditating
+surely over his fame of Poliorcetes.
+
+Count Veyhard now took all power in hand, and began with immense energy
+to make preparations for a storm. New breastworks were thrown up; the
+soldiers succeeding the miners broke the cliff unweariedly to prepare a
+mine. A feverish movement continued in the whole Swedish camp. It
+seemed that a new spirit had entered the besiegers, or that
+reinforcements had come. A few days later the news thundered through
+the Swedish and allied Polish camps that the miners had found a passage
+going under the church and the cloister, and that it depended now only
+on the good-will of the general to blow up the whole fortress.
+
+Delight seized the soldiers worn out with cold, hunger, and fruitless
+toil. Shouts of: "We have Chenstohova! We'll blow up that hen-house!"
+ran from mouth to mouth. Feasting and drinking began.
+
+The count was present everywhere; he encouraged the soldiers, kept them
+in that belief, repeated a hundred times daily the news of finding the
+passage, incited to feasting and frolics.
+
+The echo of this gladness reached the cloister at last. News of the
+mines dug and ready to explode ran with the speed of lightning from
+rampart to rampart. Even the most daring were frightened. Weeping women
+began to besiege the prior's dwelling, to hold out to him their
+children when he appeared for a while, and cry,--
+
+"Destroy not the innocent! Their blood will fall on thy head!"
+
+The greater coward a man had been, the greater his daring now in urging
+Kordetski not to expose to destruction the sacred place, the capital of
+the Most Holy Lady.
+
+Such grievous, painful times followed, for the unbending soul of our
+hero in a habit, as had not been till that hour. It was fortunate that
+the Swedes ceased their assaults, so as to prove more convincingly that
+they needed no longer either balls or cannon, that it was enough for
+them to ignite one little powder fuse. But for this very reason terror
+increased in the cloister. In the hour of deep night it seemed to some,
+the most timid, that they heard under the earth certain sounds, certain
+movements; that the Swedes were already under the cloister. Finally, a
+considerable number of the monks fell in spirit. Those, with Father
+Stradomski at the head of them, went to the prior and urged him to
+begin negotiations at once for surrender. The greater part of the
+soldiers went with them, and some of the nobles.
+
+Kordetski appeared in the courtyard, and when the throng gathered
+around him in a close circle, he said,--
+
+"Have we not sworn to one another to defend this holy place to the last
+drop of our blood? In truth, I tell you that if powder hurls us forth,
+only our wretched bodies, only the temporary covering, will fall away
+and return to the earth, but the souls will not return,--heaven will
+open above them, and they will enter into rejoicing and happiness, as
+into a sea without bounds. There Jesus Christ will receive them, and
+that Most Holy Mother will meet them, and they like golden bees will
+sit on her robe, and will sink in light and gaze on the face of the
+Lord."
+
+Here the reflection of that brightness was gleaming on his face. He
+raised his inspired eyes upward, and spoke on with a dignity and a calm
+not of earth:--
+
+"O Lord, the Ruler of worlds, Thou art looking into my heart, and Thou
+knowest that I am not deceiving this people when I say that if I
+desired only my own happiness I would stretch out my hands to Thee and
+cry from the depth of my soul: O Lord! let powder be there, let it
+explode, for in such a death is redemption of sins and faults, for it
+is eternal rest, and Thy servant is weary and toil worn over-much. And
+who would not wish a reward of such kind, for a death without pain and
+as short as the twinkle of an eye, as a flash in the heavens, after
+which is eternity unbroken, happiness inexhaustible, joy without end.
+But Thou hast commanded me to guard Thy retreat, therefore it is not
+permitted me to go. Thou hast placed me on guard, therefore Thou hast
+poured into me Thy strength, and I know, O Lord, I see and feel that
+although the malice of the enemy were to force itself under this
+church, though all the powder and destructive saltpetre were placed
+there, it would be enough for me to make the sign of the cross above
+them and they would never explode."
+
+Here he turned to the assembly and continued: "God has given me this
+power, but do you take fear out of your hearts. My spirit pierces the
+earth and tells you; Your enemies lie, there are no powder dragons
+under the church. You, people of timid hearts, you in whom fear has
+stifled faith, deserve not to enter the kingdom of grace and repose
+to-day. There is no powder under your feet then! God wishes to preserve
+this retreat, so that, like Noah's ark, it may be borne above the
+deluge of disasters and mishap; therefore, in the name of God, for the
+third time I tell you, there is no powder under the church. And when I
+speak in His name, who will make bold to oppose me, who will dare still
+to doubt?"
+
+When he had said this he was silent and looked at the throng of monks,
+nobles, and soldiers. But such was the unshaken faith, the conviction
+and power in his voice that they were silent also, and no man came
+forward. On the contrary, solace began to enter their hearts, till at
+last one of the soldiers, a simple peasant, said,--
+
+"Praise to the name of the Lord! For three days they say they are able
+to blow up the fortress; why do they not blow it up?"
+
+"Praise to the Most Holy Lady! Why do they not blow it up?" repeated a
+number of voices.
+
+Then a wonderful sign was made manifest. Behold all about them on a
+sudden was heard the sound of wings, and whole flocks of small winter
+birds appeared in the court of the fortress, and every moment new ones
+flew in from the starved country-places around. Birds such as gray
+larks, ortolans, buntings with yellow breasts, poor sparrows, green
+titmice, red bulfinches, sat on the slopes of the roofs, on the corners
+over the doors, on the church; others flew around in a many-colored
+crown above the head of the prior, flapping their wings, chirping sadly
+as if begging for alms, and having no fear whatever of man. People
+present were amazed at the sight; and Kordetski, after he had prayed
+for a while, said at last,--
+
+"See these little birds of the forest. They come to the protection of
+the Mother of God, but you doubt Her power."
+
+Consolation and hope had entered their hearts; the monks, beating their
+breasts, went to the church, and the soldiers mounted the walls.
+
+Women scattered grain to the birds, which began to pick it up eagerly.
+
+All interpreted the visit of these tiny forest-dwellers as a sign of
+success to themselves, and of evil to the enemy.
+
+"Fierce snows must be lying, when these little birds, caring neither
+for shots nor the thunder of cannon, flock to our buildings," said the
+soldiers.
+
+"But why do they fly from the Swedes to us?"
+
+"Because the meanest creature has the wit to distinguish an enemy from
+a friend."
+
+"That cannot be," said another soldier, "for in the Swedish camp are
+Poles too; but it means that there must be hunger there, and a lack of
+oats for the horses."
+
+"It means still better," said a third, "that what they say of the
+powder is downright falsehood."
+
+"How is that?" asked all, in one voice.
+
+"Old people say," replied the soldier, "that if a house is to fall, the
+sparrows and swallows having nests in spring under the roof, go away
+two or three days in advance; every creature has sense to feel danger
+beforehand. Now if powder were under the cloister, these little birds
+would not fly to us."
+
+"Is that true?"
+
+"As true as Amen to 'Our Father!'"
+
+"Praise to the Most Holy Lady! it will be bad for the Swedes."
+
+At this moment the sound of a trumpet was heard at the northwestern
+gate; all ran to see who was coming.
+
+It was a Swedish trumpeter with a letter from the camp. The monks
+assembled at once in the council hall. The letter was from Count
+Veyhard, and announced that if the fortress were not surrendered before
+the following day it would be hurled into the air. But those who before
+had fallen under the weight of fear had no faith now in this threat.
+
+"Those are vain threats!" said the priests and the nobles together.
+
+"Let us write to them not to spare us; let them blow us up!"
+
+And in fact they answered in that sense.
+
+Meanwhile the soldiers who had gathered around the trumpeter answered
+his warnings with ridicule.
+
+"Good!" said they to him. "Why do you spare us? We will go the sooner
+to heaven."
+
+But the man who delivered the answering letter to the messenger said,--
+
+"Do not lose words and time for nothing. Want is gnawing you, but we
+lack nothing, praise be to God! Even the birds fly away from you."
+
+And in this way Count Veyhard's last trick came to nothing. And when
+another day had passed it was shown with perfect proof how vain were
+the fears of the besieged, and peace returned to the cloister.
+
+The following day a worthy man from Chenstohova, Yatsek Bjuhanski, left
+a letter again giving warning of a storm; also news of the return of
+Yan Kazimir from Silesia, and the uprising of the whole Commonwealth
+against the Swedes. But according to reports circulating outside the
+walls, this was to be the last storm.
+
+Bjuhanski brought the letter with a bag of fish to the priests for
+Christmas Eve, and approached the walls disguised as a Swedish soldier.
+Poor man!-the Swedes saw him and seized him. Miller gave command to
+stretch him on the rack; but the old man had heavenly visions in the
+time of his torture, and smiled as sweetly as a child, and instead of
+pain unspeakable joy was depicted on his face. The general was present
+at the torture, but he gained no confession from the martyr; he merely
+acquired the despairing conviction that nothing could bend those
+people, nothing could break them.
+
+Now came the old beggarwoman Kostuha, with a letter from Kordetski
+begging most humbly that the storm be delayed during service on the day
+of Christ's birth. The guards and the officers received the beggarwoman
+with insults and jeers at such an envoy, but she answered them straight
+in the face,--
+
+"No other would come, for to envoys you are as murderers, and I took
+the office for bread,--a crust. I shall not be long in this world; I
+have no fear of you: if you do not believe, you have me in your hands."
+
+But no harm was done her. What is more, Miller, eager to try
+conciliation again, agreed to the prior's request, even accepted a
+ransom for Bjuhanski, not yet tortured quite out of his life; he sent
+also that part of the silver found with the Swedish soldiers. He did
+this last out of malice to Count Veyhard, who after the failure of the
+mine had fallen into disfavor again.
+
+At last Christmas Eve came. With the first star, lights great and small
+began to shine all around in the fortress. The night was still, frosty,
+but clear. The Swedish soldiers, stiffened with cold in the
+intrenchments, gazed from below on the dark walls of the unapproachable
+fortress, and to their minds came the warm Scandinavian cottages
+stuffed with moss, their wives and children, the fir-tree gleaming with
+lights; and more than one iron breast swelled with a sigh, with regret,
+with homesickness, with despair. But in the fortress, at tables covered
+with hay, the besieged were breaking wafers. A quiet joy was shining in
+all faces, for each one had the foreboding, almost the certainty, that
+the hours of suffering would be soon at an end.
+
+"Another storm to-morrow, but that will be the last," repeated the
+priests and the soldiers. "Let him to whom God will send death give
+thanks that the Lord lets him be present at Mass, and thus opens more
+surely heaven's gates, for whoso dies for the faith on the day of
+Christ's birth must be received into glory."
+
+They wished one another success, long years, or a heavenly crown; and
+so relief dropped into every heart, as if suffering were over already.
+
+But there stood one empty chair near the prior; before it a plate on
+which was a package of white wafers bound with a blue ribbon. When all
+had sat down, no one occupied that place. Zamoyski said,--
+
+"I see, revered father, that according to ancient custom there are
+places for men outside the cloister."
+
+"Not for men outside," said Father Agustine, "but as a remembrance of
+that young man whom we loved as a son, and whose soul is looking with
+pleasure upon us because we keep him in eternal memory."
+
+"As God lives," replied Zamoyski, "he is happier now than we. We owe
+him due thanks."
+
+Kordetski had tears in his eyes, and Charnyetski said,--
+
+"They write of smaller men in the chronicles. If God gives me life, and
+any one asks me hereafter, who was there among us the equal of ancient
+heroes, I shall say Babinich."
+
+"Babinich was not his name," said Kordetski.
+
+"How not Babinich?"
+
+"I long knew his real name under the seal of confession; but when going
+out against that cannon, he said to me: 'If I perish, let men know who
+I am, so that honorable repute may rest with my name, and destroy my
+former misdeeds.' He went, he perished; now I can tell you that he was
+Kmita!"
+
+"That renowned Lithuanian Kmita?" cried Charnyetski, seizing his
+forelock.
+
+"The same. How the grace of God changes hearts!"
+
+"For God's sake. Now I understand why he undertook that work; now I
+understand where he got that daring, that boldness, in which he
+surpassed all men. Kmita, Kmita, that terrible Kmita whom Lithuania
+celebrates."
+
+"Henceforth not only Lithuania, but the whole Commonwealth will glorify
+him in a different manner."
+
+"He was the first to warn us against Count Veyhard."
+
+"Through his advice we closed the gates in good season, and made
+preparations."
+
+"He killed the first Swede with a shot from a bow."
+
+"And how many of their cannon did he spoil! Who brought down De
+Fossis?"
+
+"And that siege gun! If we are not terrified at the storm of to-morrow,
+who is the cause?"
+
+"Let each remember him with honor, and celebrate his name wherever
+possible, so that justice be done," said Kordetski; "and now may God
+give him eternal rest."
+
+"And may everlasting light shine on him," answered one chorus of
+voices.
+
+But Pan Charnyetski was unable for a long time to calm himself, and his
+thoughts were continually turning to Kmita.
+
+"I tell you, gentlemen, that there was something of such kind in that
+man that though he served as a simple soldier, the command of itself
+crawled at once to his hand, so that it was a wonder to me how people
+obeyed such a young man unwittingly. In fact, he was commander on the
+bastion, and I obeyed him myself. Oh, had I known him then to be
+Kmita!"
+
+"Still it is a wonder to me," said Zamoyski, "that the Swedes have not
+boasted of his death."
+
+Kordetski sighed. "The powder must have killed him on the spot."
+
+"I would let a hand be cut from me could he be alive again," cried
+Charnyetski. "But that such a Kmita let himself be blown up by powder!"
+
+"He gave his life for ours," said Kordetski.
+
+"It is true," added Zamoyski, "that if that cannon were lying in the
+intrenchment, I should not think so pleasantly of to-morrow."
+
+"To-morrow God will give us a new victory," said the prior, "for the
+ark of Noah cannot be lost in the deluge."
+
+Thus they conversed with one another on Christmas Eve, and then
+separated; the monks going to the church, the soldiers, some to quiet
+rest, and others to keep watch on the walls and at the gates. But great
+care was superfluous, for in the Swedish camp there reigned unbroken
+calm. They had given themselves to rest and meditation, for to them too
+was approaching a most serious day.
+
+The night was solemn. Legions of stars twinkled in the sky, changing
+into blue and rosy colors. The light of the moon changed to green the
+shrouds of snow stretching between the fortress and the hostile camp.
+The wind did not howl, and it was calm, as from the beginning of the
+siege it had not been near the cloister.
+
+At midnight the Swedish soldiers heard the flow of the mild and grand
+tones of the organ; then the voices of men were joined with them; then
+the sounds of bells, large and small. Joy, consolation, and great calm
+were in those sounds; and the greater was the doubt, the greater the
+feeling of helplessness which weighed down the hearts of the Swedes.
+
+The Polish soldiers from the commands of Zbrojek and Kalinski, without
+seeking permission, went up to the very walls. They were not permitted
+to enter through fear of some snare; but they were permitted to stand
+near the walls. They also collected together. Some knelt on the snow,
+others shook their heads pitifully, sighing over their own lot, or beat
+their breasts, promising repentance; and all heard with delight and
+with tears in their eyes the music and the hymns sung according to
+ancient usage.
+
+At the same time the sentries on the walls who could not be in the
+church, wishing to make up for their loss, began also to sing, and soon
+was heard throughout the whole circuit of the walls the Christmas
+hymn:--
+
+
+                 "He is lying in the manger;
+                  Who will run
+                  To greet the little stranger?"
+
+
+In the afternoon of the following day the thunder of guns drowned again
+every other sound. All the intrenchments began to smoke simultaneously,
+the earth trembled in its foundations; as of old there flew on the roof
+of the church heavy balls, bombs, grenades, and torches fixed in
+cylinders, pouring a rain of melted lead, and naked torches, knots and
+ropes. Never had the thunder been so unceasing, never till then had
+such a river of fire and iron fallen on the cloister; but among the
+Swedish guns was not that great gun, which alone could crush the wall
+and make a breach necessary for assault.
+
+But the besieged were so accustomed to fire that each man knew what he
+had to do, and the defence went in its ordinary course without command.
+Fire was answered with fire, missile with missile, but better aimed,
+for with more calmness.
+
+Toward evening Miller went out to see by the last rays of the setting
+sun the results; and his glance fell on the tower outlined calmly on
+the background of the sky.
+
+"That cloister will stand for the ages of ages!" cried he, beside
+himself.
+
+"Amen!" answered Zbrojek, quietly.
+
+In the evening a council was assembled again at headquarters, still
+more gloomy than usual. Miller opened it himself.
+
+"The storm of to-day," said he, "has brought no result. Our powder is
+nearly consumed; half of our men are lost, the rest discouraged: they
+look for disasters, not victory. We have no supplies; we cannot expect
+reinforcements."
+
+"But the cloister stands unmoved as on the first day of the siege,"
+added Sadovski.
+
+"What remains for us?"
+
+"Disgrace."
+
+"I have received orders," said the general, "to finish quickly or
+retreat to Prussia."
+
+"What remains to us?" repeated the Prince of Hesse.
+
+All eyes were turned to Count Veyhard, who said: "To save our honor!"
+
+A short broken laugh, more like the gnashing of teeth, came from
+Miller, who was called Poliorcetes. "The Count wishes to teach us how
+to raise the dead," said he.
+
+Count Veyhard acted as though he had not heard this.
+
+"Only the slain have saved their honor," said Sadovski.
+
+Miller began to lose his cool blood. "And that cloister stands there
+yet, that Yasna Gora, that hen-house! I have not taken it! And we
+withdraw. Is this a dream, or am I speaking in my senses?"
+
+"That cloister stands there yet, that Yasna Gora!" repeated word for
+word the Prince of Hesse, "and we shall withdraw,--defeated!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; it seemed as though the leader and his
+subordinates found a certain wild pleasure in bringing to mind their
+shame and defeat.
+
+Now Count Veyhard said slowly and emphatically: "It has happened more
+than once in every war that a besieged fortress has ransomed itself
+from the besiegers, who then went away as victors; for whoso pays a
+ransom, by this same recognizes himself as defeated."
+
+The officers, who at first listened to the words of the speaker with
+scorn and contempt, now began to listen more attentively.
+
+"Let that cloister pay us any kind of ransom," continued the count;
+"then no one will say that we could not take it, but that we did not
+wish to take it."
+
+"Will they agree?" asked the Prince of Hesse.
+
+"I will lay down my head," answered Count Veyhard, "and more than that,
+my honor as a soldier."
+
+"Can that be!" asked Sadovski. "We have enough of this siege, but have
+they enough? What does your worthiness think of this?"
+
+Miller turned to Veyhard "Many grievous moments, the most grievous of
+my life, have I passed because of your counsels, Sir Count; but for
+this last advice I thank you, and will be grateful."
+
+All breasts breathed more freely. There could be no real question but
+that of retreating with honor.
+
+On the morrow, the day of Saint Stephen, the officers assembled to the
+last man to hear Kordetski's answer to Miller's letter, which proposed
+a ransom, and was sent in the morning.
+
+They had to wait long. Miller feigned joyousness, but constraint was
+evident on his face. No one of the officers could keep his place. All
+hearts beat unquietly. The Prince of Hesse and Sadovski stood under the
+window conversing in a low voice.
+
+"What do you think?" asked the first; "will they agree?"
+
+"Everything indicates that they will agree. Who would not wish to be
+rid of such terrible danger come what may, at the price of a few tens
+of thousands of thalers, especially since monks have not worldly
+ambition and military honor, or at least should not have? I only fear
+that the general has asked too much."
+
+"How much has he asked?"
+
+"Forty thousand from the monks, and twenty thousand from the nobles,
+but in the worst event they will try to reduce the sum."
+
+"Let us yield, in God's name, let us yield. If they have not the money,
+I would prefer to lend them my own, if they will let us go away with
+even the semblance of honor. But I tell your princely highness that
+though I recognize the count's advice this time as good, and I believe
+that they will ransom themselves, such a fever is gnawing me that I
+would prefer ten storms to this waiting."
+
+"Uf! you are right But still this Count Veyhard may go high."
+
+"Even as high as the gibbet," said the other.
+
+But the speakers did not foresee that a worse fate than even the gibbet
+was awaiting Count Veyhard.
+
+That moment the thunder of cannon interrupted further conversation.
+
+"What is that? firing from the fortress!" cried Miller. And springing
+up like a man possessed, he ran out of the room.
+
+All ran after him and listened. The sound of regular salvos came indeed
+from the fortress.
+
+"Are they fighting inside, or what?" cried Miller; "I don't
+understand."
+
+"I will explain to your worthiness," said Zbrojek, "this is Saint
+Stephen's Day, and the name's day of the Zamoyskis, father and son; the
+firing is in their honor."
+
+With that shouts of applause were heard from the fortress, and after
+them new salvos.
+
+"They have powder enough," said Miller, gloomily. "That is for us a new
+indication."
+
+But fate did not spare him another very painful lesson.
+
+The Swedish soldiers were so discouraged and fallen in spirit that at
+the sound of firing from the fortress the detachments guarding the
+nearest intrenchments deserted them in panic.
+
+Miller saw one whole regiment, the musketeers of Smaland, taking refuge
+in disorder at his own quarters; he heard too how the officers repeated
+among themselves at this sight,--
+
+"It is time, it is time, it is time to retreat!"
+
+But by degrees everything grew calm; one crushing impression remained.
+The leader, and after him the subordinates, entered the room and
+waited, waited impatiently; even the face of Count Veyhard, till then
+motionless, betrayed disquiet.
+
+At last the clatter of spurs was heard in the antechamber, and the
+trumpeter entered, all red from cold, his mustaches covered with his
+frozen breath.
+
+"An answer from the cloister!" said he, giving a large packet wound up
+in a colored handkerchief bound with a string.
+
+Miller's hands trembled somewhat, and he chose to cut the string with a
+dagger rather than to open it slowly. A number of pairs of eyes were
+fixed on the packet; the officers were breathless. The general unwound
+one roll of the cloth, a second, and a third, unwound with increasing
+haste till at last a package of wafers fell out on the table. Then he
+grew pale, and though no one asked what was in the package, he said,
+"Wafers!"
+
+"Nothing more?" asked some one in the crowd.
+
+"Nothing more!" answered the general, like an echo.
+
+A moment of silence followed, broken only by panting; at times too was
+heard the gritting of teeth, at times the rattling of rapiers.
+
+"Count Veyhard!" said Miller, at last, with a terrible and ill-omened
+voice.
+
+"He is no longer here!" answered one of the officers.
+
+Again silence followed.
+
+That night movement reigned in the whole camp. Scarcely was the light
+of day quenched when voices of command were heard, the hurrying of
+considerable divisions of cavalry, the sound of measured steps of
+infantry, the neighing of horses, the squeaking of wagons, the dull
+thump of cannon, with the biting of iron, the rattle of chains, noise,
+bustle, and turmoil.
+
+"Will there be a new storm in the morning?" asked the guards at the
+gates.
+
+But they were unable to see, for since twilight the sky was covered
+with clouds, and abundant snow had begun to fall. Its frequent flakes
+excluded the light. About five o'clock in the morning all sounds had
+ceased, but the snow was falling still more densely. On the walls and
+battlements it had created new walls and battlements. It covered the
+whole cloister and church, as if wishing to hide them from the glance
+of the enemy, to shelter and cover them from iron missiles.
+
+At last the air began to grow gray, and the bell commenced tolling for
+morning service, when the soldiers standing guard at the southern gate
+heard the snorting of a horse.
+
+Before the gate stood a peasant, all covered with snow; behind him was
+a low, small wooden sleigh, drawn by a thin, shaggy horse. The peasant
+fell to striking his body with his arms, to jumping from one foot to
+the other, and to crying,--
+
+"People, but open here!"
+
+"Who is alive?" they asked from the walls.
+
+"Your own, from Dzbov. I have brought game for the benefactors."
+
+"And how did the Swedes let you come?"
+
+"What Swedes?"
+
+"Those who are besieging the church."
+
+"Oho, there are no Swedes now!"
+
+"Praise God, every soul! Have they gone?"
+
+"The tracks behind them are covered."
+
+With that, crowds of villagers and peasants blackened the road, some
+riding, others on foot, there were women too, and all began to cry from
+afar,--
+
+"There are no Swedes! there are none! They have gone to Vyelunie. Open
+the gates! There is not a man in the camp!"
+
+"The Swedes have gone, the Swedes have gone!" cried men on the walls;
+and the news ran around like lightning.
+
+Soldiers rushed to the bells, and rang them all as if for an alarm.
+Every living soul rushed out of the cells, the dwellings, and the
+church.
+
+The news thundered all the time. The court was swarming with monks,
+nobles, soldiers, women, and children. Joyful shouts were heard around.
+Some ran out on the walls to examine the empty camp; others burst into
+laughter or into sobs. Some would not believe yet, but new crowds came
+continually, peasants and villagers.
+
+They came from Chenstohova, from the surrounding villages, and from the
+forests near by, noisily, joyously, and with singing. New tidings
+crossed one another each moment. All had seen the retreating Swedes,
+and told in what direction they were going.
+
+A few hours later the slope and the plain below the mountain were
+filled with people. The gates of the cloister were open wide, as they
+had been before the siege; and all the bells were ringing, ringing,
+ringing,--and those voices of triumph flew to the distance, and then
+the whole Commonwealth heard them.
+
+The snow was covering and covering the tracks of the Swedes.
+
+About noon of that day the church was so filled with people that head
+was as near head as on a paved street in a city one stone is near
+another. Father Kordetski himself celebrated a thanksgiving Mass, and
+to the throng of people it seemed that a white angel was celebrating
+it. And it seemed to them also that he was singing out his soul in that
+Mass, or that it was borne heavenward in the smoke of the incense, and
+was expanding in praise to the Lord.
+
+The thunder of cannon shook not the walls, nor the glass in the
+windows, nor covered the people with dust, nor interrupted prayer, nor
+that thanksgiving hymn which amid universal ecstasy and weeping, the
+holy prior was intoning--
+
+"Te Deum laudamus."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VI.
+
+
+The horses bore Kmita and the Kyemliches swiftly to ward the Silesian
+boundary. They advanced with caution to avoid meeting Swedish scouts,
+for though the cunning Kyemliches had "passes," given by Kuklinovski
+and signed by Miller, still soldiers, though furnished with such
+documents, were usually subjected to examination, and examination might
+have an evil issue for Pan Andrei and his comrades. They rode,
+therefore, swiftly, so as to pass the boundary in all haste and push
+into the depth of the Emperor's territory. The boundaries themselves
+were not free from Swedish ravagers, and frequently whole parties of
+horsemen rode into Silesia to seize those who were going to Yan
+Kazimir. But the Kyemliches, during their stay at Chenstohova, occupied
+continually with hunting individual Swedes, had learned through and
+through the whole region, all the boundary roads, passages, and paths
+where the chase was most abundant, and were as if in their own land.
+
+Along the road old Kyemlich told Pan Andrei what was to be heard in the
+Commonwealth; and Pan Andrei, having been confined so long in the
+fortress, forgetting his own pain, listened to the news eagerly, for it
+was very unfavorable to the Swedes, and heralded a near end to their
+domination in Poland.
+
+"The army is sick of Swedish fortune and Swedish company," said old
+Kyemlich; "and as some time ago the soldiers threatened the hetmans
+with their lives if they would not join the Swedes, so now the same men
+entreat Pototski and send deputations asking him to save the
+Commonwealth from oppression, swearing to stand by him to the death.
+Some colonels also have begun to attack the Swedes on their own
+responsibility."
+
+"Who began first?"
+
+"Jegotski, the starosta of Babimost, and Pan Kulesha. These began in
+Great Poland, and annoy the Swedes notably. There are many small
+divisions in the whole country, but it is difficult to learn the names
+of the leaders, for they conceal them to save their own families and
+property from Swedish vengeance. Of the army that regiment rose first
+which is commanded by Pan Voynillovich."
+
+"Gabryel? He is my relative, though I do not know him."
+
+"A genuine soldier. He is the man who rubbed out Pratski's party, which
+was serving the Swedes, and shot Pratski himself; but now he has gone
+to the rough mountains beyond Cracow; there he cut up a Swedish
+division, and secured the mountaineers from oppression."
+
+"Are the mountaineers fighting with the Swedes already?"
+
+"They were the first to rise; but as they are stupid peasants, they
+wanted to rescue Cracow straightway with axes. General Douglas
+scattered them, for they knew nothing of the level country; but of the
+parties sent to pursue them in the mountains, not a man has returned.
+Pan Voynillovich has helped those peasants, and now has gone himself to
+the marshal at Lyubovlya, and joined his forces."
+
+"Is Pan Lyubomirski, the marshal, opposed to the Swedes?"
+
+"Reports disagreed. They said that he favored this side and that; but
+when men began to mount their horses throughout the whole country he
+went against the Swedes. He is a powerful man, and can do them a great
+deal of harm. He alone might war with the King of Sweden. People say
+too that before spring there will not be one Swede in the
+Commonwealth."
+
+"God grant that!"
+
+"How can it be otherwise, your grace, since for the siege of
+Chenstohova all are enraged against them? The army is rising, the
+nobles are fighting already wherever they can, the peasants are
+collecting in crowds, and besides, the Tartars are marching; the Khan,
+who defeated Hmelnitski and the Cossacks, and promised to destroy them
+completely unless they would march against the Swedes, is coming in
+person."
+
+"But the Swedes have still much support among magnates and nobles?"
+
+"Only those take their part who must, and even they are merely waiting
+for a chance. The prince voevoda of Vilna is the only man who has
+joined them sincerely, and that act has turned out ill for him."
+
+Kmita stopped his horse, and at the same time caught his side, for
+terrible pain had shot through him.
+
+"In God's name!" cried he, suppressing a groan, "tell me what is taking
+place with Radzivill. Is he all the time in Kyedani?"
+
+"O Ivory Gate!" said the old man; "I know as much as people say, and
+God knows what they do not say. Some report that the prince voevoda is
+living no longer; others that he is still defending himself against Pan
+Sapyeha, but is barely breathing. It is likely that they are struggling
+with each other in Podlyasye, and that Pan Sapyeha has the upper hand,
+for the Swedes could not save the prince voevoda. Now they say that,
+besieged in Tykotsin by Sapyeha, it is all over with him."
+
+"Praise be to God! The honest are conquering traitors! Praise be to
+God! Praise be to God!"
+
+Kyemlich looked from under his brows at Kmita, and knew not himself
+what to think, for it was known in the whole Commonwealth that if
+Radzivill had triumphed in the beginning over his own troops and the
+nobles who did not wish Swedish rule, it happened, mainly, thanks to
+Kmita and his men. But old Kyemlich did not let that thought be known
+to his colonel, and rode farther in silence.
+
+"But what has happened to Prince Boguslav?" asked Pan Andrei, at last.
+
+"I have heard nothing of him, your grace," answered Kyemlich. "Maybe he
+is in Tykotsin, and maybe with the elector. War is there at present,
+and the King of Sweden has gone to Prussia; but we meanwhile are
+waiting for our own king. God give him! for let him only show himself,
+all to a man will rise, and the troops will leave the Swedes
+straightway."
+
+"Is that certain?"
+
+"Your grace, I know only what those soldiers said who had to be with
+the Swedes at Chenstohova. They are very fine cavalry, some thousands
+strong, under Zbrojek, Kalinski, and other colonels. I may tell your
+grace that no man serves there of his own will, except Kuklinovski's
+ravagers; they wanted to get the treasures of Yasna Gora. But all
+honorable soldiers did nothing but lament, and one quicker than another
+complained: 'We have enough of this Jew's service! Only let our king
+put a foot over the boundary, we will turn our sabres at once on the
+Swedes; but while he is not here, how can we begin, whither can we go?'
+So they complain; and in the other regiments which are under the
+hetmans it is still worse. This I know certainly, for deputations came
+from them to Pan Zbrojek with arguments, and they had secret talks
+there at night; this Miller did not know, though he felt that there was
+evil about him."
+
+"But is the prince voevoda of Vilna besieged in Tykotsin?" asked Pan
+Andrei.
+
+Kyemlich looked again unquietly on Kmita, for he thought that surely a
+fever was seizing him if he asked to have the same information
+repeated; still he answered,--
+
+"Besieged by Pan Sapyeha."
+
+"Just are Thy judgments, God!" said Kmita. "He who might compare in
+power with kings! Has no one remained with him?"
+
+"In Tykotsin there is a Swedish garrison. But with the prince only some
+of his trustiest attendants have remained."
+
+Kmita's breast was filled with delight. He had feared the vengeance of
+the terrible magnate on Olenka, and though it seemed to him that he had
+prevented that vengeance with his threats, still he was tormented by
+the thought that it would be better and safer for Olenka and all the
+Billeviches to live in a lion's den than in Kyedani, under the hand of
+the prince, who never forgave any man. But now when he had fallen his
+opponents must triumph by the event; now when he was deprived of power
+and significance, when he was lord of only one poor castle, in which he
+defended his own life and freedom, he could not think of vengeance; his
+hand had ceased to weigh on his enemies.
+
+"Praise be to God! praise be to God!" repeated Kmita.
+
+He had his head so filled with the change in Radzivill's fortunes, so
+occupied with that which had happened during his stay in Chenstohova,
+and with the question where was she whom his heart loved, and what had
+become of her, that a third time he asked Kyemlich: "You say that the
+prince is broken?"
+
+"Broken completely," answered the old man. "But are you not sick?"
+
+"My side is burned. That is nothing!" answered Kmita.
+
+Again they rode on in silence. The tired horses lessened their speed by
+degrees, till at last they were going at a walk. That monotonous
+movement lulled to sleep Pan Andrei, who was mortally wearied, and he
+slept long, nodding in the saddle. He was roused only by the white
+light of day. He looked around with amazement, for in the first moment
+it seemed to him that everything through which he had passed in that
+night was merely a dream; at last he inquired,--
+
+"Is that you, Kyemlich? Are we riding from Chenstohova?"
+
+"Of course, your grace."
+
+"But where are we?"
+
+"Oho, in Silesia already. Here the Swedes will not get us."
+
+"That is well!" said Kmita, coming to his senses completely. "But where
+is our gracious king living?"
+
+"At Glogov."
+
+"We will go there then to bow down to our lord, and offer him service.
+But listen, old man, to me."
+
+"I am listening, your grace."
+
+Kmita fell to thinking, however, and did not speak at once. He was
+evidently combining something in his head; he hesitated, considered,
+and at last said: "It cannot be otherwise!"
+
+"I am listening, your grace," repeated Kyemlich.
+
+"Neither to the king nor to any man at the court must you mutter who I
+am. I call myself Babinich, I am faring from Chenstohova. Of the great
+gun and of Kuklinovski you may talk, so that my intentions be not
+misconstrued, and I be considered a traitor, for in my blindness I
+aided and served Prince Radzivill; of this they may have heard at the
+court."
+
+"I may speak of what your grace did at Chenstohova--"
+
+"But who will show that 'tis true till the siege is over?"
+
+"I will act at your command."
+
+"The day will come for truth to appear at the top," added Kmita, as it
+were to himself, "but first our gracious lord must convince himself.
+Later he also will give me his witness."
+
+Here the conversation was broken. By this time it had become perfect
+day. Old Kyemlich began to sing matins, and Kosma and Damian
+accompanied him with bass voices. The road was difficult, for the frost
+was cutting, and besides, the travellers were stopped continually and
+asked for news, especially if Chenstohova was resisting yet. Kmita
+answered that it was resisting, and would take care of itself; but
+there was no end to questions. The roads were swarming with travellers,
+the inns everywhere filled. Some people were seeking refuge in the
+depth of the country from the neighboring parts of the Commonwealth
+before Swedish oppression; others were pushing toward the boundary for
+news. From time to time appeared nobles, who, having had enough of the
+Swedes, were going, like Kmita, to offer their services to the fugitive
+king. There were seen, also, attendants of private persons; at times
+smaller or larger parties of soldiers, from armies, which either
+voluntarily or in virtue of treaties with the Swedes had passed the
+boundaries,--such, for instance, as the troops of Stefan Charnyetski.
+News from the Commonwealth had roused the hope of those "exiles," and
+many of them were making ready to come home in arms. In all Silesia,
+and particularly in the provinces of Ratibor and Opol, it was boiling
+as in a pot; messengers were flying with letters to the king and from
+the king; they were flying with letters to Charnyetski, to the primate,
+to Pan Korytsinski, the chancellor; to Pan Varshytski, the castellan of
+Cracow, the first senator of the Commonwealth, who had not deserted the
+cause of Yan Kazimir for an instant.
+
+These lords, in agreement with the great queen, who was unshaken in
+misfortune, were coming to an understanding with one another, with the
+country, and with the foremost men in it, of whom it was known that
+they would gladly resume allegiance to their legal lord. Messengers
+were sent independently by the marshal of the kingdom, the hetmans, the
+army, and the nobles, who were making ready to take up arms.
+
+It was the eve of a general war, which in some places had broken out
+already. The Swedes put down these local outbursts either with arms or
+with the executioner's axe, but the fire quenched in one place flamed
+up at once in another. An awful storm was hanging over the heads of the
+Scandinavian invaders; the ground itself, though covered with snow,
+began to burn their feet; threats and vengeance surrounded them on all
+sides; their own shadows alarmed them.
+
+They went around like men astray. The recent songs of triumph died on
+their lips, and they asked one another in the greatest amazement, "Are
+these the same people who yesterday left their own king, and gave up
+without fighting a battle?" Yes, lords, nobles, army,--an example
+unheard of in history,--passed over to the conqueror; towns and castles
+threw open their gates; the country was occupied. Never had a conquest
+cost fewer exertions, less blood. The Swedes themselves, wondering at
+the ease with which they had occupied a mighty Commonwealth, could not
+conceal their contempt for the conquered, who at the first gleam of a
+Swedish sword rejected their own king, their country, provided that
+they could enjoy life and goods in peace, or acquire new goods in the
+confusion. What in his time Count Veyhard had told the emperor's envoy,
+Lisola, the king himself, and all the Swedish generals repeated: "There
+is no manhood in this nation, there is no stability, there is no order,
+no faith, no patriotism! It must perish."
+
+They forgot that that nation had still one feeling, specially that one
+whose earthly expression was Yasna Gora. And in that feeling was
+rebirth.
+
+Therefore the thunder of cannon which was heard under the sacred
+retreat found an echo at once in the hearts of all magnates, nobles,
+town-dwellers, and peasants. An outcry of awe was heard from the
+Carpathians to the Baltic, and the giant was roused from his torpor.
+
+"That is another people!" said the amazed Swedish generals.
+
+And all, from Arwid Wittemberg to the commandants of single castles,
+sent to Karl Gustav in Prussia tidings filled with terror.
+
+The earth was pushing from under their feet; instead of recent friends,
+they met enemies on all sides; instead of submission, hostility;
+instead of fear, a wild daring ready for everything; instead of
+mildness, ferocity; instead of long-suffering, vengeance.
+
+Meanwhile from hand to hand were flying in thousands throughout the
+whole Commonwealth the manifestoes of Yan Kazimir, which, issued at
+first in Silesia, had found no immediate echo. Now, on the contrary,
+they were seen in castles still free of the enemy. Wherever the Swedish
+hand was not weighing, the nobles assembled in crowds large and small,
+and beat their breasts, listening to the lofty words of the fugitive
+king, who, recounting faults and sins, urged them not to lose hope, but
+hasten to the rescue of the fallen Commonwealth.
+
+"Though the enemy have already advanced far, it is not too late," wrote
+Yan Kazimir, "for us to recover the lost provinces and towns, give due
+praise to God, satisfy the profaned churches with the blood of the
+enemy, and restore the former liberties, laws, and ancient enactments
+of Poland to their usual circuit; if only there is a return of that
+ancient Polish virtue, and that devotion and love of God peculiar to
+your ancestors, virtues for which our great-grandfather, Sigismund I.,
+honored them before many nations. A return to virtue has already
+diminished these recent transgressions. Let those of you to whom God
+and His holy faith are dearer than aught else rise against the Swedish
+enemy. Do not wait for leaders or voevodas, or for such an order of
+things as is described in public law. At present the enemy have brought
+all these things to confusion among you; but do you join, the first man
+to a second, a third to these two, a fourth to the three, a fifth to
+the four, and thus farther, so that each one with his own subjects may
+come, and when it is possible try resistance. Afterward you will select
+a leader. Join yourselves one party to another, and you will form an
+army. When the army is formed and you have chosen a known chief over
+it, wait for our person, not neglecting an occasion wherever it comes
+to defeat the enemy. If we hear of the occasion, and your readiness and
+inclination, we will come at once and lay down our life wherever the
+defence of the country requires it."
+
+This manifesto was read even in the camp of Karl Gustav, in castles
+having Swedish garrisons, in all places wherever Polish squadrons were
+found. The nobles shed tears at every word of the king their kind lord,
+and took an oath on crosses, on pictures of the Most Holy Lady, and on
+scapulars to please him. To give a proof of their readiness, while
+ardor was in their hearts and their tears were not dry, they mounted
+here and there without hesitation, and moved on while hot against the
+Swedes.
+
+In this way the smaller Swedish parties began to melt and to vanish.
+This was done in Lithuania, Mazovia, Great and Little Poland. More than
+once nobles who had assembled at a neighbor's house for a christening,
+a name's day, a wedding or a dance, without any thought of war,
+finished the entertainment with this, that after they had taken a good
+share of drink they struck like a thunderbolt and cut to pieces the
+nearest Swedish command. Then, amid songs and shouts, they assembled
+for the road. Those who wished to "hunt" rode farther, changed into a
+crowd greedy for blood, from a crowd into a "party" which began steady
+war. Subject peasants and house-servants joined the amusement in
+throngs; others gave information about single Swedes or small squads
+disposed incautiously through the villages. And the number of "balls"
+and "masquerades" increased with each day. Joyousness and daring
+personal to the people were bound up with these bloody amusements.
+
+They disguised themselves gladly as Tartars, the very name of which
+filled the Swedes with alarm; for among them were current marvellous
+accounts and fables touching the ferocity, the terrible and savage
+bravery of those sons of the Crimean steppes, with whom the
+Scandinavians had never met hitherto. Besides, it was known universally
+that the Khan with about a hundred thousand of the horde was marching
+to succor Yan Kazimir; and the nobles made a great uproar while
+attacking Swedish commands, from which wonderful disorder resulted.
+
+The Swedish colonels and commandants in many places were really
+convinced that Tartars were present, and retreated in haste to larger
+fortresses and camps, spreading everywhere erroneous reports and alarm.
+Meanwhile the neighborhoods which were freed in this manner from the
+enemy were able to defend themselves, and change an unruly rabble into
+the most disciplined of armies.
+
+But more terrible for the Swedes than "masquerades" of nobles, or than
+the Tartars themselves, were the movements of the peasants. Excitement
+among the people began with the first day of the siege of Chenstohova;
+and ploughmen hitherto silent and patient began here and there to offer
+resistance, here and there to take scythes and flails and help nobles.
+The most brilliant Swedish generals looked with the greatest alarm at
+these crowds, which might at any moment turn into a genuine deluge and
+overwhelm beyond rescue the invaders.
+
+Terror seemed to them the most appropriate means by which to crush in
+the beginning this dreadful danger. Karl Gustav cajoled still, and
+retained with words of kindness those Polish squadrons which had
+followed him to Prussia. He had not spared flattery on Konyetspolski,
+the celebrated commander from Zbaraj. This commander stood at his side
+with six thousand cavalry, which at the first hostile meeting with the
+elector spread such terror and destruction among the Prussians that the
+elector abandoning the fight agreed as quickly as possible to the
+conditions.
+
+The King of Sweden sent letters also to the hetmans, the magnates, and
+the nobles, full of graciousness, promises, and encouragement to
+preserve loyalty to him. But at the same time he issued commands to his
+generals and commandants to destroy with fire and sword every
+opposition within the country, and especially to cut to pieces peasant
+parties. Then began a period of iron military rule. The Swedes cast
+aside the semblance of friendship. The sword, fire, pillage,
+oppression, took the place of the former pretended good will. From the
+castles they sent strong detachments of cavalry and infantry in pursuit
+of the "masqueraders." Whole villages, with churches and priests'
+dwellings, were levelled to the earth. Nobles taken prisoners, were
+delivered to the executioner; the right hands were cut from captured
+peasants, then they were sent home.
+
+These Swedish detachments were specially savage in Great Poland, which,
+as it was the first to surrender, was also the first to rise against
+foreign dominion. Commandant Stein gave orders on a certain occasion to
+cut the hands from more than three hundred peasants. In towns they
+built permanent gibbets, which every day were adorned with new victims.
+Pontus de la Gardie did the same in Lithuania and Jmud, where the noble
+villages took up arms first, and after them the peasants. Because in
+general it was difficult for the Swedes in the disturbance to
+distinguish their friends from their enemies, no one was spared.
+
+But the fire put down in blood, instead of dying, grew without ceasing,
+and a war began which was not on either side a question merely of
+victory, castles, towns, or provinces, but of life or death. Cruelty
+increased hatred, and they began not to struggle, but to exterminate
+each the other without mercy.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER VII.
+
+
+This war of extermination was just beginning when Kmita, with the three
+Kyemliches, reached Glogov, after a journey which was difficult in view
+of Pan Andrei's shaken health. They arrived in the night. The town was
+crowded with troops, lords, nobles, servants of the king and of
+magnates. The inns were so occupied that old Kyemlich with the greatest
+trouble found lodgings for his colonel outside the town at the house of
+a rope-maker.
+
+Pan Andrei spent the whole first day in bed in pain and fever from the
+burn. At times he thought that he should be seriously and grievously
+ill; but his iron constitution gained the victory. The following night
+brought him ease, and at daybreak he dressed and went to the parish
+church to thank God for his miraculous escape.
+
+The gray and snowy winter morning had barely dissipated the darkness.
+The town was still sleeping, but through the church door lights could
+be seen on the altar, and the sounds of the organ came forth.
+
+Kmita went to the centre of the church. The priest was celebrating Mass
+before the altar; there were few worshippers so far. At benches some
+persons were kneeling with their faces hidden in their hands; but
+besides those Pan Andrei saw, when his eyes had grown used to the
+darkness, a certain figure lying in the form of a cross in front of the
+pews on a carpet. Behind him were kneeling two youths with ruddy and
+almost angelic childish faces.
+
+This man was motionless, and only from his breast moving continually
+with deep sighs could it be known that he was not sleeping, but praying
+earnestly and with his whole soul. Kmita himself became absorbed in a
+thanksgiving prayer; but when he had finished his eyes turned
+involuntarily to the man lying as a cross, and could not leave him;
+something fastened them to him. Sighs deep as groans, audible in the
+silence of the church, shook that figure continually. The yellow rays
+of the candles burning before the altar, together with the light of
+day, whitening in the windows, brought it out of the gloom, and made it
+more and more visible.
+
+Pan Andrei conjectured at once from the dress that he must be some
+noted person, besides all present, not excepting the priest celebrating
+Mass, looked on him with honor and respect. The unknown was dressed
+entirely in black velvet bound with sable, but on his shoulders he had,
+turned down, a white lace collar, from under which peeped the golden
+links of a chain; a black hat with feathers of like color lay at his
+side; one of the pages kneeling beyond the carpet held gloves and a
+sword enamelled in blue. Kmita could not see the face of the unknown,
+for it was hidden by the folds of the carpet, and besides, the locks of
+an unusually thick wig scattered around his head concealed it
+completely.
+
+Pan Andrei pressed up to the front pew to see the face of the unknown
+when he rose. Mass was then drawing to an end. The priest was singing
+_Pater noster_. The people who wished to be at the following Mass were
+coming in through the main entrance. The church was filled gradually
+with figures with heads shaven at the sides, dressed in cloaks with
+long sleeves, in military burkas, in fur cloaks, and in brocade coats.
+It became somewhat crowded. Kmita then pushed with his elbow a noble
+standing at his side, and whispered,--
+
+"Pardon, your grace, that I trouble you during service, but my
+curiosity is most powerful. Who is that?" He indicated with his eyes
+the man lying in the form of a cross.
+
+"Have you come from a distance, that you know not?" asked the noble.
+
+"Certainly I come from a distance, and therefore I ask in hope that if
+I find some polite man he will not begrudge an answer."
+
+"That is the king."
+
+"As God lives!" cried Kmita.
+
+But at that moment the king rose, for the priest had begun to read the
+Gospel.
+
+Pan Andrei saw an emaciated face, yellow and transparent, like church
+wax. The eyes of the king were moist, and his lids red. You would have
+said that all the fate of the country was reflected in that noble face,
+so much was there in it of pain, suffering, care. Sleepless nights
+divided between prayer and grief, terrible deceptions, wandering,
+desertion, the humiliated majesty of that son, grandson, and
+great-grandson of powerful kings, the gall which his own subjects had
+given him to drink so bountifully, the ingratitude of that country for
+which he was ready to devote his blood and life,--all this could be
+read in that face as in a book, and still it expressed not only
+resignation, obtained through faith and prayer, not only the majesty of
+a king and an anointed of God, but such great, inexhaustible kindness
+that evidently it would be enough for the greatest renegade, the most
+guilty man, only to stretch out his hands to that father, and that
+father would receive him, forgive him, and forget his offences.
+
+It seemed to Kmita at sight of him that some one had squeezed his heart
+with an iron hand. Compassion rose in the ardent soul of the young
+hero. Compunction, sorrow, and homage straitened the breath in his
+throat, a feeling of immeasurable guilt cut his knees under him so that
+he began to tremble through his whole body, and at once a new feeling
+rose in his breast. In one moment he had conceived such a love for that
+suffering king that to him there was nothing dearer on earth than that
+father and lord, for whom he was ready to sacrifice blood and life,
+bear torture and everything else in the world. He wished to throw
+himself at those feet, to embrace those knees, and implore forgiveness
+for his crimes. The noble, the insolent disturber, had died in him in
+one moment, and the royalist was born, devoted with his whole soul to
+his king.
+
+"That is our lord, our unhappy king," repeated he to himself, as if he
+wished with his lips to give witness to what his eyes saw and what his
+heart felt.
+
+After the Gospel, Yan Kazimir knelt again, stretched out his arms,
+raised his eyes to heaven, and was sunk in prayer. The priest went out
+at last, there was a movement in the church, the king remained
+kneeling.
+
+Then that noble whom Kmita had addressed pushed Pan Andrei in the side.
+
+"But who are you?" asked he.
+
+Kmita did not understand the question at once, and did not answer it
+directly, so greatly were his heart and mind occupied by the person of
+the king.
+
+"And who are you?" repeated that personage.
+
+"A noble like yourself," answered Pan Andrei, waking as if from a
+dream.
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"What is my name? Babinich; I am from Lithuania, from near Vityebsk."
+
+"And I am Pan Lugovski, of the king's household. Have you just come
+from Lithuania, from Vityebsk?"
+
+"No; I come from Chenstohova."
+
+Pan Lugovski was dumb for a moment from wonder.
+
+"But if that is true, then come and tell us the news. The king is
+almost dead from anxiety because he has had no certain tidings these
+three days. How is it? You are perhaps from the squadron of Zbrojek,
+Kalinski, or Kuklinovski, from near Chenstohova."
+
+"Not from near Chenstohova, but directly from the cloister itself."
+
+"Are you not jesting? What is going on there, what is to be heard? Does
+Yasna Gora defend itself yet?"
+
+"It does, and will defend itself. The Swedes are about to retreat."
+
+"For God's sake! The king will cover you with gold. From the very
+cloister do you say that you have come? How did the Swedes let you
+pass?"
+
+"I did not ask their permission; but pardon me, I cannot give a more
+extended account in the church."
+
+"Right, right!" said Pan Lugovski. "God is merciful! You have fallen
+from heaven to us! It is not proper in the church,--right! Wait a
+moment. The king will rise directly; he will go to breakfast before
+high Mass. To-day is Sunday. Come stand with me at the door, and when
+the king is going out I will present you. Come, come, there is no time
+to spare."
+
+He pushed ahead, and Kmita followed. They had barely taken their places
+at the door when the two pages appeared, and after them came Yan
+Kazimir slowly.
+
+"Gracious King!" cried Pan Lugovski, "there are tidings from
+Chenstohova."
+
+The wax-like face of Yan Kazimir became animated in an instant.
+
+"What tidings? Where is the man?" inquired he.
+
+"This noble; he says that he has come from the very cloister."
+
+"Is the cloister captured?" cried the king.
+
+That moment Pan Andrei fell his whole length at the feet of the king.
+Yan Kazimir inclined and began to raise him by the arms.
+
+"Oh, ceremony another time, another time!" cried he. "Rise, in God's
+name, rise! Speak quickly! Is the cloister taken?"
+
+Kmita sprang up with tears in his eyes, and cried with animation,--
+
+"It is not, and will not be taken, Gracious Lord. The Swedes are
+beaten. The great gun is blown up. There is fear among them, hunger,
+misery. They are thinking of retreat."
+
+"Praise, praise to Thee, Queen of the Angels and of us!" said the king.
+Then he turned to the church door, removed his hat, and without
+entering knelt on the snow at the door. He supported his head on a
+stone pillar, and sank into silence. After a while sobbing began to
+shake him. Emotion seized all, and Pan Andrei wept loudly. The king,
+after he had prayed and shed tears, rose quieted, with a face much
+clearer. He inquired his name of Kmita, and when the latter had told
+his assumed one, said,--
+
+"Let Pan Lugovski conduct you at once to our quarters. We shall not
+take our morning food without hearing of the defence."
+
+A quarter of an hour later Kmita was standing in the king's chamber
+before a distinguished assembly. The king was only waiting for the
+queen, to sit down to breakfast. Marya Ludvika appeared soon. Yan
+Kazimir barely saw her when he exclaimed,--
+
+"Chenstohova has held out! The Swedes will retreat! Here is Pan
+Babinich, who has just come, and he brings the news."
+
+The black eyes of the queen rested inquiringly on the youthful face of
+the hero, and seeing its sincerity, they grew bright with joy; and he,
+when he had made a profound obeisance, looked also at her boldly, as
+truth and honesty know how to look.
+
+"The power of God!" said the queen. "You have taken a terrible weight
+from our hearts, and God grant this is the beginning of a change of
+fortune. Do you come straight from near Chenstohova?"
+
+"Not from near Chenstohova, he says, but from the cloister itself,--one
+of the defenders!" exclaimed the king. "A golden guest! God grant such
+to come daily; but let him begin. Tell, brother, tell how you defended
+yourselves, and how the hand of God guarded you."
+
+"It is sure, Gracious King and Queen, that nothing saved us but the
+guardianship of God and the miracles of the Most Holy Lady, which I saw
+every day with my eyes."
+
+Here Kmita was preparing for his narrative, when new dignitaries
+appeared. First came the nuncio of the Pope; then the primate,
+Leshchynski; after him Vydjga, a golden-mouthed preacher, who was the
+queen's chancellor, later bishop of Varmia, and finally primate. With
+him came the chancellor of the kingdom, Pan Korytsinski, and the
+Frenchman De Noyers, a relative of the queen, and other dignitaries who
+had not deserted the king in misfortune, but chose to share with him
+the bitter bread of exile rather than break plighted faith.
+
+The king was eager to hear; therefore he ceased eating, every moment,
+and repeated, "Listen, gentlemen, listen; a guest from Chenstohova!
+Good news; hear it! From Yasna Gora itself!"
+
+Then the dignitaries looked with curiosity on Kmita, who was standing
+as it were before a court; but he, bold by nature and accustomed to
+intercourse with great people, was not a whit alarmed at sight of so
+many celebrated persons; and when all had taken their places, he began
+to describe the whole siege.
+
+Truth was evident in his words; for he spoke with clearness and
+strength, like a soldier who had seen everything, touched everything,
+passed through everything. He praised to the skies Pan Zamoyski and Pan
+Charnyetski; spoke of Kordetski, the prior, as of a holy prophet;
+exalted other fathers; missed no one save himself; but he ascribed the
+whole success of the defence, without deviation, to the Most Holy Lady,
+to Her favor and miracles.
+
+The king and the dignitaries listened to him in amazement. The
+archbishop raised his tearful eyes to heaven. Father Vydjga interpreted
+everything hurriedly to the nuncio; other great personages caught their
+heads; some prayed, or beat their breasts.
+
+At last, when Kmita came to the recent storms,--when he began to relate
+how Miller had brought heavy guns from Cracow, and among them one
+against which not only the walls of Chenstohova, but no walls in the
+world could stand,--such silence began as though some one were sowing
+poppy seeds, and all eyes rested on Pan Andrei's lips.
+
+But he stopped suddenly, and began to breathe quickly; a clear flush
+came out on his face; he frowned, raised his head, and spoke boldly:
+"Now I must speak of myself, though I should prefer to be silent. And
+if I say aught which seems praise, God is my witness that I do so not
+for rewards, for I do not need them, since the greatest reward for me
+is to shed my blood for majesty."
+
+"Speak boldly, I believe you," said the king. "But that great gun?"
+
+"That great gun--I, stealing out in the night from the fortress, blew
+into fragments with powder."
+
+"O loving God!" cried the king.
+
+But after this cry was silence, such astonishment had seized each
+person. All looked as at a rainbow at the young hero, who stood with
+flashing eyes, with a flush on his face, and with head proudly erect.
+And so much was there in him at that moment of a certain terribleness
+and wild courage that the thought came to each one unwittingly, such a
+man might dare such a deed. After silence of a moment the primate
+said,--
+
+"This man looks like that!"
+
+"How did you do it?" asked the king.
+
+Kmita explained how he did it.
+
+"I cannot believe my ears," said Pan Korytsinski, the chancellor.
+
+"Worthy gentlemen," answered the king, with dignity, "you do not know
+whom we have before us. There is yet hope that the Commonwealth has not
+perished while it gives such cavaliers and citizens."
+
+"This man might say of himself, '_Si fractus illabatur orbis, impavidum
+ferient ruinae_ (If the broken firmament should fall the ruins would
+strike him unterrified)!'" said Father Vydjga, who loved to quote
+authors at every opportunity.
+
+"These are almost impossible things," said the chancellor again. "Tell,
+Cavalier, how you brought away your life, and how you passed through
+the Swedes."
+
+"The explosion stunned me," said Kmita, "and next day the Swedes found
+me in the ditch lying as if lifeless. They judged me at once, and
+Miller condemned me to death."
+
+"Then did you escape?"
+
+"A certain Kuklinovski begged me of Miller, so that he might put me to
+death, for he had a fierce animosity against me."
+
+"He is a well-known disturber and murderer; we have heard of him," said
+the castellan of Kjyvinsk. "His regiment is with Miller at Chenstohova.
+That is true!"
+
+"Previously Kuklinovski was an envoy from Miller to the cloister, and
+once tried to persuade me in secret to treason when I was conducting
+him to the gate. I struck him in the face and kicked him. For that
+insult he was enraged against me."
+
+"Ah, this I see is a noble of fire and sulphur!" cried the king,
+amused. "Do not go into such a man's road. Did Miller then give you to
+Kuklinovski?"
+
+"He did, Gracious Gentlemen. Kuklinovski shut me with himself and some
+men in an empty little barn. There he had me tied to a beam with ropes,
+then he began to torture me and to burn my sides with fire."
+
+"By the living God!"
+
+"While doing this he was called away to Miller; when he was gone three
+nobles came, certain Kyemliches, his soldiers, who had served with me
+previously. They killed the guards, and unbound me from the beam--"
+
+"And you fled! Now I understand," said the king.
+
+"No, your Royal Grace. We waited for the return of Kuklinovski. Then I
+gave command to tie him to that same beam, and I burned him better with
+fire."
+
+When he had said this, Kmita, roused by remembrance, became red again,
+and his eyes gleamed like those of a wolf. But the king, who passed
+easily from grief to joy, from seriousness to sport, began to strike
+the table with his hand, and exclaim with laughter,--
+
+"That was good for him! that was good for him! Such a traitor deserved
+nothing better!"
+
+"I left him alive," continued Kmita, "but he must have perished from
+cold before morning."
+
+"That's a deed; he does not give away his own. We need more of such!"
+cried the king, now completely delighted. "Did you come hither with
+those soldiers? What are their names?"
+
+"They are Kyemlich, a father and two sons."
+
+"My mother is from the house of Kyemlich," said Father Vydjga.
+
+"It is evident that there are great and small Kyemliches," answered
+Kmita, smiling; "these are not only small persons, but robbers; they
+are fierce soldiers, however, and faithful to me."
+
+Meanwhile the chancellor, who had been whispering for a time in the ear
+of the Archbishop of Gnyezno, said at last,--
+
+"Many come here who for their own praise or for an expected reward are
+glad to raise dust. They bring false and disturbing news, and are
+frequently sent by the enemy."
+
+This remark chilled all present. Kmita's face became purple.
+
+"I do not know the office of your grace," said he, "which, I think,
+must be considerable, therefore I do not wish to offend you; but there
+is no office, as I think, which would empower any one to give the lie
+to a noble, without reason."
+
+"Man! you are speaking to the grand chancellor of the kingdom," said
+Lugovski.
+
+"Whoso gives me the lie, even if he is chancellor, I answer him, it is
+easier to give the lie than to give your life, it is easier to seal
+with wax than with blood!"
+
+Pan Korytsinski was not angry; he only said: "I do not give you the
+lie, Cavalier; but if what you say is true, you must have a burned
+side."
+
+"Come to another place, your great mightiness, to another room, and I
+will show it to you!" roared Kmita.
+
+"It is not needful," said the king; "I believe you without that."
+
+"It cannot be, your Royal Grace," exclaimed Pan Andrei; "I wish it
+myself, I beg it as a favor, so that here no one, even though I know
+not how worthy, should make me an exaggerator. My torment would be an
+ill reward; I wish belief."
+
+"I believe you," answered the king.
+
+"Truth itself was in his words," added Marya Ludvika. "I am not
+deceived in men."
+
+"Gracious King and Queen, permit. Let some man go aside with me, for it
+would be grievous for me to live here in suspicion."
+
+"I will go," said Pan Tyzenhauz, a young attendant of the king. So
+saying, he conducted Kmita to another room, and on the way said to him,
+"I do not go because I do not believe you, for I believe; but to speak
+with you. Have we met somewhere in Lithuania? I cannot remember your
+name, for it may be that I saw you when a youth, and I myself was a
+youth then?"
+
+Kmita turned away his face somewhat to hide his sudden confusion.
+
+"Perhaps at some provincial diet. My late father took me with him
+frequently to see public business."
+
+"Perhaps. Your face is surely not strange to me, though at that time it
+had not those scars. Still see how _memoria fragilis est_ (weak memory
+is); also it seems to me you had a different name."
+
+"Years dull the memory," answered Pan Andrei.
+
+They went to another room. After a while Tyzenhauz returned to the
+royal pair.
+
+"He is roasted, Gracious King, as on a spit," said he; "his whole side
+is burned."
+
+When Kmita in his turn came back, the king rose, pressed his head, and
+said,--
+
+"We have never doubted that you speak the truth, and neither your pain
+nor your services will pass unrewarded."
+
+"We are your debtors," added the queen, extending her hand to him.
+
+Pan Andrei dropped on one knee and kissed with reverence the hand of
+the queen, who stroked him on the head like a mother.
+
+"Be not angry with the chancellor," said the king. "In this place there
+are really not a few traitors, or, if not traitors, men who are unwise,
+that wind three after three, and it belongs to the chancellor's office
+to discover truth touching public affairs."
+
+"What does my poor anger mean for such a great man?" answered Pan
+Andrei. "And I should not dare to murmur against a worthy senator, who
+gives an example of loyalty and love of country to all."
+
+The chancellor smiled kindly and extended his hand. "Well, let there be
+peace! You spoke ill to me of wax; but know this, that the Korytsinskis
+have sealed often with blood, not with wax only."
+
+The king was rejoiced. "This Babinich has pleased us," said he to the
+senators, "has touched our heart as few have. We will not let you go
+from our side, and God grant that we shall return together soon to our
+beloved country."
+
+"Oh, Most Serene King," cried Kmita, with ecstasy; "though confined in
+the fortress of Yasna Gora, I know from the nobles, from the army, and
+even from those who, serving under Zbrojek and Kalinski, besieged
+Chenstohova, that all are waiting for the day and the hour of your
+return. Only show yourself. Gracious Lord, and that day all Lithuania,
+Poland, and Russia will stand by you as one man! The nobles will join;
+even insignificant peasants will go with their lord to resist. The army
+under the hetmans is barely breathing from eagerness to move against
+the Swedes. I know this, too, that at Chenstohova deputies came from
+the hetmans' troops to arouse Zbrojek, Kalinski, and Kuklinovski,
+against the Swedes. Appear on the boundary to-day, and in a week there
+will not be a Swede; only appear, only show yourself, for we are there
+like sheep without a shepherd."
+
+Sparks came from Kmita's eyes while he was speaking, and such great
+ardor seized him that he knelt in the middle of the hall. His
+enthusiasm was communicated even to the queen herself, who, being of
+fearless courage, had long been persuading the king to return.
+
+Therefore, turning to Yan Kazimir, she said with energy and
+determination: "I hear the voice of the whole people through the mouth
+of this noble."
+
+"That is true, that is true, Gracious Lady, our Mother!" exclaimed
+Kmita.
+
+But certain words in what Kmita had said struck the chancellor and the
+king.
+
+"We have always been ready," said the king, "to sacrifice our health
+and life, and hitherto we have been waiting for nothing else but a
+change in our subjects."
+
+"That change has taken place already," said Marya Ludvika.
+
+"_Majestas infracta malis_ (Majesty unbroken by misfortune)!" said
+Father Vydjga, looking at her with homage.
+
+"It is important," said the archbishop, "if, really, deputations from
+the hetmans went to Chenstohova."
+
+"I know this from my men, those Kyemliches," answered Pan Andrei. "In
+the squadrons of Zbrojek and Kalinski all spoke openly of this, paying
+no attention to Miller and the Swedes. These Kyemliches were not
+enclosed in the fortress; they had relations with the world, with
+soldiers and nobles,--I can bring them before your Royal Grace and your
+worthinesses; let them tell how it is seething in the whole country as
+in a pot. The hetmans joined the Swedes from constraint only; the
+troops wish to return to duty. The Swedes beat nobles and priests,
+plunder, violate ancient liberties; it is no wonder then that each man
+balls his fist and looks anxiously at his sabre."
+
+"We, too, have had news from the troops," said the king; "there were
+here, also, secret envoys who told us of the general wish to return to
+former loyalty and honor."
+
+"And that agrees with what this cavalier tells," said the chancellor.
+"But if deputations are passing among the regiments it is important,
+for it means that the fruit is already ripe, that our efforts were not
+vain, that our work is accomplished, that the time is at hand."
+
+"But Konyetspolski," said the king, "and so many others who are still
+at the side of the invader, who look into his eyes and give assurances
+of their devotion?"
+
+Then all grew silent, the king became gloomy on a sudden, and as when
+the sun goes behind a cloud a shadow covers at once the whole world, so
+did his face grow dark. After a time he said,--
+
+"God sees in our heart that even to-day we are ready to move, and that
+not the power of Sweden detains us, but the unhappy fickleness of our
+people, who, like Proteus, take on a new form every moment. Can we
+believe that this change is sincere, this desire not imagined, this
+readiness not deceitful? Can we believe that people who so recently
+deserted us, and with such light hearts joined the invader against
+their own king, against their own country, against their own liberties?
+Pain straitens our heart, and we are ashamed of our own subjects! Where
+does history show such examples? What king has met so many treasons, so
+much ill-will? Who has been so deserted? Call to mind, your kindnesses,
+that we in the midst of our army, in the midst of those who were bound
+to shed their blood for us,--it is a danger and a terror to tell
+it,--we were not sure of our life. And if we left the country and had
+to seek an asylum, it is not from fear of the Swedish enemy, but of our
+own subjects, to save our own children from the terrible crime of king
+murder and parricide."
+
+"Gracious Lord!" exclaimed Kmita; "our people have sinned grievously;
+they are guilty, and the hand of God is punishing them justly; but
+still, by the wounds of Christ, there has not been found among that
+people, and God grant that there will never be found, a man who would
+raise his hand on the sacred person of the anointed of God."
+
+"You do not believe, because you are honest," said the king, "but we
+have letters and proofs. The Radzivills have paid us badly for the
+kindness with which we have covered them; but still Boguslav, though a
+traitor, was moved by conscience, and not only did he not wish to lend
+a hand to such a deed, but he was the first to warn us of it."
+
+"What deed?" asked the astonished Kmita.
+
+"He informed us," said the king, "that there was a man who offered for
+one hundred gold ducats to seize us and deliver us, living or dead, to
+the Swedes."
+
+A shiver passed through the whole assembly at these words of the king,
+and Kmita was barely able to groan out the question, "Who was that
+man?--who was he?"
+
+"A certain Kmita," answered the king.
+
+A wave of blood suddenly struck Pan Andrei in the head, it grew dark in
+his eyes, he seized his forelock, and with a terribly wandering voice
+said: "That is a lie! Prince Boguslav lies like a dog! Gracious King,
+believe not that traitor; he did that of purpose to bring infamy on an
+enemy, and to frighten you, my king. He is a traitor! Kmita would not
+have done such a deed."
+
+Here Pan Andrei turned suddenly where he was standing. His strength,
+exhausted by the siege, undermined by the explosion of powder in the
+great gun, and through the torture given by Kuklinovski, left him
+altogether, and he fell without consciousness at the feet of the king.
+
+They bore him into the adjoining room, where the king's physician
+examined him. But in the assembly of dignitaries they knew not how to
+explain why the words of the king had produced such a terrible
+impression on the young man.
+
+"Either he is so honest that horror alone has thrown him off his feet,
+or he is some relative of that Kmita," said the castellan of Cracow.
+
+"We must ask him," replied the chancellor. "In Lithuania nobles are all
+related one to another, as in fact they are with us."
+
+"Gracious Lord," said Tyzenhauz, "God preserve me from wishing to speak
+evil of this young man; but we should not trust him at present too
+much. That he served in Chenstohova is certain,--his side is burned;
+this the monks would not have done in any event, for they as servants
+of God must have every clemency, even for prisoners and traitors; but
+one thing is coming continually to my head and destroying trust in him,
+that is, I met him somewhere in Lithuania,--still a youth, at a diet or
+a carnival,--I don't remember--"
+
+"And what of that?" asked the king.
+
+"And it seems to me always that his name was not Babinich."
+
+"Do not tell every little thing," said the king; "you are young and
+inattentive, and a thing might easily enter your head. Whether he is
+Babinich or not, why should I not trust him? Sincerity and truth are
+written on his lips, and evidently he has a golden heart. I should not
+trust myself, if I could not trust a soldier who has shed his blood for
+us and the country."
+
+"He deserves more confidence than the letter of Prince Boguslav," said
+the queen, suddenly, "and I recommend this to the consideration of your
+worthinesses, there may not be a word of truth in that letter. It might
+have been very important for the Radzivills of Birji that we should
+lose courage completely, and it is easy to admit that Prince Boguslav
+wished also to ruin some enemy of his, and leave a door open to himself
+in case of changed fortune."
+
+"If I were not accustomed," said the primate, "to hear wisdom itself
+coming from the mouth of the gracious queen, I should be astonished at
+the quickness of these words, worthy of the ablest statesman--"
+
+"_Comasque gerens, animosque viriles_ (Though wearing tresses, she has
+the courage of a man)," interrupted Father Vydjga, in a low voice.
+
+Encouraged by these words, the queen rose from her chair and began to
+speak: "I care not for the Radzivills of Birji, for they, as heretics,
+listen easily to the whispers of the enemy of the human race; nor of
+the letter of Prince Boguslav, which may touch private affairs. But I
+am most pained by the despairing words of my lord and husband, the
+king, spoken against this people. For who will spare them if their own
+king condemns them? And still, when I look through the world, I ask in
+vain, where is there another such people in which the praise of God
+endures with the manner of ancient sincerity and increases continually?
+In vain do I look for another people in which such open candor exists.
+Where is there another State in which no one has heard of those hellish
+blasphemies, subtle crimes, and never ending feuds with which foreign
+chronicles are filled. Let people skilled in the history of the world
+show me another kingdom where all the kings died their own quiet
+deaths. You have no knives or poisons here; you have no protectors, as
+among the English. It is true that this nation has grown grievously
+guilty, has sinned through frivolity and license. But where is the
+nation that never errs, and where is the one which, as soon as it has
+recognized its offence, begins penance and reformation? Behold they
+have already taken thought, they are now coming, beating their breasts
+to your majesty, ready to spill their blood, to yield their lives, to
+sacrifice their fortune for you. And will you reject them; will you not
+forgive the penitent; will you not trust those who have reformed, those
+who are doing penance; will you not return the affection of a father to
+children who have erred? Trust them, since they are yearning for their
+Yagyellon blood, and for your government, which is of their fathers. Go
+among them; I, a woman, fear no treason, for I see love, I see sorrow
+for sins and restoration of this kingdom to which they called you after
+your father and your brother. It does not seem to me likely that God
+will destroy such a great commonwealth, in which the light of the true
+faith is burning. For a short period God's justice has stretched forth
+the rod to chastise, not to ruin its children, and soon will the
+fatherly love of that heavenly Lord receive them and cherish them. But
+do not contemn them, O king, and fear not to confide in their sonly
+discretion, for in this way alone can you turn evil into good,
+suffering into comfort, defeat into triumph."
+
+When she had said this, the queen sat down, with fire still in her
+eyes, and heaving breast; all looked at her with veneration, and her
+chancellor, Vydjga, began to speak with a resonant voice,--
+
+
+           "Nulla sors longa est, dolor et voluptas,
+            Invicens cedunt.
+            Ima permutat brevis hora summis."
+
+            (No fortune is long, pain and pleasure
+            Yield in turn.
+            A short hour changes the lowest with the highest.)
+
+
+But no one heard what he said, for the ardor of the heroic lady was
+communicated to every heart. The king himself sprang up, with a flush
+on his sallow face, and said,--
+
+"I have not lost the kingdom yet, since I have such a queen. Let her
+will be done, for she spoke with prophetic inspiration. The sooner I
+move and appear in my realms the better."
+
+To this the primate answered with seriousness: "I do not wish to oppose
+the will of my gracious king and queen, nor to turn them from an
+undertaking in which there is hazard, but in which there may be also
+salvation. Still I should consider it a wise thing to assemble in Opol,
+where a majority of the senators are tarrying, and there listen to the
+ideas of all; these may develop and explain the affair more clearly and
+broadly."
+
+"Then to Opol!" exclaimed the king, "and afterward to the road, and
+what God will give!"
+
+"God will give a happy return and victory!" said the queen.
+
+"Amen!" said the primate.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER VIII.
+
+
+Pan Andrei fretted in his lodgings like a wounded wildcat. The hellish
+revenge of Boguslav Radzivill brought him almost to madness. Not enough
+that that prince had sprung out of his hands, killed his men, almost
+deprived him of life; he had put upon him besides shame such as no one,
+not merely of his name, but no Pole from the beginning of the world,
+had ever groaned under.
+
+There were moments when Kmita wished to leave everything--the glory
+which was opening before him, the service of the king--and fly away to
+avenge himself on that magnate whom he wanted to eat up alive.
+
+But on the other hand, in spite of all his rage and the whirlwind in
+his head, he remembered that while the prince lived revenge would not
+vanish; and the best means, the only way to hurl back his calumny and
+lay bare all the infamy of his accusation, was precisely the service of
+the king; for in it he could show the world that not only had he not
+thought of raising his hand against the sacred person of Yan Kazimir,
+but that among all the nobles of Lithuania and Poland no person more
+loyal than Kmita could be found.
+
+But he gnashed his teeth and was boiling like a stew; he tore his
+clothing, and long, long was it before he could calm himself. He
+gloated over the thought of revenge. He saw this Radzivill again in his
+hands; he swore by the memory of his father, that he must reach
+Boguslav even if death and torments were awaiting him therefor. And
+though the prince was a mighty lord whom not only the revenge of a
+common noble, but even the revenge of a king, could not easily touch;
+still, whoso knew that unrestrained soul better, would not have slept
+calmly, and more than once would have trembled before his vows.
+
+And still Pan Andrei did not know yet that the prince had not merely
+covered him with shame and robbed him of repute.
+
+Meanwhile the king, who from the first had conceived a great love for
+the young hero, sent Pan Lugovski to him that same day, and on the
+morrow commanded Kmita to accompany his majesty to Opol, where at a
+general assembly of the senators it was intended to deliberate on the
+return of the king to the country. Indeed there was something over
+which to deliberate. Lyubomirski, the marshal of the kingdom, had sent
+a new letter, announcing that everything in the country was ready for a
+general war, and urging earnestly the return. Besides this, news was
+spread of a certain league of nobles and soldiers formed for the
+defence of the king and the country, concerning which men had really
+been thinking for some time, but which, as appeared afterward, was
+concluded a little later, under the name of the Confederation of
+Tishovtsi.
+
+All minds were greatly occupied by the news, and immediately after a
+thanksgiving Mass they assembled in a secret council, to which, at the
+instance of the king, Kmita too was admitted, since he had brought news
+from Chenstohova.
+
+They began then to discuss whether the return was to take place at
+once, or whether it were better to defer it till the army, not only by
+wish, but by deed, should abandon the Swedes.
+
+Yan Kazimir put an end to these discussions by saying: "Do not discuss,
+your worthinesses, the return, or whether it is better to defer it
+awhile, for I have taken counsel already concerning that with God and
+the Most Holy Lady. Therefore I communicate to you that whatever may
+happen we shall move in person these days. Express your ideas
+therefore, your worthinesses, and be not sparing of counsel as to how
+our return may be best and most safely accomplished."
+
+Opinions were various. Some advised not to trust too greatly to the
+marshal of the kingdom, who had once shown hesitation and disobedience,
+when, instead of giving the crown to the emperor for safe keeping,
+according to the order of the king, he had carried it to Lyubovlya.
+"Great," said they, "is the pride and ambition of that lord, and if he
+should have the person of the king in his castle, who knows what he
+might do, or what he would ask for his services; who knows that he
+would not try, or wish to seize the whole government in his own hands,
+and become the protector, not only of the entire country, but of the
+king?"
+
+These advised the king therefore to wait for the retreat of the Swedes
+and repair to Chenstohova, as to the place from which grace and rebirth
+had spread over the Commonwealth. But others gave different opinions,--
+
+"The Swedes are yet at Chenstohova, and though by the grace of God they
+will not capture the place, still there are no unoccupied roads. All
+the districts about there are in Swedish hands. The enemy are at
+Kjepitsi, Vyelunie, Cracow; along the boundary also considerable forces
+are disposed. In the mountains near the Hungarian border, where
+Lyubovlya is situated, there are no troops save those of the marshal;
+the Swedes have never gone to that distance, not having men enough nor
+daring sufficient. From Lyubovlya it is nearer to Russia, which is free
+of hostile occupation, and to Lvoff, which has not ceased to be loyal,
+and to the Tartars, who, according to information, are coming with
+succor; all these are waiting specially for the decision of the king."
+
+"As to Pan Lyubomirski," said the Bishop of Cracow, "his ambition will
+be satisfied with this, that he will receive the king first in his
+starostaship of Spij, and will surround him with protection. The
+government will remain with the king, but the hope itself of great
+services will satisfy the marshal. If he wishes to tower above all
+others through his loyalty, then, whether his loyalty flows from
+ambition or from love to the king and the country, his majesty will
+always receive notable profit."
+
+This opinion of a worthy and experienced bishop seemed the most proper;
+therefore it was decided that the king should go through the mountains
+to Lyubovlya, and thence to Lvoff, or whithersoever circumstances might
+indicate.
+
+They discussed also the day of returning; but the voevoda of Lenchytsk,
+who had just come from his mission to the emperor for aid, said that it
+was better not to fix the date, but to leave the decision to the king,
+so that the news might not be spread and the enemy forewarned. They
+decided only this, that the king would move on with three hundred
+dragoons, under command of Tyzenhauz, who, though young, enjoyed
+already the reputation of a great soldier.
+
+But still more important was the second part of the deliberations, in
+which it was voted unanimously that on his arrival in the country,
+government and the direction of the war should pass into the hands of
+the king, whom nobles, troops, and hetmans were to obey in all things.
+They spoke besides of the future, and touched upon the causes of those
+sudden misfortunes which, as a deluge, had covered the whole land in
+such a brief period. And the primate himself gave no other cause for
+this than the disorder, want of obedience, and excessive contempt for
+the office and majesty of the king.
+
+He was heard in silence, for each man understood that it was a question
+here of the fate of the Commonwealth, and of great, hitherto unexampled
+changes in it, which might bring back the ancient power of the State,
+and which was long desired by the wise queen who loved her adopted
+country.
+
+From the mouth of the worthy prince of the church there came words like
+thunderbolts, and the souls of the hearers opened to the truth, almost
+as flowers open to the sun.
+
+"Not against ancient liberties do I rise," said the primate, "but
+against that license which with its own hands is murdering the country.
+In very truth men have forgotten in this Commonwealth the distinction
+between freedom and license; and as excessive pleasure ends in pain, so
+freedom unchecked has ended in slavery. You have descended to such
+error, citizens of this illustrious Commonwealth, that only he among
+you passes for a defender of liberty who raises an uproar, who breaks
+diets and opposes the king, not when it is needful, but when for the
+king it is a question of saving the country. In our treasury the bottom
+of the chest can be seen; the soldier unpaid seeks pay of the enemy;
+the diets, the only foundation of this Commonwealth, are dissolved
+after having done nothing, for one disorderly man, one evil citizen,
+for his own private purpose may prevent deliberation. What manner of
+liberty is that which permits one man to stand against all? If that is
+freedom for one man, then it is bondage for all others. And where have
+we gone with the use of this freedom which seemed such sweet fruit?
+Behold one weak enemy, against whom our ancestors gained so many
+splendid victories, now _sicut fulgur exit ab occidente et poret usque
+ad orientem_ (flashes like lightning from the west, and goes as far as
+the east). No one opposes him, traitorous heretics aided him, and he
+seized possession of all things; he persecutes the faith, he desecrates
+churches, and when you speak of your liberties he shows you the sword.
+Behold what your provincial diets have come to, what your veto has come
+to, what your license has come to, your degradation of the king at
+every step. Your king, the natural defender of the country, you have
+rendered, first of all, powerless, and then you complain that he does
+not defend you. You did not want your own government, and now the enemy
+is governing. And who, I ask, can save us in this fall, who can bring
+back ancient glory to this Commonwealth, if not he who has spent so
+much of his life and time for it; when the unhappy domestic war with
+the Cossacks tore it, who exposed his consecrated person to dangers
+such as no monarch in our time has passed through; who at Zborovo, at
+Berestechko, and at Jvanyets fought like a common soldier, bearing
+toils and hardships beyond his station of king? To him now we will
+confide ourselves; to him, with the example of the ancient Romans, we
+will give the dictatorship, and take counsel ourselves how to save in
+time coming this fatherland from domestic enemies, from vice, license,
+disorder, disobedience, and restore due dignity to the government and
+the king."
+
+So spoke the primate; and misfortune with the experience of recent
+times had changed his hearers in such a degree that no man protested,
+for all saw clearly that either the power of the king must be
+strengthened, or the Commonwealth must perish without fail. They began
+therefore to consider in various ways how to bring the counsels of the
+primate into practice. The king and queen listened to them eagerly and
+with joy, especially the queen, who had labored long and earnestly at
+the introduction of order into the Commonwealth.
+
+The king returned then to Glogov glad and satisfied, and summoning a
+number of confidential officers, among whom was Kmita, he said,--
+
+"I am impatient, my stay in this country is burning me, I could wish to
+start even to-morrow; therefore I have called you, as men of arms and
+experience, to provide ready methods. It is a pity that we should lose
+time, when our presence may hasten considerably a general war."
+
+"In truth," said Lugovski, "if such is the will of your Royal Grace,
+why delay? The sooner the better."
+
+"While the affair is not noised about and the enemy do not double their
+watchfulness," added Colonel Wolf.
+
+"The enemy are already on their guard, and have taken possession of the
+roads so far as they are able," said Kmita.
+
+"How is that?" asked the king.
+
+"Gracious Lord, your intended return is no news for the Swedes. Almost
+every day a report travels over the whole Commonwealth, that your Royal
+Grace is already on the road, or even now in your realms, _inter
+regna_. Therefore it is necessary to observe the greatest care, and to
+hurry by through narrow places stealthily, for Douglas's scouts are
+waiting on the roads."
+
+"The best carefulness," said Tyzenhauz, looking at Kmita, "is three
+hundred faithful sabres; and if my gracious lord gives me command over
+them, I will conduct him in safety, even over the breasts of Douglas's
+scouts."
+
+"You will conduct if there are just three hundred, but suppose that you
+meet six hundred or a thousand, or come upon a superior force waiting
+in ambush, what then?"
+
+"I said three hundred," answered Tyzenhauz, "for three hundred were
+mentioned. If however that is too small a party, we can provide five
+hundred and even more."
+
+"God save us from that. The larger the party, the more noise will it
+make," said Kmita.
+
+"I think that the marshal of the kingdom will come out to meet us with
+his squadrons," put in the king.
+
+"The marshal will not come out," answered Kmita, "for he will not know
+the day and the hour, and even if he did know some delay might happen
+on the road, as is usual; it is difficult to foresee everything."
+
+"A soldier says that, a genuine soldier!" said the king. "It is clear
+that you are not a stranger to war."
+
+Kmita laughed, for he remembered his attacks on Hovanski. Who was more
+skilled than he in such actions? To whom could the escort of the king
+be entrusted with more judgment?
+
+But Tyzenhauz was evidently of a different opinion from the king, for
+he frowned and said with sarcasm against Kmita, "We wait then for your
+enlightened counsel."
+
+Kmita felt ill will in the words; therefore he fixed his glance on
+Tyzenhauz and answered,--
+
+"My opinion is that the smaller the party the easier it will pass."
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"The will of your Royal Grace is unfettered," said Kmita, "and can do
+what it likes, but my reason teaches me this: Let Pan Tyzenhauz go
+ahead with the dragoons, giving out purposely that he is conducting the
+king; this he will do to attract the enemy to himself. His affair is to
+wind out, to escape from the trap safely. And we with a small band in a
+day or two will move after him with your Royal Grace; and when the
+enemy's attention is turned in another direction it will be easy for us
+to reach Lyubovlya."
+
+The king clapped his hands with delight. "God sent us this soldier!"
+cried he. "Solomon could not judge better. I give my vote for this
+plan, and there must not be another. They will hunt for the king among
+the dragoons, and the king will pass by under their noses. It could not
+be better!"
+
+"Gracious King," cried Tyzenhauz, "that is pastime."
+
+"Soldier's pastime!" said the king. "But no matter, I will not recede
+from that plan."
+
+Kmita's eyes shone from delight because his opinion had prevailed, but
+Tyzenhauz sprang from his seat.
+
+"Gracious Lord!" said he, "I resign my command from the dragoons. Let
+some one else lead them."
+
+"And why is that?"
+
+"For if your Royal Grace will go without defence, exposed to the play
+of fortune, to every destructive chance which may happen, I wish to be
+near your person to expose my breast for you and to die should the need
+be."
+
+"I thank you for your sincere intention," answered Yan Kazimir; "but
+calm yourself, for in just such a way as Babinich advises shall I be
+least exposed."
+
+"Let Pan Babinich, or whatever his name may be, take what he advises on
+his own responsibility! It may concern him that your Royal Grace be
+lost in the mountains. I take as witness God and my companions here
+present that I advised against it from my soul."
+
+Scarcely had he finished speaking when Kmita sprang up, and standing
+face to face with Tyzenhauz asked, "What do you mean by these words?"
+
+Tyzenhauz measured him haughtily with his eyes from head to foot, and
+said, "Do not strain your head, little man, toward mine, the place is
+too high for you."
+
+To which Kmita with lightning in his eyes replied, "It is not known for
+whom it would be too high if--"
+
+"If what?" asked Tyzenhauz, looking at him quickly.
+
+"If I should reach higher people, than you."
+
+Tyzenhauz laughed. "But where would you seek them?"
+
+"Silence!" said the king suddenly, with a frown. "Do not begin a
+quarrel in my presence."
+
+Yan Kazimir made an impression of such dignity on all surrounding him,
+that both young men were silent and confused, remembering that in the
+presence of the king unseemly words had escaped them. But the king
+added,--
+
+"No one has the right to exalt himself above that cavalier who burst
+the siege gun and escaped from Swedish hands, even though his father
+lived in a village, which, as I see, was not the case, for a bird from
+his feathers, and blood from deeds are easily known. Drop your
+offences." Here the king turned to Tyzenhauz. "You wish it; then remain
+with our person. We may not refuse that. Wolf or Denhoff will lead the
+dragoons. But Babinich too will remain, and we will go according to his
+counsel, for he has pleased our heart."
+
+"I wash my hands!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"Only preserve the secret, gentlemen. Let the dragoons go to Ratibor
+to-day, and spread as widely as possible the report that I am with
+them. And then be on the watch, for you know not the day nor the
+hour--Go, Tyzenhauz, give the order to the captain of the dragoons."
+
+Tyzenhauz went out wringing his hands from anger and sorrow; after him
+went other officers.
+
+That same day the news thundered through all Glogov that the king had
+already gone to the boundaries of the Commonwealth. Even many
+distinguished senators thought that the departure had really taken
+place. Couriers, sent purposely, took the report to Opol and to the
+roads on the boundary.
+
+Tyzenhauz, though he had declared that he washed his hands, did not
+give up the affair as lost; as attendant of the king, he had access to
+the person of the monarch every moment made easy. That very day
+therefore, after the dragoons had gone, he stood before the face of Yan
+Kazimir, or rather before both royal persons, for Marya Ludvika was
+present.
+
+"I have come for the order," said he; "when do we start?"
+
+"The day after to-morrow, before dawn."
+
+"Are many people to go?"
+
+"You will go; Lugovski with the soldiers. The castellan of Sandomir
+goes also with me. I begged him to take as few men as possible; but we
+cannot dispense with a few trusty and tried sabres. Besides, his
+holiness the nuncio wishes to accompany me; his presence will add
+importance, and will touch all who are faithful to the true church. He
+does not hesitate therefore to expose his sacred person to hazard. Do
+you have a care that there are not more than forty horses, for that is
+Babinich's counsel."
+
+"Gracious Lord!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"And what do you wish yet?"
+
+"On my knees I implore one favor. The question is settled, the dragoons
+have gone,--we shall travel without defence, and the first scouting
+party of a few tens of horses may capture us. Listen, your Royal Grace,
+to the prayer of your servant, on whose faithfulness God is looking,
+and do not trust in everything to that noble. He is an adroit man,
+since he has been able in so short a time to steal into your heart and
+favor; but--"
+
+"Do you envy him?" interrupted the king.
+
+"I do not envy him, Gracious Lord; I do not wish even to suspect him of
+treason positively; but I would swear that his name is not Babinich.
+Why does he hide his real name? Why is it somehow inconvenient to tell
+what he did before the siege of Chenstohova? Why specially has he
+insisted upon dragoons going out first, and that your Royal Grace
+should go without an escort?"
+
+The king thought awhile, and began, according to his custom, to pout
+his lips repeatedly.
+
+"If it were a question of collusion with the Swedes," said he at last,
+"what could three hundred dragoons do? What power would they be, and
+what protection? Babinich would need merely to notify the Swedes to
+dispose a few hundred infantry along the roads, and they could take us
+as in a net. But only think if there can be a question of treason here.
+He would have had to know beforehand the date of our journey, and to
+inform the Swedes in Cracow; and how could he do so, since we move the
+day after to-morrow? He could not even guess that we would choose his
+plan; we might have gone according to your suggestion or that of
+others. It was at first decided to go with the dragoons; then if he
+wished to talk with the Swedes this special party would have confused
+his arrangements, for he would have to send out new messengers and give
+fresh notice. All these are irrefragable reasons. And besides he did
+not insist at all on his opinion, as you say; he only offered, as did
+others, what seemed to him best. No, no! Sincerity is looking forth
+from the eyes of that noble, and his burned side bears witness that he
+is ready to disregard even torture."
+
+"His Royal Grace is right," said the queen, on a sudden; "these points
+are irrefragable, and the advice was and is good."
+
+Tyzenhauz knew from experience that when the queen gave her opinion it
+would be vain for him to appeal to the king, Yan Kazimir had such
+confidence in her wit and penetration. And it was a question now with
+the young man only that the king should observe needful caution.
+
+"It is not my duty," answered he, "to oppose my king and queen. But if
+we are to go the day after to-morrow, let this Babinich not know of it
+till the hour of departure."
+
+"That may be," said the king.
+
+"And on the road I will have an eye on him, and should anything happen
+he will not go alive from my hands."
+
+"You will not have to act," said the queen. "Listen; not you will
+preserve the king from evil happenings on the road, from treason, and
+snares of the enemy; not you, not Babinich, not the dragoons, not the
+powers of earth, but the Providence of God, whose eye is turned
+continually on the shepherds of nations and the anointed of the Lord.
+It will guard him. It will protect him and bring him safely; and in
+case of need, send him assistance, of which you do not even think, you
+who believe in earthly power only."
+
+"Most Serene Lady!" answered Tyzenhauz, "I believe, too, that without
+the will of God not a hair will fall from the head of any man; but to
+guard the king's person through fear of traitors is no sin for me."
+
+Marya Ludvika smiled graciously. "But you suspect too hastily, and thus
+cast shame on a whole nation, in which, as this same Babinich has said,
+there has not yet been found one to raise his hand against his own
+king. Let it not astonish you that after such desertion, after such a
+breaking of oaths and faith as the king and I have experienced, I say
+still that no one has dared such a terrible crime, not even those who
+to-day serve the Swedes."
+
+"Prince Boguslav's letter, Gracious Lady?"
+
+"That letter utters untruth," said the queen, with decision. "If there
+is a man in the Commonwealth ready to betray even the king, that man is
+Prince Boguslav, for he in name only belongs to this people."
+
+"Speaking briefly, do not put suspicion on Babinich," said the king.
+"As to his name, it must be doubled in your head. Besides, we may ask
+him; but how can we say to him here, how inquire, 'If you are not
+Babinich, then what is your name?' Such a question might pain an honest
+man terribly, and I'll risk my head that he is an honest man."
+
+"At such a price, Gracious Lord, I would not convince myself of his
+honesty."
+
+"Well, well, we are thankful for your care. To-morrow for prayer and
+penance, and the day after to the road, to the road!"
+
+Tyzenhauz withdrew with a sigh, and in the greatest secrecy began
+preparations that very day for the journey. Even dignitaries who were
+to accompany the king were not all informed of the time. But the
+servants were ordered to have horses in readiness, for they might start
+any day for Ratibor.
+
+The king did not show himself the entire following day, even in the
+church; but he lay in the form of a cross in his own room till night,
+fasting and imploring the King of kings for aid, not for himself, but
+for the Commonwealth.
+
+Marya Ludvika, together with her ladies-in-waiting, was also in prayer.
+
+Then the following night freshened the strength of the wearied ones;
+and when in darkness the Glogov church-bell sounded to matins, the hour
+had struck for the journey.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER IX.
+
+
+They rode through Ratibor, merely stopping to feed the horses. No one
+recognized the king, no one paid much attention to the party, for all
+were occupied with the recent passage of the dragoons, among whom, as
+all thought, was the King of Poland. The retinue was about fifty in
+number, for several dignitaries accompanied the king; five bishops
+alone, and among others the nuncio, ventured to share with him the
+toils of a journey not without peril. The road within the boundary of
+the empire, however, presented no danger. At Oderberg, not far from the
+junction of the Olsha with the Odra, they entered Moravia.
+
+The day was cloudy, and snow fell so thickly that it was not possible
+to see the road a few steps ahead. But the king was joyous and full of
+courage, for a sign had been manifested which all considered most
+favorable, and which contemporary historians did not neglect to insert
+in their chronicles. Behold, just as the king was departing from
+Glogov, a little bird, entirely white, appeared before his horse and
+began to circle round, rising at times in the air, at times coming down
+to the head of the king, chirping and twittering joyously meanwhile.
+They remembered that a similar bird, but black, had circled over the
+king when he was retreating from Warsaw before the Swedes.
+
+But this was white, exactly of the size and form of a swallow; which
+fact roused the greater wonder, because it was deep winter, and
+swallows were not thinking yet of return. But all were rejoiced, and
+the king for the first few days spoke of nothing else, and promised
+himself the most successful future. It appeared from the beginning,
+too, how sound was Kmita's advice to travel apart.
+
+Everywhere in Moravia people were telling of the recent passage of the
+King of Poland. Some stated that they had seen him with their own eyes,
+all in armor, with a sword in his hand and a crown on his head. Various
+stories, also, were current of the forces which he had with him, and in
+general the number of his dragoons was exaggerated to the fabulous.
+There were some who had seen ten thousand, and who could not wait till
+the last horses, men, gunners, and flags had passed.
+
+"Surely," said they, "the Swedes will spring before them, but what they
+will do with such a force is unknown."
+
+"Well," asked the king of Tyzenhauz, "was not Babinich right?"
+
+"We are not in Lyubovlya yet, Gracious Lord," replied the young
+magnate.
+
+Babinich was satisfied with himself and with the journey. Generally he
+went ahead of the king's party with the three Kyemliches, examining the
+road; sometimes he rode with the rest, entertaining the king with
+narratives of single incidents in the siege of Chenstohova, of which
+the king never had enough. And almost every hour that young hero,
+cheerful, mettlesome, eagle-like, drew nearer the heart of the king.
+Time passed for the monarch now in prayer, now in pious meditation on
+eternal life, now in discussing the coming war and the aid hoped from
+the emperor, and finally in looking at knightly amusements with which
+the attendant soldiers endeavored to shorten the time of the journey.
+For Yan Kazimir had this in his nature, that his mind passed easily
+from seriousness almost to frivolity, from hard labor to amusements, to
+which, when there was leisure, he gave himself with his whole soul, as
+if no care, no grief had pressed him at any time.
+
+The soldiers then exhibited themselves, each with what he could do; the
+Kyemliches, Kosma, and Damian, immense and awkward figures, amused the
+king by breaking horseshoes, which they broke like canes; he paid them
+a thaler apiece, though his wallet was empty enough, for all his money,
+and even the diamonds and "parafanaly" (paraphernalia) of the queen,
+had been spent on the army.
+
+Pan Andrei exhibited himself by throwing a heavy hatchet, which he
+hurled upward with such force that it was barely visible, and then he
+sprang under the instrument with his horse and caught it by the handle
+as it fell. At sight of this the king clapped his hands.
+
+"I saw that done," said he, "by Pan Slushka, brother of the
+vice-chancellor's wife, but he threw not so high by half."
+
+"This is customary with us in Lithuania," said Pan Andrei; "and when a
+man practises it from childhood he becomes skilful."
+
+"Whence have you those scars across the lip?" asked the king of him
+once, pointing to Kmita's scars. "Some one went through you well with a
+sabre."
+
+"That is not from a sabre, Gracious Lord, but from a bullet. I was
+fired at by a man who put the pistol to my mouth."
+
+"An enemy or one of ours?"
+
+"One of ours; but an enemy whom I shall yet call to account, and till
+that happens it is not proper for me to speak of it."
+
+"Have you such animosity as that?"
+
+"I have no animosity. Gracious Lord, for on my head I bear a still
+deeper scar from a sabre, through which cut my soul almost left me; but
+since an honorable man did it I harbor no offence against him." Kmita
+removed his cap and showed the king a deep furrow, the white edges of
+which were perfectly visible. "I am not ashamed of this wound," said
+he, "for it was given me by such a master that there is not another
+like him in the Commonwealth."
+
+"Who is such a master?"
+
+"Pan Volodyovski."
+
+"For God's sake! I know him. He did wonders at Zbaraj. And I was at the
+wedding of his comrade, Skshetuski, who was the first to bring me news
+of the besieged. Those are great cavaliers! And with them was a third,
+him the whole army glorified as the greatest of all. A fat noble, and
+so amusing that we almost burst our sides from laughter."
+
+"That is Pan Zagloba, I think!" said Kmita; "he is a man not only
+brave, but full of wonderful stratagems."
+
+"Do you know what they are doing now?"
+
+"Volodyovski used to lead dragoons with the voevoda of Vilna."
+
+The king frowned. "And is he serving the Swedes now with the prince
+voevoda?"
+
+"He! The Swedes? He is with Pan Sapyeha. I saw myself how, after the
+treason of the prince, he threw his baton at his feet."
+
+"Oh, he is a worthy soldier!" answered the king. "From Pan Sapyeha we
+have had news from Tykotsin, where he is besieging the voevoda. God
+give him luck! If all were like him, the Swedish enemy would regret
+their undertaking."
+
+Here Tyzenhauz, who had been listening to the conversation, asked
+suddenly, "Then were you with Radzivill at Kyedani?"
+
+Kmita was somewhat confused, and began to throw up his hatchet. "I
+was," answered he.
+
+"Give peace to your hatchet," said Tyzenhauz. "And what were you doing
+at the prince's house?"
+
+"I was a guest," answered Kmita, impatiently, "and I ate his bread,
+until I was disgusted with his treason."
+
+"And why did you not go with other honorable soldiers to Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"Because I had made a vow to go to Chenstohova, which you will more
+easily understand when I tell you that our Ostra Brama was occupied by
+the Northerners."
+
+Tyzenhauz began to shake his head and smack his lips; this attracted
+the attention of the king, so that he looked inquiringly at Kmita. The
+latter, made impatient, turned to Tyzenhauz and said,--
+
+"My worthy sir! Why do I not inquire of you where you have been, and
+what you have been doing?"
+
+"Ask me," replied Tyzenhauz; "I have nothing to conceal."
+
+"Neither am I before a court; and if I shall ever be, you will not be
+my judge. Leave me, then, that I lose not my patience."
+
+When he had said this, he hurled the hatchet so sharply that it grew
+small in the height; the king raised his eyes after it, and at that
+moment he was thinking of nothing save this, would Babinich catch it in
+its fall, or would he not catch it?
+
+Babinich put spurs to his horse, sprang forward, and caught it. That
+same evening Tyzenhauz said to the king,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, this noble pleases me less and less."
+
+"But me more and more," answered the king, pursing his lips.
+
+"I heard to-day one of his people call him colonel; he only looked
+threateningly, and straightway confused the man. There is something in
+that."
+
+"And it seems to me sometimes that he does not wish to tell
+everything," added the king; "but that is his affair."
+
+"No, Gracious Lord," exclaimed Tyzenhauz, forcibly, "it is not his
+affair, it is our affair, and that of the whole Commonwealth. For if he
+is some traitor who is planning the death or captivity of your Royal
+Grace, then with your person will perish all those who at this moment
+have taken arms; the whole Commonwealth will perish, which you alone
+are competent to save."
+
+"I will ask him myself to-morrow."
+
+"God grant that I be a false prophet, but nothing good looks out of his
+eyes. He is too smart, too bold, too daring; and such people are ready
+for anything."
+
+The king looked troubled. Next morning, when they moved on their
+journey, he beckoned Kmita to approach him.
+
+"Where were you, Colonel?" asked the king, suddenly.
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+Kmita struggled with himself; the wish was burning him to spring from
+his horse, fall at the feet of the king, and throw off the burden he
+was bearing,--tell the whole truth at once. But he thought of the
+fearful impression which the name Kmita would make, especially after
+the letter of Prince Boguslav Radzivill. How could he, who had been the
+right hand of Radzivill, who had maintained the preponderance of Prince
+Yanush, who had aided him in scattering his disobedient squadrons, who
+supported him in treason; how could he, accused and suspected of the
+most terrible crime,--an attack on the person of the king,--succeed in
+convincing the king, the bishops, and senators, that he had corrected
+himself, that he was transformed? With what could he show the sincerity
+of his intentions? What proofs could he bring save naked words? His
+former offences pursue him unceasingly, unsparingly, as furious dogs a
+wild beast in the forest. He determined on silence. But he felt also
+unspeakable disgust and hatred of subterfuge. Must he throw dust in the
+eyes of the king, whom he loved with all the power of his soul, and
+deceive him with fictitious tales?
+
+He felt that strength failed him for this; therefore he said, after a
+while: "Gracious King, the time will come, perhaps soon, in which I
+shall open my whole soul to your Royal Grace as in confession to a
+priest. But I wish deeds to vouch for me, for my sincere intention, for
+my loyalty and my love of majesty, not words simply. I have offended
+against you, my Gracious Lord, and the country, and I have repented too
+little yet; therefore I am seeking service in which I can find
+reparation more easily. Besides, who has not offended? Who in the whole
+Commonwealth does not need to beat his breast? It may be that I have
+offended more grievously than others, but I was the first also to
+bethink myself. Do not inquire, Gracious Lord, about anything until the
+present service will convince you concerning me; do not ask, for I
+cannot answer without closing the road of salvation to myself, for God
+is the witness, and the Most Holy Lady, our Queen, that I had no evil
+intent, that I am ready to give the last drop of my blood for you."
+
+Here Pan Andrei's eyes grew moist, and such sincerity and sorrow
+appeared on his face that his countenance defended him with greater
+power than his words.
+
+"God is looking at my intentions," said he, "and will account them to
+me at judgment, but, Gracious Lord, if you do not trust me, dismiss me,
+remove me from your person. I will follow at a distance, so as to come
+in time of difficulty, even without being called, and lay down my life
+for you. And then, Gracious Lord, you will believe that I am not a
+traitor, but one of that kind of servants of whom you have not many,
+even among those who cast suspicion on others."
+
+"I believe you to-day," said the king. "Remain near our person as
+before, for treason does not speak in such fashion."
+
+"I thank your Royal Grace," answered Kmita; and reining in his horse
+somewhat, he pushed back among the last ranks of the party.
+
+But Tyzenhauz did not limit himself to conveying suspicions to the
+king. The result was that all began to look askance at Kmita. Audible
+conversation ceased at his approach, and whispers began. Every movement
+of his was followed, every word considered. Kmita noticed this, and was
+ill at ease among these men.
+
+Even the king, though he did not remove confidence from him, had not
+for Pan Andrei such a joyful countenance as before. Therefore the young
+hero lost his daring, grew gloomy, sadness and bitterness took
+possession of his heart. Formerly in front, among the first, he used to
+make his horse prance; now he dragged on many yards behind the
+cavalcade, with hanging head and gloomy thoughts.
+
+At last the Carpathians stood white before the travellers. Snow lay on
+their slopes, clouds spread their unwieldy bodies on the summits; and
+when an evening came clear at sunset, those mountains put on flaming
+garments from which marvellously bright gleams went forth till quenched
+in the darkness embracing the whole world. Kmita gazed on those wonders
+of nature which to that time he had never seen; and though greatly
+grieved, he forgot his cares from admiration and wonder.
+
+Each day those giants grew greater, more mighty, till at last the
+retinue of the king came to them and entered a pass which opened on a
+sudden, like a gate.
+
+"The boundary must be near," said the king, with emotion.
+
+Then they saw a small wagon, drawn by one horse, and in the wagon a
+peasant. The king's men stopped him at once.
+
+"Man," said Tyzenhauz, "are we in Poland?"
+
+"Beyond that cliff and that little river is the emperor's boundary, but
+you are standing on the king's land."
+
+"Which way is it then to Jivyets?"
+
+"Go straight ahead; you will come to the road." And the mountaineer
+whipped his horse.
+
+Tyzenhauz galloped to the retinue standing at a distance.
+
+"Gracious Lord," cried he, with emotion, "you are now _inter regna_,
+for at that little river your kingdom begins."
+
+The king said nothing, only made a sign to hold his horse, dismounted,
+and throwing himself on his knees, raised his eyes and his hands
+upward.
+
+At sight of this, all dismounted and followed his example. That king,
+then a wanderer, fell after a moment in the form of a cross on the
+snow, and began to kiss that land, so beloved and so thankless, which
+in time of disaster had refused refuge to his head.
+
+Silence followed, and only sighs interrupted it.
+
+The evening was frosty, clear; the mountains and the summits of the
+neighboring fir-trees were in purple, farther off in the shadow they
+had begun to put on violet; but the road on which the king was lying
+turned as it were into a ruddy and golden ribbon, and rays fell on the
+king, bishops, and dignitaries.
+
+Then a breeze began from the summits, and bearing on its wings sparks
+of snow, flew to the valley. Therefore the nearer fir-trees began to
+bend their snow-covered heads, bow to their lord, and to make a joyous
+and rustling sound, as if they were singing that old song, "Be welcome
+to us, thou dear master!"
+
+Darkness had already filled the air when the king's retinue moved
+forward. Beyond the defile was spread out a rather roomy plain, the
+other end of which was lost in the distance. Light was dying all
+around; only in one place the sky was still bright with red. The king
+began to repeat _Ave Maria_; after him the others with concentration of
+spirit repeated the pious words.
+
+Their native land, unvisited by them for a long time; the mountains
+which night was now covering; the dying twilight, the prayer,--all
+these caused a solemnity of heart and mind; hence after the prayer the
+king, the dignitaries, and the knights rode on in silence. Night fell,
+but in the east the sky was shining still more redly.
+
+"Let us go toward that twilight," said the king, at last; "it is a
+wonder that it is shining yet."
+
+Then Kmita galloped up. "Gracious Lord, that is a fire!"
+cried he.
+
+All halted.
+
+"How is that?" asked the king; "it seems to me that 'tis the twilight."
+
+"A fire, a fire! I am not mistaken!" cried Kmita.
+
+And indeed, of all of the attendants of the king he knew most in that
+matter. At last it was no longer possible to doubt, since above that
+supposed twilight were rising as it were red clouds, rolling now
+brighter, now darker in turn.
+
+"It is as if Jivyets were burning!" cried the king; "maybe the enemy is
+ravaging it."
+
+He had not finished speaking when to their ears flew the noise of men,
+the snorting of horses, and a number of dark figures appeared before
+the retinue.
+
+"Halt, halt!" cried Tyzenhauz.
+
+These figures halted, as if uncertain what to do farther.
+
+"Who are you?" was asked from the retinue.
+
+"Ours!" said a number of voices. "Ours! We are escaping with our lives
+from Jivyets. The Swedes are burning Jivyets, and murdering people."
+
+"Stop, in God's name! What do you say? Whence have they come?"
+
+"They were waiting for our king. There is a power of them, a power! May
+the Mother of God have the king in Her keeping!"
+
+Tyzenhauz lost his head for a moment. "See what it is to go with a
+small party!" cried he to Kmita; "Would that you were killed for such
+counsel!"
+
+Yan Kazimir began to inquire himself of the fugitives. "But where is
+the king?"
+
+"The king has gone to the mountains with a great army. Two days ago he
+passed through Jivyets; they pursued him, and were fighting somewhere
+near Suha. We have not heard whether they took him or not; but to-day
+they returned to Jivyets, and are burning and murdering."
+
+"Go with God!" said Yan Kazimir.
+
+The fugitives shot past quickly.
+
+"See what would have met us had we gone with the dragoons!" exclaimed
+Kmita.
+
+"Gracious King!" said Father Gembitski, "the enemy is before us. What
+are we to do?"
+
+All surrounded the monarch, as if wishing to protect him with their
+persons from sudden danger. The king gazed on that fire which was
+reflected in his eyes, and he was silent; no one advanced an opinion,
+so difficult was it to give good advice.
+
+"When I was going out of the country a fire lighted me," said Yan
+Kazimir, at last; "and when I enter, another gives light."
+
+Again silence, only still longer than before.
+
+"Who has any advice?" inquired Father Gembitski, at last.
+
+Then the voice of Tyzenhauz was heard, full of bitterness, and insult:
+"He who did not hesitate to expose the king's person to danger, who
+said that the king should go without a guard, let him now give advice."
+
+At this moment a horseman pushed out of the circle. It was Kmita.
+
+"Very well!" said he. And rising in the stirrups he shouted, turning to
+his attendants standing at some distance, "Kyemliches, after me!"
+
+Then he urged his horse to a gallop, and after him shot the three
+horsemen with all the breath that was in the breasts of their horses.
+
+A cry of despair came from Tyzenhauz: "That is a conspiracy!" said he.
+"These traitors will give us up surely. Gracious King, save yourself
+while there is time, for the enemy will soon close the pass! Gracious
+King, save yourself! Back! back!"
+
+"Let us return, let us return!" cried the bishops and dignitaries, in
+one voice.
+
+Yan Kazimir became impatient, lightnings flashed from his eyes;
+suddenly he drew his sword from its sheath and cried,--
+
+"May God not grant me to leave my country a second time. Come what may,
+I have had enough of that!" And he put spurs to his horse to move
+forward; but the nuncio himself seized the reins.
+
+"Your Royal Grace," said he, seriously, "you bear on your shoulders the
+fate of the Catholic Church and the country, therefore you are not free
+to expose your person."
+
+"Not free," repeated the bishops.
+
+"I will not return to Silesia, so help me the Holy Cross!" answered Yan
+Kazimir.
+
+"Gracious Lord! listen to the prayers of your subjects," said the
+castellan of Sandomir. "If you do not wish to return to the emperor's
+territory, let us go at least from this place and turn toward the
+Hungarian boundary, or let us go back through this pass, so that our
+return be not intercepted. There we will wait. In case of an attack by
+the enemy, escape on horses will remain to us; but at least let them
+not enclose us as in a trap."
+
+"Let it be even so," said the king. "I do not reject prudent counsel,
+but I will not go wandering a second time. If we cannot appear by this
+road, we will by another. But I think that you are alarmed in vain.
+Since the Swedes looked for us among the dragoons, as the people from
+Jivyets said, it is clear proof that they know nothing of us, and that
+there is no treason or conspiracy. Just consider; you are men of
+experience. The Swedes would not have attacked the dragoons, they would
+not have fired a gun at them if they know that we were following them.
+Be calm, gentlemen! Babinich has gone with his men for news, and he
+will return soon of a certainty."
+
+When he had said this the king turned his horse toward the pass; after
+him his attendants. They halted on the spot where the first mountaineer
+had shown them the boundary.
+
+A quarter of an hour passed, then a half-hour and an hour.
+
+"Have you noticed, gentlemen," asked the voevoda of Lenchytsk on a
+sudden, "that the fire is decreasing?"
+
+"It is going out, going out; you can almost see it die," said a number
+of voices.
+
+"That is a good sign," said the king.
+
+"I will go ahead with a few men," said Tyzenhauz. "We will halt about a
+furlong from here, and if the Swedes come we will detain them till we
+die. In every case there will be time to think of the safety of the
+king's person."
+
+"Remain with the party; I forbid you to go!" said the king.
+
+To which Tyzenhauz answered,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, give command later to shoot me for disobedience, but
+now I will go, for now it is a question of you." And calling upon a
+number of soldiers in whom it was possible to trust in every emergency,
+he moved forward.
+
+They halted at the other end of the defile which opened into the
+valley, and stood in silence, with muskets ready, holding their ears
+toward every sound. The silence lasted long; finally the sound of snow
+trampled by horses' feet came to them.
+
+"They are coming!" whispered one of the soldiers.
+
+"That is no party; only a few horses are to be heard," answered the
+other. "Pan Babinich is returning."
+
+Meanwhile those approaching came in the darkness within a few tens of
+yards.
+
+"Who is there?" cried Tyzenhauz.
+
+"Ours! Do not fire there!" sounded the voice of Kmita.
+
+At that moment he appeared before Tyzenhauz, and not knowing him in the
+darkness, inquired,--
+
+"But where is the king?"
+
+"At the end of the pass."
+
+"Who is speaking, for I cannot see?"
+
+"Tyzenhauz. But what is that great bundle which you have before you?"
+And he pointed to some dark form hanging before Kmita, on the front of
+the saddle.
+
+Pan Andrei made no answer, but rode on. When he had reached the king's
+escort, he recognized the person of the king, for it was much clearer
+beyond the pass, and cried,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, the road is open!"
+
+"Are there no Swedes in Jivyets?"
+
+"They have gone to Vadovitsi. That was a party of German mercenaries.
+But here is one of them, Gracious Lord; ask him yourself." And Pan
+Andrei pushed to the ground that form which he held before him, so that
+a groan was heard in the still night.
+
+"Who is that?" asked the astonished king.
+
+"A horseman!"
+
+"As God is dear to me! And you have brought an informant! How is that?
+Tell me."
+
+"Gracious Lord; when a wolf prowls in the night around a flock of sheep
+it is easy for him to seize one; and besides, to tell the truth, this
+is not the first time with me."
+
+The king raised his hands. "But this Babinich is a soldier, may the
+bullets strike him! I see that with such servants I can go even in the
+midst of Swedes."
+
+Meanwhile all gathered around the horseman, who did not rise from the
+ground however.
+
+"Ask him, Gracious Lord," said Kmita, not without a certain
+boastfulness in his voice; "though I do not know whether he will
+answer, for he is throttled a little and there is nothing here to burn
+him with."
+
+"Pour some gorailka into his throat," said the king.
+
+And indeed that medicine helped more than burning, for the horseman
+soon recovered strength and voice. Then Kmita, putting a sword-point to
+his throat, commanded him to tell the whole truth.
+
+The prisoner confessed that he belonged to the regiment of Colonel
+Irlehorn, that they had intelligence of the passage of the king with
+dragoons, therefore they fell upon them near Suha, but meeting firm
+resistance they had to withdraw to Jivyets, whence they marched on to
+Vadovitsi and Cracow, for such were their orders.
+
+"Are there other divisions of the Swedes in the mountains?" asked Kmita
+in German, while squeezing the throat of the horseman somewhat more
+vigorously.
+
+"Maybe there are some," answered he in a broken voice. "General Douglas
+sent scouting-parties around, but they are all withdrawing, for the
+peasants are attacking them in passes."
+
+"Were you the only ones in the neighborhood of Jivyets?"
+
+"The only ones."
+
+"Do you know that the King of Poland has passed?"
+
+"He passed with those dragoons who fought with us at Suha. Many saw
+him."
+
+"Why did you not pursue him?"
+
+"We were afraid of the mountaineers."
+
+Here Kmita began again in Polish: "Gracious Lord, the road is open and
+you will find a night's lodging in Jivyets, for only a part of the
+place is burned."
+
+But unconfiding Tyzenhauz was speaking at this time with the castellan
+of Voinik, and said: "Either that is a great warrior and true as gold,
+or a finished traitor. Consider, your worthiness, that all this may be
+simulated, from the taking of this horseman to his confederates. And if
+this is a trick,--if the Swedes are in ambush in Jivyets,--if the king
+goes and falls as into a net?"
+
+"It is safer to convince one's self," answered the castellan of Voinik.
+
+Then Tyzenhauz turned to the king and said aloud: "Gracious Lord,
+permit me to go ahead to Jivyets and convince myself that what this
+cavalier says and what this trooper declares is true."
+
+"Let it be so! Permit them to go, Gracious Lord," said Kmita.
+
+"Go," said the king; "but we will move forward a little, for it is
+cold."
+
+Tyzenhauz rushed on at all speed, and the escort of the king began to
+move after him slowly. The king regained his good humor and
+cheerfulness, and after a while said to Kmita,--
+
+"But with you it is possible to hunt Swedes as birds with a falcon, for
+you strike from above."
+
+"That is my fashion," said Kmita. "Whenever your Royal Grace wishes to
+hunt, the falcon will always be ready."
+
+"Tell how you caught him."
+
+"That is not difficult. When a regiment marches there are always a few
+men who lag in the rear, and I got this one about half a furlong
+behind. I rode up to him; he thought that I was one of his own people,
+he was not on his guard, and before he could think I had seized and
+gagged him so that he could not shout."
+
+"You said that this was not your first time. Have you then practised
+somewhere before?"
+
+Kmita laughed. "Oh, Gracious Lord, I have, and that of the best. Let
+your Royal Grace but give the order and I will go again, overtake them,
+for their horses are road-weary, take another man, and order my
+Kyemliches to take also."
+
+They advanced some time in silence; then the tramp of a horse was
+heard, and Tyzenhauz flew up. "Gracious King," said he, "the road is
+free, and lodgings are ready."
+
+"But did not I say so?" cried Yan Kazimir. "You, gentlemen, had no need
+to be anxious. Let us ride on now, let us ride, for we have earned our
+rest."
+
+All advanced at a trot, briskly, joyously; and an hour later the
+wearied king was sleeping a sleep without care on his own territory.
+
+That evening Tyzenhauz approached Kmita. "Forgive me," said he; "out of
+love for the king I brought you under suspicion."
+
+Kmita refused his hand and said: "Oh, that cannot be! You made me a
+traitor and a betrayer."
+
+"I would have done more, for I would have shot you in the head; but
+since I have convinced myself that you are an honest man and love the
+king, I stretch out my hand to you. If you wish, take it; if not, take
+it not. I would prefer to have no rivalry with you save that of
+attachment to the king; but I am not afraid of other rivalry."
+
+"Is that your thought? H'm! perhaps you are right, but I am angry with
+you."
+
+"Well, stop being angry. You are a strong soldier. But give us your
+lips, so that we may not lie down to sleep in hatred."
+
+"Let it be so!" said Kmita.
+
+And they fell into each other's arms.
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER X.
+
+
+The king's party arrived at Jivyets late in the evening, and paid
+almost no attention to the place, which was terrified by the recent
+attack of the Swedish detachment. The king did not go to the castle,
+which had been ravaged by the enemy and burned in part, but stopped at
+the priest's house. Kmita spread the news that the party was escorting
+the ambassador of the emperor, who was going from Silesia to Cracow.
+
+Next morning they held on toward Vadovitsi, and then turned
+considerably to one side toward Suha. From this place they were to pass
+through Kjechoni to Yordanovo, thence to Novy Targ, and if it appeared
+that there were no Swedish parties near Chorshtyn to go to Chorshtyn;
+if there were, they were to turn toward Hungary and advance on
+Hungarian soil to Lyubovlya. The king hoped, too, that the marshal of
+the kingdom, who disposed of forces so considerable that no reigning
+prince had so many, would make the road safe and hasten forth to meet
+his sovereign. Only this could prevent, that the marshal knew not which
+road the king would take; but among the mountaineers there was no lack
+of trusty men ready to bear word to the marshal. There was no need even
+of confiding the secret to them, for they went willingly when told that
+it was a question of serving the king. These people, though poor and
+half wild, tilling little or not at all an ungrateful soil, living by
+their herds, pious, and hating heretics, were, in truth, given heart
+and soul to the sovereign. They were the first to seize their axes and
+move from the mountains when news of the taking of Cracow spread
+through the country, and especially when news came of the siege of
+Chenstohova, to which pious women were accustomed to go on pilgrimages.
+General Douglas, a well-known warrior, furnished with cannon and
+muskets, scattered them, it is true, on the plains, to which they were
+not accustomed; but the Swedes only with the greatest caution entered
+their special districts, in which it was not easy to reach them, and
+easy to suffer disaster,--so that some smaller divisions, having
+needlessly entered this labyrinth of mountains, were lost.
+
+And now news of the king's passage with an army had already done its
+own, for all had sprung up as one man to defend him and accompany him
+with their axes, even to the end of the world. Yan Kazimir might, if he
+had only disclosed who he was, have surrounded himself in a short time
+with thousands of half-wild "householders;" but he thought justly that
+in such an event the news would be carried about everywhere by all the
+whirlwinds through the whole region, and that the Swedes might send out
+numerous troops to meet him, therefore he chose to travel unknown even
+to the mountaineers.
+
+But in all places trusty guides were found, to whom it was enough to
+say that they were conducting bishops and lords who desired to preserve
+themselves from Swedish hands. They were led, therefore, among snows,
+cliffs, and whirlwinds, and over places so inaccessible that you would
+have said: "A bird cannot fly through them."
+
+More than once the king and the dignitaries had clouds below them, and
+when there were not clouds their glances passed over a shoreless
+expanse, covered with white snows, an expanse seemingly as wide as the
+whole country was wide; more than once they entered mountain throats,
+almost dark, covered with snow, in which perhaps only a wild beast
+might have its lair. But they avoided places accessible to the enemy,
+shortening the road; and it happened that a settlement, at which they
+expected to arrive in half a day, appeared suddenly under their feet,
+and in it they awaited rest and hospitality, though in a smoky hut and
+a sooty room.
+
+The king was in continual good humor; he gave courage to others to
+endure the excessive toil, and he guaranteed that by such roads they
+would surely reach Lyubovlya as safely as unexpectedly.
+
+"The marshal does not expect that we shall fall on his shoulders!"
+repeated the king, frequently.
+
+"What was the return of Xenophon to our journey among the clouds?"
+asked the nuncio.
+
+"The higher we rise, the lower will Swedish fortune fall," answered the
+king.
+
+They arrived at Novy Targ. It seemed that all danger was passed; still
+the mountaineers declared that Swedish troops were moving about near
+Chorshtyn and in the neighborhood. The king supposed that they might be
+the marshal's German cavalry, of which he had two regiments, or they
+might be his own dragoons sent in advance and mistaken for the enemy's
+scouts. Since in Chorshtyn the bishop of Cracow had a garrison,
+opinions were divided in the royal party. Some wished to go by the road
+to Chorshtyn, and then pass along the boundary to Spij; others advised
+to turn straight to Hungary, which came up in wedge-form to Novy Targ,
+and go over heights and through passes, taking guides everywhere who
+knew the most dangerous places.
+
+This last opinion prevailed, for in that way meeting with the Swedes
+became almost impossible; and besides this "eagle" road over the
+precipices and through the clouds gave pleasure to the king.
+
+They passed then from Novy Targ somewhat to the south and west, on the
+right hand of the Byaly Dunayets. The road at first lay through a
+region rather open and spacious, but as they advanced the mountains
+began to run together and the valleys to contract. They went along
+roads over which horses could barely advance. At times the riders had
+to dismount and lead; and more than once the beasts resisted, pointing
+their ears and stretching their distended and steaming nostrils forward
+toward precipices, from the depths of which death seemed to gaze
+upward.
+
+The mountaineers, accustomed to precipices, frequently considered roads
+good on which the heads of unaccustomed men turned and their ears rang.
+At last they entered a kind of rocky chasm long, straight, and so
+narrow that three men could barely ride abreast in it. Two cliffs
+bounded it on the right side and the left. At places however the edges
+inclined, forming slopes less steep, covered with piles of snow
+bordered on the edges with dark pine-trees. Winds blew away the snow
+immediately from the bottom of the pass, and the hoofs of horses
+gritted everywhere on a stony road. But at that moment the wind was not
+blowing, and such silence reigned that there was a ringing in the ears.
+Above where between the woody edges a blue belt of sky was visible,
+black flocks of birds flew past from time to time, shaking their wings
+and screaming.
+
+The king's party halted for rest. Clouds of steam rose from the horses,
+and the men too were tired.
+
+"Is this Poland or Hungary?" inquired, after a time, the king of a
+guide.
+
+"This is Poland."
+
+"But why do we not turn directly to Hungary?"
+
+"Because it is impossible. At some distance this pass turns, beyond the
+turn is a cliff, beyond that we come out on the high-road, turn, then
+go through one more pass, and there the Hungarian country begins."
+
+"Then I see it would have been better to go by the highway at first,"
+said the king.
+
+"Quiet!" cried the mountaineer, quickly. And springing to the cliff he
+put his ear to it.
+
+All fixed their eyes on him; his face changed in a moment, and he said:
+"Beyond the turn troops are coming from the water-fall! For God's sake!
+Are they not Swedes?"
+
+"Where? How? What?" men began to ask on every side. "We hear nothing."
+
+"No, for snow is lying on the sides. By God's wounds, they are near!
+they will be here straightway!"
+
+"Maybe they are the marshal's troops," said the king.
+
+In one moment Kmita urged his horse forward. "I will go and see!" said
+he.
+
+The Kyemliches moved that instant after him, like hunting-dogs in a
+chase; but barely had they stirred from their places when the turn of
+the pass, about a hundred yards distant, was made black by men and
+horses. Kmita looked at them, and the soul quivered within him from
+terror.
+
+Swedes were advancing.
+
+They were so near that it was impossible to retreat, especially since
+the king's party had wearied horses. It only remained to break through,
+to perish, or to go into captivity. The unterrified king understood
+this in a flash; therefore he seized the hilt of his sword.
+
+"Cover the king and retreat!" cried Kmita.
+
+Tyzenhauz with twenty men pushed forward in the twinkle of an eye; but
+Kmita instead of joining them moved on at a sharp trot against the
+Swedes.
+
+He wore the Swedish dress, the same in which he disguised himself when
+going out from the cloister. Seeing a horseman coming toward them in
+such a dress, the Swedes thought perhaps this was some party of their
+own belonging to the King of Sweden; they did not hasten their pace,
+but the captain commanding pushed out beyond the first three.
+
+"What people are you?" asked he in Swedish, looking at the threatening
+and pale face of the young man approaching.
+
+Kmita rode up to him so closely that their knees almost touched, and
+without speaking a word fired from a pistol directly into his ear.
+
+A shout of terror was rent from the breasts of the Swedish cavalry; but
+still louder thundered the voice of Pan Andrei, "Strike!"
+
+And like a rock torn from a cliff rolling down, crushing everything in
+its course, so did he fall on the first rank, bearing death and
+destruction. The two young Kyemliches, like two bears, sprang after him
+into the whirl. The clatter of sabres on mail and helmets was heard,
+like the sound of hammers, and was followed straightway by outcries and
+groans.
+
+It seemed at the first moment to the astonished Swedes that three
+giants had fallen upon them in that wild mountain pass. The first three
+pushed back confused in the presence of the terrible man, and when the
+succeeding ones had extricated themselves from behind the bend of the
+pass, those in the rear were thrown back and confused. The horses fell
+to biting and kicking. The soldiers in the remoter ranks were not able
+to shoot, nor come to the assistance of those in front, who perished
+without aid under the blows of the three giants. In vain did they fall,
+in vain did they present their weapon points; here sabres were
+breaking, there men and horses fell. Kmita urged his horse till his
+hoofs were hanging above the heads of the steeds of his opponents, he
+was raging himself, cutting and thrusting. The blood rushed to his
+face, and from his eyes fire flashed. All thoughts were quenched in him
+save one,--he might perish, but he must detain the Swedes. That thought
+turned in him to a species of wild ecstasy; therefore his powers were
+trebled, his movements became like those of a leopard, mad, and swift
+as lightning. With blows of his sabre, which were blows beyond human,
+he crushed men as a thunderbolt crushes young trees; the twin
+Kyemliches followed, and the old man, standing a trifle in the rear,
+thrust his rapier out every moment between his sons, as a serpent
+thrusts out its bloody tongue.
+
+Meanwhile around the king there rose confusion. The nuncio, as at
+Jivyets, seized the reins of his horse, and on the other side the
+bishop of Cracow pulled back the steed with all his force; but the king
+spurred him till he stood on his hind legs.
+
+"Let me go!" cried the king. "As God lives! We shall pass through the
+enemy!"
+
+"My Lord, think of the country!" cried the bishop of Cracow.
+
+The king was unable to tear himself from their hands, especially since
+young Tyzenhauz with all his men closed the road. Tyzenhauz did not go
+to help Kmita; he sacrificed him, he wanted only to save the king.
+
+"By the passion of our Lord!" cried he, in despair, "those men will
+perish immediately! Gracious Lord, save yourself while there is time! I
+will hold them here yet awhile!"
+
+But the stubbornness of the king when once roused reckoned with nothing
+and no man. Yan Kazimir spurred his horse still more violently, and
+instead of retreating pushed forward.
+
+But time passed, and each moment might bring with it final destruction.
+
+"I will die on my own soil! Let me go!" cried the king.
+
+Fortunately, against Kmita and the Kyemliches, by reason of the
+narrowness of the pass, only a small number of men could act at once,
+consequently they were able to hold out long. But gradually even their
+powers began to be exhausted. A number of times the rapiers of the
+Swedes had struck Kmita's body, and his blood began to flow. His eyes
+were veiled as it were by a mist. The breath halted in his breast. He
+felt the approach of death; therefore he wanted only to sell his life
+dearly. "Even one more!" repeated he to himself, and he sent down his
+steel blade on the head or the shoulder of the nearest horseman, and
+again he turned to another; but evidently the Swedes felt ashamed,
+after the first moment of confusion and fear, that four men were able
+to detain them so long, and they crowded forward with fury; soon the
+very weight of men and horses drove back the four men, and each moment
+more swiftly and strongly.
+
+With that Kmita's horse fell, and the torrent covered the rider.
+
+The Kyemliches struggled still for a time, like swimmers who seeing
+that they are drowning make efforts to keep their heads above the whirl
+of the sea, but soon they also fell. Then the Swedes moved on like a
+whirlwind toward the party of the king.
+
+Tyzenhauz with his men sprang against them, and struck them in such
+fashion that the sound was heard through the mountains.
+
+But what could that handful of men, led by Tyzenhauz, do against a
+detachment of nearly three hundred strong?
+
+There was no doubt that for the king and his party the fatal hour of
+death or captivity must come.
+
+Yan Kazimir, preferring evidently the first to the second, freed
+finally the reins from the hands of the bishops, and pushed forward
+quickly toward Tyzenhauz. In an instant he halted as if fixed to the
+earth.
+
+Something uncommon had happened. To spectators it seemed as though the
+mountains themselves were coming to the aid of the rightful king.
+
+Behold on a sudden the edges of the pass quivered as if the earth were
+moving from its foundations, as if the pines on the mountain desired to
+take part in the battle; and logs of wood, blocks of snow and ice,
+stones, fragments of cliff's, began to roll down with a terrible crash
+and roar on the ranks of the Swedes crowded in the pass. At the same
+time an unearthly howl was heard on each side of the narrow place.
+
+Below in the ranks began seething which passed human belief. It seemed
+to the Swedes that the mountains were falling and covering them. Shouts
+rose, the lamentations of crushed men, despairing cries for assistance,
+the whining of horses, the bite and terrible sound of fragments of
+cliffs on armor.
+
+At last men and horses formed one mass quivering convulsively, crushed,
+groaning, despairing, and dreadful. But the stones and pieces of
+cliff's ground them continually, rolling without mercy on the now
+formless masses, the bodies of horses and men.
+
+"The mountaineers! the mountaineers!" shouted men in the retinue of the
+king.
+
+"With axes at the dog-brothers!" called voices from the mountain.
+
+And that very moment from both rocky edges appeared long-haired heads,
+covered with round fur caps, and after them came out bodies, and
+several hundred strange forms began to let themselves down on the
+slopes of the snow.
+
+Dark and white rags floating above their shoulders gave them the
+appearance of some kind of awful birds of prey. They pushed down in the
+twinkle of an eye; the sound of their axes emphasized their wild
+ominous shouting and the groans of the Swedes.
+
+The king himself tried to restrain the slaughter; some horsemen, still
+living, threw themselves on their knees, and raising their defenceless
+hands, begged for their lives. Nothing availed, nothing could stay the
+vengeful axes. A quarter of an hour later there was not one man living
+among the Swedes in the pass.
+
+After that the bloody mountaineers began to hurry toward the escort of
+the king.
+
+The nuncio looked with astonishment on those people, strange to him,
+large, sturdy, covered partly with sheepskin, sprinkled with blood, and
+shaking their still steaming axes.
+
+But at sight of the bishops they uncovered their heads. Many of them
+fell on their knees in the snow.
+
+The bishop of Cracow raising his tearful face toward heaven said,
+"Behold the assistance of God, behold Providence, which watches over
+the majesty of the king." Then turning to the mountaineers, he asked,
+"Men, who are you?"
+
+"We are of this place," answered voices from the crowd.
+
+"Do you know whom you have come to assist? This is your king and your
+lord, whom you have saved."
+
+At these words a shout rose in the crowd. "The king! the king! Jesus,
+Mary! the king!" And the joyful mountaineers began to throng and crowd
+around Yan Kazimir. With weeping they fell to him from every side; with
+weeping, they kissed his feet, his stirrups, even the hoofs of his
+horse. Such excitement reigned, such shouting, such weeping that the
+bishops from fear for the king's person were forced to restrain the
+excessive enthusiasm.
+
+And the king was in the midst of a faithful people, like a shepherd
+among sheep, and great tears were flowing down his face. Then his
+countenance became bright, as if some sudden change had taken place in
+his soul, as if a new, great thought from heaven by birth had flashed
+into his mind, and he indicated with his hand that he wished to speak;
+and when there was silence he said with a voice so loud that the whole
+multitude heard him,--
+
+"O God, Thou who hast saved me by the hands of simple people, I swear
+by the suffering and death of Thy Son to be a father to them from this
+moment forward."
+
+"Amen!" responded the bishops.
+
+For a certain time a solemn silence reigned, then a new burst of joy.
+They inquired of the mountaineers whence they had come into the passes,
+and in what way they had appeared to rescue the king. It turned out
+that considerable parties of Swedes had been wandering about Chorshtyn,
+and, not capturing the castle itself, they seemed to seek some one and
+to wait. The mountaineers too had heard of a battle which those parties
+had delivered against troops among whom it was said that the king
+himself was advancing. Then they determined to push the Swedes into an
+ambush, and sending to them deceitful guides, they lured them into the
+pass.
+
+"We saw," said the mountaineers, "how those four horsemen attacked
+those dogs; we wanted to assist the four horsemen, but were afraid to
+fall upon the dog-brothers too soon!"
+
+Here the king seized his head. "Mother of Thy only Son!" cried he,
+"find Babinich for me! Let us give him at least a funeral! And he is
+the man who was considered a traitor, the one who first shed his own
+blood for us."
+
+"It was I who accused him. Gracious Lord!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"Find him, find him!" cried the king. "I will not leave here till I
+look upon his face and put my blessing on him."
+
+The soldiers and the mountaineers sprang to the place of the first
+struggle, and soon they removed from the pile of dead horses and men
+Pan Andrei. His face was pale, all bespattered with blood, which was
+hanging in large stiffened drops on his mustaches; his eyes were
+closed; his armor was bent from the blows of swords and horses' hoofs.
+But that armor had saved him from being crushed, and to the soldier who
+raised him it seemed as though he heard a low groan.
+
+"As God is true, he is alive!" cried he.
+
+"Remove his armor," called others.
+
+They cut the straps quickly. Kmita breathed more deeply.
+
+"He is breathing, he is breathing! He is alive!" repeated a number of
+voices.
+
+But he lay a certain time motionless; then he opened his eyes. At that
+time one of the soldiers poured a little gorailka into his mouth;
+others raised him by the armpits.
+
+Now the king, to whose hearing the cry repeated by several voices had
+come, rode up in haste. The soldiers drew into his presence Pan Andrei,
+who was hanging on them and slipping from their hands to the ground.
+Still, at sight of the king consciousness returned to him for a moment,
+a smile almost childlike lighted his face, and his pale lips whispered
+clearly,--
+
+"My lord, my king, is alive--is free." And tears shone on his
+eyelashes.
+
+"Babinich, Babinich! with what can I reward you?" cried the king.
+
+"I am not Babinich; I am Kmita!" whispered the knight.
+
+When he had said this he hung like a corpse in the arms of the
+soldiers.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XI.
+
+
+Since the mountaineers gave sure information that on the road to
+Chorshtyn there was nothing to be heard of other Swedish parties, the
+retinue of the king turned toward the castle, and soon found themselves
+on the highway, along which the journey was easiest and least tiresome.
+They rode on amid songs of the mountaineers and shouts, "The king is
+coming! The king is coming!" and along the road new crowds of men
+joined them, armed with flails, scythes, forks, and guns, so that Yan
+Kazimir was soon at the head of a considerable division of men, not
+trained, it is true, but ready at any moment to go with him even to
+Cracow and spill their blood for their sovereign. Near Chorshtyn more
+than a thousand "householders" and half-wild shepherds surrounded the
+king.
+
+Then nobles from Novy Sanch and Stary Sanch began to come in. They said
+that a Polish regiment, under command of Voynillovich, had defeated,
+that morning, just before the town of Novy Sanch, a considerable
+detachment of Swedes, of which almost all the men were either slain, or
+drowned in the Kamyenna or Dunayets.
+
+This turned out to be really the fact, when soon after on the road
+banners began to gleam, and Voynillovich himself came up with the
+regiment of the voevoda of Bratslav.
+
+The king greeted with joy a celebrated and to him well-known knight,
+and amidst the universal enthusiasm of the people and the army, he rode
+on toward Spij. Meanwhile men on horseback rushed with all breath to
+forewarn the marshal that the king was approaching, and to be ready to
+receive him.
+
+Joyous and noisy was the continuation of the journey. New crowds were
+added continually. The nuncio, who had left Silesia filled with fear
+for the king's fate and his own, and for whom the beginning of the
+journey had increased this fear, was beside himself now with delight,
+for he was certain that the future would surely bring victory to the
+king, and besides to the church over heretics. The bishops shared his
+joy; the lay dignitaries asserted that the whole people, from the
+Carpathians to the Baltic, would grasp their weapons as these crowds
+had done. Voynillovich stated that for the greater part this had taken
+place already. And he told what was to be heard in the country, what a
+terror had fallen upon the Swedes, how they dared go no longer outside
+fortifications in small numbers, how they were leaving the smaller
+castles, which they burned, and taking refuge in the strongest.
+
+"The Polish troops are beating their breasts with one hand, and are
+beginning to beat the Swedes with the other," said he. "Vilchkovski,
+who commands the hussar regiment of your Royal Grace, has already
+thanked the Swedes for their service, and that in such fashion that he
+fell upon them at Zakjevo, under the command of Colonel Altenberg, and
+slew a large number,--destroyed almost all. I, with the assistance of
+God, drove them out of Novy Sanch, and God gave a noted victory. I do
+not know whether one escaped alive. Pan Felitsyan Kohovski with the
+infantry of Navoi helped me greatly, and so they received pay for those
+dragoons at least whom they attacked two or three days ago."
+
+"What dragoons?" asked the king.
+
+"Those whom your Royal Grace sent ahead from Silesia. The Swedes fell
+on these suddenly, and though not able to disperse them, for they
+defended themselves desperately, they inflicted considerable loss. And
+we were almost dying of despair, for we thought that your Royal Grace
+was among those men in your own person, and we feared lest some evil
+might happen to majesty. God inspired your Royal Grace to send the
+dragoons ahead. The Swedes heard of it at once, and occupied the roads
+everywhere."
+
+"Do you hear, Tyzenhauz?" asked the king. "An experienced soldier is
+talking."
+
+"I hear, Gracious Lord," answered the young magnate.
+
+"And what further, what further? Tell on!" said the king, turning to
+Voynillovich.
+
+"What I know I shall surely not hide. Jegotski and Kulesha are active
+in Great Poland; Varshytski has driven Lindorm from the castle of
+Pilets; Dankoff is defending itself; Lantskoron is in our hands; and in
+Podlyasye, Sapyeha is gaining every day at Tykotsin. The Swedes are in
+greater straits in the castle, and with them is failing the prince
+voevoda of Vilna. As to the hetmans, they have moved already from
+Sandomir to Lyubelsk, showing clearly that they are breaking with the
+enemy. The voevoda of Chernigov is with them, and from the region about
+is marching to them every living man who can hold a sabre in his hand.
+They say, too, that there is some kind of federation to be formed there
+against the Swedes, in which is the hand of Sapyeha as well as that of
+Stefan Charnyetski."
+
+"Is Charnyetski now in Lyubelsk?"
+
+"He is, your Royal Grace. But he is here to-day and there to-morrow. I
+have to join him, but where to find him I know not."
+
+"There will be noise around him," said the king; "you will not need to
+inquire."
+
+"So I think too," answered Voynillovich.
+
+In such conversation was the road passed. Meanwhile the sky had grown
+perfectly clear, so that the azure was unspotted by even a small cloud.
+The snow was glittering in the sunlight. The mountains of Spij were
+extended gloriously and joyously before the travellers, and Nature
+itself seemed to smile on the king.
+
+"Dear country!" said Yan Kazimir, "God grant me strength to bring thee
+peace before my bones rest in thy earth."
+
+They rode out on a lofty eminence, from which the view was open and
+wide, for beyond, at the foot of it, was spread a broad plain. There
+they saw below, and at a great distance as it were, the movement of a
+human ant-hill.
+
+"The troops of the marshal!" cried Voynillovich.
+
+"Unless they are Swedes," said the king.
+
+"No, Gracious Lord! The Swedes could not march from Hungary, from the
+south. I see now the hussar flag."
+
+In fact a forest of spears soon pushed out in the blue distance, and
+colored streamers were quivering like flowers moved by the wind; above
+these flags spear-points were glittering like little flames. The sun
+played on the armor and helmets.
+
+The throngs of people accompanying the king gave forth a joyous shout,
+which was heard at a distance, for the mass of horses, riders, flags,
+horse-tail standards, and ensigns began to move more quickly. Evidently
+they were moving with all speed, for the regiments became each moment
+more definite, and increased in the eye with incomprehensible rapidity.
+
+"Let us stay on this height. We will await the marshal here," said the
+king.
+
+The retinue halted; the men coming toward them moved still more
+rapidly. At moments they were concealed from the eye by turns of the
+road, or small hills and cliffs, scattered along the plain; but soon
+they appeared again, like a serpent with a skin of splendid colors
+playing most beautifully. At last they came within a quarter of a mile
+of the height, and slackened their speed. The eye could take them in
+perfectly, and gain pleasure from them. First advanced the hussar
+squadron of the marshal himself, well armored, and so imposing that any
+king might be proud of such troops. Only nobles of the mountains served
+in this squadron, chosen men of equal size; their armor was of bright
+squares inlaid with bronze, gorgets with the image of the Most Holy
+Lady of Chenstohova, round helmets with steel rims, crests on the top,
+and at the side wings of eagles and vultures, on their shoulders tiger
+and leopard skins, but on the officers wolf skins, according to custom.
+
+A forest of green and black streamers waved above them. In front rode
+Lieutenant Victor; after him a janissary band with bells, trumpets,
+drums, and pipes; then a wall of the breasts of horses and men clothed
+in iron.
+
+The king's heart opened at that lordly sight. Next to the hussars came
+a light regiment still more numerous, with drawn sabres in their hands
+and bows at their shoulders; then three companies of Cossacks, in
+colors like blooming poppies, armed with spears and muskets; next two
+hundred dragoons in red jackets; then escorts belonging to different
+personages visiting at Lyubovlya, attendants dressed as if for a
+wedding, guards, haiduks, grooms, Hungarians, and janissaries, attached
+to the service of great lords.
+
+And all that changed in colors like a rainbow, and came on
+tumultuously, noisily, amid the neighing of horses, the clatter of
+armor, the thunder of kettle-drums, the roll of other drums, the blare
+of trumpets, and cries so loud that it seemed as though the snows would
+rush down from the mountains because of them. In the rear of the troops
+were to be seen closed and open carriages, in which evidently were
+riding dignitaries of the church and the world.
+
+The troops took position in two lines along the road, and between them
+appeared, on a horse white as milk, the marshal of the kingdom, Pan
+Yerzy Lyubomirski. He flew on like a whirlwind over that road, and
+behind him raced two equerries, glittering in gold. When he had ridden
+to the foot of the eminence, he sprang from his horse, and throwing the
+reins to one of the equerries, went on foot to the king standing above.
+
+He removed his cap, and placing it on the hilt of his sabre, advanced
+with uncovered head, leaning on a staff all set with pearls. He was
+dressed in Polish fashion, in military costume; on his breast was armor
+of silver plates thickly inlaid at the edges with precious stones, and
+so polished that he seemed to be bearing the sun on his bosom; over his
+left shoulder was hanging a cloak of Venetian velvet of dark color,
+passing into violet purple; it was fastened at the throat by a cord
+with a buckle of diamonds, and the whole cloak was embroidered with
+diamonds; in like manner a diamond was trembling in his cap, and these
+stones glittered like many-colored sparks around his whole person, and
+dazzled the eyes, such was the brightness which came from them.
+
+He was a man in the vigor of life, of splendid form. His head was
+shaven around the temples; his forelock was rather thin, growing gray,
+and lay on his forehead in a shaggy tuft; his mustache, as black as the
+wing of a crow, drooped in fine points at both sides. His lofty
+forehead and Roman nose added to the beauty of his face, but the face
+was marred somewhat by cheeks that were too plump, and small eyes
+encircled with red lids. Great dignity, but also unparalleled pride and
+vanity were depicted on that face. You might easily divine that that
+magnate wished to turn to himself eternally the eyes of the whole
+Commonwealth, nay, of all Europe; and such was the case in reality.
+
+Where Yerzy Lyubomirski could not hold the first place, where he could
+only share glory and merit with others, his wounded pride was ready to
+bar the way and corrupt and crush every endeavor, even when it was a
+question of saving the country.
+
+He was an adroit and fortunate leader, but even in this respect others
+surpassed him immeasurably; and in general his abilities, though
+uncommon, were not equal to his ambition and desire of distinction.
+Endless unrest therefore was boiling in his soul, whence was born that
+suspiciousness, that envy, which later on carried him so far that he
+became more destructive to the Commonwealth than the terrible Yanush
+Radzivill. The black soul which dwelt in Prince Yanush was great also;
+it stopped before no man and no thing. Yanush wanted a crown, and he
+went toward it consciously over graves and the ruin of his country.
+Lyubomirski would have taken a crown if the hands of the nobles had
+placed it on his head; but having a smaller soul, he dared not desire
+the crown openly and expressly. Radzivill was one of those men whom
+failure casts down to the level of criminals, and success elevates to
+the greatness of demigods; Lyubomirski was a mighty disturber who was
+always ready to ruin work for the salvation of the country, in the name
+of his own offended pride, and to build up nothing in place of it. He
+did not even dare to raise himself, he did not know how. Radzivill died
+the more guilty, Lyubomirski the more harmful man.
+
+But at that hour, when in gold, velvet, and precious stones he stood in
+front of the king, his pride was sufficiently satisfied. For he was the
+first magnate to receive his own king on his own land; he first took
+him under a species of guardianship, he had to conduct him to a throne
+which had been overturned, and to drive out the enemy; from him the
+king and the country expected everything; on him all eyes were turned.
+Therefore to show loyalty and service coincided with his self-love, in
+fact flattered it, he was ready in truth for sacrifices and devotion,
+he was ready to exceed the measure even with expressions of respect and
+loyalty. When therefore he had ascended one half of that eminence on
+which the king was standing, he took his cap from the sword-hilt and
+began, while bowing, to sweep the snow with its diamond plume.
+
+The king urged his horse somewhat toward the descent, then halted to
+dismount, for the greeting. Seeing this, the marshal sprang forward to
+hold the stirrup with his worthy hands, and at that moment grasping
+after his cloak, he drew it from his shoulders, and following the
+example of a certain English courtier, threw it under the feet of the
+monarch.
+
+The king, touched to the heart, opened his arms to the marshal, and
+seized him like a brother in his embrace. For a while neither was able
+to speak; but at that exalted spectacle the army, the nobles, the
+people, roared in one voice, and thousands of caps flew into the air,
+all the guns, muskets, and blunderbusses sounded, cannon from Lyubovlya
+answered in a distant bass, till the mountains trembled; all the echoes
+were roused and began to course around, striking the dark walls of pine
+woods, the cliffs and rocks, and flew with the news to remoter
+mountains and cliffs.
+
+"Lord Marshal," said the king, "we will thank you for the restoration
+of the kingdom!"
+
+"Gracious Lord!" answered Lyubomirski, "my fortune, my life, my blood,
+all I have I place at the feet of your Royal Grace."
+
+"Vivat! vivat Yoannes Casimirus Rex!" thundered the shouts.
+
+"May the king live! our father!" cried the mountaineers.
+
+Meanwhile the gentlemen who were riding with the king surrounded the
+marshal; but he did not leave the royal person. After the first
+greetings the king mounted his horse again; but the marshal, not
+wishing to recognize bounds to his hospitality and honor to his guest,
+seized the bridle, and going himself on foot, led the king through the
+lines of the army amid deafening shouts, till they came to a gilded
+carriage drawn by eight dapple-gray horses; in this carriage Yan
+Kazimir took his seat, together with Vidon, the nuncio of the Pope.
+
+The bishops and dignitaries took seats in succeeding carriages, then
+they moved on slowly to Lyubovlya. The marshal rode at the window of
+the king's carriage, splendid, self-satisfied, as if he were already
+proclaimed father of the country. At both sides went a dense army,
+singing songs, thundering out in the following words:--
+
+
+                 "Cut the Swedes, cut,
+                  With sharpened swords.
+
+                 "Beat the Swedes, beat,
+                  With strong sticks.
+
+                 "Roll the Swedes, roll,
+                  Empale them on stakes.
+
+                 "Torment the Swedes, torment,
+                  And torture them as you can.
+
+                 "Pound the Swedes, pound,
+                  Pull them out of their skins.
+
+                 "Cut the Swedes, cut,
+                  Then there will be fewer.
+
+                 "Drown the Swedes, drown,
+                  If you are a good man!"
+
+
+Unfortunately amidst the universal rejoicing and enthusiasm no one
+foresaw that later the same troops of Lyubomirski, after they had
+rebelled against their legal lord and king, would sing the same song,
+putting the French in place of the Swedes.
+
+But now it was far from such a state. In Lyubovlya the cannon were
+thundering in greeting till the towers and battlements were covered
+with smoke, the bells were tolling as at a fire. At the part of the
+courtyard in which the king descended from the carriage, the porch and
+the steps were covered with scarlet cloth. In vases brought from Italy
+were burning perfumes of the East. The greater part of the treasures of
+the Lyubomirskis,--cabinets of gold and silver, carpets, mats, gobelin
+tapestry, woven wonderfully by Flemish hands, statues, clocks,
+cupboards, ornamented with precious stones, cabinets inlaid with
+mother-of-pearl and amber brought previously to Lyubovlya to preserve
+them from Swedish rapacity, were now arranged and hung up in display;
+they dazzled the eye and changed that castle into a kind of fairy
+residence. And the marshal had arranged all this luxury, worthy of a
+Sultan, in this fashion of purpose to show the king that though he was
+returning as an exile, without money, without troops, having scarcely a
+change of clothing, still he was a mighty lord, since he had servants
+so powerful, and as faithful as powerful. The king understood this
+intention, and his heart rose in gratitude; every moment therefore he
+took the marshal by the shoulder, pressed his head and thanked him. The
+nuncio, though accustomed to luxury, expressed his astonishment at what
+he beheld, and they heard him say to Count Apotyngen that hitherto he
+had had  no idea of the power of the King of Poland, and now saw that
+the previous defeats were merely a temporary reverse of fortune, which
+soon must be changed.
+
+At the feast, which followed a rest, the king sat on an elevation, and
+the marshal himself served him, permitting no one to take his place. At
+the right of the king sat the nuncio, at his left the prince primate,
+Leshchynski, farther on both sides dignitaries, lay and clerical, such
+as the bishops of Cracow, Poznan, Lvoff, Lutsk, Premysl, Helm; the
+archdeacon of Cracow; farther on keepers of the royal seal and
+voevodas, of whom eight had assembled, and castellans and
+referendaries; of officers, there were sitting at the feast
+Voynillovich, Viktor, Stabkovski, and Baldwin Shurski.
+
+In another hall a table was set for inferior nobles, and there were
+large barracks for peasants, for all had to be joyful on the day of the
+king's coming.
+
+At the tables there was no other conversation but touching the royal
+return, and the terrible adventures which had met them on the road, in
+which the hand of God had preserved the king. Yan Kazimir himself
+described the battle in the pass, and praised the cavalier who had held
+back the first Swedish onset.
+
+"And how is he?" asked he of the marshal.
+
+"The physician does not leave him, and guarantees his life; and
+besides, maidens and ladies in waiting have taken him in care, and
+surely they will not let the soul go from the body, for the body is
+shapely and young!" answered the marshal, joyously.
+
+"Praise be to God!" cried the king. "I heard from his lips something
+which I shall not repeat to you, for it seems to me that I heard
+incorrectly, or that he said it in delirium; but should it come true
+you will be astonished."
+
+"If he has said nothing which might make your Royal Grace gloomy."
+
+"Nothing whatever of that nature," said the king; "it has comforted us
+beyond measure, for it seems that even those whom we had reason to hold
+our greatest enemies are ready to spill their blood for us if need be."
+
+"Gracious Lord!" cried the marshal, "the time of reform has come; but
+under this roof your Royal Grace is among persons who have never sinned
+even in thought against majesty."
+
+"True, true!" answered the king, "and you, Lord Marshal, are in the
+first rank."
+
+"I am a poor servant of your Royal Grace."
+
+At table the noise grew greater. Gradually they began to speak of
+political combinations; of aid from the emperor, hitherto looked for in
+vain; of Tartar assistance, and of the coming war with the Swedes.
+Fresh rejoicing set in when the marshal stated that the envoy sent by
+him to the Khan had returned just a couple of days before, and reported
+that forty thousand of the horde were in readiness, and perhaps even a
+hundred thousand, as soon as the king would reach Lvoff and conclude a
+treaty with the Khan. The same envoy had reported that the Cossacks
+through fear of the Tartars had returned to obedience.
+
+"You have thought of everything," said the king, "in such fashion that
+we could not have thought it out better ourselves." Then he seized his
+glass and said: "To the health of our host and friend, the marshal of
+the kingdom!"
+
+"Impossible, Gracious Lord!" cried the marshal; "no man's health can be
+drunk here before the health of your Royal Grace."
+
+All restrained their half-raised goblets; but Lyubomirski, filled with
+delight, perspiring, beckoned to his chief butler.
+
+At this sign the servants who were swarming through the hall rushed to
+pour out Malvoisie again, taken with gilded dippers from kegs of pure
+silver. Pleasure increased still more, and all were waiting for the
+toast of the marshal.
+
+The chief butler brought now two goblets of Venetian crystal of such
+marvellous work that they might pass for the eighth wonder of the
+world. The crystal, bored and polished to thinness during whole years,
+perhaps, cast real diamond light. On the setting great artists of Italy
+had labored. The base of each goblet was gold, carved in small figures
+representing the entrance of a conqueror to the Capitol. The conqueror
+rode in a chariot of gold on a street paved with pearls. Behind him
+followed captives with bound hands; with them a king, in a turban
+formed of one emerald; farther followed legionaries with eagles
+and ensigns. More than fifty small figures found room on each
+base,--figures as high as a hazel-nut, but made so marvellously that
+the features of the faces and the feelings of each one could be
+distinguished, the pride of the victors, the grief of the vanquished.
+The base was bound to the goblet with golden filigree, fine as hair
+bent with wondrous art into grape leaves, clusters, and various
+flowers. Those filigree were wound around the crystal, and joining at
+the top in one ring formed the edge of the goblet, which was set with
+stones in seven colors.
+
+The head butler gave one such goblet to the king and the other to the
+marshal, both filled with Malvoisie. All rose from their seats;
+the marshal raised the goblet, and cried with all the voice in his
+breast,--
+
+"Vivat Yoannes Casimirus Rex!"
+
+"Vivat! vivat! vivat!"
+
+At that moment the guns thundered again so that the walls of the castle
+were trembling. The nobles feasting in the second hall came with their
+goblets; the marshal wished to make an oration, but could not, for his
+words were lost in the endless shouts: "Vivat! vivat! vivat!"
+
+Such joy seized the marshal, such ecstasy, that wildness was gleaming
+in his eyes, and emptying his goblet he shouted so, that he was heard
+even in the universal tumult,--
+
+"_Ego ultimus_ (I am the last)!"
+
+Then he struck the priceless goblet on his own head with such force
+that the crystal sprang into a hundred fragments, which fell with a
+rattle on the floor, and the head of the magnate was covered with
+blood. All were astonished, and the king said,--
+
+"Lord Marshal, we regret not the goblet, but the head which we value so
+greatly."
+
+"Treasures and jewels are nothing to me," cried the marshal, "when I
+have the honor of receiving your Royal Grace in my house. Vivat Yoannes
+Casimirus Rex!"
+
+Here the butler gave him another goblet.
+
+"Vivat! vivat!" shouted the guests without ceasing. The sound of broken
+glass was mingled with the shout. Only the bishops did not follow the
+example of the marshal, for their spiritual dignity forbade them.
+
+The nuncio, who did not know of that custom of breaking glasses on the
+head, bent to the bishop of Poznan, sitting near him, and said,--
+
+"As God lives, astonishment seizes me! Your treasury is empty, and for
+one such goblet two good regiments of men might be equipped and
+maintained."
+
+"It is always so with us," answered the bishop; "when desire rises in
+the heart there is no measure in anything."
+
+And in fact the desire grew greater each moment. Toward the end of the
+feast a bright light struck the windows of the castle.
+
+"What is that?" asked the king.
+
+"Gracious Lord, I beg you to the spectacle," answered the marshal. And
+tottering slightly, he conducted the king to the window. There a
+wonderful sight struck their eyes. It was as clear in the court as when
+there is daylight. A number of tens of pitch-barrels cast a bright
+yellow gleam on the pavement, cleared of snow and strewn with leaves of
+mountain-fern. Here and there were burning tubs of brandy which cast
+blue light; salt was sprinkled into some to make them burn red.
+
+The spectacle began. First knights cut off Turkish heads, tilted at a
+ring and at one another; then the dogs of Liptovo fought with a bear;
+later, a man from the hills, a kind of mountain Samson, threw a
+millstone and caught it in the air. Midnight put an end to these
+amusements.
+
+Thus did the marshal declare himself, though the Swedes were still in
+the land.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XII.
+
+
+In the midst of feasting and the throng of new dignitaries, nobles, and
+knights who were coming continually, the kindly king forgot not his
+faithful servant who in the mountain-pass had exposed his breast to the
+Swedish sword with such daring; and on the day following his arrival in
+Lyubovlya he visited the wounded Pan Andrei. He found him conscious and
+almost joyful, though pale as death; by a lucky fortune the young hero
+had received no grievous wound, only blood had left him in large
+quantities.
+
+At sight of the king, Kmita even rose in the bed to a sitting position,
+and though the king insisted that he should lie down again, he was
+unwilling to do so.
+
+"Gracious Lord," said he, "in a couple of days I shall be on horseback,
+and with your gracious permission will go farther, for I feel that
+nothing is the matter with me."
+
+"Still they must have cut you terribly. It is an unheard of thing for
+one to withstand such a number."
+
+"That has happened to me more than once, for I think that in an evil
+juncture the sabre and courage are best. Ei, Gracious Lord, the number
+of cuts that have healed on my skin you could not count on an ox-hide.
+Such is my fortune."
+
+"Complain not of fortune, for it is evident that you go headlong to
+places where not only blows but deaths are distributed. But how long do
+you practise such tactics? Where have you fought before now?"
+
+A passing blush covered the youthful face of Kmita.
+
+"Gracious Lord, I attacked Hovanski when all dropped their hands, and a
+price was set on my head."
+
+"But listen," said the king, suddenly; "you told me a wonderful word in
+that pass. I thought that delirium had seized you and unsettled your
+reason. Now you say that you attacked Hovanski. Who are you? Are you
+not really Babinich? We know who attacked Hovanski!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; at last the young knight raised his pale
+face, and said,--
+
+"Not delirium spoke through me, but truth; it was I who battered
+Hovanski, from which war my name was heard throughout the whole
+Commonwealth. I am Andrei Kmita, the banneret of Orsha."
+
+Here Kmita closed his eyes and grew still paler; but when the
+astonished king was silent, he began to speak farther,--
+
+"I am, Gracious Lord, that outlaw, condemned by God and the judgments
+of men for killing and violence. I served Radzivill, and together with
+him I betrayed you and the country; but now, thrust with rapiers and
+trampled with horses' hoofs, unable to rise, I beat my breast,
+repeating, _Mea culpa, mea culpa!_ (My fault, my fault!) and I implore
+your fatherly mercy. Forgive me, for I have cursed my previous acts,
+and have long since turned from that road which lies toward hell."
+
+Tears dropped from the eyes of the knight, and with trembling he began
+to seek the hand of the king. Yan Kazimir, it is true, did not withdraw
+his hand; but he grew gloomy, and said,--
+
+"Whoso in this land wears a crown should be unceasingly ready to
+pardon; therefore we are willing to forgive your offence, since on
+Yasna Gora and on the road you have served us with faithfulness,
+exposing your breast."
+
+"Then forgive them, Gracious Lord! Shorten my torment"
+
+"But one thing we cannot forget,--that in spite of the virtue of this
+people you offered Prince Boguslav to raise hands on majesty, hitherto
+inviolable, and bear us away living or dead, and deliver us into
+Swedish hands."
+
+Kmita, though a moment before he had said himself that he was unable to
+rise, sprang from the bed, seized the crucifix hanging above him, and
+with the cuts on his face and fever in his flashing eyes, and breathing
+quickly, began to speak thus,--
+
+"By the salvation of my father and mother, by the wounds of the
+Crucified, it is untrue! If I am guilty of that sin, may God punish me
+at once with sudden death and with eternal fires. If you do not believe
+me, I will tear these bandages, let out the remnant of the blood which
+the Swedes did not shed. I never made the offer. Never was such a
+thought in my head. For the kingdom of this world, I would not have
+done such a deed. Amen! on this cross, amen, amen!" And he trembled
+from feverish excitement.
+
+"Then did the prince invent it?" asked the astonished king. "Why? for
+what reason?"
+
+"He did invent it. It was his hellish revenge on me for what I did to
+him."
+
+"What did you do to him?"
+
+"I carried him off from the middle of his court and of his whole army.
+I wanted to cast him bound at the feet of your Royal Grace."
+
+"It's a wonder, it's a wonder! I believe you, but I do not understand.
+How was it? You were serving Yanush, and carried off Boguslav, who was
+less guilty, and you wanted to bring him bound to me?"
+
+Kmita wished to answer; but the king saw at that moment his pallor and
+suffering, therefore he said,--
+
+"Rest, and later tell me all from the beginning. I believe you; here is
+our hand."
+
+Kmita pressed the king's hand to his lips, and for some time was
+silent, for breath failed him; he merely looked at the king's face with
+immeasurable affection; at last he collected his strength, and said,--
+
+"I will tell all from the beginning. I warred against Hovanski, but I
+was hard with my own people. In part I was forced to wrong them, and to
+take what I needed; I did this partly from violence, for the blood was
+storming within me. I had companions, good nobles, but no better than
+I. Here and there a man was cut down, here and there a house was
+burned, here and there some one was chased over the snow with sticks.
+An outcry was raised. Where an enemy could not touch me, complaint was
+made before a court. I lost cases by default. Sentences came one after
+another, but I paid no heed; besides, the devil flattered me, and
+whispered to surpass Pan Lashch, who had his cloak lined with
+judgments; and still he was famous, and is famous till now."
+
+"For he did penance, and died piously," remarked the king.
+
+When he had rested somewhat, Kmita continued: "Meanwhile Colonel
+Billevich--the Billeviches are a great family in Jmud--put off his
+transitory form, and was taken to a better world; but he left me a
+village and his granddaughter. I do not care for the village, for in
+continual attacks on the enemy I have gathered no little property, and
+not only have made good the fortune taken from me by the Northerners,
+but have increased it. I have still in Chenstohova enough to buy two
+such villages, and I need ask no one for bread. But when my party
+separated I went to winter quarters in the Lauda region. There the
+maiden, Billevich's granddaughter, came so near my heart that I forgot
+God's world. The virtue and honesty in this lady were such that I grew
+shamefaced in presence of my former deeds. She too, having an inborn
+hatred of transgression, pressed me to leave my previous manner of
+life, put an end to disturbances, repair wrongs, and live honestly."
+
+"Did you follow her advice?"
+
+"How could I, Gracious Lord! I wished to do so, it is true,--God sees
+that I wished; but old sins follow a man. First, my soldiers were
+attacked in Upita, for which I burned some of the place."
+
+"In God's name! that is a crime," said the king.
+
+"That is nothing yet. Later on, the nobles of Lauda slaughtered my
+comrades, worthy cavaliers though violent. I was forced to avenge them.
+I fell upon the village of the Butryms that very night, and took
+vengeance, with fire and sword, for the murder. But they defeated me,
+for a crowd of homespuns live in that neighborhood. I had to hide. The
+maiden would not look at me, for those homespuns were made fathers and
+guardians to her by the will. But my heart was so drawn to her that I
+could not help myself. Unable to live without her, I collected a new
+party and seized her with armed hand."
+
+"Why, the Tartars do not make love differently."
+
+"I own that it was a deed of violence. But God punished me through the
+hands of Pan Volodyovski, and he cut me so that I barely escaped with
+my life. It would have been a hundred times better for me if I had not
+escaped, for I should not have joined the Radzivills to the injury of
+the king and the country. But how could it be otherwise? A new suit was
+begun against me for a capital offence; it was a question of life. I
+knew not what to do, when suddenly the voevoda of Vilna came to me with
+assistance."
+
+"Did he protect you?"
+
+"He sent me a commission through this same Pan Volodyovski, and thereby
+I went under the jurisdiction of the hetman, and was not afraid of the
+courts. I clung to Radzivill as to a plank of salvation. Soon I put on
+foot a squadron of men known as the greatest fighters in all Lithuania.
+There were none better in the army. I led them to Kyedani. Radzivill
+received me as a son, referred to our kinship through the Kishkis, and
+promised to protect me. He had his object. He needed daring men ready
+for all things, and I, simpleton, crawled as it were into bird-lime.
+Before his plans had come to the surface, he commanded me to swear on a
+crucifix that I would not abandon him in any straits. Thinking it a
+question of war with the Swedes or the Northerners, I took the oath
+willingly. Then came that terrible feast at which the Kyedani treaty
+was read. The treason was published. Other colonels threw their batons
+at the feet of the hetman, but the oath held me as a chain holds a dog,
+and I could not leave him."
+
+"But did not all those who deserted us later swear loyalty?" asked the
+king, sadly.
+
+"I, too, though I did not throw down my baton, had no wish to steep my
+hands in treason. What I suffered, Gracious Lord, God alone knows. I
+was writhing from pain, as if men were burning me alive with fire; and
+my maiden, though even after the seizure the agreement between us
+remained still unbroken, now proclaimed me a traitor, and despised me
+as a vile reptile. But I had taken oath not to abandon Radzivill. She,
+though a woman, would shame a man with her wit, and lets no one surpass
+her in loyalty to your Royal Grace."
+
+"God bless her!" said the king. "I respect her for that."
+
+"She thought to reform me into a partisan of the king and the country;
+and when that came to naught, she grew so steadfast against me that her
+hatred became as great as her love had been once. At that juncture
+Radzivill called me before him, and began to convince me. He explained,
+as two and two form four, that in this way alone could he save the
+falling country. I cannot, indeed, repeat his arguments, they were so
+great, and promised such happiness to the land. He would have convinced
+a man a hundred times wiser, much less me, a simple soldier, he such a
+statesman! Then, I say, your Royal Grace, that I held to him with both
+hands and my heart, for I thought that all others were blind; only he
+saw the truth, all others were sinning, only he was the just man. And I
+would have sprung into fire for him, as now I would for your Royal
+Grace, for I know not how to serve or to love with half a heart."
+
+"I see that, this is true!" said Yan Kazimir.
+
+"I rendered him signal service," continued Kmita, gloomily, "and I can
+say that had it not been for me his treason could not have yielded any
+poisonous fruits, for his own troops would have cut him to pieces with
+sabres. They were all ready for that. The dragoons, the Hungarian
+infantry and the light squadrons were already slaying his Scots, when I
+sprang in with my men and rubbed them out in one twinkle. But there
+were other squadrons at various quarters; these I dispersed. Pan
+Volodyovski alone, who had come out from prison, led his Lauda men to
+Podlyasye by a wonder and by superhuman resolve, so as to join with
+Sapyeha. Those who escaped me assembled in Podlyasye in considerable
+numbers, but before they could do that many good soldiers perished
+through me. God alone can count them. I acknowledge the truth as if at
+confession. Pan Volodyovski, on his way to Podlyasye, seized me, and
+did not wish to let me live; but I escaped because of letters which
+they found on my person, and from which it transpired that when
+Volodyovski was in prison and Radzivill was going to shoot him, I
+interceded persistently and saved him. He let me go free then; I
+returned to Radzivill and served longer. But the service was bitter for
+me, the soul began to revolt within me at certain deeds of the prince,
+for there is not in him either faith, honesty, or conscience, and from
+his own words it comes out that he works as much for himself as for the
+King of Sweden. I began then to spring at his eyes. He grew enraged at
+my boldness, and at last sent me off with letters."
+
+"It is wonderful what important things you tell," said the king. "At
+least we know from an eyewitness who _pars magna fuit_ (took a great
+part) in affairs, how things happened there."
+
+"It is true that _pars magna fui_ (I took a great part)," answered
+Kmita. "I set out with the letters willingly, for I could not remain in
+that place. In Pilvishki I met Prince Boguslav. May God give him into
+my hands, to which end I shall use all my power, so that my vengeance
+may not miss him for that slander. Not only did I not promise him
+anything, Gracious Lord, not only is that a shameless lie, but it was
+just there in Pilvishki that I became converted when I saw all the
+naked deceit of those heretics."
+
+"Tell quickly how it was, for we were told that Boguslav aided his
+cousin only through constraint."
+
+"He? He is worse than Prince Yanush, and in his head was the treason
+first hatched. Did he not tempt the hetman first, pointing out a crown
+to him? God will decide at the judgment. Yanush at least simulated and
+shielded himself with _bono publico_ (public good); but Boguslav,
+taking me for an arch scoundrel, revealed his whole soul to me. It is a
+terror to repeat what he said. 'The devils,' said he, 'must take your
+Commonwealth, it is a piece of red cloth, and we not only will not
+raise a hand to save it, but will pull besides, so that the largest
+piece may come to us. Lithuania,' said he, 'must remain to us, and
+after Yanush I will put on the cap of Grand Prince, and marry his
+daughter.'"
+
+The king covered his eyes with his hands. "O passion of our Lord!" said
+he. "The Radzivills, Radzeyovski, Opalinski--how could that which
+happened not happen!--they must have crowns, even through rending what
+the Lord had united."
+
+"I grew numb, Gracious Lord, I had water poured on my head so as not to
+go mad. The soul changed in me in one moment, as if a thunderbolt had
+shaken it. I was terrified at my own work. I knew not what to do,
+whether to thrust a knife into Boguslav or into myself. I bellowed like
+a wild beast, they had driven me into such a trap. I wanted service no
+longer with the Radzivills, but vengeance. God gave me a sudden
+thought: I went with a few men to the quarters of Prince Boguslav, I
+brought him out beyond the town, I carried him off and wanted to bring
+him to the confederates so as to buy myself into their company and into
+the service of your Royal Grace at the price of his head."
+
+"I forgive you all!" cried the king, "for they led you astray; but you
+have repaid them! Kmita alone could have done that, no man besides. I
+overlook all and forgive you from my heart! But tell me quickly, for
+curiosity is burning me, did he escape?"
+
+"At the first station he snatched the pistol from my belt and shot me
+in the mouth,--here is the scar. He killed my men and escaped. He is a
+famous knight, it would be hard to deny that; but we shall meet again,
+though that were to be my last hour."
+
+Here Kmita began to tear at the blanket with which he was covered, but
+the king interrupted him quickly,--
+
+"And through revenge he invented that letter against you?"
+
+"And through revenge he sent that letter. I recovered from the wound,
+in the forest, but my soul was suffering more and more. To Volodyovski,
+to the confederates I could not go, for the Lauda men would have cut me
+to pieces with their sabres. Still, knowing that the hetman was about
+to march against them, I forewarned them to collect in a body. And that
+was my first good deed, for without that Radzivill would have crushed
+them out, squadron after squadron; but now they have overcome him and,
+as I hear, are besieging him. May God aid them and send punishment to
+Radzivill, amen!"
+
+"That may have happened already; and if not it will happen surely,"
+said the king. "What did you do further?"
+
+"I made up my mind that, not being able to serve with the confederate
+troops of your Royal Grace, I would go to your person and there atone
+for my former offences with loyalty. But how was I to go? Who would
+receive Kmita, who would believe him, who would not proclaim him a
+traitor? Therefore I assumed the name Babinich, and passing through the
+whole Commonwealth, I reached Chenstohova. Whether I have rendered any
+services there, let Father Kordetski give witness. Day and night I was
+thinking only how to repair the injuries to the country, how to spill
+my blood for it, how to restore myself to repute and to honesty. The
+rest, Gracious Lord, you know already, for you have seen it. And if a
+fatherly kind heart incline you, if this new service has outweighed my
+old sins, or even equalled them, then receive me to your favor and your
+heart, for all have deserted me, no one comforts me save you. You alone
+see my sorrow and tears,--I am an outcast, a traitor, an oath-breaker,
+and still I love this country and your Royal Grace. God sees that I
+wish to serve both."
+
+Here hot tears dropped from the eyes of the young man till he was
+carried away with weeping; but the king, like a loving father, seizing
+him by the head began to kiss his forehead and comfort him.
+
+"Yendrek! you are as dear to me as if you were my own son. What have I
+said to you? That you sinned through blindness; and how many sin from
+calculation? From my heart I forgive you all, for you have wiped away
+your faults. More than one would be glad to boast of such services as
+yours. I forgive you and the country forgives; and besides, we are
+indebted to you. Put an end to your grieving."
+
+"God give your Royal Grace everything good for this sympathy," said the
+knight, with tears. "But as it is I must do penance yet in the world
+for that oath to Radzivill; for though I knew not to what I was
+swearing, still an oath is an oath."
+
+"God will not condemn you for that," said the king. "He would have to
+send half this Commonwealth to hell; namely, all those who broke faith
+with us."
+
+"I think myself, Gracious King, that I shall not go to hell, for
+Kordetski assured me of that, though he was not certain that purgatory
+would miss me. It is a hard thing to roast for a hundred of years. But
+it is well even to go there! A man can endure much when the hope of
+salvation is lighting him; and besides prayers can help somewhat and
+shorten the torment."
+
+"Do not grieve," said Yan Kazimir, "I will prevail on the nuncio
+himself to say Mass for your intention. With such assistance you will
+not suffer great harm. Trust in the mercy of God."
+
+Kmita smiled through his tears. "Besides," said he, "God give me to
+return to strength, then I will shell the soul out of more than one
+Swede, and through that there will be not only merit in heaven, but it
+will repair my earthly repute."
+
+"Be of good cheer and do not be troubled about earthly glory. I
+guarantee that what belongs to you will not miss you. More peaceful
+times will come; I myself will declare your services, which are not
+small, and surely they will be greater; and at the Diet, with God's
+help, I will have this question raised, and you will be restored soon
+to honor."
+
+"Let that, Gracious Lord, give some comfort; but before then the courts
+will attack me, from which even the influence of your Royal Grace
+cannot shield me. But never mind! I will not yield while there is
+breath in my nostrils, and a sabre in my hand. I am anxious concerning
+the maiden. Olenka is her name. Gracious Lord; I have not seen her this
+long time, and I have suffered, oh, I have suffered a world without her
+and because of her; and though at times I might wish to drive her out
+of my heart and wrestle with love as with a bear, it's of no use, for
+such a fellow as he will not let a man go."
+
+Yan Kazimir smiled good-naturedly and kindly: "How can I help you here,
+my poor man?"
+
+"Who can help me if not your grace? That maiden is an inveterate
+royalist, and she will never forgive me my deeds at Kyedani, unless
+your Royal Grace will make intercession, and give witness how I changed
+and returned to the service of the king and my country, not from
+constraint, not for profit, but through my own will and repentance."
+
+"If that is the question I will make the intercession; and if she is
+such a royalist as you say, the intercession should be effectual,--if
+the girl is only free, and if some mishap has not met her such as are
+frequent in war-time."
+
+"May angels protect her!"
+
+"She deserves it. So that the courts may not trouble you, act thus
+wise: Levies will be made now in haste. Since, as you say, outlawry
+weighs on you, I cannot give you a commission as Kmita, but I will give
+you one as Babinich; you will make a levy which will be for the good of
+the country, for you are clearly a mettlesome soldier with experience.
+You will take the field under Stefan Charnyetski; under him death is
+easiest, but the chances of glory are easiest. And if need comes you
+will attack the Swedes of yourself as you did Hovanski. Your conversion
+and good deeds commenced with the day when you called yourself
+Babinich; call yourself Babinich still further, and the courts will
+leave you at rest. When you will be as bright as the sun, when the
+report of your services will be heard through the Commonwealth, let men
+discover who this great cavalier is. This and that kind of man will be
+ashamed to summon such a knight to a court. At that time some will have
+died, you will satisfy others. Not a few decisions will be lost, and I
+promise to exalt your services to the skies, and will present them to
+the Diet for reward, for in my eyes they deserve it."
+
+"Gracious Lord! how have I earned such favors?"
+
+"Better than many who think they have a right to them. Well, well! be
+not grieved, dear royalist, for I trust that the royalist maiden will
+not be lost to you, and God grant you to assemble for me more royalists
+soon."
+
+Kmita, though sick, sprang quickly from the bed and fell his whole
+length at the feet of the king.
+
+"In God's name! what are you doing?" cried the king. "The blood will
+leave you! Yendrek! Hither, some one!"
+
+In came the marshal himself, who had long been looking for the king
+through the castle.
+
+"Holy Yerzy! my patron, what do I see?" cried he, when he saw the king
+raising Kmita with his own hands.
+
+"This is Babinich, my most beloved soldier and most faithful servant,
+who saved my life yesterday," said the king. "Help, Lord Marshal, to
+raise him to the couch."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XIII.
+
+
+From Lyubovlya the king advanced to Dukla, Krosno, Lantsut, and Lvoff,
+having at his side the marshal of the kingdom, many dignitaries and
+senators, with the court squadrons and escorts. And as a great river
+flowing through a country gathers to itself all the smaller waters, so
+did new legions gather to the retinue of the king. Lords and armed
+nobles thronged forward, and soldiers, now singly, now in groups, and
+crowds of armed peasants burning with special hatred against the
+Swedes.
+
+The movement was becoming universal, and the military order of things
+had begun to lead to it. Threatening manifestoes had appeared dated
+from Sanch: one by Constantine Lyubomirski, the marshal of the Circle
+of Knights; the other by Yan Vyelopolski, the castellan of Voinik, both
+calling on the nobles in the province of Cracow to join the general
+militia; those failing to appear were threatened with the punishments
+of public law. The manifesto of the king completed these, and brought
+the most slothful to their feet.
+
+But there was no need of threats, for an immense enthusiasm had seized
+all ranks. Old men and children mounted their horses. Women gave up
+their jewels, their dresses; some rushed off to the conflict
+themselves.
+
+In the forges gypsies were pounding whole nights and days with their
+hammers, turning the innocent tools of the ploughman into weapons.
+Villages and towns were empty, for the men had marched to the field.
+From the heaven-touching mountains night and day crowds of wild people
+were pouring down. The forces of the king increased with each moment.
+The clergy came forth with crosses and banners to meet the king; Jewish
+societies came with their rabbis; his advance was like a mighty
+triumph. From every side flew in the best tidings, as if borne by the
+wind.
+
+Not only in that part of the country which the invasion of the enemy
+had not included did people rush to arms. Everywhere in the remotest
+lands and provinces, in towns, villages, settlements, and
+unapproachable wildernesses, the awful war of revenge and retaliation
+raised its flaming head. The lower the people had fallen before, the
+higher they raised their heads now; they had been reborn, changed in
+spirit, and in their exaltation did not even hesitate to tear open
+their own half-healed wounds, to free their blood of poisoned juices.
+
+They had begun already to speak, and with increasing loudness, of the
+powerful union of the nobles and the army, at the head of which were to
+be the old grand hetman Revera Pototski and the full hetman
+Lantskoronski, Stefan Charnyetski and Sapyeha, Michael Radzivill, a
+powerful magnate anxious to remove the ill-fame which Yanush had
+brought on the house, and Pan Kryshtof Tyshkyevich, with many other
+senators, provincial and military officials and nobles.
+
+Letters were flying every day between these men and the marshal of the
+kingdom, who did not wish that so noted a union should be formed
+without him. Tidings more and more certain arrived, till at last it was
+announced with authority that the hetmans and with them the army had
+abandoned the Swedes, and formed for the defence of the king and the
+country the confederation of Tyshovtsi.
+
+The king knew of this first, for he and the queen, though far apart,
+had labored no little through letters and messengers at the formation
+of it; still, not being able to take personal part in the affair, he
+waited for the tenor of it with impatience. But before he came to
+Lvoff, Pan Slujevski with Pan Domashevski, judge of Lukoff, came to him
+bringing assurances of service and loyalty from the confederates and
+the act of union for confirmation.
+
+The king then read that act at a general council of bishops and
+senators. The hearts of all were filled with delight, their spirits
+rose in thankfulness to God; for that memorable confederacy announced
+not merely that the people had come to their senses, but that they had
+changed; that people of whom not long before the foreign invader might
+say that they had no loyalty, no love of country, no conscience, no
+order, no endurance, nor any of those virtues through which nations and
+States do endure.
+
+The testimony of all these virtues lay now before the king in the act
+of a confederation and its manifesto. In it was summed up the perfidy
+of Karl Gustav, his violation of oaths and promises, the cruelty of his
+generals and his soldiers, such as are not practised by even the
+wildest of people, desecration of churches, oppression, rapacity,
+robbery, shedding of innocent blood, and they declared against the
+Scandinavian invasion a war of life or death. A manifesto terrible as
+the trumpet of the archangel, summoned not only knights but all ranks
+and all people in the Commonwealth. Even _infames_ (the infamous),
+_banniti_ (outlaws), and _proscripti_ (the proscribed) should
+go to this war, said the manifesto. The knights were to mount their
+horses and expose their own breasts, and the land was to furnish
+infantry,--wealthy holders more, the poorer less, according to their
+wealth and means.
+
+"Since in this state good and evil belong equally to all, it is proper
+that all should share danger. Whoso calls himself a noble, with hind or
+without it, and if one noble has a number of sons, they should all go
+to the war against the enemies of the Commonwealth. Since we all,
+whether of higher or lower birth, being nobles, are eligible to all the
+prerogatives of office, dignity, and profit in the country, so we are
+equal in this, that we should go in like manner with our own persons to
+the defence of these liberties and benefits."
+
+Thus did that manifesto explain the equality of nobles. The king, the
+bishops, and the senators, who for a long time had carried in their
+hearts the thought of reforming the Commonwealth, convinced themselves
+with joyful wonder that the people had become ripe for that reform,
+that they were ready to enter upon now paths, rub the rust and mould
+from themselves, and begin a new, glorious life.
+
+"With this," explained the manifesto, "we open to each deserving man of
+plebeian condition a place, we indicate and offer by this our
+confederation an opportunity to reach and acquire the honors,
+prerogatives, and benefits which the noble estate enjoys--"
+
+When this introduction was read at the royal council, a deep silence
+followed. Those who with the king desired most earnestly that access to
+rights of nobility should be open to people of lower station thought
+that they would have to overcome, endure, and break no small
+opposition; that whole years would pass before it would be safe to give
+utterance to anything similar; meanwhile that same nobility which
+hitherto had been so jealous of its prerogatives, so stubborn in
+appearance, opened wide the gate to the gray crowds of peasants.
+
+The primate rose, encircled as it were by the spirit of prophecy, and
+said,--
+
+"Since you have inserted that _punctum_ (paragraph), posterity will
+glorify this confederation from age to age, and when any one shall wish
+to consider these times as times of the fall of ancient Polish virtue,
+in contradicting him men will point to you."
+
+Father Gembitski was ill; therefore he could not speak, but with hand
+trembling from emotion he blessed the act and the envoys.
+
+"I see the enemy already departing in shame from this land!" said the
+king.
+
+"God grant it most quickly!" cried both envoys.
+
+"Gentlemen, you will go with us to Lvoff," said the king, "where we
+will confirm this confederation at once, and besides shall conclude
+another which the powers of hell itself will not overcome."
+
+The envoys and senators looked at one another as if asking what power
+was in question; the king was silent, but his countenance grew brighter
+and brighter; he took the act again in his hand and read it a second
+time, smiled, and asked,--
+
+"Were there many opponents?"
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Pan Domashevski, "this confederacy arose with
+unanimity through the efforts of the hetmans, of Sapyeha, of Pan
+Charnyetski; and among nobles not a voice was raised in opposition, so
+angry are they all at the Swedes, and so have they flamed up with love
+for the country and your majesty."
+
+"We decided, moreover, in advance," added Pan Slujevski, "that this was
+not to be a diet, but that _pluralitas_ (plurality) alone was to
+decide; therefore no man's _veto_ could injure the cause; we should
+have cut an opponent to pieces with our sabres. All said too that it
+was necessary to finish with the _liberum veto_, since it is freedom
+for one, but slavery for many."
+
+"Golden words of yours!" said the primate. "Only let a reform of the
+Commonwealth come, and no enemy will frighten us."
+
+"But where is the voevoda of Vityebsk?" asked the king.
+
+"He went in the night, after the signing of the manifesto, to his own
+troops at Tykotsin, in which he holds the voevoda of Vilna, the
+traitor, besieged. Before this time he must have taken him, living or
+dead."
+
+"Was he so sure of capturing him?"
+
+"He was as sure as that night follows day. All, even his most faithful
+servants, have deserted the traitor. Only a handful of Swedes are
+defending themselves there, and reinforcements cannot come from any
+side. Pan Sapyeha said in Tyshovtsi, 'I wanted to wait one day, for I
+should have finished with Radzivill before evening! but this is more
+important than Radzivill, for they can take him without me; one
+squadron is enough.'"
+
+"Praise be to God!" said the king. "But where is Charnyetski?"
+
+"So many of the best cavaliers have hurried to him that in one day he
+was at the head of an excellent squadron. He moved at once on the
+Swedes, and where he is at this moment we know not."
+
+"But the hetmans?"
+
+"They are waiting anxiously for the commands of your Royal Grace. They
+are both laying plans for the coming war, and are in communication with
+Pan Yan Zamoyski in Zamost; meanwhile regiments are rolling to them
+every day with the snow."
+
+"Have all left the Swedes then?"
+
+"Yes, Gracious King. There were deputies also to the hetmans from the
+troops of Konyetspolski, who is with the person of Karl Gustav. And
+they too would be glad to return to their lawful service, though Karl
+does not spare on them promises or flattery. They said too that though
+they could not _recedere_ (withdraw) at once, they would do so as soon
+as a convenient time came, for they have grown tired of his feasts and
+his flattery, his eye-winking and clapping of hands. They can barely
+hold out."
+
+"Everywhere people are coming to their senses, everywhere good news,"
+said the king. "Praise to the Most Holy Lady! This is the happiest day
+of my life, and a second such will come only when the last soldier of
+the enemy leaves the boundary of the Commonwealth."
+
+At this Pan Domashevski struck his sword. "May God not grant that to
+happen!" said he.
+
+"How is that?" asked the king, with astonishment.
+
+"That the last wide-breeches should leave the boundaries of the
+Commonwealth on his own feet? Impossible, Gracious Lord! What have we
+sabres at our sides for?"
+
+"Oh!" said the king, made glad, "that is bravery."
+
+But Pan Slujevski, not wishing to remain behind Domashevski, said: "As
+true as life we will not agree to that, and first I will place a veto
+on it. We shall not be content with their retreat; we will follow
+them!"
+
+The primate shook his head, and smiled kindly. "Oh, the nobles are on
+horseback, and they will ride on and on! But not too fast, not too
+fast! The enemy are still within the boundaries."
+
+"Their time is short!" cried both confederates.
+
+"The spirit has changed, and fortune will change," said Father
+Gembitski, in a weak voice.
+
+"Wine!" cried the king. "Let me drink to the change, with the
+confederates."
+
+They brought wine; but with the servants who brought the wine entered
+an old attendant of the king, who said,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, Pan Kryshtoporski has come from Chenstohova, and wishes
+to do homage to your Royal Grace."
+
+"Bring him here quickly!" cried the king.
+
+In a moment a tall, thin noble entered, with a frowning look. He bowed
+before the king to his feet, then rather haughtily to the dignitaries,
+and said,--
+
+"May the Lord Jesus Christ be praised!"
+
+"For the ages of ages!" answered the king. "What is to be heard from
+the monastery?"
+
+"Terrible frost. Gracious Lord, so that the eyelids are frozen to the
+eyeballs."
+
+"But for God's sake! tell us of the Swedes and not of the frost!" cried
+the king.
+
+"But what can I say of them, Gracious Lord, when there are none at
+Chenstohova?" asked he, humorously.
+
+"Those tidings have come to us," replied the king, "but only from the
+talk of people, and you have come from the cloister itself. Are you an
+eyewitness?"
+
+"I am. Gracious Lord, a partner in the defence and an eyewitness of the
+miracles of the Most Holy Lady."
+
+"That was not the end of Her grace," said the king, raising his eyes to
+heaven, "but let us earn them further."
+
+"I have seen much in my life," continued the noble; "but such evident
+miracles I have not seen, touching which the prior Kordetski writes in
+detail in this letter."
+
+Yan Kazimir seized hastily the letter handed him by the noble, and
+began to read. At times he interrupted the reading to pray, then again
+turned to the letter. His face changed with joyful feelings; at last he
+raised his eyes to the noble.
+
+"Father Kordetski writes me," said he, "that you have lost a great
+cavalier, a certain Babinich, who blew up the Swedish siege gun with
+powder?"
+
+"He sacrificed himself for all. But some say he is alive, and God knows
+what they have said; not being certain, we have not ceased to mourn
+him, for without his gallant deed it would have been hard for us to
+defend ourselves."
+
+"If that is true, then cease to mourn him. Pan Babinich is alive, and
+here with us. He was the first to inform us that the Swedes, not being
+able to do anything against the power of God, were thinking of retreat.
+And later he rendered such famous service that we know not ourselves
+how to pay him."
+
+"Oh, that will comfort the prior!" cried the noble, with gladness; "but
+if Pan Babinich is alive, it is only because he has the special favor
+of the Most Holy Lady. How that will comfort Father Kordetski! A father
+could not love a son as he loved him. And your Royal Grace will permit
+me to greet Pan Babinich, for there is not a second man of such daring
+in the Commonwealth."
+
+But the king began again to read, and after a while cried,--
+
+"What do I hear? After retreating they tried once again to steal on the
+cloister?"
+
+"When Miller went away, he did not show himself again; but Count
+Veyhard appeared unexpectedly at the walls, trusting, it seems, to find
+the gates open. He did, but the peasants fell on him with such rage
+that he retreated shamefully. While the world is a world, simple
+peasants have never fought so in the open field against cavalry. Then
+Pan Pyotr Charnyetski and Pan Kulesha came up and cut him to pieces."
+
+The king turned to the senators.
+
+"See how poor ploughmen stand up in defence of this country and the
+holy faith."
+
+"That they stand up, Gracious King, is true," cried the noble. "Whole
+villages near Chenstohova are empty, for the peasants are in the field
+with their scythes. There is a fierce war everywhere; the Swedes are
+forced to keep together in numbers, and if the peasants catch one of
+them they treat him so that it would be better for him to go straight
+to hell. Who is not taking up arms now in the Commonwealth? It was not
+for the dog-brothers to attack Chenstohova. From that hour they could
+not remain in this country."
+
+"From this hour no man will suffer oppression in this land who resists
+now with his blood," said the king, with solemnity; "so help me God and
+the holy cross!"
+
+"Amen!" added the primate.
+
+Now the noble struck his forehead with his hand. "The frost has
+disturbed my mind, Gracious Lord, for I forgot to tell one thing, that
+such a son, the voevoda of Poznan, is dead. He died, they say,
+suddenly."
+
+Here the noble was somewhat ashamed, seeing that he had called a great
+senator "that such a son" in presence of the king and dignitaries;
+therefore he added, confused,--
+
+"I did not wish to belittle an honorable station, but a traitor."
+
+But no one had noticed that clearly, for all looked at the king, who
+said,--
+
+"We have long predestined Pan Yan Leshchynski to be voevoda of Poznan,
+even during the life of Pan Opalinski. Let him fill that office more
+worthily. The judgment of God, I see, has begun upon those who brought
+this country to its decline, for at this moment, perhaps, the voevoda
+of Vilna is giving an account of his deeds before the Supreme Judge."
+Here he turned to the bishops and senators,--
+
+"But it is time for us to think of a general war, and I wish to have
+the opinion of all of you, gentlemen, on this question."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIV.
+
+
+At the moment when the king was saying that the voevoda of Vilna was
+standing, perhaps, before the judgment of God, he spoke as it were with
+a prophetic spirit, for at that hour the affair of Tykotsin was
+decided.
+
+On December 25 Sapyeha was so sure of capturing Tykotsin that he went
+himself to Tyshovtsi, leaving the further conduct of the siege to Pan
+Oskyerko. He gave command to wait for the final storm till his return,
+which was to follow quickly; assembling, therefore, his more prominent
+officers, he said,--
+
+"Reports have come to me that among the officers there is a plan to
+bear apart on sabres the voevoda of Vilna immediately after capturing
+the castle. Now if the castle, as may happen, should surrender during
+my absence, I inform you, gentlemen, that I prohibit most strictly an
+attack on Radzivill's life. I receive letters, it is true, from persons
+of whom you gentlemen do not even dream, not to let him live when I
+take him. But I do not choose to obey these commands; and this I do not
+from any compassion, for the traitor is not worthy of that, but because
+I have no right over his life, and I prefer to bring him before the
+Diet, so that posterity may have in this case an example that no
+greatness of family, no office can cover such offence, nor protect him
+from public punishment."
+
+In this sense spoke the voevoda of Vityebsk, but more minutely, for his
+honesty was equalled by this weakness: he esteemed himself an orator,
+and loved on every occasion to speak copiously, and listened with
+delight to his own words, adding to them the most beautiful sentences
+from the ancients.
+
+"Then I must steep my right hand well in water," answered Zagloba, "for
+it itches terribly. But I only say this, that if Radzivill had me in
+his hands, surely he would not spare my head till sunset. He knows well
+who in great part made his troops leave him; he knows well who
+embroiled him with the Swedes. But even if he does, I know not why I
+should be more indulgent to Radzivill than Radzivill to me."
+
+"Because the command is not in your hands and you must obey," said
+Sapyeha, with dignity.
+
+"That I must obey is true, but it is well at times also to obey
+Zagloba. I say this boldly, because if Radzivill had listened to me
+when I urged him to defend the country, he would not be in Tykotsin
+to-day, but in the field at the head of all the troops of Lithuania."
+
+"Does it seem to you that the baton is in bad hands?"
+
+"It would not become me to say that, for I placed it in those hands.
+Our gracious lord, Yan Kazimir, has only to confirm my choice, nothing
+more."
+
+The voevoda smiled at this, for he loved Zagloba and his jokes.
+
+"Lord brother," said he, "you crushed Radzivill, you made me hetman,
+and all this is your merit. Permit me now to go in peace to Tyshovtsi,
+so that Sapyeha too may serve the country in something."
+
+Zagloba put his hands on his hips, thought awhile as if he were
+considering whether he ought to permit or not; at last his eye gleamed,
+he nodded, and said with importance,--
+
+"Go, your grace, in peace."
+
+"God reward you for the permission!" answered the voevoda, with a
+laugh.
+
+Other officers seconded the voevoda's laugh. He was preparing to start,
+for the carriage was under the window; he took farewell of all,
+therefore, giving each instructions what to do during his absence; then
+approaching Volodyovski, he said,--
+
+"If the castle surrenders you will answer to me for the life of the
+voevoda."
+
+"According to order! a hair will not fall from his head," said the
+little knight.
+
+"Pan Michael," said Zagloba to him, after the departure of the voevoda,
+"I am curious to know what persons are urging our Sapyo[2] not to let
+Radzivill live when he captures him."
+
+"How should I know?" answered the little knight.
+
+"If you say that what another mouth does not whisper to your ear your
+own will not suggest, you tell the truth! But they must be some
+considerable persons, since they are able to command the voevoda."
+
+"Maybe it is the king himself."
+
+"The king? If a dog bit the king he would forgive him that minute, and
+give him cheese in addition. Such is his heart."
+
+"I will not dispute about that; but still, do they not say that he is
+greatly incensed at Radzivill?"
+
+"First, any man will succeed in being angry,--for example, my anger at
+Radzivill; secondly, how could he be incensed at Radzeyovski when he
+took his sons in guardianship, because the father was not better? That
+is a golden heart, and I think it is the queen who is making requests
+against the life of Radzivill. She is a worthy lady, not a word against
+that, but she has a woman's mind; and know that if a woman is enraged
+at you, even should you hide in a crack of the floor, she will pick you
+out with a pin."
+
+Volodyovski sighed at this, and said,--
+
+"Why should any woman be angry with me, since I have never made trouble
+for one in my life?"
+
+"Ah, but you would have been glad to do so. Therefore, though you serve
+in the cavalry, you rush on so wildly against the walls of Tykotsin
+with infantry, for you think not only is Radzivill there, but Panna
+Billevich. I know you, you rogue! Is it not true? You have not driven
+her out of your head yet."
+
+"There was a time when I had put her thoroughly out of my head; and
+Kmita himself, if now here, would be forced to confess that my action
+was knightly, not wishing to act against people in love. I chose to
+forget my rebuff, but I will not hide this: if Panna Billevich is now
+in Tykotsin, and if God permits me a second time to save her from
+trouble, I shall see in that the expressed will of Providence. I need
+take no thought of Kmita, I owe him nothing; and the hope is alive in
+me that if he left her of his own will she must have forgotten him, and
+such a thing will not happen now as happened to me the first time."
+
+Conversing in this way, they reached their quarters, where they found
+Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav, Roh Kovalski and the lord tenant of Vansosh,
+Jendzian.
+
+The cause of Sapyeha's trip to Tyshovtsi was no secret, hence all the
+knights were pleased that so honorable a confederacy would rise in
+defence of the faith and the country.
+
+"Another wind is blowing now in the whole Commonwealth," said Pan
+Stanislav, "and, thanks be to God, in the eyes of the Swedes."
+
+"It began from Chenstohova," answered Pan Yan. "There was news
+yesterday that the cloister holds out yet, and repulses more and more
+powerful assaults. Permit not, Most Holy Mother, the enemy to put Thy
+dwelling-place to shame."
+
+Here Jendzian sighed and said: "Besides the holy images how much
+precious treasure would go into enemies' hands; when a man thinks of
+that, food refuses to pass his throat!"
+
+"The troops are just tearing away to the assault; we can hardly hold
+them back," said Pan Michael. "Yesterday Stankyevich's squadron moved
+without orders and without ladders, for they said, 'When we finish this
+traitor, we will go to relieve Chenstohova;' and when any man mentions
+Chenstohova all grit their teeth and shake their sabres."
+
+"Why have we so many squadrons here when one half would be enough for
+Tykotsin?" asked Zagloba. "It is the stubbornness of Sapyeha, nothing
+more. He does not wish to obey me; he wants to show that without my
+counsel he can do something. As you see yourselves, how are so many men
+to invest one paltry castle? They merely hinder one another, for there
+is not room for them all."
+
+"Military experience speaks through you,--it is impossible!" answered
+Pan Stanislav.
+
+"Well, I have a head on my shoulders."
+
+"Uncle has a head on his shoulders!" cried Pan Roh, suddenly; and
+straightening his mustaches, he began to look around on all present as
+if seeking some one to contradict him.
+
+"But the voevoda too has a head," answered Pan Yan; "and if so many
+squadrons are here, there is danger that Prince Boguslav might come to
+the relief of his cousin."
+
+"Then send a couple of light squadrons to ravage Electoral Prussia,"
+said Zagloba; "and summon volunteers there from among common people. I
+myself would be the first man to go to try Prussian beer."
+
+"Beer is not good in winter, unless warmed," remarked Pan Michael.
+
+"Then give us wine, or gorailka, or mead," said Zagloba.
+
+Others also exhibited a willingness to drink; therefore the lord tenant
+of Vansosh occupied himself with that business, and soon a number of
+decanters were on the table. Hearts were glad at this sight, and the
+knights began to drink to one another, raising their goblets each time
+for a new health.
+
+"Destruction to the Swedes, may they not skin our bread very long!"
+said Zagloba. "Let them devour their pine cones in Sweden."
+
+"To the health of his Royal Grace and the Queen!" said Pan Yan.
+
+"And to loyal men!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"Then to our own healths!"
+
+"To the health of Uncle!" thundered Kovalski.
+
+"God reward! Into your hands! and empty though your lips to the bottom.
+Zagloba is not yet entirely old! Worthy gentlemen! may we smoke this
+badger out of his hole with all haste, and move then to Chenstohova."
+
+"To Chenstohova!" shouted Kovalski. "To the rescue of the Most Holy
+Lady."
+
+"To Chenstohova!" cried all.
+
+"To defend the treasures of Yasna Gora from the Pagans!" added
+Jendzian.
+
+"Who pretend that they believe in the Lord Jesus, wishing to hide their
+wickedness; but in fact they only howl at the moon like dogs, and in
+this is all their religion."
+
+"And such as these raise their hands against the splendors of Yasna
+Gora!"
+
+"You have touched the spot in speaking of their faith," said
+Volodyovski to Zagloba, "for I myself have heard how they howl at the
+moon. They said afterward that they were singing Lutheran psalms; but
+it is certain that the dogs sing such psalms."
+
+"How is that?" asked Kovalski. "Are there such people among them?"
+
+"There is no other kind," answered Zagloba, with deep conviction.
+
+"And is their king no better?"
+
+"Their king is the worst of all. He began this war of purpose to
+blaspheme the true faith in the churches."
+
+Here Kovalski, who had drunk much, rose and said: "If that is true,
+then as sure as you are looking at me, and as I am Kovalski, I'll
+spring straight at the Swedish king in the first battle, and though he
+stood in the densest throng, that is nothing! My death or his! I'll
+reach him with my lance,--hold me a fool, gentlemen, if I do not!"
+
+When he had said this he clinched his fist and was going to thunder on
+the table. He would have smashed the glasses and decanters, and broken
+the table; but Zagloba caught him hastily by the arm and said,--
+
+"Sit down, Roh, and give us peace. We will not think you a fool if you
+do not do this, but know that we will not stop thinking you a fool
+until you have done it. I do not understand, though, how you can raise
+a lance on the King of Sweden, when you are not in the hussars."
+
+"I will join the escort and be enrolled in the squadron of Prince
+Polubinski; and my father will help me."
+
+"Father Roh?"
+
+"Of course."
+
+"Let him help you, but break not these glasses, or I'll be the first
+man to break your head. Of what was I speaking, gentlemen? Ah! of
+Chenstohova. _Luctus_ (grief) will devour me, if we do not come in time
+to save the holy place. _Luctus_ will devour me, I tell you all! And
+all through that traitor Radzivill and the philosophical reasoning of
+Sapyeha."
+
+"Say nothing against the voevoda. He is an honorable man," said the
+little knight.
+
+"Why cover Radzivill with two halves when one is sufficient? Nearly ten
+thousand men are around this little booth of a castle, the best cavalry
+and infantry. Soon they will lick the soot out of all the chimneys in
+this region, for what was on the hearths they have eaten already."
+
+"It is not for us to argue over the reasons of superiors, but to obey!"
+
+"It is not for you to argue, Pan Michael, but for me; half of the
+troops who abandoned Radzivill chose me as leader, and I would have
+driven Karl Gustav beyond the tenth boundary ere now, but for that
+luckless modesty which commanded me to place the baton in the hands of
+Sapyeha. Let him put an end to his delay, lest I take back what I
+gave."
+
+"You are only so daring after drink," said Volodyovski.
+
+"Do you say that? Well, you will see! This very day I will go among the
+squadrons and call out, 'Gracious gentlemen, whoso chooses come with me
+to Chenstohova; it is not for you to wear out your elbows and knifes
+against the mortar of Tykotsin! I beg you to come with me! Whoso made
+me commander, whoso gave me power, whoso had confidence that I would do
+what was useful for the country and the faith, let him stand at my
+side. It is a beautiful thing to punish traitors, but a hundred times
+more beautiful to save the Holy Lady, our Mother and the Patroness of
+this kingdom from oppression and the yoke of the heretic.'"
+
+Here Zagloba, from whose forelock the steam had for some time been
+rising, started up from his place, sprang to a bench, and began to
+shout as if he were before an assembly,--
+
+"Worthy gentlemen! whoso is a Catholic, whoso a Pole, whoso has pity on
+the Most Holy Lady, let him follow me! To the relief of Chenstohova!"
+
+"I go!" shouted Roh Kovalski.
+
+Zagloba looked for a while on those present, and seeing astonishment
+and silent faces, he came down from the bench and said,--
+
+"I'll teach Sapyeha reason! I am a rascal if by tomorrow I do not take
+half the army from Tykotsin and lead it to Chenstohova."
+
+"For God's sake, restrain yourself, father!" said Pan Yan.
+
+"I'm a rascal, I tell you!" repeated Zagloba.
+
+They were frightened lest he should carry out his threat, for he was
+able to do so. In many squadrons there was murmuring at the delay in
+Tykotsin; men really gnashed their teeth thinking of Chenstohova. It
+was enough to cast a spark on that powder; and what if a man so
+stubborn, of such immense knightly importance as Zagloba, should cast
+it? To begin with, the greater part of Sapyeha's army was composed of
+new recruits, and therefore of men unused to discipline, and ready for
+action on their own account, and they would have gone as one man
+without doubt after Zagloba to Chenstohova.
+
+Therefore both Skshetuskis were frightened at this undertaking, and
+Volodyovski cried,--
+
+"Barely has a small army been formed by the greatest labor of the
+voevoda, barely is there a little power for the defence of the
+Commonwealth, and you wish with disorder to break up the squadrons,
+bring them to disobedience. Radzivill would pay much for such counsel,
+for it is water to his mill. Is it not a shame for you to speak of such
+a deed?"
+
+"I'm a scoundrel if I don't do it!" said Zagloba.
+
+"Uncle will do it!" said Kovalski.
+
+"Silence, you horseskull!" roared out Pan Michael.
+
+Pan Roh stared, shut his mouth, and straightened himself at once.
+
+Then Volodyovski turned to Zagloba: "And I am a scoundrel if one man of
+my squadron goes with you; you wish to ruin the army, and I tell you
+that I will fall first upon your volunteers."
+
+"O Pagan, faithless Turk!" said Zagloba. "How is that? you would attack
+knights of the Most Holy Lady? Are you ready? Well, I know you! Do you
+think, gentlemen, that it is a question with him of an army or
+discipline? No! he sniffs Panna Billevich behind the walls of Tykotsin.
+For a private question, for your own wishes you would not hesitate to
+desert the best cause. You would be glad to flutter around a maiden, to
+stand on one foot, then the other, and display yourself. But nothing
+will come of this! My head for it, that better than you are running
+after her, even that same Kmita, for even he is no worse than you."
+
+Volodyovski looked at those present, taking them to witness what
+injustice was done him; then he frowned. They thought he would burst
+out in anger, but because he had been drinking, he fell all at once
+into tenderness.
+
+"This is my reward," said he. "From the years of a stripling I have
+served the country; I have not put the sabre out of my hand! I
+have neither cottage, wife, nor children; my head is as lone as a
+lance-point. The most honorable think of themselves, but I have no
+rewards save wounds in the flesh; nay, I am accused of selfishness,
+almost held a traitor."
+
+Tears began to drop on his yellow mustaches. Zagloba softened in a
+moment, and throwing open his arms, cried,--
+
+"Pan Michael, I have done you cruel injustice! I should be given to the
+hangman for having belittled such a tried friend!"
+
+Then falling into mutual embraces, they began to kiss each other; they
+drank more to good understanding, and when sorrow had gone considerably
+out of his heart, Volodyovski said,--
+
+"But you will not ruin the army, bring disobedience, and give an evil
+example?"
+
+"I will not, Pan Michael, I will not for your sake."
+
+"God grant us to take Tykotsin; whose affair is it what I seek behind
+the walls of the fortress? Why should any man jeer at me?"
+
+Struck by that question, Zagloba began to put the ends of his mustaches
+in his mouth and gnaw them; at last he said: "Pan Michael, I love you
+as the apple of my eye, but drive that Panna Billevich out of your
+head."
+
+"Why?" asked Pan Michael, with astonishment.
+
+"She is beautiful, _assentior_ (I agree)," answered Zagloba, "but she
+is distinguished in person, and there is no proportion whatever between
+you. You might sit on her shoulder, like a canary-bird, and peck sugar
+out of her mouth. She might carry you like a falcon on her glove, and
+let you off against every enemy, for though you are little you are
+venomous like a hornet."
+
+"Well, have you begun?" asked Volodyovski.
+
+"If I have begun, then let me finish. There is one woman as if created
+for you, and she is precisely that kernel-- What is her name? That one
+whom Podbipienta was to marry?"
+
+"Anusia Borzobogati!" cried Pan Yan. "She is indeed an old love of
+Michael's."
+
+"A regular grain of buckwheat, but a pretty little rogue; just like a
+doll," said Zagloba, smacking his lips.
+
+Volodyovski began to sigh, and to repeat time after time what he always
+repeated when mention was made of Anusia: "What is happening to the
+poor girl? Oh, if she could only be found!"
+
+"You would not let her out of your hands, for, God bless me, I have not
+seen in my life any man so given to falling in love. You ought to have
+been born a rooster, scratch the sweepings in a house-yard, and cry,
+'Co, co, co,' at the top-knots."
+
+"Anusia! Anusia!" repeated Pan Michael. "If God would send her to
+me--But perhaps she is not in the world, or perhaps she is married--"
+
+"How could she be? She was a green turnip when I saw her, and
+afterward, even if she ripened, she may still be in the maiden state.
+After such a man as Podbipienta she could not take any common fellow.
+Besides, in these times of war few are thinking of marriage."
+
+"You did not know her well," answered Pan Michael. "She was wonderfully
+honest; but she had such a nature that she let no man pass without
+piercing his heart. The Lord God created her thus. She did not miss
+even men of lower station; for example, Princess Griselda's physician,
+that Italian, who was desperately in love with her. Maybe she has
+married him and he has taken her beyond the sea."
+
+"Don't talk such nonsense, Michael!" cried Zagloba, with indignation.
+"A doctor, a doctor,--that the daughter of a noble of honorable blood
+should marry a man of such low estate! I have already said that that is
+impossible."
+
+"I was angry with her myself, for I thought, 'This is without limit;
+soon she will be turning the heads of attorneys.'"
+
+"I prophesy that you will see her yet," said Zagloba.
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Pan
+Tokarzevich, who had served formerly with Radzivill, but after the
+treason of the hetman, left him, in company with others, and was now
+standard-bearer in Oskyerko's regiment.
+
+"Colonel," said he to Volodyovski, "we are to explode a petard."
+
+"Is Pan Oskyerko ready?"
+
+"He was ready at midday, and he is not willing to wait, for the night
+promises to be dark."
+
+"That is well; we will go to see. I will order the men to be ready with
+muskets, so that the besieged may not make a sortie. Will Pan Oskyerko
+himself explode the petard?"
+
+"He will--in his own person. A crowd of volunteers go with him."
+
+"And I will go!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"And we!" cried Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav.
+
+"Oh, 'tis a pity that old eyes cannot see in the dark," said Zagloba,
+"for of a surety I should not let you go alone. But what is to be done?
+When dusk comes I cannot draw my sword. In the daytime, in the daytime,
+in the sunlight, then the old man likes to move to the field. Give me
+the strongest of the Swedes, if at midday."
+
+"But I will go," said, after some thought, the tenant of Vansosh. "When
+they blow up the gate the troops will spring to the storm in a crowd,
+and in the castle there may be great wealth in plate and in jewels."
+
+All went out, for it was now growing dark; in the quarters Zagloba
+alone remained. He listened for a while to the snow squeaking under the
+steps of the departing men, then began to raise one after another the
+decanters, and look through them at the light burning in the chimney to
+see if there was something yet in any of them.
+
+The others marched toward the castle in darkness and wind, which rose
+from the north and blew with increasing force, howling, storming,
+bringing with it clouds of snow broken fine.
+
+"A good night to explode a petard!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"But also for a sortie," answered Pan Yan. "We must keep a watchful eye
+and ready muskets."
+
+"God grant," said Pan Tokarzevich, "that at Chenstohova there is a
+still greater storm. It is always warmer for our men behind the walls.
+But may the Swedes freeze there on guard, may they freeze!"
+
+"A terrible night!" said Pan Stanislav; "do you hear, gentlemen, how it
+howls, as if Tartars were rushing through the air to attack?"
+
+"Or as if devils were singing a requiem for Radzivill!" said
+Volodyovski.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XV.
+
+
+But a few days subsequent the great traitor in the castle was looking
+at the darkness coming down on the snowy shrouds and listening to the
+howling of the wind.
+
+The lamp of his life was burning out slowly. At noon of that day he was
+still walking around and looking through the battlements, at the tents
+and the wooden huts of Sapyeha's troops; but two hours later he grew so
+ill that they had to carry him to his chambers.
+
+From those times at Kyedani in which he had striven for a crown, he had
+changed beyond recognition. The hair on his head had grown white,
+around his eyes red rings had formed, his face was swollen and flabby,
+therefore it seemed still more enormous, but it was the face of a half
+corpse, marked with blue spots and terrible through its expression of
+hellish suffering.
+
+And still, though his life could be measured by hours, he had lived too
+long, for not only had he outlived faith in himself and his fortunate
+star, faith in his own hopes and plans, but his fall was so deep that
+when he looked at the bottom of that precipice to which he was rolling,
+he would not believe himself. Everything had deceived him: events,
+calculations, allies. He, for whom it was not enough to be the
+mightiest lord in Poland, a prince of the Roman Empire, grand hetman,
+and voevoda of Vilna; he, for whom all Lithuania was less than what he
+desired and was lusting after, was confined in one narrow, small castle
+in which either Death or Captivity was waiting for him. And he watched
+the door every day to see which of these two terrible goddesses would
+enter first to take his soul or his more than half-ruined body.
+
+Of his lands, of his estates and starostaships, it was possible not
+long before to mark out a vassal kingdom; now he is not master even of
+the walls of Tykotsin.
+
+Barely a few months before he was treating with neighboring kings;
+to-day one Swedish captain obeys his commands with impatience and
+contempt, and dares to bend him to his will.
+
+When his troops left him, when from a lord and a magnate who made the
+whole country tremble, he became a powerless pauper who needed rescue
+and assistance himself, Karl Gustav despised him. He would have raised
+to the skies a mighty ally, but he turned with haughtiness from the
+supplicant.
+
+Like Kostka Napyerski, the foot-pad, besieged on a time in Chorshtyn,
+is he, Radzivill, besieged now in Tykotsin. And who is besieging him?
+Sapyeha, his greatest personal enemy. When they capture him they will
+drag him to justice in worse fashion than a robber, as a traitor.
+
+His kinsmen have deserted him, his friends, his connections. Armies
+have plundered his property, his treasures and riches are blown into
+mist, and that lord, that prince, who once upon a time astonished the
+court of France and dazzled it with his luxury, he who at feasts
+received thousands of nobles, who maintained tens of thousands of his
+own troops, whom he fed and supported, had not now wherewith to nourish
+his own failing strength; and terrible to relate, he, Radzivill, in the
+last moments of his life, almost at the hour of his death, was hungry!
+
+In the castle there had long been a lack of provisions; from the scant
+remaining supplies the Swedish commander dealt stingy rations, and the
+prince would not beg of him.
+
+If only the fever which was devouring his strength had deprived him of
+consciousness; but it had not. His breast rose with increasing
+heaviness, his breath turned into a rattle, his swollen feet and hands
+were freezing, but his mind, omitting moments of delirium, omitting the
+terrible visions and nightmares which passed before his eyes, remained
+for the greater part of the time clear. And that prince saw his whole
+fall, all his want, all his misery and humiliation; that former
+warrior-victor saw all his defeat, and his sufferings were so immense
+that they could be equalled only by his sins.
+
+Besides, as the Furies tormented Orestes, so was he tormented by
+reproaches of conscience, and in no part of the world was there a
+sanctuary to which he could flee from them. They tormented him in the
+day, they tormented him at night, in the field, under the roof; pride
+could not withstand them nor repulse them. The deeper his fall, the
+more fiercely they lashed him. And there were moments in which he tore
+his own breast. When enemies came against his country from every side,
+when foreign nations grieved over its hapless condition, its sufferings
+and bloodshed, he, the grand hetman, instead of moving to the field,
+instead of sacrificing the last drop of his blood, instead of
+astonishing the world like Leonidas or Themistocles, instead of pawning
+his last coat like Sapyeha, made a treaty with enemies against the
+mother, raised a sacrilegious hand against his own king, and imbrued it
+in blood near and dear to him. He had done all this, and now he is at
+the limit not only of infamy, but of life, close to his reckoning,
+there beyond. What is awaiting him?
+
+The hair rose on his head when he thought of that. For he had raised
+his hand against his country, he had appeared to himself great in
+relation to that country, and now all had changed. Now he had become
+small, and the Commonwealth, rising from dust and blood, appeared to
+him something great and continually greater, invested with a mysterious
+terror, full of a sacred majesty, awful. And she grew, increased
+continually in his eyes, and became more and more gigantic. In presence
+of her he felt himself dust as prince and as hetman, as Radzivill. He
+could not understand what that was. Some unknown waves were rising
+around him, flowing toward him, with roaring, with thunder, flowing
+ever nearer, rising more terribly, and he understood that he must be
+drowned in that immensity, hundreds such as he would be drowned. But
+why had he not seen this awfulness and this mysterious power at first;
+why had he, mad man, rushed against it? When these ideas roared in his
+head, fear seized him in presence of that mother, in presence of that
+Commonwealth; for he did not recognize her features, which formerly
+were so kind and so mild.
+
+The spirit was breaking within him, and terror dwelt in his breast. At
+moments he thought that another country altogether, another people,
+were around him. Through the besieged walls came news of everything
+that men were doing in the invaded Commonwealth, and marvellous and
+astonishing things were they doing. A war of life or death against the
+Swedes and traitors had begun, all the more terrible in that it had not
+been foreseen by any man. The Commonwealth had begun to punish. There
+was something in this of the anger of God for the insult to majesty.
+
+When through the walls of Tykotsin came news of the siege of
+Chenstohova, Radzivill, a Calvinist, was frightened; and fright did not
+leave his soul from that day, for then he perceived for the first time
+those mysterious waves which, after they had risen, were to swallow the
+Swedes and him; then the invasion of the Swedes seemed not an invasion,
+but a sacrilege, and the punishment of it inevitable. Then for the
+first time the veil dropped from his eyes, and he saw the changed face
+of the Commonwealth, no longer a mother, but a punishing queen.
+
+All who had remained true to her and served with heart and soul, rose
+and grew greater and greater; whoso sinned against her went down. "And
+therefore it is not free to any one to think," said the prince to
+himself, "of his own elevation, or that of his family, but he must
+sacrifice life, strength, and love to her."
+
+But for him it was now too late; he had nothing to sacrifice; he had no
+future before him save that beyond the grave, at sight of which he
+shuddered.
+
+From the time of besieging Chenstohova, when one terrible cry was torn
+from the breast of an immense country, when as if by a miracle there
+was found in it a certain wonderful, hitherto unknown and not
+understood power, when you would have said that a mysterious hand from
+beyond this world rose in its defence, a new doubt gnawed into the soul
+of the prince, and he could not free himself from the terrible thought
+that God stood with that cause and that faith.
+
+And when such thoughts roared in his head he doubted his own faith, and
+then his despair passed even the measure of his sins. Temporal fall,
+spiritual fall, darkness, nothingness,--behold to what he had come,
+what he had gained by serving self.
+
+And still at the beginning of the expedition from Kyedani against
+Podlyasye he was full of hope. It is true that Sapyeha, a leader
+inferior to him beyond comparison, had defeated him in the field, and
+the rest of the squadrons left him, but he strengthened himself with
+the thought that any day Boguslav might come with assistance. That
+young eagle of the Radzivills would fly to him at the head of Prussian
+Lutheran legions, who would not pass over to the papists like the
+Lithuanian squadrons; and at once he would bend Sapyeha in two, scatter
+his forces, scatter the confederates, and putting themselves on the
+corpse of Lithuania, like two lions on the carcass of a deer, with
+roaring alone would terrify all who might wish to tear it away from
+them.
+
+But time passed; the forces of Prince Yanush melted; even the foreign
+regiments went over to the terrible Sapyeha; days passed, weeks,
+months, but Boguslav came not.
+
+At last the siege of Tykotsin began.
+
+The Swedes, a handful of whom remained with Yanush, defended themselves
+heroically; for, stained already with terrible cruelty, they saw that
+even surrender would not guard them from the vengeful hands of the
+Lithuanians. The prince in the beginning of the siege had still the
+hope that at the last moment, perhaps, the King of Sweden himself would
+move to his aid, and perhaps Pan Konyetspolski, who at the head of six
+thousand cavalry was with Karl Gustav. But his hope was vain. No one
+gave him a thought, no one came with assistance.
+
+"Oh, Boguslav! Boguslav!" repeated the prince, walking through the
+chambers of Tykotsin; "if you will not save a cousin, save at least a
+Radzivill!"
+
+At last in his final despair Prince Yanush resolved on taking a step at
+which his pride revolted fearfully; that was to implore Prince Michael
+Radzivill of Nyesvyej for rescue. This letter, however, was intercepted
+on the road by Sapyeha's men; but the voevoda of Vityebsk sent to
+Yanush in answer a letter which he had himself received from Prince
+Michael a week before.
+
+Prince Yanush found in it the following passage:--
+
+
+"If news has come to you, gracious lord, that I intend to go with
+succor to my relative, the voevoda of Vilna, believe it not, for I hold
+only with those who endure in loyalty to the country and our king, and
+who desire to restore the former liberties of this most illustrious
+Commonwealth. This course will not, as I think, bring me to protect
+traitors from just and proper punishment. Boguslav too will not come,
+for, as I hear, the elector prefers to think of himself, and does not
+wish to divide his forces; and _quod attinet_ (as to) Konyetspolski,
+since he will pay court to Prince Yanush's widow, should she become
+one, it is to his profit that the prince voevoda be destroyed with all
+speed."
+
+
+This letter, addressed to Sapyeha, stripped the unfortunate Yanush of
+the remnant of his hope, and nothing was left him but to wait for the
+accomplishment of his destiny.
+
+The siege was hastening to its close.
+
+News of the departure of Sapyeha passed through the wall almost that
+moment; but the hope that in consequence of his departure hostile steps
+would be abandoned were of short duration, for in the infantry
+regiments an unusual movement was observable. Still some days passed
+quietly enough, since the plan of blowing up the gate with a petard
+resulted in nothing; but December 31 came, on which only the
+approaching night might incommode the besiegers, for evidently they
+were preparing something against the castle, at least a new attack of
+cannon on the weakened walls.
+
+The day was drawing to a close. The prince was lying in the so-called
+"Corner" hall situated in the western part of the castle. In an
+enormous fireplace were burning whole logs of pine wood which cast a
+lively light on the white and rather empty walls. The prince was lying
+on his back on a Turkish sofa, pushed out purposely into the middle of
+the room, so that the warmth of the blaze might reach it. Nearer to the
+fireplace, a little in the shade, slept a page, on a carpet; near the
+prince were sitting, slumbering in arm-chairs, Pani Yakimovich,
+formerly chief lady-in-waiting at Kyedani, another page, a physician,
+also the prince's astrologer, and Kharlamp.
+
+Kharlamp had not left the prince, though he was almost the only one of
+his former officers who had remained. That was a bitter service, for
+the heart and soul of the officer were outside the walls of Tykotsin,
+in the camp of Sapyeha; still he remained faithful at the side of his
+old leader. From hunger and watching the poor fellow had grown as thin
+as a skeleton. Of his face there remained but the nose, which now
+seemed still greater, and mustaches like bushes. He was clothed in
+complete armor, breastplate, shoulder-pieces, and morion, with a wire
+cape which came down to his shoulders. His cuirass was battered, for he
+had just returned from the walls, to which he had gone to make
+observations a little while before, and on which he sought death every
+day. He was slumbering at the moment from weariness, though there was a
+terrible rattling in the prince's breast as if he had begun to die, and
+though the wind howled and whistled outside.
+
+Suddenly short quivering began to shake the gigantic body of Radzivill,
+and the rattling ceased. Those who were around him woke at once and
+looked quickly, first at him and then at one another. But he said,--
+
+"It is as if something had gone out of my breast; I feel easier."
+
+He turned his head a little, looked carefully toward the door, at last
+he said, "Kharlamp!"
+
+"At the service of your highness!"
+
+"What does Stahovich want here?"
+
+The legs began to tremble under poor Kharlamp, for unterrified as he
+was in battle he was superstitious in the same degree; therefore he
+looked around quickly, and said in a stifled voice,--
+
+"Stahovich is not here; your highness gave orders to shoot him at
+Kyedani."
+
+The prince closed his eyes and answered not a word.
+
+For a time there was nothing to be heard save the doleful and
+continuous howling of the wind.
+
+"The weeping of people is heard in that wind," said the prince, again
+opening his eyes in perfect consciousness. "But I did not bring in the
+Swedes; it was Radzeyovski."
+
+When no one gave answer, he said after a short time,--
+
+"He is most to blame, he is most to blame, he is most to blame."
+
+And a species of consolation entered his breast, as if the remembrance
+rejoiced him that there was some one more guilty than he.
+
+Soon, however, more grievous thoughts must have come to his head, for
+his face grew dark, and he repeated a number of times,--
+
+"Jesus! Jesus! Jesus!"
+
+And again choking attacked him; a rattling began in his throat more
+terrible than before. Meanwhile from without came the sound of
+musketry, at first infrequent, then more frequent; but amidst the
+drifting of the snow and the howling of the whirlwind they did not
+sound too loudly, and it might have been thought that that was some
+continual knocking at the gate.
+
+"They are fighting!" said the prince's physician.
+
+"As usual!" answered Kharlamp. "People are freezing in the snow-drifts,
+and they wish to fight to grow warm."
+
+"This is the sixth day of the whirlwind and the snow," answered the
+doctor. "Great changes will come in the kingdom, for this is an unheard
+of thing."
+
+"God grant it!" said Kharlamp. "It cannot be worse."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the prince, to whom a new
+relief had come.
+
+"Kharlamp!"
+
+"At the service of your highness!"
+
+"Does it seem to me so from weakness, or did Oskyerko try to blow up
+the gate with a petard two days since?"
+
+"He tried, your highness; but the Swedes seized the petards and wounded
+him slightly, and Sapyeha's men were repulsed."
+
+"If wounded slightly, then he will try again. But what day is it?"
+
+"The last day of December, your highness."
+
+"God be merciful to my soul! I shall not live to the New Year. Long ago
+it was foretold me that every fifth year death is near me."
+
+"God is kind, your highness."
+
+"God is with Sapyeha," said the prince, gloomily.
+
+All at once he looked around and said: "Cold comes to me from it. I do
+not see it, but I feel that it is here."
+
+"What is that, your highness?"
+
+"Death!"
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!"
+
+A moment of silence followed; nothing was heard but the whispered "Our
+Father," repeated by Pani Yakimovich.
+
+"Tell me," said the prince, with a broken voice, "do you believe that
+outside of your faith no one can be saved?"
+
+"Even in the moment of death it is possible to renounce errors," said
+Kharlamp.
+
+The sound of shots had become at that moment more frequent. The thunder
+of cannon began to shake the windowpanes, which answered each report
+with a plaintive sound.
+
+The prince listened a certain time calmly, then rose slightly on the
+pillow; his eyes began slowly to widen, his pupils to glitter. He sat
+up; for a moment he held his head with his hand, then cried suddenly,
+as if in bewilderment,--
+
+"Boguslav! Boguslav! Boguslav!"
+
+Kharlamp ran out of the room like a madman.
+
+The whole castle trembled and quivered from the thunder of cannon.
+
+All at once there was heard the cry of several thousand voices; then
+something was torn with a ghastly smashing of walls, so that brands and
+coals from the chimney were scattered on the floor. At the same time
+Kharlamp rushed into the chamber.
+
+"Sapyeha's men have blown up the gate!" cried he. "The Swedes have fled
+to the tower! The enemy is here! Your highness--"
+
+Further words died on his lips. Radzivill was sitting on the sofa with
+eyes starting out; with open lips he was gulping the air, his teeth
+bared like those of a dog when he snarls; he tore with his hands the
+sofa on which he was sitting, and gazing with terror into the depth of
+the chamber, cried, or rather gave out hoarse rattles between one
+breath and another,--
+
+"It was Radzeyovski--Not I--Save me!--What do you want? Take the
+crown!--It was Radzeyovski--Save me, people! Jesus! Jesus! Mary!"
+
+These were the last words of Radzivill.
+
+Then a terrible coughing seized him; his eyes came out in still more
+ghastly fashion from their sockets; he stretched himself out, fell on
+his back, and remained motionless.
+
+"He is dead!" said the doctor.
+
+"He cried Mary, though a Calvinist, you have heard!" said Pani
+Yakimovich.
+
+"Throw wood on the fire!" said Kharlamp to the terrified pages.
+
+He drew near to the corpse, closed the eyelids; then he took from his
+own armor a gilded image of the Mother of God which he wore on a chain,
+and placing the hands of Radzivill together on his breast, he put the
+image between the dead fingers.
+
+The light of the fire was reflected from the golden ground of the
+image, and that reflection fell upon the face of the voevoda and made
+it cheerful so that never had it seemed so calm.
+
+Kharlamp sat at the side of the body, and resting his elbows on his
+knees, hid his face in his hands.
+
+The silence was broken only by the sound of shots.
+
+All at once something terrible took place. First of all was a flash of
+awful brightness; the whole world seemed turned into fire, and at the
+same time there was given forth such a sound as if the earth had fallen
+from under the castle. The walls tottered; the ceilings cracked with a
+terrible noise; all the windows tumbled in on the floor, and the panes
+were broken into hundreds of fragments. Through the empty openings of
+the windows that moment clouds of snow drifted in, and the whirlwind
+began to howl gloomily in the corners of the chamber.
+
+All the people present fell to the floor on their faces, speechless
+from terror.
+
+Kharlamp rose first, and looked directly on the corpse of the voevoda;
+the corpse was lying in calmness, but the gilded image had slipped a
+little in the hands.
+
+Kharlamp recovered his breath. At first he felt certain that that was
+an army of Satans who had broken into the chamber for the body of the
+prince.
+
+"The word has become flesh!" said he. "The Swedes must have blown up
+the tower and themselves."
+
+But from without there came no sound. Evidently the troops of Sapyeha
+were standing in dumb wonder, or perhaps in fear that the whole castle
+was mined, and that there would be explosion after explosion.
+
+"Put wood on the fire!" said Kharlamp to the pages.
+
+Again the room was gleaming with a bright, quivering light. Round about
+a deathlike stillness continued; but the fire hissed, the whirlwind
+howled, and the snow rolled each moment more densely through the window
+openings.
+
+At last confused voices were heard, then the clatter of spurs and the
+tramp of many feet; the door of the chamber was opened wide, and
+soldiers rushed in.
+
+It was bright from the naked sabres, and more and more figures of
+knights in helmets, caps, and kolpaks crowded through the door. Many
+were bearing lanterns in their hands, and they held them to the light,
+advancing carefully, though it was light in the room from the fire as
+well.
+
+At last there sprang forth from the crowd a little knight all in
+enamelled armor, and cried,--
+
+"Where is the voevoda of Vilna?"
+
+"Here!" said Kharlamp, pointing to the body lying on the sofa.
+
+Volodyovski looked at him, and said,--
+
+"He is not living!"
+
+"He is not living, he is not living!" went from mouth to mouth.
+
+"The traitor, the betrayer is not living!"
+
+"So it is," said Kharlamp, gloomily. "But if you dishonor his body and
+bear it apart with sabres, you will do ill, for before his end he
+called on the Most Holy Lady, and he holds Her image in his hand."
+
+These words made a deep impression. The shouts were hushed. Then the
+soldiers began to approach, to go around the sofa, and look at the dead
+man. Those who had lanterns turned the light of them on his eyes; and
+he lay there, gigantic, gloomy, on his face the majesty of a hetman and
+the cold dignity of death.
+
+The soldiers came one after another, and among them the officers;
+therefore Stankyevich approached, the two Skshetuskis, Horotkyevich,
+Yakub Kmita, Oskyerko, and Pan Zagloba.
+
+"It is true!" said Zagloba, in a low voice, as if he feared to rouse
+the prince. "He holds in his hands the Most Holy Lady, and the shining
+from Her falls on his face."
+
+When he said this he removed his cap. That instant all the others bared
+their heads. A moment of silence filled with reverence followed, which
+was broken at last by Volodyovski.
+
+"Ah!" said he, "he is before the judgment of God, and people have
+nothing to do with him." Here he turned to Kharlamp: "But you,
+unfortunate, why did you for his sake leave your country and king?"
+
+"Give him this way!" called a number of voices at once.
+
+Then Kharlamp rose, and taking off his sabre threw it with a clatter on
+the floor, and said,--
+
+"Here I am, cut me to pieces! I did not leave him with you, when he was
+powerful as a king, and afterward it was not proper to leave him when
+he was in misery and no one stayed with him. I have not grown fat in
+his service; for three days I have had nothing in my mouth, and the
+legs are bending under me. But here I am, cut me to pieces! for I
+confess furthermore [here Kharlamp's voice trembled] that I loved him."
+
+When he had said this he tottered and would have fallen; but Zagloba
+opened his arms to him, caught him, supported him, and cried,--
+
+"By the living God! Give the man food and drink!"
+
+That touched all to the heart; therefore they took Kharlamp by the arms
+and led him out of the chamber at once. Then the soldiers began to
+leave it one after another, making the sign of the cross with devotion.
+
+On the road to their quarters Zagloba was meditating over something. He
+stopped, coughed, then pulled Volodyovski by the skirt. "Pan Michael,"
+said he.
+
+"Well, what?"
+
+"My anger against Radzivill is passed; a dead man is a dead man! I
+forgive him from my heart for having made an attempt on my life."
+
+"He is before the tribunal of heaven," said Volodyovski.
+
+"That's it, that's it! H'm, if it would help him I would even give for
+a Mass, since it seems to me that he has an awfully small chance up
+there."
+
+"God is merciful!"
+
+"As to being merciful, he is merciful; still the Lord cannot look
+without abhorrence on heretics. And Radzivill was not only a heretic,
+but a traitor. There is where the trouble is!"
+
+Here Zagloba shook his head and began to look upward.
+
+"I am afraid," said he, after a while, "that some of those Swedes who
+blew themselves up will fall on my head; that they will not be received
+there in heaven is certain."
+
+"They were good men," said Pan Michael, with recognition; "they
+preferred death to surrender, there are few such soldiers in the
+world."
+
+All at once Volodyovski halted: "Panna Billevich was not in the
+castle," said he.
+
+"But how do you know?"
+
+"I asked those pages. Boguslav took her to Taurogi."
+
+"El!" said Zagloba, "that was as if to confide a kid to a wolf. But it
+is not your affair; your predestined is that kernel!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XVI.
+
+
+Lvoff from the moment of the king's arrival was turned into a real
+capital of the Commonwealth. Together with the king came the greater
+part of the bishops from the whole country and all those lay senators
+who had not served the enemy. The calls already issued summoned also to
+arms the nobles of Rus and of the remoter adjoining provinces, they
+came in numbers and armed with the greater ease because the Swedes had
+not been in those regions. Eyes were opened and hearts rose at sight of
+this general militia, for it reminded one in nothing of that of Great
+Poland, which at Uistsie offered such weak opposition to the enemy. On
+the contrary, in this case marched a warlike and terrible nobility,
+reared from childhood on horseback and in the field, amidst continual
+attacks of wild Tartars, accustomed to bloodshed and burning, better
+masters of the sabre than of Latin. These nobles were in fresh training
+yet from Hmelnitski's uprising, which lasted seven years without
+interval, so that there was not a man among them who was not as many
+times in fire as he had years of life. New swarms of these were
+arriving continually in Lvoff: some had marched from the Byeshchadi
+full of precipices, others from the Pruth, the Dniester, and the
+Seret; some lived on the steep banks of the Dniester, some on the
+wide-spreading Bug; some on the Sinyuha had not been destroyed from the
+face of the earth by peasant incursions; some had been left on the
+Tartar boundaries;--all these hurried at the call of the king to the
+city of the Lion,[3] some to march thence against an enemy as yet
+unknown. The nobles came in from Volynia and from more distant
+provinces, such hatred was kindled in all souls by the terrible tidings
+that the enemy had raised sacrilegious hands on the Patroness of the
+Commonwealth in Chenstohova.
+
+And the Cossacks dared not raise obstacles, for the hearts were moved
+in the most hardened, and besides, they were forced by the Tartars to
+beat with the forehead to the king, and to renew for the hundredth time
+their oath of loyalty. A Tartar embassy, dangerous to the enemies of
+the king, was in Lvoff under the leadership of Suba Gazi Bey, offering,
+in the name of the Khan, a horde a hundred thousand strong to assist
+the Commonwealth; of these forty thousand from near Kamenyets could
+take the field at once.
+
+Besides the Tartar embassy a legation had come from Transylvania to
+carry through negotiations begun with Rakotsy concerning succession to
+the throne. The ambassador of the emperor was present; so was the papal
+nuncio, who had come with the king. Every day deputations arrived from
+the armies of the kingdom and Lithuania, from provinces and lands, with
+declarations of loyalty, and a wish to defend to the death the invaded
+country.
+
+The fortunes of the king increased; the Commonwealth, crushed
+altogether so recently, was rising before the eyes of all to the wonder
+of ages and nations. The souls of men were inflamed with thirst for war
+and retaliation, and at the same time they grew strong. And as in
+spring-time a warm generous rain melts the snow, so mighty hope melted
+doubt. Not only did they wish for victory, but they believed in it. New
+and favorable tidings came in continually; though often untrue, they
+passed from mouth to mouth. Time after time men told now of castles
+recovered, now of battles in which unknown regiments under leaders
+hitherto unknown had crushed the Swedes, now of terrible clouds of
+peasants sweeping along, like locusts, against the enemy. The name of
+Stefan Charnyetski was more and more frequent on every lip.
+
+The details in these tidings were often untrue, but taken together they
+reflected as a mirror what was being done in the whole country.
+
+But in Lvoff reigned as it were a continual holiday. When the king came
+the city greeted him solemnly, the clergy of the three rites, the
+councillors of the city, the merchants, the guilds. On the squares and
+streets, wherever an eye was cast, banners, white, sapphire, purple,
+and gilded, were waving. The Lvoff people raised proudly their golden
+lion on a blue field, recalling with self-praise the scarcely passed
+Cossack and Tartar attacks.
+
+At every appearance of the king a shout was raised among the crowds,
+and crowds were never lacking.
+
+The population doubled in recent days. Besides senators and bishops,
+besides nobles, flowed in throngs of peasants also, for the news had
+spread that the king intended to improve their condition. Therefore
+rustic coats and horse-blankets were mingled with the yellow coats of
+the townspeople. The mercantile Armenians with their swarthy faces put
+up booths for merchandise and arms which the assembled nobles bought
+willingly.
+
+There were many Tartars also with the embassy; there were Hungarians,
+Wallachians, and Austrians,--a multitude of people, a multitude of
+troops, a multitude of different kinds of faces, many strange garments
+in colors brilliant and varied, troops of court servants, hence
+gigantic grooms, haiduks, janissaries, red Cossacks, messengers in
+foreign costume.
+
+The streets were filled from morning till evening with the noise of
+men, now passing squadrons of a quota, now divisions of mounted nobles,
+the cries of command, the shining of armor and naked sabres, the
+neighing of horses, the rumble of cannon, and songs full of threatening
+and curses for the Swedes.
+
+The bells in the churches, Polish, Russian, and Armenian, were tolling
+continually, announcing to all that the king was in the city, and that
+Lvoff, to its eternal praise, was the first of the capitals that had
+received the king, the exile.
+
+They beat to him with the forehead; wherever he appeared caps flew
+upward, and shouts of "Vivat!" shook the air. They beat with the
+forehead also before the carriages of bishops, who through the windows
+blessed the assembled throngs; they bowed to and applauded senators,
+honoring in them loyalty to the king and country.
+
+So the whole city was seething. At night they even burned on the square
+piles of wood, at which in spite of cold and frost those men were
+encamped who could not find lodgings because of the excessive
+multitude.
+
+The king spent whole days in consultation with senators. Audience was
+given to foreign embassies, to deputations from provinces and troops;
+methods of filling the empty treasury with money were considered; all
+means were used to rouse war wherever it had not flamed up already.
+
+Couriers were flying to the most important towns in every part of the
+Commonwealth, to distant Prussia, to sacred Jmud, to Tyshovtsi, to the
+hetmans, to Sapyeha, who after the storming of Tykotsin took his army
+to the south with forced marches; couriers went also to Konyetspolski,
+who was still with the Swedes. Where it was needful money was sent; the
+slothful were roused with manifestoes.
+
+The king recognized, consecrated, and confirmed the confederation of
+Tyshovtsi and joined it himself; taking the direction of all affairs
+into his untiring hands, he labored from morning till night, esteeming
+the Commonwealth more than his own rest, his own health.
+
+But this was not the limit of his efforts; for he had determined to
+conclude in his own name and the name of the estates a league such that
+no earthly power, could overcome,--a league which in future might serve
+to reform the Commonwealth.
+
+The moment for this had come at last.
+
+The secret must have escaped from the senators to the nobles, and from
+the nobles to the peasants, for since morning it had been said that at
+the hour of services something important would happen,--that the king
+would make some solemn vow, concerning, as was said, the condition of
+the peasants and a confederation with heaven. There were persons,
+however, who asserted that these were incredible things, without an
+example in history; but curiosity was excited, and everywhere something
+was looked for.
+
+The day was frosty, clear; tiny flakes of snow were flying through the
+air, glittering like sparks. The land infantry of Lvoff and the
+district of Jidache, in blue half shubas, hemmed with gold, and half a
+Hungarian regiment were drawn out in a long line before the cathedral,
+holding their muskets at their feet in front of them; officers passed
+up and down with staffs in their hands. Between these two lines a
+many-colored throng flowed into the church, like a river. In front
+nobles and knights, after them the senate of the city, with gilded
+chains on their necks, and tapers in their hands. They were led by the
+mayor, a physician noted throughout the whole province; he was dressed
+in a black velvet toga, and wore a calotte. After the senate went
+merchants, and among them many Armenians with green and gold skull-caps
+on their heads, and wearing roomy Eastern gowns. These, though
+belonging to a special rite, went with the others to represent the
+estate. After the merchants came, with their banners, the guilds, such
+as butchers, bakers, tailors, goldsmiths, confectioners, embroiderers,
+linen-drapers, tanners, mead-boilers, and a number of others yet; from
+each company representatives went with their own banner, which was
+borne by a man the most distinguished of all for beauty. Then came
+various brotherhoods and the common throng in coats, in sheepskins, in
+horse-blankets, in homespun; dwellers in the suburbs, peasants.
+Admittance was barred to no one till the church was packed closely with
+people of all ranks and both sexes.
+
+At last carriages began to arrive; but they avoided the main door, for
+the king, the bishops, and the dignitaries had a special entrance
+nearer the high altar. Every moment the troops presented arms; at last
+the soldiers dropped their muskets to their feet, and blew on their
+chilled hands, throwing out clouds of steam from their breasts.
+
+The king came with the nuncio, Vidon; then arrived the archbishop of
+Gnyezno and the bishop, Prince Chartoryski; next appeared the bishop of
+Cracow, the archbishop of Lvoff, the grand chancellor of the kingdom,
+many voevodas and castellans. All these vanished through the side door;
+and their carriages, retinues, equerries, and attendants of every
+description formed as it were a new army, standing at the side of the
+cathedral.
+
+Mass was celebrated by the apostolic nuncio, Vidon, arrayed in purple,
+in a white chasuble embroidered with pearls and gold.
+
+For the king a kneeling-stool was placed between the great altar and
+the pews; before the kneeling-stool was a Turkish sofa. The church
+arm-chairs were occupied by bishops and lay senators.
+
+Many colored rays, passing through the windows, joined with the gleam
+of candles, with which the altar seemed burning, and fell upon the
+faces of senators in the church chairs, on the white beards, on the
+imposing forms, on golden chains, on violet velvet. You would have
+said, "A Roman senate!" such was the majesty and dignity of these old
+men. Here and there among gray heads was to be seen the face of a
+warrior senator; here and there gleamed the blond head of a youthful
+lord. All eyes were fixed on the altar, all were praying; the flames of
+the candles were glittering and quivering; the smoke from the censers
+was playing and curling in the bright air. The body of the church was
+packed with heads, and over the heads a rainbow of banners was playing,
+like a rainbow of flowers.
+
+The majesty of the king, Yan Kazimir, prostrated itself, according to
+his custom, in the form of a cross, and humiliated itself before the
+majesty of God. At last the nuncio brought from the tabernacle a
+chalice, and bearing it before him approached the kneeling-stool, then
+the king raised himself with a brighter face, the voice of the nuncio
+was heard: "_Ecce Agnus Dei_ (Behold the Lamb of God)," and the king
+received communion.
+
+For a time he remained kneeling, with inclined head; at last he rose,
+turned his eyes toward heaven, and stretched out both hands.
+
+There was sudden silence in the church, so that breathing was not
+audible. All divined that the moment had come, and that the king would
+make some vow; all listened with collected spirit. But he stood with
+outstretched arms; at last, with a voice filled with emotion, but as
+far reaching as a bell, he began to speak,--
+
+"O Great Mother of Divine humanity, and Virgin! I, Yan Kazimir, king by
+the favor of Thy Son, King of kings and my Lord, and by Thy favor
+approaching Thy Most Holy feet, form this, the following pact. I to-day
+choose Thee my Patroness and Queen of my dominions. I commit to Thy
+special guardianship and protection myself, my Polish kingdom, the
+Grand Principality of Lithuania, Russia, Prussia, Mazovia, Jmud,
+Livland, and Chernigov, the armies of both nations and all common
+people. I beg obediently Thy aid and favor against enemies in the
+present affliction of my kingdom."
+
+Here the king fell on his knees and was silent for a time. In the
+church a deathlike stillness continued unbroken; then rising he spoke
+on,--
+
+"And constrained by Thy great benefactions, I, with the Polish people,
+am drawn to a new and ardent bond of service to Thee. I promise Thee in
+my own name and in the names of my ministers, senators, nobles, and
+people, to extend honor and glory to Thy Son, Jesus Christ, Our
+Saviour, through all regions of the Polish kingdom; to make a promise
+that when, with the mercy of Thy Son, I obtain victory over the Swedes,
+I will endeavor that an anniversary be celebrated solemnly in my
+kingdom to the end of the world, in memory of the favor of God, and of
+Thee, O Most Holy Virgin."
+
+Here he ceased again and knelt. In the church there was a murmur; but
+the voice of the king stopped it quickly, and though he trembled this
+time with penitence and emotion, he continued still more distinctly,--
+
+"And since, with great sorrow of heart, I confess that I endure from
+God just punishment, which is afflicting us all in my kingdom with
+various plagues for seven years, because poor, simple tillers of the
+soil groan in suffering, oppressed by the soldiery, I bind myself on
+the conclusion of peace to use earnest efforts, together with the
+estates of the Commonwealth, to free suffering peasants from every
+cruelty, in which, O Mother of Mercy, Queen, and my Lady, since Thou
+hast inspired me to make this vow, obtain for me, by grace of Thy
+mercy, aid from Thy Son to accomplish what I here promise."
+
+These words of the king were heard by the clergy, the senators, the
+nobles, and the common people. A great wail was raised in the church,
+which came first from hearts of the peasants; it burst forth from them,
+and then became universal. All raised their hands to heaven; weeping
+voices repeated, "Amen, amen, amen!" in testimony that they had joined
+their feelings and vows with the promise of the king. Enthusiasm seized
+their hearts, and at that moment made them brothers in love for the
+Commonwealth and its Patroness. Indescribable joy shone on their faces
+like a clear flame, and in all that church there was no one who doubted
+that God would overwhelm the Swedes.
+
+After that service the king, amid the thunder of musketry and cannon
+and mighty shouts of "Victory! victory! may he live!" went to the
+castle, and there he confirmed the heavenly confederation together with
+that of Tyshovtsi.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVII.
+
+
+After these solemnities various tidings flew into Lvoff like winged
+birds. There were older and fresh tidings more or less favorable, but
+all increased courage. First the confederation of Tyshovtsi grew like a
+conflagration; every one living joined it, nobles as well as peasants.
+Towns furnished wagons, firearms, and infantry; the Jews money. No one
+dared to oppose the manifestoes; the most indolent mounted. There came
+also a terrible manifesto from Wittemberg, turned against the
+confederation. Fire and sword were to punish those who joined it. This
+manifesto produced the same effect as if a man tried to quench flames
+with powder. The manifesto, with the knowledge assuredly of the king,
+and to rouse hatred more thoroughly against the Swedes, was scattered
+through Lvoff in great numbers, and it is not becoming to state what
+common people did with the copies; it suffices to say that the wind
+bore them terribly dishonored through the streets of the city, and the
+students showed, to the delight of crowds, "Wittemberg's Confusion,"
+singing at the same time the song beginning with these words,--
+
+
+                 "O Wittemberg, poor man,
+                  Race across over the sea,
+                        Like a hare!
+                  But when thy buttons are lost
+                  Thou wilt drop down thy trousers,
+                        While racing away!"
+
+
+And Wittemberg, as if making the words of the song true, gave up his
+command in Cracow to the valiant Wirtz, and betook himself hurriedly to
+Elblang, where the King of Sweden was sojourning with the queen,
+spending his time at feasts, and rejoicing in his heart that he had
+become the lord of such an illustrious kingdom.
+
+Accounts came also to Lvoff of the fall of Tykotsin, and minds were
+gladdened. It was strange that men had begun to speak of that event
+before a courier had come; only they did not say whether Radzivill had
+died or was in captivity. It was asserted, however, that Sapyeha, at
+the head of a considerable force, had gone from Podlyasye to Lyubelsk
+to join the hetmans; that on the road he was beating the Swedes and
+growing in power every day.
+
+At last envoys came from Sapyeha himself in a considerable number, for
+the voevoda had sent neither less nor more than one whole squadron to
+be at the disposal of the king, desiring in this way to show honor to
+the sovereign, to secure his person from every possible accident, and
+perhaps specially to increase his significance.
+
+The squadron was brought by Volodyovski, well known to the king; so Yan
+Kazimir gave command that he should stand at once in his presence, and
+taking Pan Michael's head between his hands, he said,--
+
+"I greet thee, famous soldier! Much water has flowed down since we lost
+sight of thee. I think that we saw thee last at Berestechko, all
+covered with blood."
+
+Pan Michael bent to the knees of the king, and said,--
+
+"It was later, in Warsaw, Gracious Lord; also in the castle with the
+present castellan of Kieff, Pan Charnyetski."
+
+"But are you serving all the time? Had you no desire to enjoy leisure
+at home?"
+
+"No; for the Commonwealth was in need, and besides, in these public
+commotions my property has been lost. I have no place in which to put
+my head, Gracious Lord; but I am not sorry for myself, thinking that
+the first duty of a soldier is to the king and the country."
+
+"Ah, would there were more such! The enemy would not be so rich. God
+grant the time for rewards will come; but now tell me what you have
+done with the voevoda of Vilna?"
+
+"The voevoda of Vilna is before the judgment of God. The soul went out
+of him just as we were going to the final storm."
+
+"How was that?"
+
+"Here is Pan Sapyeha's report," said Volodyovski.
+
+The king took Sapyeha's letter and began to read; he had barely begun
+when he stopped.
+
+"Pan Sapyeha is mistaken," said he, "when he writes that the grand
+baton of Lithuania is unoccupied; it is not, for I give it to him."
+
+"There is no one more worthy," said Pan Michael, "and to your Royal
+Grace the whole army will be grateful till death for this deed."
+
+The king smiled at the simple soldierly confidence, and read on. After
+a while he sighed, and said,--
+
+"Radzivill might have been the first pearl in this glorious kingdom, if
+pride and the errors which he committed had not withered his soul. It
+is accomplished! Inscrutable are the decisions of God! Radzivill and
+Opalinski--almost in the same hour! Judge them, O Lord, not according
+to their sins, but according to Thy mercy."
+
+Silence followed; then the king again began to read.
+
+"We are thankful to the voevoda," said he, when he had finished, "for
+sending a whole squadron and under the greatest cavalier, as he writes.
+But I am safe here; and cavaliers, especially such as you, are more
+needed in the field. Rest a little, and then I will send you to assist
+Charnyetski, for on him evidently the greatest pressure will be
+turned."
+
+"We have rested enough already at Tykotsin, Gracious Lord," said the
+little knight, with enthusiasm; "if our horses were fed a little, we
+might move to-day, for with Charnyetski there will be unspeakable
+delights. It is a great happiness to look on the face of our gracious
+lord, but we are anxious to see the Swedes."
+
+The king grew radiant. A fatherly kindness appeared on his face, and he
+said, looking with pleasure on the sulphurous figure of the little
+knight,--
+
+"You were the first little soldier to throw the baton of a colonel at
+the feet of the late prince voevoda."
+
+"Not the first, your Royal Grace; but it was the first, and God grant
+the last, time for me to act against military discipline." Pan Michael
+stopped, and after a while added, "It was impossible to do otherwise."
+
+"Certainly," said the king. "That was a grievous hour for those who
+understood military duty; but obedience must have its limits, beyond
+which guilt begins. Did many officers remain in with Radzivill?"
+
+"In Tykotsin we found only one officer, Pan Kharlamp, who did not leave
+the prince at once, and who did not wish afterward to desert him in
+misery. Compassion alone kept Kharlamp with Radzivill, for natural
+affection drew him to us. We were barely able to restore him to health,
+such hunger had there been in Tykotsin, and he took the food from his
+own mouth to nourish the prince. He has come here to Lvoff to implore
+pardon of your Royal Grace, and I too fall at your feet for him; he is
+a tried and good soldier."
+
+"Let him come hither," said the king.
+
+"He has also something important to tell, which he heard in Kyedani
+from the mouth of Prince Boguslav, and which relates to the person of
+your Royal Grace, which is sacred to us."
+
+"Is this about Kmita?"
+
+"Yes, Gracious Lord."
+
+"Did you know Kmita?"
+
+"I knew him and fought with him; but where he is now, I know not."
+
+"What do you think of him?"
+
+"Gracious Lord, since he undertook such a deed there are no torments of
+which he is not worthy, for he is an abortion of hell."
+
+"That story is untrue," said the king; "it is all an invention of
+Prince Boguslav. But putting that affair aside, what do you know of
+Kmita in times previous?"
+
+"He was always a great soldier, and in military affairs incomparable.
+He used to steal up to Hovanski so that with a few hundred people he
+brought the whole force of the enemy to misery; no other man could have
+done that. It is a miracle that the skin was not torn from him and
+stretched over a drum. If at that time some one had placed Prince
+Radzivill himself in the hands of Hovanski, he would not have given him
+so much pleasure as he would had he made him a present of Kmita. Why!
+it went so far that Kmita ate out of Hovanski's camp-chests, slept on
+his rugs, rode in his sleighs and on his horse. But he was an
+infliction on his own people too, terribly self-willed; like Pan
+Lashch, he might have lined his cloak with sentences, and in Kyedani he
+was lost altogether."
+
+Here Volodyovski related in detail all that had happened in Kyedani.
+
+Yan Kazimir listened eagerly, and when at last Pan Michael told how
+Zagloba had freed first himself and then all his comrades from
+Radzivill's captivity, the king held his sides from laughter.
+
+"_Vir incomparabilis! vir incomparabilis_ (an incomparable man)!" he
+repeated. "But is he here with you?"
+
+"At the command of your Royal Grace!" answered Volodyovski.
+
+"That noble surpasses Ulysses! Bring him to me to dinner for a pleasant
+hour, and also the Skshetuskis; and now toll me what you know more of
+Kmita."
+
+"From letters found on Roh Kovalski we learned that we were sent to
+Birji to die. The prince pursued us afterward and tried to surround us,
+but he did not take us. We escaped luckily. And that was not all, for
+not far from Kyedani we caught Kmita, whom I sent at once to be shot."
+
+"Oh!" said the king, "I see that you had sharp work there in
+Lithuania."
+
+"But first Pan Zagloba had him searched to find letters on his person.
+In fact, a letter from the hetman was found, in which we learned that
+had it not been for Kmita we should not have been taken to Birji, but
+would have been shot without delay in Kyedani."
+
+"But you see!" said the king.
+
+"In view of that we could not take his life. We let him go. What he did
+further I know not, but he did not leave Radzivill at that time. God
+knows what kind of man he is. It is easier to form an opinion of any
+one else than of such a whirlwind. He remained with Radzivill and then
+went somewhere. Later he warned us that the prince was marching from
+Kyedani. It is hard to belittle the notable service he did us, for had
+it not been for that warning Radzivill would have fallen on unprepared
+troops, and destroyed the squadrons one after the other. I know not
+myself, Gracious Lord, what to think,--whether that was a calumny which
+Prince Boguslav uttered."
+
+"That will appear at once," said the king; and he clapped his hands.
+"Call hither Pan Babinich!" said he to a page who appeared on the
+threshold.
+
+The page vanished, and soon the door of the king's chamber opened, and
+in it stood Pan Andrei. Volodyovski did not know him at once, for he
+had changed greatly and grown pale, as he had not recovered from the
+struggle in the pass. Pan Michael therefore looked at him without
+recognition.
+
+"It is a wonder," said he at last; "were it not for the thinness of
+lips and because your Royal Grace gives another name, I should say this
+is Pan Kmita."
+
+The king smiled and said,--
+
+"This little knight has just told me of a terrible disturber of that
+name, but I explained as on my palm that he was deceived in his
+judgment, and I am sure that Pan Babinich will confirm what I say."
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Babinich, quickly, "one word from your grace
+will clear that disturber more than my greatest oath."
+
+"And the voice is the same," said Pan Michael, with growing
+astonishment; "but that wound across the mouth was not there."
+
+"Worthy sir," answered Kmita, "the head of a noble is a register on
+which sometimes a man's hand writes with a sabre. And here is your
+note; recognize it."
+
+He bowed his head, shaven at the sides, and pointed at the long whitish
+scar.
+
+"My hand!" cried Volodyovski.
+
+"But I say that you do not know Kmita," put in the king.
+
+"How is that, Gracious Lord?"
+
+"For you know a great soldier, but a self-willed one, an associate in
+the treason of Radzivill. But here stands the Hector of Chenstohova, to
+whom, next to Kordetski, Yasna Gora owes most; here stands the defender
+of the country and my faithful servant, who covered me with his own
+breast and saved my life when in the pass I had fallen among the Swedes
+as among wolves. Such is this new Kmita. Know him and love him, for he
+deserves it."
+
+Volodyovski began to move his yellow mustaches, not knowing what to
+say; and the king added,--
+
+"And know that not only did he promise Prince Boguslav nothing, but he
+began on him the punishment for Radzivill intrigues, for he seized him
+and intended to give him into your hands."
+
+"And he warned us against Prince Yanush!" cried Volodyovski. "What
+angel converted you?"
+
+"Embrace each other!" said the king.
+
+"I loved you at once!" said Kmita to Volodyovski.
+
+Then they fell into each other's embraces, and the king looked on them
+and pursed out his lips with delight, time after time, as was his
+habit. But Kmita embraced the little knight with such feeling that he
+raised him as he would a cat, and not soon did he place him back on his
+feet.
+
+Then the king went to the daily council, for the two hetmans of the
+kingdom had come to Lvoff, they were to form the army there, and lead
+it later to the aid of Charnyetski, and the confederate divisions
+marching, under various leaders, throughout the country.
+
+The knights were alone.
+
+"Come to my quarters," said Volodyovski; "you will find there Pan Yan,
+Pan Stanislav, and Zagloba, who will be glad to hear what the king has
+told me. There too is Kharlamp."
+
+But Kmita approached the little knight with great disquiet on his face.
+"Did you find many people with Radzivill?" asked he.
+
+"Of officers, Kharlamp alone was there."
+
+"I do not ask about the military, but about women."
+
+"I know what you mean," answered Pan Michael, flushing somewhat.
+"Prince Boguslav took Panna Billevich to Taurogi."
+
+Kmita's face changed at once; first it was pale as a parchment, then
+purple, and again whiter than before. He did not find words at once;
+but his nostrils quivered while he was catching breath, which
+apparently failed in his breast. Then he seized his temples with both
+hands, and running through the room like a madman, began to repeat,--
+
+"Woe to me, woe, woe!"
+
+"Come! Kharlamp will tell you better, for he was present," said
+Volodyovski.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XVIII.
+
+
+When they had left the king's chamber the two knights walked on in
+silence. Volodyovski did not wish to speak; Kmita was unable to utter a
+word, for pain and rage were gnawing him. They broke through the crowds
+of people who had collected in great numbers on the streets in
+consequence of tidings that the first detachment of the Tartars
+promised by the Khan had arrived, and was to enter the city to be
+presented to the king. The little knight led on; Kmita hastened after
+him like one beside himself, with his cap pulled over his eyes and
+stumbling against men on the way.
+
+When they had come to a more spacious place Pan Michael seized Kmita by
+the wrist and said,--
+
+"Control yourself! Despair will do nothing."
+
+"I am not in despair," answered Kmita, "but I want his blood."
+
+"You may be sure to find him among the enemies of the country."
+
+"So much the better," answered Kmita, feverishly; "but even should I
+find him in a church--"
+
+"In God's name, do not commit sacrilege!" interrupted the little
+colonel, quickly.
+
+"That traitor will bring me to sin."
+
+They were silent for a time. Then Kmita asked, "Where is he now?"
+
+"Maybe in Taurogi, and maybe not. Kharlamp will know better."
+
+"Let us go."
+
+"It is not far. The squadron is outside the town, but we are here; and
+Kharlamp is with us."
+
+Then Kmita began to breathe heavily like a man going up a steep
+mountain. "I am fearfully weak yet," said he.
+
+"You need moderation all the more, since you will have to deal with
+such a knight."
+
+"I had him once, and here is what remained." Kmita pointed to the scar
+on his face.
+
+"Tell me how it was, for the king barely mentioned it."
+
+Kmita began to tell; and though he gritted his teeth, and even threw
+his cap on the ground, still his mind escaped from misfortune, and he
+calmed himself somewhat.
+
+"I knew that you were daring," said Volodyovski; "but to carry off
+Radzivill from the middle of his own squadron, I did not expect that,
+even of you."
+
+Meanwhile they arrived at the quarters. Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav,
+Zagloba, Jendzian, and Kharlamp were looking at Crimean coats made of
+sheepskin, which a trading Tartar had brought. Kharlamp, who knew Kmita
+better, recognized him at one glance of the eye, and dropping the coat
+exclaimed,--
+
+"Jesus, Mary!"
+
+"May the name of the Lord be praised!" cried Jendzian.
+
+But before all had recovered breath after the wonder, Volodyovski
+said,--
+
+"I present to you, gentlemen, the Hector of Chenstohova, the faithful
+servant of the king, who has shed his blood for the faith, the country,
+and the sovereign."
+
+When astonishment had grown still greater, the worthy Pan Michael began
+to relate with enthusiasm what he had heard from the king of Kmita's
+services, and from Pan Andrei himself of the seizure of Prince
+Boguslav; at last he finished thus,--
+
+"Not only is what Prince Boguslav told of this knight not true, but the
+prince has no greater enemy than Pan Kmita, and therefore he has taken
+Panna Billevich from Kyedani, so as to pour out on him in some way his
+vengeance."
+
+"And this cavalier has saved our lives and warned the confederates
+against Prince Yanush," cried Zagloba. "In view of such services,
+previous offences are nothing. As God lives, it is well that he came to
+us with you. Pan Michael, and not alone; it is well also that our
+squadron is outside the city, for there is a terrible hatred against
+him among the Lauda men, and before he could have uttered a syllable
+they would have cut him to pieces."
+
+"We greet you with full hearts as a brother and future comrade," said
+Pan Yan.
+
+Kharlamp seized his head.
+
+"Such men never sink," said he; "they swim out on every side, and
+besides bring glory to the shore."
+
+"Did I not tell you that?" cried Zagloba. "The minute I saw him in
+Kyedani I thought at once, 'That is a soldier, a man of courage.' And
+you remember that we fell to kissing each other straightway. It is true
+that Radzivill was ruined through me, but also through him. God
+inspired me in Billeviche not to let him be shot. Worthy gentlemen, it
+is not becoming to give a dry reception to a cavalier like him; he may
+think that we are hypocrites."
+
+When he heard this Jendzian packed off the Tartar with his coats, and
+bustled around with the servant to get drinks.
+
+But Kmita was thinking only how to hear most quickly from Kharlamp
+about the removal of Olenka.
+
+"Where were you then?" asked he.
+
+"I scarcely ever left Kyedani," answered Great Nose. "Prince Boguslav
+came to our prince voevoda. He so dressed himself for supper that one's
+eyes ached in looking at him; it was clear that Panna Billevich had
+pleased him mightily, for he was almost purring from pleasure, like a
+cat rubbed on the back. It is said that a cat repeats prayers, but if
+Boguslav prayed he was praising the devil. Oh, but he was agreeable,
+and sweet and pleasant spoken."
+
+"Let that go!" said Pan Michael, "you cause too great pain to the
+knight."
+
+"On the contrary. Speak! speak!" cried Kmita.
+
+"He said then at table," continued Kharlamp, "that it was no derogation
+even to a Radzivill to marry the daughter of a common noble, and that
+he himself would prefer such a lady to one of those princesses whom the
+King and Queen of France wished to give him, and whose names I cannot
+remember, for they sounded as when a man is calling hounds in the
+forest."
+
+"Less of that!" said Zagloba.
+
+"He said it evidently to captivate the lady; we, knowing that, began
+one after another to look and mutter, thinking truly that he was
+setting traps for the innocent."
+
+"But she? but she?" asked Kmita, feverishly.
+
+"She, like a maiden of high blood and lofty bearing, showed no
+satisfaction, did not look at him; but when Boguslav began to talk
+about you, she fixed her eyes on him quickly. It is terrible what
+happened when he said that you offered for so many ducats to seize the
+king and deliver him dead or alive to the Swedes. We thought the soul
+would go out of her; but her anger against you was so great that it
+overcame her woman's weakness. When he told with what disgust he had
+rejected your offer, she began to respect him, and look at him
+thankfully; afterward she did not withdraw her hand from him when he
+wished to escort her from the table."
+
+Kmita covered his eyes with his hands. "Strike, strike, whoso believes
+in God!" said he. Suddenly he sprang from his place. "Farewell,
+gentlemen!"
+
+"How is this? Whither?" asked Zagloba, stopping the way.
+
+"The king will give me permission; I will go and find him," said Kmita.
+
+"By God's wounds, wait! You have not yet learned all, and to find him
+there is time. With whom will you go? Where will you find him?"
+
+Kmita perhaps might not have obeyed, but strength failed him; he was
+exhausted from wounds, therefore he dropped on the bench, and resting
+his shoulders against the wall, closed his eyes. Zagloba gave him a
+glass of wine; he seized it with trembling bands, and spilling some on
+his beard and breast, drained it to the bottom.
+
+"There is nothing lost," said Pan Yan; "but the greatest prudence is
+needed, for you have an affair with a celebrated man. Through hurried
+action and sudden impulse you may ruin Panna Billevich and yourself."
+
+"Hear Kharlamp to the end," said Zagloba.
+
+Kmita gritted his teeth. "I am listening with patience."
+
+"Whether the lady went willingly I know not," said Kharlamp, "for I was
+not present at her departure. I know that the sword-bearer of Rossyeni
+protested when they urged him previously; then they shut him up in the
+barracks, and finally he was allowed to go to Billeviche without
+hindrance. The lady is in evil hands; this cannot be concealed, for
+according to what they say of the young prince no Mussulman has such
+greed of the fair sex. If any fair head strikes his eye, though she be
+married, he is ready to disregard even that."
+
+"Woe! woe!" repeated Kmita.
+
+"The scoundrel!" cried Zagloba.
+
+"But it is a wonder to me that the prince voevoda gave her to
+Boguslav," said Pan Yan.
+
+"I am not a statesman, therefore I repeat only what the officers said,
+and namely Ganhoff, who knew all the secrets of the prince; I heard
+with my own ears how some one cried out in his presence, 'Kmita will
+have nothing after our young prince!' and Ganhoff answered, 'There is
+more of politics in this removal than love. Prince Boguslav,' said he,
+'lets no one off; but if the lady resists he will not be able to treat
+her like others, in Taurogi, for a noise would be made. Yanush's
+princess is living there with her daughter; therefore Boguslav must be
+very careful, for he seeks the hand of his cousin. It will be hard for
+him to simulate virtue,' said he, 'but he must in Taurogi.'"
+
+"A stone has of course fallen from your heart," cried Zagloba, "for
+from this it is clear that nothing threatens the lady."
+
+"But why did they take her away?" cried Kmita.
+
+"It is well that you turn to me," said Zagloba, "for I reason out
+quickly more than one thing over which another would break his head for
+a whole year in vain. Why did he take her away? I do not deny that she
+must have struck his eye; but he took her away to restrain through her
+all the Billeviches, who are numerous and powerful, from rising against
+the Radzivills."
+
+"That may be!" said Kharlamp. "It is certain that in Taurogi he must
+curb himself greatly; there he cannot go to extremes."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"The prince voevoda supposed in Tykotsin that he must be at Elblang
+with the King of Sweden, to whom he had to go for reinforcements. It is
+certain that he is not in Taurogi at present, for envoys did not find
+him there."
+
+Here Kharlamp turned to Kmita. "If you wish to listen to a simple
+soldier I will tell you what I think. If any misadventure has happened
+to Panna Billevich in Taurogi, or if the prince has been able to arouse
+in her affection, you have no reason to go; but if not, if she is with
+Yanush's widow and will go with her to Courland, it will be safer there
+than elsewhere, and a better place could not be found for her in this
+whole Commonwealth, covered with the flame of war."
+
+"If you are a man of such courage as they say, and as I myself think,"
+added Pan Yan, "you have first to get Boguslav, and when you have him
+in your hands, you have all."
+
+"Where is he now?" repeated Kmita, turning to Kharlamp.
+
+"I have told you already," answered Great Nose, "but you are forgetful
+from sorrow; I suppose that he is in Elblang, and certainly will take
+the field with Karl Gustav against Charnyetski."
+
+"You will do best if you go with us to Charnyetski, for in this way you
+will soon meet Boguslav," said Volodyovski.
+
+"I thank you, gentlemen, for kindly advice," cried Kmita. And he began
+to take hasty farewell of all, and they did not detain him, knowing
+that a suffering man is not good for the cup or for converse; but Pan
+Michael said,--
+
+"I will attend you to the archbishop's palace, for you are so reduced
+that you may fall somewhere on the street."
+
+"And I!" said Pan Yan.
+
+"Then we will all go!" put in Zagloba.
+
+They girded on their sabres, put on warm burkas, and went out. On the
+streets there were still more people than before. Every moment the
+knights met groups of armed nobles, soldiers, servants of magnates and
+nobles, Armenians, Jews, Wallachians, Russian peasants from the suburbs
+burned during the two attacks of Hmelnitski.
+
+Merchants were standing before their shops; the windows of the houses
+were filled with heads of curious people. All were repeating that the
+chambul had come, and would soon march through the city to be presented
+to the king. Every living person wished to see that chambul, for it was
+a great rarity to look on Tartars marching in peace through the streets
+of a city. In other temper had Lvoff seen these guests hitherto; the
+city had seen them only beyond the walls, in the form of impenetrable
+clouds on the background of flaming suburbs and neighboring villages.
+Now they were to march in as allies against Sweden. Our knights were
+barely able to open a way for themselves through the throng. Every
+moment there were cries; "They are coming, they are coming!" People ran
+from street to street, and were packed in such masses that not a step
+forward was possible.
+
+"Ha!" said Zagloba, "let us stop a little, Pan Michael. They will
+remind us of the near past, for we did not look sidewise but straight
+into the eyes of these bull-drivers. And I too have been in captivity
+among them. They say that the future Khan is as much like me as one cup
+is like another. But why talk of past follies?"
+
+"They are coming, they are coming!" cried the people again.
+
+"God has changed the hearts of the dog-brothers," continued Zagloba,
+"so that instead of ravaging the Russian borders they come to aid us.
+This is a clear miracle! For I tell you that if for every pagan whom
+this old hand has sent to hell, one of my sins had been forgiven, I
+should be canonized now, and people would have to fast on the eve of my
+festival, or I should have been swept up living to heaven in a chariot
+of fire."
+
+"And do you remember," asked Volodyovski, "how it was with them when
+they were returning from the Valadynka from Rashkoff to Zbaraj?"
+
+"Of course I do, Pan Michael; but somehow you fell into a hole, and I
+chased through the thick wood to the high-road. And when we came back
+to find you, the knights could not restrain their astonishment, for at
+each bush lay a dead beast of a Tartar."
+
+Pan Volodyovski remembered that at the time in question it was just the
+opposite; but he said nothing, for he was wonderfully astonished, and
+before he could recover breath voices were shouting for the tenth time;
+"They are coming, they are coming!"
+
+The shout became general; then there was silence, and all heads were
+turned in the direction from which the chambul was to come. Now
+piercing music was heard in the distance, the crowds began to open from
+the middle of the street toward the walls of the houses, and from the
+end appeared the first Tartar horsemen.
+
+"See! they have a band even; that is uncommon with Tartars!"
+
+"They wish to make the best impression," said Pan Yan; "but still some
+chambuls after they have lived long in camp, have their own musicians.
+That must be a choice body."
+
+Meanwhile the horsemen had come up and begun to ride past. In front on
+a pied horse sat a Tartar holding two pipes in his mouth, and as tawny
+as if he had been dried and smoked. Bending his head backward and
+closing his eyes, he ran his fingers over those pipes, obtaining from
+them notes squeaking, sharp, and so quick that the ear could barely
+catch them. After him rode two others holding staffs furnished at the
+ends with brass rattles, and they were shaking these rattles as if in
+frenzy; farther back some were making shrill sounds with brass plates,
+some were beating drums, while others were playing in Cossack fashion
+on teorbans; and all, with the exception of the pipers were singing, or
+rather howling, from moment to moment, a wild song, at the same time
+showing their teeth and rolling their eyes. After that chaotic music,
+which went like a brawl past the dwellers in Lvoff, clattered horses
+four abreast; the whole party was made up of about four hundred men.
+
+This was in fact a chosen body, as a specimen, and to do honor to the
+King of Poland, for his own use, and as an earnest sent by the Khan.
+They were led by Akbah Ulan, of the Dobrudja, therefore of the
+sturdiest Tartars in battle, an old and experienced warrior, greatly
+respected in the Uluses (Tartar villages), because of his bravery and
+severity. He rode between the music and the rest of the party, dressed
+in a shuba of rose-colored velvet, but greatly faded, and too narrow
+for his powerful person; it was lined with tattered marten-skin, he
+held in front of him a baton, like those used by Cossack colonels. His
+red face had become blue from the cold wind, and he swayed somewhat on
+his lofty saddle; from one moment to another he looked from side to
+side, or turned his face around to his Tartars, as if not perfectly
+sure that they could restrain themselves at sight of the crowds, the
+women, the children, the open shops, the rich goods, and that they
+would not rush with a shout at those wonders.
+
+But they rode on quietly, like dogs led by chains and fearing the lash,
+and only from their gloomy and greedy glances might it be inferred what
+was passing in the souls of those barbarians. The crowds gazed on them
+with curiosity, though almost with hostility, so great in those parts
+of the Commonwealth was hatred of the Pagan. From time to time cries
+were heard: "Ahu! ahu!" as if at wolves. Still there were some who
+expected much from them.
+
+"The Swedes have a terrible fear of the Tartars, and the soldiers tell
+wonders of them, from which their fear increases," said some, looking
+at the Tartars.
+
+"And justly," answered others. "It is not for the cavalry of Karl to
+war with the Tartars, who, especially those of the Dobrudja, are equal
+sometimes to our cavalry. Before a Swedish horseman can look around,
+the Tartar will have him on a lariat."
+
+"It is a sin to call sons of Pagans to aid us," said some voice.
+
+"Sin or no sin, they will serve us."
+
+"A very decent chambul!" said Zagloba.
+
+Really the Tartars were well dressed in white, black, and party-colored
+sheepskin coats, the wool on the outside; black bows, and quivers full
+of arrows were shaking on their shoulders; each had besides a sabre,
+which was not always the case in large chambuls, for the poorest were
+not able to obtain such a luxury, using in hand-to-hand conflict a
+horse-skull fastened to a club. But these were men, as was said, to be
+exhibited; therefore some of them had even muskets in felt cases, and
+all were sitting on good horses, small, it is true, rather lean and
+short, with long forelocks on their faces, but of incomparable
+swiftness.
+
+In the centre of the party went also four camels: the crowd concluded
+that in their packs were presents from the Khan to the king; but in
+that they were mistaken, for the Khan chose to take gifts, not give
+them; he promised, it is true, reinforcements, but not for nothing.
+
+When they had passed, Zagloba said: "That aid will cost dear. Though
+allies, they will ruin the country. After the Swedes and them, there
+will not be one sound roof in the Commonwealth."
+
+"It is sure that they are terribly grievous allies," said Pan Yan.
+
+"I have heard on the road," said Pan Michael, "that the king has made a
+treaty, that to every five hundred of the horde is to be given one of
+our officers, who is to have command and the right of punishment.
+Otherwise these friends would leave only heaven and earth behind them."
+
+"But this is a small chambul; what will the king do with it?"
+
+"The Khan sent them to be placed at the disposal of the king almost as
+a gift; and though he will make account of them, still the king can do
+what he likes with them, and undoubtedly he will send them with us to
+Charnyetski."
+
+"Well, Charnyetski will be able to keep them in bounds."
+
+"Not unless he is among them, otherwise they will plunder. It cannot
+be, but they will give them an officer at once."
+
+"And will he lead them? But what will that big Aga do?"
+
+"If he does not meet a fool, he will carry out orders."
+
+"Farewell, gentlemen!" cried Kmita, on a sudden.
+
+"Whither in such haste?"
+
+"To fall at the king's feet, and ask him to give me command of these
+people."
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XIX.
+
+
+That same day Akbah Ulan beat with his forehead to the king, and
+delivered to him letters of the Khan in which the latter repeated his
+promise of moving with one hundred thousand of the horde against the
+Swedes, when forty thousand thalers were paid him in advance, and when
+the first grass was on the fields, without which, in a country so
+ruined by war, it would be difficult to maintain such a great number of
+horses. As to that small chambul, the Khan had sent it to his "dearest
+brother" as a proof of his favor, so that the Cossacks, who were still
+thinking of disobedience, might have an evident sign that this favor
+endures steadily, and let but the first sound of rebellion reach the
+ears of the Khan, his vengeful anger will fall on all Cossacks.
+
+The king received Akbah Ulan affably, and presenting him with a
+beautiful steed, said that he would send him soon to Pan Charnyetski in
+the field, for he wished to convince the Swedes by facts, that the Khan
+was giving aid to the Commonwealth. The eyes of the Tartar glittered
+when he heard of service under Charnyetski; for knowing him from the
+time of former wars in the Ukraine, he, in common with all the Agas,
+admired him.
+
+But he was less pleased with the part of the Khan's letter which asked
+the king to attach to the chambul an officer, who knew the country
+well, who would lead the party and restrain the men, and also Akbah
+Ulan himself from plunder and excesses. Akbah Ulan would have preferred
+certainly not to have such a patron over him; but since the will of the
+Khan and the king were explicit, he merely beat with his forehead once
+more, hiding carefully his vexation, and perhaps promising in his soul
+that not he would bow down before that patron, but the patron before
+him.
+
+Barely had the Tartar gone out, and the senators withdrawn, when Kmita,
+who had an audience at once, fell at the feet of the king, and said,--
+
+"Gracious Lord! I am not worthy of the favor for which I ask, but I set
+as much by it as by life itself. Permit me to take command over these
+Tartars and move to the field with them at once."
+
+"I do not refuse," answered the astonished Yan Kazimir, "for a better
+leader it would be difficult to find. A cavalier of great daring and
+resolve is needed to hold them in check, or they will begin straightway
+to burn and murder our people. To this only am I firmly opposed, that
+you go tomorrow, before your flesh has healed from the wounds made by
+Swedish rapiers."
+
+"I feel that as soon as the wind blows around me in the field, my
+weakness will pass, and strength will enter me again; as to the
+Tartars, I will manage them and bend them into soft wax."
+
+"But why in such haste? Whither are you going?"
+
+"Against the Swedes, Gracious Lord; I have nothing to wait for here,
+since what I wanted I have, that is your favor and pardon for my former
+offences. I will go to Charnyetski with Volodyovski, or I will attack
+the enemy separately, as I did once Hovanski, and I trust in God that I
+shall have success."
+
+"It must be that something else is drawing you to the field."
+
+"I will confess as to a father, and open my whole soul. Prince
+Boguslav, not content with the calumny which he cast on me, has taken
+that maiden from Kyedani and confined her in Taurogi, or worse, for he
+is attacking her honesty, her virtue, her honor as a woman. Gracious
+Lord! the reason is confused in my head, when I think in what hands the
+poor girl is at present. By the passion of the Lord! these wounds pain
+less. That maiden thinks to this moment that I offered that damned
+soul, that arch-cur to raise hands on your Royal Grace--and she holds
+me the lowest of all the degenerate. I cannot endure, I am not able to
+endure, till I find her, till I free her. Give me those Tartars and I
+swear that I will not do my own work alone, but I will crush so many
+Swedes that the court of this castle might be paved with their skulls."
+
+"Calm yourself," said the king.
+
+"If I had to leave service and the defence of majesty and the
+Commonwealth for my own cause, it would be a shame for me to ask, but
+here one unites with the other. The time has come to beat the Swedes, I
+will do nothing else. The time has come to hunt a traitor; I will hunt
+him to Livland, to Courland, and even as far as the Northerners, or
+beyond the sea to Sweden, should he hide there."
+
+"We have information that Boguslav will move very soon with Karl, from
+Elblang."
+
+"Then I will go to meet them."
+
+"With such a small chambul? They will cover you with a cap."
+
+"Hovanski, with eighty thousand, was covering me, but he did not
+succeed."
+
+"All the loyal army is under Charnyetski. They will strike Charnyetski
+first of all."
+
+"I will go to Charnyetski. It is needful to give him aid the more
+quickly."
+
+"You will go to Charnyetski, but to Taurogi with such a small number
+you cannot go. Radzivill delivered all the castles in Jmud to the
+enemy, and Swedish garrisons are stationed everywhere; but Taurogi, it
+seems to me, is somewhere on the boundary of Prussia?"
+
+"On the very boundary of Electoral Prussia, but on our side, and twenty
+miles from Tyltsa. Wherever I have to go, I will go, and not only will
+I not lose men, but crowds of daring soldiers will gather to me on the
+road. And consider this, Gracious Lord, that wherever I show myself the
+whole neighborhood will mount against the Swedes. First, I will rouse
+Jmud, if no one else does it. What place may not be reached now, when
+the whole country is boiling like water in a pot? I am accustomed to be
+in a boil."
+
+"But you do not think of this,--perhaps the Tartars will not like to go
+so far with you."
+
+"Only let them not like! only let them try not to like," said Kmita,
+gritting his teeth at the very thought, "as there are four hundred,
+or whatever number there is of them, I'll have all four hundred
+hanged--there will be no lack of trees! Just let them try to rebel
+against me."
+
+"Yandrek!" cried the king, falling into good humor and pursing his
+lips, "as God is dear to me, I cannot find a better shepherd for those
+lambs! Take them and lead them wherever it pleases thee most."
+
+"I give thanks, Gracious Lord!" said the knight, pressing the knees of
+the king.
+
+"When do you wish to start?" asked Yan Kazimir.
+
+"God willing, to-morrow."
+
+"Maybe Akbah Ulan will not be ready, because his horses are
+road-weary."
+
+"Then I will have him lashed to a saddle with a lariat, and he will go
+on foot if he spares his horse."
+
+"I see that you will get on with him. Still use mild measures while
+possible. But now, Yendrek, it is late; to-morrow I wish to see you
+again. Meanwhile take this ring, tell your royalist lady that you have
+it from the king, and tell her that the king commands her to love
+firmly his faithful servant and defender."
+
+"God grant me," said the young hero, with tears in his eyes, "not to
+die save in defence of your Royal Grace!"
+
+Here the king withdrew, for it was already late; and Kmita went to his
+own quarters to prepare for the road, and think what to begin, and
+whither he ought to go first.
+
+He remembered the words of Kharlamp, that should it appear that
+Boguslav was not in Taurogi it would really be better to leave the
+maiden there, for from Taurogi being near the boundary, it was easy to
+take refuge in Tyltsa, under care of the elector. Moreover, though the
+Swedes had abandoned in his last need the voevoda of Vilna, it was
+reasonable to expect that they would have regard for his widow; hence,
+if Olenka was under her care, no evil could meet her. If they had gone
+to Courland, that was still better. "And to Courland I cannot go with
+my Tartars," said Kmita to himself, "for that is another State."
+
+He walked then, and worked with his head. Hour followed hour, but he
+did not think yet of rest; and the thought of his new expedition so
+cheered him, that though that day he was weak in the morning, he felt
+now that his strength was returning, and he was ready to mount in a
+moment.
+
+The servants at last had finished tying the saddle-straps and were
+preparing to sleep, when all at once some one began to scratch at the
+door of the room.
+
+"Who is there?" asked Kmita. Then to his attendant, "Go and see!"
+
+He went, and after he had spoken to some one outside the door, he
+returned.
+
+"Some soldier wants to see your grace greatly. He says that his name is
+Soroka."
+
+"By the dear God! let him in," called Kmita. And without waiting for
+the attendant to carry out the order, he sprang to the door. "Come in,
+dear Soroka! come hither!"
+
+The soldier entered the room, and with his first movement wished to
+fall at the feet of his colonel, for he was a friend and a servant as
+faithful as he was attached; but soldierly subordination carried the
+day, therefore he stood erect and said,--
+
+"At the orders of your grace!"
+
+"Be greeted, dear comrade, be greeted!" said Kmita, with emotion. "I
+thought they had cut you to pieces in Chenstohova." And he pressed
+Soroka's head, then began to shake him, which he could do without
+lowering himself too much, for Soroka was descended from village
+nobility.
+
+Then the old sergeant fell to embracing Kmita's knees.
+
+"Whence do you come?" asked Kmita.
+
+"From Chenstohova."
+
+"And you were looking for me?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"And from whom did you learn that I was alive?"
+
+"From Kuklinovski's men. The prior, Kordetski, celebrated High Mass
+from delight, in thanksgiving to God. Then there was a report that Pan
+Babinich had conducted the king through the mountains; so I knew that
+that was your grace, no one else."
+
+"And Father Kordetski is well?"
+
+"Well; only it is unknown whether the angels will not take him alive to
+heaven any day, for he is a saint."
+
+"Surely he is nothing else. Where did you discover that I came with the
+king to Lvoff?"
+
+"I thought, since you conducted the king you must be near him; but I
+was afraid that your grace might move to the field and that I should be
+late."
+
+"To-morrow I go with the Tartars."
+
+"Then it has happened well, for I bring your grace two full belts, one
+which I wore and the other you carried, and besides, those precious
+stones which we took from the caps of boyars, and those which your
+grace took when we seized the treasury of Hovanski."
+
+"Those were good times when we gathered in wealth; but there cannot be
+much of it now, for I left a good bit with Father Kordetski."
+
+"I do not know how much, but the prior himself said that two good
+villages might be bought with it."
+
+Then Soroka drew near the table, and began to remove the belts from his
+body. "And the stones are in this canteen," added he, putting the
+canteen near the belts.
+
+Kmita made no reply, but shook in his hand some gold ducats without
+counting them, and said to the sergeant,--
+
+"Take these!"
+
+"I fall at the feet of your grace. Ei, if I had had  on the road one
+such ducat!"
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"Because I am terribly weak. There are few places now where they will
+give one morsel of bread to a man, for all are afraid; and at last I
+barely dragged my feet forward from hunger."
+
+"By the dear God! but you had all this with you!"
+
+"I dared not use it without leave."
+
+"Take this!" said Kmita, giving him another handful. Then he cried to
+the servants,--
+
+"Now, scoundrels, give him to eat in less time than a man might say
+'Our Father,' or I'll take your heads!"
+
+They sprang one in front of another, and in little while there was an
+enormous dish of smoked sausage before Soroka, and a flask of vodka.
+The soldier fastened his eyes greedily on the food, and his lips and
+mustaches were quivering; but he dared not sit in presence of the
+colonel.
+
+"Sit down, eat!" commanded Kmita.
+
+Kmita had barely spoken when a dry sausage was crunching between the
+powerful jaws of Soroka. The two attendants looked on him with
+protruding eyes.
+
+"Be off!" cried Kmita.
+
+They sprang out with all breath through the door; out the knight walked
+with hasty steps up and down the room, not wishing to interrupt his
+faithful servant. But he, as often as he poured out a glass of vodka,
+looked sidewise at the colonel, fearing to find a frown; then he
+emptied the glass and turned toward the wall.
+
+Kmita walked, walked; at last he began to speak to himself. "It cannot
+be otherwise!" muttered he; "it is needful to send him. I will give
+orders to tell her--No use, she will not believe! She will not read a
+letter, for she holds me a traitor and a dog. Let him not come in her
+way, but let him see and tell me what is taking place there."
+
+Then he said on a sudden; "Soroka!"
+
+The soldier sprang up so quickly that he came near overturning the
+table, and straightened as straight as a string.
+
+"According to order!"
+
+"You are an honest man, and in need you are cunning. You will go on a
+long road, but not on a hungry one."
+
+"According to order!"
+
+"To Tyltsa, on the Prussian border. There Panna Billevich is living in
+the castle of Boguslav Radzivill. You will learn if the prince is
+there, and have an eye on everything. Do not try to see Panna
+Billevich, but should a meeting happen of itself, tell her, and swear
+that I brought the king through the mountains, and that I am near his
+person. She will surely not give you credit; for the prince has defamed
+me, saying that I wished to attempt the life of the king,--which is a
+lie befitting a dog."
+
+"According to order!"
+
+"Do not try to see her, as I have said, for she will not believe you.
+But if you meet by chance, tell her what you know. Look at every thing,
+and listen! But take care of yourself, for if the prince is there and
+recognizes you, or if any one from his court recognizes you, you will
+be impaled on a stake. I would send old Kyemlich, but he is in the
+other world, slain in the pass, and his sons are too dull. They will go
+with me. Have you been in Tyltsa?"
+
+"I have not, your grace."
+
+"You will go to Shchuchyn, thence along the Prussian boundary to
+Tyltsa. Taurogi is twenty miles distant from Tyltsa and opposite, on
+our side. Stay in Taurogi till you have seen everything, then come to
+me. You will find me where I shall be. Ask for the Tartars and Pan
+Babinich. And now go to sleep with the Kyemliches. To-morrow for the
+road."
+
+After these words, Soroka went out. Kmita did not lie down to sleep for
+a long time, but at last weariness overcame him; then he threw himself
+on the bed, and slept a stone sleep.
+
+Next morning he rose greatly refreshed and stronger than the day
+before. The whole court was already on foot, and the usual activity had
+begun. Kmita went first to the chancellery, for his commission and
+safe-conduct; he visited Suba Gazi Bey, chief of the Khan's embassy in
+Lvoff, and had a long conversation with him.
+
+During that conversation Pan Andrei put his hand twice in his purse; so
+that when he was going out Suba Gazi Bey changed caps with him, gave
+him a baton of green feathers and some yards of an equally green cord
+of silk.
+
+Armed in this fashion, Pan Andrei returned to the king, who had just
+come from Mass; then the young man fell once more at the knees of the
+sovereign; after that he went, together with the Kyemliches and his
+attendants, directly to the place where Akbah Ulan was quartered with
+his chambul.
+
+At sight of him the old Tartar put his hand to his forehead, his mouth,
+and his breast; but learning who Kmita was and why he had come, he grew
+severe at once; his face became gloomy, and was veiled with
+haughtiness.
+
+"And the king has sent you to me as a guide," said he to Kmita, in
+broken Russian; "you will show me the road, though I should be able to
+go myself wherever it is needed, and you are young and inexperienced."
+
+"He indicates in advance what I am to be," thought Kmita, "but I will
+be polite to him as long as I can." Then he said aloud: "Akbah Ulan,
+the king has sent me here as a chief, not as a guide. And I tell you
+this, that you will do better not to oppose the will of his grace."
+
+"The Khan makes appointments over the Tartars, not the king," answered
+Akbah Ulan.
+
+"Akbah Ulan," repeated Kmita, with emphasis, "the Khan has made a
+present of thee to the king, as he would a dog or a falcon; therefore
+show no disrespect to him, lest thou be tied like a dog with a rope."
+
+"Allah!" cried the astonished Tartar.
+
+"Hei! have a care that thou anger me not!" said Kmita.
+
+Akbah Ulan's eyes became bloodshot. For a time he could not utter a
+word; the veins on his neck were swollen, his hands sought his dagger.
+
+"I'll bite, I'll bite!" said he, with stifled voice.
+
+But Pan Andrei, though he had promised to be polite, had had  enough,
+for by nature he was very excitable. In one moment therefore something
+struck him as if a serpent had stung; he seized the Tartar by the thin
+beard with his whole hand, and pushing back his head as if he wished to
+show him something on the ceiling, he began to talk through his set
+teeth.
+
+"Hear me, son of a goat! Thou wouldst like to have no one above thee,
+so as to burn, rob, and slaughter! Thou wouldst have me as guide! Here
+is thy guide! thou hast a guide!" And thrusting him to the wall, he
+began to pound his head against a corner of it.
+
+He let him go at last, completely stunned, but not looking for his
+knife now. Kmita, following the impulse of his hot blood, discovered
+the best method of convincing Oriental people accustomed to slavery;
+for in the pounded head of the Tartar, in spite of all the rage which
+was stifling him, the thought gleamed at once how powerful and
+commanding must that knight be who could act in this manner with him,
+Akbah Ulan; and with his bloody lips he repeated three times,--
+
+"Bagadyr (hero), Bagadyr, Bagadyr!"
+
+Kmita meanwhile placed on his own head the cap of Suba Grazi, drew
+forth the green baton, which he had kept behind his belt of purpose
+till that moment, and said,--
+
+"Look at these, slave! and these!"
+
+"Allah!" exclaimed the astonished Ulan.
+
+"And here!" added Kmita, taking the cord from his pocket.
+
+But Akbah Ulan was already lying at his feet, and striking the floor
+with his forehead.
+
+An hour later the Tartars were marching out in a long line over the
+road from Lvoff to Vyelki Ochi; and Kmita, sitting on a valiant
+chestnut steed which the king had given him, drove along the chambul as
+a shepherd dog drives sheep. Akbah Ulan looked at the young hero with
+wonder and fear.
+
+The Tartars, who were judges of warriors, divined at the first glance
+that under that leader there would be no lack of blood and plunder, and
+went willingly with singing and music.
+
+And Kmita's heart swelled within him when he looked at those forms,
+resembling beasts of the wilderness; for they were dressed in sheepskin
+and camel-skin coats with the wool outside. The wave of wild heads
+shook with the movements of the horses; he counted them, and was
+thinking how much he could undertake with that force.
+
+"It is a peculiar body," thought he, "and it seems to me as if I were
+leading a pack of wolves; and with such men precisely would it be
+possible to run through the whole Commonwealth, and trample all
+Prussia. Wait awhile, Prince Boguslav!"
+
+Here boastful thoughts began to flow into his head, for he was inclined
+greatly to boastfulness.
+
+"God has given man adroitness," said he to himself; "yesterday I had
+only the two Kyemliches, but to-day four hundred horses are clattering
+behind me. Only let the dance begin; I shall have a thousand or two of
+such roisterers as my old comrades would not be ashamed of. Wait a
+while, Boguslav!"
+
+But after a moment he added, to quiet his own conscience: "And I shall
+serve also the king and the country."
+
+He fell into excellent humor. This too pleased him greatly, that
+nobles, Jews, peasants, even large crowds of general militia, could not
+guard themselves from fear in the first moment at sight of his Tartars.
+And there was a fog, for the thaw had filled the air with a vapor. It
+happened then every little while that some one rode up near, and seeing
+all at once whom they had before them, cried out,--
+
+"The word is made flesh!"
+
+"Jesus! Mary! Joseph!"
+
+"The Tartars! the horde!"
+
+But the Tartars passed peacefully the equipages, loaded wagons, herds
+of horses and travellers. It would have been different had the leader
+permitted, but they dared not undertake anything of their own will, for
+they had seen how at starting Akbah Ulan had held the stirrup of that
+leader.
+
+Now Lvoff had vanished in the distance beyond the mist. The Tartars had
+ceased to sing, and the chambul moved slowly amid the clouds of steam
+rising from the horses. All at once the tramp of a horse was heard
+behind. In a moment two horsemen appeared. One of them was Pan Michael,
+the other was the tenant of Vansosh; both, passing the chambul, pushed
+straight to Kmita.
+
+"Stop! stop!" cried the little knight.
+
+Kmita held in his horse. "Is that you?"
+
+Pan Michael reined in his horse. "With the forehead!" said he, "letters
+from the king: one to you, the other to the voevoda of Vityebsk."
+
+"I am going to Pan Charnyetski, not to Sapyeha."
+
+"But read the letter."
+
+Kmita broke the seal and read as follows:--
+
+
+We learn through a courier just arrived from the voevoda of Vityebsk
+that he cannot march hither to Little Poland, and is turning back again
+to Podlyasye, because Prince Boguslav, who is not with the King of
+Sweden, has planned to fall upon Tykotsin and Pan Sapyeha. And since he
+must leave a great part of his troops in garrisons, we order you to go
+to his assistance with that Tartar chambul. And since your own wish is
+thus gratified, we need not urge you to hasten. The other letter you
+will give to the voevoda; in it we commend Pan Babinich, our faithful
+servant, to the good will of the voevoda, and above all to the
+protection of God.            YAN KAZIMIR, _King_.
+
+
+"By the dear God! by the dear God! This is happy news for me!" cried
+Kmita. "I know not how to thank the king and you for it."
+
+"I offered myself to come," said the little knight, "out of compassion,
+for I saw your pain; I came so that the letters might reach you
+surely."
+
+"When did the courier arrive?"
+
+"We were with the king at dinner,--I, Pan Yan, Pan Stanislav, Kharlamp,
+and Zagloba. You cannot imagine what Zagloba told there about the
+carelessness of Sapyeha, and his own services. It is enough that the
+king cried from continual laughter, and both hetmans were holding their
+sides all the time. At last the chamber servant came with a letter;
+when the king burst out, 'Go to the hangman, maybe evil news will spoil
+my fun!' When he learned that it was from Pan Sapyeha, he began to read
+it. Indeed he read evil news, for that was confirmed which had long
+been discussed; the elector had broken all his oaths, and against his
+own rightful sovereign had joined the King of Sweden at last."
+
+"Another enemy, as if there were few of them hitherto!" cried Kmita;
+and he folded his hands. "Great God! only let Pan Sapyeha send me for a
+week to Prussia, and God the Merciful grant that ten generations will
+remember me and my Tartars."
+
+"Perhaps you will go there," said Pan Michael; "but first you must
+defeat Boguslav, for as a result of that treason of the elector is he
+furnished with men and permitted to go to Podlyasye."
+
+"Then we shall meet, as to-day is to-day; as God is in heaven, so shall
+we meet," cried Kmita, with flashing eyes. "If you had brought me the
+appointment of voevoda of Vilna, it would not have given me more
+pleasure."
+
+"The king too cried at once; 'There is an expedition ready for Yendrek,
+from which the soul will rejoice in him.' He wanted to send his servant
+after you, but I said I will go myself, I will take farewell of him
+once more."
+
+Kmita bent on his horse, and seized the little knight in his embrace.
+
+"A brother would not have done for me what you have done! God grant me
+to thank you in some way."
+
+"Tfu! Did not I want to shoot you?"
+
+"I deserved nothing better. Never mind! May I be slain in the first
+battle if in all knighthood I love a man more than I love you."
+
+Then they began to embrace again at parting, and Volodyovski said,--
+
+"Be careful with Boguslav, be careful, for it is no easy matter with
+him."
+
+"For one of us death is written. Ei! if you who are a genius at the
+sabre could discover your secrets to me. But there is no time. As it
+is, may the angels help me; and I will see his blood, or my eyes will
+close forever on the light of day."
+
+"God aid you! A lucky journey, and give angelica to those traitors of
+Prussians!" said Volodyovski.
+
+"Be sure on that point. The disgusting Lutherans!"
+
+Here Volodyovski nodded to Jendzian, who during this time was talking
+to Akbah Ulan, explaining the former successes of Kmita over Hovanski.
+And both rode back to Lvoff.
+
+Then Kmita turned his chambul on the spot, as a driver turns his wagon,
+and went straight toward the north.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XX.
+
+
+Though the Tartars, and especially those of the Dobrudja, knew how to
+stand breast to breast against armed men in the field, their most
+cherished warfare was the slaughter of defenceless people, the seizing
+of women and peasants captive, and above all, plunder. The road was
+very bitter therefore to that chambul which Kmita led, for under
+his iron hand these wild warriors had to become lambs, keep their
+knives in the sheaths, and the quenched tinder and coiled ropes in
+their saddle-bags. They murmured at first.
+
+Near Tarnogrod a few remained behind of purpose to let free the "red
+birds" in Hmyelevsk and to frolic with the women. But Kmita, who had
+pushed on toward Tomashov, returned at sight of the first gleam of
+fire, and commanded the guilty to hang the guilty. And he had gained
+such control of Akbah Ulan, that the old Tartar not only did not
+resist, but he urged the condemned to hang quickly, or the "bogadyr"
+would be angry. Thenceforth "the lambs" marched quietly, crowding more
+closely together through the villages and towns, lest suspicion might
+fall on them. And the execution, though Kmita carried it out so
+severely, did not rouse even ill will or hatred against him; such
+fortune had that fighter that his subordinates felt just as much love
+for him as they did fear.
+
+It is true that Pan Andrei permitted no one to wrong them. The country
+had been terribly ravaged by the recent attack of Hmelnitski and
+Sheremetyeff; therefore it was as difficult to find provisions and
+pasture as before harvest, and besides, everything had to be in time
+and in plenty; in Krinitsi, where the townspeople offered resistance
+and would not furnish supplies, Pan Andrei ordered that some of them be
+beaten with sticks, and the under-starosta he stretched out with the
+blow of a whirlbat.
+
+This delighted the horde immensely, and hearing with pleasure the
+uproar of the beaten people, they said among themselves,--
+
+"Ei! our Babinich is a falcon; he lets no man offend his lambs."
+
+It is enough that not only did they not grow thin, but the men and
+horses improved in condition. Old Ulan, whose stomach had expanded,
+looked with growing wonder on the young hero and clicked with his
+tongue.
+
+"If Allah were to give me a son, I should like such a one. I should not
+die of hunger in my old age in the Ulus," repeated he.
+
+But Kmita from time to time struck him on the stomach and said,--
+
+"Here listen, wild boar! If the Swedes do not open your paunch, you
+will hide the contents of all cupboards inside it."
+
+"Where are the Swedes? Our ropes will rot, our bows will be mildewed,"
+answered Ulan, who was homesick for war.
+
+They were advancing indeed through a country to which a Swedish foot
+had not been able to come, but farther they would pass through one in
+which there had been garrisons afterward driven out by confederates.
+They met everywhere smaller and larger bands of armed nobles, marching
+in various directions, and not smaller bands of peasants, who more than
+once stopped the road to them threateningly, and to whom it was often
+difficult to explain that they had to do with friends and servants of
+the King of Poland.
+
+They came at last to Zamost. The Tartars were amazed at sight of this
+mighty fortress; but what did they think when told that not long before
+it had stopped the whole power of Hmelnitski?
+
+Pan Zamoyski, the owner by inheritance, permitted them as a mark of
+great affection and favor to enter the town. They were admitted through
+a brick gate, while the other two were stone. Kmita himself did not
+expect to see anything similar, and he could not recover from
+astonishment at sight of the broad streets, built in straight lines,
+Italian fashion; at sight of the splendid college, and the academy, the
+castle, walls, the great cannon and every kind of provision. As few
+among magnates could be compared with the grandson of the great
+chancellor, so there were few fortresses that could be compared with
+Zamost.
+
+But the greatest ecstasy seized the Tartars, when they saw the Armenian
+part of the town. Their nostrils drew in greedily the odor of morocco,
+a great manufacture of which was carried on by industrial immigrants
+from Kaffa; and their eyes laughed at sight of the dried fruits and
+confectionery, Eastern carpets, girdles, inlaid sabres, daggers, bows,
+Turkish lamps, and every kind of costly article.
+
+The cup-bearer of the kingdom himself pleased Kmita's heart greatly, he
+was a genuine kinglet in that Zamost of his; a man in the strength of
+his years, of fine presence though lacking somewhat robustness, for he
+had not restrained sufficiently the ardors of nature in early years. He
+had always loved the fair sex, but his health had not been shaken to
+that degree that joyousness had vanished from his face. So far he had
+not married, and though the most renowned houses in the Commonwealth
+had opened wide their doors, he asserted that he could not find in them
+a sufficiently beautiful maiden. He found her somewhat later, in the
+person of a young French lady, who though in love with another gave him
+her hand without hesitation, not foreseeing that the first one,
+disregarded, would adorn in the future his own and her head with a
+kingly crown.
+
+The lord of Zamost was not distinguished for quick wit, though he had
+enough for his own use. He did not strive for dignities and offices,
+though they came to him of themselves; and when his friends reproached
+him with a lack of native ambition, he answered,--"It is not true that
+I lack it, for I have more than those who bow down. Why should I wear
+out the thresholds of the court? In Zamost I am not only Yan Zamoyski,
+but Sobiepan Zamoyski,"[4] with which name he was very well pleased. He
+was glad to affect simple manners, though he had received a refined
+education and had passed his youth in journeys through foreign lands.
+He spoke of himself as a common noble, and spoke emphatically of the
+moderateness of his station, perhaps so that others might contradict
+him, and perhaps so that they might not notice his medium wit. On the
+whole he was an honorable man, and a better son of the Commonwealth
+than many others.
+
+And as he came near Kmita's heart, so did Kmita please him; therefore
+he invited Pan Andrei to the chambers of the castle and entertained
+him, for he loved this also, that men should exalt his hospitality.
+
+Pan Andrei came to know in the castle many noted persons; above all,
+Princess Griselda Vishnyevetski, sister of Pan Zamoyski and widow of
+the great Yeremi,--a man who in his time was well-nigh the greatest in
+the Commonwealth, who nevertheless had lost his whole immense fortune
+in the time of the Cossack incursion, so that the princess was now
+living at Zamost, on the bounty of her brother Yan.
+
+But that lady was so full of grandeur, of majesty and virtue, that her
+brother was the first to blow away the dust from before her; and
+moreover he feared her like fire. There was no case in which he did not
+gratify her wishes, nor an affair the most important concerning which
+he did not advise with her. The people of the castle said that the
+princess ruled Zamost, the army, the treasury, and her brother; but she
+did not wish to take advantage of her preponderance, being given with
+her whole soul to grief for her husband and to the education of her
+son.
+
+That son had recently returned for a short time from the court of
+Vienna and was living with her. He was a youth in the springtime of
+life; but in vain did Kmita seek in him those marks which the son of
+the great Yeremi should bear in his features.
+
+The figure of the young prince was graceful; but he had a large, full
+face, and protruding eyes with a timid look; he had coarse lips, moist,
+as with people inclined to pleasures of the table; an immense growth of
+hair, black as a raven's wing, fell to his shoulders. He inherited from
+his father only that raven hair and dark complexion.
+
+Pan Andrei was assured by those who were more intimate with the prince
+that he had a noble soul, unusual understanding, and a remarkable
+memory, thanks to which he was able to speak almost all languages; and
+that a certain heaviness of body and temperament with a native greed
+for food were the only defects of that otherwise remarkable young man.
+
+In fact, after he had entered into conversation with him Pan Andrei
+became convinced that the prince not only had an understanding mind and
+a striking judgment touching everything, but the gift of attracting
+people. Kmita loved him after the first conversation with that feeling
+in which compassion is the greatest element. He felt that he would give
+much to bring back to that orphan the brilliant future which belonged
+to him by right of birth.
+
+Pan Andrei convinced himself at the first dinner that what was said of
+the gluttony of Michael Vishnyevetski was true. The young prince seemed
+to think of nothing save eating. His prominent eyes followed each dish
+uneasily, and when they brought him the platter he took an enormous
+quantity on his plate and ate ravenously, smacking his lips as only
+gluttons do. The marble face of the princess grew clouded with still
+greater sorrow at that sight. It became awkward for Kmita, so that he
+turned away his eyes and looked at Sobiepan.
+
+But Zamoyski was not looking either at Prince Michael or his own guest.
+Kmita followed his glance, and behind the shoulders of Princess
+Griselda he saw a wonderful sight indeed, which he had not hitherto
+noticed.
+
+It was the small pretty head of a maiden, who was as fair as milk, as
+red as a rose, and beautiful as an image. Short wavy locks ornamented
+her forehead; her quick eyes were directed to the officers sitting near
+Zamoyski, not omitting Sobiepan himself. At last those eyes rested on
+Kmita, and looked at him fixedly, as full of coquetry as if they
+intended to gaze into the depth of his heart.
+
+But Kmita was not easily confused; therefore he began to look at once
+into those eyes with perfect insolence, and then he punched in the side
+Pan Shurski, lieutenant of the armored castle squadron at Zamost, who
+was sitting near him, and asked in an undertone,--
+
+"But who is that tailed farthing?"
+
+"Worthy sir," answered Shurski, aloud, "do not speak slightingly when
+you do not know of whom you are speaking. That is Panna Anusia
+Borzobogati. And you will not call her otherwise unless you wish to
+regret your rudeness."
+
+"You do not know, sir, that a farthing is a kind of bird and very
+beautiful, therefore there is no contempt in the name," answered Kmita,
+laughing; "but noticing your anger you must be terribly in love."
+
+"But who is not in love?" muttered the testy Shurski. "Pan Zamoyski
+himself has almost looked his eyes out, and is as if sitting on an
+awl."
+
+"I see that, I see that!"
+
+"What do you see? He, I, Grabovski, Stolangyevich, Konoyadzki, Rubetski
+of the dragoons, Pyechynga,--she has sunk us all. And with you it will
+be the same, if you stay here. With her twenty-four hours are
+sufficient."
+
+"Lord brother! with me she could do nothing in twenty-four months."
+
+"How is that?" asked Shurski, with indignation; "are you made of metal,
+or what?"
+
+"No! But if some one had stolen the last dollar from your pocket you
+would not be afraid of a thief."
+
+"Is that it?" answered Shurski.
+
+Kmita grew gloomy at once, for his trouble came to his mind, and he
+noticed no longer that the black eyes were looking still more
+stubbornly at him, as if asking, "What is thy name, whence dost thou
+come, youthful knight?"
+
+But Shurski muttered: "Bore, bore away! She bored that way into me till
+she bored to my heart. Now she does not even care."
+
+Kmita shook himself out of his seriousness.
+
+"Why the hangman does not some one of you marry her?"
+
+"Each one prevents every other."
+
+"The girl will be left in the lurch," said Kmita, "though in truth
+there must be white seeds in that pear yet."
+
+Shurski opened his eyes, and bending to Kmita's ear said very
+mysteriously,--
+
+"They say that she is twenty-five, as I love God. She was with Princess
+Griselda before the incursion of the rabble?"
+
+"Wonder of wonders, I should not give her more than sixteen or eighteen
+at the most."
+
+This time the devil (the girl) guessed apparently that they were
+talking of her, for she covered her gleaming eyes with the lids, and
+only shot sidelong glances at Kmita, inquiring continually: "Who art
+thou, so handsome? Whence dost thou come?" And he began involuntarily
+to twirl his mustache.
+
+After dinner Zamoyski, who from respect to the courtly manners of Kmita
+treated him as an unusual guest, took him by the arm. "Pan Babinich,"
+said he, "you have told me that you are from Lithuania?"
+
+"That is true, Pan Zamoyski."
+
+"Tell me, did you know the Podbipientas?"
+
+"As to knowing I know them not, for they are no longer in the world, at
+least those who had the arms Tear-Cowl. The last one fell at Zbaraj. He
+was the greatest knight that Lithuania had. Who of us does not know of
+Podbipienta?"
+
+"I have heard also of him; but I ask for this reason: There is in
+attendance on my sister a lady of honorable family. She was the
+betrothed of this Podbipienta who was killed at Zbaraj. She is an
+orphan, without father or mother; and though my sister loves her
+greatly, still, being the natural guardian of my sister, I have in this
+way the maiden in guardianship."
+
+"A pleasant guardianship!" put in Kmita.
+
+Zamoyski smiled, winked, and smacked his tongue. "Sweetcakes! isn't
+she?"
+
+But suddenly he saw that he was betraying himself, and assumed a
+serious air.
+
+"Oh, you traitor!" said he, half jestingly, half seriously, "you want
+to hang me on a hook, and I almost let it out!"
+
+"What?" asked Kmita, looking him quickly in the eyes.
+
+Here Zamoyski saw clearly that in quickness of wit he was not the equal
+of his guest, and turned the conversation at once.
+
+"That Podbipienta," said he, "bequeathed her some estates there
+in your region. I don't remember the names of them, for they are
+strange,--Baltupie, Syrutsiani, Myshykishki,--in a word, all that he
+had. Would I could remember them! Five or six estates."
+
+"They are adjoining estates, not separate. Podbipienta was a very
+wealthy man, and if that lady should come to his fortune she might have
+her own ladies-in-waiting, and seek for a husband among senators."
+
+"Do you tell me that? Do you know those places?"
+
+"I know only Lyubovich and Sheputy, for they are near my land. The
+forest boundary alone is ten miles long, and the fields and meadows are
+as much more."
+
+"Where are they?"
+
+"In Vityebsk."
+
+"Oh, far away! the affair is not worth the trouble, and the country is
+under the enemy."
+
+"When we drive out the enemy we shall come to the property. But the
+Podbipientas have property in other places,--in Jmud very considerable,
+I know, for I have a piece of land there myself."
+
+"I see that your substance is not a bag of chopped straw."
+
+"It brings in nothing now. But I need nothing from others."
+
+"Advise me how to put that maiden on her feet."
+
+Kmita laughed.
+
+"I prefer to talk over this matter rather than others. It would be
+better for her to go to Pan Sapyeha. If he would take the affair in
+hand, he could do a great deal as voevoda of Vityebsk and the most
+noted man in Lithuania. He could send notices to the tribunals that the
+will was made to Panna Borzobogati, so that Podbipienta's more distant
+relatives should not seize the property."
+
+"That is true; but now there are no tribunals, and Sapyeha has
+something else in his head."
+
+"The lady might be placed in his hands and under his guardianship.
+Having her before his eyes, he would give aid more speedily."
+
+Kmita looked with astonishment at Zamoyski. "What object has he in
+wishing to remove her from this place?" thought he.
+
+Zamoyski continued: "It would be difficult for her to live in camp, in
+the tent of the voevoda of Vityebsk; but she might stay with his
+daughters."
+
+"I do not understand this," thought Kmita; "would he consent to be only
+her guardian?"
+
+"But here is the difficulty: how can I send her to those parts in the
+present time of disturbance? Several hundred men would be needed, and I
+cannot strip Zamost. If I could only find some one to conduct her. Now,
+you might take her; you are going to Sapyeha. I would give you letters,
+and you would give me your word of honor to take her in safety."
+
+"I conduct her to Sapyeha?" asked Kmita, in amazement.
+
+"Is the office unpleasant? Even if it should come to love on the
+road--"
+
+"Ah," said Kmita, "another one is managing my affections; and though
+the tenant pays nothing, still I do not think of making a change."
+
+"So much the better; with all the greater satisfaction can I confide
+her to you."
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"Well, will you undertake it?" asked the starosta,
+
+"I am marching with Tartars."
+
+"People tell me that the Tartars fear you worse than fire. Well, what?
+Will you undertake it?"
+
+"H'm! why not, if thereby I can oblige your grace? But--"
+
+"Ah, you think that the princess must give permission; she will, as God
+is dear to me! For she,--fancy to yourself,--she suspects me."
+
+Here the starosta whispered in Kmita's ear; at last he said aloud,--
+
+"She was very angry with me for that, and I put my ears aside; for to
+war with women,--behold you! I would rather have the Swedes outside
+Zamost. But she will have the best proof that I am planning no evil,
+when I wish to send the girl away. She will be terribly amazed, it is
+true; but at the first opportunity I'll talk with her touching this
+matter."
+
+When he had said this, Zamoyski turned and went away. Kmita looked at
+him, and muttered,--
+
+"You are setting some snare, Pan Sobiepan; and though I do not
+understand the object, I see the snare quickly, for you are a terribly
+awkward trapper."
+
+Zamoyski was pleased with himself, though he understood well that the
+work was only half done; and another remained so difficult that at
+thought of it despair seized him, and even terror. He had to get
+permission of Princess Griselda, whose severity and penetrating mind
+Pan Sobiepan feared from his whole soul. But having begun, he wished to
+bring the work to completion as early as possible; therefore next
+morning, after Mass, and breakfast, and after he had reviewed the hired
+German infantry, he went to the chambers of the princess.
+
+He found the lady embroidering a cope for the college. Behind her was
+Anusia winding silk hung upon two armchairs; a second skein of rose
+color she had placed around her neck, and moving her hands quickly, she
+ran around the chairs in pursuit of the unwinding thread.
+
+Zamoyski's eyes grew bright at sight of her; but he assumed quickly a
+serious look, and greeting the princess, began as if unwillingly,--
+
+"That Pan Babinich who has come here with the Tartars is a
+Lithuanian,--a man of importance, a very elegant fellow, a born knight
+in appearance. Have you noticed him?"
+
+"You brought him to me yourself," answered the princess, indifferently,
+"he has an honest face."
+
+"I asked him concerning that property left Panna Borzobogati. He says
+it is a fortune almost equal to that of the Radzivills."
+
+"God grant it to Anusia; her orphanhood will be the lighter, and her
+old age as well," said the lady.
+
+"But there is a danger lest distant relatives tear it apart. Babinich
+says that Sapyeha might occupy himself with it, if he wished. He is an
+honest man, and very friendly to us: I would confide my own daughter to
+him. It would be enough for him to send notices to the tribunals, and
+proclaim the guardianship. But Babinich says it is needful that Panna
+Anusia should go to those places in person."
+
+"Where,--to Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"Or to his daughters, so as to be there, that the formal installation
+might take place."
+
+The starosta invented at that moment "formal installation," thinking
+justly that the princess would accept this counterfeit money instead of
+true coin. She thought a moment, and asked,--
+
+"How could she go now, when Swedes are on the road?"
+
+"I have news that the Swedes have left Lublin. All this side of the
+Vistula is free."
+
+"And who would take Anusia to Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"Suppose this same Babinich."
+
+"With Tartars? Lord Brother, fear God; those are wild, chaotic people!"
+
+"I am not afraid," put in Anusia, curtesying.
+
+But Princess Griselda had noted already that her brother came with some
+plan all prepared; therefore she sent Anusia out of the room, and began
+to look at Pan Sobiepan with an inquiring gaze. But he said as if to
+himself,--
+
+"These Tartars are down in the dust before Babinich; he hangs them for
+any insubordination."
+
+"I cannot permit this journey," answered the princess. "The girl is
+honest but giddy, and rouses enthusiasm quickly. You know that best
+yourself. I would never confide her to a young, unknown man."
+
+"Unknown here he is not, for who has not heard of the Babiniches as men
+of high family and steady people? [Zamoyski had never heard of the
+Babiniches in his life.] Besides," continued he, "you might give her
+some sedate woman as companion, and then decorum would be observed.
+Babinich I guarantee. I tell you this, too, Lady Sister, that he has in
+those places a betrothed with whom he is, as he tells me himself, in
+love; and whoso is in love has something else in his head. The
+foundation of the matter is this, that another such chance may not come
+for a long time,--the fortune may be lost to the girl, and in ripe
+years she may be without a roof above her."
+
+The princess ceased embroidering, raised her head, and fixing her
+penetrating eyes on her brother, asked,--
+
+"What reason have you to send her from here?"
+
+"What reason have I?" repeated he, dropping his glance; "what can I
+have?--none!"
+
+"Yan, you have conspired with Babinich against her virtue!"
+
+"There it is! As God is dear to me, only that was wanting! You will
+read the letter which I shall send to Sapyeha, and give your own. I
+will merely say this to you, that I shall not leave Zamost. Finally
+examine Babinich himself, and ask him whether he will undertake the
+office.
+
+"The moment you suspect me I step aside."
+
+"Why do you insist so that she shall leave Zamost?"
+
+"For I wish her good, and it is the question of an immense fortune.
+Besides, I confess it concerns me much that she should leave Zamost.
+Your suspicions have grown disagreeable; it is not to my taste that you
+should be frowning at me forever and looking stern. I thought that in
+consenting to the departure of the young lady I should find the best
+argument against suspicions. God knows I have enough of this, for I am
+no student who steals under windows at night. I tell you more: my
+officers are enraged one against the other, and shaking their sabres at
+one another. There is neither harmony, nor order, nor service as there
+should be. I have enough of this. But since you are boring me with your
+eyes, then do as you wish; but look after Michael yourself, for that is
+your affair, not mine."
+
+"Michael!" exclaimed the astonished princess.
+
+"I say nothing against the girl. She does not disturb him more than
+others; but if you do not see his arrowy glances and ardent affection,
+then I tell you this, that Cupid has not such power to blind as a
+mother's love."
+
+Princess Griselda's brows contracted, and her face grew pale.
+
+Pan Sobiepan, seeing that he had struck home at last, slapped his knees
+with his hands and continued,--
+
+"Lady Sister, thus it is, thus it is! What is the affair to me? Let
+Michael give her silk to unwind, let his nostrils quiver when he looks
+at her, let him blush, let him look at her through keyholes! What is
+that to me? Still, I know--she has a good fortune--her family--well,
+she is of nobles, and I do not raise myself above nobles. If you want
+it yourself, all right. Their years are not the same, but again it is
+not my affair."
+
+Zamoyski rose, and bowing to his sister very politely, started to go
+out.
+
+The blood rushed to her face. The proud lady did not see in the whole
+Commonwealth a match worthy of Vishnyevetski, and abroad, perhaps among
+the archduchesses of Austria; therefore these words of her brother
+burned her like iron red hot.
+
+"Yan!" said she, "wait!"
+
+"Lady Sister," said Zamoyski, "I wished first to give you proof that
+you suspect me unjustly; second, that you should watch some one besides
+me. Now you will do as you please; I have nothing more to say."
+
+Then Pan Zamoyski bowed and went out.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXI.
+
+
+Pan Zamoyski had not uttered pure calumny to his sister when he spoke
+of Michael's love for Anusia, for the young prince had fallen in love
+with her, as had all, not excepting the pages of the castle. But that
+love was not over-violent, and by no means aggressive; it was rather an
+agreeable intoxication of the head and mind, than an impulse of the
+heart, which, when it loves, impels to permanent possession of the
+object beloved. For such action Michael had not the energy.
+
+Nevertheless, Princess Griselda, dreaming of a brilliant future for her
+son, was greatly terrified at that feeling. In the first moment the
+sudden consent of her brother to Anusia's departure astonished her; now
+she ceased thinking of that, so far had the threatening danger seized
+her whole soul. A conversation with her son, who grew pale and
+trembled, and who before he had confessed anything shed tears,
+confirmed her in the supposition that the danger was terrible.
+
+Still she did not conquer her scruples of conscience at once, and it
+was only when Anusia, who wanted to see a new world, new people, and
+perhaps also turn the head of the handsome cavalier, fell at her feet
+with a request for permission, that the princess did not find strength
+sufficient to refuse.
+
+Anusia, it is true, covered herself with tears at the thought of
+parting with her mistress and mother; but for the clever girl it was
+perfectly evident that by asking for the separation she had cleared
+herself from every suspicion of having with preconceived purpose turned
+the head of Prince Michael, or even Zamoyski himself.
+
+Princess Griselda, from desire to know surely if there was a conspiracy
+between her brother and Kmita, directed the latter to come to her
+presence. Her brother's promise not to leave Zamost had calmed her
+considerably, it is true; she wished, however, to know more intimately
+the man who was to conduct the young lady.
+
+The conversation with Kmita set her at rest thoroughly.
+
+There looked from the blue eyes of the young noble such sincerity and
+truth that it was impossible to doubt him. He confessed at once that he
+was in love with another, and besides he had neither the wish nor the
+head for folly. Finally he gave his word as a cavalier that he would
+guard the lady from every misfortune, even if he had to lay down his
+head.
+
+"I will take her safely to Pan Sapyeha, for Pan Zamoyski says that the
+enemy has left Lublin. But I can do no more; not because I hesitate in
+willing service for your highness, since I am always willing to shed my
+blood for the widow of the greatest warrior and the glory of the whole
+Commonwealth, but because I have my own grievous troubles, out of which
+I know not whether I shall bring my life."
+
+"It is a question of nothing more," answered the princess, "than that
+you give her into the hands of Pan Sapyeha, and he will not refuse my
+request to be her guardian."
+
+Here she gave Kmita her hand, which he kissed with the greatest
+reverence, and she said in parting,--
+
+"Be watchful, Cavalier, be watchful, and do not place safety in this,
+that the country is free of the enemy."
+
+These last words arrested Kmita; but he had no time to think over them,
+for Zamoyski soon caught him.
+
+"Gracious Knight," said he, gayly, "you are taking the greatest
+ornament of Zamost away from me."
+
+"But at your wish," answered Kmita.
+
+"Take good care of her. She is a toothsome dainty. Some one may be
+ready to take her from you."
+
+"Let him try! Oh, ho! I have given the word of a cavalier to the
+princess, and with me my word is sacred."
+
+"Oh, I only say this as a jest. Fear not, neither take unusual
+caution."
+
+"Still I will ask of your serene great mightiness a carriage with
+windows."
+
+"I will give you two. But you are not going at once, are you?"
+
+"I am in a hurry. As it is, I am here too long."
+
+"Then send your Tartars in advance to Krasnystav. I will hurry off a
+courier to have oats ready for them there, and will give you an escort
+of my own to that place. No evil can happen to you here, for this is my
+country. I will give you good men of the German dragoons, bold fellows
+and acquainted with the road. Besides, to Krasnystav the road is as if
+cut out with a sickle."
+
+"But why am I to stay here?"
+
+"To remain longer with us; you are a dear guest. I should be glad to
+detain you a year. Meanwhile I shall send to the herds at Perespa;
+perhaps some horse will be found which will not fail you in need."
+
+Kmita looked quickly into the eyes of his host; then, as if making a
+sudden decision, said,--
+
+"I thank you, I will remain, and will send on the Tartars."
+
+He went straight to give them orders, and taking Akbah Ulan to one side
+he said,--
+
+"Akbah Ulan, you are to go to Krasnystav by the road, straight as if
+cut with a sickle. I stay here, and a day later will move after you
+with Zamoyski's escort. Listen now to what I say! You will not go to
+Krasnystav, but strike into the first forest, not far from Zamost, so
+that a living soul may not know of you; and when you hear a shot on the
+highroad, hurry to me, for they are preparing some trick against me in
+this place."
+
+"Your will," said Akbah Ulan, placing his hand on his forehead, his
+mouth, and his breast.
+
+"I have seen through you, Pan Zamoyski," said Kmita to himself. "In
+Zamost you are afraid of your sister therefore you wish to seize the
+young lady, and secret her somewhere in the neighborhood, and make of
+me the instrument of your desires, and who knows if not to take my
+life. But wait! You found a man keener than yourself; you will fall
+into your own trap!"
+
+In the evening Lieutenant Shurski knocked at Kmita's door. This
+officer, too, knew something, and had his suspicions; and because he
+loved Anusia he preferred that she should depart, rather than fall into
+the power of Zamoyski. Still he did not dare to speak openly, and
+perhaps because he was not sure; but he wondered that Kmita had
+consented to send the Tartars on in advance; he declared that the roads
+were not so safe as was said, that everywhere armed bands were
+wandering,--hands swift to deeds of violence.
+
+Pan Andrei decided to feign that he divined nothing "What can happen to
+me?" asked he; "besides, Zamoyski gives me his own escort."
+
+"Bah! Germans!"
+
+"Are they not reliable men?"
+
+"Is it possible to depend upon those dog-brothers ever? It has happened
+that after conspiring on the road they went over to the enemy."
+
+"But there are no Swedes on this side of the Vistula."
+
+"They are in Lublin, the dogs! It is not true that they have left. I
+advise you honestly not to send the Tartars in advance, for it is
+always safer in a large company."
+
+"It is a pity that you did not inform me before. I have one tongue in
+my mouth, and an order given I never withdraw."
+
+Next morning the Tartars moved on. Kmita was to follow toward evening,
+so as to pass the first night at Krasnystav. Two letters to Pan Sapyeha
+were given him,--one from the princess, the other from her brother.
+
+Kmita had a great desire to open the second, but he dared not; he
+looked at it, however, before the light, and saw that inside was blank
+paper. This discovery was proof to him that both the maiden and the
+letters were to be taken from him on the road.
+
+Meanwhile the horses came from Perespa, and Zamoyski presented the
+knight with a steed beautiful beyond admiration; the steed he received
+with thankfulness, thinking in his soul that he would ride farther on
+him than Zamoyski expected. He thought also of his Tartars, who must
+now be in the forest, and wild laughter seized him. At times again he
+was indignant in soul, and promised to give the master of Zamost a
+lesson.
+
+Finally the hour of dinner came, which passed in great gloom. Anusia
+had red eyes; the officers were in deep silence. Pan Zamoyski alone was
+cheerful, and gave orders to fill the goblets; Kmita emptied his, one
+after another. But when the hour of parting came, not many persons took
+leave of the travellers, for Zamoyski had sent the officers to their
+service. Anusia fell at the feet of the princess, and for a long time
+could not be removed from her; the princess herself had evident
+disquiet in her face. Perhaps she reproached herself in secret for
+permitting the departure of a faithful servant at a period when mishap
+might come easily. But the loud weeping of Michael, who held his fists
+to his eyes, crying like a school-boy, confirmed the proud lady in her
+conviction that it was needful to stifle the further growth of this
+boyish affection. Besides, she was quieted by the hope that in the
+family of Sapyeha the young lady would find protection, safety, and
+also the great fortune which was to settle her fate for the rest of her
+life.
+
+"I commit her to your virtue, bravery, and honor," said the princess
+once more to Kmita; "and remember that you have sworn to me to conduct
+her to Pan Sapyeha without fail."
+
+"I will take her as I would a glass, and in need will wind oakum around
+her, because I have given my word; death alone will prevent me from
+keeping it," answered the knight.
+
+He gave his arm to Anusia, but she was angry and did not look at him;
+he had treated her rather slightingly, therefore she gave him her hand
+very haughtily, turning her face and head in another direction.
+
+She was sorry to depart, and fear seized her; but it was too late then
+to draw back.
+
+The moment came; they took their seats,--she in the carriage with her
+old servant, Panna Suvalski, he on his horse,--and they started. Twelve
+German horsemen surrounded the carriage and the wagon with Anusia's
+effects. When at last the doors in the Warsaw gate squeaked and the
+rattle of wheels was heard on the drop-bridge, Anusia burst into loud
+weeping.
+
+Kmita bent toward the carriage. "Fear not, my lady, I will not eat
+you!"
+
+"Clown!" thought Anusia.
+
+They rode some time along the houses outside the walls, straight toward
+Old Zamost; then they entered fields and a pine-wood, which in those
+days stretched along a hilly country to the Bug on one side; on the
+other it extended, interrupted by villages, to Zavihost.
+
+Night had fallen, but very calm and clear; the road was marked by a
+silver line; only the rolling of the carriage and the tramp of the
+horses broke the silence.
+
+"My Tartars must be lurking here like wolves in a thicket," thought
+Kmita.
+
+Then he bent his ear.
+
+"What is that?" asked he of the officer who was leading the escort.
+
+"A tramp! Some horseman is galloping after us!" answered the officer.
+
+He had barely finished speaking when a Cossack hurried up on a foaming
+horse, crying,--
+
+"Pan Babinich! Pan Babinich! A letter from Pan Zamoyski."
+
+The retinue halted. The Cossack gave the letter to Kmita.
+
+Kmita broke the seal, and by the light of a lantern read as follows:--
+
+
+"Gracious and dearest Pan Babinich! Soon after the departure of Panna
+Borzobogati tidings came to us that the Swedes not only have not left
+Lublin, but that they intend to attack my Zamost. In view of this,
+further journeying and peregrination become inconvenient. Considering
+therefore the dangers to which a fair head might be exposed, we wish to
+have Panna Borzobogati in Zamost. Those same knights will bring her
+back; but you, who must be in haste to continue your journey, we do not
+wish to trouble uselessly. Announcing which will of ours to your grace,
+we beg you to give orders to the horseman according to our wishes."
+
+
+"Still he is honest enough not to attack my life; he only wishes to
+make a fool of me," thought Kmita. "But we shall soon see if there is a
+trap here or not."
+
+Now Anusia put her head out of the window. "What is the matter?" asked
+she.
+
+"Nothing! Pan Zamoyski commends you once more to my bravery. Nothing
+more."
+
+Here he turned to the driver,--
+
+"Forward!"
+
+The officer leading the horsemen reined in his horse. "Stop!" cried he
+to the driver. Then to Kmita, "Why move on?"
+
+"But why halt longer in the forest?" asked Kmita, with the face of a
+stupid rogue.
+
+"For you have received some order."
+
+"And what is that to you? I have received, and that is why I command to
+move on."
+
+"Stop!" repeated the officer.
+
+"Move on!" repeated Kmita.
+
+"What is this?" inquired Anusia again.
+
+"We will not go a step farther till I see the order!" said the officer,
+with decision.
+
+"You will not see the order, for it is not sent to you."
+
+"Since you will not obey it, I will carry it out. You move on to
+Krasnystav, and have a care lest we give you something for the road,
+but we will go home with the lady."
+
+Kmita only wished the officer to acknowledge that he knew the contents
+of the order; this proved with perfect certainty that the whole affair
+was a trick arranged in advance.
+
+"Move on with God!" repeated the officer now, with a threat.
+
+At that moment the horsemen began one after another to take out their
+sabres.
+
+"Oh, such sons! not to Zamost did you wish to take the maiden, but
+aside somewhere, so that Pan Zamoyski might give free reign to his
+wishes; but you have met with a more cunning man!" When Babinich had
+said this, he fired upward from a pistol.
+
+At this sound there was such an uproar in the forest, as if the shot
+had roused whole legions of wolves sleeping near by. The howl was heard
+in front, behind, from the sides. At once the tramp of horses sounded
+with the cracking of limbs breaking under their hoofs, and on the road
+were seen black groups of horsemen, who approached with unearthly
+howling.
+
+"Jesus! Mary! Joseph!" cried the terrified women in the carriage.
+
+Now the Tartars rushed up like a cloud; but Kmita restrained them with
+a triple cry, and turning to the astonished officer, began to boast,--
+
+"Know whom you have met! Pan Zamoyski wished to make a fool of me, a
+blind instrument. To you he intrusted the functions of a pander, which
+you undertook, Sir Officer for the favor of a master. How down to
+Zamoyski from Babinich, and tell him that the maiden will go safely to
+Pan Sapyeha."
+
+The officer looked around with frightened glance, and saw the wild
+faces gazing with terrible eagerness on him and his men. It was evident
+that they were waiting only for a word to hurl themselves on the twelve
+horsemen and tear them in pieces.
+
+"Your grace, you will do what you wish, for we cannot manage superior
+power," said he, with trembling voice "but Pan Zamoyski is able to
+avenge himself."
+
+Kmita laughed. "Let him avenge himself on you; for had it not come out
+that you knew the contents of the order and had you not opposed the
+advance, I should not have been sure of the trick, and should have
+given you the maiden straightway. Tell the starosta to appoint a keener
+pander than you."
+
+The calm tone with which Kmita said this assured the officer somewhat,
+at least on this point,--that death did not threaten either him or his
+troopers; therefore he breathed easily, and said,--
+
+"And must we return with nothing to Zamost?"
+
+"You will return with my letter, which will be written on the skin of
+each one of you."
+
+"Your grace--"
+
+"Take them!" cried Kmita; and he seized the officer himself by the
+shoulder.
+
+An uproar and struggle began around the carriage. The shouts of the
+Tartars deadened the cries for assistance and the screams of terror
+coming from the breasts of the women.
+
+But the struggle did not last long, for a few minutes later the
+horsemen were lying on the road tied, one at the side of the other.
+
+Kmita gave command to flog them with bullock-skin whips, but not beyond
+measure, so that they might retain strength to walk back to Zamost. The
+common soldiers received one hundred, and the officer a hundred and
+fifty lashes, in spite of the prayers and entreaties of Anusia, who not
+knowing what was passing around her, and thinking that she had fallen
+into terrible hands, began to implore with joined palms and tearful
+eyes for her life.
+
+"Spare my life, knight! In what am I guilty before you? Spare me, spare
+me!"
+
+"Be quiet, young lady!" roared Kmita.
+
+"In what have I offended?"
+
+"Maybe you are in the plot yourself?"
+
+"In what plot? O God, be merciful to me, a sinner!"
+
+"Then you did not know that Pan Zamoyski only permitted your departure
+apparently, so as to separate you from the princess and carry you off
+on the road, to make an attempt on your honor in some empty castle?"
+
+"O Jesus of Nazareth!" screamed Anusia.
+
+And there was so much truth and sincerity in that cry that Kmita said
+more mildly,--
+
+"How is that? Then you were not in the plot? That may be!"
+
+Anusia covered her face with her hands, but she could say nothing; she
+merely repeated, time after time,--
+
+"Jesus, Mary! Jesus, Mary!"
+
+"Calm yourself," said Kmita, still more mildly. "You will go in safety
+to Pan Sapyeha, for Pan Zamoyski did not know with whom he had to deal.
+See, those men whom they are flogging were to carry you off. I give
+them their lives, so that they may tell Pan Zamoyski how smoothly it
+went with them."
+
+"Then have you defended me from shame?"
+
+"I have, though I did not know whether you would be glad."
+
+Anusia, instead of making answer or contradiction, seized Pan Andrei's
+hand and pressed it to her pale lips; and sparks went from his feet to
+his head.
+
+"Give peace, for God's sake!" cried he. "Sit in the carriage, for you
+will wet your feet--and be not afraid! You would not be better cared
+for with your mother."
+
+"I will go now with you even to the end of the world."
+
+"Do not say such things."
+
+"God will reward you for defending honor."
+
+"It is the first time that I have had the opportunity," said Kmita. And
+then he muttered in an undertone to himself: "So far I have defended
+her as much as a cat sheds tears."
+
+Meanwhile the Tartars had ceased to beat the horsemen and Pan Andrei
+gave command to drive them naked and bloody along the road toward
+Zamost. They went, weeping bitterly. Their horses, weapons, and
+clothing Kmita gave his Tartars; and then moved on quickly, for it was
+unsafe to loiter.
+
+On the road the young knight could not restrain himself from looking
+into the carriage to gaze at the flashing eyes and wonderful face of
+the maiden. He asked each time if she did not need something, if the
+carriage was convenient, or the quick travelling did not tire her too
+much.
+
+She answered, with thankfulness, that it was pleasant to her as it had
+never been. She had recovered from her terror completely. Her heart
+rose in gratitude to her defender, and she thought: "He is not so rude
+and surly as I held at first."
+
+"Ai, Olenka, what do I suffer for you!" said Kmita to himself; "do you
+not feed me with ingratitude? Had this been in old times, u-ha!"
+
+Then he remembered his comrades and the various deeds of violence which
+he had committed in company with them; then he began to drive away
+temptation, began to repeat for their unhappy souls, "Eternal rest."
+
+When they had reached Krasnystav, Kmita considered it better not to
+wait for news from Zamost, and went on farther. But at parting he wrote
+and sent to Zamoyski the following letter:--
+
+
+SERENE GREAT MIGHTY LORD STAROSTA,[5] and to me very Gracious Favorer
+and Benefactor! Whomsoever God has made great in the world, to him He
+deals out wit in more bountiful measure. I knew at once that you,
+Serene Great Mighty Lord, only wished to put me on trial, when you sent
+the order to give up Panna Borzobogati. I knew this all the better when
+the horsemen betrayed that they knew the substance of the order, though
+I did not show them the letter, and though you wrote to me that the
+idea came to you only after my departure. As on the one hand I admire
+all the more your penetration, so on the other, to put the careful
+guardian more completely at rest, I promise anew that nothing will
+suffice to lead me away from fulfilling the function imposed on me. But
+since those soldiers, evidently misunderstanding your intention, turned
+out to be great ruffians, and even threatened my life, I think that I
+should have hit upon your thought if I had commanded to hang them.
+Because I did not do so, I beg your forgiveness; still I gave orders to
+flog them properly with bullock-skin whips, which punishment, if your
+Great Mighty Lordship considers it too small, you can increase
+according to your will. With this, hoping that I have earned the
+increased confidence and gratitude of your Serene Great Mighty
+Lordship, I subscribe myself the faithful and well-wishing servant of
+your Serene Great Mighty Lordship.
+
+                                                BABINICH.
+
+
+The dragoons, when they had dragged themselves to Zamost late at night,
+did not dare to appear before the eyes of their master; therefore he
+learned of the whole matter from this letter which the Krasnystav
+Cossack brought next day.
+
+After he had read Kmita's letter, Zamoyski shut himself up in his rooms
+for three days, admitting no attendant save the chamber servants, who
+brought him his food. They heard, also, how he swore in French, which
+he did only when he was in the greatest fury.
+
+By degrees, however, the storm was allayed. On the fourth day and fifth
+Zamoyski was still very silent; he was ruminating over something and
+pulling at his mustache; in a week, when he was very pleasant and had
+drunk a little at table, he began to twirl his mustache, not to pull
+it, and said to Princess Griselda,--
+
+"Lady Sister, you know that there is no lack of penetration in me; a
+couple of days ago I tested of purpose that noble who took Anusia, and
+I can assure you that he will take her faithfully to Pan Sapyeha."
+
+About a month later, as it seems, Pan Sobiepan turned his heart in
+another direction; and besides he became altogether convinced that what
+had happened, happened with his will and knowledge.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXII.
+
+
+The province of Lyubelsk and the greater part of Podlyasye were almost
+completely in the hands of Poles, that is, of the confederates and
+Sapyeha's men. Since the King of Sweden remained in Prussia, where he
+was treating with the elector, the Swedes, not feeling very powerful in
+presence of the general uprising, which increased every day, dared not
+come out of the towns and castles, and still less to cross to the
+eastern side of the Vistula, where the Polish forces were greatest. In
+those two provinces, therefore, the Poles were laboring to form a
+considerable and well-ordered army, able to meet the regular soldiers
+of Sweden. In the provincial towns they were training infantry, and
+since the peasants in general had risen, there was no lack of
+volunteers; it was only necessary to organize in bodies and regular
+commands those chaotic masses of men frequently dangerous to their own
+country.
+
+The district captains betook themselves to this labor. Besides, the
+king had issued a number of commissions to old and tried soldiers;
+troops were enrolled in all provinces, and since there was no lack of
+military people in those regions, squadrons of perfect cavalry were
+formed. Some went west of the Vistula, others to Charnyetski, still
+others to Sapyeha. Such multitudes had taken arms that Yan Kazimir's
+forces were already more numerous than those of the Swedes.
+
+A country over whose weakness all Europe had recently wondered, gave
+now an example of power unsuspected, not only by its enemies, but by
+its own king, and even by those whose faithful hearts, a few months
+before, had been rent by pain and despair. Money was found, as well as
+enthusiasm and bravery; the most despairing souls were convinced that
+there is no position, no fall, no weakness from which there may not be
+a deliverance, and that when children are born consolation cannot die.
+
+Kmita went on without hindrance, gathering on his road unquiet spirits,
+who joined the chambul with readiness, hoping to find most blood and
+plunder in company with the Tartars. These he changed easily into good
+and prompt soldiers, for he had the gift to make his subordinates fear
+and obey. He was greeted joyously on the road, and that by reason of
+the Tartars; for the sight of them convinced men that the Khan was
+indeed coming with succor to the Commonwealth. It was declaimed openly
+that forty thousand chosen Tartar cavalry were marching to strengthen
+Sapyeha. Wonders were told of the "modesty" of these allies,--how they
+committed no violence or murder on the road. They were shown as an
+example to the soldiers of the country.
+
+Pan Sapyeha was quartered temporarily at Byala. His forces were
+composed of about ten thousand regular troops, cavalry and infantry.
+They were the remnants of the Lithuanian armies, increased by new men.
+The cavalry, especially some of the squadrons, surpassed in valor and
+training the Swedish horsemen; but the infantry were badly trained, and
+lacked firearms, powder, and cannon. Sapyeha had thought to find these
+in Tykotsin; but the Swedes, by blowing themselves up with the powder,
+destroyed at the same time all the cannons of the castle.
+
+Besides these forces there were in the neighborhood of Byala twelve
+thousand general militia from all Lithuania, Mazovia, and Podlyasye;
+but from few of these did the voevoda promise himself service,
+especially since having an immense number of wagons they hindered
+movement and turned the army into a clumsy, unwieldy multitude.
+
+Kmita thought of one thing in entering Byala. There were under Sapyeha
+so many nobles from Lithuania and so many of Radzivill's officers, his
+former acquaintances, that he feared they would recognize him and cut
+him to pieces before he could cry, "Jesus! Mary!"
+
+His name was detested in Sapyeha's camp and in all Lithuania; for men
+still preserved in vivid remembrance the fact that while serving Prince
+Yanush, he had cut down those squadrons which, opposing the hetman, had
+declared for the country.
+
+Pan Andrei had changed much, and this gave him comfort. First, he had
+become thin; second, he had the scar on his face from Boguslav's
+bullet; finally, he wore a beard, rather long, pointed in Swedish
+fashion, and his mustache he combed upward, so that he was more like
+some Erickson than a Polish noble.
+
+"If there is not a tumult against me at once, men will judge me
+differently after the first battle," thought Kmita, when entering
+Byala.
+
+He arrived in the evening, announced who he was, whence he had come,
+that he was bearing letters from the king, and asked a special audience
+of the voevoda.
+
+The voevoda received him graciously because of the warm recommendation
+of the king, who wrote,--
+
+
+"We send to you our most faithful servant, who is called the Hector of
+Chenstohova, from the time of the siege of that glorious place; and he
+has saved our freedom and life at the risk of his own during our
+passage through the mountains. Have him in special care, so that no
+injustice come to him from the soldiers. We know his real name, and the
+reasons for which he serves under an assumed one; no man is to hold him
+in suspicion because of this change, or suspect him of intrigues."
+
+
+"But is it not possible to know why you bear an assumed name?" asked
+the voevoda.
+
+"I am under sentence, and cannot make levies in my own name. The king
+gave me a commission, and I can make levies as Babinich."
+
+"Why do you want levies if you have Tartars?"
+
+"For a greater force would not be in the way."
+
+"And why are you under sentence?"
+
+"Under the command and protection of whomsoever I go, him I ought to
+tell all as to a father. My real name is Kmita."
+
+The voevoda pushed back a couple of steps,--
+
+"He who promised Boguslav to carry off our king, living or dead?"
+
+Kmita related with all his energy how and what had happened,--how,
+befogged by Prince Yanush, he had served the Radzivills; how he had
+learned their real purposes from the mouth of Boguslav, and then
+carried off the latter and thus incurred his implacable vengeance.
+
+The voevoda believed, for he could not refuse belief, especially since
+the king's letter confirmed the truth of Kmita's words. Besides, his
+soul was so delighted in the voevoda that he would at that moment have
+pressed his worst enemy to his heart and forgiven his greatest offence.
+This delight was caused by the following passage in the king's
+letter:--
+
+
+"Though the grand baton of Lithuania, unused now after the death of the
+voevoda of Vilna, can by usual procedure be given to a successor only
+at the Diet, still in the present extraordinary circumstances,
+disregarding the usual course, We give this baton to you, greatly
+cherished by us, for the good of the Commonwealth and your memorable
+services, thinking justly that, God giving peace, no voice at the
+coming Diet will be raised against this our choice, and that our act
+will find general approval."
+
+
+Pan Sapyeha, as was said then in the Commonwealth, "had pawned his coat
+and sold his last silver spoon;" he had not served his country for
+profit, nor for honors. But even the most disinterested man is glad to
+see that his services are appreciated, that they are rewarded with
+gratitude, that his virtue is recognized. Therefore Sapyeha's serious
+face was uncommonly radiant.
+
+This act of the king adorned the house of Sapyeha with new splendor;
+and to this no "kinglet" of that time was indifferent,--it were well
+had there been none to strive for elevation _per nefas_ (through
+injustice). Therefore Pan Sapyeha was ready to do for the king what was
+in his power and what was out of his power.
+
+"Since I am hetman," said he to Kmita, "you come under my jurisdiction
+and are under my guardianship. There is a multitude here of the general
+militia, hence tumult is near; therefore do not show yourself over-much
+till I warn the soldiers, and remove that calumny which Boguslav cast
+on you."
+
+Kmita thanked him from his heart, and then spoke of Anusia, whom he had
+brought to Byala. In answer the hetman fell to scolding, but being in
+excellent humor he scolded joyously.
+
+"You made a fool of Sobiepan, as God is dear to me! He sits there with
+his sister inside the walls of Zamost, as with the Lord God, behind the
+stove, and thinks that every one can do as he does,--raise the skirts
+of his coat, turn to the fire, and warm his back. I know the
+Podbipientas, for they are related to the Bjostovskis, and the
+Bjostovskis to me. The fortune is a lordly one, that is not to be
+denied; but though war with the Northerners has weakened it for a time,
+still people are alive yet in those regions. Where can anything be
+found, where any courts, any officers? Who will take the property and
+put the young lady in possession? They have gone stark mad! Boguslav is
+sitting on my shoulders; I have my duties in the army, but they would
+have me fill my head with women."
+
+"She is not a woman, but a cherry," said Kmita. "She is nothing however
+to me. They asked me to bring her here; I have brought her. They asked
+me to give her to you; I give her."
+
+The hetman then took Kmita by the ear and said: "But who knows,
+protector, in what form you have brought her? God preserve us, people
+may say that from the guardianship of Sapyeha she has suffered; and I,
+old man, shall have to keep my eyes open. What did you do at the
+stopping-places? Tell me right away, Pagan, did you not learn from your
+Tartars some heathen customs?"
+
+"At the stopping-places," answered Kmita, jestingly, "I commanded my
+attendants to plough my skin with discipline, so as to drive out the
+less worthy motives, which have their seat under the skin, and which I
+confess were plaguing me worse than horseflies."
+
+"Ah, you see-- Is she a worthy maiden?"
+
+"Really so; and terribly pretty."
+
+"And the Turk was at hand?"
+
+"But she is as honest as a nun; that I must say for her. And as to
+suffering I think that would come sooner from the Zamoyski guardianship
+than from you."
+
+Here Kmita told what had taken place and how. Then the hetman fell to
+clapping him on the shoulder and laughing,--
+
+"Well, you are a crafty fellow! Not in vain do they tell so much of
+Kmita. Have no fear! Pan Zamoyski is not a stubborn man, and he is my
+friend. His first anger will pass, and he will even laugh at it himself
+and reward you."
+
+"I need no reward!" interrupted Kmita.
+
+"It is well that you have ambition and are not looking for favor. Only
+serve me against Boguslav, and you will not need to think of past
+outlawry."
+
+Sapyeha was astonished when he looked at the soldier's face, which a
+moment before was so open and joyous. Kmita at mention of Boguslav grew
+pale in an instant, and his face took on wrinkles like the face of a
+dog, when preparing to bite.
+
+"Would that the traitor were poisoned with his own spittle, if he could
+only fall into my hands before his death!" said he, gloomily.
+
+"I do not wonder at your venom. Have a care, though, that your anger
+does not choke your adroitness, for you have to deal with no common
+man. It is well that the king sent you hither. You will attack Boguslav
+for me, as you once did Hovanski."
+
+"I will attack him better!" said Kmita, with the same gloom.
+
+With this the conversation ended. Kmita went away to sleep in his
+quarters, for he was wearied from the road.
+
+Meanwhile the news spread through the army that the king had sent the
+baton to their beloved chief. Joy burst out like a flame among
+thousands of men. The officers of various squadrons hurried to the
+quarters of the hetman. The sleeping town sprang up from its slumber.
+Bonfires were kindled. Standard-bearers came with their standards.
+Trumpets sounded and kettle-drums thundered; discharges from muskets
+and cannon roared. Pan Sapyeha ordered a lordly feast, and they
+applauded the whole night through, drinking to the health of the king,
+the hetman, and to the coming victory over Boguslav.
+
+Pan Andrei, as was agreed, was not present at the feast.
+
+The hetman at the table began a conversation about Boguslav, and not
+telling who that officer was who had come with the Tartars and brought
+the baton, he spoke in general of the perversity of Boguslav.
+
+"Both Radzivills," said he, "were fond of intrigues, but Prince
+Boguslav goes beyond his dead cousin. You remember, gentlemen, Kmita,
+or at least you have heard of him. Now imagine to yourselves, what
+Boguslav reported--that Kmita offered to raise his hand on the king our
+lord--was not true."
+
+"Still Kmita helped Yanush to cut down good cavaliers."
+
+"It Is true that he helped Yanush; but at last he saw what he was
+doing, and then not only did he leave the service, but as you know,
+being a man of daring, he attacked Boguslav. It was close work there
+for the young prince, and he barely escaped with his life from Kmita's
+hands."
+
+"Kmita was a great soldier!" answered many voices.
+
+"The prince through revenge invented against him a calumny at which the
+soul shudders."
+
+"The devil could not have invented a keener!"
+
+"Do you know that I have in my hands proofs in black and white that
+that was revenge for the change in Kmita?"
+
+"To put infamy in such a way on any one's name! Only Boguslav could do
+that! To sink such a soldier!"
+
+"I have heard this," continued the hetman: "Kmita, seeing that nothing
+remained for him to do in this region, hurried off to Chenstohova,
+rendered there famous services, and then defended the king with his own
+breast."
+
+Hearing this, the same soldiers who would have cut Kmita to pieces with
+their sabres began to speak of him more and more kindly.
+
+"Kmita will not forgive the calumny, he is not such a man; he will fall
+on Boguslav."
+
+"Boguslav has insulted all soldiers, by casting such infamy on one of
+them."
+
+"Kmita was cruel and violent, but he was not a parricide."
+
+"He will have vengeance!"
+
+"We will be first to take vengeance for him!"
+
+"If you, serene great mighty hetman, guarantee this with your office,
+it must have been so."
+
+"It was so!" said the hetman.
+
+And they lacked little of drinking Kmita's health. But in truth there
+were very violent voices against this, especially among the former
+officers of Radzivill. Hearing these, the hetman said,--
+
+"And do you know, gentlemen, how this Kmita comes to my mind? Babinich,
+the king's courier, resembles him much. At the first moment I was
+mistaken myself."
+
+Here Sapyeha began to look around with more severity and to speak with
+greater seriousness,--
+
+"Though Kmita were to come here himself, since he has changed, since he
+has defended a holy place with immense bravery, I should defend him
+with my office of hetman. I ask you therefore, gentlemen, to raise no
+disturbance here by reason of this newly arrived. I ask you to remember
+that he has come here by appointment of the king and the Khan. But
+especially do I recommend this to you who are captains in the general
+militia, for with you it is harder to preserve discipline."
+
+Whenever Sapyeha spoke thus, Zagloba alone dared to murmur, all others
+would sit in obedience, and so they sat now; but when the hetman's face
+grew gladsome again, all rejoiced. The goblets moving swiftly filled
+the measure of rejoicing, and the whole town was thundering till
+morning, so that the walls of houses were shaking on their foundation,
+and the smoke of salutes veiled them, as in time of battle.
+
+Next morning Sapyeha sent Anusia to Grodno with Pan Kotchyts. In
+Grodno, from which Hovanski had long since withdrawn, the voevoda's
+family was living.
+
+Poor Anusia, whose head the handsome Babinich had turned somewhat, took
+farewell of him very tenderly; but he was on his guard, and only at the
+very parting did he say to her,--
+
+"Were it not for one devil which sits in my heart like a thorn, I
+should surely have fallen in love with you to kill."
+
+Anusia thought to herself that there is no splinter which may not be
+picked out with patience and a needle; but she feared somewhat this
+Babinich, therefore she said nothing, sighed quietly, and departed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIII.
+
+
+A week after the departure of Anusia with Kotchyts, Sapyeha's camp was
+still at Byala. Kmita, with the Tartars, was ordered to the
+neighborhood of Rokitno; he was resting too, for the horses needed food
+and rest after the long road. Prince Michael Kazimir Radzivill, the
+owner of the place by inheritance, came also to Byala; he was a
+powerful magnate of the Nyesvyej branch of Radzivills, of whom it was
+said that they had inherited from the Kishkis alone seventy towns and
+four hundred villages. This Radzivill resembled in nothing his kinsmen
+of Birji. Not less ambitious perhaps than they, but differing in faith,
+an ardent patriot, and an adherent of the lawful king, he joined with
+his whole soul the confederacy of Tyshovtsi, and strengthened it as
+best he could. His immense possessions were, it is true, greatly
+ravaged by the last war, but still he stood at the head of considerable
+forces and brought the hetman no small aid.
+
+Not so much, however, did the number of his soldiers weigh in the
+balance as the fact that Radzivill stood against Radzivill; in this way
+the last seeming of justice was taken from Boguslav, and his acts were
+covered with the open character of invasion and treason.
+
+Therefore Sapyeha saw Prince Michael in his camp with delight. He was
+certain now that he would overcome Boguslav, for he surpassed him much
+in power; but according to his custom he weighed his plans slowly,
+stopped, considered, and summoned councils of officers.
+
+Kmita also was at these councils. He so hated the name Radzivill that
+at first sight of Prince Michael he trembled from anger and rage; but
+Michael knew how to win people by his countenance alone, on which
+beauty was united with kindness. The great qualities of this Radzivill,
+the grievous times which he had recently passed while defending the
+country from Zolotarenko and Serobryani, his genuine love for the king,
+made him one of the most honorable cavaliers of his time. His very
+presence in the camp of Sapyeha, the rival of the house of Radzivill,
+testified how far the young prince knew how to sacrifice private to
+public affairs. Whoso knew him was forced to love him. This feeling
+could not be resisted even by the passionate Kmita, despite his first
+opposition.
+
+Finally the prince captivated the heart of Pan Andrei by his advice.
+
+This advice was not merely to move against Boguslav, but to move
+without negotiations, to dash upon him at once: "Do not let him take
+castles; give him neither rest nor chance to draw breath; make war upon
+him with his own method." In such decision the prince saw speedy and
+certain victory.
+
+"It cannot be that Karl Gustav has not moved also; we must have our
+hands free, therefore, as soon as possible, and hasten to succor
+Charnyetski."
+
+Of the same opinion was Kmita, who had been fighting three days with
+his old evil habit of self-will so as to restrain himself from
+advancing without orders.
+
+But Sapyeha liked to act with certainty, he feared every inconsiderate
+step; therefore he determined to wait for surer intelligence.
+
+And the hetman had his reasons. The reported expedition of Boguslav
+against Podlyasye might be only a snare, a trick of war. Perhaps it was
+a feigned expedition with small forces, to prevent the junction of
+Sapyeha with the king. That done, Boguslav would escape from before
+Sapyeha, receiving battle nowhere, or delaying; but meanwhile Karl
+Gustav with the elector would strike Charnyetski, crush him with
+superior forces, move against the king himself, and smother the work in
+its inception,--the work of defence created by the glorious example of
+Chenstohova. Sapyeha was not only a leader, but a statesman. He
+explained his reasons with power at the councils, so that even Kmita
+was forced in his soul to agree with him. First of all, it was
+incumbent to know what course to take. If Boguslav's invasion proved to
+be merely a trick, it was sufficient to send a number of squadrons
+against him, and move with all speed to Charnyetski against the chief
+power of the enemy. The hetman might leave boldly a few or even more
+squadrons, for his forces were not all around Byala. Young Pan
+Krishtof, or the so-called Kryshtofek Sapyeha, was posted with two
+light squadrons and a regiment of infantry at Yavorov; Horotkyevich was
+moving around Tykotsin, having under him half a dragoon regiment very
+well trained, and five hundred volunteers, besides a light horse
+squadron named for Sapyeha; and in Byalystok were land infantry.
+
+These forces would more than suffice to stand against Boguslav, if he
+had only a few hundred horses.
+
+But the clear-sighted hetman sent couriers in every direction and
+waited for tidings.
+
+At last tidings came; but like thunderbolts, and all the more so that
+by a peculiar concurrence of circumstances all came in one evening.
+
+They were just at council in the castle of Byala when an officer of
+orderlies entered and gave a letter to the hetman. Barely had the
+hetman cast eyes on it when he changed in the face and said,--
+
+"My relative is cut to pieces at Yavorov by Boguslav himself; hardly
+has he escaped with his life."
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"The letter is written in Bransk, in fright and confusion," said he;
+"therefore it contains not a word touching Boguslav's power, which
+must, I think, be considerable, since, as I read, two squadrons and a
+regiment of infantry are cut to pieces. It must be, however, that
+Boguslav fell on them unawares. The letter gives nothing positive."
+
+"I am certain now," said Prince Michael, "that Boguslav wants to seize
+all Podlyasye, so as to make of it a separate or feudal possession in
+the treaties. Therefore he has surely come with as much power as he
+could possibly get. I have no other proofs save a knowledge of
+Boguslav. He cares neither for the Swedes nor the Brandenburgers, only
+for himself. He is an uncommon warrior, who trusts in his fortunate
+star. He wants to win a province, to avenge Yanush, to cover himself
+with glory; and to do this he must have a corresponding power, and has
+it, otherwise he would not march on us."
+
+"For everything the blessing of God is indispensable," said Oskyerko;
+"and the blessing is with us!"
+
+"Serene great mighty hetman," said Kmita, "information is needed. Let
+me loose from the leash with my Tartars, and I will bring you
+information."
+
+Oskyerko, who had been admitted to the secret and knew who Babinich
+was, supported the proposal at once and with vigor.
+
+"As God is good to me, that is the best idea in the world! Such a man
+is needed there, and such troops. If only the horses are rested."
+
+Here Oskyerko was stopped, for the officer of orderlies entered the
+room again.
+
+"Serene great mighty hetman!" said he.
+
+Sapyeha slapped his knees and exclaimed. "They have news! Admit them."
+
+After a while two light-horsemen entered, tattered and muddy.
+
+"From Horotkyevich?" asked Sapyeha.
+
+"Yes."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"Killed, or if not killed, we know not where he is."
+
+The hetman rose, but sat down again and inquired calmly,--
+
+"Where is the squadron?"
+
+"Swept away by Prince Boguslav."
+
+"Were many lost?"
+
+"We were cut to pieces; maybe a few were left who were taken captive
+like us. Some say that the colonel escaped; but that he is wounded I
+saw myself. We escaped from captivity."
+
+"Where were you attacked?"
+
+"At Tykotsin."
+
+"Why did you not go inside the walls, not being in force?"
+
+"Tykotsin is taken."
+
+The hetman covered his eyes for a moment with his hand, then he began
+to pass his hand over his forehead.
+
+"Is there a large force with Boguslav?"
+
+"Four thousand cavalry, besides infantry and cannon; the infantry very
+well trained. The cavalry moved forward, taking us with them; but
+luckily we escaped."
+
+"Whence did you escape?"
+
+"From Drohichyn."
+
+Sapyeha opened wide his eyes. "You are drunk. How could Boguslav come
+to Drohichyn? When did he defeat you?"
+
+"Two weeks ago."
+
+"And is he in Drohichyn?"
+
+"His scouting-parties are. He remained in the rear himself, for some
+convoy is captured which Pan Kotchyts was conducting."
+
+"He was conducting Panna Borzobogati!" cried Kmita.
+
+A silence followed. Boguslav's success, and so sudden, had confused the
+officers beyond measure. All thought in their hearts that the hetman
+was to blame for delay, but no one dared say so aloud.
+
+Sapyeha, however, felt that he had done what was proper, and had acted
+wisely. Therefore he recovered first from the surprise, sent out the
+men with a wave of his hand, and said,--
+
+"These are ordinary incidents of war, which should confuse no one. Do
+not think, gentlemen, that we have suffered any defeat. Those regiments
+are a loss surely; but the loss might have been a hundred times greater
+if Boguslav had enticed us to a distant province. He is coming to us.
+We will go out to meet him like hospitable hosts."
+
+Here he turned to the colonels: "According to my orders all must be
+ready to move?"
+
+"They are ready," said Oskyerko. "Only saddle the horses and sound the
+trumpet."
+
+"Sound it to-day. We move in the morning at dawn, without fail. Pan
+Babinich will gallop ahead with his Tartars, and seize with all haste
+informants."
+
+Kmita had barely heard this when he was outside the door, and a moment
+later hurrying on as his horse could gallop to Rokitno.
+
+And Sapyeha also did not delay long.
+
+It was still night when the trumpets gave out their prolonged sounds;
+then cavalry and infantry poured forth into the field; after them
+stretched a long train of squeaking wagons. The first gleams of day
+were reflected on musket-barrels and spear-points.
+
+And they marched, regiment after regiment, squadron after squadron, in
+great regularity. The cavalry sang their matins, and the horses snorted
+sharply in the morning coolness, from which the soldiers predicted sure
+victory for themselves.
+
+Their hearts were full of consolation; for the knighthood knew from
+experience that Sapyeha weighed everything, that he labored with his
+head, that he considered every undertaking from both sides, that when
+he began a thing he would finish it, and when he moved he would strike.
+
+At Rokitno the lairs of the Tartars were cold; they had gone the night
+before, hence must have pushed far in advance. It surprised Sapyeha
+that along the road it was difficult to learn anything of them, though
+the division, numbering, with volunteers, several hundred, could not
+pass without being seen.
+
+The most experienced officers wondered greatly at this march, and at
+Pan Babinich for being able to lead in such fashion.
+
+"Like a wolf he goes through the willows, and like a wolf he will
+bite," said they; "he is as if born for the work."
+
+But Oskyerko, who, as has been said, knew who Babinich was, said to
+Sapyeha,--
+
+"It was not for nothing that Hovanski put a price on his head. God will
+give victory to whom he chooses; but this is sure, that war with us
+will soon be bitter for Boguslav."
+
+"But it is a pity that Babinich has vanished as if he had fallen into
+water," answered the hetman.
+
+Three days passed without tidings. Sapyeha's main forces had reached
+Drohichyn, had crossed the Bug, and found no enemy in front. The hetman
+began to be disturbed. According to the statements of the light horse,
+Boguslav's scouts had reached Drohichyn; it was evident therefore that
+Boguslav had determined to withdraw. But what was the meaning of this
+withdrawal? Had Boguslav learned that Sapyeha's forces were superior,
+and was he afraid to measure strength with him, or did he wish to
+entice the hetman far toward the north, to lighten for the King of
+Sweden his attack on Charnyetski and the hetmans of the kingdom?
+Babinich was to find an informant and let the hetman know. The reports
+of the light horse as to the number of Boguslav's troops might be
+erroneous; hence the need of precise information at the earliest.
+
+Meanwhile five days more passed, and Babinich gave no account of
+himself. Spring was coming; the days were growing warmer; the snow was
+melting. The neighborhoods were being covered with water, under which
+were sleeping morasses which hindered the march in an unheard of
+degree. The greater part of the cannons and wagons the hetman had to
+leave in Drohichyn, and go farther on horseback. Hence great
+inconvenience and murmuring, especially among the general militia. In
+Bransk they came upon such mud that even the infantry could not march
+farther. The hetman collected on the road horses from peasants and
+small nobles, and seated musketeers on them. The light cavalry took
+others; but they had gone too far already, and the hetman understood
+that only one thing remained,--to advance with all speed.
+
+Boguslav retreated unceasingly. Along the road they found continual
+traces of him in villages burned here and there, in corpses of men
+hanging on trees. The small local nobles came every little while with
+information to Sapyeha; but the truth was lost, as is usual in
+contradictory statements. One saw a single squadron, and swore that the
+prince had no more troops; another saw two; a third three, a fourth an
+army five miles long. In a word they were fables such as men tell who
+know nothing of armies or war.
+
+They had seen Tartars, too, here and there; but the stories concerning
+them seemed most improbable, for it was said that they were seen not
+behind the prince's army, but in front, marching ahead. Sapyeha panted
+angrily when any one mentioned Babinich in his presence, and he said to
+Oskyerko,--
+
+"You overrated him. In an evil hour I sent away Volodyovski, for if he
+were here I should have had long ago as many informants as I need; but
+Babinich is a whirlwind, or even worse. Who knows, he may in truth have
+joined Boguslav and be marching in the vanguard."
+
+Oskyerko himself did not know what to think. Meanwhile another week
+passed; the army had come to Byalystok.
+
+It was midday.
+
+Two hours later the vanguard gave notice that some detachment was
+approaching.
+
+"It may be Babinich!" cried the hetman. "I'll give him _Pater Noster!_"
+
+It was not Babinich himself. But in the camp there rose such commotion
+over the arrival of this detachment that Sapyeha went out to see what
+was taking place.
+
+Meanwhile officers from different squadrons flew in, crying,--
+
+"From Babinich! Prisoners! A whole band! He seized a crowd of men!"
+
+Indeed the hetman saw a number of tens of men on poor, ragged horses.
+Babinich's Tartars drove nearly three hundred men with bound hands,
+beating them with bullock-skin whips. The prisoners presented a
+terrible sight. They were rather shadows than men. With torn clothing,
+half naked, so poor that the bones were pushing through their skin,
+bloody, they marched half alive, indifferent to all things, even to the
+whistle of the whips which cut them, and to the wild shouts of the
+Tartars.
+
+"What kind of men are they?" asked the hetman.
+
+"Boguslav's troops!" answered one of Kmita's volunteers who had brought
+the prisoners together with the Tartars.
+
+"But where did you get so many?"
+
+"Nearly half as many more fell on the road, from exhaustion."
+
+With this an old Tartar, a sergeant in the horde, approached, and
+beating with the forehead, gave a letter from Kmita to Sapyeha.
+
+The hetman, without delay, broke the seal and began to read aloud:--
+
+
+"Serene great mighty hetman! If I have sent neither news nor informants
+with news hitherto, it is because I went in front, and not in the rear
+of Prince Boguslav's army, and I wished to learn the most possible."
+
+
+The hetman stopped reading.
+
+"That is a devil!" said he. "Instead of following the prince, he went
+ahead of him."
+
+"May the bullets strike him!" added Oskyerko, in an undertone.
+
+The hetman read on.
+
+
+"It was dangerous work, as Boguslav's scouts marched in a wide front;
+but after I had cut down two parties and spared none. I worked to the
+van of the army, from which movement great confusion came upon the
+prince, for he fell to thinking at once that he was surrounded, and as
+it were was crawling into a trap."
+
+
+"That is the reason of this unexpected withdrawal!" cried the hetman.
+"A devil, a genuine devil!" He read on with still more curiosity,--
+
+
+"The prince, not understanding what had happened, began to lose his
+head, and sent out party after party, which we cut up notably, so that
+none of them returned in the same number. Marching in advance, we
+seized provisions, cut dams, destroyed bridges, so that Boguslav's men
+advanced with great trouble, neither sleeping nor eating, having rest
+neither day nor night. They could not stir from the camp, for the
+Tartars seized the unwary; and when the camp was sleeping, the Tartars
+howled terribly in the willows; so the enemy, thinking that a great
+army was moving on them, had to stand under arms all night. The prince
+was brought to great despair, not knowing what to begin, where to go,
+how to turn,--for this reason it is needful to march on him quickly,
+before his fear passes. He had six thousand troops, but has lost nearly
+a thousand. His horses are dying. His cavalry is good; his infantry is
+passable; God, however, has granted that from day to day it decreases,
+and if our army comes up it will fly apart. I seized in Byalystok the
+prince's carriages, some of his provision chests and things of value,
+with two cannons; but I was forced to throw most of these into the
+river. The traitor from continual rage has grown seriously ill, and is
+barely able to sit on his horse; fever leaves him neither night nor
+day. Panna Borzobogati is taken, but being ill the prince can make no
+attack on her honor. These reports, with the account of Boguslav's
+desperation, I got from the prisoners whom my Tartars touched up with
+fire, and who if they are touched again will repeat the truth. Now I
+commend my obedient services to you, serene great mighty hetman,
+begging for forgiveness if I have erred, the Tartars are good fellows,
+and seeing a world of plunder, serve marvellously."
+
+
+"Serene great mighty lord," said Oskyerko, "now you surely regret less
+that Volodyovski is away, for he could not equal this devil incarnate.
+Oh, he is an ambitious piece; he even hurled the truth into the eyes of
+Prince Yanush, not caring whether it was pleasant or unpleasant for
+that hetman to hear it. This was his style with Hovanski, but Hovanski
+had fifteen times more troops."
+
+"If that is true, we need to advance at the greatest speed," said
+Sapyeha.
+
+"Before the prince can collect his wits."
+
+"Let us move on, by the dear God! Babinich will cut the dams, and we
+will overtake Boguslav!"
+
+Meanwhile the prisoners, whom the Tartars had kept in a group in front
+of Sapyeha, seeing the hetman, fell to groaning and weeping, showing
+their misery and calling for mercy in various tongues; for there were
+among them Swedes, Germans, and the Scottish guards of Prince Boguslav.
+Sapyeha took them from the Tartars, and gave command to feed them and
+take their testimony without torture. Their statements confirmed the
+truth of Kmita's words; therefore the rest of Sapyeha's army advanced
+at great speed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIV.
+
+
+Kmita's next report came from Sokolka, and was brief:
+
+
+"The prince, to mislead our troops, has feigned a march toward
+Shchuchyn, whither he has sent a party. He has gone himself with his
+main force to Yanov, and has received there a reinforcement of
+infantry, led by Captain Kyritz, eight hundred good men. From the place
+where we are the prince's fires are visible. In Yanov he intends to
+rest one week. The prisoners say that he is ready for battle. The fever
+is shaking him continually."
+
+
+On receipt of this statement Sapyeha, leaving the remainder of his
+cannon and wagons, moved on with cavalry to Sokolka; and at last the
+two armies stood eye to eye. It was foreseen too that a battle was
+unavoidable; for on one side they could flee no longer, the others
+pursuing. Meanwhile, like wrestlers who after a long chase are to seize
+each other by the bodies, they lay opposite each other, catching breath
+in their panting throats, and resting.
+
+When the hetman saw Kmita he seized him by the shoulders, and said,--
+
+"I was angry with you for not giving an account of yourself for so
+long, but I see that you have accomplished more than I could hope for;
+and if God gives victory, not mine but yours will be the merit. You
+went like an angel guardian after Boguslav."
+
+An ill-omened light gleamed in Kmita's eyes. "If I am his angel
+guardian, I must be present at his death."
+
+"God will order that," said the hetman, seriously; "but if you wish the
+Lord to bless you, then pursue the enemy of the country, not your own."
+
+Kmita bowed in silence; but it could not be learned whether the
+beautiful words of the hetman made any impression on him. His face
+expressed implacable hatred, and was the more threatening that the toil
+of pursuit after Boguslav had emaciated it still more. Formerly in that
+countenance was depicted only daring and insolent wildness; now it had
+become also stern and inexorable. You could easily see that he against
+whom that man had recorded vengeance in his soul ought to guard
+himself, even if he were Radzivill.
+
+He had, in truth, avenged himself terribly. The services he had
+rendered in that campaign were immense. By pushing himself in front of
+Boguslav he had beaten him from the road, had made his reckoning false,
+had fixed in him the conviction that he was surrounded, and had forced
+him to retreat. Further he went before him night and day. He destroyed
+scouting-parties; he was without mercy for prisoners. In Syemyatiche,
+in Botski, in Orel and Byelsk he had fallen in the dark night on the
+whole camp.
+
+In Voishki, not far from Zabludovo, in a purely Radzivill country, he
+had fallen like a blind hurricane on the quarters of the prince
+himself, so that Boguslav, who had just sat down to dinner, almost fell
+into his hands; and thanks to Sakovich alone, did he take out his head
+alive.
+
+At Byalystok Kmita seized the carriages and camp-chests of Boguslav. He
+wearied, weakened, and inflicted hunger on Boguslav's troops. The
+choice German infantry and Swedish cavalry which the prince had brought
+with him were like walking skeletons, from wandering, from surprises,
+from sleeplessness. The mad howling of the Tartars and Kmita's
+volunteers was heard in front of them, at the flanks, and in the rear.
+Scarcely had a wearied soldier closed his eyes when he had to seize his
+weapons. The farther on, the worse the condition.
+
+The small nobility inhabiting those neighborhoods joined with the
+Tartars, partly through hatred of the Radzivills of Birji, partly
+through fear of Kmita; for he punished beyond measure those who
+resisted. His forces increased therefore; those of Boguslav melted.
+
+Besides, Boguslav himself was really ill; and though in the heart of
+that man care never had its nest long, and though the astrologers, whom
+he believed blindly, had foretold him in Prussia that his person would
+meet no harm in that expedition, his ambition suffered harshly more
+than once. He, whose name had been repeated with admiration in the
+Netherlands, on the Rhine, and in France, was beaten every day in those
+deep forests by an unseen enemy, and overcome without a battle.
+
+There was, besides, in that pursuit such uncommon stubbornness and
+impetuosity passing the usual measure of war, that Boguslav with his
+native quickness divined after a few days that some inexorable personal
+enemy was following him. He learned the name Babinich easily, for the
+whole neighborhood repeated it; but that name was strange to him. Not
+less glad would he be to know the person; and on the road in times of
+pursuit he arranged tens and hundreds of ambushes,--always in vain.
+Babinich was able to avoid traps, and inflicted defeats where they were
+least expected.
+
+At last both armies came to the neighborhood of Sokolka. Boguslav found
+there the reinforcement under Kyritz, who, not knowing hitherto where
+the prince was, went to Yanov, where the fate of Boguslav's expedition
+was to be decided.
+
+Kmita closed hermetically all the roads leading from Yanov to Sokolka,
+Korychyn, Kuznitsa, and Suhovola. The neighboring forests, willow
+woods, and thickets were occupied by the Tartars. Not a letter could
+pass; no wagon with provisions could be brought in. Boguslav himself
+was in a hurry for battle before his last biscuit in Yanov should be
+eaten.
+
+But as a man of quick wit, trained in every intrigue, he determined to
+try negotiations first. He did not know yet that Sapyeha in this kind
+of intrigue surpassed him greatly in reasoning and quickness. From
+Sokolka then in Boguslav's name came Pan Sakovich, under-chamberlain
+and starosta of Oshmiana, the attendant and personal friend of Prince
+Boguslav, with a letter and authority to conclude peace.
+
+This Pan Sakovich was a wealthy man, who reached senatorial dignity
+later in life, for he became voevoda of Smolensk and treasurer of the
+Grand Principality; he was at that time one of the most noted cavaliers
+in Lithuania, famed equally for bravery and beauty. Pan Sakovich was of
+medium stature; the hair of his head and brows was black as a raven's
+wing, but he had pale blue eyes which gazed with marvellous and
+unspeakable insolence, so that Boguslav said of him that he stunned
+with his eyes as with the back of an axe. He wore foreign garments
+which he brought from journeys made with Boguslav; he spoke nearly all
+languages; in battle he rushed into the greatest whirl so madly that
+among his enemies he was called "the doomed man." But, thanks to his
+uncommon strength and presence of mind, he always came out unharmed. It
+was said that he had strength to stop a carriage in its course by
+seizing the hind wheel; he could drink beyond measure, could toss off a
+quart of cream in vodka, and be as sober as if he had taken nothing in
+his mouth. With men he was morose, haughty, offensive; in Boguslav's
+hand he was as soft as wax. His manners were polished, and though in
+the king's chambers he knew how to bear himself, he had a certain
+wildness in his spirit which burst forth at times like a flame.
+
+Pan Sakovich was rather a companion than a servant of Boguslav.
+Boguslav, who in truth had never loved any one in his life, had an
+unconquerable weakness for this man. By nature exceedingly sordid, he
+was generous to Sakovich alone. By his influence he raised him to be
+under-chamberlain, and had him endowed with the starostaship of
+Oshmiana. After every battle Boguslav's first question was: "Where is
+Sakovich? has he met with no harm?" The prince depended greatly on the
+starosta's counsels, and employed him in war and in negotiations in
+which the courage and impudence of Sakovich were very effective.
+
+This time he sent him to Sapyeha. But the mission was
+difficult,--first, because the suspicion might easily fall on the
+starosta that he had come only to spy out and discover Sapyeha's
+strength; second, because the envoy had much to ask and nothing to
+offer.
+
+Happily, Pan Sakovich did not trouble himself with anything. He entered
+as a victor who comes to dictate terms to the vanquished, and struck
+Sapyeha with his pale eyes.
+
+Sapyeha smiled when he saw that pride, but half of his smile was
+compassion. Every man may impose much with daring and impudence, but on
+people of a certain measure; the hetman was above the measure of
+Sakovich.
+
+"My master, prince in Birji and Dubinki, commander-in-chief of the
+armies of his princely highness the elector," said Sakovich, "has sent
+me with a greeting, and to ask about the health of your worthiness."
+
+"Thank the prince, and say that you saw me well."
+
+Sapyeha took the letter, opened it carelessly enough, read it, and
+said,--
+
+"Too bad to lose time. I cannot see what the prince wants. Do you
+surrender, or do you wish to try your fortune?"
+
+Sakovich feigned astonishment.
+
+"Whether we surrender? I think that the prince proposes specially in
+this letter that you surrender; at least my instructions--"
+
+"Of your instructions we will speak later, my dear Pan Sakovich. We
+have chased you nearly a hundred and fifty miles, as a hound does a
+hare. Have you ever heard of a hare proposing to a hound to surrender?"
+
+"We have received reinforcements."
+
+"Von Kyritz, with eight hundred men, and so tired that they will lay
+down their arms before battle. I will give you Hmelnitski's saying
+'There is no time to talk!'"
+
+"The elector with all his power is with us."
+
+"That is well,--I shall not have far to seek him; for I wish to ask him
+by what right he sends troops into the Commonwealth, of which he is a
+vassal, and to which he is bound in loyalty."
+
+"The right of the strongest."
+
+"Maybe in Prussia such a right exists, but not with us. But if you are
+the stronger, take the field."
+
+"The prince would long since have attacked you, were it not for kindred
+blood."
+
+"I wonder if that is the only hindrance!"
+
+"The prince wonders at the animosity of the Sapyehas against the house
+of Radzivill, and that your worthiness for private revenge hesitates
+not to spill the blood of the country."
+
+"Tfu!" cried Kmita, listening behind the hetman's armchair to the
+conversation.
+
+Pan Sakovich rose, went to Kmita, and struck him with his eyes. But he
+met his own, or better; and in the eyes of Pan Andrei the starosta
+found such an answer that he dropped his glance to the floor.
+
+The hetman frowned. "Take your seat, Pan Sakovich. And do you preserve
+calm" (turning to Kmita). Then he said to Sakovich,--
+
+"Conscience speaks only the truth, but mouths chew it and spit it into
+the world as calumny. He who with foreign troops attacks a country,
+inflicts wrong on him who defends it. God hears this, and the heavenly
+chronicler will inscribe."
+
+"Through hatred of the Sapyehas to the Radzivills was the prince
+voevoda of Vilna consumed."
+
+"I hate traitors, not the Radzivills; and the best proof of this is
+that Prince Michael Radzivill is in my camp now. Tell me what is your
+wish?"
+
+"Your worthiness, I will tell what I have in my heart; he hates who
+sends secret assassins."
+
+Pan Sapyeha was astonished in his turn.
+
+"I send assassins against Prince Boguslav?"
+
+"That is the case!"
+
+"You have gone mad!"
+
+"The other day they caught, beyond Yanov, a murderer who once made an
+attack on the life of the prince. Tortures brought him to tell who sent
+him."
+
+A moment of silence followed; but in that silence Pan Sapyeha heard how
+Kmita, standing behind him, repeated twice through his set lips, "Woe,
+woe!"
+
+"God is my judge," answered the hetman, with real senatorial dignity,
+"that neither to you nor your prince shall I ever justify myself; for
+you were not made to be my judges. But do you, instead of loitering,
+tell directly what you have come for, and what conditions your prince
+offers."
+
+"The prince, my lord, has destroyed Horotkyevich, has defeated Pan
+Krishtof Sapyeha, taken Tykotsin; therefore he can justly call himself
+victor, and ask for considerable advantages. But regretting the loss of
+Christian blood, he desires to return in quiet to Prussia, requiring
+nothing more than the freedom of leaving his garrisons in the castles.
+We have also taken prisoners not a few, among whom are distinguished
+officers, not counting Panna Anusia Borzobogati, who has been sent
+already to Taurogi. These may be exchanged on equal terms."
+
+"Do not boast of your victories, for my advance guard, led by Pan
+Babinich here present, pressed you for a hundred and fifty miles; you
+retreated before it, lost twice as many prisoners as you took
+previously; you lost wagons, cannon, camp-chests. Your army is
+fatigued, dropping from hunger, has nothing to eat; you know not
+whither to turn. You have seen my army; I did not ask to have your eyes
+bound purposely, that you might know whether you are able to measure
+forces with us. As to that young lady, she is not under my
+guardianship, but that of Pan Zamoyski and Princess Griselda
+Vishnyevetski. The prince will reckon with them if he does her any
+injustice. But speak with wisdom; otherwise I shall order Pan Babinich
+to march at once."
+
+Sakovich, instead of answering, turned to Kmita: "Then you are the man
+who made such onsets on the road? You must have learned your murderous
+trade under Kmita--"
+
+"Learn on your own skin whether I practised well!"
+
+The hetman again frowned. "You have nothing to do here," said he to
+Sakovich; "you may go."
+
+"Your worthiness, give me at least a letter."
+
+"Let it be so. Wait at Pan Oskyerko's quarters for a letter."
+
+Hearing this, Pan Oskyerko conducted Sakovich at once to his quarters.
+The hetman waved his hand as a parting; then he turned to Pan Andrei.
+"Why did you say 'Woe,' when he spoke of that man whom they seized?"
+asked he, looking quickly and severely into the eyes of the knight.
+"Has hatred so deadened your conscience that you really sent a murderer
+to the prince?"
+
+"By the Most Holy Lady whom I defended, no!" answered Kmita; "not
+through strange hands did I wish to reach his throat."
+
+"Why did you say 'Woe'? Do you know that man?"
+
+"I know him," answered Kmita, growing pale from emotion and rage. "I
+sent him from Lvoff to Taurogi--Prince Boguslav took Panna Billevich to
+Taurogi--I love that lady. We were to marry--I sent that man to get me
+news of her. She was in such hands--"
+
+"Calm yourself!" said the hetman. "Have you given him any letters?"
+
+"No; she would not read them."
+
+"Why?"
+
+"Boguslav told her that I offered to carry away the king."
+
+"Great are your reasons for hating him."
+
+"True, your worthiness, true."
+
+"Does the prince know that man?"
+
+"He knows him. That is the sergeant Soroka. He helped me to carry off
+Boguslav."
+
+"I understand," said the hetman; "the vengeance of the prince is
+awaiting him."
+
+A moment of silence followed.
+
+"The prince is in a trap," said the hetman, after a while; "maybe he
+will consent to give him up."
+
+"Let your worthiness," said Kmita, "detain Sakovich, and send me to the
+prince. Perhaps I may rescue Soroka."
+
+"Is his fate such a great question for you?"
+
+"An old soldier, an old servant; he carried me in his arms. A multitude
+of times he has saved my life. God would punish me were I to abandon
+him in such straits." And Kmita began to tremble from pity and anxiety.
+
+But the hetman said: "It is no wonder to me that the soldiers love you,
+for you love them. I will do what I can. I will write to the prince
+that I will free for him whomsoever he wishes for that soldier, who
+besides at your command has acted as an innocent agent."
+
+Kmita seized his head: "What does he care for prisoners? he will not
+let him go for thirty of them."
+
+"Then he will not give him to you; he will even attempt your life."
+
+"He would give him for one,--for Sakovich."
+
+"I cannot imprison Sakovich; he is an envoy."
+
+"Detain him, and I will go with a letter to the prince. Perhaps I shall
+succeed--God be with him! I will abandon my revenge, if he will give me
+that soldier."
+
+"Wait," said the hetman; "I can detain Sakovich. Besides that I will
+write to the prince to send me a safe-conduct without a name."
+
+The hetman began to write at once. An hour later a Cossack was
+galloping with a letter to Yanov, and toward evening he returned with
+Boguslav's answer:--
+
+
+"I send according to request the safe-conduct with which every envoy
+may return unharmed, though it is a wonder to me that your worthiness
+should ask for a conduct while you have such a hostage as my servant
+and friend Pan Sakovich, for whom I have so much love that I would give
+all the officers in my army for him. It is known also that envoys are
+not killed, but are usually respected even by wild Tartars with whom
+your worthiness is making war against my Christian army. Now,
+guaranteeing the safety of your envoy by my personal princely word, I
+subscribe myself, etc."
+
+
+That same evening Kmita took the safe-conduct and went with the two
+Kyemliches. Pan Sakovich remained in Sokolka as a hostage.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXV.
+
+
+It was near midnight when Pan Andrei announced himself to the advanced
+pickets of the prince, but no one was sleeping in the whole camp. The
+battle might begin at any moment, therefore they had prepared for it
+carefully. Boguslav's troops had occupied Yanov itself; they commanded
+the road from Sokolka, which was held by artillery, managed by the
+elector's trained men. There were only three cannons, but abundance of
+powder and balls. On both sides of Yanov, among the birch groves,
+Boguslav gave orders to make intrenchments and to occupy them with
+double-barrelled guns and infantry. The cavalry occupied Yanov itself,
+the road behind the cannons, and the intervals between the trenches.
+The position was defensible enough, and with fresh men defence in it
+might be long and bloody; but of fresh soldiers there were only eight
+hundred under Kyritz; the rest were so wearied that they could barely
+stand on their feet. Besides, the howling of the Tartars was heard in
+Suhovola at midnight, and later in the rear of Boguslav's ranks; hence
+a certain fear was spread among the soldiers. Boguslav was forced to
+send in that direction all his light cavalry, which after it had gone
+three miles dared neither return nor advance, for fear of ambushes in
+the forest.
+
+Boguslav, though fever together with violent chills was tormenting him
+more than ever, commanded everything in person; but since he rode with
+difficulty he had himself carried by four soldiers in an open litter.
+In this way he had examined the road as well as the birch groves, and
+was entering Yanov when he was informed that an envoy from Sapyeha was
+approaching.
+
+They were already on the street. Boguslav was unable to recognize Kmita
+because of the darkness, and because Pan Andrei, through excess of
+caution on the part of officers in the advance guard, had his head
+covered with a bag in which there was an opening only for his mouth.
+
+The prince noticed the bag when Kmita, after dismounting, stood near
+him; he gave command to remove it at once.
+
+"This is Yanov," said he, "and there is no reason for secrecy." Then he
+turned in the darkness to Pan Andrei: "Are you from Pan Sapyeha?"
+
+"I am."
+
+"And what is Pan Sakovich doing there?"
+
+"Pan Oskyerko is entertaining him."
+
+"Why did you ask for a safe conduct when you have Sakovich? Pan Sapyeha
+is too careful, and let him see to it that he is not too clever."
+
+"That is not my affair," answered Kmita.
+
+"I see that the envoy is not over-given to speech."
+
+"I have brought a letter, and in the quarters I will speak of my own
+affair."
+
+"Is there a private question?"
+
+"There will be a request to your highness."
+
+"I shall be glad not to refuse it. Now I beg you to follow. Mount your
+horse; I should ask you to the litter, but it is too small."
+
+They moved on. The prince in the litter and Kmita at one side on
+horseback. They looked in the darkness without being able to
+distinguish the faces of each other. After a while the prince, in spite
+of furs, began to shake so that his teeth chattered. At last he said,--
+
+"It has come on me grievously; if it were--brr!--not for this, I would
+give other conditions."
+
+Kmita said nothing, and only wished to pierce with his eyes the
+darkness, in the middle of which the head and face of the prince were
+outlined in indefinite gray and white features. At the sound of
+Boguslav's voice and at sight of his figure all the former insults, the
+old hatred, and the burning desire for revenge so rose in Kmita's heart
+that they turned almost to madness. His hand of itself sought the
+sword, which had been taken from him; but at his girdle he had the
+baton with an iron head, the ensign of his rank of colonel; the devil
+then began to whirl in his brain at once, and to whisper: "Cry in his
+ear who you are, and smash his head into bits. The night is dark, you
+will escape. The Kyemliches are with you. You will rub out a traitor
+and pay for injustice. You will rescue Olenka, Soroka-- Strike!
+strike!"
+
+Kmita came still nearer the litter, and with trembling hand began to
+draw forth the baton. "Strike!" whispered the devil; "you will serve
+the country."
+
+Kmita had now drawn out the baton, and he squeezed the handle as if
+wishing to crush it in his hand. "One, two, three!" whispered the
+devil.
+
+But at that moment Kmita's horse, whether because he had hit the helmet
+of the soldier with his nose, or had shied, it is enough that he
+stumbled violently. Kmita pulled the reins. During this time the litter
+had moved on several steps. The hair stood on the head of the young
+man.
+
+"O Most Holy Mother, restrain my hand!" whispered he, through his set
+teeth. "O Most Holy Mother, save me! I am here an envoy; I came from
+the hetman, and I want to murder like a night assassin. I am a noble; I
+am a servant of Thine. Lead me not into temptation!"
+
+"But why are you loitering?" asked Boguslav, in a voice broken by
+fever.
+
+"I am here!"
+
+"Do you hear the cocks crowing beyond the fences? It is needful to
+hurry, for I am sick and want rest."
+
+Kmita put the baton behind his belt and rode farther, near the litter.
+Still he could not find peace. He understood that only with cool blood
+and self-command could he free Soroka; therefore he stipulated with
+himself in advance what words to use with the prince so as to incline
+and convince him. He vowed to have only Soroka in view, to mention
+nothing else, and especially not Olenka. And he felt how in the
+darkness a burning blush covered his face at the thought that perhaps
+the prince himself would mention her, and maybe mention something that
+Pan Andrei would not be able to endure or listen to.
+
+"Let him not mention her," said he to himself; "let him not allude to
+her, for in that is his death and mine. Let him have mercy upon
+himself, if he lacks shame."
+
+Pan Andrei suffered terribly; his breath failed him, and his throat was
+so straitened that he feared lest he might not be able to bring forth
+the words when he came to speak. In this stifling oppression he began
+the Litany.
+
+After a time relief came; he was quieted considerably, and that grasp
+as it were of an iron hand squeezing his throat was relaxed.
+
+They had now arrived at the prince's quarters. The soldiers put down
+the litter; two attendants took the prince by the armpits; he turned to
+Kmita, and with his teeth chattering continually, said,--
+
+"I beg you to follow. The chill will soon pass; then we can speak."
+
+After a while they found themselves in a separate apartment in which
+heaps of coals were glowing in a fireplace, and in which was
+unendurable heat. His servants placed Prince Boguslav on a long
+campaign arm-chair covered with furs, and brought a light. Then the
+attendants withdrew. The prince threw his head back, closed his eyes,
+and remained in that position motionless for a time; at last he said,--
+
+"Directly,--let me rest."
+
+Kmita looked at him. The prince had not changed much, but the fever had
+pinched his face. He was painted as usual, and his cheeks touched with
+color; but just for that reason, when he lay there with closed eyes and
+head thrown back, he was somewhat like a corpse or a wax figure. Pan
+Andrei stood before him in the bright light. The prince began to open
+his lids lazily; suddenly he opened them completely, and a flame, as it
+were, flew over his face. But it remained only an instant; then again
+he closed his eyes.
+
+"If thou art a spirit, I fear thee not," said he; "but vanish."
+
+"I have come with a letter from the hetman," answered Kmita.
+
+Boguslav shuddered a little, as if he wished to shake off visions; then
+he looked at Kmita and asked,--
+
+"Have I been deceived in you?"
+
+"Not at all," answered Pan Andrei, pointing with his finger to the
+scar.
+
+"That is the second!" muttered the prince to himself; and he added
+aloud, "Where is the letter?"
+
+"Here it is," said Kmita, giving the letter.
+
+Boguslav began to read, and when he had finished a marvellous light
+flashed in his eyes.
+
+"It is well," said he; "there is loitering enough! Tomorrow the
+battle--and I am glad, for I shall not have a fever."
+
+"And we, too, are glad," answered Kmita.
+
+A moment of silence followed, during which these two inexorable enemies
+measured each other with a certain terrible curiosity. The prince first
+resumed the conversation.
+
+"I divine that it was you who attacked me with the Tartars?"
+
+"It was T."
+
+"And did you not fear to come here?"
+
+Kmita did not answer.
+
+"Did you count on our relationship through the Kishkis? For you and I
+have our reckonings. I can tear you out of your skin, Sir Cavalier."
+
+"You can, your highness."
+
+"You came with a safe-conduct, it is true. I understand now why Pan
+Sapyeha asked for it. But you have attempted my life. Sakovich is
+detained there; but Sapyeha has no right to Sakovich, while I have a
+right to you, cousin."
+
+"I have come with a prayer to your highness."
+
+"I beg you to mention it. You can calculate that for you everything
+will be done. What is the prayer?"
+
+"You have here a captive soldier, one of those men who aided me in
+carrying you off. I gave orders, he acted as a blind instrument. Be
+pleased to set that man at liberty."
+
+Boguslav thought awhile.
+
+"I am thinking," said he, "which is greater,--your daring as a soldier,
+or your insolence as a petitioner."
+
+"I do not ask this man from you for nothing."
+
+"And what will you give me for him?"
+
+"Myself."
+
+"Is it possible that he is such a precious soldier? You pay
+bountifully, but see that that is sufficient; for surely you would like
+to ransom something else from me."
+
+Kmita came a step nearer to the prince, and grew so awfully pale that
+Boguslav, in spite of himself, looked at the door, and notwithstanding
+all his daring he changed the subject of conversation.
+
+"Pan Sapyeha will not entertain such an agreement. I should be glad to
+hold you; but I have guaranteed with my word of a prince your safety."
+
+"I will write by that soldier to the hetman that I remain of my own
+will."
+
+"And he will declare that, in spite of your will, I must send you. You
+have given him services too great. He will not set Sakovich free, and
+Sakovich I prize higher than you."
+
+"Then, your highness, free that soldier, and I will go on my word where
+you command."
+
+"I may fall to-morrow; I care nothing for treaties touching the day
+after."
+
+"I implore your highness for that man. I--"
+
+"What will you do?"
+
+"I will drop my revenge."
+
+"You see, Pan Kmita, many a time have I gone against a bear with a
+spear, not because I had to do so, but from desire. I am glad when some
+danger threatens, for life is less dull for me. In this case I reserve
+your revenge as a pleasure; for you are, I must confess, of that breed
+of bears which seek the hunter themselves."
+
+"Your highness," said Kmita, "for small mercies God often forgives
+great sins. Neither of us knows when it will come to him to stand
+before the judgment of Christ."
+
+"Enough!" said the prince. "I compose psalms for myself in spite of the
+fever, so as to have some merit before the Lord; should I need a
+preacher I should summon my own. You do not know how to beg with
+sufficient humility, and you go in round-about ways. I will show you
+the method myself: strike to-morrow in the battle on Sapyeha, and after
+to-morrow I will let out the soldier and forgive you your sins. You
+betrayed Radzivill; betray now Sapyeha."
+
+"Is this the last word of your highness? By all the saints, I implore
+you!"
+
+"No! Devil take you! And you change in the face--But don't come too
+near, for, though I am ashamed to call attendants--look here! You are
+too bold!"
+
+Boguslav pointed at a pistol-barrel peeping from under the fur with
+which it was covered, and looked with sparkling eyes into Kmita's eyes.
+
+"Your highness!" cried Kmita, almost joining his hands in prayer, but
+with a face changed by wrath.
+
+"You beg, but you threaten," said Boguslav; "you bend your neck, but
+the devil is gnashing his teeth at me from behind your collar. Pride is
+gleaming in your eyes, and in your mouth it sounds as in a cloud. With
+your forehead to the Radzivill feet when you beg, my little man! Beat
+with your forehead on the floor, then I will answer."
+
+Pan Andrei's face was as pale as a piece of linen; he drew his hand
+over his moist forehead, his eyes, his face; and he spoke with such a
+broken voice, as if the fever from which the prince suffered had
+suddenly sprung upon him.
+
+"If your highness will free for me that old soldier, I am ready to fall
+at your feet."
+
+Satisfaction gleamed in Boguslav's eyes. He had brought down his enemy,
+bent his proud neck. Better food he could not give to his revenge and
+hatred.
+
+Kmita stood before him with hair erect in his forelock, trembling in
+his whole body. His face, resembling even in rest the head of a hawk,
+recalled all the more an enraged bird of prey. You could not tell
+whether at the next moment he would throw himself at the feet, or hurl
+himself at the breast of the prince. But Boguslav not taking his eyes
+from him, said,--
+
+"Before witnesses! before people!" And he turned to the door. "Hither!"
+
+A number of attendants, Poles and foreigners, came in; after them
+officers entered.
+
+"Gracious gentlemen!" said the prince, "behold Pan Kmita, the banneret
+of Orsha and envoy of Pan Sapyeha, who has come to beg a favor of me,
+and he wishes to have all you gentlemen as witnesses."
+
+Kmita tottered like a drunken man, groaned, and fell at Boguslav's
+feet. The prince stretched his feet purposely so that the end of his
+riding-boot touched the forehead of the knight.
+
+All looked in silence, astonished at the famous name, as well as at
+this,--that he who bore it was now an envoy from Pan Sapyeha. All
+understood, too, that something uncommon was taking place.
+
+The prince rose, and without saying a word passed into the adjoining
+chamber, beckoning to two attendants to follow him.
+
+Kmita rose. His face showed no longer either anger or rapacity, merely
+indifference and insensibility. He appeared unconscious of what was
+happening to him, and his energy seemed broken completely.
+
+Half an hour passed; an hour. Outside the windows was heard the tramp
+of horses' feet and the measured tread of soldiers; he sat continually
+as if of stone.
+
+Suddenly the door opened. An officer entered, an old acquaintance of
+Kmita's from Birji, and eight soldiers,--four with muskets, four
+without firearms,--with sabres.
+
+"Gracious Colonel, rise!" said the officer, politely.
+
+Kmita looked on him wanderingly. "Glovbich!" said he, recognizing the
+officer.
+
+"I have an order," answered Glovbich, "to bind your hands and conduct
+you beyond Yanov. The binding is for a time, then you will go free;
+therefore I beg you not to resist."
+
+"Bind!" answered Kmita.
+
+And he permitted them to tie him. But they did not tie his feet. The
+officer led him out of the room and on foot through Yanov. Then they
+advanced for about an hour. On the road some horsemen joined them.
+Kmita heard them speaking in Polish; the Poles, who served with
+Boguslav, all knew the name of Kmita, and therefore were most curious
+to know what would happen to him. The party passed the birch grove and
+came to an open field, on which Pan Andrei saw a detachment of the
+light Polish squadron of Boguslav.
+
+The soldiers stood in rank, forming a square; in the middle was a space
+in which were two foot-soldiers holding horses harnessed to draw, and
+some men with torches.
+
+By the light of the torches Pan Andrei saw a freshly sharpened stake
+lying on the ground with the large end fastened in a great log.
+
+A shiver passed through Kmita involuntarily. "That is for me," thought
+he; "Boguslav has ordered them to draw me on the stake with horses. He
+sacrifices Sakovich to his vengeance."
+
+But he was mistaken; the stake was intended first for Soroka.
+
+By the quivering flames Pan Andrei saw Soroka himself; the old soldier
+was sitting there at the side of the log on a stool, without a cap and
+with bound hands, guarded by four soldiers. A man dressed in a short
+shuba without sleeves was at that moment giving him in a shallow cup
+gorailka, which Soroka drank eagerly enough. When he had drunk, he
+spat; and since at that very moment Kmita was placed between two
+horsemen in the first rank, Soroka saw him, sprang from the stool and
+straightened himself as if on military parade.
+
+For a while they looked the one at the other. Soroka's face was calm
+and resigned; he only moved his jaws as if chewing.
+
+"Soroka!" groaned Kmita, at last.
+
+"At command!" answered the soldier.
+
+And again silence followed. What had they to say at such a moment? Then
+the executioner, who had given Soroka the vodka, approached him.
+
+"Well, old man,"' said he, "it is time for you!"
+
+"And you will draw me on straight?"
+
+"Never fear."
+
+Soroka feared not; but when he felt on his shoulder the hand of the
+executioner, he began to pant quickly and loudly. At last he said,--
+
+"More gorailka!"
+
+"There is none!"
+
+Suddenly one of the soldiers pushed out of the rank and gave a
+canteen,--
+
+"Here is some; give it to him."
+
+"To the rank!" commanded Glovbich.
+
+Still the man in the short shuba held the canteen to Soroka's mouth; he
+drank abundantly, and after he had drunk breathed deeply.
+
+"See!" said he, "the lot of a soldier after thirty years' service.
+Well, if it is time, it is time!"
+
+Another executioner approached and they began to undress him.
+
+A moment of silence. The torches trembled in the hands of those holding
+them; it became terrible for all.
+
+Meanwhile from the ranks surrounding the square was wrested a murmur of
+dissatisfaction, which became louder each instant: "A soldier is not an
+executioner; he gives death himself, but does not wish to see torture."
+
+"Silence!" cried Glovbich.
+
+The murmur became a loud bustle, in which were heard single words:
+"Devils!" "Thunders!" "Pagan service!"
+
+Suddenly Kmita shouted as if they had been drawing him on to the
+stake,--
+
+"Stop!"
+
+The executioner halted involuntarily. All eyes were turned to Kmita.
+
+"Soldiers!" shouted Pan Andrei, "Prince Boguslav is a traitor to the
+king and the Commonwealth! You are surrounded, and to-morrow you will
+be cut to pieces. You are serving a traitor; you are serving against
+the country! But whoso leaves this service leaves the traitor; to him
+forgiveness of the king, forgiveness of the hetman! Choose! Death and
+disgrace, or a reward to-morrow! I will pay wages, and a ducat a
+man,--two ducats a man! Choose! It is not for you, worthy soldiers, to
+serve a traitor! Long life to the king! Long life to the grand hetman
+of Lithuania!"
+
+The disturbance was turned into thunder; the ranks were broken. A
+number of voices shouted,--
+
+"Long life to the king!"
+
+"We have had enough of this service!"
+
+"Destruction to traitors!"
+
+"Stop! stop!" shouted other voices.
+
+"To-morrow you will die in disgrace!" bellowed Kmita.
+
+"The Tartars are in Suhovola!"
+
+"The prince is a traitor!"
+
+"We are fighting against the king!"
+
+"Strike!"
+
+"To the prince!"
+
+"Halt!"
+
+In the disturbance some sabre had cut the ropes tying Kmita's hands. He
+sprang that moment on one of the horses which were to draw Soroka on
+the stake, and cried from the horse,--
+
+"Follow me to the hetman!"
+
+"I go!" shouted Glovbich. "Long life to the king!"
+
+"May he live!" answered fifty voices, and fifty sabres glittered at
+once.
+
+"To horse, Soroka!" commanded Kmita.
+
+There were some who wished to resist, but at sight of the naked sabres
+they grew silent. One, however, turned his horse and vanished from the
+eye in a moment. The torches went out. Darkness embraced all.
+
+"After me!" shouted Kmita. An orderless mass of men moved from the
+place, and then stretched out in a long line.
+
+When they had gone two or three furlongs they met the infantry pickets
+who occupied in large parties the birch grove on the left side.
+
+"Who goes?"
+
+"Glovbich with a party!"
+
+"The word?"
+
+"Trumpets!"
+
+"Pass!"
+
+They rode forward, not hurrying over-much; then they went on a trot.
+
+"Soroka!" said Kmita.
+
+"At command!" answered the voice of the sergeant at his side.
+
+Kmita said nothing more, but stretching out his hand, put his palm on
+Soroka's head, as if wishing to convince himself that he was riding
+there. The soldier pressed Pan Andrei's hand to his lips in silence.
+
+Then Glovbich called from the other side,--
+
+"Your grace! I wanted long to do what I have done to-day."
+
+"You will not regret it!"
+
+"I shall be thankful all my life to you."
+
+"Tell me, Glovbich, why did the prince send you, and not a foreign
+regiment, to the execution?"
+
+"Because he wanted to disgrace you before the Poles. The foreign
+soldiers do not know you."
+
+"And was nothing to happen to me?"
+
+"I had the order to cut your bonds; but if you tried to defend Soroka
+we were to bring you for punishment to the prince."
+
+"Then he was willing to sacrifice Sakovich," muttered Kmita.
+
+Meanwhile Prince Boguslav in Yanov, wearied with the fever and the toil
+of the day, had gone to sleep. He was roused from slumber by an uproar
+in front of his quarters and a knocking at the door.
+
+"Your highness, your highness!" cried a number of voices.
+
+"He is asleep, do not rouse him!" answered the pages.
+
+But the prince sat up in bed and cried,--
+
+"A light!"
+
+They brought in a light, and at the same time the officer on duty
+entered.
+
+"Your highness," said he, "Sapyeha's envoy has brought Glovbich's
+squadron to mutiny and taken it to the hetman."
+
+Silence followed.
+
+"Sound the kettle-drums and other drums!" said Boguslav at last; "let
+the troops form in rank!"
+
+The officer went out; the prince remained alone.
+
+"That is a terrible man!" said he to himself; and he felt that a new
+paroxysm of fever was seizing him.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVI.
+
+
+It is easy to imagine Sapyeha's amazement when Kmita not only returned
+safely himself, but brought with him a number of tens of horsemen and
+his old servant. Kmita had to tell the hetman and Oskyerko twice what
+had happened, and how it had happened; they listened with curiosity,
+clapping their hands frequently and seizing their heads.
+
+"Learn from this," said the hetman, "that whoso carries vengeance too
+far, from him it often slips away like a bird through the fingers.
+Prince Boguslav wanted to have Pole's as witnesses of your shame and
+suffering so as to disgrace you the more, and he carried the matter too
+far. But do not boast of this, for it was the ordinance of God which
+gave you victory, though, in my way, I will tell you one thing,--he is
+a devil; but you too are a devil! The prince did ill to insult you."
+
+"I will not leave him behind in vengeance, and God grant that I shall
+not overdo it."
+
+"Leave vengeance altogether, as Christ did; though with one word he
+might have destroyed the Jews."
+
+Kmita said nothing, and there was no time for discussion; there was not
+even time for rest. He was mortally wearied, and still he had
+determined to go that night to his Tartars, who were posted in the
+forests and on the roads in the rear of Boguslav's army. But people of
+that period slept soundly on horseback. Pan Andrei simply gave command
+then to saddle a fresh horse, promising himself to slumber sweetly on
+the road.
+
+When he was mounting Soroka came to him and stood straight as in
+service.
+
+"Your grace!" said he.
+
+"What have you to say, old man?"
+
+"I have come to ask when I am to start?"
+
+"For what place?"
+
+"For Taurogi."
+
+Kmita laughed: "You will not go to Taurogi, you will go with me."
+
+"At command!" answered the sergeant, striving not to show his delight
+
+They rode on together. The road was long, for they had to go around by
+forests, so as not to fall into Boguslav's hands; but Kmita and Soroka
+slept a hundred fold, and came to the Tartars without any accident.
+
+Akbah Ulan presented himself at once before Babinich, and gave him a
+report of his activity. Pan Andrei was satisfied. Every bridge had been
+burned, the dams were cut; that was not all, the water of springtime
+had overflowed, changing the fields, meadows, and roads in the lower
+places into muddy quagmires.
+
+Boguslav had no choice but to fight, to conquer or perish; it was
+impossible for him to think of retreat.
+
+"Very well," said Kmita; "he has good cavalry, but heavy. He will not
+have use for it in the mud of to-day."
+
+Then he turned to Akbah Ulan. "You have grown poor," said he, striking
+him on the stomach with his fist; "but after the battle you will fill
+your paunch with the prince's ducats."
+
+"God has created the enemy, so that men of battle might have some one
+to plunder," said the Tartar, with seriousness.
+
+"But Boguslav's cavalry stands in front of you."
+
+"There are some hundreds of good horses, and yesterday a regiment of
+infantry came and intrenched itself."
+
+"But could they not be enticed to the field?"
+
+"They will not come out."
+
+"But turn them, leave them in the rear, and go to Yanov."
+
+"They occupy the road."
+
+"Then we must think of something!" Kmita began to stroke his forelock
+with his hand: "Have you tried to steal up to them? How far will they
+follow you out?"
+
+"A furlong, two,--not farther."
+
+"Then we must think of something!" repeated Kmita.
+
+But that night they thought of nothing. Next morning, however, Kmita
+went with the Tartars toward the camp lying between Suhovol and Yanov,
+and discovered that Akbah Ulan had exaggerated, saying that the
+infantry was intrenched on that side; for they had little ditches,
+nothing more. It was possible to make a protracted defence from them,
+especially against Tartars, who did not go readily to the attack of
+such places; but it was impossible for men in them to think of enduring
+any kind of siege.
+
+"If I had infantry," thought Kmita, "I would go into fire."
+
+But it was difficult even to dream of bringing infantry; for, first,
+Sapyeha himself had not very many; second, there was no time to bring
+them.
+
+Kmita approached so closely that Boguslav's infantry opened fire on
+him; but he did not care. He rode among the bullets and examined,
+looked around; and the Tartars, though less enduring of fire, had to
+keep pace with him. Then cavalry rushed out and undertook to flank him.
+He retreated about three thousand yards and turned again. But they had
+ridden back toward the trenches. In vain did the Tartars let off a
+cloud of arrows after them. Only one man fell from his horse, and that
+one his comrades saved, carried in.
+
+Kmita on returning, instead of riding straight to Suhovola, rushed
+toward the west and came to the Kamyonka.
+
+This swampy river had overflowed widely, for that year the springtime
+was wonderfully abundant in water. Kmita looked at the river, threw a
+number of broken branches into it so as to measure the speed of the
+current, and said to Ulan,--
+
+"We will go around their flank and strike them in the rear."
+
+"Horses cannot swim against the current."
+
+"It goes slowly. They will swim! The water is almost standing."
+
+"The horses will be chilled, and the men cannot endure it. It is cold
+yet."
+
+"Oh, the men will swim holding to the horses' tails! That is your
+Tartar way."
+
+"The men will grow stiff."
+
+"They will get warm under fire."
+
+"Kismet (fate)!"
+
+Before it had grown dark in the world, Kmita had ordered them to cut
+bunches of willows, dry reeds, and rushes, and tie them to the sides of
+the horses. When the first star appeared, he sent about eight hundred
+horses into the water, and they began to swim. He swam himself at the
+head of them; but soon he saw that they were advancing so slowly that
+in two days they would not swim past the trenches. Then he ordered them
+to swim to the other bank.
+
+That was a dangerous undertaking. The other bank was steep and swampy.
+The horses, though light, sank in it to their bellies. But Kmita's men
+pushed forward, though slowly and saving one another, while advancing a
+couple of furlongs.
+
+The stars indicated midnight. Then from the south came to them echoes
+of distant fighting.
+
+"The battle has begun!" shouted Kmita.
+
+"We shall drown!" answered Akbah Ulan.
+
+"After me!"
+
+The Tartars knew not what to do, when on a sudden they saw that Kmita's
+horse issued from the mud, evidently finding firm footing.
+
+In fact, a bench of sand had begun. On the top of it there was water to
+the horses' breasts, but under foot was solid ground. They went
+therefore more swiftly. On the left distant fires were gleaming.
+
+"Those are the trenches!" said Kmita, quietly. "Let us avoid them, go
+around!"
+
+After a while they had really passed the trenches. Then they turned to
+the left, and put their horses into the river again, so as to land
+beyond the trenches.
+
+More than a hundred horses were swamped at the shore; but almost all
+the men came out. Kmita ordered those who had lost their beasts to sit
+behind other horsemen, and they moved toward the trenches. First he
+left volunteers with the order not to disturb the trenches till he
+should have gone around them to the rear. When he was approaching he
+heard shots, at first few, then more frequent.
+
+"It is well!" said he; "Sapyeha is attacking!"
+
+And he moved on.
+
+In the darkness was visible only a multitude of heads jumping with the
+movement of the horses; sabres did not rattle, armor did not sound; the
+Tartars and volunteers knew how to move in silence, like wolves.
+
+From the side of Yanov the firing became more and more vigorous; it was
+evident that Sapyeha was moving along the whole line.
+
+But on the trenches toward which Kmita was advancing shouts were heard
+also. A number of piles of wood were burning near them, casting around
+a strong light. By this light Pan Andrei saw infantry firing rarely,
+more occupied in looking in front at the field, where cavalry was
+fighting with volunteers.
+
+They saw him too from the trenches, but instead of firing they greeted
+the advancing body with a loud shout. The soldiers thought that
+Boguslav had sent them reinforcements.
+
+But when barely a hundred yards separated the approaching body from the
+trenches, the infantry began to move about unquietly; an increasing
+number of soldiers, shading their eyes with their hands, were looking
+to see what kind of people were coming.
+
+When fifty yards distant a fearful howl tore the air, and Kmita's force
+rushed like a storm, took in the infantry, surrounded them like a ring,
+and that whole mass of men began to move convulsively. You would have
+said that a gigantic serpent was stifling a chosen victim.
+
+In this crowd piercing shouts were heard. "Allah!" "Herr Jesus!" "Mein
+Gott!"
+
+Behind the trenches new shouts went up; for the volunteers, though in
+weaker numbers, recognizing that Pan Babinich was in the trenches,
+pressed on the cavalry with fury. Meanwhile the sky, which had been
+cloudy for some time, as is common in spring, poured down a heavy,
+unexpected rain. The blazing fires were put out, and the battle went on
+in the darkness.
+
+But the battle did not last long. Attacked on a sudden, Boguslav's
+infantry went under the knife. The cavalry, in which were many Poles,
+laid down their arms. The foreigners, namely, one hundred dragoons,
+were cut to pieces.
+
+When the moon came out again from behind the clouds, it lighted only
+crowds of Tartars finishing the wounded and taking plunder.
+
+But neither did that last long. The piercing sound of a pipe was heard;
+Tartars and volunteers as one man sprang to their horses.
+
+"After me!" cried Kmita.
+
+And he led them like a whirlwind to Yanov.
+
+A quarter of an hour later the ill-fated place was set on fire at four
+corners, and in an hour one sea of flame was spread as widely as Yanov
+extended. Above the conflagration pillars of fiery sparks were flying
+toward the ruddy sky.
+
+Thus did Kmita let the hetman know that he had taken the rear of
+Boguslav's army.
+
+He himself like an executioner, red from the blood of men, marshalled
+his Tartars amid the fire, so as to lead them on farther.
+
+They were already in line and extending into column, when suddenly, on
+a field as bright as in day, from the fire, he saw before him a
+division of the elector's gigantic cavalry.
+
+A knight led them, distinguishable from afar, for he wore silver-plate
+armor, and sat on a white horse.
+
+"Boguslav!" bellowed Kmita, with an unearthly voice, and rushed forward
+with his whole Tartar column.
+
+They approached one another, like two waves driven by two winds. A
+considerable space divided them; the horses on both sides reached their
+greatest speed, and went with ears down like hounds, almost sweeping
+the earth with their bellies. On one side large men with shining
+breastplates, and sabres held erect in their right hands; on the other,
+a black swarm of Tartars.
+
+At last they struck in a long line on the clear field; but then
+something terrible took place. The Tartar swarm fell as grain bent by a
+whirlwind; the gigantic men rode over it and flew farther, as if the
+men and the horses had the power of thunderbolts and the wings of a
+storm.
+
+Some of the Tartars sprang up and began to pursue. It was possible to
+ride over the wild men, but impossible to kill them at once; so more
+and more of them hastened after the fleeing cavalry. Lariats began to
+whistle in the air.
+
+But at the head of the retreating cavalry the rider on the white horse
+ran ever in the first rank, and among the pursuers was not Kmita.
+
+Only in the gray of dawn did the Tartars begin to return, and almost
+every man had a horseman on his lariat. Soon they found Kmita, and
+carried him in unconsciousness to Pan Sapyeha.
+
+The hetman himself took a seat at Kmita's bedside. About midday Pan
+Andrei opened his eyes.
+
+"Where is Boguslav?" were his first words.
+
+"Cut to pieces. God gave him fortune at first; then he came out of the
+birch groves and in the open field fell on the infantry of Pan
+Oskyerko; there he lost men and victory. I do not know whether he led
+away even five hundred men, for your Tartars caught a good number of
+them."
+
+"But he himself?"
+
+"Escaped!"
+
+Kmita was silent awhile; then said;--
+
+"I cannot measure with him yet. He struck me with a double-handed sword
+on the head, and knocked me down with my horse. My morion was of trusty
+steel, and did not let the sword through; but I fainted."
+
+"You should hang up that morion in a church."
+
+"I will pursue him, even to the end of the world!" said Kmita.
+
+To this the hetman answered: "See what news I have received to-day
+after the battle!"
+
+Kmita read aloud the following words,--
+
+
+The King of Sweden has moved from Elblang; he is marching on Zamost,
+thence to Lvoff against Yan Kazimir. Come, your worthiness, with all
+your forces, to save king and country, for I cannot hold out alone.
+
+                                                 Charnyetski.
+
+
+A moment of silence.
+
+"Will you go with us, or will you go with the Tartars to Taurogi?"
+
+Kmita closed his eyes. He remembered the words of Father Kordetski, and
+what Volodyovski had told him of Pan Yan, and said,--
+
+"Let private affairs wait! I will meet the enemy at the side of the
+country!"
+
+The hetman pressed Pan Andrei's head. "You are a brother to me!" said
+he; "and because I am old, receive my blessing."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXVII.
+
+
+At a time when all living men in the Commonwealth were mounting their
+horses Karl Gustav stayed continually in Prussia, busied in capturing
+the towns of that province and in negotiating with the elector.
+
+After an easy and unexpected conquest, the quick soldier soon saw that
+the Swedish lion had swallowed more than his stomach could carry. After
+the return of Yan Kazimir he lost hope of retaining the Commonwealth;
+but while making a mental abdication of the whole, he wished at least
+to retain the greater part of his conquest, and above all Royal
+Prussia,--a province fruitful, dotted with large towns, wealthy, and
+adjoining his own Pomerania. But as that province was first to defend
+itself, so did it continue faithful to its lord and the Commonwealth.
+The return of Yan Kazimir, and the war begun by the confederation of
+Tyshovtsi might revive the courage of Prussia, confirm it in loyalty,
+give it will for endurance; therefore Karl Gustav determined to crush
+the uprising, and to wipe out Kazimir's forces so as to take from
+Prussians the hope of resistance.
+
+He had to do this for the sake of the elector, who was ever ready to
+side with the stronger. The King of Sweden knew him thoroughly, and
+doubted not for a moment that if the fortune of Yan Kazimir should
+preponderate, the elector would be on his side again.
+
+When, therefore, the siege of Marienburg advanced slowly,--for the more
+it was attacked the more stubbornly did Pan Weiher defend it,--Karl
+Gustav marched to the Commonwealth, so as to reach Yan Kazimir again,
+even in the remotest corner of the land.
+
+And since with him deed followed decision as swiftly as thunder follows
+lightning, he raised his army disposed in towns; and before any one in
+the Commonwealth had looked around, before the news of his march had
+spread, he had passed Warsaw and had rushed into the greatest blaze of
+conflagration.
+
+Driven by anger, revenge, and bitterness, he moved on like a storm.
+Behind him ten thousand horse trampled the fields, which were still
+covered with snow; and taking the infantry from the garrisons, he went
+on, like a whirlwind, toward the far south of the Commonwealth.
+
+On the road he burned and pursued. He was not now that recent Karl
+Gustav, the kindly, affable, and joyous lord, clapping his hands at
+Polish cavalry, winking at feasts, and praising the soldiers. Now,
+wherever he showed himself the blood of peasants and nobles flowed in a
+torrent. On the road he annihilated "parties," hanged prisoners, spared
+no man.
+
+But as when, in the thick of the pine-woods, a mighty bear rushes
+forward with heavy body crushing branches and brush on the way, while
+wolves follow after, and not daring to block his path, pursue, press
+nearer and nearer behind, so did those "parties" pursuing the armies of
+Karl join in throngs denser and denser, and follow the Swedes as a
+shadow a man, and still more enduringly than a shadow, for they
+followed in the day and the night, in fair and foul weather; before him
+too bridges were ruined, provisions destroyed, so that he had to march
+as in a desert, without a place for his head or anything with which to
+give strength to his body when hungry.
+
+Karl Gustav noted quickly how terrible his task was. The war spread
+around him as widely as the sea spreads around a ship lost in the
+waters. Prussia was on fire; on fire was Great Poland, which had first
+accepted his sovereignty, and first wished to throw off the Swedish
+yoke; Little Poland was on fire, and so were Russia, Lithuania, and
+Jmud. In the castles and large towns the Swedes maintained themselves
+yet, as if on islands; but the villages, the forests, the fields, the
+rivers, were already in Polish hands. Not merely a single man, or small
+detachments, but a whole regiment might not leave the main Swedish army
+for two hours; for if it did the regiment vanished without tidings, and
+prisoners who fell into the hands of peasants died in terrible
+tortures.
+
+In vain had Karl Gustav given orders to proclaim in villages and towns
+that whoso of peasants should bring an armed noble, living or dead,
+would receive freedom forever and land as a reward; for peasants, as
+well as nobles and townsmen, marched off to the woods. Men from the
+mountains, men from deep forests, men from meadows and fields, hid in
+the woods, formed ambushes on the roads against the Swedes, fell upon
+the smaller garrisons, and cut scouting-parties to pieces. Flails,
+forks, and scythes, no less than the sabres of nobles, were streaming
+with Swedish blood.
+
+All the more did wrath rise in the heart of Karl, that a few months
+before he had gathered in that country so easily; hence he could hardly
+understand what had happened, whence these forces, whence that
+resistance, whence that awful war for life or death, the end of which
+he saw not and could not divine.
+
+Frequent councils were held in the Swedish camp. With the king marched
+his brother Adolph, prince of Bipont, who had command over the army;
+Robert Douglas; Henry Horn, relative of that Horn who had been slain by
+the scythe of a peasant at Chenstohova; Waldemar, Prince of Denmark,
+and that Miller who had left his military glory at the foot of Yasna
+Gora; Aschemberg, the ablest cavalry leader among the Swedes;
+Hammerskiold, who commanded the artillery; and the old robber Marshal
+Arwid Wittemberg, famed for rapacity, living on the last of his health,
+for he was eaten by the Gallic disease; Forgell, and many others, all
+leaders skilled in the capture of cities, and in the field yielding in
+genius to the king only.
+
+These men were terrified in their hearts lest the whole army with the
+king should perish through toil, lack of food, and the fury of the
+Poles. Old Wittemberg advised the king directly against the campaign:
+"How will you go, O King," said he, "to the Russian regions after an
+enemy who destroys everything on the way, but is unseen himself? What
+will you do if horses lack not only hay, but even straw from the roofs
+of cottages, and men fall from exhaustion? Where are the armies to come
+to our aid, where are the castles in which to draw breath and rest our
+weary limbs? My fame is not equal to yours; but were I Karl Gustav, I
+would not expose that glory acquired by so many victories to the fickle
+fortune of war."
+
+To which Karl Gustav answered: "And neither would I, were I
+Wittemberg."
+
+Then he mentioned Alexander of Macedon, with whom he liked to be
+compared, and marched forward, pursuing Charnyetski. Charnyetski, not
+having forces so great nor so well trained, retreated before him, but
+retreated like a wolf ever ready to turn on his enemy. Sometimes he
+went in advance of the Swedes, sometimes at their flanks, and sometimes
+in deep forests he let them go in advance; so that while they thought
+themselves the pursuers, he, in fact, was the hunter. He cut off
+the unwary; here and there he hunted down a whole party, destroyed
+foot-regiments marching slowly, attacked provision-trains. The Swedes
+never knew where he was. More than once in the darkness of night they
+began to fire from muskets and cannons into thickets, thinking that
+they had an enemy before them. They were mortally wearied; they marched
+in cold, in hunger, in affliction, and that _vir molestissimus_ (most
+harmful man) hung about them continually, as a hail-cloud hangs over a
+grain-field.
+
+At last they attacked him at Golamb, not far from the junction of the
+Vyepr and the Vistula. Some Polish squadrons being ready for battle
+charged the enemy, spreading disorder and dismay. In front sprang
+Volodyovski with his Lauda squadron, and bore down Waldemar, prince of
+Denmark; but the two Kavetskis, Samuel and Yan, urged from the hill the
+armored squadron against English mercenaries under Wilkinson, and
+devoured them in a moment, as a pike gulps a whiting; and Pan Malavski
+engaged so closely with the Prince of Bipont that men and horses were
+confounded like dust which two whirlwinds sweeping from opposite
+quarters bring together and turn into one circling column. In the
+twinkle of an eye the Swedes were pushed to the Vistula, seeing which
+Douglas hastened to the rescue with chosen horsemen. But even these
+reinforcements could not check the onset; the Swedes began to spring
+from the high bank to the ice, falling dead so thickly that they lay
+black on the snow-field, like letters on white paper. Waldemar, Prince
+of Denmark, fell; Wilkinson fell; and the Prince of Bipont, thrown from
+his horse, broke his leg. But of Poles both Kavetskis fell; killed also
+were Malavski, Rudavski, Rogovski, Tyminski, Hoinski, and Porvanyetski.
+Volodyovski alone, though he dived among the Swedish ranks like a
+seamew in water, came out without having suffered the slightest wound.
+
+Now Karl Gustav himself came up with his main force and with artillery.
+Straightway the form of the battle changed. Charnyetski's other
+regiments, undisciplined and untrained, could not take position in
+season; some had not their horses in readiness, others had been in
+distant villages, and in spite of orders to be always ready, were
+taking their leisure in cottages. When the enemy pressed suddenly on
+these men, they scattered quickly and began to retreat to the Vyepr.
+Therefore Charnyetski gave orders to sound the retreat so as to spare
+those regiments that had opened the battle. Some of the fleeing went
+beyond the Vistula; others to Konskovoli, leaving the field and the
+glory of the victory to Karl; for specially those who had crossed the
+Vyepr were long pursued by the squadrons of Zbrojek and Kalinski, who
+remained yet with the Swedes.
+
+There was delight beyond measure in the Swedish camp. No great trophies
+fell to the king, it is true,--sacks of oats, and a few empty wagons;
+but it was not at that time a question of plunder for Karl. He
+comforted himself with this,--that victory followed his steps as
+before; that barely had he shown himself when he inflicted defeat on
+that very Charnyetski on whom the highest hopes of Yan Kazimir and the
+Commonwealth were founded. He could trust that the news would run
+through the whole country; that every mouth would repeat, "Charnyetski
+is crushed;" that the timid would exaggerate the proportions of the
+defeat, and thus weaken hearts and take courage from those who had
+grasped their weapons at the call of the confederation of Tyshovtsi.
+
+So when they brought in and placed at his feet those bags of oats, and
+with them the bodies of Wilkinson and Prince Waldemar, he turned to his
+fretful generals and said,--
+
+"Unwrinkle your foreheads, gentlemen, for this is the greatest victory
+which I have had for a year, and may end the whole war."
+
+"Your Royal Grace," answered Wittemberg, who, weaker than usual, saw
+things in a gloomier light, "let us thank God even for this,--that we
+shall have a farther march in peace, though Charnyetski's troops
+scatter quickly and rally easily."
+
+"Marshal," answered the king, "I do not think you a worse leader than
+Charnyetski; but if I had beaten you in this fashion, I think you would
+not be able to assemble your troops in two months."
+
+Wittemberg only bowed in silence, and Karl spoke on: "Yes, we shall
+have a quiet march, for Charnyetski alone could really hamper it. If
+Charnyetski's troops are not before us, there is no hindrance."
+
+The generals rejoiced at these words. Intoxicated with victory, the
+troops marched past the king with shouts and with songs. Charnyetski
+ceased to threaten them like a cloud. Charnyetski's troops were
+scattered; he had ceased to exist. In view of this thought their past
+sufferings were forgotten and their future toils were sweet. The king's
+words, heard by many officers, were borne through the camp; and all
+believed that the victory had uncommon significance, that the dragon of
+war was slain once more, and that only days of revenge and dominion
+would come.
+
+The king gave the army some hours of repose; meanwhile from Kozyenitsi
+came trains with provisions. The troops were disposed in Golamb, in
+Krovyeniki, and in Jyrzynie. The cavalry burned some deserted houses,
+hanged a few peasants seized with arms in their hands, and a few
+camp-servants mistaken for peasants; then there was a feast in the
+Swedish camp, after which the soldiers slept a sound sleep, since for a
+long time it was the first quiet one.
+
+Next day they woke in briskness, and the first words which came to the
+mouths of all were: "There is no Charnyetski!"
+
+One repeated this to another, as if to give mutual assurance of the
+good news. The march began joyously. The day was dry, cold, clear. The
+hair of the horses and their nostrils were covered with frost. The cold
+wind froze soft places on the Lyubelsk highroad, and made marching
+easy. The troops stretched out in a line almost five miles long, which
+they had never done previously. Two dragoon regiments, under command of
+Dubois, a Frenchman, went through Markushev and Grabov, five miles from
+the main force. Had they marched thus three days before they would have
+gone to sure death, but now fear and the glory of victory went before
+them.
+
+"Charnyetski is gone," repeated the officers and soldiers to one
+another.
+
+In fact, the march was made in quiet. From the forest depths came no
+shouts; from thickets fell no darts, hurled by invisible hands.
+
+Toward evening Karl Gustav arrived at Grabov, joyous and in good humor.
+He was just preparing for sleep when Aschemberg announced through the
+officer of the day that he wished greatly to see the king.
+
+After a while he entered the royal quarters, not alone, but with a
+captain of dragoons. The king, who had a quick eye and a memory so
+enormous that he remembered nearly every soldier's name, recognized the
+captain at once.
+
+"What is the news, Freed?" asked he. "Has Dubois returned?"
+
+"Dubois is killed."
+
+The king was confused; only now did he notice that the captain looked
+as if he had been taken from the grave; and his clothes were torn.
+
+"But the dragoons?" inquired he, "those two regiments?"
+
+"All cut to pieces. I alone was let off alive."
+
+The dark face of the king became still darker; with his hands he placed
+his locks behind his ears.
+
+"Who did this?"
+
+"Charnyetski."
+
+Karl Gustav was silent, and looked with amazement at Aschemberg; but he
+only nodded as if wishing to repeat: "Charnyetski, Charnyetski,
+Charnyetski!"
+
+"All this is incredible," said the king, after a while. "Have you seen
+him with your own eyes?"
+
+"As I see your Royal Grace. He commanded me to bow to you, and to
+declare that now he will recross the Vistula, but will soon be on our
+track again. I know not whether he told the truth."
+
+"Well," said the king, "had he many men with him?"
+
+"I could not estimate exactly, but I saw about four thousand, and
+beyond the forest was cavalry of some kind. We were surrounded near
+Krasichyn, to which Colonel Dubois went purposely from the highroad,
+for he was told that there were some men there. Now, I think that
+Charnyetski sent an informant to lead us into ambush, since no one save
+me came out alive. The peasants killed the wounded. I escaped by a
+miracle."
+
+"That man must have made a compact with hell," said the king, putting
+his hand to his forehead; "for to rally troops after such a defeat, and
+be on our neck again, is not human power."
+
+"It has happened as Marshal Wittemberg foresaw," put in Aschemberg.
+
+"You all know how to foresee," burst out the king, "but how to advise
+you do not know."
+
+Aschemberg grew pale and was silent. Karl Gustav, when joyous, seemed
+goodness itself; but when once he frowned he roused indescribable fear
+in those nearest him, and birds do not hide so before an eagle as the
+oldest and most meritorious generals hid before him. But this time he
+moderated quickly, and asked Captain Freed again,--
+
+"Has Charnyetski good troops?"
+
+"I saw some unrivalled squadrons, such cavalry as the Poles have."
+
+"They are the same that attacked with such fury in Golamb; they must be
+old regiments. But Charnyetski himself,--was he cheerful, confident?"
+
+"He was as confident as if he had beaten us at Golamb. Now his heart
+must rise the more, for they have forgotten Golembo and boast of
+Krasichyn. Your Royal Grace, what Charnyetski told me to repeat I have
+repeated; but when I was on the point of departing some one of the high
+officers approached me, an old man, and told me that he was the person
+who had stretched out Gustavus Adolphus in a hand-to-hand conflict, and
+he poured much abuse on your Royal Grace; others supported him. So do
+they boast. I left amid insults and abuse."
+
+"Never mind," said Karl Gustav, "Charnyetski is not broken, and has
+rallied his army; that is the main point. All the more speedily must we
+march so as to reach the Polish Darius at the earliest. You are free to
+go, gentlemen. Announce to the army that those regiments perished at
+the hands of peasants in unfrozen morasses. We advance!"
+
+The officers went out; Karl Gustav remained alone. For something like
+an hour he was in gloomy thought. Was the victory at Golamb to bring no
+fruit, no change to the position, but to rouse still greater rage in
+that entire country?
+
+Karl, in presence of the army and of his generals, always showed
+confidence and faith in himself; but when he was alone he began to
+think of that war,--how easy it had been at first, and then increased
+always in difficulty. More than once doubt embraced him. All the events
+seemed to him in some fashion marvellous. Often he could see no
+outcome, could not divine the end. At times it seemed to him that he
+was like a man who, going from the shore of the sea into the water,
+feels at every step that he is going deeper and deeper and soon will
+lose the ground under his feet.
+
+But he believed in his star. And now he went to the window to look at
+the chosen star,--that one which in the Wain or Great Bear occupies the
+highest place and shines brightest. The sky was clear, and therefore at
+that moment the star shone brightly, twinkled blue and red; but from
+afar, lower down on the dark blue of the sky, a lone cloud was
+blackening serpent-shaped, from which extended as it were arms, as it
+were branches, as it were the feelers of a monster of the sea, and it
+seemed to approach the king's star continually.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXVIII.
+
+
+Next morning the king marched farther and reached Lublin. There he
+received information that Sapyeha had repulsed Boguslav's invasion, and
+was advancing with a considerable army; he left Lublin the same day,
+merely strengthening the garrison of that place.
+
+The next object of his expedition was Zamost; for if he could occupy
+that strong fortress he would acquire a fixed base for further war, and
+such a notable preponderance that he might look for a successful end
+with all hope. There were various opinions touching Zamost. Those Poles
+still remaining with Karl contended that it was the strongest fortress
+in the Commonwealth, and brought as proof that it had withstood all the
+forces of Hmelnitski.
+
+But since Karl saw that the Poles were in no wise skilled in
+fortification, and considered places strong which in other lands would
+scarcely be held in the third rank; since he knew also that in Poland
+no fortress was properly mounted,--that is, there were neither walls
+kept as they should be, not earthworks, nor suitable arms,--he felt
+well touching Zamost. He counted also on the spell of his name, on the
+fame of an invincible leader, and finally on treaties. With treaties,
+which every magnate in the Commonwealth was authorized to make, or at
+least permitted himself to make, Karl had so far effected more than
+with arms. As an adroit man, and one wishing to know with whom he had
+to deal, he collected carefully all information touching the owner of
+Zamost. He inquired about his ways, his inclinations, his wit and
+fancy.
+
+Yan Sapyeha, who at that time by his treason still spotted the name, to
+the great affliction of Sapyeha the hetman, gave the fullest
+explanations to the king concerning Zamoyski. They spent whole hours in
+council. But Yan Sapyeha did not consider that it would be easy for the
+king to captivate the master of Zamost.
+
+"He cannot be tempted with money," said Yan, "for he is terribly rich.
+He cares not for dignities, and never wished them, even when they
+sought him themselves. As to titles, I have heard him at the court
+reprimand Des Noyers, the queen's secretary, because in addressing him
+he said, 'Mon prince.' 'I am not a prince,' answered he, 'but I have
+had archdukes as prisoners in my Zamost.' The truth is, however, that
+not he had them, but his grandfather, who among our people is surnamed
+the Great."
+
+"If he will open the gates of Zamost, I will offer him something which
+no Polish king could offer."
+
+It did not become Yan Sapyeha to ask what that might be; he merely
+looked with curiosity at Karl Gustav. But the king understood the look,
+and answered, gathering, as was his wont, his hair behind his ears,--
+
+"I will offer him the province of Lyubelsk as an independent
+principality; a crown will tempt him. No one of you could resist such a
+temptation, not even the present voevoda of Vilna."
+
+"Endless is the bounty of your Royal Grace," replied Sapyeha, not
+without a certain irony in his voice.
+
+But Karl answered with a cynicism peculiar to himself: "I give it, for
+it is not mine."
+
+Sapyeha shook his head: "He is an unmarried man and has no sons. A
+crown is dear to him who can leave it to his posterity."
+
+"What means do you advise me to take?"
+
+"I think that flattery would effect most. The man is not too
+quick-witted, and may be easily over-reached. It is necessary to
+represent that on him alone depends the pacification of the
+Commonwealth; it is necessary to tell him that he alone may save it
+from war, from all defeats and future misfortunes; and that especially
+by opening the gates. If the fish will swallow that little hook, we
+shall be in Zamost; otherwise not."
+
+"Cannon remain as the ultimate argument."
+
+"H'm! To that argument there is something in Zamost with which to give
+answer. There is no lack of heavy guns there; we have none, and when
+thaws come it will be impossible to bring them."
+
+"I have heard that the infantry in the fortress is good; but there is a
+lack of cavalry."
+
+"Cavalry are needed only in the open field, and besides, since
+Charnyetski's army, as is shown, is not crushed, he can throw in one or
+two squadrons for the use of the fortress."
+
+"You see nothing save difficulties."
+
+"But I trust ever in the lucky star of your Royal Grace."
+
+Yan Sapyeha was right in foreseeing that Charnyetski would furnish
+Zamost with cavalry needful for scouting and seizing informants. In
+fact, Zamoyski had enough of his own, and needed no assistance
+whatever; but Charnyetski sent the two squadrons which had suffered
+most at Golamb--that is, the Shemberk and Lauda--to the fortress to
+rest, recruit themselves and change their horses, which were fearfully
+cut up. Sobiepan received them hospitably, and when he learned what
+famous soldiers were in them he exalted these men to the skies, covered
+them with gifts, and seated them every day at his table.
+
+But who shall describe the joy and emotion of Princess Griselda at
+sight of Pan Yan and Pan Michael, the most valiant colonels of her
+great husband? Both fell at her feet shedding warm tears at sight of
+the beloved lady; and she could not restrain her weeping. How many
+reminiscences of those old Lubni days were connected with them; when
+her husband, the glory and love of the people, full of the strength of
+life, ruled with power a wild region, rousing terror amid barbarism
+with one frown of his brow, like Jove. Such were those times not long
+past; but where are they now? To-day the lord is in his grave,
+barbarians have taken the land, and she, the widow, sits on the ashes
+of happiness, of greatness, living only with her sorrow and with
+prayer.
+
+Still in those reminiscences sweetness was so mingled with bitterness
+that the thoughts of those three flew gladly to times that were gone.
+They spoke then of their past lives, of those places which their eyes
+were never to see, of the past wars, finally of the present times of
+defeat and God's anger.
+
+"If our prince were alive," said Pan Yan, "there would be another
+career for the Commonwealth. The Cossacks would be rubbed out, the
+Trans-Dnieper would be with the Commonwealth, and the Swede would find
+his conqueror. God has ordained as He willed of purpose to punish us
+for sins."
+
+"Would that God might raise up a defender in Pan Charnyetski!" said
+Princess Griselda.
+
+"He will!" cried Pan Michael. "As our prince was a head above other
+lords, so Charnyetski is not at all like other leaders. I know the two
+hetmans of the kingdom, and Sapyeha of Lithuania. They are great
+soldiers; but there is something uncommon in Charnyetski; you would
+say, he is an eagle, not a man. Though kindly, still all fear him; even
+Pan Zagloba in his presence forgets his jokes frequently. And how he
+leads his troops and moves them, passes imagination. It cannot be
+otherwise than that a great warrior will rise in the Commonwealth."
+
+"My husband, who knew Charnyetski as a colonel, prophesied greatness
+for him," said the princess.
+
+"It was said indeed that he was to seek a wife in our court," put in
+Pan Michael.
+
+"I do not remember that there was talk about that," answered the
+princess.
+
+In truth she could not remember, for there had never been anything of
+the kind; but Pan Michael, cunning at times, invented this, wishing to
+turn the conversation to her ladies and learn something of Anusia; for
+to ask directly he considered improper, and in view of the majesty of
+the princess, too confidential. But the stratagem failed. The princess
+turned her mind again to her husband and the Cossack wars; then the
+little knight thought: "Anusia has not been here, perhaps, for God
+knows how many years." And he asked no more about her. He might have
+asked the officers, but his thoughts and occupations were elsewhere.
+Every day scouts gave notice that the Swedes were nearer; hence
+preparations were made for defence. Pan Yan and Pan Michael received
+places on the walls, as officers knowing the Swedes and warfare against
+them. Zagloba roused courage in the men, and told tales of the enemy to
+those who had no knowledge of them yet; and among warriors in the
+fortress there were many such, for so far the Swedes had not come to
+Zamost.
+
+Zagloba saw through Pan Zamoyski at once; the latter conceived an
+immense love for the bulky noble, and turned to him on all questions,
+especially since he heard from Princess Griselda how Prince Yeremi had
+venerated Zagloba and called him _vir incomparabilis_ (the incomparable
+man). Every day then at table all kept their ears open; and Zagloba
+discoursed of ancient and modern times, told of the wars with the
+Cossacks, of the treason of Radzivill, and how he himself had brought
+Pan Sapyeha into prominence among men.
+
+"I advised him," said he, "to carry hempseed in his pocket, and use a
+little now and then. He has grown so accustomed to this that he takes a
+grain every little while, puts it in his mouth, bites it, breaks it,
+eats it, spits out the husk. At night when he wakes he does the same.
+His wit is so sharp now from hempseed that his greatest intimates do
+not recognize him."
+
+"How is that?" asked Zamoyski.
+
+"There is an oil in hempseed through which the man who eats it
+increases in wit."
+
+"God bless you," said one of the colonels; "but oil goes to the
+stomach, not to the head."
+
+"Oh, there is a method in things!" answered Zagloba. "It is needful in
+this case to drink as much wine as possible; oil, being the lighter, is
+always on top; wine, which goes to the head of itself, carries with it
+every noble substance. I have this secret from Lupul the Hospodar,
+after whom, as is known to you, gentlemen, the Wallachians wished to
+create me hospodar; but the Sultan, whose wish is that the hospodar
+should not have posterity, placed before me conditions to which I could
+not agree."
+
+"You must use a power of hempseed yourself," said Sobiepan.
+
+"I do not need it at all, your worthiness; but from my whole heart I
+advise you to take it."
+
+Hearing these bold words, some were frightened lest the starosta might
+take them to heart; but whether he failed to notice them or did not
+wish to do so, it is enough that he merely laughed and asked,--
+
+"But would not sunflower seeds take the place of hemp?"
+
+"They might," answered Zagloba; "but since sunflower oil is heavier, it
+would be necessary to drink stronger wine than that which we are
+drinking at present."
+
+The starosta understood the hint, was amused, and gave immediate order
+to bring the best wines. Then all rejoiced in their hearts, and the
+rejoicing became universal. They drank and gave vivats to the health of
+the king, the host, and Pan Charnyetski. Zagloba fell into good humor
+and let no one speak. He described at great length the affair at
+Golamb, in which he had really fought well, for, serving in the Lauda
+squadron, he could not do otherwise. But because he had learned from
+Swedish prisoners taken from the regiments of Dubois of the death of
+Prince Waldemar, Zagloba took responsibility for that death on himself.
+
+"The battle," said he, "would have gone altogether differently were it
+not that the day before I went to Baranov to the canon of that place,
+and Charnyetski, not knowing where I was, could not advise with me.
+Maybe the Swedes too had heard of that canon, for he has splendid mead,
+and they went at once to Golamb. When I returned it was too late; the
+king had attacked, and it was necessary to strike at once. We went
+straight into the fire; but what is to be done when the general militia
+choose to show their contempt for the enemy by turning their backs? I
+don't know how Charnyetski will manage at present without me."
+
+"He will manage, have no fear on that point," said Volodyovski.
+
+"I know why. The King of Sweden chooses to pursue me to Zamost rather
+than seek Charnyetski beyond the Vistula. I do not deny that
+Charnyetski is a good soldier; but when he begins to twist his beard
+and look with his wildcat glance, it seems to an officer of the
+lightest squadron that he is a dragoon. He pays no attention to a man's
+office; and this you yourselves saw when he gave orders to drag over
+the square with horses an honorable man, Pan Jyrski, only because he
+did not reach with his detachment the place to which he was ordered.
+With a noble, gracious gentlemen, it is necessary to act like a father,
+not like a dragoon. Say to him, 'Lord brother,' be kind, rouse his
+feelings,--he will call to mind the country and glory, will go farther
+for you than a dragoon who serves for a salary."
+
+"A noble is a noble, and war is war," remarked Zamoyski. "You have
+brought that out in a very masterly manner," answered Zagloba.
+
+"Pan Charnyetski will turn the plans of Karl into folly," said
+Volodyovski. "I have been in more than one war, and I can speak on this
+point."
+
+"First, we will make a fool of him at Zamost," said Sobiepan, pouting
+his lips, puffing, and showing great spirit, staring, and putting his
+hands on his hips. "Bah! Tfu! What do I care? When I invite a man I
+open the door to him. Well!"
+
+Here Zamoyski began to puff still more mightily, to strike the table
+with his knees, bend forward, shake his head, look stern, flash his
+eyes, and speak, as was his habit, with a certain coarse carelessness.
+
+"What do I care? He is lord in Sweden; but Zamoyski is lord for himself
+in Zamost. _Eques polonus sum_ (I am a Polish nobleman), nothing more.
+But I am in my own house; I am Zamoyski, and he is King of Sweden; but
+Maximilian was Austrian, was he not? Is he coming? Let him come. We
+shall see! Sweden is small for him, but Zamost is enough for me. I will
+not yield it."
+
+"It is a delight, gracious gentlemen, to hear not only such eloquence,
+but such honest sentiments," cried Zagloba.
+
+"Zamoyski is Zamoyski!" continued Pan Sobiepan, delighted with the
+praise. "We have not bowed down, and we will not. I will not give up
+Zamost, and that is the end of it."
+
+"To the health of the host!" thundered the officers.
+
+"Vivat! vivat!"
+
+"Pan Zagloba," cried Zamoyski, "I will not let the King of Sweden into
+Zamost, and I will not let you out."
+
+"I thank you for the favor; but, your worthiness, do not do that, for
+as much as you torment Karl with the first decision, so much will you
+delight him with the second."
+
+"Give me your word that you will come to me after the war is over."
+
+"I give it."
+
+Long yet did they feast, then sleep began to overcome the knights;
+therefore they went to rest, especially as sleepless nights were soon
+to begin for them, since the Swedes were already near, and the advance
+guards were looked for at any hour.
+
+"So in truth he will not give up Zamost," said Zagloba, returning to
+his quarters with Pan Yan and Volodyovski. "Have you seen how we have
+fallen in love with each other? It will be pleasant here in Zamost
+for me and you. The host and I have become so attached to each other
+that no cabinet-maker could join inlaid work better. He is a good
+fellow--h'm! If he were my knife and I carried him at my belt, I would
+whet him on a stone pretty often, for he is a trifle dull. But he is a
+good man, and he will not betray like those bull-drivers of Birji. Have
+you noticed how the magnates cling to old Zagloba? I cannot keep them
+off. I'm scarcely away from Sapyeha when there is another at hand. But
+I will tune this one as a bass-viol, and play such an aria on him for
+the Swedes that they will dance to death at Zamost. I will wind him up
+like a Dantzig clock with chimes."
+
+Noise coming from the town interrupted further conversation. After a
+time an officer whom they knew passed quickly near them.
+
+"Stop!" cried Volodyovski; "what is the matter?"
+
+"There is a fire to be seen from the walls. Shchebjeshyn is burning!
+The Swedes are there!"
+
+"Let us go on the walls," said Pan Yan.
+
+"Go; but I will sleep, since I need my strength for to-morrow,"
+answered Zagloba.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXIX.
+
+
+That night Volodyovski went on a scouting expedition, and about morning
+returned with a number of informants. These men asserted that the King
+of Sweden was at Shchebjeshyn in person, and would soon be at Zamost.
+
+Zamoyski was rejoiced at the news, for he hurried around greatly, and
+had a genuine desire to try his walls and guns on the Swedes. He
+considered, and very justly, that even if he had to yield in the end he
+would detain the power of Sweden for whole months; and during that time
+Yan Kazimir would collect troops, bring the entire Tartar force to his
+aid, and organize in the whole country a powerful and victorious
+resistance.
+
+"Since the opportunity is given me," said he, with great spirit, at the
+military council, "to render the country and the king notable service,
+I declare to you, gentlemen, that I will blow myself into the air
+before a Swedish foot shall stand here. They want to take Zamoyski by
+force. Let them take him! We shall see who is better. You, gentlemen,
+will, I trust, aid me most heartily."
+
+"We are ready to perish with your grace," said the officers, in chorus.
+
+"If they will only besiege us," said Zagloba, "I will lead the first
+sortie."
+
+"I will follow, Uncle!" cried Roh Kovalski; "I will spring at the king
+himself!"
+
+"Now to the walls!" commanded Zamoyski.
+
+All went out. The walls were ornamented with soldiers as with flowers.
+Regiments of infantry, so splendid that they were unequalled in the
+whole Commonwealth, stood in readiness, one at the side of the other,
+with musket in hand, and eyes turned to the field. Not many foreigners
+served in these regiments, merely a few Prussians and French; they were
+mainly peasants from Zamoyski's inherited lands. Sturdy, well-grown
+men, who, wearing colored jackets and trained in foreign fashion,
+fought as well as the best Cromwellians of England. They were specially
+powerful when after firing it came to rush on the enemy in hand-to-hand
+conflict. And now, remembering their former triumphs over Hmelnitski,
+they were looking for the Swedes with impatience. At the cannons, which
+stretched out through the embrasures their long necks to the fields as
+if in curiosity, served mainly Flemings, the first of gunners. Outside
+the fortress, beyond the moat, were squadrons of light cavalry, safe
+themselves, for they were under cover of cannon, certain of refuge, and
+able at any moment to spring out whithersoever it might be needed.
+
+Zamoyski, wearing inlaid armor and carrying a gilded baton in his hand,
+rode around the walls, and inquired every moment,--
+
+"Well, what--not in sight yet?" And he muttered oaths when he received
+negative answers on all sides. After a while he went to another side,
+and again he asked,--
+
+"Well, what--not in sight yet?"
+
+It was difficult to see the Swedes, for there was a mist in the air;
+and only about ten o'clock in the forenoon did it begin to disappear.
+The heaven shining blue above the horizon became clear, and immediately
+on the western side of the walls they began to cry,--
+
+"They are coming, they are coming, they are coming!"
+
+Zamoyski, with three adjutants and Zagloba, entered quickly an angle of
+the walls from which there was a distant view, and the four men began
+to look through field-glasses. The mist was lying a little on the
+ground yet, and the Swedish hosts, marching from Vyelanchy, seemed to
+be wading to the knees in that mist, as if they were coming out of wide
+waters. The nearer regiments had become very distinct, so that the
+naked eye could distinguish the infantry; they seemed like clouds of
+dark dust rolling on toward the town. Gradually more regiments,
+artillery, and cavalry appeared.
+
+The sight was beautiful. From each quadrangle of infantry rose an
+admirably regular quadrangle of spears; between them waved banners of
+various colors, but mostly blue with white crosses, and blue with
+golden lions. They came very near. On the walls there was silence;
+therefore the breath of the air brought from the advancing army the
+squeaking of wheels, the clatter of armor, the tramp of horses, and the
+dull sound of human voices. When they had come within twice the
+distance of a shot from a culverin, they began to dispose themselves
+before the fortress. Some quadrangles of infantry broke ranks; others
+prepared to pitch tents and dig trenches.
+
+"They are here!" said Zamoyski.
+
+"They are the dog-brothers!" answered Zagloba. "They could be counted,
+man for man, on the fingers. Persons of my long experience, however, do
+not need to count, but simply to cast an eye on them. There are ten
+thousand cavalry, and eight thousand infantry with artillery. If I am
+mistaken in one common soldier or one horse, I am ready to redeem the
+mistake with my whole fortune."
+
+"Is it possible to estimate in that way?"
+
+"Ten thousand cavalry and eight thousand infantry. I have hope in God
+that they will go away in much smaller numbers; only let me lead one
+sortie."
+
+"Do you hear? They are playing an aria."
+
+In fact, trumpeters and drummers stepped out before the regiments, and
+military music began. At the sound of it the more distant regiments
+approached, and encompassed the town from a distance. At last from the
+dense throngs a few horsemen rode forth. When half-way, they put white
+kerchiefs on their swords, and began to wave them.
+
+"An embassy!" cried Zagloba; "I saw how the scoundrels came to Kyedani
+with the same boldness, and it is known what came of that."
+
+"Zamost is not Kyedani, and I am not the voevoda of Vilna," answered
+Zamoyski.
+
+Meanwhile the horsemen were approaching the gate. After a short time an
+officer of the day hurried to Zamoyski with a report that Pan Yan
+Sapyeha desired, in the name of the King of Sweden, to see him and
+speak with him.
+
+Zamoyski put his hands on his hips at once, began to step from one foot
+to the other, to puff, to pout, and said at last, with great
+animation,--
+
+"Tell Pan Sapyeha that Zamoyski does not speak with traitors. If the
+King of Sweden wishes to speak with me, let him send me a Swede by
+race, not a Pole,--for Poles who serve the Swedes may go as embassadors
+to my dogs; I have the same regard for both."
+
+"As God is dear to me, that is an answer!" cried Zagloba, with
+unfeigned enthusiasm.
+
+"But devil take them!" said the starosta, roused by his own words and
+by praise. "Well, shall I stand on ceremony with them?"
+
+"Permit me, your worthiness, to take him that answer," said Zagloba.
+And without waiting, he hastened away with the officer, went to Yan
+Sapyeha, and, apparently, not only repeated the starosta's words, but
+added something very bad from himself; for Sapyeha turned from the town
+as if a thunderbolt had burst in front of his horse, and rode away with
+his cap thrust over his ears.
+
+From the walls and from the squadrons of the cavalry which were
+standing before the gate they began to hoot at the men riding off,--
+
+"To the kennel with traitors, the betrayers! Jew servants! Huz, huz!"
+
+Sapyeha stood before the king, pale, with compressed lips. The king too
+was confused, for Zamost had deceived his hopes, in spite of what had
+been said, he expected to find a town of such power of resistance as
+Cracow, Poznan, and other places, so many of which he had captured;
+meanwhile he found a fortress powerful, calling to mind those of
+Denmark and the Netherlands, which he could not even think of taking
+without guns of heavy calibre.
+
+"What is the result?" asked the king, when he saw Sapyeha.
+
+"Nothing! Zamoyski will not speak with Poles who serve your Royal
+Grace. He sent out his jester, who reviled me and your Royal Grace so
+shamefully that it is not proper to repeat what he said."
+
+"It is all one to me with whom he wants to speak, if he will only
+speak. In default of other arguments, I have iron arguments; but
+meanwhile I will send Forgell."
+
+Half an hour later Forgell, with a purely Swedish suite, announced
+himself at the gate. The drawbridge was let down slowly over the moat,
+and the general entered the fortress amid silence and seriousness.
+Neither the eyes of the envoy nor those of any man in his suite were
+bound; evidently Zamoyski wished him to see everything, and be able to
+report to the king touching everything. The master of Zamost received
+Forgell with as much splendor as an independent prince would have done,
+and arranged all, in truth, admirably, for Swedish lords had not one
+twelfth as much wealth as the Poles had; and Zamoyski among Poles was
+well-nigh the most powerful. The clever Swede began at once to treat
+him as if the king had sent the embassy to a monarch equal to himself;
+to begin with, he called him "Princeps," and continued to address him
+thus, though Pan Sobiepan interrupted him promptly in the beginning,--
+
+"Not princeps, _eques polonus_ (a Polish nobleman), but for that very
+reason the equal of princes."
+
+"Your princely grace," said Forgell, not permitting himself to be
+diverted, "the Most Serene King of Sweden and Lord," here he enumerated
+his titles, "has not come here as an enemy in any sense; but, speaking
+simply, has come on a visit, and through me announces himself, having,
+as I believe, a well-founded hope that your princely grace will desire
+to open your gates to him and his army."
+
+"It is not a custom with us," answered Zamoyski, "to refuse hospitality
+to any man, even should he come uninvited. There will always be a place
+at my table for a guest; but for such a worthy person as the Swedish
+monarch the first place. Inform then the Most Serene King of Sweden
+that I invite him, and all the more gladly since the Most Serene
+Carolus Gustavus is lord in Sweden, as I am in Zamost. But as your
+worthiness has seen, there is no lack of servants in my house;
+therefore his Swedish Serenity need not bring his servants with him.
+Should he bring them I might think that he counts me a poor man, and
+wishes to show me contempt."
+
+"Well done!" whispered Zagloba, standing behind the shoulders of Pan
+Sobiepan.
+
+When Zamoyski had finished his speech he began to pout his lips, to
+puff and repeat,--
+
+"Ah, here it is, this is the position!"
+
+Forgell bit his mustache, was silent awhile, and said,--
+
+"It would be the greatest proof of distrust toward the king if your
+princely grace were not pleased to admit his garrison to the fortress.
+I am the king's confidant. I know his innermost thoughts, and besides
+this I have the order to announce to your worthiness, and to give
+assurance by word in the name of the king, that he does not think of
+occupying the possessions of Zamost or this fortress permanently. But
+since war has broken out anew in this unhappy land, since rebellion has
+raised its head, and Yan Kazimir, unmindful of the miseries which may
+fall on the Commonwealth, and seeking only his own fortune, has
+returned within the boundaries, and, together with pagans, comes forth
+against our Christian troops, the invincible king, my lord, has
+determined to pursue him, even to the wild steppes of the Tartars and
+the Turks, with the sole purpose of restoring peace to the country, the
+reign of justice, prosperity, and freedom to the inhabitants of this
+illustrious Commonwealth."
+
+Zamoyski struck his knee with his hand without saying a word; but
+Zagloba whispered,--
+
+"The Devil has dressed himself in vestments, and is ringing for Mass
+with his tail."
+
+"Many benefits have accrued to this land already from the protection of
+the king," continued Forgell; "but thinking in his fatherly heart that
+he has not done enough, he has left his Prussian province again to go
+once more to the rescue of the Commonwealth, which depends on finishing
+Yan Kazimir. But that this new war should have a speedy and victorious
+conclusion, it is needful that the king occupy for a time this
+fortress. It is to be for his troops a point from which pursuit
+may begin against rebels. But hearing that he who is the lord of
+Zamost surpasses all, not only in wealth, antiquity of stock, wit,
+high-mindedness, but also in love for the country, the king, my master,
+said at once: 'He will understand me, he will be able to appreciate my
+intentions respecting this country, he will not deceive my confidence,
+he will surpass my hopes, he will be the first to put his hand to the
+prosperity and peace of this country.' This is the truth! So on you
+depends the future fate of this country. You may save it and become the
+father of it; therefore I have no doubt of what you will do. Whoever
+inherits from his ancestors such fame should not avoid an opportunity
+to increase that fame and make it immortal. In truth, you will do more
+good by opening the gates of this fortress than if you had added a
+whole province to the Commonwealth. The king is confident that your
+uncommon wisdom, together with your heart, will incline you to this;
+therefore he will not command, he prefers to request, he throws aside
+threats, he offers friendship; not as a ruler with a subject, but as
+powerful with powerful does he wish to deal."
+
+Here General Forgell bowed before Zamoyski with as much respect as
+before an independent monarch. In the hall it grew silent. All eyes
+were fixed on Zamoyski. He began to twist, according to his custom, in
+his gilded armchair, to pout his lips, and exhibit stern resolve; at
+last he thrust out his elbows, placed his palms on his knees, and
+shaking his head like a restive horse, began,--
+
+"This is what I have to say! I am greatly thankful to his Swedish
+Serenity for the lofty opinion which he has of my wit and my love for
+the Commonwealth. Nothing is dearer to me than the friendship of such a
+potentate. But I think that we might love each other all the same if
+his Swedish Serenity remained in Stockholm and I in Zamost; that is
+what it is. For Stockholm belongs to his Swedish Serenity, and Zamost
+to me. As to love for the Commonwealth, this is what I think. The
+Commonwealth will not improve by the coming in of the Swedes, but by
+their departure. That is my argument! I believe that Zamost might help
+his Swedish Serenity to victory over Yan Kazimir; but your worthiness
+should know that I have not given oath to his Swedish Grace, but to Yan
+Kazimir; therefore I wish victory to Yan Kazimir, and I will not give
+Zamost to the King of Sweden. That is my position!"
+
+"That policy suits me!" said Zagloba.
+
+A joyous murmur rose in the hall; but Zamoyski slapped his knees with
+his hands, and the sounds were hushed.
+
+Forgell was confused, and was silent for a time; then he began to argue
+anew, insisted a little, threatened, begged, flattered. Latin flowed
+from his mouth like a stream, till drops of sweat were on his forehead;
+but all was in vain, for after his best arguments, so strong that they
+might move walls, he heard always one answer,--
+
+"But still I will not yield Zamost; that is my position!"
+
+The audience continued beyond measure; at last it became awkward and
+difficult for Forgell, since mirth was seizing those present. More and
+more frequently some word fell, some sneer,--now from Zagloba, now from
+others,--after which smothered laughter was heard in the hall. Forgell
+saw finally that it was necessary to use the last means; therefore he
+unrolled a parchment with seals, which he held in his hand, and to
+which no one had turned attention hitherto, and rising said with a
+solemn, emphatic voice,--
+
+"For opening the gates of the fortress his Royal Grace," here again he
+enumerated the titles, "gives your princely grace the province of
+Lubelsk in perpetual possession."
+
+All were astonished when they heard this, and Zamoyski himself was
+astonished for a moment. Forgell had begun to turn a triumphant look on
+the people around him, when suddenly and in deep silence Zagloba,
+standing behind Zamoyski, said in Polish,--
+
+"Your worthiness, offer the King of Sweden the Netherlands in
+exchange."
+
+Zamoyski, without thinking long, put his hands on his hips and fired
+through the whole hall in Latin,--
+
+"And I offer to his Swedish Serenity the Netherlands!"
+
+That moment the hall resounded with one immense burst of laughter. The
+breasts of all were shaking, and the girdles on their bodies were
+shaking; some clapped their hands, others tottered as drunken men, some
+leaned on their neighbors, but the laughter sounded continuously.
+Forgell was pale; he frowned terribly, but he waited with fire in his
+eyes and his head raised haughtily. At last, when the paroxysm of
+laughter had passed, he asked in a short, broken voice,--
+
+"Is that the final answer of your worthiness?"
+
+Zamoyski twirled his mustache. "No!" said he, raising his head still
+more proudly, "for I have cannon on the walls."
+
+The embassy was at an end.
+
+Two hours later cannons were thundering from the trenches of the
+Swedes, but Zamoyski's guns answered them with equal power. All Zamost
+was covered with smoke, as with an immense cloud; moment after moment
+there were flashes in that cloud, and thunder roared unceasingly. But
+fire from the heavy fortress guns was preponderant. The Swedish balls
+fell in the moat or bounded without effect from the strong angles;
+toward evening the enemy were forced to draw back from the nearer
+trenches, for the fortress was covering them with such a rain of
+missiles that nothing living could endure it. The Swedish king, carried
+away by anger, commanded to burn all the villages and hamlets, so that
+the neighborhood seemed in the night one sea of fire; but Zamoyski
+cared not for that.
+
+"All right!" said he, "let them burn. We have a roof over our heads,
+but soon it will be pouring down their backs."
+
+And he was so satisfied with himself and rejoiced that he made a great
+feast that day and remained till late at the cups. A resounding
+orchestra played at the feast so loudly that, in spite of the thunder
+of artillery, it could be heard in the remotest trenches of the Swedes.
+
+But the Swedes cannonaded continually, so constantly indeed that the
+firing lasted the whole night. Next day a number of guns were brought
+to the king, which as soon as they were placed in the trenches began to
+work against the fortress. The king did not expect, it is true, to make
+a breach in the walls; he merely wished to instil into Zamoyski the
+conviction that he had determined to storm furiously and mercilessly.
+He wished to bring terror on them; but that was bringing terror on
+Poles.[6] Zamoyski paid no attention to it for a moment, and often
+while on the walls he said, in time of the heaviest cannonading,--
+
+"Why do they waste powder?"
+
+Volodyovski and the others offered to make a sortie, but Zamoyski would
+not permit it; he did not wish to waste blood. He knew besides that it
+would be necessary to deliver open battle; for such a careful warrior
+as the king and such a trained army would not let themselves be
+surprised. Zagloba, seeing this fixed determination, insisted all the
+more, and guaranteed that he would lead the sortie.
+
+"You are too bloodthirsty!" answered Zamoyski. "It is pleasant for us
+and unpleasant for the Swedes; why should we go to them? You might
+fall, and I need you as a councillor; for it was by your wit that I
+confounded Forgell so by mentioning the Netherlands."
+
+Zagloba answered that he could not restrain himself within the walls,
+he wanted so much to get at the Swedes; but he was forced to obey. In
+default of other occupation he spent his time on the walls among the
+soldiers, dealing out to them precautions and counsel with importance,
+which all heard with no little respect, holding him a greatly
+experienced warrior, one of the foremost in the Commonwealth; and he
+was rejoiced in soul, looking at the defence and the spirit of the
+knighthood.
+
+"Pan Michael," said he to Volodyovski, "there is another spirit in the
+Commonwealth and in the nobles. No one thinks now of treason or
+surrender; and every one out of good-will for the Commonwealth and the
+king is ready to give his life sooner than yield a step to the enemy.
+You remember how a year ago from every side was heard, 'This one has
+betrayed, that one has betrayed, a third has accepted protection;' and
+now the Swedes need protection more than we. If the Devil does not
+protect them, he will soon take them. We have our stomachs so full here
+that drummers might beat on them, but their entrails are twisted into
+whips from hunger."
+
+Zagloba was right. The Swedish army had no supplies; and for eighteen
+thousand men, not to mention horses, there was no place from which to
+get supplies. Zamoyski, before the arrival of the enemy, had brought in
+from all his estates for many miles around food for man and horse. In
+the more remote neighborhoods of the country swarmed parties of
+confederates and bands of armed peasants, so that foraging detachments
+could not go out, since just beyond the camp certain death was in
+waiting.
+
+In addition to this, Pan Charnyetski had not gone to the west bank of
+the Vistula, but was circling about the Swedish army like a wild beast
+around a sheepfold. Again nightly alarms had begun, and the loss of
+smaller parties without tidings. Near Krasnik appeared certain Polish
+troops, which had cut communication with the Vistula. Finally, news
+came that Pavel Sapyeha, the hetman, was marching from the north with a
+powerful Lithuanian army; that in passing he had destroyed the garrison
+at Lublin, had taken Lublin, and was coming with cavalry to Zamost.
+
+Old Wittemberg, the most experienced of the Swedish leaders, saw the
+whole ghastliness of the position, and laid it plainly before the king.
+
+"I know," said he, "that the genius of your Royal Grace can do wonders;
+but judging things in human fashion, hunger will overcome us, and when
+the enemy fall upon our emaciated army not a living foot of us will
+escape."
+
+"If I had this fortress," answered the king, "I could finish the war in
+two months."
+
+"For such a fortress a year's siege is short."
+
+The king in his soul recognized that the old warrior was right, but he
+did not acknowledge that he saw no means himself, that his genius was
+strained. He counted yet on some unexpected event; hence he gave orders
+to fire night and day.
+
+"I will bend the spirit in them," said he; "they will be more inclined
+to treaties."
+
+After some days of cannonading so furious that the light could not be
+seen behind the smoke, the king sent Forgell again to the fortress.
+
+"The king, my master," said Forgell, appearing before Zamoyski,
+"considers that the damage which Zamost must have suffered from our
+cannonading will soften the lofty mind of your princely grace and
+incline it to negotiations."
+
+To which Zamoyski said: "Of course there is damage! Why should there
+not be? You killed on the market square a pig, which was struck in the
+belly by the fragment of a bomb. If you cannonade another week, perhaps
+you'll kill another pig."
+
+Forgell took that answer to the king. In the evening a new council was
+held in the king's quarters; next day the Swedes began to pack their
+tents in wagons and draw their cannon out of the trenches, and in the
+night the whole army moved onward.
+
+Zamost thundered after them from all its artillery, and when they had
+vanished from the eye two squadrons, the Shemberk and the Lauda, passed
+out through the southern gate and followed in their track.
+
+The Swedes marched southward. Wittemberg advised, it is true, a return
+to Warsaw, and with all his power he tried to convince the king that
+that was the only road of salvation; but the Swedish Alexander had
+determined absolutely to pursue the Polish Darius to the remotest
+boundaries of the kingdom.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XXX.
+
+
+The spring of that year approached with wonderful roads; for while in
+the north of the Commonwealth snow was already thawing, the stiffened
+rivers were set free, and the whole country was filled with March
+water, in the south the icy breath of winter was still descending from
+the mountains to the fields, woods, and forests. In the forests lay
+snow-drifts, in the open country frozen roads sounded under the hoofs
+of horses; the days were dry, the sunsets red, the nights starry and
+frosty. The people living on the rich clay, on the black soil, and in
+the woods of Little Poland comforted themselves with the continuance of
+the cold, stating that the field-mice and the Swedes would perish from
+it. But inasmuch as the spring came late, it came as swiftly as an
+armored squadron advancing to the attack of an enemy. The sun shot down
+living fire from heaven, and at once the crust of winter burst; from
+the Hungarian steppes flew a strong warm wind, and began to blow on the
+fields and wild places. Straightway in the midst of shining ponds
+arable ground became dark, a green fleece shot up on the low
+river-lands, and the forests began to shed tears from bursting buds on
+their branches.
+
+In the heavens continually fair were seen, daily, rows of cranes, wild
+ducks, teal, and geese. Storks flew to their places of the past year,
+and the roofs were swarming with swallows; the twitter of birds was
+heard in the villages, their noise in the woods and ponds, and in the
+evening the whole country was ringing with the croaking and singing of
+frogs, which swam with delight in the waters.
+
+Then came great rains, which were as if they had been warmed; they fell
+in the daytime, they fell in the night, without interruption.
+
+The fields were turned into lakes, the rivers overflowed, the fords
+became impassable; then followed the "stickiness and the impossible of
+muddy roads." Amid all this water, mud, and swamp the Swedish legions
+dragged onward continually toward the south.
+
+But how little was that throng, advancing as it were to destruction,
+like that brilliant army which in its time marched under Wittemberg to
+Great Poland! Hunger had stamped itself on the faces of the old
+soldiers; they went on more like spectres than men, in suffering, in
+toil, in sleeplessness, knowing that at the end of the road not food
+was awaiting, but hunger; not sleep, but a battle; and if rest, then
+the rest of the dead.
+
+Arrayed in iron these skeletons of horsemen sat on skeletons of horses.
+The infantry hardly drew their legs along; barely could they hold
+spears and muskets with trembling hands. Day followed day; they went
+onward continually. Wagons were broken, cannons were fastened in
+sloughs; they went on so slowly that sometimes they were able to
+advance hardly five miles in one day. Diseases fell on the soldiers,
+like ravens on corpses; the teeth of some were chattering from fever;
+others lay down on the ground simply from weakness, choosing rather to
+die than advance.
+
+But the Swedish Alexander hastened toward the Polish Darius
+unceasingly. At the same time he was pursued himself. As in the
+night-time jackals follow a sick buffalo waiting to see if he will soon
+fall, and he knows that he will fall and he hears the howl of the
+hungry pack, so after the Swedes went "parties," nobles and peasants,
+approaching ever nearer, attacking ever more insolently, and snatching
+away.
+
+At last came Charnyetski, the most terrible of all the pursuers, and
+followed closely. The rearguards of the Swedes as often as they looked
+behind saw horsemen, at one time far off on the edge of the horizon, at
+another a furlong away, at another twice the distance of a musket-shot,
+at another time, when attacking, on their very shoulders.
+
+The enemy wanted battle; with despair did the Swedes pray to the Lord
+of Hosts for battle. But Charnyetski did not receive battle, he bided
+his time; meanwhile he preferred to punish the Swedes, or let go from
+his hand against them single parties as one would falcons against water
+birds.
+
+And so they marched one after the other. There were times, however,
+when Charnyetski passed the Swedes, pushed on, and blocked the road
+before them, pretending to prepare for a general battle. Then the
+trumpet sounded joyously from one end of the Swedish camp to the other,
+and, oh miracle! new strength, a new spirit seemed to vivify on a
+sudden the wearied ranks of the Scandinavians. Sick, wet, weak, like
+Lazaruses, they stood in rank promptly for battle, with flaming faces,
+with fire in their eyes. Spears and muskets moved with as much accuracy
+as if iron hands held them; the shouts of battle were heard as loudly
+as if they came from the healthiest bosoms, and they marched forward to
+strike breast against breast.
+
+Then Charnyetski struck once, twice; but when the artillery began to
+thunder he withdrew his troops, leaving to the Swedes as profit, vain
+labor and the greater disappointment and disgust.
+
+When, however, the artillery could not come up, and spears and sabres
+had to decide in the open field, he struck like a thunderbolt, knowing
+that in a hand-to-hand conflict the Swedish cavalry could not stand,
+even against volunteers.
+
+And again Wittemberg implored the king to retreat and thus avoid ruin
+to himself and the army; but Karl Gustav in answer compressed his lips,
+fire flashed from his eyes, and he pointed to the south, where in the
+Russian regions he hoped to find Yan Kazimir, and also fields open to
+conquest, rest, provisions, pastures for horses, and rich plunder.
+
+Meanwhile, to complete the misfortune, those Polish regiments which had
+served him hitherto, and which in one way or another were now alone
+able to meet Charnyetski, began to leave the Swedes. Pan Zbrojek
+resigned first; he had held to Karl hitherto not from desire of gain,
+but from blind attachment to the squadron, and soldierly faithfulness
+to Karl. He resigned in this fashion, that he engaged in conflict with
+a regiment of Miller's dragoons, cut down half the men, and departed.
+After him resigned Pan Kalinski, who rode over the Swedish infantry.
+Yan Sapyeha grew gloomier each day; he was meditating something in his
+soul, plotting something. He had not gone hitherto himself, but his men
+were deserting him daily.
+
+Karl Gustav was marching then through Narol, Tsyeshanov, and Oleshytse,
+to reach the San. He was upheld by the hope that Yan Kazimir would bar
+his road and give him battle. A victory might yet repair the fate of
+Sweden and bring a change of fortune. In fact, rumors were current that
+Yan Kazimir had set out from Lvoff with the quarter soldiers and the
+Tartars. But Karl's reckonings deceived him. Yan Kazimir preferred to
+await the junction of the armies and the arrival of the Lithuanians
+under Sapyeha. Delay was his best ally; for he was growing daily in
+strength, while Karl was becoming weaker.
+
+"That is not the march of troops nor of an army, but a funeral
+procession!" said old warriors in Yan Kazimir's suite.
+
+Many Swedish officers shared this opinion. Karl Gustav however repeated
+still that he was going to Lvoff; but he was deceiving himself and his
+army. It was not for him to go to Lvoff, but to think of his own
+safety. Besides, it was not certain that he would find Yan Kazimir in
+Lvoff; in every event the "Polish Darius" might withdraw far into
+Podolia, and draw after him the enemy into distant steppes where the
+Swedes must perish without rescue.
+
+Douglas went to Premysl to try if that fortress would yield, and
+returned, not merely with nothing, but plucked. The catastrophe was
+coming slowly, but inevitably. All tidings brought to the Swedish camp
+were simply the announcement of it. Each day fresh tidings and ever
+more terrible.
+
+"Sapyeha is marching; he is already in Tomashov!" was repeated one day.
+"Lyubomirski is marching with troops and mountaineers!" was announced
+the day following. And again: "The king is leading the quarter soldiers
+and the horde one hundred thousand strong! He has joined Sapyeha!"
+
+Among these tidings were "tidings of disaster and death," untrue and
+exaggerated, but they always spread fear. The courage of the army fell.
+Formerly whenever Karl appeared in person before his regiments, they
+greeted him with shouts in which rang the hope of victory; now the
+regiments stood before him dull and dumb. And at the fires the
+soldiers, famished and wearied to death, whispered more of Charnyetski
+than of their own king. They saw him everywhere. And, a strange thing!
+when for a couple of days no party had perished, when a few nights
+passed without alarms or cries of "Allah!" and "Strike, kill!" their
+disquiet became still greater. "Charnyetski has fled; God knows what he
+is preparing!" repeated the soldiers.
+
+Karl halted a few days in Yaroslav, pondering what to do. During that
+time the Swedes placed on flat-bottomed boats sick soldiers, of whom
+there were many in camp, and sent them by the river to Sandomir, the
+nearest fortified town still in Swedish hands. After this work had been
+finished, and just when the news of Yan Kazimir's march from Lvoff had
+come in, the King of Sweden determined to discover where Yan Kazimir
+was, and with that object Colonel Kanneberg with one thousand cavalry
+passed the San and moved to the east.
+
+"It may be that you have in your hands the fate of the war and us all,"
+said the king to him at parting.
+
+And in truth much depended on that party, for in the worst case
+Kanneberg was to furnish the camp with provisions; and if he could
+learn certainly where Yan Kazimir was, the Swedish King was to move at
+once with all his forces against the "Polish Darius," whose army he was
+to scatter and whose person he was to seize if he could.
+
+The first soldiers and the best horses were assigned, therefore, to
+Kanneberg. Choice was made the more carefully as the colonel could not
+take artillery or infantry; hence he must have with him men who with
+sabres could stand against Polish cavalry in the field.
+
+March 20, the party set out. A number of officers and soldiers took
+farewell of them, saying: "God conduct you! God give victory! God give
+a fortunate return!" They marched in a long line, being one thousand in
+number, and went two abreast over the newly built bridge which had one
+square still unfinished, but was in some fashion covered with planks so
+that they might pass.
+
+Good hope shone in their faces, for they were exceptionally well fed.
+Food had been taken from others and given to them; gorailka was poured
+into their flasks. When they were riding away they shouted joyfully and
+said to their comrades,--
+
+"We will bring you Charnyetski himself on a rope."
+
+Fools! They knew not that they were going as go bullocks to slaughter
+at the shambles!
+
+Everything combined for their ruin. Barely had they crossed the river
+when the Swedish sappers removed the temporary covering of the bridge,
+so as to lay stronger planks over which cannon might pass. The thousand
+turned toward Vyelki Ochi, singing in low voices to themselves; their
+helmets glittered in the sun on the turn once and a second time; then
+they began to sink in the dense pine-wood.
+
+They rode forward two miles and a half,--emptiness, silence around
+them; the forest depths seemed vacant altogether. They halted to give
+breath to the horses; after that they moved slowly forward. At last
+they reached Vyelki Oehi, in which they found not a living soul. That
+emptiness astonished Kanneberg.
+
+"Evidently they have been waiting for us here," said he to Major Sweno;
+"but Charnyetski must be in some other place, since he has not prepared
+ambushes."
+
+"Does your worthiness order a return?" asked Sweno.
+
+"We will go on even to Lvoff itself, which is not very far. I must find
+an informant, and give the king sure information touching Yan Kazimir."
+
+"But if we meet superior forces?"
+
+"Even if we meet several thousand of those brawlers whom the Poles call
+general militia, we will not let ourselves be torn apart by such
+soldiers."
+
+"But we may meet regular troops. We have no artillery, and against them
+cannons are the main thing."
+
+"Then we will draw back in season and inform the king of the enemy, and
+those who try to cut off our retreat we will disperse."
+
+"I am afraid of the night!" replied Sweno.
+
+"We will take every precaution. We have food for men and horses for two
+days; we need not hurry."
+
+When they entered the pine-wood beyond Vyelki Ochi, they acted with
+vastly more caution. Fifty horsemen rode in advance musket in hand,
+each man with his gunstock on his thigh. They looked carefully on every
+side; examined the thickets, the undergrowth; frequently they halted,
+listened; sometimes they went from the road to one side to examine the
+depths of the forest, but neither on the roads nor at the sides was
+there a man.
+
+But one hour later, after they had passed a rather sudden turn, two
+troopers riding in advance saw a man on horseback about four hundred
+yards ahead.
+
+The day was clear and the sun shone brightly; hence the man could be
+seen as something on the hand. He was a soldier, not large, dressed
+very decently in foreign fashion. He seemed especially small because he
+sat on a large cream-colored steed, evidently of high breed.
+
+The horseman was riding at leisure, as if not seeing that troops were
+rolling on after him. The spring floods had dug deep ditches in the
+road, in which muddy water was sweeping along. The horseman spurred his
+steed in front of the ditches, and the beast sprang across with the
+nimbleness of a deer, and again went on at a trot, throwing his head
+and snorting vivaciously from time to time.
+
+The two troopers reined in their horses and began to look around for
+the sergeant. He clattered up in a moment, looked, and said: "That is
+some hound from the Polish kennel."
+
+"Shall I shout at him?"
+
+"Shout not; there may be more of them. Go to the colonel."
+
+Meanwhile the rest of the advance guard rode up, and all halted; the
+small horseman halted too, and turned the face of his steed to the
+Swedes as if wishing to block the road to them. For a certain time they
+looked at him and he at them.
+
+"There is another! a second! a third! a fourth! a whole party!" were
+the sudden cries in the Swedish ranks.
+
+In fact, horsemen began to pour out from both sides of the road; at
+first singly, then by twos, by threes. All took their places in line
+with him who had appeared first.
+
+But the second Swedish guard with Sweno, and then the whole detachment
+with Kanneberg, came up. Kanneberg and Sweno rode to the front at once.
+
+"I know those men!" cried Sweno, when he had barely seen them; "their
+squadron was the first to strike on Prince Waldemar at Golamb; those
+are Charnyetski's men. He must be here himself!"
+
+These words produced an impression; deep silence followed in the ranks,
+only the horses shook their bridle-bits.
+
+"I sniff some ambush," continued Sweno. "There are too few of them to
+meet us, but there must be others hidden in the woods."
+
+He turned here to Kanneberg: "Your worthiness, let us return."
+
+"You give good counsel," answered the colonel, frowning. "It was not
+worth while to set out if we must return at sight of a few ragged
+fellows. Why did we not return at sight of one? Forward!"
+
+The first Swedish rank moved at that moment with the greatest
+regularity; after it the second, the third, the fourth. The distance
+between the two detachments was becoming less.
+
+"Cock your muskets!" commanded Kanneberg.
+
+The Swedish muskets moved like one; their iron necks were stretched
+toward the Polish horsemen.
+
+But before the muskets thundered, the Polish horsemen turned their
+horses and began to flee in a disorderly group.
+
+"Forward!" cried Kanneberg.
+
+The division moved forward on a gallop, so that the ground trembled
+under the heavy hoofs of the horses.
+
+The forest was filled with the shouts of pursuers and pursued. After
+half an hour of chasing, either because the Swedish horses were better,
+or those of the Poles were wearied by some journey, the distance
+between the two bodies was decreasing.
+
+But at once something wonderful happened. The Polish band, at first
+disorderly, did not scatter more and more as the flight continued, but
+on the contrary, they fled in ever better order, in ranks growing more
+even, as if the very speed of the horses brought the riders into line.
+
+Sweno saw this, urged on his horse, reached Kanneberg, and called
+out,--
+
+"Your worthiness, that is an uncommon party; those are regular
+soldiers, fleeing designedly and leading us to an ambush."
+
+"Will there be devils in the ambush, or men?" asked Kanneberg.
+
+The road rose somewhat and became ever wider, the forest thinner, and
+at the end of the road was to be seen an unoccupied field, or rather a
+great open space, surrounded on all sides by a dense, deep gray
+pine-wood.
+
+The Polish horsemen increased their pace in turn, and it transpired
+that hitherto they had gone slowly of purpose; for now in a short time
+they pushed forward so rapidly that the Swedish leader knew that he
+could never overtake them. But when he had come to the middle of the
+open plain and saw that the enemy were almost touching the other end of
+it, he began to restrain his men and slacken speed.
+
+But, oh marvel! the Poles, instead of sinking in the opposite forest,
+wheeled around at the very edge of the half-circle and returned on a
+gallop toward the Swedes, putting themselves at once in such splendid
+battle order that they roused wonder even in their opponents.
+
+"It is true!" cried Kanneberg, "those are regular soldiers. They turned
+as if on parade. What do they want for the hundredth time?"
+
+"They are attacking us!" cried Sweno.
+
+In fact, the squadron was moving forward at a trot. The little knight
+on the cream-colored steed shouted something to his men, pushed
+forward, again reined in his horse, gave signs with his sabre;
+evidently he was the leader.
+
+"They are attacking really!" said Kanneberg, with astonishment.
+
+And now the horses, with ears dropped back, were coming at the greatest
+speed, stretched out so that their bellies almost touched the ground.
+Their riders bent forward to their shoulders, and were hidden behind
+the horse manes. The Swedes standing in the first rank saw only
+hundreds of distended horse-nostrils and burning eyes. A whirlwind does
+not move as that squadron tore on.
+
+"God with us! Sweden! Fire!" commanded Kanneberg, raising his sword.
+
+All the muskets thundered; but at that very moment the Polish squadron
+fell into the smoke with such impetus that it hurled to the right and
+the left the first Swedish ranks, and drove itself into the density of
+men and horses, as a wedge is driven into a cleft log. A terrible whirl
+was made, breastplate struck breast-plate, sabre struck rapier; and the
+rattle, the whining of horses, the groan of dying men roused every
+echo, so that the whole pine-wood began to give back the sounds of the
+battle, as the steep cliffs of mountains give back the thunder.
+
+The Swedes were confused for a time, especially since a considerable
+number of them fell from the first blow; but soon recovering, they went
+powerfully against the enemy. Their flanks came together; and since the
+Polish squadron was pushing ahead anyhow, for it wished to pass through
+with a thrust, it was soon surrounded. The Swedish centre yielded
+before the squadron, but the flanks pressed on it with the greater
+power, unable to break it; for it defended itself with rage and with
+all that incomparable adroitness which made the Polish cavalry so
+terrible in hand-to-hand conflict. Sabres toiled then against rapiers,
+bodies fell thickly; but the victory was just turning to the Swedish
+side when suddenly from under the dark wall of the pinewood rolled out
+another squadron, and moved forward at once with a shout.
+
+The whole right wing of the Swedes, under the lead of Sweno, faced the
+new enemy in which the trained Swedish soldiers recognized hussars.
+They were led by a man on a valiant dapple gray; he wore a burka, and a
+wild-cat skin cap with a heron feather. He was perfectly visible to the
+eye, for he was riding at one side some yards from the soldiers.
+
+"Charnyetski! Charnyetski!" was the cry in the Swedish ranks.
+
+Sweno looked in despair at the sky, then pressed his horse with his
+knees and rushed forward with his men.
+
+But Charnyetski led his hussars a few yards farther, and when they were
+moving with the swiftest rush, he turned back alone.
+
+With that a third squadron issued from the forest, he galloped to that
+and led it forward; a fourth came out, he led that on; pointing to each
+with his baton, where it must strike. You would have said that he was a
+man leading harvesters to his field and distributing work among them.
+
+At last, when the fifth squadron had come forth from the forest, he put
+himself at the head of that, and with it rushed to the fight.
+
+But the hussars had already forced the right wing to the rear, and
+after a while had broken it completely; the three other squadrons,
+racing around the Swedes in Tartar fashion and raising an uproar, had
+thrown them into disorder; then they fell to cutting them with steel,
+to thrusting them with lances, scattering, trampling, and finally
+pursuing them amid shrieks and slaughter.
+
+Kanneberg saw that he had fallen into an ambush, and had led his
+detachment as it were under the knife. For him there was no thought of
+victory now; but he wished to save as many men as possible, hence he
+ordered to sound the retreat. The Swedes, therefore, turned with all
+speed to that same road by which they had come to Vyelki Ochi; but
+Charnyetski's men so followed them that the breaths of the Polish
+horses warmed the shoulders of the Swedes.
+
+In these conditions and in view of the terror which had seized the
+Swedish cavalry, that return could not take place in order; and soon
+Kanneberg's brilliant division was turned into a crowd fleeing in
+disorder and slaughtered almost without resistance.
+
+The longer the pursuit lasted, the more irregular it became; for the
+Poles did not pursue in order, each of them drove his horse according
+to the breath in the beast's nostrils, and attacked and slew whom he
+wished.
+
+Both sides were mingled and confused in one mass. Some Polish soldiers
+passed the last Swedish ranks; and it happened that when a Pole stood
+in his stirrups to strike with more power the man fleeing in front of
+him, he fell himself thrust with a rapier from behind. The road to
+Vyelki Ochi was strewn with Swedish corpses; but the end of the chase
+was not there. Both sides rushed with the same force along the road
+through the next forest; there however the Swedish horses, wearied
+first, began to go more slowly, and the slaughter became still more
+bloody.
+
+Some of the Swedes sprang from their beasts and vanished in the forest;
+but only a few did so, for the Swedes knew from experience that
+peasants were watching in the forest, and they preferred to die from
+sabres rather than from terrible tortures, of which the infuriated
+people were not sparing. Some asked quarter, but for the most part in
+vain; for each Pole chose to slay an enemy, and chase on rather than
+take him prisoner, guard him, and leave further pursuit.
+
+They cut then without mercy, so that no one might return with news of
+the defeat. Volodyovski was in the van of pursuit with the Lauda
+squadron. He was that horseman who had appeared first to the Swedes as
+a decoy; he had struck first, and now, sitting on a horse which was as
+if impelled by a whirlwind, he enjoyed himself with his whole soul,
+wishing to be sated with blood, and avenge the defeat of Golamb. Every
+little while he overtook a horseman, and when he had overtaken him he
+quenched him as quickly as he would a candle; sometimes he came on the
+shoulders of two, three, or four, but soon, only in a moment, that same
+number of horses ran riderless before him. More than one hapless Swede
+caught his own rapier by the point, and turning the hilt to the knight
+for quarter implored with voice and with eyes. Volodyovski did not
+stop, but thrusting his sabre into the man where the neck joins the
+breast, he gave him a light, small push, and the man dropped his hands,
+gave forth one and a second word with pale lips, then sank in the
+darkness of death.
+
+Volodyovski, not looking around, rushed on and pushed new victims to
+the earth.
+
+The valiant Sweno took note of this terrible harvester, and summoning a
+few of the best horsemen he determined with the sacrifice of his own
+life to restrain even a little of the pursuit in order to save others.
+They turned therefore their horses, and pointing their rapiers waited
+with the points toward the pursuers. Volodyovski, seeing this,
+hesitated not a moment, spurred on his horse, and fell into the midst
+of them.
+
+And before any one could have winked, two helmets had fallen. More than
+ten rapiers were directed at once to the single breast of Volodyovski;
+but at that instant rushed in Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav, Yuzva Butrym,
+Zagloba and Roh Kovalski, of whom Zagloba related, that even when going
+to the attack he had his eyes closed in sleep, and woke only when his
+breast struck the breast of an enemy.
+
+Volodyovski put himself under the saddle so quickly that the rapiers
+passed through empty air. He learned this method from the Tartars of
+Bailgorod; but being small and at the same time adroit beyond human
+belief, he brought it to such perfection that he vanished from the eye
+when he wished, either behind the shoulder or under the belly of the
+horse. So he vanished this time, and before the astonished Swedes could
+understand what had become of him he was erect on the saddle again,
+terrible as a wild-cat which springs down from lofty branches among
+frightened dogs.
+
+Meanwhile his comrades gave him aid, and bore around death and
+confusion. One of the Swedes held a pistol to the very breast of
+Zagloba. Roh Kovalski, having that enemy on his left side, was unable
+to strike him with a sabre; but he balled his fist, struck the Swede's
+head in passing, and that man dropped under the horse as if a
+thunderbolt had met him, and Zagloba, giving forth a shout of delight,
+slashed in the temple Sweno himself, who dropped his hands and fell
+with his forehead to the horse's shoulder. At sight of this the other
+Swedes scattered. Volodyovski, Yuzva Footless, Pan Yan, and Pan
+Stanislav followed and cut them down before they had gone a hundred
+yards.
+
+And the pursuit lasted longer. The Swedish horses had less and less
+breath in their bodies, and ran more and more slowly. At last from a
+thousand of the best horsemen, which had gone out under Kanneberg,
+there remained barely a hundred and some tens; the rest had fallen in a
+long belt over the forest road. And this last group was decreasing, for
+Polish hands ceased not to toil over them.
+
+At last they came out of the forest. The towers of Yaroslav were
+outlined clearly in the azure sky. Now hope entered the hearts of the
+fleeing, for they knew that in Yaroslav was the king with all his
+forces, and at any moment he might come to their aid. They had
+forgotten that immediately after their passage the top had been taken
+from the last square of the bridge, so as to put stronger planks for
+the passage of cannon.
+
+Whether Charnyetski knew of this through his spies, or wished to show
+himself of purpose to the Swedish king and cut down before his eyes the
+last of those unfortunate men, it is enough that not only did he not
+restrain the pursuit, but he sprang forward himself with the Shemberk
+squadron, slashed, cut with his own hand, pursuing the crowd in such
+fashion as if he wished with that same speed to strike Yaroslav.
+
+At last they ran to within a furlong of the bridge; shouts from the
+field came to the Swedish camp. A multitude of soldiers and officers
+ran out from the town to see what was taking place beyond the river;
+they had barely looked when they saw and recognized the horsemen who
+had gone out of camp in the morning.
+
+"Kanneberg's detachment! Kanneberg's detachment!" cried thousands of
+voices.
+
+"Almost cut to pieces! Scarcely a hundred men are running!"
+
+At that moment the king himself galloped up; with him Wittemberg,
+Forgell, Miller, and other generals.
+
+The king grew pale. "Kanneberg!" said he.
+
+"By Christ and his wounds! the bridge is not finished," cried
+Wittemberg; "the enemy will cut them down to the last man."
+
+The king looked at the river, which had risen with spring waters,
+roaring with its yellow waves; to give aid by swimming was not to be
+thought of.
+
+The few men still left were coming nearer.
+
+Now there was a new cry: "The king's train and the guard are coming!
+They too will perish!"
+
+In fact, it had happened that a part of the king's provision-chests
+with a hundred men of the infantry guard had come out at that moment by
+another road from adjoining forests. When they saw what had happened,
+the men of the escort, in the conviction that the bridge was ready,
+hastened with all speed toward the town.
+
+But they were seen from the field by the Poles. Immediately about three
+hundred horsemen rushed toward them at full speed; in front of all,
+with sabre above his head and fire in his eyes, flew the tenant of
+Vansosh, Jendzian. Not many proofs had he given hitherto of his
+bravery; but at sight of the wagons in which there might be rich
+plunder, daring so rose in his heart that he went some tens of yards in
+advance of the others. The infantry at the wagons, seeing that they
+could not escape, formed themselves into a quadrangle, and a hundred
+muskets were directed at once at the breast of Jendzian. A roar shook
+the air, a line of smoke flew along the wall of the quadrangle; but
+before the smoke had cleared away the rider had urged on his horse so
+that the forefeet of the beast were above the heads of the men, and the
+lord tenant fell into the midst of them like a thunderbolt.
+
+An avalanche of horsemen rushed after him. And as when wolves overcome
+a horse, and he, lying yet on his back, defends himself desperately
+with his hoofs, and they cover him completely and tear from him lumps
+of living flesh, so those wagons and the infantry were covered
+completely with a whirling mass of horses and riders. But terrible
+shouts rose from that whirl, and reached the ears of the Swedes
+standing on the other bank.
+
+Meanwhile still nearer the bank the Poles were finishing the remnant of
+Kanneberg's cavalry. The whole Swedish army had come out like one man
+to the lofty bank of the San. Infantry, cavalry, artillery were mingled
+together; and all looked as if in an ancient circus in Rome at the
+spectacle; but they looked with set lips, with despair in their hearts,
+with terror and a feeling of helplessness. At moments from the breasts
+of those unwilling spectators was wrested a terrible cry. At moments a
+general weeping was heard; then again silence, and only the panting of
+the excited soldiers was audible. For that thousand men whom Kanneberg
+had led out were the front and the pride of the whole Swedish army;
+they were veterans, covered with glory in God knows how many lands, and
+God knows how many battles. But now they are running, like a lost flock
+of sheep, over the broad fields in front of the Swedish army, dying
+like sheep under the knife of the butcher. For that was no longer a
+battle, but a hunt. The terrible Polish horsemen circled about, like a
+storm, over the field of struggle, crying in various voices and running
+ahead of the Swedes. Sometimes a number less than ten, sometimes a
+group more than ten fell on one man. Sometimes one met one, sometimes
+the hunted Swede bowed down on the saddle as if to lighten the blow for
+the enemy, sometimes he withstood the brunt: but oftener he perished,
+for with edged weapons the Swedish soldiers were not equal to Polish
+nobles trained in all kinds of fencing.
+
+But among the Poles the little knight was the most terrible of all,
+sitting on his cream-colored steed, which was as nimble and as swift as
+a falcon. The whole army noted him; for whomsoever he pursued he
+killed, whoever met him perished it was unknown how and when, with such
+small and insignificant movements of his sword did he hurl the
+sturdiest horsemen to the earth. At last he saw Kanneberg himself, whom
+more than ten men were chasing; the little knight shouted at them,
+stopped the pursuit by command, and attacked the Swede himself.
+
+The Swedes on the other bank held the breath in their breasts. The king
+had pushed to the edge of the river and looked with throbbing heart,
+moved at once with alarm and hope; for Kanneberg, as a great lord and a
+relative of the king, was trained from childhood in every species of
+sword exercise by Italian masters; in fighting with edged weapons he
+had not his equal in the Swedish army. All eyes therefore were fixed on
+him now, barely did they dare to breathe; but he, seeing that the
+pursuit of the crowd had ceased, and wishing after the loss of his
+troops to save his own glory in the eyes of the king, said to his
+gloomy soul,--
+
+"Woe to me if having first lost my men, I do not seal with my own blood
+the shame, or if I do not purchase my life by having overturned this
+terrible man. In another event, though the hand of God might bear me to
+that bank, I should not dare to look in the eyes of any Swede." When he
+had said this he turned his horse and rushed toward the yellow knight.
+
+Since those Poles who had cut him off from the river had withdrawn,
+Kanneberg had the hope that if he should finish his opponent, he might
+spring into the water, and then what would be would be; if he could not
+swim the stormy stream, its current would bear him far with the horse,
+and his brothers would provide him some rescue.
+
+He sprang therefore like a thunderbolt at the little knight, and the
+little knight at him. The Swede wished during the rush to thrust the
+rapier up to the hilt under the arm of his opponent; but he learned in
+an instant that though a master himself he must meet a master as well,
+for his sword merely slipped along the edge of the Polish sabre, only
+quivered somehow wonderfully in his hand, as if his arm had suddenly
+grown numb; barely was he able to defend himself from the blow which
+the knight then gave him; luckily at that moment their horses bore them
+away in opposite directions.
+
+Both wheeled in a circle and returned simultaneously; but they rode now
+more slowly against each other, wishing to have more time for the
+meeting and even to cross weapons repeatedly. Kanneberg withdrew into
+himself so that he became like a bird which presents to view only
+a powerful beak from the midst of upraised feathers. He knew
+one infallible thrust in which a certain Florentine had trained
+him,--infallible because deceitful and almost impossible to be warded
+off,--consisting in this: that the point of the sword was directed
+apparently at the breast, but by avoiding obstacles at the side it
+passed through the throat till the hilt reached the back of the neck.
+This thrust he determined to make now.
+
+And, sure of himself, he approached, restraining his horse more and
+more; but Volodyovski rode toward him with short springs. For a moment
+he thought to disappear suddenly under the horse like a Tartar, but
+since he had to meet with only one man, and that before the eyes of
+both armies, though he understood that some unexpected thrust was
+waiting for him, he was ashamed to defend himself in Tartar and not in
+knightly fashion.
+
+"He wishes to take me as a heron does a falcon with a thrust," thought
+Pan Michael to himself; "but I will use that windmill which I invented
+in Lubni."
+
+And this idea seemed to him best for the moment; therefore it
+surrounded him like a glittering shield of light, and he struck his
+steed with his spurs and rushed on Kanneberg.
+
+Kanneberg drew himself in still more, and almost grew to the horse; in
+the twinkle of an eye the rapier caught the sabre, and quickly he stuck
+out his head like a snake and made a ghastly thrust.
+
+But in that instant a terrible whirling began to sound, the rapier
+turned in the hands of the Swede; the point struck empty space, but the
+curved end of the sabre fell with the speed of lightning; on the face
+of Kanneberg, cut through a part of his nose, his mouth and beard,
+struck his shoulder-blade, shattered that, and stopped only at the
+sword-belt which crossed his shoulder.
+
+The rapier dropped from the hands of the unfortunate man, and night
+embraced his head; but before he fell from his horse, Volodyovski
+dropped his own weapon and seized him by the shoulder.
+
+The Swedes from the other bank roared with one out burst, but Zagloba
+sprang to the little knight.
+
+"Pan Michael, I knew it would be so, but I was ready to avenge you!"
+
+"He was a master," answered Volodyovski. "You take the horse, for he is
+a good one."
+
+"Ha! if it were not for the river we could rush over and frolic with
+those fellows. I would be the first--"
+
+The whistle of balls interrupted further words of Zagloba; therefore he
+did not finish the expression of his thoughts, but cried,--
+
+"Let us go, Pan Michael; those traitors are ready to fire."
+
+"Their bullets have no force, for the range is too great."
+
+Meanwhile other Polish horsemen came up congratulating Volodyovski and
+looking at him with admiration; but he only moved his mustaches, for he
+was a cause of gladness to himself as well as to them.
+
+But on the other bank among the Swedes, it was seething as in a
+beehive. Artillerists on that side drew out their cannons in haste; and
+in the nearer Polish ranks trumpets were sounded for withdrawal. At
+this sound each man sprang to his squadron, and in a moment all were in
+order. They withdrew then to the forest, and halted again, as if
+offering a place to the enemy and inviting them across the river. At
+last, in front of the ranks of men and horses, rode out on his dapple
+gray the man wearing a burka and a cap with a heron's feather, and
+bearing a gilded baton in his hand.
+
+He was perfectly visible, for the reddish rays of the setting sun fell
+on him, and besides he rode before the regiments as if reviewing them.
+All the Swedes knew him at once, and began to shout,--
+
+"Charnyetski! Charnyetski!"
+
+He said something to the colonels. It was seen how he stopped longer
+with the knight who had slain Kanneberg, and placed his hand on his
+shoulder; then he raised his baton, and the squadrons began to turn
+slowly one after another to the pine-woods.
+
+Just then the sun went down. In Yaroslav the bells sounded in the
+church; then all the regiments began to sing in one voice as they were
+riding away, "The Angel of the Lord announced to the Most Holy Virgin
+Mary;" and with that song they vanished from the eyes of the Swedes.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXI.
+
+
+That evening the Swedes lay down to sleep without putting food into
+their mouths, and without hope that they would have anything to
+strengthen themselves with on the morrow. They were not able to sleep
+from the torment of hunger. Before the second cock-crow the suffering
+soldiers began to slip out of the camp singly and in crowds to plunder
+villages adjoining Yaroslav. They went like night-thieves to Radzymno,
+to Kanchuya, to Tychyno, where they hoped to find food of some kind.
+Their confidence was increased by the fact that Charnyetski was on the
+other side of the river; but even had he been able to cross, they
+preferred death to hunger. There was evidently a great relaxation in
+the camp, for despite the strictest orders of the king about fifteen
+hundred men went out in this way.
+
+They fell to ravaging the neighborhood, burning, plundering, killing;
+but scarcely a man of them was to return. Charnyetski was on the other
+side of the San, it is true, but on the left bank were various
+"parties" of nobles and peasants; of these the strongest, that of
+Stjalkovski, formed of daring nobles of the mountains, had come that
+very night to Prohnik, as if led by the evil fate of the Swedes. When
+he saw the fire and heard the shots, Stjalkovski went straight to the
+uproar and fell upon the plunderers. They defended themselves fiercely
+behind fences; but Stjalkovski broke them up, cut them to pieces,
+spared no man. In other villages other parties did work of the same
+kind. Fugitives were followed to the very camp, and the pursuers spread
+alarm and confusion, shouting in Tartar, in Wallachian, in Hungarian,
+and in Polish; so that the Swedes thought that some powerful auxiliary
+of the Poles was attacking them, maybe the Khan with the whole horde.
+
+Confusion began, and--a thing without example hitherto--panic, which
+the officers put down with the greatest effort. The king, who remained
+on horseback till daylight, saw what was taking place; he understood
+what might come of that, and called a council of war at once in the
+morning.
+
+That gloomy council did not last long, for there were not two roads to
+choose from. Courage had fallen in the army, the soldiers had nothing
+to eat, the enemy had grown in power.
+
+The Swedish Alexander, who had promised the whole world to pursue the
+Polish Darius even to the steppes of the Tartars, was forced to think
+no longer of pursuit, but of his own safety.
+
+"We can return by the San to Sandomir, thence by the Vistula to Warsaw
+and to Prussia," said Wittemberg; "in that way we shall escape
+destruction."
+
+Douglas seized his own head: "So many victories, so many toils, such a
+great country conquered, and we must return."
+
+To which Wittemberg said: "Has your worthiness any advice?"
+
+"I have not," answered Douglas.
+
+The king, who had said nothing hitherto, rose, as a sign that the
+session was ended, and said,
+
+"I command the retreat!"
+
+Not a word further was heard from his mouth that day.
+
+Drums began to rattle, and trumpets to sound. News that the retreat was
+ordered ran in a moment from one end of the camp to the other. It was
+received with shouts of delight. Fortresses and castles were still in
+the hands of the Swedes; and in them rest, food, and safety were
+waiting.
+
+The generals and soldiers betook themselves so zealously to preparing
+for retreat that that zeal, as Douglas remarked, bordered on disgrace.
+
+The king sent Douglas with the vanguard to repair the difficult
+crossings and clear the forests. Soon after him moved the whole army in
+order of battle; the front was covered by artillery, the rear by
+wagons, at the flanks marched infantry. Military supplies and tents
+sailed down the river on boats.
+
+All these precautions were not superfluous; barely had the march begun,
+when the rearguard of the Swedes saw Polish cavalry behind, and
+thenceforth they lost it almost never from sight. Charnyetski assembled
+his own squadrons, collected all the "parties" of that region, sent to
+Yan Kazimir for reinforcements, and pursued. The first stopping-place,
+Pjevorsk, was at the same time the first place of alarm. The Polish
+divisions pushed up so closely that several thousand infantry with
+artillery had to turn against them. For a time the king himself thought
+that Charnyetski was really attacking; but according to his wont he
+only sent detachment after detachment. These attacked with an uproar
+and retreated immediately. All the night passed in these encounters,--a
+troublesome and sleepless night for the Swedes.
+
+The whole march, all the following nights and days were to be like this
+one.
+
+Meanwhile Yan Kazimir sent two squadrons of very well trained cavalry,
+and with them a letter stating that the hetmans would soon march with
+cavalry, and that he himself with the rest of the infantry and with the
+horde would hasten after them. In fact, he was detained only by
+negotiations with the Khan, with Rakotsy, and with the court of Vienna.
+Charnyetski was rejoiced beyond measure by this news; and when the day
+after the Swedes advanced in the wedge between the Vistula and the San,
+he said to Colonel Polyanovski,--
+
+"The net is spread, the fish are going in."
+
+"And we will do like that fisherman," said Zagloba, "who played on the
+flute to the fish so that they might dance, and when they would not, he
+pulled them on shore; then they began to jump around, and he fell to
+striking them with a stick, crying: 'Oh, such daughters! you ought to
+have danced when I begged you to do so.'"
+
+"They will dance," answered Charnyetski; "only let the marshal, Pan
+Lyubomirski, come with his army, which numbers five thousand."
+
+"He may come any time," remarked Volodyovski.
+
+"Some nobles from the foot-hills arrived to-day," said Zagloba; "they
+say that he is marching in haste; but whether he will join us instead
+of fighting on his own account is another thing."
+
+"How is that?" asked Charnyetski, glancing quickly at Zagloba.
+
+"He is a man of uncommon ambition and envious of glory. I have known
+him many years; I was his confidant and made his acquaintance when he
+was still a lad, at the court of Pan Krakovski. He was learning fencing
+at that time from Frenchmen and Italians. He fell into terrible anger
+one day when I told him that they were fools, not one of whom could
+stand before me. We had a duel, and I laid out seven of them one
+following the other. After that Lyubomirski learned from me, not only
+fencing, but the military art. By nature his wit is a little dull; but
+whatever he knows he knows from me."
+
+"Are you then such a master of the sword?" asked Polyanovski.
+
+"As a specimen of my teaching, take Pan Volodyovski; he is my second
+pupil. From that man I have real comfort."
+
+"True, it was you who killed Sweno."
+
+"Sweno? If some one of you, gentlemen, had done that deed, he would
+have had something to talk about all his life, and besides would invite
+his neighbors often to dinner to repeat the story at wine; but I do not
+mind it, for if I wished to take in all I have done, I could pave the
+road from this place to Sandomir with such Swenos. Could I not? Tell
+me, any of you who know me."
+
+"Uncle could do it," said Roh Kovalski.
+
+Charnyetski did not hear the continuation of this dialogue, for he had
+fallen to thinking deeply over Zagloba's words. He too knew of
+Lyubomirski's ambition, and doubted not that the marshal would either
+impose his own will on him, or would act on his own account, even
+though that should bring harm to the Commonwealth. Therefore his stern
+face became gloomy, and he began to twist his beard.
+
+"Oho!" whispered Zagloba to Pan Yan, "Charnyetski is chewing something
+bitter, for his face is like the face of an eagle; he will snap up
+somebody soon."
+
+Then Charnyetski said: "Some one of you, gentlemen, should go with a
+letter from me to Lyubomirski."
+
+"I am known to him, and I will go," said Pan Yan.
+
+"That is well," answered Charnyetski; "the more noted the messenger,
+the better."
+
+Zagloba turned to Volodyovski and whispered: "He is speaking now
+through the nose; that is a sign of great change."
+
+In fact, Charnyetski had a silver palate, for a musket-ball had carried
+away his own years before at Busha. Therefore whenever he was roused,
+angry, and unquiet, he always began to speak with a sharp and clinking
+voice. Suddenly he turned to Zagloba: "And perhaps you would go with
+Pan Skshetuski?"
+
+"Willingly," answered Zagloba. "If I cannot do anything, no man can.
+Besides, to a man of such great birth it will be more proper to send
+two."
+
+Charnyetski compressed his lips, twisted his beard, and repeated as if
+to himself: "Great birth, great birth--"
+
+"No one can deprive Lyubomirski of that," remarked Zagloba.
+
+Charnyetski frowned.
+
+"The Commonwealth alone is great, and in comparison with it no family
+is great, all of them are small; and I would the earth swallowed those
+who make mention of their greatness."
+
+All were silent, for he had spoken with much vehemence; and only after
+some time did Zagloba say,--
+
+"In comparison with the whole Commonwealth, certainly."
+
+"I did not grow up out of salt, nor out of the soil, but out of that
+which pains me," said Charnyetski; "and the Cossacks who shot this lip
+through pained me, and now the Swedes pain me; and either I shall cut
+away this sore with the sabre, or die of it myself, so help me God!"
+
+"And we will help you with our blood!" said Polyanovski.
+
+Charnyetski ruminated some time yet over the bitterness which rose in
+his heart, over the thought that the marshal's ambition might hinder
+him in saving the country; at last he grew calm and said,--
+
+"Now it is necessary to write a letter. I ask you, gentlemen, to come
+with me."
+
+Pan Yan and Zagloba followed him, and half an hour later they were on
+horseback and riding back toward Radymno; for there was news that the
+marshal had halted there with his army.
+
+"Yan," said Zagloba, feeling of the bag in which he carried
+Charnyetski's letter, "do me a favor; let me be the only one to talk to
+the marshal."
+
+"But, father, have you really known him, and taught him fencing?"
+
+"Hei! that came out of itself, so that the breath should not grow hot
+in my mouth, and my tongue become soft, which might easily happen from
+too long silence. I neither knew him nor taught him. Just as if I had
+nothing better to do than be a bear-keeper, and teach the marshal how
+to walk on hind legs! But that is all one; I have learned him through
+and through from what people tell of him, and I shall be able to bend
+him as a cook bends pastry. Only one thing I beg of you: do not say
+that we have a letter from Charnyetski, and make no mention of it till
+I give the letter myself."
+
+"How is that? Should I not do the work for which I was sent? In my life
+such a thing has not happened, and it will not happen! Even if
+Charnyetski should forgive me, I would not do that for ready treasure."
+
+"Then I will draw my sabre and hamstring your horse so that you cannot
+follow me. Have you ever seen anything miscarry that I invented with my
+own head? Tell me, have you ever come into evil plight yourself with
+Zagloba's stratagems? Did Pan Michael come out badly, or your Helena,
+or any of you, when I freed you all from Radzivill's hands? I tell you
+that more harm than good may come of that letter; for Charnyetski wrote
+it in such agitation that he broke three pens. Finally, you can speak
+of it when my plans fail. I promise to give it then, but not before."
+
+"If I can only deliver the letter, it is all one when."
+
+"I ask for no more. Now on, for there is a terrible road before us."
+
+They urged the horses, and went at a gallop. But they did not need to
+ride long, for the marshal's vanguard had not only passed Radymno, but
+Yaroslav; and Lyubomirski himself was at Yaroslav, and occupied the
+former quarters of the King of Sweden.
+
+They found him at dinner, with the most important officers. But when
+the envoys were announced, Lyubomirski gave orders to receive them at
+once; for he knew the names, since they were mentioned at that time in
+the whole Commonwealth.
+
+All eyes were turned on the envoys as they entered; the officers looked
+with especial admiration and curiosity at Pan Yan. When the marshal had
+greeted them courteously, he asked at once,--
+
+"Have I that famous knight before me who brought the letters from
+besieged Zbaraj to the king?"
+
+"I crept through," said Pan Yan.
+
+"God grant me as many such officers as possible! I envy Pan Charnyetski
+nothing so much; as to the rest, I know that even my small services
+will not perish from the memory of men."
+
+"And I am Zagloba," said the old knight, pushing himself forward.
+
+Here he passed his eye around the assembly; and the marshal, as he
+wished to attract every one to himself, exclaimed,--
+
+"Who does not know of the man who slew Burlai, the leader of the
+barbarians; of the man who raised Radzivill's army in rebellion--"
+
+"And I led Sapyeha's army, who, if the truth is told, chose me, not him
+for leader," added Zagloba.
+
+"And why did you wish, being able to have such a high office, to leave
+it and serve under Pan Charnyetski?"
+
+Here Zagloba's eye gleamed at Skshetuski, and he said: "Serene great
+mighty marshal, from your worthiness I as well as the whole country
+take example how to resign ambition and self-interest for the good of
+the Commonwealth."
+
+Lyubomirski blushed from satisfaction, and Zagloba, putting his hands
+on his hips, continued,--
+
+"Pan Charnyetski has sent us to bow to your worthiness in his name and
+that of the whole army, and at the same time to inform you of the
+considerable victory which God has permitted us to gain over
+Kanneberg."
+
+"I have heard of it already," said the marshal, dryly enough, in whom
+envy had now begun to move, "but gladly do I hear it again from an
+eyewitness."
+
+Zagloba began at once to relate, but with certain changes, for the
+forces of Kanneberg grew in his mouth to two thousand men. He did not
+forget either to mention Sweno or himself, and how before the eyes of
+the king the remnant of the cavalry were cut to pieces near the river;
+how the wagons and three hundred men of the guards fell into the hands
+of the fortunate conquerors; in a word, the victory increased in his
+narrative to the dimensions of an unspeakable misfortune for the
+Swedes.
+
+All listened with attention, and so did the marshal; but he grew
+gloomier and gloomier, his face was chilled as if by ice, and at last
+he said,--
+
+"I do not deny that Charnyetski is a celebrated warrior, but still he
+cannot devour all the Swedes himself; something will remain for others
+to gulp."
+
+"Serene great mighty lord," answered Zagloba, "it is not Pan
+Charnyetski who gained the victory."
+
+"But who?"
+
+"But Lyubomirski!"
+
+A moment of universal astonishment followed. The marshal opened his
+mouth, began to wink, and looked at Zagloba with such an astonished
+gaze, as if he wished to ask: "Is there not a stave lacking in your
+barrel?"
+
+Zagloba did not let himself be beaten from the track, but pouting his
+lips with great importance (he borrowed this gesture from Zamoyski),
+said,--
+
+"I heard Charnyetski say before the whole army: 'It is not our sabres
+that slay them; 'tis the name of Lyubomirski that cuts them down. Since
+they have heard that he is right here marching on, their courage has so
+gone out of them that they see in every one of our soldiers the army of
+the marshal, and they put their heads under the knife like sheep.'"
+
+If all the rays of the sun had fallen at once on the face of the
+marshal, that face could not have been more radiant.
+
+"How is that?" asked he; "did Charnyetski himself say that?"
+
+"He did, and many other things; but I do not know that 'tis proper for
+me to repeat them, for he told them only to intimates."
+
+"Tell! Every word of Pan Charnyetski deserves to be repeated a hundred
+times. He is an uncommon man, and I said so long ago."
+
+Zagloba looked at the marshal, half closing his one eye, and muttered:
+"You have swallowed the hook; I'll land you this minute."
+
+"What do you say?" asked the marshal.
+
+"I say that the army cheered your worthiness in such fashion that they
+could not have cheered the king better; and in Pjevorsk, where we
+fought all night with the Swedes, wherever a squadron sprang out the
+men cried: 'Lyubomirski! Lyubomirski!' and that had a better effect
+than 'Allah!' and 'Slay, kill!' There is a witness here too,--Pan
+Skshetuski, no common soldier, and a man who has never told a lie in
+his life."
+
+The marshal looked involuntarily at Pan Yan, who blushed to his ears,
+and muttered something through his nose. Meanwhile the officers of the
+marshal began to praise the envoys aloud,--
+
+"See, Pan Charnyetski has acted courteously, sending such polished
+cavaliers; both are famous knights, and honey simply flows from the
+mouth of one of them."
+
+"I have always understood that Pan Charnyetski was a well-wisher of
+mine, but now there is nothing that I would not do for him," cried the
+marshal, whose eyes were veiled with a mist from delight.
+
+At this Zagloba broke into enthusiasm: "Serene great mighty lord, who
+would not render homage to you, who would not honor you, the model of
+all civic virtues, who recall Aristides in justice, the Scipios in
+bravery! I have read many books in my time, have seen much, have
+meditated much, and my soul has been rent from pain; for what have I
+seen in this Commonwealth? The Opalinskis, the Radzeyovskis, the
+Radzivills, who by their personal pride, setting their own ambition
+above all things, were ready at every moment to desert the country for
+their own private gain. I thought further, this Commonwealth is lost
+through the viciousness of its own sons. But who has comforted me, who
+has consoled me in my suffering? Pan Charnyetski, for he said: 'The
+Commonwealth has not perished, since Lyubomirski has risen up in it.
+These others,' said he, 'think of themselves alone; he is only looking,
+only seeking how to make an offering of his own interests on the common
+altar. These are pushing themselves forward; he is pushing himself
+back, for he wants to illustrate by his example. Now,' said he, 'he is
+marching with a powerful conquering army, and I have heard,' said he,
+'that he wishes to give me the command over it, in order to teach
+others how they should sacrifice their ambition, though even just, for
+the country. Go, then,' said he, 'to Pan Lyubomirski, declare to him
+that I do not want the sacrifice, I do not desire it, since he is a
+better leader than I am; since, moreover, not only as leader, but--God
+grant our Kazimir a long life!--as king are we ready to choose him,
+and--we will choose him!'"
+
+Here Zagloba was somewhat frightened lest he had passed the measure,
+and really after the exclamation, "We will choose him!" followed
+silence; but before the magnate heaven opened; he grew somewhat pale at
+first, then red, then pale again, and laboring heavily with his breast,
+said, after the silence of a moment,--
+
+"The Commonwealth is and will ever remain in control of its own will,
+for on that ancient foundation do our liberties rest. But I am only a
+servant of its servants, and God is my witness that I do not raise my
+eyes to those heights at which a citizen should not gaze. As to command
+over the army, Pan Charnyetski must accept it. I demand it especially
+for this, to give an example to those who, having continually the
+greatness of their family in mind, are unwilling to recognize any
+authority whenever it is necessary to forget the greatness of their
+family for the good of the country. Therefore, though perhaps I am not
+such a bad leader, still I, Lyubomirski, enter willingly under the
+command of Charnyetski, praying to God only to send us victory over the
+enemy!"
+
+"Roman! Father of the country!" exclaimed Zagloba, seizing the
+marshal's hand and pressing it to his lips.
+
+But at the same moment the old rogue turned his eye on Pan Yan, and
+began to wink time after time.
+
+Thundering shouts were heard from the officers. The throng in the
+quarters increased with each moment.
+
+"Wine!" cried the marshal.
+
+And when they brought in goblets he raised at once a toast to the king,
+then to Charnyetski, whom he called his leader, and finally to the
+envoys. Zagloba did not remain behind with the toasts, and he so caught
+the hearts of all that the marshal himself conducted them to the
+threshold, and the knights to the gates of Yaroslav.
+
+At last Pan Yan and Zagloba were alone; then Zagloba stopped the road
+in front of Pan Yan, reined in his horse, and putting his hands on his
+hips, said,--
+
+"Well, Yan, what do you think?"
+
+"God knows," answered Pan Yan, "that if I had not seen it with my own
+eyes and heard it with my own ears, I would not believe, even if an
+angel had told me."
+
+"Ha! do you know? I will swear to you that Charnyetski himself at the
+most asked and begged Lyubomirski to go in company with him. And do you
+know what he would have done? Lyubomirski would have gone alone; for if
+Charnyetski has adjured in the letter by the love of country, or if he
+mentioned private interests, and I am sure that he has, the marshal
+would have been offended at once, and would have said: 'Does he want to
+be my preceptor, and teach me how to serve the country?' I know those
+men! Happily old Zagloba took the matter in hand, and hardly had he
+opened his mouth when Lyubomirski not only wanted to go with
+Charnyetski, but to go under his command. Charnyetski is killing
+himself with anxiety, but I will comfort him. Well, Yan, does Zagloba
+know how to manage the magnates?"
+
+"I tell you that I am not able to let the breath go from my lips from
+astonishment."
+
+"I know them! Show one of them a crown and a corner of the ermine robe,
+and you may rub him against the grain like a hound pup, and besides, he
+will bend up to you and present his back himself. No cat will so lick
+his chops, even if you hold before him a dinner of pure cheese. The
+eyes of the most honest of them will be bursting out from desire; and
+if a scoundrel happens, such as the voevoda of Vilna, he is ready to
+betray the country. Oh, the vanity of man! Lord Jesus! if Thou hadst
+given me as many thousands of ducats as Thou hast created candidates
+for this crown, I should be a candidate myself. For if any of them
+imagines that I hold myself inferior to him, then may his stomach burst
+from his own pride. Zagloba is as good as Lyubomirski; in fortune alone
+is the difference. This is true, Yan. Do you think that I really kissed
+him on the hand? I kissed my own thumb, and shoved his hand up to my
+nose. Certain it is that since he is alive no one has so fooled him. I
+have spread him like butter on toast for Charnyetski. God grant our
+king as long a life as possible; but in case of election, I would
+rather give a vote to myself than to Lyubomirski. Roh Kovalski would
+give me another, and Pan Michael would strike down my opponents. As God
+lives! I would make you grand hetman of the kingdom straightway, and
+Pan Michael, after Sapyeha, grand hetman of Lithuania,--but Jendzian,
+treasurer. He would punish the Jews with taxes! But enough; the main
+thing is that I have caught Lyubomirski on a hook and put the line in
+Charnyetski's hand. For whomsoever the flour, it will be ground on the
+Swedes; and whose is the merit? What do you think? Should the
+chroniclers inscribe it to some one else? But I have no luck. It will
+be well even if Charnyetski does not break out on the old man for not
+having given the letter. Such is human gratitude. This is not my first,
+not my first--others are sitting in starostaships, and are grown around
+with fat, like badgers; but do you, old man, shake your poor stomach on
+a horse as before."
+
+Here Zagloba waved his hand. "Human gratitude may go to the hangman!
+And whether in this or that position you must die, still it is pleasant
+to serve the country. The best reward is good company. As soon as a man
+is on horseback, then, with such comrades as you and Michael, he is
+ready to ride to the end of the world,--such is our Polish nature. If a
+German, a Frenchman, an Englishman, or a dark Spaniard is on horseback,
+he is ready at once to gallop into your eyes; but a Pole, having inborn
+patience, will endure much, and will permit even a Swedish fellow to
+pluck him; but when the limit is passed and the Pole whacks him in the
+snout, such a Swede will cover himself three times with his legs. For
+there is metal yet in the Poles, and while the metal lasts the
+Commonwealth will last. Beat that into yourself, Yan."
+
+And so spoke Zagloba for a long time, for he was very glad; and
+whenever he was very glad he was talkative beyond usual measure, and
+full of wise sentences.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXII.
+
+
+Charnyetski, in truth, did not even dare to think that the marshal of
+the kingdom would put himself under his command. He wished merely joint
+action, and he feared that even that would not be attained because of
+the great ambition of Lyubomirski; for the proud magnate had mentioned
+more than once to his officers that he wished to attack the Swedes
+independently, for thus he could effect something; but if he and
+Charnyetski won a victory together, the whole glory would flow to
+Charnyetski.
+
+Such was the case, in fact. Charnyetski understood the marshal's
+reasons, and was troubled. He was reading now, for the tenth time, the
+copy of the letter which he had sent from Pjevorsk, wishing to see if
+he had written anything to offend so irritable a man as Lyubomirski.
+
+He regretted certain phrases; finally he began to regret, on the whole,
+that he had sent the letter. Therefore he was sitting gloomy in his
+quarters, and every little while he approached the window and looked
+out on the road to see if the envoys were not returning. The officers
+saw him through the window, and divined what was passing in his mind,
+for evident trouble was on his forehead.
+
+"But look," said Polyanovski to Pan Michael, "there will be nothing
+pleasant, for the castellan's face has become spotted, and that is a
+bad sign."
+
+Charnyetski's face bore numerous traces of small-pox, and in moments of
+great emotion or disquiet it was covered with white and dark spots. As
+he had sharp features, a very high forehead and cloudy, Jupiter brows,
+a bent nose, and a glance cutting straight through, when in addition
+those spots appeared, he became terrible. The Cossacks in their time
+called him the spotted dog; but in truth, he was more like a spotted
+eagle, and when he led men to the attack and his burka spread out like
+great wings, the likeness struck both his own men and the enemy.
+
+He roused fear in these and those. During the Cossack wars leaders of
+powerful bands lost their heads when forced to act against Charnyetski.
+Hmelnitski himself feared him, but especially the counsels which he
+gave the king. They brought upon the Cossacks the terrible defeat of
+Berestechko. But his fame increased chiefly after Berestechko, when,
+together with the Tartars, he passed over the steppes like a flame,
+crushed the uprisen crowds, took towns and trenches by storm, rushing
+with the speed of a whirlwind from one end of the Ukraine to the other.
+
+With this same raging endurance was he plucking the Swedes now.
+"Charnyetski does not knock out my men, he steals them away," said Karl
+Gustav. But Charnyetski was tired of stealing away; he thought that the
+time had come to strike. But he lacked artillery and infantry
+altogether, without which nothing decisive could be done, nothing
+important effected; hence his eagerness for a junction with
+Lyubomirski, who had a small number of cannon, it is true, but brought
+with him infantry composed of mountaineers. These, though not over-much
+trained as yet, had still been under fire more than once, and might,
+for want of better, be used against the incomparable infantry legions
+of Karl Gustav.
+
+Charnyetski, therefore, was as if in a fever. Not being able to endure
+in the house, he went outside, and seeing Volodyovski and Polyanovski,
+he asked,--
+
+"Are the envoys not in sight?"
+
+"It is clear that they are glad to see them," answered Volodyovski.
+
+"They are glad to see them, but not glad to read my letter, or the
+marshal would have sent his answer."
+
+"Pan Castellan," said Polyanovski, whom Charnyetski trusted greatly,
+"why be careworn? If the marshal comes, well; if not, we will attack as
+of old. As it is, blood is flowing from the Swedish pot; and we know
+that when a pot once begins to leak, everything will run out of it."
+
+"There is a leak in the Commonwealth too," said Charnyetski. "If the
+Swedes escape this time, they will be reinforced, succor will come to
+them from Prussia, our chance will be lost." Then he struck his side
+with his hand in sign of impatience. Just then was heard the tread of
+horses and the bass voice of Zagloba singing,--
+
+
+           "Kaska to the bakehouse went her way,
+            And Stah said to her, 'Take me in, let me in,
+                                          My love.
+            For the snow is falling, and the wind is blowing;
+            Where shall I, poor fellow, put my head
+                                          Till morning?'"
+
+
+"It is a good sign! They are returning joyously," cried Polyanovski.
+
+That moment the envoys, seeing Charnyetski, sprang from their saddles,
+gave their horses to an attendant, and went quickly to the entrance.
+Zagloba threw his cap suddenly into the air, and imitating the voice of
+the marshal so excellently that whoever was not looking on might be
+deceived, cried,--
+
+"Vivat Pan Charnyetski, our leader!"
+
+The castellan frowned, and asked quickly: "Is there a letter for me?"
+
+"There is not," answered Zagloba; "there is something better. The
+marshal with his army passes voluntarily under command of your
+worthiness."
+
+Charnyetski pierced him with a look, then turned to Pan Yan, as if
+wishing to say: "Speak you, for this one has been drinking!"
+
+Zagloba was in fact a little drunk; but Skshetuski confirmed his words,
+hence astonishment was reflected on the face of the castellan.
+
+"Come with me," said he to the two. "I beg you also," said he to
+Polyanovski and Pan Michael.
+
+All entered his room. They had not sat down yet when Charnyetski asked:
+"What did he say to my letter?"
+
+"He said nothing," answered Zagloba, "and why he did not will appear at
+the end of my story; but now _incipiam_ (I will begin)."
+
+Here he told all as it had happened,--how he had brought the marshal to
+such a favorable decision. Charnyetski looked at him with growing
+astonishment, Polyanovski seized his own head, Pan Michael's mustaches
+were quivering.
+
+"I have not known you hitherto, as God is dear to me!" cried
+Charnyetski, at last. "I cannot believe my own ears."
+
+"They have long since called me Ulysses," said Zagloba, modestly.
+
+"Where is my letter?"
+
+"Here it is."
+
+"I must forgive you for not delivering it. He is a finished rogue! A
+vice-chancellor might learn from him how to make treaties. As God
+lives, if I were king, I would send you to Tsargrad."
+
+"If he were there, a hundred thousand Turks would be here now!" cried
+Pan Michael.
+
+To which Zagloba said: "Not one, but two hundred thousand, as true as I
+live."
+
+"And did the marshal hesitate at nothing?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"He? He swallowed all that I put to his lips, just as a fat gander
+gulps pellets; his eyes were covered with mist. I thought that from
+delight he would burst, as a Swedish bomb bursts. With flattery that
+man might be taken to hell."
+
+"If it can only be ground out on the Swedes, if it can only be ground
+out, and I have hope that it will be," said Charnyetski, delighted.
+"You are a man adroit as a fox; but do not make too much sport of the
+marshal, for another would not have done what he has to-day. Much
+depends on him. We shall march to Sandomir itself over the estates of
+the Lyubomirskis, and the marshal can raise with one word the whole
+region, command peasants to injure crossings, burn bridges, hide
+provisions in the forests. You have rendered a service which I shall
+not forget till death; but I must thank the marshal, for as I believe
+he has not done this from mere vanity."
+
+Then he clapped his hands and cried: "A horse for me at once! Let us
+forge the iron while it is hot!" Then he turned to the colonels: "Come,
+all of you gentlemen, with me, so that the suite may be the most
+imposing."
+
+"And must I go too?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"You have built the bridge between me and the marshal, it is proper
+that you be the first to pass over. Besides, I think that they will see
+you gladly. Come, come, lord brother, or I shall say that you wished to
+leave a half-finished work."
+
+"Hard to refuse. I must draw my belt tighter, however, lest I shake
+into nothing. Not much strength is left me, unless I fortify it with
+something."
+
+"But with what?"
+
+"Much has been told me of the castellan's mead which I have not tasted
+as yet, and I should like to know if it is better than the marshal's."
+
+"We will drink a stirrup cup now, but after our return we shall not
+limit the cups in advance. You will find a couple of decanters of it in
+your own quarters."
+
+Then the castellan commanded to bring goblets; they drank enough for
+brightness and good humor, mounted and rode away.
+
+The marshal received Charnyetski with open arms, entertained him with
+food and drink, did not let him go till morning; but in the morning the
+two armies were joined, and marched farther under command of
+Charnyetski.
+
+Near Syenyava the Poles attacked the Swedes again with such effect that
+they cut the rearguard to pieces and brought disorder into the main
+army. Only at daybreak did the artillery disperse them. At Lejaysk,
+Charnyetski attacked with still greater vigor. Considerable detachments
+of the Swedes were mired in soft places, caused by rains and
+inundations, and those fell into the hands of the Poles. The roads
+became of the worst for the Swedes. Exhausted, hungry, and tortured by
+desire of sleep, the regiments barely marched. More and more soldiers
+stopped on the way. Some were found so terribly reduced that they no
+longer wished to eat or drink, they only begged for death. Others lay
+down and died on hillocks; some lost presence of mind, and looked with
+the greatest indifference on the approaching pursuers. Foreigners, who
+were counted frequently in the ranks of the Swedes, began to disappear
+from the camp and go over to Charnyetski. Only the unbroken spirit of
+Karl Gustav held the remnant of its dying strength in the whole army.
+
+For not only did an enemy follow the army; various "parties" under
+unknown leaders and bands of peasants crossed its road continually.
+Those bodies, unformed and not very numerous, could not, it is true,
+strike it with offensive warfare, but they wearied it mortally. And
+wishing to instil into the Swedes the conviction that Tartars had
+already come with assistance, all the Polish troops gave forth the
+Tartar shout; therefore "Allah! Allah!" was heard night and day without
+a moment's cessation. The Swedish soldiers could not draw breath, could
+not put aside their armor for an instant. More than once a few men
+alarmed the whole camp. Horses fell by tens, and were eaten
+immediately; for the transport of provisions had become impossible.
+From time to time the Polish horsemen found Swedish corpses terribly
+disfigured; here they recognized at once the hands of peasants. The
+greater part of the villages in the triangle between the San and the
+Vistula belonged to the marshal and his relatives; therefore all the
+peasants in those parts rose up as one man, for the marshal, unsparing
+of his own fortune, had announced that whoever took up arms would be
+freed from subjection. Scarcely had this news gone the round of the
+region when the peasants put their scythes on staffs and began to bring
+Swedish heads into camp: they brought them in every day till
+Lyubomirski was forced to prohibit that custom as unchristian. Then
+they brought in gloves and boots. The Swedes, driven to desperation,
+flayed those who fell into their hands; and the war became more and
+more dreadful. Some of the Polish troops adhered yet to the Swedes, but
+they adhered only through fear. On the road to Lejaysk many of them
+deserted; those who remained made such tumults in the camp daily that
+Karl Gustav gave orders to shoot a number of officers. This was the
+signal for a general withdrawal, which was effected sabre in hand. Few,
+if any, Poles remained; but Charnyetski, gaining new strength, attacked
+with still greater vigor.
+
+The marshal gave most effectual assistance. During this period, which
+by the way was short, the nobler sides of Lyubomirski's nature gained,
+perhaps, the upper hand over his pride and self-love; therefore he
+omitted no toil, he spared neither his health nor his person, he led
+squadrons frequently, gave the enemy no rest; and as he was a good
+soldier he rendered good services. These, added to his later ones,
+would have secured him a glorious memory in the nation, were it not for
+that shameless rebellion which toward the end of his career he raised
+in order to hinder the reform of the Commonwealth.
+
+But at this time he did everything to win glory, and he covered himself
+with it as with a robe. Pan Vitovski, the castellan of Sandomir, an old
+and experienced soldier, vied with him. Vitovski wished to equal
+Charnyetski himself; but he could not, for God had denied him
+greatness.
+
+All three crushed the Swedes more and more, and with such effect that
+the infantry and cavalry regiments, to whom it came to form the
+rearguard on the retreat, marched with so much fear that a panic arose
+among them from the slightest cause. Then Karl Gustav decided to march
+always with the rearguard, so as to give courage by his presence.
+
+But in the very beginning he almost paid for this position with
+his life. It happened that having with him a detachment of the
+life-guards,--the largest of all the regiments, for the soldiers in it
+were selected from the whole Scandinavian people,--the king stopped for
+refreshment at the village of Rudnik. When he had dined with the parish
+priest he decided to sleep a little, since he had not closed his eyes
+the night preceding. The life-guards surrounded the house, to watch
+over the safety of the king. Meanwhile the priest's horse-boy stole
+away from the village, and coming up to a mare in the field, sprang
+upon her colt and raced off to Charnyetski.
+
+Charnyetski was ten miles distant at this time; but his vanguard,
+composed of the regiment of Prince Dymitri Vishnyevetski, was marching
+under Shandarovski, the lieutenant, about two miles behind the Swedes.
+Shandarovski was just talking to Roh Kovalski, who had ridden up that
+moment with orders from Charnyetski, when suddenly both saw the lad
+flying toward them at all horse speed.
+
+"What devil is that racing up so," asked Shandarovski, "and besides on
+a colt?"
+
+"Some village lad," said Kovalski.
+
+Meanwhile the boy had ridden to the front of the rank, and only stopped
+when the colt, frightened at horses and men, stood on his hind legs and
+dug his hoofs into the earth. The youth sprang off, and holding the
+colt by the mane, bowed to the knights.
+
+"Well, what have you to say?" asked the lieutenant, approaching him.
+
+"The Swedes are with us at the priest's house; they say that the king
+himself is among them!" said the youth, with sparkling eyes.
+
+"Many of them?"
+
+"Not more than two hundred horses."
+
+Shandarovski's eyes now flashed in their turn; but he was afraid of an
+ambush, therefore he looked threateningly at the boy and asked,--
+
+"Who sent you?"
+
+"Who was to send me? I jumped myself on the colt, I came near falling,
+and lost my cap. It is well that the Swedish carrion did not see me!"
+
+Truth was beating out of the sunburned face of the youth; he had
+evidently a great animosity against the Swedes,--he was panting, his
+cheeks were burning, he stood before the officers holding the mane of
+the colt with one hand, his hair disordered, the shirt open on his
+bosom.
+
+"Where is the rest of the Swedish army?" asked the lieutenant.
+
+"At daybreak so many passed that we could not count them; those went
+farther, only cavalry remained. But there is one sleeping at the
+priest's, and they say that he is the king."
+
+"Boy," answered Shandarovski, "if you are lying, your head will fall;
+but if you speak the truth, ask what you please."
+
+"As true as I live! I want nothing unless the great mighty lord officer
+would command to give me a sabre."
+
+"Give him some blade," cried Shandarovski to his attendants, completely
+convinced now.
+
+The other officers fell to inquiring of the boy where the house was,
+where the village, what the Swedes were doing.
+
+"The dogs! they are watching. If you go straight they will see you; but
+I will take you behind the alder grove."
+
+Orders were given at once, and the squadron moved on, first at a trot
+and then at a gallop. The youth rode before the first rank bareback on
+his colt without a bridle. He urged the colt with his heels, and every
+little while looked with sparkling eyes on the naked sabre.
+
+When the village was in sight, he turned out of the willows and led by
+a somewhat muddy road to the alder grove, in which it was still
+muddier; therefore they slackened the speed of the horses.
+
+"Watch!" said the boy; "they are about ten rods on the right from the
+end of the alder grove."
+
+They advanced now very slowly, for the road was difficult and heavy;
+the cavalry horses sank frequently to their knees. At last the alder
+grove began to grow thinner, and they came to the edge of the open
+space.
+
+Not more than three hundred yards distant, they saw a broad square
+rising somewhat, and in it the priest's house surrounded by poplars,
+among which were to be seen the tops of straw beehives. On the square
+were two hundred horsemen in rimmed helmets and breastplates.
+
+The great horsemen sat on enormous lean horses, and were in
+readiness,--some with rapiers at their shoulders, others with muskets
+on their thighs; but they were looking in another direction toward the
+main road, from which alone they expected the enemy. A splendid blue
+standard with a golden lion was waving above their heads.
+
+Farther on, around the house stood guards by twos. One was turned
+toward the alder grove; but because the sun shone brightly and struck
+his eyes, and in the alders, which were already covered with thick
+leaves, it was almost dark, he could not see the Polish horsemen.
+
+In Shandarovski, a fiery horseman, the blood began to boil like water
+in a pot; but he restrained himself and waited till the ranks should be
+in order. Meanwhile Roh Kovalski put his heavy hand on the shoulder of
+the youth,--
+
+"Listen, horsefly!" said he; "have you seen the king?"
+
+"I saw him, great mighty lord!" whispered the lad.
+
+"How did he look? How can he be known?"
+
+"He is terribly black in the face, and wears red ribbons at his side."
+
+"Did you see his horse?"
+
+"The horse is black, with a white face."
+
+"Look out, and show him to me."
+
+"I will. But shall we go quickly?"
+
+"Shut your mouth!"
+
+Here they were silent; and Roh began to pray to the Most Holy Lady to
+permit him to meet Karl, and to direct his hand at the meeting.
+
+The silence continued still a moment, then the horse under Shandarovski
+himself snorted. At that the horseman on guard looked, quivered as if
+something had been thrown at his saddle, and fired his pistol.
+
+"Allah! Allah! Kill, slay! Uha-u, slay!" was heard in the alder grove;
+and the squadron, coming out of the shadow like lightning, rushed at
+the Swedes.
+
+They struck into the smoke before all could turn front to them, and a
+terrible hewing began; only sabres and rapiers were used, for no man
+had time to fire. In the twinkle of an eye the Poles pushed the Swedes
+to the fence, which fell with a rattle under the pressure of the
+horses' rumps, and the Poles began to slash them so madly that they
+were crowded and confused. Twice they tried to close, and twice torn
+asunder they formed two separate bodies which in a twinkle divided into
+smaller groups; at last they were scattered as peas thrown by a peasant
+through the air with a shovel.
+
+All at once were heard despairing voices: "The king, the king! Save the
+king!"
+
+But Karl Gustav, at the first moment of the encounter, with pistols in
+hand and a sword in his teeth, rushed out. The trooper who held the
+horse at the door gave him the beast that moment; the king sprang on,
+and turning the corner, rushed between the poplars and the beehives to
+escape by the rear from the circle of battle.
+
+Reaching the fence he spurred his horse, sprang over, and fell into the
+group of his men who were defending themselves against the right wing
+of the Poles, who had just surrounded the house and were fighting with
+the Swedes behind the garden.
+
+"To the road!" cried Karl Gustav. And overturning with the hilt of his
+sword the Polish horseman who was raising his sabre above him, with one
+spring he came out of the whirl of the fight; the Swedes broke the
+Polish rank and sprang after him with all their force, as a herd of
+deer hunted by dogs rush whither they are led by their leader.
+
+The Polish horsemen turned their horses after them, and the chase
+began. Both came out on the highroad from Rudnik to Boyanovka. They
+were seen from the front yard where the main battle was raging, and
+just then it was that the voices were heard crying,--
+
+"The king, the king! Save the king!"
+
+But the Swedes in the front yard were so pressed by Shandarovski that
+they could not think even of saving themselves; the king raced on then
+with a party of not more than twelve men, while after him were chasing
+nearly thirty, and at the head of them all Roh Kovalski.
+
+The lad who was to point out the king was involved somewhere in the
+general battle, but Roh himself recognized Karl Gustav by the knot of
+red ribbons. Then he thought that his opportunity had come; he bent in
+the saddle, pressed his horse with the spurs, and rushed on like a
+whirlwind.
+
+The pursued, straining the last strength from their horses, stretched
+along over the broad road. But the swifter and lighter Polish horses
+began soon to gain on them. Roh came up very quickly with the hindmost
+Swede; he rose in his stirrups for a better blow, and cut terribly;
+with one awful stroke he took off the arm and the shoulder, and rushed
+on like the wind, fastening his eyes again on the king.
+
+The next horseman was black before his eyes; he hurled him down. He
+split the head and the helmet of the third, and tore farther, having
+the king, and the king only, in his eye. Now the horses of the Swedes
+began to pant and fall; a crowd of Polish horsemen overtook them and
+cut down the riders in a twinkle.
+
+Roh had already passed horses and men, so as not to lose time; the
+distance between him and Karl Gustav began to decrease. There were only
+two men between him and the king.
+
+Now an arrow, sent from a bow by some one of the Poles, sang near the
+ear of Pan Roh, and sank in the loins of the rider rushing before him.
+The man trembled to the right and the left; at last he bent backward,
+bellowed with an unearthly voice, and fell from the saddle.
+
+Between Roh and the king there was now only one man. But that one,
+wishing evidently to save the king, instead of helping turned his
+horse. Kovalski came up, and a cannonball does not sweep a man from the
+saddle as he hurled him to the ground; then, giving a fearful shout, he
+rushed forward like a furious stag.
+
+The king might perhaps have met him, and would have perished
+inevitably; but others were flying on behind Roh, and arrows began to
+whistle; any moment one of them might wound his horse. The king,
+therefore, pressed his heels more closely, bent his head to the mane,
+and shot through the space in front of him like a sparrow pursued by a
+hawk.
+
+But Roh began not only to prick his own horse with the spurs, but to
+beat him with the side of the sabre; and so they sped on one after the
+other. Trees, stones, willows, flashed before their eyes; the wind
+whistled in their ears. The king's hat fell from his head; at last he
+threw down his purse, thinking that the pitiless rider might be tempted
+by it and leave the pursuit; but Kovalski did not look at the purse,
+and rolled his horse on with more and more power till the beast was
+groaning from effort.
+
+Roh had evidently forgotten himself altogether; for racing onward he
+began to shout in a voice in which besides threats there was also a
+prayer,--
+
+"Stop, for God's mercy!"
+
+Then the king's horse stumbled so violently that if the king had not
+held the bridle with all his power the beast would have fallen. Roh
+bellowed like an aurochs; the distance dividing him from Karl Gustav
+had decreased notably.
+
+After a while the steed stumbled a second time, and again before the
+king brought him to his feet Roh had approached a number of yards.
+
+Then he straightened himself in the saddle as if for a blow. He was
+terrible; his eyes were bursting out, his teeth were gleaming from
+under his reddish mustaches. One more stumble of the horse, another
+moment, and the fate of the Commonwealth, of all Sweden, of the entire
+war would have been decided. But the king's horse began to run again;
+and the king, turning, showed the barrels of two pistols, and twice did
+he fire.
+
+One of the bullets shattered the knee of Kovalski's horse; he reared,
+then fell on his forefeet, and dug the earth with his nose.
+
+The king might have rushed that moment on his pursuer and thrust him
+through with his rapier; but at the distance of two hundred yards other
+Polish horsemen were flying forward; so he bent down again in his
+saddle, and shot on like an arrow propelled from the bow of a Tartar.
+
+Kovalski freed himself from his horse. He looked for a while
+unconsciously at the fleeing man, then staggered like one drunk, sat on
+the road, and began to roar like a bear.
+
+But the king was each instant farther, farther, farther! He began to
+diminish, to melt, and then vanished in the dark belt of pine scrub.
+
+Meanwhile, with shouting and roaring, came on Kovalski's companions.
+There were fifteen of them whose horses held out. One brought the
+king's purse, another his hat, on which black ostrich feathers were
+fastened with diamonds. These two began to cry out,--
+
+"These are yours, comrade! they belong to you of right."
+
+Others asked: "Do you know whom you were chasing? That was Karl
+himself."
+
+"As God is true! In his life he has never fled before any man as before
+you. You have covered yourself with immense glory!"
+
+"And how many men did you put down before you came up with the king?"
+
+"You lacked only little of freeing the Commonwealth in one flash, with
+your sabre."
+
+"Take the purse!"
+
+"Take the hat!"
+
+"The horse was good, but you can buy ten such with these treasures."
+
+Roh gazed at his comrades with dazed eyes; at last he sprang up and
+shouted,--
+
+"I am Kovalski, and this is Pani Kovalski! Go to all the devils!"
+
+"His mind is disturbed!" cried they.
+
+"Give me a horse! I'll catch him yet," shouted Roh.
+
+But they took him by the arms, and though he struggled they brought him
+back to Rudnik, pacifying and comforting him along the road.
+
+"You gave him Peter!" cried they. "See what has come to this victor,
+this conqueror of so many towns and villages!"
+
+"Ha, ha! He has found out Polish cavaliers!"
+
+"He will grow tired of the Commonwealth. He has come to close
+quarters."
+
+"Vivat, Roh Kovalski!"
+
+"Vivat, vivat, the most manful cavalier, the pride of the whole army!"
+
+And they fell to drinking out of their canteens. They gave Roh one, and
+he emptied the bottle at a draught.
+
+During the pursuit of the king along the Boyanovka road the Swedes
+defended themselves in front of the priest's house with bravery worthy
+of their renowned regiment. Though attacked suddenly and scattered very
+quickly, they rallied as quickly around their blue standard, for the
+reason that they were surrounded by a dense crowd. Not one of them
+asked for quarter, but standing horse to horse, shoulder to shoulder,
+they thrust so fiercely with their rapiers that for a time victory
+seemed to incline to their side. It was necessary either to break them
+again, which became impossible since a line of Polish horsemen
+surrounded them completely, or to cut them to pieces. Shandarovski
+recognized the second plan as the better; therefore encircling the
+Swedes with a still closer ring, he sprang on them like a wounded
+falcon on a flock of long-billed cranes. A savage slaughter and press
+began. Sabres rattled against rapiers, rapiers were broken on the hilts
+of sabres. Sometimes a horse rose, like a dolphin above the sea waves,
+and in a moment fell in the whirl of men and horses. Shouts ceased;
+there were heard only the cry of horses, the sharp clash of steel,
+gasping from the panting breasts of the knights; uncommon fury had
+mastered the hearts of Poles and Swedes. They fought with fragments of
+sabres and rapiers; they closed with one another like hawks, caught one
+another by the hair, by mustaches, gnawed with their teeth; those who
+had fallen from their horses and were yet able to stand stabbed with
+their knives horses in the belly and men in the legs; in the smoke, in
+the steam from horses, in the terrible frenzy of battle, men were
+turned into giants and gave the blows of giants; arms became clubs,
+sabres lightning. Steel helmets were broken at a blow, like earthen
+pots; heads were cleft; arms holding sabres were swept away. They hewed
+without rest; they hewed without mercy, without pity. From under the
+whirl of men and horses blood began to flow along the yard in streams.
+
+The great blue standard was waving yet above the Swedish circle, but
+the circle diminished with each moment. As when harvesters attack grain
+from two sides, and the sickles begin to glitter, the standing grain
+disappears and the men see one another more nearly each moment, thus
+did the Polish ring become ever narrower, and those fighting on one
+side could see the bent sabres fighting on the opposite side.
+
+Pan Shandarovski was wild as a hurricane, and ate into the Swedes as a
+famished wolf buries his jaws in the flesh of a freshly killed horse;
+but one horseman surpassed him in fury, and that was the youth who had
+first let them know that the Swedes were in Rudnik, and now had sprung
+in with the whole squadron on the enemy. The priest's colt, three years
+old, which till that time had walked quietly over the land, shut in by
+the horses, could not break out of the throng; you would have said he
+had gone mad, like his master. With ears thrown back, with eyes
+bursting out of his bead, with erect mane, he pushed forward, bit, and
+kicked; but the lad struck with his sabre as with a flail; he struck at
+random, to the right, to the left, straight ahead; his yellow forelock
+was covered with blood, the points of rapiers had been thrust into his
+shoulders and legs, his face was cut; but these wounds only roused him.
+He fought with madness, like a man who has despaired of life and wishes
+only to avenge his own death.
+
+But now the Swedish body had decreased like a pile of snow on which men
+are throwing hot water from every side. At last around the king's
+standard less than twenty men remained. The Polish swarm had covered
+them completely, and they were dying gloomily, with set teeth; no hand
+was stretched forth, no man asked for mercy. Now in the crowd were
+heard voices: "Seize the standard! The standard!"
+
+When he heard this, the lad pricked his colt and rushed on like a
+flame. When every Swede had two or three Polish horsemen against him,
+the lad slashed the standard-bearer in the mouth; he opened his arms,
+and fell on the horse's mane. The blue standard fell with him.
+
+The nearest Swede, shouting terribly, grasped after the staff at once;
+but the boy caught the standard itself, and pulling, tore it off in a
+twinkle, wound it in a bundle, and holding it with both hands to his
+breast, began to shout to the sky,--
+
+"I have it, I won't give it! I have it, I won't give it!"
+
+The last remaining Swedes rushed at him with rage; one thrust the flag
+through, and cut his shoulder.
+
+Then a number of men stretched their bloody hands to the lad, and
+cried: "Give the standard, give the standard!"
+
+Shandarovski sprang to his aid, and commanded: "Let him alone! He took
+it before my eyes; let him give it to Charnyetski himself."
+
+"Charnyetski is coming!" cried a number of voices.
+
+In fact, from a distance trumpets were heard; and on the road from the
+side of the field appeared a whole squadron, galloping to the priest's
+house. It was the Lauda squadron; and at the head of it rode
+Charnyetski himself. When the men had ridden up, seeing that all was
+over, they halted; and Shandarovski's soldiers began to hurry toward
+them.
+
+Shandarovski himself hastened with a report to the castellan; but he
+was so exhausted that at first he could not catch breath, for he
+trembled as in a fever, and the voice broke in his throat every moment.
+
+"The king himself was here: I don't know--whether he has escaped!"
+
+"He has, he has!" answered those who had seen the pursuit.
+
+"The standard is taken! There are many killed!"
+
+Charnyetski, without saying a word, hurried to the scene of the
+struggle, where a cruel and woful sight presented itself. More than two
+hundred bodies of Swedes and Poles were lying like a pavement, one at
+the side of the other, and often one above the other. Sometimes one
+held another by the hair; some had died biting or tearing one another
+with their nails; and some again were closed as in a brotherly embrace,
+or they lay one with his head on the breast of his enemy. Many faces
+were so trampled that there remained nothing human in them; those not
+crushed by hoofs had their eyes open full of terror, the fierceness of
+battle, and rage. Blood spattered on the softened earth under the feet
+of Charnyetski's horse, which were soon red above the fetlocks; the
+odor of blood and the sweat of horses irritated the nostrils and
+stopped breath in the breast.
+
+The castellan looked on those corpses of men as the agriculturist looks
+on bound sheaves of wheat which are to fill out his stacks.
+Satisfaction was reflected on his face. He rode around the priest's
+house in silence, looked at the bodies lying on the other side, beyond
+the garden; then returned slowly to the chief scene.
+
+"I see genuine work here, and I am satisfied with you, gentlemen."
+
+They hurled up their caps with bloody hands.
+
+"Vivat Charnyetski!"
+
+"God grant another speedy meeting. Vivat! vivat!"
+
+And the castellan said: "You will go to the rear for rest. But who took
+the standard?"
+
+"Give the lad this way!" cried Shandarovski; "where is he?"
+
+The soldiers sprang for him, and found him sitting at the wall of the
+stable near the colt, which had fallen from wounds and was just
+breathing out his last breath. At the first glance it did not seem that
+the lad would last long, but he held the standard with both hands to
+his breast.
+
+They bore him away at once, and brought him before Charnyetski. The
+youth stood there barefoot, with disordered hair, with naked breast,
+his shirt and his jacket in shreds, smeared with Swedish blood and his
+own, tottering, bewildered, but with unquenched fire in his eyes.
+
+Charnyetski was astounded at sight of him. "How is this?" asked he.
+"Did he take the royal standard?"
+
+"With his own hand and his own blood," answered Shandarovski. "He was
+the first also to let us know of the Swedes; and afterward, in the
+thickest of the whirl, he did so much that he surpassed me and us all."
+
+"It is truth, genuine truth, as if some one had written it!" cried
+others.
+
+"What is thy name?" asked Charnyetski of the lad.
+
+"Mihalko."
+
+"Whose art thou?"
+
+"The priest's."
+
+"Thou hast been the priest's, but thou wilt be thy own!" said
+Charnyetski.
+
+Mihalko heard not the last words, for from his wounds and the loss of
+blood he tottered and fell, striking the castellan's stirrup with his
+head.
+
+"Take him and give him every care. I am the guaranty that at the first
+Diet he will be the equal of you all in rank, as to-day he is the equal
+in spirit."
+
+"He deserves it! he deserves it!" cried the nobles.
+
+Then they took Mihalko on a stretcher, and bore him to the priest's
+house.
+
+Charnyetski listened to the further report, which not Shandarovski
+gave, but those who had seen the pursuit of the king by Roh Kovalski.
+He was wonderfully delighted with that narrative, so that he caught his
+head, and struck his thighs with his hands; for he understood that
+after such an adventure the spirit must fall considerably in Karl
+Gustav.
+
+Zagloba was not less delighted, and putting his hands on his hips, said
+proudly to the knights,--
+
+"Ha! he is a robber, isn't he? If he had reached Karl, the devil
+himself could not have saved the king! He is my blood, as God is dear
+to me, my blood!"
+
+In course of time Zagloba believed that he was Roh Kovalski's uncle.
+
+Charnyetski gave orders to find the young knight; but they could not
+find him, for Roh, from shame and mortification, had crept into a barn,
+and burying himself in the straw, had fallen asleep so soundly that he
+came up with the squadron only two days later. But he still suffered
+greatly, and dared not show himself before the eyes of his uncle. His
+uncle, however, sought him out, and began to comfort him,--
+
+"Be not troubled, Roh!" said he. "As it is, you have covered yourself
+with great glory; I have myself heard the castellan praise you: 'To the
+eye a fool,' said he, 'so that he looks as though he could not count
+three, and I see that he is a fiery cavalier who has raised the
+reputation of the whole army.'"
+
+"The Lord Jesus has not blessed me," said Roh; "for I got drunk the day
+before, and forgot my prayers."
+
+"Don't try to penetrate the judgments of God, lest you add blasphemy to
+other deeds. Whatever you can take on your shoulders take, but take
+nothing on your mind; if you do, you will fail."
+
+"Rut I was so near that the sweat from his horse was flying to me. I
+should have cut him to the saddle! Uncle thinks that I have no reason
+whatever!"
+
+"Every creature," said Zagloba, "has its reason. You are a sprightly
+lad, Roh, and you will give me comfort yet more than once. God grant
+your sons to have the same reason in their fists that you have!"
+
+"I do not want that! I am Kovalski, and this is Pani Kovalski."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXIII.
+
+
+After the affair at Rudnik the king advanced farther toward the point
+of the wedge between the San and the Vistula, and did not cease as
+before to march with the rearguard; for he was not only a famous
+leader, but a knight of unrivalled daring. Charnyetski, Vitovski, and
+Lyubomirski followed, and urged him on as a wild beast is urged to a
+trap. Detached parties made an uproar night and day around the Swedes.
+The retreating troops had less and less provisions; they were more and
+more wearied and drooping in courage, looking forward to certain
+destruction.
+
+At last the Swedes enclosed themselves in the very corner where the two
+rivers meet, and rested. On one side the Vistula defended them, on the
+other the San, both overflowed, as usual in springtime; the third side
+of the triangle the king fortified with strong intrenchments, in which
+cannons were mounted.
+
+That was a position not to be taken, but it was possible to die there
+from hunger. But even in that regard the Swedes gained better courage,
+for they hoped that the commandants would send them provisions by water
+from Cracow and other river fortresses. For instance, right there at
+hand was Sandomir, in which Colonel Schinkler had collected
+considerable supplies. He sent these in at once; therefore the Swedes
+ate, drank, slept; and when they woke they sang Lutheran psalms,
+praising God that he had saved them from such dire distress.
+
+But Charnyetski was preparing new blows for them.
+
+Sandomir in Swedish hands could always come to the aid of the main
+army. Charnyetski planned, therefore, to take the town with the castle
+at a blow, and cut off the Swedes.
+
+"We will prepare a cruel spectacle for them," said he, at a council of
+war. "They will look on from the opposite bank when we strike the town,
+and they will not be able to give aid across the Vistula; and when we
+have Sandomir we will not let provisions come from Wirtz in Cracow."
+
+Lyubomirski, Vitovski, and others tried to dissuade Charnyetski from
+that undertaking. "It would be well," said they, "to take such a
+considerable town, and we might injure the Swedes greatly; but how are
+we to take it? We have no infantry, siege guns we have not; it would be
+hard for cavalry to attack walls."
+
+"But do our peasants," asked Charnyetski, "fight badly as infantry? If
+I had two thousand such as Mihalko, I would take not only Sandomir, but
+Warsaw."
+
+And without listening to further counsel he crossed the Vistula. Barely
+had his summons gone through the neighborhood when a couple of thousand
+men hurried to him, one with a scythe, another with a musket, the third
+with carabine; and they marched against Sandomir.
+
+They fell upon the place rather suddenly, and in the streets a fierce
+conflict set in. The Swedes defended themselves furiously from the
+windows and the roofs, but they could not withstand the onrush. They
+were crushed like worms in the houses, and pushed entirely out of the
+town. Schinkler took refuge, with the remnant of his forces, in the
+castle; but the Poles followed him with the same impetuosity. A storm
+against the gates and the walls began, Schinkler saw that he could not
+hold out, even in the castle; so he collected what he could of men,
+articles and supplies of provisions, and putting them on boats, crossed
+to the king, who looked from the other bank on the defeat of his men
+without being able to succor them.
+
+The castle fell into the hands of the Poles; but the cunning Swede when
+departing put under the walls in the cellars kegs of powder with
+lighted matches.
+
+When he appeared before the king he told him of this at once, so as to
+rejoice his heart.
+
+"The castle," said he, "will fly into the air with all the men.
+Charnyetski may perish."
+
+"If that is true, I want myself to see how the pious Poles will fly to
+heaven," said the king; and he remained on the spot with all the
+generals.
+
+In spite of the commands of Charnyetski, who foresaw deceit, the
+volunteers and the peasants ran around through the whole castle to seek
+hidden Swedes and treasure. The trumpets sounded an alarm for every man
+to take refuge in the town; but the searchers in the castle did not
+hear the trumpets, or would not heed them.
+
+All at once the ground trembled under their feet, an awful thunder and
+a roar tore the air, a gigantic pillar of fire rose to the sky, hurling
+upward earth, walls, roofs, the whole castle, and more than five
+hundred bodies of those who had not been able to withdraw.
+
+Karl Gustav held his sides from delight, and his favor-seeking
+courtiers began at once to repeat his words: "The Poles are going to
+heaven, to heaven!"
+
+But that joy was premature; for none the less did Sandomir remain in
+Polish hands, and could no longer furnish food for the main army
+enclosed between the rivers.
+
+Charnyetski disposed his camp opposite the Swedes, on the other side
+of the Vistula, and guarded the passage.
+
+Sapyeha, grand hetman of Lithuania and voevoda of Vilna, came from the
+other side and took his position on the San.
+
+The Swedes were invested completely; they were caught as it were in a
+vise.
+
+"The trap is closed!" said the soldiers to one another in the Polish
+camps.
+
+For every man, even the least acquainted with military art, understood
+that inevitable destruction was hanging over the invaders, unless
+reinforcements should come in time and rescue them from trouble.
+
+The Swedes too understood this. Every morning officers and soldiers,
+coming to the shore of the Vistula, looked with despair in their eyes
+and their hearts at the legions of Charnyetski's terrible cavalry
+standing black on the other side.
+
+Then they went to the San; there again the troops of Sapyeha were
+watching day and night, ready to receive them with sabre and musket.
+
+To cross either the San or the Vistula while both armies stood near was
+not to be thought of. The Swedes might return to Yaroslav by the same
+road over which they come, but they knew that in that case not one of
+them would ever see Sweden.
+
+For the Swedes grievous days and still more grievous nights now began,
+for these days and nights were uproarious and quarrelsome. Again
+provisions were at an end.
+
+Meanwhile Charnyetski, leaving command of the army to Lyubomirski and
+taking the Lauda squadron as guard crossed the Vistula above the mouth
+of the San, to visit Sapyeha and take counsel with him touching the
+future of the war.
+
+This time the mediation of Zagloba was not needed to make the two
+leaders agree; for both loved the country more than each one himself,
+both were ready to sacrifice to it private interests, self-love, and
+ambition.
+
+The Lithuanian hetman did not envy Charnyetski, nor did Charnyetski
+envy the hetman, but each did homage to the other; so the meeting
+between them was of such character that tears stood in the eyes of the
+oldest soldiers.
+
+"The Commonwealth is growing, the dear country is rejoicing, when such
+sons of heroes take one another by the shoulders," said Zagloba to Pan
+Michael and Pan Yan. "Charnyetski is a terrible soldier and a true
+soul, but put Sapyeha to a wound and it will heal. Would there were
+more such men! The skin would fly off the Swedes, could they see this
+love of the greatest patriots. How did they conquer us, if not through
+the rancor and envy of magnates? Have they overcome us with force? This
+is how I understand! The soul jumps in a man's body at sight of such a
+meeting. I will guarantee, too, that it will not be dry; for Sapyeha
+loves a feast wonderfully, and with such a friend he will willingly let
+himself out."
+
+"God is merciful! the evil will pass," said Pan Yan.
+
+"Be careful that you do not blaspheme," said Zagloba; "every evil must
+pass, for should it last forever it would prove that the Devil governs
+the world, and not the Lord Jesus, who has mercy inexhaustible."
+
+Their further conversation was interrupted by the sight of Babinich,
+whose lofty form they saw from a distance over the wave of other heads.
+
+Pan Michael and Zagloba began to beckon to him, but he was so much
+occupied in looking at Charnyetski that he did not notice them at
+first.
+
+"See," said Zagloba, "how thin the man has grown!"
+
+"It must be that he has not done much against Boguslav," said
+Volodyovski; "otherwise he would be more joyful."
+
+"It is sure that he has not, for Boguslav is before Marienburg with
+Steinbock, acting against the fortress."
+
+"There is hope in God that he will do nothing."
+
+"Even if he should take Marienburg," said Zagloba, "we will capture
+Karl Gustav right away; we shall see if they will not give the fortress
+for the king."
+
+"See! Babinich is coming to us!" interrupted Pan Yan.
+
+He had indeed seen them, and was pushing the crowd to both sides; he
+motioned with his cap, smiling at them from a distance. They greeted
+one another as good friends and acquaintances.
+
+"What is to be heard? What have you done with the prince?" asked
+Zagloba.
+
+"Evil, evil! But there is no time to tell of it. We shall sit down to
+table at once. You will remain here for the night; come to me after the
+feast to pass the night among my Tartars. I have a comfortable cabin;
+we will talk at the cups till morning."
+
+"The moment a man says a wise thing it is not I who will oppose," said
+Zagloba. "But tell us why you have grown so thin?"
+
+"That hell-dweller overthrew me and my horse like an earthen pot,
+so that from that time I am spitting fresh blood and cannot recover.
+There is hope in the mercy of our Lord Christ that I shall let the
+blood out of him yet. But let us go now, for Sapyeha and Charnyetski
+are beginning to make declarations and to be ceremonious about
+precedence,--a sign that the tables are ready. We wait for you here
+with great pleasure, for you have shed Swedish pig-blood in plenty."
+
+"Let others speak of what I have done," said Zagloba; "it does not
+become me."
+
+Meanwhile whole throngs moved on, and all went to the square between
+the tents on which were placed tables. Sapyeha in honor of Charnyetski
+entertained like a king. The table at which Charnyetski was seated was
+covert with Swedish flags. Mead and wine flowed from vats, so that
+toward the end both leaders became somewhat joyous. There was no lack
+of gladsomeness, of jests, of toasts, of noise; though the weather was
+marvellous, and the sun warm beyond wonder. Finally the cool of the
+evening separated the feasters.
+
+Then Kmita took his guests to the Tartars. They sat down in his tent on
+trunks packed closely with every kind of booty, and began to speak of
+Kmita's expedition.
+
+"Boguslav is now before Marienburg," said Pan Andrei, "though some say
+that he is at the elector's, with whom he is to march to the relief of
+the king."
+
+"So much the better; then we shall meet! You young fellows do not know
+how to manage him; let us see what the old man will do. He has met with
+various persons, but not yet with Zagloba. I say that we shall meet,
+though Prince Yanush in his will advised him to keep far from Zagloba."
+
+"The elector is a cunning man," said Pan Yan; "and if he sees that it
+is going ill with Karl, he will drop all his promises and his oath."
+
+"But I tell you that he will not," said Zagloba. "No one is so venomous
+against us as the Prussian. When your servant who had to work under
+your feet and brush your clothes becomes your master by change of
+fortune, he will be sterner to you, the kinder you were to him."
+
+"But why is that?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"His previous condition of service will remain in his mind, and he will
+avenge himself on you for it, though you have been to him kindness
+itself."
+
+"What of that?" asked Pan Michael. "It often happens that a dog bites
+his master in the hand. Better let Babinich tell about his expedition."
+
+"We are listening," said Pan Yan.
+
+Kmita, after he had been silent awhile, drew breath and began to tell
+of the last campaign of Sapyeha against Boguslav, and the defeat of the
+latter at Yanov; finally how Prince Boguslav had broken the Tartars,
+overturned him with his horse, and escaped alive.
+
+"But," interrupted Volodyovski, "you said that you would follow him
+with your Tartars, even to the Baltic."
+
+"And you told me also in your time," replied Kmita, "how Pan Yan here
+present, when Bogun carried off his beloved maiden, forgot her and
+revenge because the country was in need. A man becomes like those with
+whom he keeps company; I have joined you, gentlemen, and I wish to
+follow your example."
+
+"May the Mother of God reward you, as she has Pan Yan!" said Zagloba.
+"Still I would rather your maiden were in the wilderness than in
+Boguslav's hands."
+
+"That is nothing!" exclaimed Pan Michael; "you will find her!"
+
+"I have to find not only her person, but her regard and love."
+
+"One will come after the other," said Pan Michael, "even if you had to
+take her person by force, as at that time--you remember?"
+
+"I shall not do such a deed again."
+
+Here Pan Andrei sighed deeply, and after a while he said, "Not only
+have I not found her, but Boguslav has taken another from me."
+
+"A pure Turk! as God is dear to me!" cried Zagloba.
+
+And Pan Yan inquired: "What other?"
+
+"Oh, it is a long story, a long story," said Kmita. "There was a maiden
+in Zamost, wonderfully fair, who pleased Pan Zamoyski. He, fearing
+Princess Vishnyevetski, his sister, did not dare to be over-bold before
+her; he planned, therefore, to send the maiden away with me, as if to
+Sapyeha, to find an inheritance in Lithuania, but in reality to take
+her from me about two miles from Zamost, and put her in some wilderness
+where no one could stand in his way. But I sounded his intention. You
+want, thought I to myself, to make a pander of me; wait! I flogged his
+men, and the lady in all maidenly honor I brought to Sapyeha. Well, I
+say to you that the girl is as beautiful as a goldfinch, but honest. I
+am now another man, and my comrades, the Lord light their souls! are
+long ago dust in the earth."
+
+"What sort of maiden was she?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"From a respectable house, a lady-in-waiting on Princess Griselda. She
+was once engaged to a Lithuanian, Podbipienta, whom you, gentlemen,
+knew."
+
+"Anusia Borzobogati!" shouted Volodyovski, springing from his place.
+
+Zagloba jumped up too from a pile of felt "Pan Michael, restrain
+yourself!"
+
+But Volodyovski sprang like a cat toward Kmita. "Is it you, traitor,
+who let Boguslav carry her off?"
+
+"Be not unjust to me," said Kmita. "I took her safely to the hetman,
+having as much care for her as for my own sister. Boguslav seized her,
+not from me, but from another officer with whom Pan Sapyeha sent her to
+his own family; his name was Glovbich or something, I do not remember
+well."
+
+"Where is he now?"
+
+"He is no longer living, he was slain; so at least Sapyeha's officers
+said. I was attacking Boguslav separately, with the Tartars; therefore
+I know nothing accurately save what I have told you. But noticing your
+changed face, I see that a similar thing has met us; the same man has
+wronged us, and since that is the case let us join against him to
+avenge the wrong and take vengeance in company. He is a great lord and
+a great knight, and still I think it will be narrow for him in the
+whole Commonwealth, if he has two such enemies."
+
+"Here is my hand!" said Volodyovski. "Henceforth we are friends for
+life and death. Whoever meets him first will pay him for both. God
+grant me to meet him first, for that I will let his blood out is as
+sure as that there is Amen in 'Our Father.'"
+
+Here Pan Michael began to move his mustaches terribly and to feel of
+his sabre. Zagloba was frightened, for he knew that with Pan Michael
+there was no joking.
+
+"I should not care to be Prince Boguslav now," said he, "even if some
+one should add Livonia to my title. It is enough to have such a wildcat
+as Kmita against one, but what will he do with Pan Michael? And that is
+not all; I will conclude an alliance with you. My head, your sabres! I
+do not know as there is a potentate in Christendom who could stand
+against such an alliance. Besides, the Lord God will sooner or later
+take away his luck, for it cannot be that for a traitor and a heretic
+there is no punishment; as it is, Kmita has given it to him terribly."
+
+"I do not deny that more than one confusion has met him from me," said
+Pan Andrei. And giving orders to fill the goblets, he told how he had
+freed Soroka from captivity. But he did not tell how he had cast
+himself first at the feet of Radzivill, for at the very thought of that
+his blood boiled.
+
+Pan Michael was rejoiced while hearing the narrative, and said at the
+end,--
+
+"May God aid you, Yendrek! With such a daring man one could go to hell.
+The only trouble is that we shall not always campaign together, for
+service is service. They may send me to one end of the Commonwealth and
+you to the other. It is not known which will meet him first."
+
+Kmita was silent a moment.
+
+"In justice I should reach him--if only I do not come out again with
+confusion, for I am ashamed to acknowledge that I cannot meet that
+hell-dweller hand to hand."
+
+"Then I will teach you all my secrets," said Pan Michael.
+
+"Or I!" said Zagloba.
+
+"Pardon me, your grace, I prefer to learn from Michael," said Kmita.
+
+"Though he is such a knight, still I and Pani Kovalski are not afraid
+of him, if only I had a good sleep," put in Roh.
+
+"Be quiet, Roh!" answered Zagloba; "may God not punish you through his
+hand for boasting."
+
+"Oh, tfu! nothing will happen to me from him."
+
+Poor Kovalski was an unlucky prophet, but it was steaming terribly from
+his forelock, and he was ready to challenge the whole world to single
+combat. Others too drank heavily to one another, and to the destruction
+of Boguslav and the Swedes.
+
+"I have heard," said Kmita, "that as soon as we rub out the Swedes here
+and take the king, we shall march straight to Warsaw. Then surely there
+will be an end of the war. After that will come the elector's turn."
+
+"Oh, that's it! that's it!" said Zagloba.
+
+"I heard Sapyeha say that once, and he, as a great man, calculates
+better than others; he said: 'There will be a truce with the Swedes;
+with the Northerners there is one already, but with the elector we
+should not make any conditions. Pan Charnyetski,' he says, 'will go
+with Lyubomirski to Brandenburg, and I with the treasurer of Lithuania
+to Electoral Prussia; and if after that we do not join Prussia to the
+Commonwealth, it is because in our chancellery we have no such head as
+Pan Zagloba, who in autograph letters threatened the elector.'"
+
+"Did Sapyeha say that?" asked Zagloba, flushing from pleasure.
+
+"All heard him. And I was terribly glad, for that same rod will flog
+Boguslav; and if not earlier, we will surely reach him at that time."
+
+"If we can finish with these Swedes first," said Zagloba. "Devil take
+them! Let them give up Livland and a million, I will let them off
+alive."'
+
+"The Cossack caught the Tartar, and the Tartar is holding him by the
+head!" said Pan Yan, laughing. "Karl is still in Poland; Cracow,
+Warsaw, Poznan, and all the most noted towns are in his hands, and
+father wants him to ransom himself. Hei, we shall have to work much at
+him yet before we can think of the elector."
+
+"And there is Steinbock's army, and the garrisons, and Wirtz," put in
+Pan Stanislav.
+
+"But why do we sit here with folded hands?" asked Roh Kovalski, on a
+sudden, with staring eyes; "cannot we beat the Swedes?"
+
+"You are foolish, Roh," said Zagloba.
+
+"Uncle always says one thing; but as I am alive, I saw a boat at the
+shore. We might go and carry off even the sentry. It is so dark that
+you might strike a man on the snout and he wouldn't know who did it;
+before they could see we should return and exhibit the courage of
+cavaliers to both commanders. If you do not wish to go, I will go
+myself."
+
+"The dead calf moved his tail, wonder of wonders!" said Zagloba,
+angrily.
+
+But Kmita's nostrils began to quiver at once. "Not a bad idea! not a
+bad idea!" said he.
+
+"Good for camp-followers, but not for him who regards dignity. Have
+respect for yourselves! You are colonels, but you wish to amuse
+yourselves with wandering thieves!"
+
+"True, it is not very becoming," added Volodyovski. "We would better go
+to sleep."
+
+All agreed with that idea; therefore they kneeled down to their prayers
+and repeated them aloud; after that they stretched themselves on the
+felt cloth, and were soon sleeping the sleep of the just.
+
+But an hour later all sprang to their feet, for beyond the river the
+roaring of guns was heard; while shouts and tumult rose in Sapyeha's
+whole camp.
+
+"Jesus! Mary!" exclaimed Zagloba. "The Swedes are coming!"
+
+"What are you talking about?" asked Volodyovski, seizing his sabre.
+
+"Roh, come here!" cried Zagloba, for in cases of surprise he was glad
+to have his sister's son near him.
+
+But Roh was not in the tent.
+
+They ran out on the square. Crowds were already before the tents, and
+all were making their way toward the river, for on the other side was
+to be seen flashing of fire, and an increasing roar was heard.
+
+"What has happened, what has happened?" was asked of the numerous
+guards disposed along the bank.
+
+But the guards had seen nothing. One of the soldiers said that he had
+heard as it were the plash of a wave, but as fog was hanging over the
+water he could see nothing; he did not wish therefore to raise the camp
+for a mere sound.
+
+When Zagloba heard this he caught himself by the head in desperation,--
+
+"Roh has gone to the Swedes! He said that he wished to carry off a
+sentry."
+
+"For God's sake, that may be!" cried Kmita.
+
+"They will shoot the lad, as God is in heaven!" continued Zagloba, in
+despair. "Worthy gentlemen, is there no help? Lord God, that boy was of
+the purest gold; there is not another such in the two armies! What shot
+that idea into his stupid head? Oh, Mother of God, save him in
+trouble!"
+
+"Maybe he will return; the fog is dense. They will not see him."
+
+"I will wait for him here even till morning. Mother of God, Mother of
+God!"
+
+Meanwhile shots on the opposite bank lessened, lights went out
+gradually, and after an hour dull silence set in. Zagloba walked along
+the bank of the river like a hen with ducklings, and tore out the
+remnant of hair in his forelock; but he waited in vain, he despaired in
+vain. The morning whitened the river, the sun rose, but Roh came not.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIV.
+
+
+Zagloba in unbroken despair betook himself to Charnyetski, with a
+request that he would send to the Swedes to see what had happened to
+Kovalski. Is he alive yet, is he groaning in captivity, or has he paid
+with his life for his daring?
+
+Charnyetski agreed to this willingly, for he loved Zagloba. Then
+comforting him in his suffering, he said,--
+
+"I think your sister's son must be alive, otherwise the water would
+have brought him ashore."
+
+"God grant that he is!" answered Zagloba; "still it would be hard for
+the water to raise him, for not only had he a heavy hand, but his wit
+was like lead, as is shown by his action."
+
+"You speak justly," answered Charnyetski. "If he is alive I ought to
+give orders to drag him with a horse over the square, for disregard of
+discipline. He might alarm the Swedish army, but he has alarmed both
+armies; besides, he was not free to touch the Swedes without command
+and my order. Is this a general militia or what the devil, that every
+man has a right to act on his own account?"
+
+"He has offended, I agree; I will punish him myself, if only the Lord
+will bring him back."
+
+"But I forgive him in remembrance of the Rudnik affair. I have many
+prisoners to exchange, and more distinguished officers than Kovalski.
+Do you go to the Swedes and negotiate about exchange; I will give two
+or three for him if need be, for I do not wish to make your heart
+bleed. Come to me for a letter to the king, and go quickly."
+
+Zagloba sprang with rejoicing to Kmita's tent, and told his comrades
+what had happened. Pan Andrei and Volodyovski exclaimed at once that
+they too would go with him, for both were curious to see the Swedes;
+besides Kmita might be very useful, since he spoke German almost as
+fluently as Polish.
+
+Preparations did not delay them long. Charnyetski, without waiting for
+the return of Zagloba, sent the letter by a messenger; then they
+provided a piece of white cloth fixed to a pole, took a trumpeter, sat
+in a boat, and moved on.
+
+At first they went in silence, nothing save the plash of oars was to be
+heard; at last Zagloba was somewhat alarmed and said,--
+
+"Lot the trumpeter announce us immediately, for those scoundrels are
+ready to fire in spite of the white flag."
+
+"What do you say?" answered Volodyovski; "even barbarians respect
+envoys, and this is a civilized people."
+
+"Let the trumpeter sound, I say. The first soldier who happens along
+will fire, make a hole in the boat, and we shall get into the water;
+the water is cold, and I have do wish to get wet through their
+courtesy."
+
+"There, a sentry is visible!" said Kmita.
+
+The trumpeter sounded. The boat shot forward quickly; on the other
+shore a hurried movement began, and soon a mounted officer rode up,
+wearing a yellow leather cap. When he had approached the edge of the
+water he shaded his eyes with his hand and began to look against the
+light. A few yards from the shore Kmita removed his cap in greeting;
+the officer bowed to him with equal politeness.
+
+"A letter from Pan Charnyetski to the Most Serene King of Sweden!"
+cried Pan Andrei, showing the letter.
+
+The guard standing on the shore presented arms. Pan Zagloba was
+completely reassured; presently he fixed his countenance in dignity
+befitting his position as an envoy, and said in Latin,--
+
+"The past night a certain cavalier was seized on this shore; I have
+come to ask for him."
+
+"I cannot speak Latin," answered the officer.
+
+"Ignoramus!" muttered Zagloba.
+
+The officer turned then to Pan Andrei,--
+
+"The king is in the farther end of the camp. Be pleased, gentlemen, to
+stay here; I will go and announce you." And he turned his horse.
+
+The envoys looked around. The camp was very spacious, for it embraced
+the whole triangle formed by the San and the Vistula. At the summit of
+the triangle lay Panyev, at the base Tarnobjeg on one side, and
+Rozvadov on the other. Apparently it was impossible to take in the
+whole extent at a glance; still, as far as the eye could reach, were to
+be seen trenches, embankments, earthworks, and fascines at which were
+cannons and men. In the very centre of the place, in Gojytsi, were the
+quarters of the king; there also the main forces of the army.
+
+"If hunger does not drive them out of this place, we can do nothing
+with them," said Kmita. "The whole region is fortified. There is
+pasture for horses."
+
+"But there are not fish for so many mouths," said Zagloba. "Lutherans
+do not like fasting food. Not long since they had all Poland, now they
+have this wedge; let them sit here in safety, or go back to Yaroslav."
+
+"Very skilful men made these trenches," added Volodyovski, looking with
+the eye of a specialist on the work. "We have more swordsmen, but fewer
+learned officers; and in military art we are behind others."
+
+"Why is that?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"Why? It does not beseem me as a soldier who has served all his life in
+the cavalry, to say this, but everywhere infantry and cannon are the
+main thing; hence those campaigns and military man[oe]uvres, marches,
+and countermarches. A man in a foreign army must devour a multitude of
+books and turn over a multitude of Roman authors before he becomes a
+distinguished officer; but there is nothing of that with us. Cavalry
+rushes into the smoke in a body, and shaves with its sabres; and if it
+does not shave off in a minute, then they shave it off."
+
+"You speak soundly, Pan Michael; but what nation has won so many famous
+victories?"
+
+"Yes, because others in old times warred in the same way, and not
+having the same impetus they were bound to lose; but now they have
+become wiser, and see what they are doing."
+
+"Wait for the end. Place for me now the wisest Swedish or German
+engineer, and against him I will put Roh, who has never turned over
+books, and let us see."
+
+"If you could put him," interrupted Kmita.
+
+"True, true! I am terribly sorry for him. Pan Andrei, jabber a little
+in that dog's language of those breeches fellows, and ask what has
+happened to Roh."
+
+"You do not know regular soldiers. Here no man will open his lips to
+you without an order; they are stingy of speech."
+
+"I know that they are surly scoundrels. While if to our nobles, and
+especially to the general militia, an envoy comes, immediately talk,
+talk, they will drink gorailka with him, and will enter into political
+discussion with him; and see how these fellows stand there like posts
+and bulge out their eyes at us! I wish they would smother to the last
+man!"
+
+In fact, more and more foot-soldiers gathered around the envoys,
+looking at them curiously. The envoys were dressed so carefully in
+elegant and even rich garments, that they made an imposing appearance.
+Zagloba arrested most attention, for he bore himself with almost
+senatorial dignity; Volodyovski was less considered, by reason of his
+stature.
+
+Meanwhile the officer who received them first on the bank returned with
+another of higher rank, and with soldiers leading horses. The superior
+officer bowed to the envoys and said in Polish,--
+
+"His Royal Grace asks you, gentlemen, to his quarters; and since they
+are not very near we have brought horses."
+
+"Are you a Pole?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"No, I am a Cheh,--Sadovski, in the Swedish service."
+
+Kmita approached him at once. "Do you know me?"
+
+Sadovski looked at him quickly. "Of course! At Chenstohova you blew up
+the largest siege gun, and Miller gave you to Kuklinovski. I greet you,
+greet you heartily as a famous knight."
+
+"And what is going on with Kuklinovski?" asked Kmita.
+
+"But do you not know?"
+
+"I know that I paid him with that with which he wanted to treat me, but
+I left him alive."
+
+"He died."
+
+"I thought he would freeze to death," said Pan Andrei, waving his hand.
+
+"Worthy Colonel," put in Zagloba, "have you not a certain Roh
+Kovalski?"
+
+Sadovski laughed: "Of course."
+
+"Praise be to God and the Most Holy Lady! The lad is alive and I shall
+get him. Praise be to God!"
+
+"I do not know whether the king will be willing to yield him up," said
+Sadovski.
+
+"But why not?"
+
+"Because he has pleased him greatly. He recognized him at once as the
+same man who had pushed after him with such vigor at Rudnik. We held
+our sides listening to the narrative of the prisoner. The king asked:
+'Why did you pick me out?' and he answered, 'I made a vow.' Then the
+king asked again, 'But will you do so again?' 'Of course!' answered the
+prisoner. The king began to laugh. 'Put away your vow,' said he, 'and I
+will give you your life and freedom.' 'Impossible!' 'Why?' 'For my
+uncle would proclaim me a fool.' 'And are you so sure that you could
+manage me in a hand-to-hand fight?' 'Oh, I could manage five men like
+you,' said he. Then the king asked again: 'And do you dare to raise
+your hand against majesty?' 'Yes,' said he, 'for you have a vile
+faith.' They interpreted every word to the king, and he was more and
+more pleased, and continued to repeat: 'This man has pleased me.' Then
+wishing to see whether in truth he had such strength, he gave orders to
+choose twelve of the strongest men in camp and bring them to wrestle in
+turn with the prisoner. But he is a muscular fellow! When I came away
+he had stretched out ten one after another, and not a man of them could
+rise again. We shall arrive just at the end of the amusement."
+
+"I recognize Roh, my blood!" said Zagloba. "We will give for him even
+three famous officers!"
+
+"You will find the king in good humor," said Sadovski, "which is a rare
+thing nowadays."
+
+"Oh, I believe that!" answered the little knight
+
+Meanwhile Sadovski turned to Kmita, and asked how he had not only freed
+himself from Kuklinovski, but put an end to him. Kmita told him in
+detail. Sadovski, while listening, seized his own head with amazement;
+at last he pressed Kmita's hand again, and said,--
+
+"Believe me, I am sincerely glad; for though I serve the Swedes, every
+true soldier's heart rejoices when a real cavalier puts down a ruffian.
+I must acknowledge to you that when a daring man is found among you,
+one must look with a lantern through the universe to find his equal."
+
+"You are a courteous officer," said Zagloba.
+
+"And a famous soldier, we know that," added Volodyovski.
+
+"I learned courtesy and the soldier's art from you," answered Sadovski,
+touching his cap.
+
+Thus they conversed, vying with one another in courtesy, till they
+reached Grojytsi, where the king's quarters were. The whole village was
+occupied by soldiers of various arms. Our envoys looked with curiosity
+at the groups scattered among the fences. Some, wishing to sleep away
+their hunger, were dozing around cottages, for the day was very clear
+and warm; some were playing dice on drums, drinking beer; some were
+hanging their clothes on the fences; others were sitting in front of
+the cottages singing Scandinavian longs, rubbing with brick-dust their
+breastplates and helmets, from which bright gleams went forth. In
+places they were cleaning horses, or leading them out; in a word, camp
+life was moving and seething under the bright sky. There were men, it
+is true, who bore signs of terrible toil and hunger, but the sun
+covered their leanness with gold; besides, days of rest were beginning
+for those incomparable warriors, therefore they took courage at once,
+and assumed a military bearing. Volodyovski admired them in spirit,
+especially the infantry regiments, famous through the whole world for
+endurance and bravery. Sadovski gave explanations as they passed,
+saying,--
+
+"This is the Smaland regiment of the royal guard. This is the infantry
+of Delekarlia, the very best."
+
+"In God's name, what little monsters are these?" cried Zagloba on a
+sudden, pointing to a group of small men with olive complexions and
+black hair hanging on both sides of their heads.
+
+"Those are Laplanders, who belong to the remotest Hyperboreans."
+
+"Are they good in battle? It seems to me that I might take three in
+each hand and strike with their heads till I was tired."
+
+"You could surely do so. They are useless in battle. The Swedes bring
+them for camp servants, and partly as a curiosity. But they are the
+most skilful of wizards; each of them has at least one devil in his
+service, and some have five."
+
+"How do they get such friendship with evil spirits?" asked Kmita,
+making the sign of the cross.
+
+"Because they wander in night, which with them lasts half a year or
+more; and you know that it is easier to hold converse with the Devil at
+night."
+
+"But have they souls?"
+
+"It is unknown; but I think that they are more in the nature of
+animals."
+
+Kmita turned his horse, caught one of the Laplanders by the shoulders,
+raised him up like a cat, and examined him curiously; then he put him
+on his feet, and said,--
+
+"If the king would give me one such, I would give orders to have him
+dried and hung up in the church in Orsha, where, among other
+curiosities, are ostrich eggs."
+
+"In Lubni, at the parish church, there were jaws of a whale or even of
+a giant," said Volodyovski.
+
+"Let us go on, for something evil will fall on us here," said Zagloba.
+
+"Let us go," repeated Sadovski. "To tell the truth, I ought to have had
+bags put on your heads, as is the custom; but we have nothing here to
+hide, and that you have looked on the trenches is all the better for
+us."
+
+They spurred on their horses, and after a while were before the castle
+at Gojytsi. In front of the gate they sprang from their saddles, and
+advanced on foot; for the King was before the house.
+
+They saw a large number of generals and very celebrated officers. Old
+Wittemberg was there, Douglas, Loewenhaupt, Miller, Erickson, and many
+others. All were sitting on the balcony, a little behind the king,
+whose chair was pushed forward; and they looked on the amusement which
+Karl Gustav was giving himself with the prisoner. Roh had just
+stretched out the twelfth cavalier, and was in a coat torn by the
+wrestlers, panting and sweating greatly. When he saw his uncle in
+company with Kmita and Volodyovski, he thought at once that they too
+were prisoners. He stared at them, opened his mouth, and advanced a
+couple of steps; but Zagloba gave him a sign with his hand to stand
+quietly, and the envoy stood himself with his comrades before the face
+of the king.
+
+Sadovski presented the envoys; they bowed low, as custom and etiquette
+demanded, then Zagloba delivered Charnyetski's letter.
+
+The king took the letter, and began to read; meanwhile the Polish
+envoys looked at him with curiosity, for they had never seen him
+before. He was a man in the flower of his age, as dark in complexion as
+though born an Italian or a Spaniard. His long hair, black as a raven's
+wing, fell behind his ears to his shoulders. In brightness and color
+his eyes brought to mind Yeremi Vishnyevetski; his brows were greatly
+elevated, as if he were in continual astonishment. In the place where
+the brows approached, his forehead was raised in a large protuberance,
+which made him resemble a lion; a deep wrinkle above his nose, which
+did not leave him even when he was laughing, gave his face a
+threatening and wrathful expression. His lower lip protruded like that
+of Yan Kazimir, but his face was heavier and his chin larger; he wore
+mustaches in the form of cords, brushed out somewhat at the ends. In
+general, his face indicated an uncommon man, one of those who when they
+walk over the earth press blood out of it. There was in him grandeur,
+the pride of a monarch, the strength of a lion, and the quickness of
+genius; but though a kindly smile never left his mouth, there was
+lacking that kindness of heart which illuminates a face from within
+with a mild light, as a lamp placed in the middle of an alabaster urn
+lights it. He sat in the arm-chair, with crossed legs, the powerful
+calves of which were indicated clearly from under the black stockings,
+and blinking as was his wont, he read with a smile the letter from
+Charnyetski. Raising his lids, he looked at Pan Michael, and said,--
+
+"I knew you at once; you slew Kanneberg."
+
+All eyes were turned immediately on Volodyovski, who, moving his
+mustaches, bowed and answered,--
+
+"At the service of your Royal Grace."
+
+"What is your office?" asked the king.
+
+"Colonel of the Lauda squadron."
+
+"Where did you serve before?"
+
+"With the voevoda of Vilna."
+
+"And did you leave him with the others? You betrayed him and me."
+
+"I was bound to my own king, not to your Royal Grace."
+
+The king said nothing; all foreheads were frowning, eyes began to bore
+into Pan Michael; but he stood calmly, merely moving his mustaches time
+after time.
+
+All at once the king said,--
+
+"It is pleasant for me to know such a famous cavalier. Kanneberg passed
+among us as incomparable in hand-to-hand conflict. You must be the
+first sabre in the kingdom?"
+
+"_In universo_ (In the universe)!" said Zagloba.
+
+"Not the last," answered Volodyovski.
+
+"I greet you, gentlemen, heartily. For Pan Charnyetski I have a real
+esteem as for a great soldier, though he broke his word to me, for he
+ought to be sitting quietly till now in Syevej."
+
+"Your Royal Grace," said Kmita, "Pan Charnyetski was not the first to
+break his word, but General Miller, who seized Wolf's regiment of royal
+infantry."
+
+Miller advanced a step, looked in the face of Kmita, and began to
+whisper something to the king, who, blinking all the time, listened
+attentively; looking at Pan Andrei, he said at last,--
+
+"I see that Pan Charnyetski has sent me chosen cavaliers. I know from
+of old that there is no lack of daring men among you; but there is a
+lack of faith in keeping promises and oaths."
+
+"Holy are the words of your Royal Grace," answered Zagloba.
+
+"How do you understand that?"
+
+"If it were not for this vice of our people, your Royal Grace would not
+be here."
+
+The king was silent awhile; the generals again frowned at the boldness
+of the envoys.
+
+"Yan Kazimir himself freed you from the oath," said Karl, "for he left
+you and took refuge abroad."
+
+"From the oath we can be freed only by the Vicar of Christ, who resides
+in Rome; and he has not freed us."
+
+"A truce to that!" said the king. "I have acquired the kingdom by
+this," here he struck his sword, "and by this I will hold it. I do not
+need your suffrages nor your oaths. You want war, you will have it. I
+think that Pan Charnyetski remembers Golembo yet."
+
+"He forgot it on the road from Yaroslav," answered Zagloba.
+
+The king, instead of being angry, smiled: "I'll remind him of it."
+
+"God rules the world."
+
+"Tell him to visit me; I shall be glad to receive him. But he must
+hurry, for as soon as my horses are in condition I shall march
+farther."
+
+"Then we shall receive your Royal Grace," said Zagloba, bowing and
+placing his hand slightly on his sabre.
+
+"I see," said the king, "that Pan Charnyetski has sent in the embassy
+not only the best sabres, but the best mouth. In a moment you parry
+every thrust. It is lucky that the war is not of words, for I should
+find an opponent worthy of my power. But I will come to the question.
+Pan Charnyetski asks me to liberate this prisoner, offering two
+officers of distinction in return. I do not set such a low price on my
+soldiers as you think, and I have no wish to redeem them too cheaply;
+that would be against my own and their ambition, but since I can refuse
+Pan Charnyetski nothing, I will make him a present of this cavalier."
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Zagloba, "Pan Charnyetski did not wish to
+show contempt for Swedish officers, but compassion for me; for this is
+my sister's son, and I, at the service of your Royal Grace, am Pan
+Charnyetski's adviser."
+
+"In truth," said the king, "I ought not to let the prisoner go, for he
+has made a vow against me, unless he will give up his vow in view of
+this favor."
+
+Here he turned to Roh, who was standing in front of the porch, and
+beckoned: "But come nearer, you strong fellow!"
+
+Roh approached a couple of steps, and stood erect.
+
+"Sadovski," said the king, "ask him if he will let me go in case I free
+him."
+
+Sadovski repeated the king's question.
+
+"Impossible!" cried Roh.
+
+The king understood without an interpreter, and began to clap his hands
+and blink.
+
+"Well, well! How can I set such a man free? He has twisted the necks of
+twelve horsemen, and promises me as the thirteenth. Good, good! the
+cavalier has pleased me. Is he Pan Charnyetski's adviser too? If he is,
+I will let him go all the more quickly."
+
+"Keep your mouth shut!" muttered Zagloba to Roh.
+
+"A truce to amusement!" said the king, suddenly. "Take him, and have
+still one more proof of my clemency. I can forgive, as the lord of this
+kingdom, since such is my will and favor; but I will not enter into
+terms with rebels."
+
+Here the king frowned, and the smile left his face: "Whoso raises his
+hand against me is a rebel, for I am his lawful king. Only from
+kindness to you have I not punished hitherto as was proper. I have been
+waiting for you to come to your minds; but the hour will strike when
+kindness will be exhausted and the day of punishment will rise. Through
+your self-will and instability the country is flaming with fire;
+through your disloyalty blood is flowing. But I tell you the last days
+are passing; you do not wish to hear admonitions, you do not wish to
+obey laws, you will obey the sword and the gallows!"
+
+Lightnings flashed in Karl's eyes. Zagloba looked on him awhile with
+amazement, unable to understand whence that storm had come after fair
+weather; finally he too began to grow angry, therefore he bowed and
+said only,--
+
+"We thank your Royal Grace."
+
+Then he went off, and after him Kmita, Volodyovski, and Roh Kovalski.
+
+"Gracious, gracious!" said Zagloba, "and before you can look around he
+bellows in your ear like a bear. Beautiful end to an embassy! Others
+give honor with a cup at parting, but he with the gallows! Let him hang
+dogs, not nobles! O my God! how grievously we have sinned against our
+king, who was a father, is a father, and will be a father, for there is
+a Yagyellon heart in him. And such a king traitors deserted, and went
+to make friendship with scarecrows from beyond the sea. We are served
+rightly, for we were not worthy of anything better. Gibbets! gibbets!
+He is fenced in, and we have squeezed him like curds in a bag, so that
+whey is coming out, and still he threatens with sword and gibbet. Wait
+awhile! The Cossack caught a Tartar, and the Tartar has him by the
+head. It will be closer for you yet.--Roh, I wanted to give you a slap
+on the face or fifty blows on a carpet, but I forgive you now since you
+acted so like a cavalier and promised to hunt him still farther. Let me
+kiss you, for I am delighted with you."
+
+"Uncle is still glad!" said Roh.
+
+"The gibbet and the sword! And he told that to my eyes," said Zagloba
+again, after a while. "You have protection! The wolf protects in the
+same fashion a sheep for his own eating. And when does he say that?
+Now, when there is goose skin on his own back. Let him take his
+Laplanders for counsellors, and with them seek Satan's aid. But the
+Most Holy Lady will help us, as she did Pan Bobola in Sandomir when
+powder threw him and his horse across the Vistula, and he was not hurt.
+He looked around to see where he was, and arrived in time to dine with
+the priest. With such help we will pull them all by the necks like
+lobsters out of a wicker trap."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXV.
+
+
+Almost twenty days passed. The king remained continually at the
+junction of the rivers, and sent couriers to fortresses and commands in
+every direction toward Cracow and Warsaw, with orders for all to hasten
+to him with assistance. They sent him also provisions by the Vistula in
+as great quantities as possible, but insufficient. After ten days the
+Swedes began to eat horse-flesh; despair seized the king and the
+generals at thought of what would happen when the cavalry should lose
+their horses, and when there would be no beasts to draw cannon. From
+every side too there came unpleasant news. The whole country was
+blazing with war, as if some one had poured pitch over it and set fire.
+Inferior commands and garrisons could not hasten to give aid, for they
+were not able to leave the towns and villages. Lithuania, held hitherto
+by the iron hand of Pontus do la Gardie, rose as one man. Great Poland,
+which had yielded first of all, was the first to throw off the yoke,
+and shone before the whole Commonwealth as an example of endurance,
+resolve, and enthusiasm. Parties of nobles and peasants rushed not only
+on the garrisons in villages, but even attacked towns. In vain did the
+Swedes take terrible vengeance on the country, in vain did they cut off
+the hands of prisoners, in vain did they send up villages in smoke, cut
+settlements to pieces, raise gibbets, bring instruments of torture from
+Germany to torture insurgents. Whoso had to suffer, suffered; whoso had
+to die, died; but if he was a noble, he died with a sabre; if a
+peasant, with a scythe in his hand. And Swedish blood was flowing
+throughout all Great Poland; the peasants were living in the forests,
+even women rushed to arms; punishments merely roused vengeance and
+increased rage. Kulesha, Jegotski, and the voevoda of Podlyasye moved
+through the country like flames, and besides their parties all the
+pine-woods were filled with other parties. The fields lay untilled,
+fierce hunger increased in the land; but it twisted most the entrails
+of the Swedes, for they were confined in towns behind closed gates, and
+could not go to the open country. At last breath was failing in their
+bosoms.
+
+In Mazovia the condition was the same. There the Barkshoe people
+dwelling in forest gloom came out of their wildernesses, blocked the
+roads, seized provisions and couriers. In Podlyasye a numerous small
+nobility marched in thousands either to Sapyeha or to Lithuania.
+Lyubelsk was in the hands of the confederates. From the distant Russias
+came Tartars, and with them the Cossacks constrained to obedience.
+
+Therefore all were certain that if not in a week in a month, if not in
+a month in two, that river fork in which Karl Gustav had halted with
+the main army of the Swedes would be turned into one great tomb to the
+glory of the nation; a great lesson for those who would attack the
+Commonwealth.
+
+The end of the war was foreseen already; there were some who said that
+one way of salvation alone remained to Karl,--to ransom himself and
+give Swedish Livland to the Commonwealth.
+
+But suddenly the fortune of Karl and the Swedes was bettered.
+Marienburg, besieged hitherto in vain, surrendered, March 20, to
+Steinbock. His powerful and valiant army had then no occupation, and
+could hasten to the rescue of the king.
+
+From another direction the Markgraf of Baden, having finished levies,
+was marching also to the river fork with ready forces, and soldiers yet
+unwearied.
+
+Both pushed forward, breaking up the smaller bands of insurgents,
+destroying, burning, slaying. Along the road they gathered in Swedish
+garrisons, took the smaller commands, and increased in power, as a
+river increases the more it takes streams to its bosom.
+
+Tidings of the fall of Marienburg, of the army of Steinbock, and the
+march of the Markgraf of Baden came very quickly to the fork of the
+river, and grieved Polish hearts. Steinbock was still far away; but the
+markgraf, advancing by forced marches, might soon come up and change
+the whole position at Sandomir.
+
+The Polish leaders then held a council in which Charnyetski, Sapyeha,
+Michael Radzivill, Vitovski, and Lyubomirski, who had grown tired of
+being on the Vistula, took part. At this council it was decided that
+Sapyeha with the Lithuanian army was to remain to watch Karl, and
+prevent his escape, Charnyetski was to move against the Markgraf of
+Baden and meet him as quickly as possible; if God gave him victory, he
+would return to besiege Karl Gustav.
+
+Corresponding orders were given at once. Next morning he trumpets
+sounded to horse so quietly that they were barely heard; Charnyetski
+wished to depart unknown to the Swedes. At his recent camp-ground a
+number of unoccupied parties of nobles and peasants took position at
+once. They kindled fires and made an uproar, so that the enemy might
+think that no one had left the place; but Charnyetski's squadrons moved
+out one after another. First marched the Lauda squadron, which by right
+should have remained with Sapyeha; but since Charnyetski had fallen
+greatly in love with this squadron, the hetman was loath to take it
+from him. After the Lauda went the Vansovich squadron, chosen men led
+by an old soldier half of whose life had been passed in shedding blood;
+then followed the squadron of Prince Dymitri Vishnyevetski, under the
+same Shandarovski who at Rudnik had covered himself with immeasurable
+glory; then two regiments of Vitovski's dragoons, two regiments of the
+starosta of Yavorov; the famed Stapkovski led one; then Charnyetski's
+own regiment, the king's regiment under Polyanovski, and Lyubomirski's
+whole force. No infantry was taken, because of haste; nor wagons, for
+the army went on horseback.
+
+All were drawn up together at Zavada in good strength and great
+willingness. Then Charnyetski himself went out in front, and after he
+had arranged them for the march, he withdrew his horse somewhat and let
+them pass so as to review well the whole force. The horse under him
+sniffed, threw up his head and nodded, as if wishing to greet the
+passing regiments; and the heart swelled in the castellan himself. A
+beautiful view was before him. As far as the eye reached a river of
+horses, a river of stern faces of soldiers, welling up and down with
+the movement of the horses; above them still a third river of sabres
+and lances, glittering and gleaming in the morning sun. A tremendous
+power went forth from them, and Charnyetski felt the power in himself;
+for that was not some kind of collection of volunteers, but men forged
+on the anvil of battle, trained, exercised, and in conflict so
+"venomous" that no cavalry on earth of equal numbers could withstand
+them. Therefore Charnyetski felt with certainty, without doubt, that he
+would bear asunder with sabres and hoofs the army of the Markgraf of
+Baden; and that victory, felt in advance, made his face so radiant that
+it gleamed on the regiments.
+
+"With God to victory!" cried he at last.
+
+"With God! We will conquer!" answered mighty voices.
+
+And that shout flew through all the squadrons like deep thunder through
+clouds. Charnyetski spurred his horse to come up with the Lauda
+squadron, marching in the van.
+
+The army moved forward.
+
+They advanced not like men, but like a flock of ravening birds which
+having wind of a battle from afar, fly to outstrip the tempest. Never,
+even among Tartars in the steppes, had any man heard of such a march.
+The soldiers slept in the saddles; they ate and drank without
+dismounting; they fed the horses from their hands. Rivers, forests,
+villages, were left behind them. Scarcely had peasants hurried out from
+their cottages to look at the army when the army had vanished behind
+clouds of dust in the distance. They marched day and night, resting
+only just enough to escape killing the horses.
+
+At Kozyenitsi they came upon eight Swedish squadrons under Torneskiold.
+The Lauda men, marching in the van, first saw the enemy, and without
+even drawing breath sprang at them straightway and into the fire. Next
+advanced Shandarovski, then Vansovich, and then Stapkovski.
+
+The Swedes, thinking that they had to deal with some mere common
+parties, met them in the open field, and two hours later there was not
+a living man left to go to the markgraf and tell him that Charnyetski
+was coming. Those eight squadrons were simply swept asunder on sabres,
+without leaving a witness of defeat. Then the Poles moved straight on
+to Magnushev, for spies informed them that the markgraf was at Varka
+with his whole army.
+
+Volodyovski was sent in the night with a party to learn how the army
+was disposed, and what its power was.
+
+Zagloba complained greatly of that expedition, for even the famed
+Vishnyevetski had never made such marches as this; therefore the old
+man complained, but he chose to go with Pan Michael rather than remain
+with the army.
+
+"It was a golden time at Sandomir," said he, stretching himself in the
+saddle; "a man ate, drank, and looked at the besieged Swedes in the
+distance; bat now there is not time even to put a canteen to your
+mouth. I know the military arts of the ancients, of the great Pompey
+and Caesar; but Charnyetski has invented a new style. It is contrary to
+every rule to shake the stomach so many days and nights. The
+imagination begins to rebel in me from hunger, and it seems to me
+continually that the stars are buckwheat pudding and the moon cheese.
+To the dogs with such warfare! As God is dear to me, I want to gnaw my
+own horses' ears off from hunger."
+
+"To-morrow, God grant, we shall rest after finishing the Swedes."
+
+"I would rather have the Swedes than this tediousness! O Lord! O Lord!
+when wilt Thou give peace to this Commonwealth, and to Zagloba a warm
+place at the stove and heated beer, even without cream? Batter along,
+old man, on your nag, batter along, till you batter your body to death.
+Has any one there snuff? Maybe I could sneeze out this sleepiness
+through my nostrils. The moon is shining through my mouth, looking into
+my stomach, but I cannot tell what the moon is looking for there; it
+will find nothing. I repeat, to the dogs with such warfare!"
+
+"If Uncle thinks that the moon is cheese, then eat it, Uncle," said Roh
+Kovalski.
+
+"If I should eat you I might say that I had eaten beef; but I am afraid
+that after such a roast I should lose the rest of my wit."
+
+"If I am an ox and Uncle is my uncle, then what is Uncle?"
+
+"But, you fool, do you think that Althea gave birth to a firebrand
+because she sat by the stove?"
+
+"How does that touch me?"
+
+"In this way. If you are an ox, then ask about your father first, not
+about your uncle: for a bull carried off Europa, but her brother, who
+was uncle to her children, was a man for all that. Do you understand?"
+
+"To tell the truth, I do not; but as to eating I could eat something
+myself."
+
+"Eat the devil and let me sleep! What is it, Pan Michael? Why have we
+halted?"
+
+"Varka is in sight," answered Volodyovski. "See, the church tower is
+gleaming in the moonlight."
+
+"But have we passed Magnushev?"
+
+"Magnushev is behind on the right. It is a wonder to me that there is
+no Swedish party on this side of the river. Let us go to those thickets
+and stop; perhaps God may send us some informant."
+
+Pan Michael led his detachment to the thicket, and disposed it about a
+hundred yards from the road on each side, ordering the men to remain
+silent, and hold the bridles closely so the horses might not neigh.
+
+"Wait," said he. "Let us hear what is being done on the other side of
+the river, and perhaps we may see something."
+
+They stood there waiting; but for a long time nothing was to be heard.
+The wearied soldiers began to nod in the saddles. Zagloba dropped on
+the horse's neck and fell asleep; even the horses were slumbering. An
+hour passed. The accurate ear of Volodyovski heard something like the
+tread of a horse on a firm road.
+
+"Hold! silence!" said he to the soldiers.
+
+He pushed out himself to the edge of the thicket, and looked along the
+road. The road was gleaming in the moonlight like a silver ribbon;
+there was nothing visible on it, still the sound of horses came nearer.
+
+"They are coming surely!" said Volodyovski.
+
+All held their horses more closely, each one restraining his breath.
+Meanwhile on the road appeared a Swedish party of thirty horsemen. They
+rode slowly and carelessly enough, not in line, but in a straggling
+row. Some of the soldiers were talking, others were singing in a low
+voice; for the night, warm as in May, acted on the ardent souls of the
+soldiers. Without suspicion they passed near Pan Michael, who was
+standing so hard by the edge of the thicket that he could catch the
+odor of horses and the smoke of pipes which the soldiers had lighted.
+
+At last they vanished at the turn of the road. Volodyovski waited till
+the tramp had died in the distance; then only did he go to his men and
+say to Pan Yan and Pan Stanislav,--
+
+"Let us drive them now, like geese, to the camp of the castellan. Not a
+man must escape, lest he give warning."
+
+"If Charnyetski does not let us eat then and sleep," said Zagloba, "I
+will resign his service and return to Sapyo. With Sapyo, when there is
+a battle, there is a battle; but when there is a respite, there is a
+feast. If you had four lips, he would give each one of them enough to
+do. He is the leader for me! And in truth tell me by what devil are we
+not serving with Sapyo, since this regiment belongs to him by right?"
+
+"Father, do not blaspheme against the greatest warrior in the
+Commonwealth," said Pan Yan.
+
+"It is not I that blaspheme, but my entrails, on which hunger is
+playing, as on a fiddle--"
+
+"The Swedes will dance to the music," interrupted Volodyovski. "Now,
+gentlemen, let us advance quickly! I should like to come up with them
+exactly at that inn in the forest which we passed in coming hither."
+
+And he led on the squadron quickly, but not too quickly. They rode into
+a dense forest in which darkness enclosed them. The inn was less than
+two miles distant. When Volodyovski had drawn near, he went again at a
+walk, so as not to alarm the Swedes too soon. When not more than a
+cannon-shot away, the noise of men was heard.
+
+"They are there and making an uproar!" said Pan Michael.
+
+The Swedes had, in fact, stopped at the inn, looking for some living
+person to give information. But the place was empty. Some of the
+soldiers were shaking up the main building; others were looking in the
+cow-house, in the shed, or raising the thatch on the roof. One half of
+the men remained on the square holding the horses of those who were
+searching.
+
+Pan Michael's division approached within a hundred yards, and began to
+surround the inn with a Tartar crescent. Those of the Swedes standing
+in front heard perfectly, and at last saw men and horses; since,
+however, it was dark in the forest they could not see what kind of
+troops were coming; but they were not alarmed in the least, not
+admitting that others than Swedes could come from that point. At last
+the movement of the crescent astonished and disturbed them. They called
+at once to those who were in the buildings.
+
+Suddenly a shout of "Allah!" was heard, and the sound of shots, in one
+moment dark crowds of soldiers appeared as if they had grown out of the
+earth. Now came confusion, a flash of sabres, oaths, smothered shouts;
+but the whole affair did not last longer than the time needed to say
+the Lord's Prayer twice.
+
+There remained on the ground before the inn five bodies of men and
+horses; Volodyovski moved on, taking with him twenty-five prisoners.
+
+They advanced at a gallop, urging the Swedish horses with the sides of
+their sabres, and arrived at Magnushev at daybreak. In Charnyetski's
+camp no one was sleeping; all were ready. The castellan himself came
+out leaning on his staff, thin and pale from watching.
+
+"How is it?" asked he of Pan Michael. "Have you many informants?"
+
+"Twenty-five prisoners."
+
+"Did many escape?"
+
+"All are taken."
+
+"Only send you, soldier, even to hell! Well done! Take them at once to
+the torture, I will examine them."
+
+Then the castellan turned, and when departing said,--
+
+"But be in readiness, for perhaps we may move on the enemy without
+delay."
+
+"How is that?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"Be quiet!" said Volodyovski.
+
+The prisoners, without being burned, told in a moment what they knew of
+the forces of the markgraf,--how many cannons he had, what infantry
+and cavalry. Charnyetski grew somewhat thoughtful; for he learned that
+it was really a newly levied army, but formed of the oldest soldiers,
+who had taken part in God knows how many wars. There were also many
+Germans among them, and a considerable division of French; the whole
+force exceeded that of the Poles by several hundred. But it appeared
+from the statements of the prisoners that the markgraf did not even
+admit that Charnyetski was near, and believed that the Poles were
+besieging Karl Gustav with all their forces at Sandomir.
+
+The castellan had barely heard this when he sprang up and cried to his
+attendant: "Vitovski, give command to sound the trumpet to horse!"
+
+Half an hour later the army moved and marched in the fresh spring
+morning through forests and fields covered with dew. At last Varka--or
+rather its ruins, for the place had been burned almost to the ground
+six years before--appeared on the horizon.
+
+Charnyetski's troops were marching over an open flat; therefore they
+could not be concealed from the eyes of the Swedes. In fact they were
+seen; but the markgraf thought that they were various "parties" which
+had combined in a body with the intent of alarming the camp.
+
+Only when squadron after squadron, advancing at a trot, appeared from
+beyond the forest, did a feverish activity rise in the Swedish camp.
+Charnyetski's men saw smaller divisions of horsemen and single officers
+hurrying between the regiments. The bright-colored Swedish infantry
+began to pour into the middle of the plain; the regiments formed one
+after another before the eyes of the Poles and were numerous,
+resembling a flock of many-colored birds. Over their heads were raised
+toward the sun quadrangles of strong spears with which the infantry
+shielded themselves against attacks of cavalry. Finally, were seen
+crowds of Swedish armored cavalry advancing at a trot along the wings;
+the artillery was drawn up and brought to the front in haste. All the
+preparations, all the movements were as visible as something on the
+palm of the hand, for the sun had risen clearly, splendidly, and
+lighted up the whole country.
+
+The Pilitsa separated the two armies.
+
+On the Swedish bank trumpets and kettle-drums were heard, and the
+shouts of soldiers coming with all speed into line. Charnyetski ordered
+also to sound the crooked trumpets, and advanced with his squadrons
+toward the river.
+
+Then he rushed with all the breath of his horse to the Vansovich
+squadron, which was nearest the Pilitsa.
+
+"Old soldier!" cried he to Vansovich, "advance for me to the bridge,
+there dismount and to muskets! Let all their force be turned on you!
+Lead on!"
+
+Vansovich merely flushed a little from desire, and waved his baton. The
+men shouted and shot after him like a cloud of dust driven by wind.
+
+When they came within three hundred yards of the bridge, they slackened
+the speed of their horses; then two thirds of them sprang from the
+saddles and advanced on a run to the bridge.
+
+But the Swedes came from the other side; and soon muskets began to
+play, at first slowly, then every moment more briskly, as if a thousand
+flails were beating irregularly on a barn-floor. Smoke stretched over
+the river. Shouts of encouragement were thundering from one and the
+other command. The minds of both armies were bent to the bridge, which
+was wooden, narrow, difficult to take, but easy to defend. Still over
+this bridge alone was it possible to cross to the Swedes.
+
+A quarter of an hour later Charnyetski pushed forward Lyubomirski's
+dragoons to the aid of Vansovich.
+
+But the Swedes now attacked the opposite front with artillery. They
+drew up new pieces one after another, and bombs began to fly with a
+howl over the heads of Vansovich's men and the dragoons, to fall in the
+meadow and dig into the earth, scattering mud and turf on those
+fighting.
+
+The markgraf, standing near the forest in the rear of the army, watched
+the battle through a field-glass. From time to time he removed the
+glass from his eyes, looked at his staff, shrugged his shoulders and
+said with astonishment: "They have gone mad; they want absolutely to
+force the bridge. A few guns and two or three regiments might defend it
+against a whole army."
+
+Vansovich advanced still more stubbornly with his men; hence the
+defence grew still more resolute. The bridge became the central point
+of the battle, toward which the whole Swedish line was approaching and
+concentrating. An hour later the entire Swedish order of battle was
+changed, and they stood with flank to their former position. The bridge
+was simply covered with a rain of fire and iron. Vansovich's men were
+falling thickly; meanwhile orders came more and more urgent to advance
+absolutely.
+
+"Charnyetski is murdering those men!" cried Lyubomirski on a sudden.
+
+Vitovski, as an experienced soldier, saw that evil was happening, and
+his whole body quivered with impatience; at last he could endure no
+longer. Spurring his horse till the beast groaned piteously, he rushed
+to Charnyetski, who during all this time, it was unknown why, was
+pushing men toward the river.
+
+"Your grace," cried Vitovski, "blood is flowing for nothing; we cannot
+carry that bridge!"
+
+"I do not want to carry it!" answered Charnyetski.
+
+"Then what does your grace want? What must we do?"
+
+"To the river with the squadrons! to the river! And you to your place!"
+
+Here Charnyetski's eyes flashed such lightnings that Vitovski withdrew
+without saying a word.
+
+Meanwhile the squadrons had come within twenty paces of the bank, and
+stood in a long line parallel with the bed of the river. None of the
+officers or the soldiers had the slightest suspicion of what they were
+doing.
+
+In a flash Charnyetski appeared like a thunderbolt before the front of
+the squadrons. There was fire in his face, lightning in his eyes. A
+sharp wind had raised the burka on his shoulders so that it was like
+strong wings: his horse sprang and reared, casting fire from his
+nostrils. The castellan dropped his sword on its pendant, took the rap
+from his head, and with hair erect shouted to his division,--
+
+"Gentlemen! the enemy defends himself with this water, and jeers at us!
+He has sailed through the sea to crush our fatherland, and he thinks
+that we in defence of it cannot swim through this river!"
+
+Here he hurled his cap to the earth, and seizing his sabre pointed with
+it to the swollen waters. Enthusiasm bore him away, for he stood in the
+saddle and shouted more mightily still,--
+
+"To whom God, faith, fatherland, are all, follow me!"
+
+And pressing the horse with the spurs so that the steed sprang as it
+were into space, he rushed into the river. The wave plashed around him;
+man and horse were hidden under water, but they rose in the twinkle of
+an eye.
+
+"After my master!" cried Mihalko, the same who had covered himself with
+glory at Rudnik; and he sprang into the water.
+
+"After me!" shouted Volodyovski, with a shrill but thin voice; and he
+sprang in before he had finished shouting.
+
+"O Jesus! O Mary!" bellowed Zagloba, raising his horse for the leap.
+
+With that an avalanche of men and horses dashed into the river, so that
+it struck both banks with wild impetus. After the Lauda squadron went
+Vishnyevetski's, then Vitovski's, then Stapkovski's, after that all the
+others. Such a frenzy seized the men that the squadrons crowded one
+another in emulation; the shouts of command were mingled with the roar
+of the soldiers; the river overflowed the banks and foamed itself into
+milk in a moment. The current bore the regiments down somewhat; but the
+horses, pricked with spurs, swam like a countless herd of dolphins,
+snorting and groaning. They filled the river to such a degree that the
+mass of heads of horses and riders formed as it were a bridge on which
+a man might have passed with dry foot to the other bank.
+
+Charnyetski swam over first; but before the water had dropped from him
+the Lauda squadron had followed him to land; then he waved his baton,
+and cried to Volodyovski,--
+
+"On a gallop! Strike!"
+
+And to the Vishnyevetski squadron under Shandarovski,--
+
+"With them!"
+
+And so he sent the squadrons one after another, till he had sent all.
+He stood at the head of the last himself, and shouting, "In the name of
+God! with luck!" followed the others.
+
+Two regiments of Swedish cavalry posted in reserve saw what was
+happening; but such amazement had seized the colonels that before they
+could move from their tracks the Lauda men, urging their horses to the
+highest speed, and sweeping with irresistible force, struck the first
+regiment, scattered that, as a whirlwind scatters leaves, hurled it
+against the second, brought that to disorder; then Shandarovski came
+up, and a terrible slaughter began, but of short duration; after a
+while the Swedish ranks were broken, and a disordered throng plunged
+forward toward the main army.
+
+Charnyetski's squadron pursued them with a fearful outcry, slashing,
+thrusting, strewing the field with corpses.
+
+At last it was clear why Charnyetski had commanded Vansovich to carry
+the bridge, though he had no thought of crossing it. The chief
+attention of the whole army had been concentrated on that point;
+therefore no one defended, or had time to defend, the river itself.
+Besides nearly all the artillery and the entire front of the Swedish
+army was turned toward the bridge; and now when three thousand cavalry
+were rushing with all impetus against the flank of that army, it was
+needful to change the order of battle, to form a new front, to defend
+themselves even well or ill against the shock. Now rose a terrible
+haste and confusion; infantry and cavalry regiments turned with all
+speed to face the enemy, straining themselves in their hurry, knocking
+one against another, not understanding commands in the uproar, acting
+independently. In vain did the officers make superhuman efforts; in
+vain did the markgraf move straightway the regiments of cavalry posted
+at the forest; before they came to any kind of order, before the
+infantry could put the butt ends of their lances in the ground to hold
+the points to the enemy, the Lauda squadron fell, like the spirit of
+death, into the very midst of their ranks; after it a second, a third,
+a fourth, a fifth, and a sixth squadron. Then began the day of
+judgment! The smoke of musketry fire covered, as if with a cloud, the
+whole scene of conflict; and in that cloud screams, seething, unearthly
+voices of despair, shouts of triumph, the sharp clang of steel, as if
+in an infernal forge, the rattling of muskets; at times a flag shone
+and fell in the smoke; then the gilded point of a regimental banner,
+and again you saw nothing; but a roar was heard more and more terrible,
+as if the earth had broken on a sudden under the river, and its waters
+were tumbling down into fathomless abysses.
+
+Now on the flank other sounds were heard. This was Vansovich, who had
+crossed the bridge and was marching on the new flank of the enemy.
+After this the battle did not last long.
+
+From out that cloud large groups of men began to push, and run toward
+the forest in disorder, wild, without caps, without helmets, without
+armor. Soon after them burst out a whole flood of people in the most
+dreadful disorder. Artillery, infantry, cavalry mingled together fled
+toward the forest at random, in alarm and terror. Some soldiers cried
+in sky-piercing voices; others fled in silence, covering their heads
+with their hands. Some in their haste threw away their clothing; others
+stopped those running ahead, fell down themselves, trampled one
+another; and right there behind them, on their shoulders and heads,
+rushed a line of Polish cavaliers. Every moment you saw whole ranks of
+them spurring their horses and rushing into the densest throngs of men.
+No one defended himself longer; all went under the sword. Body fell
+upon body. The Poles hewed without rest, without mercy, on the whole
+plain; along the bank of the river toward the forest, as far as the eye
+could reach you saw merely pursued and pursuing; only here and there
+scattered groups of infantry offered an irregular, despairing
+resistance; the cannons were silent. The battle ceased to be a battle;
+it had turned into a slaughter.
+
+All that part of the army which fled toward the forest was cut to
+pieces; only a few squadrons of Swedish troopers entered it. After them
+the light squadrons of Poles sprang in among the trees.
+
+But in the forest peasants were waiting for that unslain remnant,--the
+peasants who at the sound of the battle had rushed together from all
+the surrounding villages.
+
+The most terrible pursuit, however, continued on the road to Warsaw,
+along which the main forces of the Swedes were fleeing. The young
+Markgraf Adolph struggled twice to cover the retreat; but beaten twice,
+he fell into captivity himself. His auxiliary division of French
+infantry, composed of four hundred men, threw away their arms; three
+thousand chosen soldiers, musketeers and cavalry, fled as far as
+Mnishev. The musketeers were cut down in Mnishev; the cavalry were
+pursued toward Chersk, until they were scattered completely through the
+forest, reeds, and brush; there the peasants hunted them out one by one
+on the morrow.
+
+Before the sun had set, the army of Friederich, Markgraf of Baden, had
+ceased to exist.
+
+On the first scene of battle there remained only the standard-bearers
+with their standards, for all the troops had followed the enemy. And
+the sun was well inclined to its setting when the first bodies of
+cavalry began to appear from the side of the forest and Mnishev. They
+returned with singing and uproar, hurling their caps in the air, firing
+from pistols. Almost all led with them crowds of bound prisoners. These
+walked at the sides of the horses they were without caps, without
+helmets, with heads drooping on their breasts, torn, bloody, stumbling
+every moment against the bodies of fallen comrades. The field of battle
+presented a terrible sight. In places, where the struggle had been
+fiercest, there lay simply piles of bodies half a spear-length in
+height. Some of the infantry still held in their stiffened hands long
+spears. The whole ground was covered with spears. In places they were
+sticking still in the earth; here and there pieces of them formed as it
+were fences and pickets. But on all sides was presented mostly a
+dreadful and pitiful mingling of bodies, of men mashed with hoofs,
+broken muskets, drums, trumpets, caps, belts, tin boxes which the
+infantry carried; hands and feet sticking out in such disorder from the
+piles of bodies that it was difficult to tell to what body they
+belonged. In those places specially where the infantry defended itself
+whole breastworks of corpses were lying.
+
+Somewhat farther on, near the river, stood the artillery, now cold,
+some pieces overturned by the onrush of men, others as it were ready to
+be fired. At the sides of them lay the cannoneers now held in eternal
+sleep. Many bodies were hanging across the guns and embracing them with
+their arms, as if those soldiers wished still to defend them after
+death. The brass, spotted with blood and brains, glittered with ill
+omen in the beams of the setting sun. The golden rays were reflected in
+stiffened blood, which here and there formed little lakes. Its
+nauseating odor was mingled over the whole field with the smell of
+powder, the exhalation from bodies, and the sweat of horses.
+
+Before the setting of the sun Charnyetski returned with the king's
+regiment, and stood in the middle of the field. The troops greeted him
+with a thundering shout. Whenever a detachment came up it cheered
+without end. He stood in the rays of the sun, wearied beyond measure,
+but all radiant, with bare head, his sword hanging on his belt, and he
+answered to every cheer,--
+
+"Not to me, gentlemen, not to me, but to the name of God!"
+
+At his side were Vitovski and Lyubomirski, the latter as bright as the
+sun itself, for he was in gilded plate armor, his face splashed with
+blood; for he had worked terribly and labored with his own hand as a
+simple soldier, but discontented and gloomy, for even his own regiments
+shouted,--
+
+"Vivat Charnyetski, _dux et victor_ (commander and conqueror)!"
+
+Envy began then to dive into the soul of the marshal.
+
+Meanwhile new divisions rolled in from every side of the field; each
+time an officer came up and threw a banner, captured from the enemy, at
+Charnyetski's feet. At sight of this rose new shouts, new cheers,
+hurling of caps into the air, and the firing of pistols.
+
+The sun was sinking lower and lower.
+
+Then in the one church that remained after the fire in Varka they
+sounded the Angelus; that moment all uncovered their heads. Father
+Pyekarski, the company priest, began to intone: "The Angel of the Lord
+announced unto the Most Holy Virgin Mary!" and a thousand iron breasts
+answered at once, with deep voices: "And she conceived of the Holy
+Ghost!"
+
+All eyes were raised to the heavens, which were red with the evening
+twilight; and from that bloody battle-field began to rise a pious hymn
+to the light playing in the sky before night.
+
+Just as they had ceased to sing, the Lauda squadron began to come up at
+a trot; it had chased the enemy farthest. The soldiers throw more
+banners at Charnyetski's feet. He rejoiced in heart, and seeing
+Volodyovski, urged his horse toward him and asked,--
+
+"Have many of them escaped?"
+
+Pan Michael shook his head as a sign that not many had escaped, but he
+was so near being breathless that he was unable to utter one word; he
+merely gasped with open mouth, time after time, so that his breast was
+heaving. At last he pointed to his lips, as a sign that he could not
+speak. Charnyetski understood him and pressed his head.
+
+"He has toiled!" said he; "God grant us more such."
+
+Zagloba hurried to catch his breath, and said, with chattering teeth
+and broken voice,--
+
+"For God's sake! The cold wind is blowing on me, and I am all in a
+sweat. Paralysis will strike me. Pull the clothes off some fat Swede
+and give them to me, for everything on me is wet,--wet, and it is wet
+in this place. I know not what is water, what is my own sweat, and what
+is Swedish blood. If I have ever expected in my life to cut down so
+many of those scoundrels, I am not fit to be the crupper of a saddle.
+The greatest victory of this war! But I will not spring into water a
+second time. Eat not, drink not, sleep not, and then a bath! I have had
+enough in my old years. My hand is benumbed; paralysis has struck me
+already; gorailka, for the dear God!"
+
+Charnyetski, hearing this, and seeing the old man really covered
+completely with the blood of the enemy, took pity on his age and gave
+him his own canteen.
+
+Zagloba raised it to his mouth, and after a while returned it empty;
+then he said,--
+
+"I have gulped so much water in the Pilitsa, that we shall soon see how
+fish will hatch in my stomach; but that gorailka is better than water."
+
+"Dress in other clothes, even Swedish," said Charnyetski.
+
+"I'll find a big Swede for Uncle!" said Roh.
+
+"Why should I have bloody clothes from a corpse?" said Zagloba; "take
+off everything to the shirt from that general whom I captured."
+
+"Have you taken a general?" asked Charnyetski, with animation.
+
+"Whom have I not taken, whom have I not slain?" answered Zagloba.
+
+Now Volodyovski recovered speech: "We have taken the younger markgraf,
+Adolph; Count Falckenstein, General Wegier, General Poter Benzij, not
+counting inferior officers."
+
+"But the Markgraf Friederich?" asked Charnyetski.
+
+"If he has not fallen here, he has escaped to the forest; but if he has
+escaped, the peasants will kill him."
+
+Volodyovski was mistaken in his previsions. The Markgraf Friederich
+with Counts Schlippenbach and Ehrenhain, wandering through the forest,
+made their way in the night to Chersk; after sitting there in the
+ruined castle three days and nights in hunger and cold, they wandered
+by night to Warsaw. That did not save them from captivity afterward;
+this time, however, they escaped.
+
+It was night when Charnyetski came to Varka from the field. That was
+perhaps the gladdest night of his life, for such a great disaster the
+Swedes had not suffered since the beginning of the war. All the
+artillery, all the flags, all the officers, except the chief, were
+captured. The army was cut to pieces, driven to the four winds; the
+remnants of it were forced to fall victims to bands of peasants. But
+besides, it was shown that those Swedes who held themselves invincible
+could not stand before regular Polish squadrons in the open field.
+Charnyetski understood at last what a mighty result this victory would
+work in the whole Commonwealth,--how it would raise courage, how it
+would rouse enthusiasm; he saw already the whole Commonwealth, in no
+distant future, free from oppression, triumphant. Perhaps, too, he saw
+with the eyes of his mind the gilded baton of the grand hetman on the
+sky.
+
+He was permitted to dream of this, for he had advanced toward it as a
+true soldier, as a defender of his country, and he was of those who
+grow not from salt nor from the soil, but from that which pains them.
+
+Meanwhile he could hardly embrace with his whole soul the joy which
+flowed in upon him; therefore he turned to Lyubomirski, riding at his
+side, and said,--
+
+"Now to Sandomir! to Sandomir with all speed! Since the army knows now
+how to swim rivers, neither the San nor the Vistula will frighten us!"
+
+Lyubomirski said not a word; but Zagloba, riding a little apart in
+Swedish uniform, permitted himself to say aloud,--
+
+"Go where you like, but without me, for I am not a weathercock to turn
+night and day without food or sleep."
+
+Charnyetski was so rejoiced that he was not only not angry, but he
+answered in jest,--
+
+"You are more like the belfry than the weathercock, since, as I see,
+you have sparrows in your head. But as to eating and rest it belongs to
+all."
+
+To which Zagloba said, but in an undertone. "Whoso has a beak on his
+face has a sparrow on his mind."
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXVI.
+
+
+After that victory Charnyetski permitted at last the army to take
+breath and feed the wearied horses; then he was to return to Sandomir
+by forced marches, and bend the King of Sweden to his fall.
+
+Meanwhile Kharlamp came to the camp one evening with news from Sapyeha.
+Charnyetski was at Chersk, whither he had gone to review the general
+militia assembled at that town. Kharlamp, not finding the chief, betook
+himself at once to Pan Michael, so as to rest at his quarters after the
+long journey.
+
+His friends greeted him joyously; but he, at the very beginning, showed
+them a gloomy face and said,--
+
+"I have heard of your victory. Fortune smiled here, but bore down on us
+in Sandomir. Karl Gustav is no longer in the sack, for he got out, and,
+besides, with great confusion to the Lithuanian troops."
+
+"Can that be?" cried Pan Michael, seizing his head.
+
+Pan Yan, Pan Stanislav, and Zagloba were as if fixed to the earth.
+
+"How was it? Tell, by the living God, for I cannot stay in my skin!"
+
+"Breath fails me yet," said Kharlamp; "I have ridden day and night, I
+am terribly tired. Charnyetski will come, then I will tell all from the
+beginning. Let me now draw breath a little."
+
+"Then Karl has gone out of the sack. I foresaw that, did I not? Do you
+not remember that I prophesied it? Let Kovalski testify."
+
+"Uncle foretold it," said Roh.
+
+"And whither has Karl gone?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"The infantry sailed down in boats; but he, with cavalry, has gone
+along the Vistula to Warsaw."
+
+"Was there a battle?"
+
+"There was and there was not. In brief, give me peace, for I cannot
+talk."
+
+"But tell me one thing. Is Sapyeha crushed altogether?"
+
+"How crushed! He is pursuing the king; but of course Sapyeha will never
+come up with anybody."
+
+"He is as good at pursuit as a German at fasting," said Zagloba.
+
+"Praise be to God for even this, that the army is intact!" put in
+Volodyovski.
+
+"The Lithuanians have got into trouble!" said Zagloba. "Ah, it is a bad
+case! Again we must watch a hole in the Commonwealth together."
+
+"Say nothing against the Lithuanian army," said Kharlamp. "Karl Gustav
+is a great warrior, and it is no wonder to lose against him. And did
+not you, from Poland, lose at Uistsie, at Volbor, at Suleyov, and in
+ten other places? Charnyetski himself lost at Golembo. Why should not
+Sapyeha lose, especially when you left him alone like an orphan?"
+
+"But why did we go to a dance at Varka?" asked Zagloba, with
+indignation.
+
+"I know that it was not a dance, but a battle, and God gave you the
+victory. But who knows, perhaps it had been better not to go; for among
+us they say that the troops of both nations (Lithuanian and Poland) may
+be beaten separately, but together the cavalry of hell itself could not
+manage them."
+
+"That may be," said Volodyovski; "but what the leaders have decided is
+not for us to discuss. This did not happen, either, without your
+fault."
+
+"Sapyo must have blundered; I know him!" said Zagloba.
+
+"I cannot deny that," muttered Kharlamp.
+
+They were silent awhile, but from time to time looked at one another
+gloomily, for to them it seemed that the fortune of the Commonwealth
+was beginning to sink, and yet such a short time before they were full
+of hope and confidence.
+
+"Charnyetski is coming!" said Volodyovski; and he went out of the room.
+
+The castellan was really returning; Volodyovski went to meet him, and
+began to call from a distance,--
+
+"The King of Sweden has broken through the Lithuanian army, and escaped
+from the sack. There is an officer here with letters from the voevoda
+of Vilna."
+
+"Bring him here!" cried Charnyetski. "Where is he?
+
+"With me; I will present him at once."
+
+Charnyetski took the news so much to heart that he would not wait, but
+sprang at once from his saddle and entered Volodyovski's quarters.
+
+All rose when they saw him enter; he barely nodded and said,--
+
+"I ask for the letter!"
+
+Kharlamp gave him a sealed letter. The castellan went to the window,
+for it was dark in the cottage, and began to read with frowning brow
+and anxious face. From instant to instant anger gleamed on his
+countenance.
+
+"The castellan has changed," whispered Zagloba to Pan Yan; "see how his
+beak has grown red. He will begin to lisp right away, he always does
+when in anger."
+
+Charnyetski finished the letter. For a time he twisted his beard with
+his whole hand; at last he called out with a jingling, indistinct
+voice,--
+
+"Come this way, officer!"
+
+"At command of your worthiness!"
+
+"Tell me the truth," said Charnyetski, with emphasis, "for this
+narrative is so artfully put together that I am unable to get at the
+affair. But--tell me the truth, do not color it--is the army
+dispersed?"
+
+"Not dispersed at all, your grace."
+
+"How many days are needed to assemble it?"
+
+Here Zagloba whispered to Pan Yan: "He wants to come at him from the
+left hand as it were."
+
+But Kharlamp answered without hesitation,--
+
+"Since the army is not dispersed, it does not need to be assembled. It
+is true that when I was leaving, about five hundred horse of the
+general militia could not be found, were not among the fallen; but that
+is a common thing, and the army does not suffer from that; the hetman
+has even moved after the king in good order."
+
+"You have lost no cannon?"
+
+"Yes, we lost four, which the Swedes, not being able to take with them,
+spiked."
+
+"I see that you tell the truth; tell me then how everything happened."
+
+"_Incipiam_ (I will begin)," said Kharlamp. "When we were left alone,
+the enemy saw that there was no army on the Vistula, nothing but
+parties and irregular detachments. We thought--or, properly speaking,
+Pan Sapyeha thought--that the king would attack those, and he sent
+reinforcements, but not considerable, so as not to weaken himself.
+Meanwhile there was a movement and a noise among the Swedes, as in a
+beehive. Toward evening they began to come out in crowds to the San. We
+were at the voevoda's quarters. Pan Kmita, who is called Babinich now,
+a soldier of the first degree, came up and reported this. But Pan
+Sapyeha was just sitting down to a feast, to which a multitude of noble
+women from Krasnik and Yanov had assembled--for the voevoda is fond of
+the fair sex--"
+
+"And he loves feasting!" interrupted Charnyetski.
+
+"I am not with him; there is no one to incline him to temperance," put
+in Zagloba.
+
+"Maybe you will be with him sooner than you think; then you can both
+begin to be temperate," retorted Charnyetski. Then he turned to
+Kharlamp: "Speak on!"
+
+"Babinich reported, and the voevoda answered: 'They are only pretending
+to attack; they will undertake nothing! First,' said he, 'they will try
+to cross the Vistula; but I have an eye on them, and I will attack
+myself. At present,' said he, 'we will not spoil our pleasure, so that
+we may have a joyous time! We will eat and drink.' The music began to
+tear away, and the voevoda invited those present to the dance."
+
+"I'll give him dancing!" interrupted Zagloba.
+
+"Silence, if you please!" said Charnyetski.
+
+"Again men rush in from the bank saying that there is a terrible
+uproar. 'That's nothing!' the voevoda whispered to the page; 'do not
+interrupt me!' We danced till daylight, we slept till midday. At midday
+we see that the intrenchments are bristling, forty-eight pound guns on
+them; and the Swedes fire from time to time. When a ball falls it is
+the size of a bucket; it is nothing for such a one to fill the eyes
+with dust."
+
+"Give no embellishments!" interrupted Charnyetski; "you are not with
+the hetman."
+
+Kharlamp was greatly confused, and continued: "At midday the voevoda
+himself went out. The Swedes under cover of these trenches began to
+build a bridge. They worked till evening, to our great astonishment;
+for we thought that as to building they would build, but as to crossing
+they would not be able to do that. Next day they built on. The voevoda
+put the troops in order, for he expected a battle."
+
+"All this time the bridge was a pretext, and they crossed lower down
+over another bridge, and turned your flank?" interrupted Charnyetski.
+
+Kharlamp stared and opened his mouth, he was silent in amazement; but
+at last said,--
+
+"Then your worthiness has had an account already?"
+
+"No need of that!" said Zagloba; "our grandfather guesses everything
+concerning war on the wing, as if he had seen it in fact."
+
+"Speak on!" said Charnyetski.
+
+"Evening came. The troops were in readiness, but with the first star
+there was a feast again. This time the Swedes passed over the second
+bridge lower down, and attacked us at once. The squadron of Pan
+Koshyts, a good soldier, was at the edge. He rushed on them. The
+general militia which was next to him sprang to his aid; but when the
+Swedes spat at them from the guns, they took to their heels. Pan
+Koshyts was killed, and his men terribly cut up. Now the general
+militia, rushing back in a crowd on the camp, put everything in
+disorder. All the squadrons that were ready advanced; but we effected
+nothing, lost cannon besides. If the king had had  more cannon and
+infantry, our defeat would have been severe; but fortunately the
+greater number of the infantry regiments with the cannon had sailed
+away in boats during the night. Of this no one of us knew."
+
+"Sapyo has blundered! I knew it beforehand!" cried Zagloba.
+
+"We got the correspondence of the king," added Kharlamp, "which the
+Swedes dropped. The soldiers read in it that the king is to go to
+Prussia to return with the elector's forces, for, he writes, that with
+Swedish troops alone he cannot succeed."
+
+"I know of that," said Charnyetski. "Pan Sapyeha sent me that letter."
+Then he muttered quietly, as if speaking to himself: "We must follow
+him to Prussia."
+
+"That is what I have been saying this long time," put in Zagloba.
+
+Charnyetski looked at him for a while in thoughtfulness. "It is
+unfortunate," said he, aloud; "for if I had returned to Sandomir the
+hetman and I should not have let a foot of them out alive. Well! it has
+passed and will not return. The war will be longer; but death is fated
+to this invasion and to these invaders."
+
+"It cannot be otherwise!" cried the knights in chorus; and great
+consolation entered their hearts, though a short time before they had
+doubted.
+
+Meanwhile Zagloba whispered something in Jendzian's ear; he vanished
+through the door, and soon returned with a decanter. Seeing this,
+Volodyovski inclined to the knee of the castellan.
+
+"It would be an uncommon favor for a simple soldier," he began.
+
+"I will drink with you willingly," said Charnyetski; "and do you know
+why?--because we must part."
+
+"How is that?" cried the astonished Pan Michael.
+
+"Sapyeha writes that the Lauda squadron belongs to the Lithuanian army,
+and that he sent it only to assist the forces of the kingdom; that now
+he will need it himself, especially the officers, of whom he has a
+great lack. My Volodyovski, you know how much I love you; it is hard
+for me to part with you, but here is the order. It is true Pan Sapyeha
+as a courteous man leaves the order in my power and discretion. I might
+not show it to you.--Well, it is as pleasant to me as if the hetman had
+broken my best sabre. I give you the order precisely because it is left
+to my discretion, and do your duty. To your health, my dear soldier!"
+
+Volodyovski bowed again to the castellan's knees; but he was so
+distressed that he could not utter a word, and when Charnyetski
+embraced him tears ran in a stream over his yellow mustaches.
+
+"I would rather die!" cried he, pitifully. "I have grown accustomed to
+toil under you, revered leader, and there I know not how it will be."
+
+"Pan Michael, do not mind the order," cried Zagloba, with emotion. "I
+will write to Sapyo myself, and rub his ears for him fittingly."
+
+But Pan Michael first of all was a soldier; therefore he flew into a
+passion,--
+
+"But the old volunteer is ever sitting in you. You would better be
+silent when you know not the question. Service!"
+
+"That is it," said Charnyetski.
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVII.
+
+
+Zagloba when he stood before the hetman did not answer his joyous
+greeting, but put his hands behind his back, pouted his lips, and
+looked on him like a just but stern judge. Sapyeha was pleased when he
+saw that mien, for he expected some pleasantry and said,--
+
+"How are you, old rogue? Why twist your nose as if you had found some
+unvirtuous odor?"
+
+"In the whole camp of Sapyeha it smells of hashed meat and cabbage."
+
+"Why? Tell me."
+
+"Because the Swedes have cut up a great many cabbage-heads!"
+
+"There you are! You are already criticising us. It is a pity they did
+not cut you up too."
+
+"I was with a leader under whom we are the cutters, not the cut."
+
+"The hangman take you! if they had even clipped your tongue!"
+
+"Then I should have nothing to proclaim Sapyeha's victory with."
+
+"Ah, lord brother, spare me! The majority already forget my service to
+the country, and belittle me altogether. I know too that there are many
+who make a great outcry against my person; still, had it not been for
+that rabble of a general militia, affairs might have gone differently.
+They say that I have neglected the enemy for night feasting; but the
+whole Commonwealth has not been able to resist that enemy."
+
+Zagloba was somewhat moved at the words of the hetman, and answered,--
+
+"Such is the custom with us, always to put the blame on the leader. I
+am not the man to speak evil of feasting, for the longer the day, the
+more needful the feast. Pan Charnyetski is a great warrior; still,
+according to my head, he has this defect,--that he gives his troops for
+breakfast, for dinner, and for supper nothing but Swedes' flesh. He is
+a better leader than cook; but he acts ill, for from such food war may
+soon become disgusting to the best cavaliers."
+
+"Was Charnyetski very much enraged at me?"
+
+"No, not very! In the beginning he showed a great change; but when he
+discovered that the army was unbroken, he said at once: 'The will of
+God, not the might of men! That is nothing! any general may lose a
+battle. If we had Sapyehas only in the land, we should have a country
+in which every man would be an Aristides.'"
+
+"For Pan Charnyetski I would not spare my blood!" answered Sapyeha.
+"Every other would have lowered me, so as to exalt himself and his own
+glory, especially after a fresh victory; but he is not that kind of
+man."
+
+"I will say nothing against him but this,--that I am too old for such
+service as he expects of soldiers, and especially for those baths which
+he gives the army."
+
+"Then are you glad to return to me?"
+
+"Glad and not glad, for I hear of feasting for an hour, but somehow I
+don't see it."
+
+"We will sit down to the table this minute. But what is Charnyetski
+undertaking now?"
+
+"He is going to Great Poland to help those poor people; from there he
+will march against Steinbock and to Prussia, hoping to get cannon and
+infantry from Dantzig."
+
+"The citizens of Dantzig are worthy people, and give a shining example
+to the whole Commonwealth. We shall meet Charnyetski at Warsaw, for I
+shall march there, but will stop a little first around Lublin."
+
+"Then have the Swedes besieged Lublin again?"
+
+"Unhappy place! I know not how many times it has been in the hands of
+the enemy. There is a deputation here now from Lubelsk, and they will
+appear with a petition asking me to save them. But as I have letters to
+despatch to the king and the hetmans, they must wait awhile."
+
+"I will go gladly to Lublin, for there the fair heads are comely beyond
+measure, and sprightly. When a woman of that place is cutting bread,
+and puts the loaf against herself, the crust on the lifeless bread
+blushes from delight."
+
+"Oh, Turk!"
+
+"Your worthiness, as a man advanced in years, cannot understand this;
+but I, like May, must let my blood out yet."
+
+"But you are older than I."
+
+"Only in experience, not in years. I have been able _conservare
+juventutem meam_ (to preserve my youth), and more than one man has
+envied me that power. Permit me, your worthiness, to receive the
+Lubelsk deputation. I will promise to aid them at once; let the poor
+men comfort themselves before we comfort the poor women."
+
+"That is well," said the hetman; "then I will write the letters." And
+he went out.
+
+Immediately after were admitted the deputies from Lubelsk, whom Zagloba
+received with uncommon dignity and seriousness. He promised assistance
+on condition that they would furnish the army with provisions,
+especially with every kind of drink. When the conditions were settled,
+he invited them in the name of the voevoda to supper. They were glad,
+for the army marched that night toward Lublin. The hetman himself was
+active beyond measure, for it was a question with him of effacing the
+memory of the Sandomir defeat by some military success.
+
+The siege began, but advanced rather slowly. During this time Kmita was
+learning from Volodyovski to work with the sabre, and made uncommon
+progress. Pan Michael, knowing that his art was to be used against
+Boguslav's neck, held back no secret. Often too they had better
+practice; for, approaching the castle, they challenged to single combat
+the Swedes, many of whom they slew. Soon Kmita had made such advance
+that he could meet Pan Yan on equal terms; no one in the whole army of
+Sapyeha could stand before him. Then such a desire to try Boguslav
+seized his soul that he was barely able to remain at Lublin, especially
+since the spring brought back to him strength and health. His wounds
+had healed, he ceased to spit blood, life played in him as of old, and
+fire gleamed in his eyes. At first the Lauda men looked at him
+frowningly; but they dared in not attack, for Volodyovski held them
+with iron hand; and later, when they considered his acts and his deeds,
+they were reconciled completely, and his most inveterate enemy, Yuzva
+Butrym, said,--
+
+"Kmita is dead; Babinich is living, let him live."
+
+The Lubelsk garrison surrendered at last, to the great delight of the
+army; then Sapyeha moved his squadrons toward Warsaw. On the road they
+received tidings that Yan Kazimir himself, with the hetmans and a fresh
+army, was advancing to aid them. News came too from Charnyetski, who
+was marching to the capital from Great Poland. The war, scattered
+through the whole country, was gathering at Warsaw, as a cloud
+scattered in the sky gathers and thickens to give birth to a storm with
+thunders and lightnings.
+
+Sapyeha marched through Jelehi, Garvolin, and Minsk to the Syedlets
+highway, to join the general militia of Podlyasye. Pan Yan took command
+of this multitude; for though living in Lubelsk, he was near the
+boundary of Podlyasye, and was known to all the nobles, and greatly
+esteemed by them as one of the most famous knights in the Commonwealth.
+In fact, he soon changed that nobility, gallant by nature, into a
+squadron second in no way to regular troops.
+
+Meanwhile they moved from Minsk forward to Warsaw very hastily, so as
+to stop at Praga one day. Fair weather favored the march. From time to
+time May showers sped past, cooling the ground and settling the dust;
+but on the whole the weather was marvellously fair,--not too hot, not
+too cold. The eye saw far through the transparent air. From Minsk they
+went mounted; the wagons and cannon were to follow next day. An immense
+eagerness reigned in the regiments; the dense forests on both sides of
+the whole road were ringing with echoes of military songs, the horses
+nodded as a good omen. The squadrons regularly and in order flowed on,
+one after the other, like a river shining and mighty; for Sapyeha led
+twelve thousand men, besides the general militia. The captains leading
+the regiments were gleaming in their polished cuirasses; the red flags
+waved like gigantic flowers above the heads of the knights.
+
+The sun was well toward its setting when the first squadron, that of
+Lauda, marching in advance, beheld the towers of the capital. At sight
+of this, a joyful shout tore from the breasts of the soldiers.
+
+"Warsaw! Warsaw!"
+
+That shout flew like thunder through all the squadrons, and for some
+time was to be heard over two miles of road the word, "Warsaw! Warsaw!"
+
+Many of Sapyeha's knights had never been in the capital; many of them
+had never seen it; therefore the sight made an uncommon impression on
+them. Involuntarily all reined in their horses; some removed their
+caps, others made the sign of the cross; tears streamed from the eyes
+of others, and they stood in silent emotion. All at once Sapyeha came
+out from the rear ranks on a white horse, and began to fly along the
+squadrons.
+
+"Gentlemen!" cried he, in a piercing voice, "we are here first! To us
+luck, to us honor! We will drive the Swedes out of the capital!"
+
+"We'll drive them! We'll drive them! We'll drive them!"
+
+And there rose a sound and a thunder. Some shouted continually, "We'll
+drive them!" Others cried, "Strike, whoso has manhood!" Others,
+"Against them, the dog-brothers!" The rattle of sabres was mingled with
+the shouts of the knights. Eyes flashed lightning, and from under
+fierce mustaches teeth were gleaming. Sapyeha himself was sputtering
+like a pine torch. All at once he raised his baton, and cried,--
+
+"Follow me!"
+
+Near Praga the voevoda restrained the squadron and commanded a slow
+march. The capital rose more and more clearly out of the bluish
+distance. Towers were outlined in a long line on the azure of the sky.
+The red many-storied roofs of the Old City were gleaming in the evening
+light. The Lithuanians had never seen anything more imposing in their
+lives than those white lofty walls pierced with multitudes of narrow
+windows; those walls standing like lofty swamp-reeds over the water.
+The houses seemed to grow some out of others, high and still higher;
+but above that dense and close mass of walls with windows and roofs,
+pointed towers pierced the sky. Those of the soldiers who had been in
+the capital previously, either at an election or on private affairs,
+explained to the others what each pile meant and what name it bore.
+Zagloba especially, as a person of experience, told all to the Lauda
+men, and they listened to him eagerly, wondering at his words and the
+city itself.
+
+"Look at that tower in the very centre of Warsaw! That is the citadel
+of the king. Oh that I could live as many years as I have eaten dinners
+at the king's table! I would twist Methuselah into a ram's horn. The
+king had no nearer confidant than me; I could choose among
+starostaships as among nuts, and give them away as easily as hob-nails.
+I have given promotion to multitudes of men, and when I came in
+senators used to bow to me to the girdle, in Cossack fashion. I fought
+duels also in presence of the king, for he loved to see me at work; the
+marshal of the palace had to close his eyes."
+
+"That is a tremendous building!" said Roh Kovalski: "and to think that
+these dogs have it all in hand!"
+
+"And they plunder terribly," added Zagloba. "I hear that they even take
+columns out of the walls and send them to Sweden; these columns are of
+marble and other valuable stones. I shall not recognize the dear
+corners; various writers justly describe this castle as the eighth
+wonder of the world. The King of France has a respectable palace, but
+it is a fool in comparison with this one."
+
+"And that other tower over there near it, on the right?"
+
+"That is St. Yan. There is a gallery from the castle to it. I had a
+vision in that church, for I remained behind once after vespers; I
+heard a voice from the arches, crying, 'Zagloba, there will be war with
+such a son the Swedish king, and great calamities will follow.' I was
+running with all my breath to the king to tell him what I had heard,
+when the primate caught me by the neck with his crosier. 'Don't tell
+follies,' said he; 'you were drunk!' That other church just at the side
+belongs to the Jesuit college; the third tower at a distance is the law
+courts; the fourth at the right is the marshals, and that green roof is
+the Dominicans. I could not name them all, even if I could wield my
+tongue as well as I do my sabre."
+
+"It must be that there is not another such city in the world," said one
+of the soldiers.
+
+"That is why all nations envy us!" answered Zagloba.
+
+"And that wonderful pile on the left of the castle?"
+
+"Behind the Bernardines?"
+
+"Yes."
+
+"That is the Radzeyovski Palace, formerly the Kazanovski. It is
+considered the ninth wonder of the world; but there is a plague on it,
+for in those walls began the misfortune of the Commonwealth."
+
+"How is that?" asked a number of voices.
+
+"When the vice-chancellor Radzeyovski began to dispute and quarrel with
+his wife, the king took her part. You know, gentlemen, what people said
+of this; and it is true that the vice-chancellor thought that his wife
+was in love with the king, and the king with her; then afterward,
+through hatred, he fled to the Swedes, and war began. To tell the
+truth, I was in the country at the moment, and did not see the end of
+the affair, I got it from hearsay; but I know this, that she made sweet
+eyes, not at the king, but at some one else."
+
+"At whom?"
+
+Zagloba began to twirl his mustaches: "At him to whom all are hurrying
+like ants to honey; but it does not beseem me to mention his name, for
+I have always hated boastfulness. Besides, the man has grown old, and
+from sweeping out the enemy of the country, I am worn as a broom; but
+once there was no greater beauty and love maker than I. Let Rob
+Kovalski--"
+
+Here Zagloba saw that by no means could Roh remember those times;
+therefore he waved his hand, and said,--
+
+"But what does he know of this affair?"
+
+Then he pointed out the palaces of Ossolinski and Konyetspolski,
+palaces which were in size almost equal to the Radzeyovski; finally the
+splendid villa Regia; and then the sun went down, and the darkness of
+night began to fill the air.
+
+The thunder of guns was heard on the walls of Warsaw, and trumpets were
+sounded a considerable time and prolonged, in sign that the enemy was
+approaching.
+
+Sapyeha also announced his coming by firing from muskets, to give
+courage to the inhabitants; and that night he began to transport his
+army across the Vistula. First the Lauda squadron passed; second the
+squadron of Pan Kotvich; then Kmita's Tartars; then Vankovich's
+squadron; after that, eight thousand men. In this way the Swedes, with
+their accumulated plunder, were surrounded and deprived of
+communication; but nothing remained to Sapyeha except to wait till
+Charnyetski from one side, and from the other Yan Kazimir with the
+hetmans of the kingdom, marched up, and meanwhile to see that no
+reinforcements stole through to the city.
+
+The first news came from Charnyetski, but not overfavorable, for he
+reported that his troops and horses were so exhausted that at that
+moment he could not take part in the siege. From the time of the battle
+of Varka, they were under fire day after day; and from the first months
+of the year they had fought twenty-one great battles with the Swedes,
+not counting the engagements of scouting-parties and the attacks on
+smaller detachments. He had not obtained infantry in Pomerania, and had
+not been able to advance to Dantzig; he promised, at most, to hold in
+check with the rest of his forces that Swedish army which under the
+brother of the king, Radzivill, and Douglas, was stationed at Narev,
+and apparently was preparing to come to the aid of the besieged.
+
+The Swedes prepared for defence with the bravery and skill peculiar to
+them. They burned Praga before the arrival of Sapyeha; they had begun
+already to throw bombs into all the suburbs, such as the Cracow and the
+Novy-Sviat, and on the other side against the church of St. Yerzy and
+the Virgin Mary. Then houses, great buildings, and churches flamed up.
+In the daytime smoke rolled over the city like clouds, thick and dark.
+At night those clouds became red, and bundles of sparks burst forth
+from them toward the sky. Outside the walls, crowds of people were
+wandering, without roofs over their heads, without bread; women
+surrounded Sapyeha's camp, and cried for charity; people were seen as
+thin as pincers from hunger; children were dying for want of food, in
+the arms of emaciated mothers; the suburbs were turned into a vale of
+tears and misery.
+
+Sapyeha, having neither infantry nor cannon, waited and waited for the
+coming of the king. Meanwhile he aided the poor, sending them in groups
+to the less injured neighborhoods, in which they might survive in some
+way. He was troubled not a little when he foresaw the difficulties of
+the siege, for the skilled engineers of Sweden had turned Warsaw into a
+strong fortress. Behind the walls were three thousand trained soldiers,
+led by able and experienced generals; on the whole, the Swedes passed
+as masters in besieging and defending great fortresses. To solace this
+trouble, Sapyeha arranged daily feasts, during which the goblets
+circled freely; for that worthy citizen and uncommon warrior had this
+failing,--he loved company and the clatter of glasses above all things,
+and therefore neglected frequently service for pleasure.
+
+His diligence in the daytime he balanced by negligence at night. Till
+sunset he worked faithfully, sent out scouts, despatched letters,
+inspected pickets himself, examined the informants brought in; but with
+the first star even fiddles were heard in his quarters. And when once
+he felt joyous he permitted everything, sent for officers even though
+on guard or appointed to scouting expeditions, and was angry if any one
+failed to appear, since for him there was no feast without a throng. In
+the morning Zagloba reproached him seriously, but in the night the
+servants bore Zagloba himself without consciousness to Volodyovski's
+quarters.
+
+"Sapyeha would make a saint fall," he explained next day to his
+friends; "and what must happen to me, who have been always fond of
+sport? Besides, he has some kind of special passion to force goblets on
+me, and I, not wishing to seem rude, yield to his pressing; this I do
+to avoid offending the host. But I have made a vow that at the coming
+Advent I shall have my back well covered with discipline (stripes), for
+I understand myself that this yielding cannot remain without penance;
+but now I have to keep on good terms with him, out of fear that I might
+fall into worse company and indulge myself altogether."
+
+There were officers who without the eye of the hetman accomplished
+their service; but some neglected it terribly in the evenings, as
+ordinary soldiers do when they feel no iron hand above them.
+
+The enemy was not slow to take advantage of this. Two days before the
+coming of the king and the hetmans, Sapyeha arranged his most splendid
+feast, for he was rejoiced that all the troops were coming, and that
+the siege would begin in earnest. All the best known officers were
+invited; the hetman, ever in search of an opportunity, announced that
+that feast would be in honor of the king. To Kmita, Zagloba, Pan Yan,
+Pan Stanislav, and Kharlamp were sent special orders to come without
+fail, for the hetman wished to honor them particularly for their great
+services. Pan Andrei had just mounted his horse to go with a party, so
+that the orderly found the Tartars outside the gate.
+
+"You cannot show the hetman disrespect, and return rudeness for
+kindness," said the officer.
+
+Kmita dismounted and went to ask advice of his comrades.
+
+"This is dreadfully awkward for me," said he. "I have heard that a
+considerable body of cavalry has appeared near Babitsi. The hetman
+himself commanded me to learn absolutely who they are, and now he asks
+me to the feast. What must I do?"
+
+"The hetman has sent an order to let Akbah Ulan go with the
+scouting-party," answered the officer.
+
+"An order is an order!" said Zagloba, "and whoso is a soldier must
+obey. Be careful not to give an evil example; and besides it would not
+be well for you to incur the ill-will of the hetman."
+
+"Say that I will come," said Kmita to the orderly.
+
+The officer went out. The Tartars rode off under Akbah Ulan; and Kmita
+began to dress a little, and while dressing said to his comrades,--
+
+"To-day there is a feast in honor of his Royal Grace; to-morrow there
+will be one in honor of the hetmans of the kingdom, and so on to the
+end of the siege."
+
+"Only let the king come and this will be at an end," answered
+Volodyovski; "for though our gracious lord is fond of amusing himself
+in every trouble, still service must go on more diligently, since every
+man, and among others Pan Sapyeha, will endeavor to show his zeal."
+
+"We have had too much of this, too much! There is no question on that
+point," said Pan Yan. "Is it not a wonder to you that such a laborious
+leader, such a virtuous man, such a worthy citizen, has this weakness?"
+
+"Just let night come and straightway he is another person, and from a
+grand hetman turns into a reveller."
+
+"But do you know why these banquets are not to my taste?" asked Kmita.
+"It was the custom of Yanush Radzivill to have them almost every
+evening. Imagine that, as if by some wonder, whenever there was a
+banquet, either some misfortune happened, some evil tidings came, or
+some new treason of the hetman was published. I do not know whether it
+was blind chance or an ordinance of God; but it is enough that evil
+never came except in time of a banquet. I tell you that at last it went
+so far that whenever they were setting the table the skin began to
+creep on us."
+
+"True, as God is dear to me!" added Kharlamp. "But it came from this,
+that the prince hetman chose that time to announce his intrigues with
+the enemy of the country."
+
+"Well," said Zagloba, "at least we have nothing to fear from the honest
+Sapyeha. If he will ever be a traitor, I am of as much value as my
+boot-heel."
+
+"There is nothing to be said on that point. He is as honest as bread
+without a raw spot," put in Pan Michael.
+
+"And what he neglects in the evening he repairs in the day-time," added
+Kharlamp.
+
+"Then we will go," said Zagloba, "for to tell the truth I feel a void
+in my stomach."
+
+They went out, mounted their horses, and rode off; for Sapyeha was on
+the other side of the city and rather far away. When they arrived at
+the hetman's quarters they found in the yard a multitude of horses, and
+a crowd of grooms, for whom a keg of beer had been set out, and who, as
+is usual, drinking without measure, had begun to quarrel; they grew
+quiet, however, at sight of the approaching knights, especially when
+Zagloba fell to striking with the side of his sabre those who were in
+his way, and to crying with a stentorian voice: "To your horses,
+rascals, to your horses! You are not the persons invited to the
+banquet."
+
+Sapyeha received the officers as usual, with open arms; and since he
+had been drinking a little with his guests, he began at once to tease
+Zagloba.
+
+"With the forehead, Lord Commander!" said he.
+
+"With the forehead, Lord Kiper," answered Zagloba.
+
+"If you call me that," said Sapyeha, "I will give you wine which is
+working yet."
+
+"Very good, if it will make a tippler of a hetman!"
+
+Some of the guests, hearing this, were alarmed; but Zagloba, when he
+saw the hetman in good humor, permitted himself everything, and Sapyeha
+had such a weakness for Zagloba that he not only was not angry, but he
+held his sides, and called those present to witness what he endured
+from that noble.
+
+Then began a noisy and joyous banquet. Sapyeha drank to each guest
+separately, raised toasts to the king, the hetmans, the armies of both
+peoples (Poland and Lithuania), Pan Charnyetski, the whole
+Commonwealth. Pleasure increased, and with it noise and talk. From
+toasts it came to songs. The room was filled with steam from the heads
+of the guests, and the odor of mead and wines. From outside the windows
+came in no less of an uproar, and even the noise of steel. The servants
+had begun to fight with sabres. Some nobles rushed out to restore
+order, but they increased the confusion.
+
+Suddenly there rose a shout so great that the banqueters in the hall
+became silent.
+
+"What is that?" asked one of the colonels. "The grooms cannot make such
+an uproar as that."
+
+"Silence, gentlemen!" said the hetman, disturbed.
+
+"Those are not ordinary shouts!"
+
+All at once the windows shook from the thunder of cannon and discharges
+of musketry.
+
+"A sortie!" cried Volodyovski; "the enemy is advancing!"
+
+"To horse! To sabres!"
+
+All sprang to their feet. There was a throng at the door; then a crowd
+of officers rushed to the yard, calling to their grooms for horses.
+
+But in the disturbance it was not easy for each one to find his own.
+Meanwhile from beyond the yard alarmed voices began to shout in the
+darkness,--
+
+"The enemy is advancing! Pan Kotvich is under fire!"
+
+All rushed with what breath was in their horses to their squadrons,
+jumping over fences and breaking their necks in the darkness. An alarm
+began in the whole camp. Not all the squadrons had horses at hand, and
+those who had not began the uproar first of all. Throngs of soldiers on
+foot and on horseback struck against one another, not being able to
+come to order, not knowing who was a friend and who an enemy, shouting
+and roaring in the middle of the dark night. Some cried that the King
+of Sweden was advancing with his whole army.
+
+The Swedish sortie had really struck with a mighty impetus on Kotvich's
+men. Fortunately, being sick, he was not at the banquet, and therefore
+could offer some kind of immediate resistance; still it was not a long
+one, for he was attacked by superior numbers and covered with musketry
+fire, hence was forced to retreat. Oskyerko came first to his
+assistance with his dragoons. They answered musketry fire with musketry
+fire. But neither could Oskyerko's dragoons withstand the pressure, and
+in a moment they began to withdraw more and more hastily, leaving the
+ground covered with corpses. Twice did Oskyerko endeavor to bring them
+to order, and twice was he beaten back, so that the soldiers could only
+cover their retreat by firing in groups. At last they scattered
+completely; but the Swedes pressed on like an irrepressible torrent
+toward the hetman's quarters. More and more regiments issued from the
+city to the field; after the infantry came cavalry; they brought out
+even field-guns. It looked like a general battle, and it seemed as
+though the enemy sought one.
+
+Volodyovski, rushing from the hetman's quarters, met his own squadron,
+which was always in readiness, half way, going toward the sound of the
+alarm and the shots. It was led by Roh Kovalski, who, like Kotvich, was
+not at the banquet; but Roh was not there because he had not been
+invited. Volodyovski gave orders to set fire with all speed to a couple
+of sheds, so as to light up the field, and he hurried to the battle. On
+the road he was joined by Kmita with his terrible volunteers, and that
+half of the Tartars which had not gone on the scouting expedition. Both
+came just in time to save Kotvich and Oskyerko from utter disaster.
+
+The sheds had now blazed up so well that everything could be seen as at
+noontide. In this light the Lauda men, aided by Kmita, struck the
+infantry regiments, and passing through their fire took them on sabres.
+The Swedish cavalry sprang to assist their own men, and closed mightily
+with the Lauda squadron. For a certain time they struggled exactly like
+two wrestlers who seizing each other by the bodies use their last
+strength,--now this one bends the other, and now the other bends this;
+but men fell so frequently in their ranks that at last the Swedes began
+to be confused. Kmita with his fighters rushed into the thick of the
+struggle. Volodyovski as usual cleared an opening; near him the two
+gigantic Skshetuskis fought, and Kharlamp with Roh Kovalski; the Lauda
+men emulated Kmita's fighters,--some shouting terribly, others, as the
+Butryms, rolling on in a body and in silence.
+
+New regiments rushed forward to the aid of the broken Swedes; but
+Vankovich, whose quarters were near Volodyovski's and Kmita's, was a
+little later than they and supported them. At last the hetman led all
+the troops to the engagement, and began to advance in order. A fierce
+battle sprang up along the whole line from Mokotov to the Vistula.
+
+Then Akbah Ulan, who had gone with the scouts, appeared on a foaming
+horse before the hetman.
+
+"Effendi!" cried he; "a chambul of cavalry is marching from Babitsi to
+the city, and convoying wagons; they wish to enter the gates."
+
+Sapyeha understood in one moment what that sortie in the direction of
+Mokotov meant. The enemy wished to draw away troops on the meadow road,
+so that that auxiliary cavalry and a provision train might enter the
+gates.
+
+"Run to Volodyovski!" cried the hetman to Akbah Ulan; "let the Lauda
+squadron, Kmita, and Vankovich stop the road. I will send them
+reinforcements at once."
+
+Akbah Ulan put spurs to his horse; after him flew one, and a second,
+and a third orderly. All rushed to Volodyovski and repeated the order
+of the hetman.
+
+Volodyovski turned his squadron immediately; Kmita and the Tartars
+caught up with him; going across the field, they shot on together, and
+Vankovich after them.
+
+But they arrived too late. Nearly two hundred wagons had entered the
+gate; a splendid detachment of cavalry following them was almost within
+radius of the fortress. Only the rearguard, composed of about one
+hundred men, had not come yet under cover of the artillery. But these
+too were going with all speed. The officer, riding behind, urged them
+on.
+
+Kmita, seeing them by the light of the burning shed, gave forth such a
+piercing and terrible shout, that the horses at his side were
+frightened; he recognized Boguslav's cavalry, that same which had
+ridden over him and his Tartars at Yanov.
+
+Mindful of nothing, he rushed like a madman toward them, passed his own
+men, and fell first blindly among their ranks. Fortunately the two
+Kyemliches, Kosma and Damian, sitting on the foremost horses, rode with
+him. At that moment Volodyovski struck the flank like lightning, and
+with this one blow cut off the rearguard from the main body.
+
+Cannon began to thunder from the walls; but the main division,
+sacrificing their comrades, rushed in with all speed after the wagons.
+Then the Lauda men and Kmita's forces surrounded the rearguard as with
+a ring, and a merciless slaughter began.
+
+But it was of short duration. Boguslav's men, seeing that there was no
+rescue on any side, sprang from their horses in a moment, threw down
+their weapons, and shouted with sky-piercing voices, heard in the
+throng and the uproar, that they surrendered.
+
+Neither the volunteers nor the Tartars regarded their shouts, but hewed
+on. At this moment was heard the threatening and shrill voice of
+Volodyovski, who wanted informants,--
+
+"Stop! stop! take them alive!"
+
+"Take them alive!" cried Kmita.
+
+The biting of steel ceased. The Tartars were commanded to bind the
+enemy, and with the skill peculiar to them they did this in a twinkle;
+then the squadrons pushed back hastily from the cannon-fire. The
+colonels marched toward the sheds,--the Lauda men in advance, Vankovich
+in the rear, and Kmita, with the prisoners, in the centre, all in
+perfect readiness to repulse attack should it come. Some of the Tartars
+led prisoners on leashes; others of them led captured horses. Kmita,
+when he came near the sheds, looked carefully into the faces of the
+prisoners to see if Boguslav was among them; for though one of them had
+sworn under a sword-point that the prince was not in the detachment,
+still Kmita thought that perhaps they were hiding him purposely. Then
+some voice from under the stirrup of a Tartar cried to him,--
+
+"Pan Kmita! Colonel! Rescue an acquaintance! Give command to free me
+from the rope on parole."
+
+"Hassling!" cried Kmita.
+
+Hassling was a Scot, formerly an officer in the cavalry of the voevoda
+of Vilna, whom Kmita knew in Kyedani, and in his time loved much.
+
+"Let the prisoner go free!" cried he to the Tartar, "and down from the
+horse yourself!"
+
+The Tartar sprang from the saddle as if the wind had carried him off,
+for he knew the danger of loitering when the "bagadyr" commanded.
+
+Hassling, groaning, climbed into the Tartar's lofty saddle. Kmita then
+caught him above the palm, and pressing his hand as if he wished to
+crush it, began to ask insistently,--
+
+"Whence do you come? Tell me quickly, whence do you come? For God's
+sake, tell quickly!"
+
+"From Taurogi," answered the officer.
+
+Kmita pressed him still more.
+
+"But--Panna Billevich--is she there?"
+
+"She is."
+
+Pan Andrei spoke with still greater difficulty, for he pressed his
+teeth still more closely.
+
+"And--what has the prince done with her?"
+
+"He has not succeeded in doing anything."
+
+Silence followed; after a while Kmita removed his lynxskin cap, drew
+his hand over his forehead and said,--
+
+"I was struck in the battle; blood is leaving me, and I have grown
+weak."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XXXVIII.
+
+
+The sortie had attained its object only in part; though Boguslav's
+division had entered the city, the sortie itself had not done great
+things. It is true that Pan Kotvich's squadron and Oskyerko's dragoons
+had suffered seriously; but the Swedes too had strewn the field with
+many corpses, and one regiment of infantry, which Volodyovski and
+Vankovich had struck, was almost destroyed. The Lithuanians boasted
+that they had inflicted greater loss on the enemy than they had endured
+themselves. Pan Sapyeha alone suffered internally, because a new
+"confusion" had met him from which his fame might be seriously
+affected. The colonels attached to the hetman comforted him as well as
+they could; and to tell the truth this lesson was useful, for
+henceforward he had no more such wild banquets, and if there was some
+pleasure the greatest watchfulness was observed during the time of its
+continuance. The Swedes were caught the day after. Supposing that the
+hetman would not expect a repetition of the sortie so soon, they came
+outside the walls again; but driven from their ground and leaving a
+number of dead, they returned.
+
+Meanwhile they were examining Hassling in the hetman's quarters; this
+made Pan Andrei so impatient that he almost sprang out of his skin, for
+he wished to have the Scot to himself at the earliest, and talk with
+him touching Taurogi. He prowled about the quarters all day, went in
+every little while, listened to the statements, and sprang up whenever
+Boguslav's name was mentioned in the question.
+
+But in the evening he received an order to go on a scouting expedition.
+He said nothing, only set his teeth; for he had changed greatly
+already, and had learned to defer private affairs for public service.
+But he pushed the Tartars terribly during the expedition, burst out in
+anger at the least cause, and struck with his baton till the bones
+cracked. They said one to another that the "bagadyr" was mad, and
+marched silently, as silently as cowards, looking only to the eyes of
+the leader and guessing his thoughts on the wing.
+
+On returning he found Hassling in his quarters, but so ill that he
+could not speak, for his capture had affected him so cruelly that after
+the additional torture of a whole day's inquisition he had a fever, and
+did not understand what was said to him. Kmita therefore was forced to
+be satisfied with what Zagloba told of Hassling's statements; but they
+touched only public, not private affairs. Of Boguslav the young officer
+said only this,--that after his return from the expedition to Podlyasye
+and the defeat at Yanov he had become terribly ill from rage and
+melancholy; he fell into a fever, but as soon as he had recovered
+somewhat, he moved with his troops to Pomerania, whither Steinbock and
+the elector invited him most earnestly.
+
+"But where is he now?" asked Kmita.
+
+"According to what Hassling tells me, and he has no reason to lie, he
+is with the king's brother, at the fortified camp on the Narev and the
+Bug, where Boguslav is commanding a whole cavalry division," answered
+Zagloba.
+
+"Ha! and they think to come here with succor to the besieged. We shall
+meet, as God is in heaven, even if I had to go to him in disguise."
+
+"Do not grow angry for nothing! To Warsaw they would be glad to come
+with succor, but they cannot, for Charnyetski has placed himself in
+their way. Having neither infantry nor cannon, he cannot attack their
+camp, and they are afraid to go out against him, for they know that
+their soldiers could not withstand his in the field, and they know too
+that if they went out, they could not shield themselves with the river.
+If the king himself were there he would give battle, for under his
+command the soldiers fight better, being confident that he is a great
+warrior; but neither Douglas, nor the king's brother, nor Prince
+Boguslav, though all three are daring men, would venture against
+Charnyetski."
+
+"But where is the king?"
+
+"He has gone to Prussia. The king does not believe that we are before
+Warsaw already, and that we shall capture Wittemberg. But whether he
+believes or not, he had to go for two reasons,--first, because he must
+win over the elector, even at the price of all Great Poland; second,
+because the army, which he led out of the sack, is of no use until it
+has rested. Toil, watching, and continual alarms have so gnawed it that
+the soldiers are not able to hold muskets in their hands; and still
+they are the choicest regiments in the whole army, which through all
+the German and Danish regions have won famous victories."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the coming of Volodyovski.
+
+"How is Hassling?" asked he on the threshold.
+
+"He is sick and imagines every folly," answered Kmita.
+
+"And you, my dear Michael, what do you want of Hassling?" asked
+Zagloba.
+
+"Just as if you do not know!"
+
+"I could not know that it is a question with you of that cherry-tree
+which Prince Boguslav has planted in his garden. He is a diligent
+gardener; he does not need to wait a year for fruit."
+
+"I wish you were killed for such jokes!" cried the little knight.
+
+"Look at him, tell him the most innocent thing, and immediately his
+mustaches are quivering like the horns of a mad grasshopper. In what am
+I to blame? Seek vengeance on Boguslav, not on me."
+
+"God grant me to seek and to find!"
+
+"Just now Babinich has said the same! Before long I see that he will
+raise the whole army against the prince; but Boguslav is taking good
+care of himself, and without my stratagems you will not be able to
+succeed."
+
+Here both young men sprang to their feet and asked,--
+
+"Have you any stratagems?"
+
+"But do you think it is as easy to take a stratagem out of the head as
+a sabre out of the sheath? If Boguslav were here, surely I should find
+more than one; but at that distance, not only a stratagem, but a cannon
+will not strike. Pan Andrei, give orders to bring me a goblet of mead,
+for it is hot here to-day."
+
+"I'll give you a keg of it if you will invent something."
+
+"First, why do you stand over this Hassling like an executioner? He is
+not the only man captured; you can ask others."
+
+"I have already tortured others, but they are common soldiers; they
+know nothing, but he, as an officer, was at the court," answered Kmita.
+
+"That is a reason!" answered Zagloba. "I must talk with him too; from
+what he tells me of the person and ways of Prince Boguslav, stratagems
+may be important. Now the main thing is to finish the siege soon, for
+afterward we shall move surely against that army on the Narev. But
+somehow our gracious lord and the hetmans are a long time invisible."
+
+"How so?" asked Volodyovski. "I have returned this minute from the
+hetman, who has just received news that the king will take up position
+here this evening with the auxiliary divisions, and the hetmans with
+cavalry will come to-morrow. They are advancing from Sokal itself,
+resting but little, making forced marches. Besides, it has been known
+for two days that they are almost in sight."
+
+"Are they bringing many troops?"
+
+"Nearly five times as many as Sapyeha has, infantry Russian and
+Hungarian, very excellent; six thousand Tartars under Suba Gazi, but
+probably it is impossible to let them out for even a day, for they are
+very self-willed and plunder all around."
+
+"Better give them to Pan Andrei to lead," said Zagloba.
+
+"Yes," said Kmita, "I should lead them straightway from Warsaw, for
+they are of no use in a siege; I should take them to the Bug and the
+Narev."
+
+"They are of use," replied Volodyovski, "for none can see better than
+they that provisions do not enter the fortress."
+
+"Well, it will be warm for Wittemberg. Wait, old criminal!" cried
+Zagloba. "You have warred well, I will not deny that, but you have
+robbed and plundered still better; you had two mouths,--one for false
+oaths, the other for breaking promises,--but this time you will not beg
+off with both of them. The Gallic disease will dry up your skin, and
+doctors will tear it from you; but we will flay you better, Zagloba's
+head for that!"
+
+"Nonsense! he will surrender on conditions to the king, who will not do
+anything to him," answered Pan Michael; "and we shall have to give him
+military honors besides."
+
+"He will yield on conditions, will he? Indeed!" cried Zagloba. "We
+shall see!"
+
+Here he began to pound the table with such force that Roh Kovalski, who
+was coming in at the moment, was frightened and stood as if fixed to
+the threshold.
+
+"May I serve as a waiting-lad to Jews," shouted the old man, "if I let
+free out of Warsaw that blasphemer of the faith, that robber of
+churches, that oppressor of widows, that executioner of men and women,
+that hangman's assistant, that ruffian, that blood-spiller and
+money-grabber, that purse-gnawer, that flayer! All right! The king will
+let him out on conditions; but I, as I am a Catholic, as I am Zagloba,
+as I wish for happiness during life and desire God at death, will make
+such a tumult against him as no man has ever heard of in this
+Commonwealth before! Don't wave your hand, Pan Michael! I'll make a
+tumult! I repeat it, I'll make a tumult!"
+
+"Uncle will make a tumult!" thundered Roh Kovalski.
+
+Just then Akbah Ulan thrust in his beast-like face at the door.
+
+"Effendi!" said he to Kmita, "the armies of the king are visible beyond
+the Vistula."
+
+All sprang to their feet and rushed forth.
+
+The king had come indeed. First arrived the Tartar squadrons, under
+Suba Gazi, but not in such numbers as was expected; after them came the
+troops of the kingdom, many and well armed, and above all full of
+ardor. Before evening the whole army had passed the bridge freshly
+built by Oskyerko. Sapyeha was waiting for the king with squadrons
+drawn out as if ready for battle, standing one by the side of the
+other, like an immense wall, the end of which it was difficult to reach
+with the eye. The captains stood before the regiments; near them the
+standard-bearers, each with lowered ensign; the trumpets, kettle-drums,
+crooked trumpets, and drums made a noise indescribable. The squadrons
+of the kingdom, in proportion as they passed, stood just opposite the
+Lithuanians in line; between one and the other army was an interval of
+a hundred paces.
+
+Sapyeha with baton in hand went on foot to that open space; after him
+the chief civil and military dignitaries. On the other side, from the
+armies of the kingdom approached the king on a splendid Frisian horse,
+given him by Lyubomirski; he was arrayed as if for battle, in light
+armor of blue and gold, from under which was to be seen a black velvet
+kaftan, with a lace collar coming out on the breastplate, but instead
+of a helmet he wore the ordinary Swedish hat, with black feathers; but
+he wore military gloves, and long yellow boots coming far above his
+knees.
+
+After him rode the papal nuncio, the archbishop of Lvoff, the bishop of
+Kamenyets, the priest Tsyetsishovski, the voevoda of Cracow, the
+voevoda of Rus, Baron Lisola, Count Poettingen, Pan Kamenyetski, the
+ambassador of Moscow, Pan Grodzitski, general of artillery, Tyzenhauz,
+and many others. Sapyeha advanced as marshal of the kingdom to hold the
+king's stirrup; but the king sprang lightly from the saddle, hurried to
+Sapyeha and without saying a word, seized him in his embrace.
+
+And Yan Kazimir held him a long time, in view of both armies; silent
+all the while, but tears flowed down his cheeks in a stream, for he
+pressed to his bosom the truest servant of the king and the country,--a
+man who, though he did not equal others in genius, though he even erred
+at times, still soared in honesty above all the lords of that
+Commonwealth, never wavered in loyalty, sacrificed without a moment's
+thought his whole fortune, and from the beginning of the war exposed
+his breast for his king and the country.
+
+The Lithuanians, who had whispered previously among themselves that
+perhaps reprimands would meet Pan Sapyeha because he had let Karl
+Gustav escape from near Sandomir and for the recent carelessness at
+Warsaw, or at least a cool reception, seeing this heartiness of the
+king, raised in honor of the kindly monarch a tremendous heaven-echoing
+shout. The armies of the kingdom answered it immediately with one
+thunder-roll, and for some time above the noise of the music, the
+rattle of drums, the roar of musketry, were heard only these shouts,--
+
+"Vivat Yoannes Casimirus!"
+
+"Long life to the armies of the crown!"
+
+"Long life to the Lithuanians!"
+
+So they greeted one another at Warsaw. The walls trembled, and behind
+the walls the Swedes.
+
+"I shall bellow, as God is dear to me!" cried Zagloba, with emotion; "I
+cannot restrain myself. See our king, our father!--gracious gentlemen,
+I am blubbering,--our father, our king! the other day a wanderer
+deserted by all; now here--now here are a hundred thousand sabres at
+call! merciful God! I cannot keep from tears; yesterday a wanderer,
+to-day the Emperor of Germany has not such good soldiers--"
+
+Here the sluices were opened in the eyes of Zagloba, and he began to
+sob time after time; then he turned suddenly to Roh,--
+
+"Be silent! what are you whimpering about?"
+
+"And is Uncle not whimpering?" answered Roh.
+
+"True, as God is dear to me!--I was ashamed, gracious gentlemen, of
+this Commonwealth. But now I would not change with any nation! A
+hundred thousand sabres,--let others show the like. God has brought
+them to their minds; God has given this, God has given it!"
+
+Zagloba had not made a great mistake, for really there were nearly
+seventy thousand men at Warsaw, not counting Charnyetski's division,
+which had not arrived yet, and not counting the armed camp attendants
+who rendered service when necessary, and who straggled after every camp
+in countless multitudes.
+
+After the greeting and a hurried review of the troops, the king thanked
+Sapyeha's men, amid universal enthusiasm, for their faithful services,
+and went to Uyazdov. The troops occupied the positions assigned them.
+Some squadrons remained in Praga; others disposed themselves around the
+city. A gigantic train of wagons continued to cross the Vistula till
+the following midday.
+
+Next morning the suburbs of the city were as white with tents as if
+they had been covered with snow. Countless herds of horses were
+neighing on the adjoining meadows. After the army followed a crowd of
+Armenians, Jews, Tartars; another city, more extensive and tumultuous
+than that which was besieged, grew up on the plain.
+
+The Swedes, amazed during the first days at the power of the King of
+Poland, made no sorties, so that Pan Grodzitski, general of artillery,
+could ride around the city quietly and form his plan of siege.
+
+On the following day the camp attendants began to raise intrenchments
+here and there, according to Grodzitski's plan; they placed on them at
+once the smaller cannon, for the larger ones were to appear only a
+couple of weeks later.
+
+Yan Kazimir sent a message to old Wittemberg summoning him to surrender
+the city and lay down his arms, giving favorable conditions, which,
+when known, roused discontent in the army. That discontent was spread
+mainly by Zagloba, who had a special hatred of the Swedish commander.
+
+Wittemberg, as was easy to foresee, rejected the conditions and
+resolved on a defence to continue till the last drop of blood was shed,
+and to bury himself in the ruins of the city rather than yield it to
+the king. The size of the besieging army did not frighten him a whit,
+for he knew that an excessive number was rather a hindrance than help
+in a siege. He was informed also in good season that in the camp of Yan
+Kazimir there was not one siege gun, while the Swedes had more than
+enough of them, not taking into consideration their inexhaustible
+supply of ammunition.
+
+It was in fact to be foreseen that they would defend themselves with
+frenzy, for Warsaw had served them hitherto as a storehouse for booty.
+All the immense treasures looted in castles, in churches, in cities, in
+the whole Commonwealth, came to the capital, whence they were
+despatched in parties to Prussia, and farther to Sweden. But at the
+present time, when the whole country had risen, and castles defended by
+the smaller Swedish garrisons did not insure safety, booty was brought
+to Warsaw all the more. The Swedish soldier was more ready to sacrifice
+his life than his booty. A poor people who had seized the treasures of
+a wealthy land had acquired the taste of them to such a degree that the
+world had never seen more grasping robbers. The king himself had grown
+famous for greed; the generals followed his example, and Wittemberg
+surpassed them all. When it was a question of gain, neither the honor
+of a knight nor consideration for the dignity of rank restrained
+officers. They seized, they extorted, they skinned everything that
+could be taken. In Warsaw itself colonels of high office and noble
+birth were not ashamed to sell spirits and tobacco to their own
+soldiers, so as to cram their purses with the pay of the army.
+
+This too might rouse the Swedes to fury in defence, that their foremost
+men were at that time in Warsaw. First was Wittemberg himself, next in
+command to Karl Gustav. He was the first who had entered the
+Commonwealth and brought it to decline at Uistsie. In return for that
+service a triumph was prepared for him in Sweden as for a conqueror. In
+the city was Oxenstiern, the chancellor, a statesman renowned
+throughout the world, respected for honesty even by his enemies. He was
+called the Minerva of the king. To his counsel Karl was indebted for
+all his victories in negotiation. In the capital was also Wrangel, the
+younger Horn, Erickson, the second Loewenhaupt, and many Swedish ladies
+of high birth, who had followed their husbands to the country as to a
+new Swedish colony.
+
+The Swedes had something to defend. Yan Kazimir understood, therefore,
+that the siege, especially through the lack of heavy guns on his side,
+would be long and bloody. The hetmans understood this also, but the
+army would not think of it. Barely had Grodzitski raised the
+intrenchments in some fashion, barely had he pushed forward somewhat to
+the walls, when deputations went from all the squadrons to ask the king
+to permit volunteers to storm the walls. The king had to explain to
+them a long time that fortresses were not taken with sabres, before he
+could restrain their ardor.
+
+Meanwhile the works were pushed forward as rapidly as possible. The
+troops, not being able to storm, took eager part with the camp servants
+in raising these works; men from the foremost regiments, nay, even
+officers brought earth in wheelbarrows, carried fascines, labored. More
+than once the Swedes tried to hinder, and not a day passed without
+sorties; but barely were the Swedish musketeers outside the gate, when
+the Poles, working at the intrenchments, throwing aside wheelbarrows,
+bundles of twigs, spades and pickaxes, ran with sabres into the smoke
+so furiously that the Swedes had to hide in the fortress with all
+haste. In these engagements bodies fell thickly; the fosses and the
+open space as far as the intrenchments were full of graves, in which
+were placed sometimes small bundles of the weapons of the dead. At last
+even time failed for burial, so that bodies lay on the ground spreading
+a terrible odor around the city and the besiegers.
+
+In spite of the greatest difficulty citizens stole forth to the king's
+camp every day, reporting what happened in the city, and imploring on
+their knees to hasten the storm. The Swedes, they said, had a plenty of
+provisions as yet, but the people were dying of hunger on the streets;
+they lived in want, in oppression under the terrible hand of the
+garrison. Every day echoes brought to the Polish camp sounds of
+musket-shots in the city, and fugitives brought intelligence that the
+Swedes were shooting citizens suspected of good-will to Yan Kazimir.
+The hair stood on end at the stories of the fugitives. They said that
+the whole population, sick women, newly born infants, old men, all
+lived at night on the streets, for the Swedes had driven them from
+their houses, and made passages from wall to wall, so that the
+garrison, in case Yan Kazimir's troops should enter, might withdraw and
+defend themselves. Rains fell on the people in their camping-places; on
+clear days the sun burned them, at night the cold pinched them.
+Citizens were not allowed to kindle fires; they had no means of
+preparing warm food. Various diseases spread more and more, and carried
+away hundreds of victims.
+
+Yan Kazimir's heart was ready to burst when he heard these narratives.
+He sent therefore courier after courier to hasten the coming of the
+heavy guns. Days and weeks passed; but it was impossible to undertake
+anything more important than the repulse of sorties. Still the
+besiegers were strengthened by the thought that the garrison must fail
+of provisions at last, since the roads were blocked in such fashion
+that a mouse could not reach the fortress. The besieged lost hope of
+assistance; the troops under Douglas, which were posted nearest, were
+not only unable to come to the rescue, but had to think of their own
+skin; for Yan Kazimir, having even too many men, was able to harass
+them.
+
+At last the Poles, even before the coming of the heavy guns, opened on
+the fortress with the smaller ones. Pan Grodzitski from the side of the
+Vistula, raised in front of himself, like a mole, earth defences,
+pushed to within six yards of the moat, and vomited a continual fire on
+the unfortunate city. The magnificent Kazanovski Palace was ruined; and
+the Poles did not regret it, for the building belonged to the traitor
+Radzeyovski. The shattered walls were barely standing, shining with
+their empty windows; day and night balls were dropping on the splendid
+terraces and in the gardens, smashing the beautiful fountains, bridges,
+arbors, and marble statues, terrifying the peacocks which with pitiful
+screams gave notice of their unhappy condition.
+
+Pan Grodzitski hurled fire on the Bernardine bell-tower, for he had
+decided to begin the assault on that side.
+
+Meanwhile the camp servants begged permission to attack the city, for
+they wished greatly to reach the Swedish treasures earliest. The king
+refused at first, but finally consented. A number of prominent officers
+undertook to lead them, and among others Kmita, who was imbittered by
+delay, and not only that, but in general he knew not what to do with
+himself; for Hassling, having fallen into a grievous fever, lay without
+consciousness for some weeks and could speak of nothing.
+
+Men therefore were summoned to the storm. Grodzitski opposed this to
+the last moment, insisting that until a breach was made the city could
+not be taken, even though the regular infantry were to go to the
+assault. But as the king had given permission, Grodzitski was forced to
+yield.
+
+June 15, about six thousand camp servants assembled; ladders, bundles
+of brush, and bags of sand were prepared. Toward evening a throng,
+barefoot and armed for the greater part only with sabres, began to
+approach the city where the trenches and earth defences came nearest
+the moat. When it had become perfectly dark, the men rushed, at a given
+signal, toward the moat with a terrible uproar, and began to fill it.
+The watchful Swedes received them with a murderous fire from muskets
+and cannons, and a furious battle sprang up along the whole eastern
+side of the city. Under cover of darkness the Poles filled the moat in
+a twinkle and reached the walls in an orderless mass. Kmita, with two
+thousand men, fell upon an earth fort, which the Poles called "the
+mole-hill," and which stood near the Cracow gate. In spite of a
+desperate defence he captured this place at a blow; the garrison was
+cut to pieces with sabres, not a man was spared. Pan Andrei gave
+command to turn the guns on the gate and some of them to the farther
+walls, so as to aid and cover somewhat those crowds who were striving
+to scale the walls.
+
+These men, however, were not so fortunate. They put the ladders in
+position, and ascended them so furiously that the best trained infantry
+could not have done better; but the Swedes, safe behind battlements,
+fired into their very faces, and hurled stones and blocks prepared for
+the purpose; under the weight of these the ladders were broken into
+pieces, and at last the infantry pushed down the assaulters with long
+spears, against which sabres had no effect.
+
+More than five hundred of the best camp servants were lying at the foot
+of the wall; the rest passed the moat under an incessant fire, and took
+refuge again in the Polish intrenchments.
+
+The storm was repulsed, but the little fort remained in the hands of
+the Poles. In vain did the Swedes roll at it all night from their
+heaviest guns; Kmita answered them in like manner from those cannon
+which he had captured. Only in the morning, when light came, were his
+guns dismounted to the last one. Wittemberg, for whom that intrenchment
+was as his head, sent infantry at once with the order not to dare
+return without retaking what had been lost; but Grodzitski sent
+reinforcements to Kmita, by the aid of which he not only repulsed the
+infantry, but fell upon and drove them to the Cracow gate.
+
+Grodzitski was so delighted that he ran in person to the king with the
+report.
+
+"Gracious Lord," said he, "I was opposed to yesterday's work, but now I
+see that it was not lost. While that intrenchment was in the enemy's
+hands I could do nothing against the gate; but now only let the heavy
+guns come, and in one night I will make a breach."
+
+The king, who was grieved that so many good men had fallen, was
+rejoiced at Grodzitski's words, and asked at once,--
+
+"But who has command in that intrenchment?"
+
+"Pan Babinich," answered a number of voices.
+
+The king clapped his hands. "He must be first everywhere! Worthy
+General, I know him. He is a terribly stubborn cavalier, and will not
+let himself be smoked out."
+
+"It would be a mistake beyond forgiveness, Gracious Lord, if we should
+permit that. I have already sent him infantry and small cannon; for
+that they will try to smoke him out is certain. It is a question of
+Warsaw! That cavalier is worth his weight in gold."
+
+"He is worth more; for this is not his first, and not his tenth
+achievement," said the king.
+
+Then Yan Kazimir gave orders to bring quickly a horse and a
+field-glass, and he rode out to look at the earthwork. But it was not
+to be seen from behind the smoke, for a number of forty-eight-pounders
+were blowing on it with ceaseless fire; they hurled long balls, bombs,
+and grape-shot. Still the intrenchment was so near the gate that
+musket-balls almost reached it; the bomb-shells could be seen perfectly
+when they flew up like cloudlets, and, describing a closely bent bow,
+fell into that cloud of smoke, bursting with terrible explosion. Many
+fell beyond the intrenchment, and they prevented the approach of
+reinforcements.
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost!" said the king.
+"Tyzenhauz, look! A pile of torn earth is all that remains. Tyzenhauz,
+do you know who is there?"
+
+"Gracious King, Babinich is there. If he comes out living, he will be
+able to say that he was in hell during life."
+
+"We must send him fresh men. Worthy General--"
+
+"The orders are already given, but it is difficult for them to go,
+since bombs pass over and fall very thickly on this side of the fort."
+
+"Turn all the guns on the walls so as to make a diversion," said the
+king.
+
+Grodzitski put spurs to his horse and galloped to the trenches. After a
+while cannonading was heard on the whole line, and somewhat later it
+was seen that a fresh division of Mazovian infantry went out of the
+nearest trenches, and on a run to the mole-hill.
+
+The king stood there, looking continually. At last he cried: "Babinich
+should be relieved in the command. And who, gentlemen, will volunteer
+to take his place?"
+
+Neither Pan Yan, Pan Stanislav, nor Volodyovski was near the king,
+therefore a moment of silence followed.
+
+"I!" said suddenly Pan Topor Grylevski, an officer of the light
+squadron of the primate.
+
+"I!" said Tyzenhauz.
+
+"I! I! I!" called at once a number of voices.
+
+"Let the man go who offered himself first," said the king.
+
+Pan Topor Grylevski made the sign of the cross, raised the canteen to
+his mouth, then galloped away.
+
+The king remained looking at the cloud of smoke with which the
+mole-hill was covered, and the smoke rose above it like a bridge up to
+the very wall. Since the fort was near the Vistula, the walls of the
+city towered above it, and therefore the fire was terrible.
+
+Meanwhile the thunder of cannon decreased somewhat, though the balls
+did not cease to describe arcs, and a rattle of musketry was given out
+as if thousands of men were beating threshing-floors with flails.
+
+"It is evident that they are going to the attack again," said
+Tyzenhauz. "If there were less smoke, we should see the infantry."
+
+"Let us approach a little," said the king, urging his horse.
+
+After him others moved on, and riding along the bank of the Vistula
+from Uyazdov they approached almost to the Solets itself; and since the
+gardens of the palaces and the cloisters coming down to the Vistula had
+been cleared by the Swedes in the winter for fuel, trees did not cover
+the view, they could see even without field-glasses that the Swedes
+were really moving again to the storm.
+
+"I would rather lose that position," said the king all at once, "than
+that Babinich should die."
+
+"God will defend him!" said the priest Tsyetsishovski.
+
+"And Pan Grodzitski will not fail to send him reinforcements," added
+Tyzenhauz.
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by some horseman who was
+approaching from the direction of the city at all speed. Tyzenhauz,
+having such sight that he saw better with the naked eye than others
+through field-glasses, caught his head at sight of him, and said,--
+
+"Grylevski is returning! It must be that Kmita has fallen, and the fort
+is captured."
+
+The king shaded his eyes with his hands. Grylevski rushed up, reined in
+his horse, and, panting for breath, exclaimed,--
+
+"Gracious Lord!"
+
+"What has happened? Is he killed?" asked the king.
+
+"Pan Babinich says that he is well, and does not wish any one to take
+his place; he begs only to send him food, for he has had nothing to eat
+since morning."
+
+"Is he alive then?" cried the king.
+
+"He says that he is comfortable there!" repeated Grylevski.
+
+But others, catching breath from wonder, began to cry: "That is
+courage! He is a soldier!"
+
+"But it was necessary to stay there and relieve him absolutely," said
+the king to Grylevski. "Is it not a shame to come back? Were you
+afraid, or what? It would have been better not to go."
+
+"Gracious Lord," answered Grylevski, "whoso calls me a coward, him I
+will correct on any field, but before majesty I must justify myself. I
+was in the ant-hill itself, but Babinich flew into my face because of
+my errand: 'Go,' said he, 'to the hangman! I am at work here, I am
+almost creeping out of my skin, and I have no time to talk, but I will
+not share either my glory or command with any man. I am well here and I
+will stay here, but I'll give orders to take you outside the trench! I
+wish you were killed!' said he. 'We want to eat, and they send us a
+commandant instead of food!' What had I to do, Gracious Lord? I do not
+wonder at his temper, for their hands are dropping from toil."
+
+"And how is it?" asked the king; "is he holding the place?"
+
+"Desperately. What would he not hold? I forgot to tell besides that he
+shouted to me when I was going: 'I'll stay here a week and will not
+surrender, if I have something to eat!'"
+
+"Is it possible to hold out there?"
+
+"There, Gracious Lord, is the genuine day of judgment! Bomb is falling
+after bomb; pieces of shells are whistling, like devils, around the
+ear; the earth is dug out into ditches; it is impossible to speak from
+smoke. The balls hurl around sand and earth, so that every moment a man
+must shake himself to avoid being buried. Many have fallen, but those
+who are living lie in furrows in the intrenchments, and have made
+defences before their heads of stakes strengthened with earth. The
+Swedes constructed the place carefully, and now it serves against them.
+While I was there, infantry came from Grodzitski, and now there is
+fighting again."
+
+"Since we cannot attack the walls until a breach is made," said the
+king, "we will strike the palace on the Cracow suburbs to-day; that
+will be the best diversion."
+
+"The palace is wonderfully strengthened, almost changed into a
+fortress," remarked Tyzenhauz.
+
+"But they will not hurry from the city to give aid, for all their fury
+will be turned on Babinich," said the king. "So will it be, as I am
+here alive, so will it be! I will order the storm at once; but first I
+will bless Babinich."
+
+Then the king took from the priest a golden crucifix in which were
+splinters of the true cross, and raising it on high he began to bless
+the distant mound, covered with fire and smoke, saying,--
+
+"O God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, have mercy on Thy people, and give
+salvation to the dying! Amen! amen! amen!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XXXIX.
+
+
+A bloody storm followed from the side of the Novy Svyat against the
+Cracow suburbs, not over-successful, but in so far effective that it
+turned the attention of the Swedes from the intrenchment defended by
+Kmita, and permitted the garrison enclosed in it to rest somewhat. The
+Poles pushed forward however, to the Kazimirovski Palace, but they
+could not hold that point.
+
+On the other side they stormed up to the Danillovich Palace and to
+Dantzig House, equally without result. A number of hundreds of people
+fell again. The king, however, had this consolation: he saw that even
+the general militia rushed to the walls with the greatest daring and
+devotion, and that after those attempts, more or less unsuccessful,
+their courage not only had not fallen, but on the contrary assurance of
+victory was growing strong in the army.
+
+The most fortunate event of the day was the arrival of Pan Yan Zamoyski
+and Pan Charnyetski. The first brought very excellent infantry and guns
+from Zamost, so heavy that the Swedes had nothing like them in Warsaw.
+The second, in agreement with Sapyeha, having besieged Douglas, and
+with some Lithuanian troops and the general militia of Podlyasye, under
+command of Pan Yan, had come to Warsaw to take part in the general
+storm. It was hoped by Charnyetski as well as others that this would be
+the last storm.
+
+Zamoyski's heavy guns were placed in the position taken by Kmita; they
+began work immediately against the walls and the gate, and forced the
+Swedish howitzers to silence at once. General Grodzitski himself
+occupied the "molehill," and Kmita returned to his Tartars.
+
+But he had not reached his quarters when he was summoned to Uyazdov.
+The king in presence of the whole staff applauded the young knight;
+neither Charnyetski, Sapyeha, Lyubomirski, nor the hetmans spared
+praises on him. He stood there in torn garments covered with earth, his
+face entirely discolored with powder smoke; without sleep, soiled, but
+joyous because he had held the place, had won so much praise, and
+gained immeasurable glory in both armies. Among other cavaliers Pan
+Michael and Pan Yan congratulated him.
+
+"You do not know indeed, Pan Andrei," said the little knight, "what
+great weight you have with the king. I was at the council of war
+yesterday, for Pan Charnyetski took me with him. They talked of the
+storm, and then of the news which had just come in from Lithuania, the
+war there, and the cruelties which Pontus de la Gardie and the Swedes
+permit. They were considering at the council how to strengthen
+resistance. Sapyeha said it was best to send thither a couple of
+squadrons and a man who could be there what Charnyetski was at the
+beginning of the war in Poland. To which the king answered: 'There is
+only one such man, Babinich.' The others confirmed this at once."
+
+"I would go most willingly to Lithuania, and especially to Jmud,"
+answered Kmita. "I resolved to ask of the king myself permission to go,
+but I am waiting till Warsaw is taken."
+
+"There will be a general storm to-morrow," said Zagloba.
+
+"I know, but how is Kettling?"
+
+"Who is that? Hassling?"
+
+"All one, for he has two names, as is the custom among the English, the
+Scots, and many other nations."
+
+"True," answered Zagloba, "and a Spaniard every day of the week has a
+new name for himself. Your servant told me that Hassling, or Kettling,
+is well; he has begun to talk, walks, the fever has left him, he calls
+for food every hour."
+
+"Have you been with him?" asked Kmita of Pan Michael.
+
+"I have not, for I have had no time. Who has a head for anything but
+the storm?"
+
+"Then let us go now."
+
+"Go to sleep first," said Zagloba.
+
+"True! true! I am barely standing on my feet."
+
+So when he came to his own quarters Pan Andrei followed Zagloba's
+advice, especially as he found Hassling asleep. But Zagloba and
+Volodyovski came to see him in the evening; they sat down in the broad
+summer-house which the Tartars had made for their "bagadyr." The
+Kyemliches poured out for them mead a hundred years old, which the king
+had sent to Kmita; and they drank it willingly, for the air was hot
+outside. Hassling, pale and emaciated, seemed to draw life and strength
+from the precious liquid. Zagloba clicked with his tongue, and wiped
+perspiration from his forehead.
+
+"Hei! how the great guns are thundering!" said the young Scot,
+listening. "To-morrow you will go to the storm--it is well!--for the
+healthy--God give you blessing! I am of foreign blood, and serve him
+whom it was my duty to serve, but you have my best wishes. Ah, what
+mead this is! Life enters me."
+
+Thus speaking, he threw back his golden hair and raised his blue eyes
+toward heaven; he had a wonderful face, half childlike as yet. Zagloba
+looked at him with a certain emotion.
+
+"You speak Polish as well as any of us," said he. "Become a Pole, love
+this our country, and you will do an honorable deed, and mead will not
+be lacking to you. It is not difficult for a soldier to receive
+naturalization with us."
+
+"All the more easy since I am a noble," answered Hassling. "My name is
+Hassling-Kettling of Elgin. My family come from England, though settled
+in Scotland."
+
+"Those countries beyond the sea are far away, and somehow it is more
+decent for a man to live here," said Zagloba.
+
+"It is pleasant for me here."
+
+"But unpleasant for us," said Kmita, who from the beginning was
+twisting impatiently on the bench, "for we are anxious to hear what is
+going on in Taurogi; but you are talking genealogies."
+
+"Ask me; I will answer."
+
+"Have you seen Panna Billevich often?"
+
+Over the pale face of Hassling blushes passed. "Every day!" said he.
+
+Kmita looked at him quickly. "Were you such a confidant? Why do you
+blush? Every day,--how every day?"
+
+"For she knew that I wished her well, and I rendered her some services.
+That will appear from the further narrative, but now it is necessary to
+commence at the beginning. You, gentlemen, know, perhaps, that I was
+not at Kyedani when Prince Boguslav came and took that lady to Taurogi?
+Therefore I will not repeat why that happened, for different people
+gave different accounts. I will only say that they had scarcely arrived
+when all saw at once that the prince was terribly in love--"
+
+"God punish him!" cried Kmita.
+
+"Amusements followed, such as had not been before,--tilting at the ring
+and tournaments. Any one would have thought it a time of the greatest
+peace; but letters were coming in every day, as well as envoys from the
+elector and from Prince Yanush. We knew that Prince Yanush was pushed
+by Sapyeha and the confederates; he implored for rescue by the mercy of
+God, for destruction was threatening him. We did nothing. On the
+elector's boundary troops were standing ready, captains were coming
+with letters; but we did not go with assistance, for the prince had no
+success with the lady."
+
+"Is that why Boguslav did not give aid to his cousin?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"It is. Patterson said the same, and all the persons nearest the
+prince. Some complained of this; others were glad that the Radzivills
+were falling. Sakovich conducted all public business for the prince,
+answered letters, and held council with the envoys; but the prince was
+laboring on one idea only, to contrive some kind of amusement, either a
+cavalcade or hunt. He, a miser, scattered money on every side. He gave
+orders to fell forests for whole miles, so that the lady might have a
+better view from her windows; in a word, he really scattered flowers
+under her feet, and received her in such fashion that had she been
+Queen of Sweden he could have invented nothing better. Many pitied her
+and said, 'All this is for her ruin; as to marrying, the prince will
+not marry, and if he can only catch her heart he will deceive her.' But
+it appeared that she was not a lady to be conducted whither virtue does
+not go. Oh!"
+
+"Well, what?" cried Kmita, springing up. "I know that better than
+others!"
+
+"How did Panna Billevich receive these royal homages?" asked Pan
+Michael.
+
+"At first with affable face, though it was evident that she was bearing
+some sorrow in her heart. She was present at the hunts, at the
+masquerades, cavalcades, and tournaments, thinking indeed that these
+were usual court amusements with the prince. It happened on a time that
+the prince, straining his imagination over various spectacles, wished
+to show the lady the counterfeit of war; he had a settlement burned
+near Taurogi, infantry defended it, the prince stormed the place.
+Evidently he gained a great victory, after which, being sated with
+praise, he fell at the lady's feet and begged for a return of his love.
+It is not known what he proposed to her, but from that time their
+friendship was at an end. She began to hold night and day to the sleeve
+of her uncle, the sword-bearer of Rossyeni; but the prince--"
+
+"Began to threaten her, did he?" cried Kmita.
+
+"What, threaten! He dressed himself as a Greek shepherd, as Philemon;
+special couriers were flying to Koenigsberg for patterns of shepherd's
+garments, for ribbons and wigs. He feigned despair, he walked under her
+windows, and played on a lute. And here I tell you, gentlemen, what I
+really think. He was a savage executioner of the virtue of ladies, and
+it may be boldly said of him, as is said in our country of such people,
+his sighs filled out the sails of more than one lady; but this time he
+fell in love in earnest,--which is no wonder, for the lady reminds one
+more of a goddess than a dweller in this earthly vale."
+
+Here Hassling blushed again, but Pan Andrei did not see it; for seizing
+his sides with satisfaction and pride, he looked with a triumphant
+glance at Zagloba and Volodyovski.
+
+"We know her, a perfect Diana; she needs only the moon in her hair!"
+said the little knight.
+
+"What, Diana! Diana's dogs would howl at Diana if they could see Panna
+Billevich."
+
+"Therefore I said it is 'no wonder,'" answered Hassling.
+
+"Well! But for that 'no wonder' I would burn him with a slow fire; for
+that 'no wonder' I would have him shod with hob-nails--"
+
+"Give us peace!" interrupted Zagloba. "Get him first, then play pranks;
+but now let this cavalier speak."
+
+"More than once I was on watch before the room in which he slept,"
+continued Hassling. "I know how he turned on his bed, sighed, talked to
+himself, and hissed, as if from pain; evidently desires were burning
+him. He changed terribly, dried up. It may be, too, that the illness
+under which he afterward fell was diving into him. Meanwhile news flew
+through the whole court that the prince had become so distracted that
+he wanted to marry. This came to Yanush's princess, who with her
+daughter was living at Taurogi. Then began anger and disputes; for, as
+you know, Boguslav, according to agreement, is to marry Yanush's
+daughter when she comes of age. But he forgot everything, so pierced
+was his heart. Yanush's princess, falling into a rage, went with her
+daughter to Courland. That same evening he made a proposal to Panna
+Billevich."
+
+"Did he make proposals?" cried Zagloba, Kmita, and Pan Michael, with
+astonishment.
+
+"He did. First to the sword-bearer of Rossyeni, who was no less
+astonished than you, and would not believe his own ears; but convinced
+at last he was barely able to control himself from delight, for it was
+no small splendor for the house of Billevich to be united with the
+Radzivills. It is true, as Patterson said, that there is some
+connection already, but it is old and forgotten."
+
+"Tell on!" said Kmita, trembling from impatience.
+
+"Both went to the lady with all ostentation, as is the custom on such
+occasions. The whole court was trembling. Evil tidings came from Prince
+Yanush. Sakovich alone read them, but no one paid attention to them,
+nor even to Sakovich, for he had fallen out of favor because he had
+proposed the marriage. But among us some said that it was no novelty
+for the Radzivills to marry ordinary noble women; that in the
+Commonwealth all nobles were equal, and that the house of Billevich
+went back to Roman times. And this was said by those who wished to gain
+for themselves the favor of the coming princess. Others asserted that
+this was a stratagem of the prince to come to great intimacy with the
+lady, which happens not infrequently between persons betrothed."
+
+"That was it! Nothing else," said Zagloba.
+
+"And so I think," said Hassling; "but listen further. When we were
+deliberating in the court among ourselves in this fashion, the report
+went out like a thunderbolt that the lady had cut all doubt as with a
+sabre, for she refused him directly."
+
+"God bless her!" cried Kmita.
+
+"She refused him directly," continued Hassling. "It was enough to look
+at the prince to know that. He, to whom princesses yielded, could not
+endure resistance, and almost went mad. It was dangerous to appear
+before him. We all saw that it would not remain long thus, and that the
+prince would use force sooner or later. In fact, the sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni was carried off the next day to Tyltsa, beyond the elector's
+boundary. That day the lady implored the officer keeping guard before
+her door to give her a loaded pistol. The officer did not refuse that,
+for being a noble and man of honor he felt compassion for the lady and
+homage for her beauty and resolution."
+
+"Who was that officer?" asked Kmita.
+
+"I," answered Hassling, dryly.
+
+Pan Andrei seized him by the shoulders, so that the young Scot, being
+weak, called out from pain.
+
+"That is nothing!" cried Kmita. "You are not a prisoner; you are my
+brother, my friend! Tell me what you wish! In God's name, tell me what
+you wish!"
+
+"To rest awhile," answered Hassling, breathing heavily; and he was
+silent. He merely pressed the hands which Pan Michael and Zagloba gave
+him. At last, seeing that all were burning with curiosity, he
+continued,--
+
+"I forewarned her too of what all knew, that the prince's physician was
+preparing some intoxicating drug. Meanwhile fears turned out to be
+groundless, for God interfered in the affair. He touched the prince
+with his finger, threw him on a bed of sickness, and kept him there a
+month. It is a marvel, gentlemen, but it happened as if he had been cut
+from his feet, as with a scythe, that same day, when he intended to
+attack the virtue of this lady. The hand of God, I say, nothing else!
+He thought that himself, and was afraid; may be too that during his
+sickness the desire left him, may be he was waiting to regain his
+strength; it is enough, that when he came to himself he left her in
+peace, and even permitted the sword-bearer to come from Tyltsa. It is
+true, also, that the sickness which confined him to his bed left him,
+but not the fever, which is, I believe, crushing him to this day. It is
+true, also, that soon after he left the bed he had to go on the
+expedition to Tykotsin, where defeat met him. He returned with a still
+greater fever; then the elector sent for him. But meanwhile a change
+took place at Taurogi, of which it is wonderful and laughable to tell;
+it is enough that the prince cannot count on the loyalty of any officer
+or any attendant, unless on very old ones, who neither hear nor see
+perfectly, and therefore guard nothing well."
+
+"What happened?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"During the Tykotsin campaign, before the defeat at Tanov, they
+captured a certain Panna Anusia Borzobogati, and sent her to Taurogi."
+
+"There, Grandmother, you have cakes!" exclaimed Zagloba.
+
+Pan Michael began to blink and move his mustaches; at last he said:
+"Say nothing bad of her, or when you recover you will have to meet me."
+
+"Even if I wished I could say nothing bad of that lady. But if she is
+your betrothed, I say that you take poor care of her; and if she is a
+relative, you know her too well to deny what I say. It is enough that
+in one week she made all in the company, old and young, in love with
+her, and only by using her eyes with the addition of some tricks of
+witchcraft, of which I can give no account."
+
+"She! I should know her in hell by this," muttered Zagloba.
+
+"It is a wonderful thing!" said Hassling. "Panna Billevich is equal to
+her in beauty, but has such dignity and unapproachableness that a man
+while admiring and doing homage to her does not dare to raise his eyes,
+much less to conceive any hope. You know yourselves, gentlemen, that
+there are different kinds of ladies: some are like ancient vestals;
+others, you have barely seen them and you wish--"
+
+"Worthy sir!" said Pan Michael, threateningly.
+
+"Don't make a fool of yourself, Michael, for he tells the truth," said
+Zagloba. "You go around like a young cockerel and show the whites of
+your eyes; but that she is a coquette we all know, and you have said so
+more than a hundred times."
+
+"Let us leave this matter," said Hassling. "I wished simply to explain
+to you, gentlemen, why only a few were in love with Panna Billevich,
+those who could really appreciate her unrivalled perfection [here he
+blushed again], and with Panna Borzobogati nearly all. As God is dear
+to me, I had to laugh, for it was just as if some plague had come upon
+hearts. Disputes and duels increased in the twinkle of an eye. And
+about what? For what? You must know that there was no one who could
+boast of the love of the lady; each one believed blindly in this alone,
+that earlier or later he would have some success--"
+
+"He has painted her, as it were!" muttered Pan Michael.
+
+"But these two young ladies became wonderfully fond of each other,"
+continued Hassling; "one would not move a step without the other, and
+Panna Borzobogati manages in Taurogi as it pleases her."
+
+"How is that?" asked the little knight.
+
+"For she rules everybody. Sakovich did not go on a campaign this time,
+because he is in love; and Sakovich is absolute master in all the
+possessions of Prince Boguslav. And Panna Anusia governs through him."
+
+"Is he so much in love with her?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"He is, and has the greatest confidence in himself, for he is a very
+rich man."
+
+"And his name is Sakovich?"
+
+"You wish, I see, to remember him well."
+
+"Certainly!" answered Pan Michael, as it were, carelessly, but at the
+same time he moved his mustaches so ominously that a shudder went
+through Zagloba.
+
+"I only wish to add," continued Hassling, "that if Panna Borzobogati
+should command Sakovich to betray the prince and lighten her escape and
+that of her friend, I think he would do it without hesitation; but so
+far as I know she wishes to do that without his knowledge, maybe to
+spite him, who knows? It is enough that an officer, a relative of mine,
+but not a Catholic, assured me that the departure of the sword-bearer
+with the ladies is arranged; officers are involved in the conspiracy,
+and it is to take place soon."
+
+Here Hassling began to breathe heavily, for he was weary and was using
+the last of his strength.
+
+"And this is the most important thing that I had to tell you," added
+he, hurriedly.
+
+Volodyovski and Kmita seized their heads.
+
+"Whither are they going to flee?"
+
+"To the forests and through the forests to Byalovyej."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of Sapyeha's
+orderly, who delivered to Pan Michael and Kmita a quarter of a sheet of
+paper folded in four. Volodyovski had barely unfolded his when he
+said,--
+
+"The order to occupy positions for to-morrow's work."
+
+"Do you hear how the cannons are roaring?" asked Zagloba.
+
+"Well, to-morrow! to-morrow!"
+
+"Uf! hot!" said Zagloba, "a bad day for a storm,--may the devil take
+such heat! Mother of God! But more than one will grow cold in spite of
+the heat; but not those--not those who commend themselves to Thee, our
+Patroness-- But the cannons are thundering! I am too old for storms;
+the open field is something else."
+
+Another officer appeared in the door.
+
+"Is his grace Pan Zagloba here?" asked he.
+
+"I am here."
+
+"By the command of our Gracious King, you are to be near his person
+to-morrow."
+
+"Ha! he wishes to keep me from the storm, for he knows that the old man
+will move first, only let the trumpets sound. He is a kind lord,
+mindful; I should not like to annoy him; but whether I shall restrain
+myself I know not, for when the desire presses me I think of nothing,
+and roll straight into the smoke. Such is my nature! A kind lord! Do
+you hear how the trumpets are sounding for every one to take his place?
+Well, to-morrow, to-morrow. Saint Peter will have work; he must have
+his books ready. In hell too they have put fresh pitch in the kettles,
+a bath for the Swedes. Uf! uf! to-morrow!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XL.
+
+
+July 1, between Povanski and the settlement afterward called Marymont,
+was celebrated a great field Mass, which ten thousand men of the
+quarter-soldiers heard with attentive mind. The king made a vow that in
+case of victory he would build a church to the Most Holy Lady.
+Dignitaries, the hetmans, the knights made vows, and even simple
+soldiers, following the example, each according to his means, for this
+was to be the day of the final storm.
+
+After the Mass each of the leaders moved to his own command. Sapyeha
+took his position opposite the Church of the Holy Ghost, which at that
+time was outside the walls; but because it was the key to the walls, it
+was greatly strengthened by the Swedes, and occupied in fitting manner
+by the troops. Charnyetski was to capture Dantzig House, for the rear
+wall of that building formed a part of the city wall, and by passing
+through the building it was possible to reach the city. Pyotr
+Opalinski, the voevoda of Podlyasye, with men from Great Poland and
+Mazovia, was to attack from the Cracow suburbs and the Vistula. The
+quarter-regiments were to attack the gates of New City. There were so
+many men that they almost exceeded the approaches to the walls; the
+entire plain, all the neighboring suburban villages and the meadows
+were overflowed with a sea of soldiers. Beyond the men were white
+tents, after the tents wagons far away; the eye was lost in the blue
+distance before it could reach the end of that swarm.
+
+Those legions were standing in perfect readiness, with weapons point
+forward, and one foot in advance for the run; they were ready at any
+moment to rush to the breaches made by the guns of heavy calibre, and
+especially by Zamoyski's great guns. The guns did not cease to play for
+a moment; the storm was deferred only because they were waiting for the
+final answer of Wittemberg to the letter which the grand chancellor
+Korytsinski had sent him. When about midday the officer returned with a
+refusal, the ominous trumpets rang out around the city, and the storm
+began.
+
+The armies of the kingdom under the hetmans, Charnyetski's men, the
+regiments of the king, the infantry regiments of Zamoyski, the
+Lithuanians of Sapyeha, and the legions of the general militia rushed
+toward the walls like a swollen river. But from behind the walls
+bloomed out against them rolls of white smoke and darts of flame; heavy
+cannon, arquebuses, double-barrelled guns, muskets thundered
+simultaneously; the earth was shaken in its foundations. The balls
+broke into that throng of men, ploughed long furrows in it; but the men
+ran on and tore up to the fortress, regarding neither fire nor death.
+Clouds of powder smoke hid the sun.
+
+Each attacked furiously what was nearest him,--the hetmans the gates of
+New City; Charnyetski, Dantzig House; Sapyeha with the Lithuanians, the
+Church of the Holy Ghost; the Mazovians and men of Great Poland, the
+Cracow suburbs.
+
+The heaviest work fell to the last-mentioned men, for the palaces and
+houses along the Cracow suburbs were turned into fortresses. But that
+day such fury of battle had seized the Mazovians that nothing could
+stand before their onset. They took by storm house after house, palace
+after palace; they fought in windows, in doors, in passages.
+
+After the capture of one house, before the blood was dry on their hands
+and faces, they rushed to another; again a hand-to-hand battle, and
+again they rushed farther. The private regiments vied with the general
+militia, and the general militia with the infantry. They had been
+commanded before advancing to the storm to carry at their breasts
+bundles of unripe grain to ward off the bullets, but in the ardor and
+frenzy of battle they hurled aside every defence, and ran forward with
+bare bosoms. In the midst of a bloody struggle the chapel of the Tsar
+Shuiski and the lordly palace of the Konyetspolskis were captured. The
+Swedes were destroyed to the last man in the smaller buildings, in the
+stables of the magnates, in the gardens descending to the Vistula. Near
+the Kazanovski Palace the Swedish infantry tried to make a stand in the
+street, and reinforced from the walls of the palace, from the church
+and the bell-tower of the Bernardines, which was turned into a strong
+fortress, they received the attack with a cutting fire.
+
+But the hail of bullets did not stop the attack for a moment; and the
+nobles, with the cry of "Mazovians victorious!" rushed with sabres into
+the centre of the quadrangle; after them came the land infantry,
+servants armed with poles, pickaxes, and scythes. The quadrangle was
+broken in a twinkle, and hewing began. Swedes and Poles were so mingled
+together that they formed one gigantic mass, which squirmed, twisted,
+and rolled in its own blood between the Kazanovski Palace, the house of
+Radzeyovski, and the Cracow gate.
+
+But new legions of warriors breathing blood came on continually, like a
+foaming river, from the direction of the Cracow gate. The Swedish
+infantry was cut to pieces at last, and then began that famous storm of
+the Kazanovski Palace and the Bernardines' Church which in great part
+decided the fate of the day.
+
+Zagloba commanded, for he was mistaken the day before in thinking that
+the king called him to his person only to be present; for, on the
+contrary, he confided to him, as to a famous and experienced warrior,
+command over the camp servants, who with the quarter-soldiers and the
+general militia were to go as volunteers to storm from that side.
+Zagloba was willing, it is true, to go with these men in the rear, and
+content himself with occupying the palaces already captured; but when
+in the very beginning all vying with one another were mingled
+completely, the human current bore him on with the others. So he went;
+for although he had from nature great circumspection as a gift, and
+preferred, where it was possible, not to expose his life to danger, he
+had for so many years become accustomed to battles in spite of himself,
+had been present in so many dreadful slaughters, that when the
+inevitable came he fought with others, and even better than others, for
+he fought with desperation and rage in a manful heart.
+
+So at this time he found himself at the gate of the Kazanovski Palace,
+or rather in the hell which was raging dreadfully in front of that
+gate; that is, amid a whirlpool, heat, crushing, a storm of bullets,
+fire, smoke, groans and shouts of men. Thousands of scythes, picks, and
+axes were driven against the gate; a thousand arms pressed and pushed
+it furiously. Some men fell as if struck by lightning; others pushed
+themselves into their places, trampled their bodies, and forced
+themselves forward, as if seeking death of purpose. No one had seen or
+remembered a more stubborn defence, but also not a more resolute
+attack. From the highest stories bullets were rained and pitch poured
+down on the gate; but those who were under fire, even had they wished
+could not withdraw, so powerfully were they pressed from behind. You
+saw single men, wet from perspiration, black from smoke, with set
+teeth, with wild eyes, hurling at the gate beams of such size that at
+an ordinary time three strong men would not have been able to lift
+them. So their strength was trebled by frenzy. All the windows were
+stormed simultaneously, ladders were placed at the upper stories,
+lattices were hewn from the walls. But still from those lattices
+and windows, from openings cut in the walls, were sticking out
+musket-barrels, which did not cease to smoke for a moment. But at last
+such smoke ascended, such dust rose, that on that bright sunny day the
+assailants could scarcely recognize one another. In spite of that they
+did not desist from the struggle, but climbed ladders the more
+fiercely, attacked the gate the more wildly, because the sounds from
+the Church of the Bernardines announced that there other parties were
+storming with similar energy.
+
+Now Zagloba cried with a voice so piercing that it was heard amid the
+uproar and shots: "A box with powder under the gate!"
+
+It was brought to him in a twinkle; he gave command at once to cut just
+beneath the bolt an opening of such size that the box alone would find
+place in it. When the box was fitted in, Zagloba himself set fire to
+the sulphur thread, then commanded,--
+
+"Aside! Close to the wall!"
+
+Those standing near rushed to both sides, toward those who had placed
+the ladders at the farther windows. A moment of expectation followed.
+
+A mighty report shook the air, and new bundles of smoke rose toward the
+sky. Zagloba sprang forward with his men; they saw that the explosion
+had not rent the gate to small pieces, but had torn the hinges from the
+right side, wrested away a couple of strong beams, already partly cut,
+turned the handle, and pulled off one half of the lower part, so that a
+passage was open through which large men might enter easily.
+
+Sharpened stakes, axes, and scythes began to beat violently on the
+weakened door; a hundred arms pushed it with utmost effort, a sharp
+crash was heard, and all one half fell, uncovering the depth of the
+dark antechamber.
+
+In that darkness gleamed discharges of musketry; but the human river
+rushed forward with an irresistible torrent,--the palace was captured.
+
+At the same time they broke in through the windows, and a terrible
+battle with cold weapons began in the interior of the palace. Chamber
+was taken after chamber, corridor after corridor, story after story.
+The walls had been so shattered and weakened beforehand that the
+ceiling in many rooms fell with a crash, covering with their ruins
+Poles and Swedes. But the Mazovians advanced like a conflagration; they
+penetrated every place, overturning with their long knives, cutting and
+thrusting. No man of the Swedes asked for quarter, but neither was it
+given. In some corridors and passages the piles of bodies so blocked
+the way that the Swedes made barricades of them; the Poles pulled them
+out by the feet, by the hair, and hurled them through the windows.
+Blood flowed in streams through the passages. Groups of Swedes defended
+themselves yet here and there, and repelled with weakening hands the
+furious blows of the stormers. Blood had covered their faces, darkness
+was covering their eyes, more than one sank on his knees, and still
+fought; pressed on every side, suffocated by the throng of opponents,
+the Scandinavians died in silence, in accord with their fame, as
+beseemed warriors. The statues of divinities and ancient heroes,
+bespattered with blood, looked with lifeless eyes on that death.
+
+Roh Kovalski raged specially in the upper stories; but Zagloba rushed
+with his men to the terraces, and when he had cut to pieces the
+infantry defending themselves there, he hurried from the terraces to
+those wonderful gardens which were famed throughout Europe. The trees
+were already cut down, the rare plants destroyed by Polish balls, the
+fountains broken, the earth ploughed up by bombshells,--in a word,
+everywhere a desert and destruction, though the Swedes had not raised
+their robber hands against this place, out of regard for the person of
+Radzeyovski. A savage struggle set in there, too; but it lasted only a
+short time, for the Swedes gave but feeble resistance, and were cut to
+pieces under the personal command of Zagloba. The soldiers dispersed
+now through the garden, and the whole palace was plundered.
+
+Zagloba betook himself to a corner of the garden, to a place where the
+walls formed a strong "angle," and where the sun did not come, for the
+knight wished to rest somewhat; and he rubbed the sweat from his heated
+forehead. All at once he espied some strange monsters, looking at him
+with hostility through an iron grating.
+
+The cage was fixed in a corner of the wall, so that balls falling from
+the outside could not reach it. The door of the cage was wide open; but
+those meagre and ugly creatures did not think of taking advantage of
+this. Evidently terrified by the uproar, the whistling of bullets, and
+the fierce slaughter at which they had looked a moment before, they
+crowded into a corner of the cage, and hidden in the straw, gave note
+of their terror only by muttering.
+
+"Are those monkeys or devils?" said Zagloba to himself.
+
+Suddenly anger seized him, courage swelled in his breast, and raising
+his sabre he fell upon the cage.
+
+A terrible panic was the answer to the first blow of his sabre. The
+monkeys, which the Swedish soldiers had treated kindly and fed from
+their own slender rations, fell into such a fright that madness simply
+seized them; and since Zagloba stopped their exit, they began to rush
+through the cage with unnatural springs, hanging to the sides, to the
+top, screaming and biting. At last one in frenzy sprang on Zagloba's
+shoulder, and seizing him by the head, fastened to it with all his
+power; another hung to his right shoulder, a third caught him in front
+by the neck, the fourth hung to his long split sleeves which were tied
+together behind; and Zagloba, stifled, sweating, struggled in vain, in
+vain struck blindly toward the rear. Breath soon failed him, his eyes
+were standing out of his head, and he began to cry with despairing
+voice,--
+
+"Gracious gentlemen! save me!"
+
+The cry brought a number of men, who, unable to understand what was
+happening, rushed to his aid with blood-streaming sabres; but they
+halted at once in astonishment, they looked at one another, and as if
+under the influence of some spell they burst out in one great laugh.
+More soldiers ran up, a crowd was formed; but laughter was communicated
+to all as an epidemic. They staggered as if drunk, they held their
+sides; their faces, besmeared with the gore of men, were twisting
+spasmodically, and the more Zagloba struggled the more did they laugh.
+Now Roh Kovalski ran down from an upper story, scattered the crowd, and
+freed his uncle from the Simian embraces.
+
+"You rascals!" cried the panting Zagloba, "I would you were slain! You
+are laughing to see a Catholic in oppression from these African
+monsters. I would you were slain! Were it not for me you would be
+butting your heads to this moment against the gate, for you deserve
+nothing better. I wish you were dead, because you are not worth these
+monkeys."
+
+"I wish you were dead yourself, king of the monkeys!" cried the man
+standing nearest.
+
+"_Simiarum destructor_ (destroyer of monkeys)!" cried another.
+
+"Victor!" cried the third.
+
+"What, victor! he is _victus_ (conquered)!"
+
+Here Roh Kovalski came again to the aid of his uncle, and struck the
+nearest man in the breast with his fist; the man dropped to the earth
+that instant with blood coming from his mouth. Others retreated before
+the anger of Kovalski, some drew their sabres; but further disputes
+were interrupted by the uproar and shots coming from the Bernardines'
+Church. Evidently the storm continued there yet in full force, and
+judging from the feverish musketry-tire, the Swedes were not thinking
+of surrender.
+
+"With succor! to the church! to the church!" cried Zagloba.
+
+He sprang himself to the top of the palace; there, from the right wing,
+was to be seen the church, which seemed to be in flames. Crowds of
+stormers were circling around it convulsively, not being able to enter
+and perishing for nothing in a cross tire; for bullets were rained on
+them from the Cracow gate as thickly as sand.
+
+"Cannon to the windows!" shouted Zagloba.
+
+There were guns enough, large and small, in the Kazanovski Palace,
+therefore they were drawn to the windows; from fragments of costly
+furniture and pedestals of statues, platforms were constructed; and in
+the course of half an hour a number of guns were looking, out through
+the empty openings of the windows toward the church.
+
+"Roh!" said Zagloba, with uncommon irritation, "I must do something
+considerable, or my glory is lost through those monkeys,--would that
+the plague had stifled them! The whole army will ridicule me; and
+though there is no lack of words in my mouth, still I cannot meet the
+whole world. I must wipe away this confusion, or wide as this
+Commonwealth is they will herald me through it as king of the monkeys!"
+
+"Uncle must wipe away this confusion!" repeated Roh, with a thundering
+voice.
+
+"And the first means will be that, as I have captured the Kazanovski
+Palace,--for let any one say that it was not I who did it--"
+
+"Let any one say that it was not Uncle who did it!" repeated Roh.
+
+"I will capture that church, so help me the Lord God, amen!" concluded
+Zagloba.
+
+Then he turned to his attendants who were there at the guns,--
+
+"Fire!"
+
+Fear seized the Swedes, who were defending themselves with despair in
+the church, when the whole side wall began on a sudden to tremble.
+Bricks, rubbish, lime, fell on those who were sitting in the windows,
+at the port-holes, on the fragments of the inside cornices, at the
+pigeon-holes, through which they were firing at the besiegers. A
+terrible dust rose in the house of God, and mixed with the smoke began
+to stifle the wearied men. One man could not see another in the
+darkness. Cries of "I am suffocating, I am suffocating!" still
+increased the terror. The noise of balls falling through the windows,
+of leaden lattice falling to the floor, the heat, the exhalations from
+bodies, turned the retreat of God into a hell upon earth. The
+frightened soldiers stood aside from entrances, windows, and
+port-holes. The panic is changed into frenzy. Again terrified voices
+call: "I am suffocating! Air! Water!" Hundreds of voices begin to
+roar,--
+
+"A white flag! a white flag!"
+
+Erskine, who is commanding, seizes the flag with his own hand to
+display it outside. At that moment the entrance bursts, a line of
+stormers rush in like an avalanche of Satans, and a slaughter follows.
+There is sudden silence in the church; there is heard only the
+beast-like panting of the strugglers, the bite of steel on bones, and
+on the stone floor groans, the patter of blood; and at times some voice
+in which there is nothing human cries, "Quarter! Quarter!" After an
+hour's fighting the bell on the tower begins to thunder, and thunders,
+thunders,--to the victory of the Mazovians, to the funeral of the
+Swedes.
+
+The Kazanovski Palace, the cloister, and the bell-tower are captured.
+
+Pyotr Opalinski himself, the voevoda of Podlyasye, appeared in the
+blood-stained throng before the palace on his horse.
+
+"Who came to our aid from the palace?" cried he, wishing to outcry the
+sound and the roar of men.
+
+"He who captured the palace!" said a powerful man, appearing before the
+voevoda,--"I!"
+
+"What is your name?"
+
+"Zagloba."
+
+"Vivat Zagloba!" bellowed thousands of throats.
+
+But the terrible Zagloba pointed with his stained sabre toward the
+gate,--
+
+"We have not done enough yet. Turn the cannon toward the wall and
+against the gate. Advance! follow me!"
+
+The mad throng rush in the direction of the gate. Meanwhile, oh wonder!
+the fire of the Swedes instead of increasing is growing weak. At the
+same moment some voice unexpected and piercing cries from the top of
+the bell-tower,--
+
+"Charnyetski is in the city! I see our squadrons!"
+
+The Swedish fire was weakening more and more.
+
+"Halt! halt!" commanded the voevoda.
+
+But the throng did not hear him and rushed at random. That moment a
+white flag appeared on the Cracow gate.
+
+In truth, Charnyetski, having forced his way through Dantzig House,
+rushed like a hurricane into the precincts of the fortress; when the
+Danillovich Palace was taken, and when a moment later the Lithuanian
+colors glittered on the walls near the Church of the Holy Ghost,
+Wittemberg saw that further resistance was vain. The Swedes might
+defend themselves yet in the lofty houses of Old and New City; but the
+inhabitants had already taken arms, and the defence would end in a
+terrible slaughter of the Swedes without hope of victory.
+
+The trumpeters began then to sound on the walls and to wave white
+flags. Seeing this, the Polish commanders withheld the storm. General
+Loewenhaupt, attended by a number of colonels, went out through the gate
+of New City, and rushed with all breath to the king.
+
+Yan Kazimir had the city in his hands now; but the kind king wished to
+stop the flow of Christian blood, therefore he settled on the
+conditions offered to Wittemberg at first. The city was to be
+surrendered, with all the booty collected in it. Each Swede was
+permitted to take with him only what he had brought from Sweden. The
+garrison with all the generals and with arms in hand were to march out
+of the city, taking their sick and wounded and the Swedish ladies, of
+whom a number of tens were in Warsaw. To the Poles who were serving
+with the Swedes, amnesty was given, with the idea that surely none were
+serving of their own will. Boguslav Radzivill alone was excepted. To
+this Wittemberg agreed the more readily since the prince was at that
+moment with Douglas on the Bug.
+
+The conditions were signed at once. All the bells in the churches
+announced to the city and the world that the capital had passed again
+into the hands of its rightful monarch. An hour later a multitude of
+the poorest people came out from behind the walls, seeking charity and
+bread in the Polish camp; for all in the city except the Swedes were in
+want of food. The king commanded to give what was possible, and went
+himself to look at the departure of the Swedish garrison.
+
+He was surrounded by church and lay dignitaries, by a suite so splendid
+that it dazzled the people. Nearly all the troops--that is, the troops
+of the kingdom under the hetmans, Charnyetski's division, the
+Lithuanians under Sapyeha, and an immense crowd of general militia,
+together with the camp servants--assembled around his Majesty; or all
+were curious to see those Swedes with whom a few hours before they had
+fought so terribly and bloodily. Polish commissioners were posted at
+all the gates, from the moment of signing the conditions; these
+commissioners were intrusted with the duty of seeing that the Swedes
+bore off no booty. A special commission was occupied with receiving the
+booty in the city itself.
+
+In the van came the cavalry, which was not numerous, especially since
+Boguslav's men were excluded from the right of departure; next came the
+field artillery with light guns; the heavy pieces were given to the
+Poles. The men marched at the sides of the guns with lighted matches.
+Before them waved their unfurled flags, which as a mark of honor were
+lowered before the Polish king, recently a wanderer. The artillerists
+marched proudly, looking straight into the eyes of the Polish knights,
+as if they wished to say, "We shall meet again!" And the Poles wondered
+at their haughty bearing and courage unbent by misfortune. Then
+appeared the wagons with officers and wounded. In the first one lay
+Benedikt Oxenstiern the chancellor, before whom Yan Kazimir had
+commanded the infantry to present arms, wishing to show that he knew
+how to respect virtue even in an enemy.
+
+Then to the sound of drums, and with waving flags, marched the
+quadrangle of unrivalled Swedish infantry, resembling, according to the
+expression of Suba Gazi, moving castles. After them advanced a
+brilliant party of cavalry, armored from foot to head, and with a blue
+banner on which a golden lion was embroidered. These surrounded the
+chief of staff. At sight of them a murmur passed through the crowd,--
+
+"Wittemberg is coming! Wittemberg is coming!"
+
+In fact, the field-marshal himself was approaching; and with him the
+younger Wrangel, Horn, Erskine, Loewenhaupt, Forgell. The eyes of the
+Polish knights were turned with eagerness toward them, and especially
+toward the face of Wittemberg. But his face did not indicate such a
+terrible warrior as he was in reality. It was an aged face, pale,
+emaciated by disease. He had sharp features, and above his mouth a
+thin, small mustache turned up at the ends. The pressed lips and long,
+pointed nose gave him the appearance of an old and grasping miser.
+Dressed in black velvet and with a black hat on his head, he looked
+more like a learned astrologer or a physician; and only the gold chain
+on his neck, the diamond star on his breast, and a field-marshal's
+baton in his hand showed his high office of leader.
+
+Advancing, he cast his eyes unquietly on the king, on the king's staff,
+on the squadrons standing in rank; then his eyes took in the immense
+throngs of the general militia, and an ironical smile came out on his
+pale lips.
+
+But in those throngs a murmur was rising ever greater, and the word
+"Wittemberg! Wittemberg!" was in every mouth.
+
+After a while the murmur changed into deep grumbling, but threatening,
+like the grumbling of the sea before a storm. From instant to instant
+it was silent; and then far away in the distance, in the last ranks,
+was heard some voice in peroration. This voice was answered by others;
+greater numbers answered them; they were heard ever louder and spread
+more widely, like ominous echoes. You would swear that a storm was
+coming from a distance, and that it would burst with all power.
+
+The officers were anxious and began to look at the king with disquiet.
+
+"What is that? What does that mean?" asked Yan Kazimir.
+
+Then the grumbling passed into a roar as terrible as if thunders had
+begun to wrestle with one another in the sky. The immense throng of
+general militia moved violently, precisely like standing grain when a
+hurricane is sweeping around it with giant wing. All at once some tens
+of thousands of sabres were glittering in the sun.
+
+"What is that? What does that mean?" asked the king, repeatedly.
+
+No one could answer him. Then Volodyovski, standing near Sapyeha,
+exclaimed: "That is Pan Zagloba!"
+
+Volodyovski had guessed aright. The moment the conditions of surrender
+were published and had come to the ears of Zagloba, the old noble fell
+into such a terrible rage that speech was taken from him for a while.
+When he came to himself his first act was to spring among the ranks of
+the general militia and fire up the minds of the nobles. They heard him
+willingly; for it seemed to all that for so much bravery, for such
+toil, for so much bloodshed under the walls of Warsaw, they ought to
+have a better vengeance against the enemy. Therefore great circles of
+chaotic and stormy men surrounded Zagloba, who threw live coals by the
+handful on the powder, and with his speech fanned into greater
+proportions the fire which all the more easily seized their heads, that
+they were already smoking from the usual libations consequent on
+victory.
+
+"Gracious gentlemen!" said he, "behold these old hands have toiled
+fifty years for the country; fifty years have they been shedding the
+blood of the enemy at every wall of the Commonwealth; and to-day--I
+have witnesses--they captured the Kazanovski Palace and the
+Bernardines' Church! And when, gracious gentlemen, did the Swedes lose
+heart, when did they agree to capitulate? It was when we turned our
+guns from the Bernardines to the Old City. We have not spared our
+blood, brothers; it has been shed bountifully, and no one has been
+spared but the enemy. But we, brothers, have left our lands without
+masters, our servants without lords, our wives without husbands, our
+children without fathers,--oh, my dear children, what is happening to
+you now?--and we have come here with our naked breasts against cannon.
+And what is our reward for so doing? This is it: Wittemberg goes forth
+free, and besides, they give him honor for the road. The executioner of
+our country departs, the blasphemer of religion departs; the raging
+enemy of the Most Holy Lady, the burner of our houses, the thief of our
+last bit of clothing, the murderer of our wives and children,--oh, my
+children, where are you now?--the disgracer of the clergy and virgins
+consecrated to God! Woe to thee, country! Shame to you, nobles! A new
+agony is awaiting you. Oh, our holy faith! Woe to you, suffering
+churches! weeping to thee and complaint, O Chenstohova! for Wittemberg
+is departing in freedom, and will return soon to press out tears and
+blood, to finish killing those whom he has not yet killed, to burn that
+which he has not yet burned, to put shame on that which he has not yet
+put to shame! Weep, O Poland and Lithuania! Weep, ranks of people, as I
+weep,--an old soldier who, descending to the grave, must look on your
+agony! Woe to thee, Ilion, the city of aged Priam! Woe! woe! woe!"
+
+So spoke Zagloba; and thousands listened to him, and wrath raised the
+hair on the heads of the nobles; but he moved on farther. Again he
+complained, tore his clothing, and laid bare his breast. He entered
+also into the army, which gave a willing ear to his complaints; for, in
+truth, there was a terrible animosity in all hearts against Wittemberg.
+The tumult would have burst out at once; but Zagloba himself restrained
+it, lest, if it burst too early, Wittemberg might save himself somehow;
+but if it broke out when he was leaving the city and would show himself
+to the general militia, they would bear him apart on their sabres
+before any one could see what was done.
+
+And his reckoning was justified. At sight of the tyrant frenzy seized
+the brains of the chaotic and half-drunken nobles, and a terrible storm
+burst forth in the twinkle of an eye. Forty thousand sabres were
+flashing in the sun, forty thousand throats began to bellow,--
+
+"Death to Wittemberg! Give him here! Make mince-meat of him! make
+mince-meat of him!"
+
+To the throngs of nobles were joined throngs more chaotic still and
+made brutal by the recent shedding of blood, the camp servants; even
+the more disciplined regular squadrons began to murmur fiercely against
+the oppressor, and the storm began to fly with rage against the Swedish
+staff.
+
+At the first moment all lost their heads, though all understood what
+the matter was. "What is to be done?" cried voices near the king. "Oh,
+merciful Jesus!" "Rescue! defend! It is a shame not to observe the
+conditions!"
+
+Enraged crowds rush in among the squadrons, press upon them; the
+squadrons are confused, cannot keep their places. Around them are
+sabres, sabres, and sabres; under the sabres are inflamed faces,
+threatening eyes, howling mouths; uproar, noise, wild cries grow with
+amazing rapidity. In front are rushing camp servants, camp followers,
+and every kind of army rabble, more like beasts or devils than men.
+
+Wittemberg understood what was happening. His face grew pale as a
+sheet; sweat, abundant and cold, covered his forehead in a moment; and,
+oh wonder! that field-marshal who hitherto was ready to threaten the
+whole world, that conqueror of so many armies, that captor of so many
+cities, that old soldier was then so terribly frightened at the howling
+mass that presence of mind left him utterly. He trembled in his whole
+body, he dropped his hands and groaned, spittle began to flow from his
+mouth to the golden chain, and the field-marshal's baton dropped from
+his hand. Meanwhile the terrible throng was coming nearer and nearer;
+ghastly forms were surrounding already the hapless generals; a moment
+more, they would bear them apart on sabres, so that not a fragment of
+them would remain.
+
+Other Swedish generals drew their sabres, wishing to die weapon in
+hand, as beseemed knights; but the aged oppressor grew weak altogether,
+and half closed his eyes.
+
+At this moment Volodyovski, with his men, sprang to the rescue of the
+staff. Going wedge-form on a gallop, he split the mob as a ship moving
+with all sails bears apart the towering waves of the sea. The cry of
+the trampled rabble was mingled with the shouts of the Lauda squadron;
+but the horsemen reached the staff first, and surrounded it in the
+twinkle of an eye with a wall of horses, a wall of their own breasts
+and sabres.
+
+"To the king!" cried the little knight.
+
+They moved on. The throng surrounded them from every side, ran along
+the flanks and the rear, brandished sabres and clubs, howled more and
+more terribly; but the Lauda men pushed forward, thrusting out their
+sabres from moment to moment at the sides, as a strong stag thrusts
+with his antlers when surrounded by wolves.
+
+Then Voynillovich sprang to the aid of Volodyovski; after him
+Vilchkovski with a regiment of the king, then Prince Polubinski; and
+all together, defending themselves unceasingly, conducted the staff to
+the presence of Yan Kazimir.
+
+The tumult increased instead of diminishing. It seemed, after a time,
+that the excited rabble would try to seize the Swedish generals without
+regard to the king. Wittemberg recovered; but fear did not leave him in
+the least. He sprang from his horse then; and as a hare pressed by dogs
+or wolves takes refuge under a wagon in motion, so did he, in spite of
+his gout, throw himself at the feet of Yan Kazimir.
+
+Then he dropped on his knees, and seizing the king's stirrup, began to
+cry: "Save me, Gracious Lord, save me! I have your royal word; the
+agreement is signed. Save me, save me! Have mercy on us! Do not let
+them murder me!"
+
+The king, at sight of such abasement and such shame turned away his
+eyes with aversion and said,--
+
+"Field-marshal, pray be calm."
+
+But he had a troubled face himself, for he knew not what to do. Around
+them were gathering crowds ever greater, and approaching with more
+persistence. It is true that the squadrons stood as if for battle, and
+Zamoyski's infantry had formed a terrible quadrangle round about; but
+what was to be the end of it all?
+
+The king looked at Charnyetski; but Charnyetski only twisted his beard
+with rage, his soul was storming with such anger against the
+disobedience of the general militia. Then the chancellor, Korytsinski,
+said,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, we must keep the agreement."
+
+"We must!" replied the king.
+
+Wittemberg, who was looking carefully into their eyes, breathed more
+freely.
+
+"Gracious Lord," said he, "I believe in your words as in God."
+
+To which Pototski, the old hetman of the kingdom, cried,--
+
+"And why have you broken so many oaths, so many agreements, so many
+terms of surrender? With what any man wars, from that will he perish.
+Why did you seize, in spite of the terms of capitulation, the king's
+regiment commanded by Wolf?"
+
+"Miller did that, not I," answered Wittemberg.
+
+The hetman looked at him with disdain; then turned to the king,--
+
+"Gracious Lord, I do not say this to incite your Royal Grace to break
+agreements also, for let perfidy be on their side alone."
+
+"What is to be done?" asked the king. "If we send them to Prussia,
+fifty thousand nobles will follow and cut them to pieces before they
+reach Pultusk, unless we give them the whole regular army as a guard,
+and we cannot do that. Hear, your Royal Grace, how the militia are
+howling! In truth, there is a well-founded animosity against
+Wittemberg. It is needful first to safeguard his person, and then to
+send all away when the fire has cooled down."
+
+"There is no other way!" said Korytsinski.
+
+"But where are they to be kept? We cannot keep them here; for here,
+devil take it! civil war would break out," said the voevoda of Rus.
+
+Now Sobiepan Zamoyski appeared, and pouting his lips greatly, said with
+his customary spirit,--
+
+"Well, Gracious Lord, give them to me at Zamost; let them sit there
+till calm comes. I will defend Wittemberg there from the nobles. Let
+them try to get him from me!"
+
+"But on the road will your worthiness defend the field-marshal?" asked
+the chancellor.
+
+"I can depend on my servants yet. Or have I not infantry and cannon?
+Let any one take him from Zamoyski! We shall see."
+
+Here he put his hands on his hips, struck his thighs, and bent from one
+side of the saddle to the other.
+
+"There is no other way," said the chancellor.
+
+"I see no other," added Lantskoronski.
+
+"Then take them," said the king to Zamoyski.
+
+But Wittemberg, seeing that his life was threatened no longer,
+considered it proper to protest.
+
+"We did not expect this!" said he.
+
+"Well, we do not detain you; the road is open," said Pototski, pointing
+to the distance with his hand.
+
+Wittemberg was silent
+
+Meanwhile the chancellor sent a number of officers to declare to the
+nobles that Wittemberg would not depart in freedom, but would be sent
+to Zamost. The tumult, it is true, was not allayed at once; still the
+news had a soothing effect. Before night fell attention was turned in
+another direction. The troops began to enter the city, and the sight of
+the recovered capital filled all minds with the delight of triumph.
+
+The king rejoiced; still the thought that he was unable to observe the
+conditions of the agreement troubled him not a little, as well as the
+endless disobedience of the general militia.
+
+Charnyetski was chewing his anger. "With such troops one can never be
+sure of to-morrow," said he to the king. "Sometimes they fight badly,
+sometimes heroically, all from impulse; and at any outbreak rebellion
+is ready.
+
+"God grant them not to disperse," said the king, "for they are needed
+yet, and they think that they have finished everything."
+
+"The man who caused that outbreak should be torn asunder with horses,
+without regard to the services which he has rendered," continued
+Charnyetski.
+
+The strictest orders were given to search for Zagloba, for it was a
+secret to no man that he had raised the storm; but Zagloba had as it
+were dropped into water. They searched for him in the tents, in the
+tabor, even among the Tartars, all in vain. Tyzenhauz even said that
+the king, always kind and gracious, wished from his whole soul that
+they might not find him, and even undertook a nine days' devotion to
+that effect.
+
+But a week later, after some dinner when the heart of the monarch was
+big with joy, the following words were heard from the mouth of Yan
+Kazimir,--
+
+"Announce that Pan Zagloba is not to hide himself longer, for we are
+longing for his jests."
+
+When Charnyetski was horrified at this, the king said,--
+
+"Whoso in this Commonwealth should have justice without mercy in his
+heart would be forced to carry an axe in his bosom, and not a heart.
+Faults come easier here than anywhere, but in no land does repentance
+follow so quickly."
+
+Saying this, the king had Babinich more in mind than Zagloba; and he
+was thinking of Babinich because the young man had bowed down to the
+king's feet the day before with a petition that he would not hinder him
+from going to Lithuania. He said that he wished to freshen the war
+there, and attack the Swedes, as he had once attacked Hovanski. And as
+the king intended to send there a soldier experienced in partisan
+warfare, he permitted Babinich to go, gave him the means, blessed him,
+and whispered some wish in his ear, after which the young knight fell
+his whole length at his feet.
+
+Then, without loitering, Kmita moved briskly toward the east. Suoa
+Gazi, captured by a considerable present, permitted him to take five
+hundred fresh Dobrudja Tartars; fifteen hundred other good men marched
+with him,--a force with which it was possible to begin something. And
+the young man's head was fired with a desire for battle and warlike
+achievements. The hope of glory smiled on him; he heard already how all
+Lithuania was repeating his name with pride and wonder. He heard
+especially how one beloved mouth repeated it, and his soul gave him
+wings.
+
+And there was another reason why he rode forward so briskly. Wherever
+he appeared he was the first to announce the glad tidings: "The Swede
+is defeated, and Warsaw is taken!" Wherever his horse's hoofs sounded,
+the whole neighborhood rang with these words; the people along the
+roads greeted him with weeping; they rang bells in the church-towers
+and sang _Te Deum Laudamus!_ When he rode through the forest the dark
+pines, when through the fields the golden grain, rocked by the wind,
+seemed to repeat and sound joyously,--
+
+"The Swede is defeated! Warsaw is taken! Warsaw is taken!"
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XLI.
+
+
+Though Kettling was near the person of Prince Boguslav, he did not know
+all, and could not tell of all that was done in Taurogi, for he was
+blinded himself by love for Panna Billevich.
+
+Boguslav had also another confidant, Pan Sakovich, the starosta of
+Oshmiana; and he alone knew how deeply the prince was involved by love
+for his charming captive, and what means he was using to gain her heart
+and her person.
+
+That love was merely a fierce desire, for Boguslav's heart was not
+capable of other feelings; but the desire was so violent that that
+experienced cavalier lost his head. And often in the evening, when
+alone with the starosta, he seized his own hair and cried,--
+
+"I am burning, Sakovich, I am burning!"
+
+Sakovich found means at once.
+
+"Whoso wishes to take honey must drug the bees," said he. "And has your
+physician few of such intoxicating herbs? Give him the word to-day, and
+to-morrow the affair will be over."
+
+But the prince did not like such a method, and that for various
+reasons. First, on a time, old Heraclius Billevich, the grandfather of
+Olenka, appeared to him in a dream, and standing at his pillow, looked
+with threatening eyes till the first crowing of the cocks. Boguslav
+remembered the dream; for that knight, without fear, was superstitious,
+dreaded charms, dream warnings, and supernatural apparitions so much
+that a shiver passed through him at thought of the terror and the shape
+in which that phantom might come a second time should he follow
+Sakovich's counsel. The starosta of Oshmiana himself, who did not
+believe greatly in God, but who, like the prince, dreaded dreams and
+enchantments, staggered somewhat in giving advice.
+
+The second reason of Boguslav's delay was that the "Wallachian woman"
+was living with her step-daughter in Taurogi. They called Princess
+Radzivill, the wife of Yanush, "the Wallachian woman." That lady,
+coming from a country in which her sex have rather free manners, was
+not, in truth, over-stern; nay, maybe she understood too well the
+amusements of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting; still she could not
+endure that at her side a man, the coming husband of her step-daughter,
+should do a deed calling to heaven for vengeance.
+
+But even later, when through the persuasions of Sakovich, and with the
+consent of the prince voevoda of Vilna, "the Wallachian woman" went
+with Yanush's daughter to Courland, Boguslav did not dare to do the
+deed. He feared the terrible outcry which would rise throughout all
+Lithuania. The Billeviches were wealthy people; they would not fail to
+crush him with a prosecution. The law punished such deeds with loss of
+property, honor, and life.
+
+The Radzivills, it is true, were powerful, and might trample on law;
+but when victory in war was inclining to the side of Yan Kazimir, the
+young prince might fall into serious difficulties, in which he would
+lack power, friends, and henchmen. And just then it was hard to foresee
+how the war would end. Forces were coming every day to Yan Kazimir; the
+power of Karl Gustav was decreasing absolutely by the loss of men and
+the exhaustion of money.
+
+Prince Boguslav, an impulsive but calculating man, reckoned with the
+position. His desires tormented him with fire, his reason advised
+restraint, superstitious fear bridled the outbursts of his blood. At
+the same time disease fell upon him; great and urgent questions rose,
+involving frequently the fate of the whole war; and all these causes
+rent the soul of the prince till he was mortally wearied.
+
+Still, it is unknown how the struggle might have ended had it not been
+for Boguslav's self-love. He was a man of immense self-esteem. He
+counted himself an unequalled statesman, a great leader, a great
+knight, and an invincible captor of the hearts of women. Was he to use
+force or intoxicating drugs,--he who carried around with him a bound
+casket filled with love-letters from various foreign ladies of
+celebrity? Were his wealth, his titles, his power almost royal, his
+great name, his beauty and courtliness not equal to the conquest of one
+timid noble woman?
+
+Besides, how much greater the triumph, how much greater the delight,
+when the resistance of the maiden drops, when she herself willingly,
+and with a heart beating like that of a seized bird, with burning face
+and eyes veiled with mist, falls into those arms which are stretched
+toward her!
+
+A quiver passed through Boguslav at thought of that moment, and he
+desired it as greatly as he did Olenka herself. He hoped always that
+that moment would come. He writhed, he was impatient, he deceived
+himself. At one time it seemed to him nearer, at another farther; and
+then he cried that he was burning. But he did not cease to work.
+
+To begin with, he surrounded the maiden with minute care, so that she
+must be thankful to him and think that he is kind; for he understood
+that the feeling of gratitude and friendship is that mild and warm
+flame which only needs to be fanned and it will turn into a great fire.
+Their frequent intercourse was to bring this about the more surely;
+hence Boguslav showed no insistence, not wishing to chill confidence or
+frighten it away.
+
+At the same time every look, every touch of the hand, every word was
+calculated; nothing passed in vain, everything was the drop wearing the
+stone. All that he did for Olenka might be interpreted as the
+hospitality of a host, that innocent friendly attraction which one
+person feels for another; but still it was done to create love. The
+boundary was purposely blurred and indefinite, so that to pass it would
+become easy in time; and thus the maiden might the more lightly wander
+into those labyrinths where each form might mean something or nothing.
+That play did not agree, it is true, with the native impulsiveness of
+Boguslav. Still he restrained himself, for he judged that that alone
+would lead to the object; and at the same time he found in it such
+satisfaction as the spider finds when weaving his web, the traitorous
+bird-catcher when spreading his net, or the hunter tracking patiently
+and with endurance the wild beast. His own penetration, subtlety, and
+quickness, developed by life at the French court, amused the prince.
+
+He entertained Panna Aleksandra as if she were a sovereign princess;
+but in such a way that again it was not easy for her to divine whether
+this was done exclusively for her, or whether it flowed from his innate
+and acquired politeness toward the fair sex in general. It is true that
+he made her the chief person in all the entertainments, plays,
+cavalcades, and hunting expeditious; but this came somewhat from the
+nature of things. After the departure of Yanush's princess to Courland,
+she was really first among the ladies at Taurogi. A multitude of noble
+ladies from all Jmud had taken refuge in Taurogi, as in a place lying
+near the boundary, so as to be protected by the Swedes under the
+guardianship of the prince; but they recognized Panna Billevich as
+first among all, since she was the daughter of the most noted family.
+And while the whole Commonwealth was swimming in blood, there was no
+end to entertainments. You would have said that the king's court with
+all the courtiers and ladies had gone to the country for leisure and
+entertainment.
+
+Boguslav ruled as an absolute monarch in Taurogi and in all adjoining
+Electoral Prussia, in which he was frequently a guest; therefore
+everything was at his orders. Towns furnished money and troops on his
+notes; the Prussian nobles came gladly, in carriages and on horseback,
+to his feasts, hunts, and tournaments. Boguslav even renewed, in honor
+of his lady, the conflicts of knights within barriers, which were
+already in disuse.
+
+On a certain occasion he took active part in them; dressed in silver
+armor, and girded with a silver sash which Panna Billevich had to bind
+on him, he hurled from their horses four of the first knights of
+Prussia, Kettling the fifth, and Sakovich the sixth, though the last
+had such gigantic strength that he stopped carriages in their course by
+seizing a hind wheel. And what enthusiasm rose in the crowd of
+spectators when afterward the silver-clad knight, kneeling before his
+lady, took from her hand the crown of victory! Shouts rang like the
+thunder of cannon, handkerchiefs were waving, flags were lowered; but
+he raised his visor and looked into her blushing face with his
+beautiful eyes, pressing at the same time her hand to his lips.
+
+Another time when in the enclosure a raging bear was fighting with dogs
+and had torn them all one after another, the prince, dressed only in
+light Spanish costume, sprang in with his spear, and pierced not only
+the savage beast, but also a soldier, who, seeing the moment of danger
+had sprung to his aid.
+
+Panna Aleksandra, the grand-daughter of an old soldier, reared in
+traditions of blood, war, and reverence for knightly superiority, could
+not restrain at sight of these deeds her wonder, and even homage; for
+she had been taught from childhood to esteem bravery as almost the
+highest quality of man.
+
+Meanwhile the prince gave daily proofs of daring almost beyond human,
+and always in honor of her. The assembled guests in their praises and
+enthusiasm for the prince, which were so great that even a deity might
+be satisfied with them, were forced involuntarily to connect in their
+conversations the name of Panna Billevich with the name of Boguslav. He
+was silent, but with his eyes he told her what he did not dare to utter
+with his lips. The spell surrounded her perfectly.
+
+Everything was so combined as to bring them together, to connect them,
+and at the same time to separate them from the throng of other people.
+It was difficult for any one to mention him without mentioning her.
+Into the thoughts of Olenka herself Boguslav was thrust with an
+irresistible force. Every moment of the day was so arranged as to lend
+power to the spell.
+
+In the evening, after amusements, the chambers were lighted by many
+colored lamps casting mysterious rays, as if from the land of splendid
+dreams transferred to reality; intoxicating eastern odors filled the
+air; the low sounds of invisible harps, lutes, and other instruments
+fondled the hearing; and in the midst of these odors, lights, sounds,
+he moved in the glory of universal homage, like an enchanted king's son
+in a myth-tale, beautiful, knightly, sun-bright from jewels, and as
+deeply in love as a shepherd.
+
+What maiden could resist these spells, what virtue would not grow faint
+amid such allurements? But to avoid the prince there was no possibility
+for one living with him under the same roof and enjoying his
+hospitality, which, though given perforce, was still dispensed with
+sincerity and in real lordly fashion. Besides, Olenka had gone without
+unwillingness to Taurogi, for she wished to be far from hideous
+Kyedani, as she preferred to Yanush, an open traitor, the knightly
+Boguslav, who feigned love for the deserted king and the country. Hence
+in the beginning of her visit at Taurogi she was full of friendly
+feeling for the young prince; and seeing soon how far he was striving
+for her friendship, she used her influence more than once to do good to
+people.
+
+During the third month of her stay a certain artillery officer, a
+friend of Kettling, was condemned by the prince to be shot; Panna
+Billevich, hearing of this from the young Scot, interceded for him.
+
+"A divinity may command, not implore," said Boguslav to her; and
+tearing the sentence of death he threw it at her feet. "Ordain,
+command! I will burn Taurogi, if at that price I can call forth on your
+face even a smile. I ask no other reward save this, that you be joyous
+and forget that which once pained you."
+
+She could not be joyous, having pain in her heart, pity and an
+unutterable contempt for the man whom she had loved with first love,
+and who at that time was in her eyes a worse criminal than a parricide.
+That Kmita, promising to sell the king for gold, as Judas sold Christ,
+became fouler and more repulsive in her eyes, till in the course of
+time he was turned into a human monster, a grief and reproach to her.
+She could not forgive herself for having loved him, and at the same
+time she could not forget him while she hated.
+
+In view of these feelings it was indeed difficult for her even to feign
+gladness; but still she had to be thankful to the prince even for this,
+that he would not put his hand to Kmita's crime, and for all that he
+had done for her. It was a wonder to her that the prince, such a knight
+and so full of noble feeling, did not hasten to the rescue of the
+country, since he had not consented to the intrigues of Yanush; but she
+judged that such a statesman knew what he was doing, and was forced by
+a policy which she, with her simple maiden's mind, could not sound.
+Boguslav told her also, explaining his frequent journeys to Prussian
+Tyltsa, which was near by, that his strength was failing him from
+overwork; that he was conducting negotiations between Yan Kazimir, Karl
+Gustav, and the elector, and that he hoped to bring the country out of
+difficulty.
+
+"Not for rewards, not for offices, do I do this," said he to her. "I
+will sacrifice my cousin Yanush, who was to me a father, for I know not
+whether I shall be able to implore his life for him from the animosity
+of Queen Ludvika; but I will do what my conscience and love for the
+dear mother, my country, demands."
+
+When he spoke thus with sadness on his delicate face, with eyes turned
+to the ceiling, he seemed to her as lofty as those heroes of antiquity
+of which Heraclius Billevich had told her, and of whom he himself had
+read in Cornelius Nepos. And the heart swelled within her with
+admiration and homage. By degrees it went so far that when thoughts of
+the hated Andrei Kmita had tortured her too much, she thought of
+Boguslav to cure and strengthen herself. Kmita became for her a
+terrible and gloomy darkness; Boguslav, light in which every troubled
+soul would gladly bathe itself. The sword-bearer and Panna Kulvyets,
+whom they had brought also from Vodokty, pushed Olenka still more along
+that incline by singing hymns of praise from morning till night in
+honor of Boguslav. The sword-bearer and the aunt wearied the prince, it
+is true, so that he had been thinking how to get rid of them politely;
+but he won them to himself, especially the sword-bearer, who though at
+first displeased and even enraged, still could not fight against the
+friendship and favors of Boguslav.
+
+If Boguslav had been merely a noble of noted stock, but not Radzivill,
+nor a prince, not a magnate invested with almost the majesty of a
+monarch, perhaps Panna Billevich might have loved him for life and
+death, in spite of the will of the old colonel, which left her a choice
+only between the cloister and Kmita. But she was a stern lady for her
+own self, and a very just soul; therefore she did not even admit to her
+head a dream of anything save gratitude and admiration so far as the
+prince was concerned.
+
+Her family was not so great that she could become the wife of
+Radzivill, and was too great for her to become his mistress; she looked
+on him, therefore, as she would on the king, were she at the king's
+court. In vain did Boguslav endeavor to give her other thoughts; in
+vain did he, forgetting himself in love, partly from calculation,
+partly from enthusiasm, repeat what he had said the first evening in
+Kyedani,--that the Radzivills had married ordinary noble women more
+than once; these thoughts did not cling to her, as water does not cling
+to the breast of a swan; and she remained as she had been, thankful,
+friendly, homage-giving, seeking consolation in the thought of a hero,
+but undisturbed in heart.
+
+He could not catch her through her feelings, though often it seemed to
+him that he was near his object. But he saw himself with shame and
+internal anger that he was not so daring with her as he had been with
+the first ladies in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. Perhaps this was
+because he was really in love, and perhaps because in that lady, in her
+face, in her dark brows and stern eyes, there was that which enforced
+respect. Kmita was the one and only man who in his time did not submit
+to that influence and paid no regard, prepared boldly to kiss those
+proud eyes and stern lips; but Kmita was her betrothed.
+
+All other cavaliers, beginning with Pan Volodyovski and ending with the
+very vulgar Prussian nobles in Taurogi and the prince himself, were
+less confident with her than with other ladies in the same condition.
+Impulsiveness carried away the prince; but when once in a carriage he
+pressed against her feet, whispering at the same time, "Fear not!" she
+answered that she did fear to regret the confidence reposed in him,
+Boguslav was confused, and returned to his former method of conquering
+her heart by degrees.
+
+But his patience was becoming exhausted. Gradually he began to forget
+the terrible dream, he began to think more frequently of what Sakovich
+had counselled, and that the Billeviches would all perish in the war;
+his desires tormented him more powerfully, when a certain event changed
+completely the course of affairs in Taurogi.
+
+One day news came like a thunderbolt that Tykotsin was taken by Pan
+Sapyeha, and that Prince Yanush had lost his life in the ruins of the
+castle.
+
+Everything began to seethe in Taurogi. Boguslav himself sprang up and
+went off that same day to Koenigsberg, where he was to see the ministers
+of the King of Sweden and the elector.
+
+His stay there exceeded his original plan. Meanwhile bodies of Prussian
+and even of Swedish troops were assembling at Taurogi. Men began to
+speak of an expedition against Sapyeha. The naked truth was coming to
+the surface more and more clearly, that Boguslav was a partisan of the
+Swedes, as well as his cousin Yanush.
+
+It happened that at the same time the sword-bearer of Rossyeni received
+news of the burning of his native Billeviche by the troops of
+Loewenhaupt, who, after defeating the insurgents in Jmud, at Shavli,
+ravaged the whole country with fire and sword.
+
+The old noble sprang up and set out, wishing to see the damage with his
+own eyes; and Prince Boguslav did not detain him, but sent him off
+willingly, adding at parting,--
+
+"Now you will understand why I brought you to Taurogi; for, speaking
+plainly, you owe your life to me."
+
+Olenka remained alone with Panna Kulvyets. They shut themselves up in
+their own chambers at once, and received no one but a few women. When
+these women brought tidings that the prince was preparing an expedition
+against the Poles, Olenka would not believe them at first: but wishing
+to be certain, she gave orders to summon Kettling, for she knew that
+from her the young Scot would hide nothing.
+
+He appeared before her at once, happy that he was called, that for a
+time he could speak with her who had taken possession of his soul.
+
+"Cavalier," said Panna Billevich, "so many reports are circulating
+about Taurogi that we are wandering as in a forest. Some say that the
+prince voevoda died a natural death; others that he was borne apart on
+sabres. What was the cause of his death?"
+
+Kettling hesitated for a while. It was evident that he was struggling
+with innate indecision. At last he blushed greatly, and said,--
+
+"You are the cause of the fall and the death of Prince Yanush."
+
+"I?" asked Panna Billevich, with amazement.
+
+"You; for our prince chose to remain in Taurogi rather than go to
+relieve his cousin. He forgot everything near you, my lady."
+
+Now she blushed in her turn like a purple rose, and a moment of silence
+followed.
+
+The Scot stood, hat in hand, with downcast eyes, his head bent, in a
+posture full of homage and respect. At last he raised his head, shook
+his bright curls, and said,--
+
+"My lady, if these words have offended you, let me kneel down and beg
+forgiveness."
+
+"Do not," said she, quickly, seeing that the young knight was bending
+his knees already. "I know that what you have said was said with a
+clean heart; for I have long noticed that you wish me well."
+
+The officer raised his blue eyes, and putting his hand on his heart,
+with a voice as low as the whisper of a breeze and as sad as a sigh,
+replied,--
+
+"Oh, my lady! my lady!"
+
+At this moment he was frightened lest he had said too much, and again
+he bent his head toward his bosom, and took the posture of a courtier
+who is listening to the commands of a queen.
+
+"I am here among strangers, without a guardian," said Olenka; "and
+though I shall be able to watch over myself alone, and God will
+preserve me from harm, still I need the aid of men also. Do you wish to
+be my brother? Do you wish to warn me in need, so that I may know what
+to do, and avoid every snare?"
+
+As she said this, she extended her hand; but he kneeled, in spite of
+her prohibition, and kissed the tips of her fingers.
+
+"Tell me," said she, "what is happening around me."
+
+"The prince loves you," said Kettling. "Have you not seen that?"
+
+She covered her face with her hands. "I saw and I did not see. At times
+it seemed to me that he was only very kind."
+
+"Kind!" repeated Kettling, like an echo.
+
+"But when it came into my head that I, unfortunate woman, might rouse
+in him unhappy wishes, I quieted myself with this, that no danger
+threatened me from him. I was thankful to him for what he had done,
+though God sees that I did not look for new kindnesses, since I feared
+those he had already shown me."
+
+Kettling breathed more freely.
+
+"May I speak boldly?" asked he.
+
+"Speak."
+
+"The prince has only two confidants,--Pan Sakovich and Patterson; but
+Patterson is very friendly to me, for we come from the same country,
+and he carried me in his arms. What I know, I know from him. The prince
+loves you; desires are burning in him as pitch in a pine torch. All
+things done here--all these feasts, hunts, tournaments, through which,
+thanks to the princess hand, blood is flowing from my mouth yet--were
+arranged for you. The prince loves you, my lady, to distraction, but
+with an impure fire; for he wishes to disgrace, not to marry you. For
+though he could not find a worthier, even if he were king of the whole
+world, not merely a prince, still he thinks of another,--the princess,
+Yanush's daughter, and her fortune are predestined to him. I learned
+this from Patterson; and the great God, whose gospel I take here to
+witness, knows that I speak the pure truth. Do not believe the prince,
+do not trust his kindness, do not feel safe in his moderation. Watch,
+guard yourself; for they are plotting treason against you here at every
+step. The breath is stopping in my breast from what Patterson has told
+me. There is not a criminal in the world equal to Sakovich,--I cannot
+speak of him, I cannot. Were it not for the oath which I have taken to
+guard the prince, this hand and this sword would free you from
+continual danger. But I would slay Sakovich first. This is true. Him
+first, before all men,--even before those who in my own country shed my
+father's blood, took my fortune, made me a wanderer and a hireling."
+
+Here Kettling trembled from emotion. For a while he merely pressed the
+hilt of his sword with his hand, not being able to utter a word; then
+he recovered, and in one breath told what methods Sakovich had
+suggested to the prince.
+
+Panna Aleksandra, to his great surprise, bore herself calmly enough
+while looking at the threatening precipice before her; only her face
+grew pale and became still more serious. Unbending resolution was
+reflected in her stern look.
+
+"I shall be able to save myself," said she, "so help me God and the
+holy cross!"
+
+"The prince has not consented hitherto to follow Sakovich's counsel,"
+added Kettling. "But when he sees that the road he has chosen leads to
+nothing--" and he began to tell the reasons which restrained Boguslav.
+
+The lady listened with frowning brow, but not with superfluous
+attention, for she had already begun to ponder on means to wrest
+herself free of this terrible guardianship. But there was not a place
+in the whole country unsprinkled with blood, and plans of flight did
+not seem to her clear; hence she preferred not to speak of them.
+
+"Cavalier," said she at last, "answer me one question. Is Prince
+Boguslav on the side of the King of Sweden or the King of Poland?"
+
+"It is a secret to none of us," answered the young officer, "that the
+prince wishes the division of this Commonwealth, so as to make of
+Lithuania an independent principality for himself."
+
+Here Kettling was silent, and you would have thought that his mind was
+following involuntarily the thoughts of Olenka; for after a while he
+added,--
+
+"The elector and the Swedes are at the service of the prince; and since
+they will occupy the Commonwealth, there is no place in which to hide
+from him."
+
+Olenka made no answer.
+
+The young man waited awhile longer, to learn if she would ask him other
+questions; but when she was silent, occupied with her own thoughts, he
+felt that it was not proper for him to interrupt her; therefore he bent
+double in a parting bow, sweeping the floor with the feathers in his
+cap.
+
+"I thank you, cavalier," said Olenka, extending her hand to him.
+
+The officer, without turning, withdrew toward the door. All at once
+there appeared on her face a slight flush. She hesitated a moment, and
+then said,--
+
+"One word, cavalier."
+
+"Every word is for me a favor."
+
+"Did you know Pan Andrei Kmita?"
+
+"I made his acquaintance, my lady, in Kyedani. I saw him the last time
+in Pilvishki, when we were marching hither from Podlyasye."
+
+"Is what the prince says true, that Pan Kmita offered to do violence to
+the person of the King of Poland?"
+
+"I know not, my lady. It is known to me that they took counsel together
+in Pilvishki; then the prince went with Pan Kmita to the forest, and it
+was so long before he returned that Patterson was alarmed and sent
+troops to meet him. I led those troops. We met the prince. I saw that
+he was greatly changed, as if strong emotion had passed through his
+soul. He was talking to himself, which never happens to him. I heard
+how he said: 'The devil would have undertaken that--' I know nothing
+more. But later, when the prince mentioned what Kmita offered, I
+thought, 'If this was it, it must be true.'"
+
+Panna Billevich pressed her lips together.
+
+"I thank you," said she. And after a while she was alone.
+
+The thought of flight mastered her thoroughly. She determined at any
+price to tear herself from those infamous places, and from the power of
+that treacherous prince. But where was she to find refuge? The villages
+and towns were in Swedish hands, the cloisters were ruined, the castles
+levelled with the earth; the whole country was swarming with soldiers,
+and with worse than soldiers,--with fugitives from the army, robbers,
+all kinds of ruffians. What fate could be waiting for a maiden cast as
+a prey to that storm? Who would go with her? Her aunt Kulvyets, her
+uncle, and a few of his servants. Whose power would protect her?
+Kettling would go, perhaps; maybe a handful of faithful soldiers and
+friends might even be found who would accompany him. But as Kettling
+had fallen in love with her beyond question, then how was she to incur
+a debt of gratitude to him, which she would have to pay afterward with
+a great price? Finally, what right had she to close the career of that
+young man, scarcely more than a youth, and expose it to pursuit, to
+persecution, to ruin, if she could not offer him anything in return
+save friendship? Therefore, she asked herself, what was she to do,
+whither was she to flee, since here and there destruction threatened
+her, here and there disgrace?
+
+In such a struggle of soul she began to pray ardently; and more
+especially did she repeat one prayer with earnestness to which the old
+colonel had constant recourse in evil times, beginning with the
+words,--
+
+
+           "God saved Thee with Thy Infant
+              From the malice of Herod;
+            In Egypt he straightened the road
+              For Thy safe passage--"
+
+
+At this moment a great whirlwind rose, and the trees in the garden
+began to make a tremendous noise. All at once the praying lady
+remembered the wilderness on the borders of which she had grown up from
+infancy; and the thought that in the wilderness she would find the only
+safe refuge flew through her head like lightning.
+
+Then Olenka breathed deeply, for she had found at last what she had
+been seeking. To Zyelonka, to Rogovsk! There the enemy would not go,
+the ruffian would not seek booty. There a man of the place, if he
+forgot himself, might go astray and wander till death; what must it be
+to a stranger not knowing the road? There the Domasheviches, the Smoky
+Stakyans; and if they are gone, if they have followed Pan Volodyovski,
+it is possible to go by those forests far beyond and seek quiet in
+other wildernesses.
+
+The remembrance of Pan Volodyovski rejoiced Olenka. Oh, if she had such
+a protector! He was a genuine soldier; his was a sabre under which she
+might take refuge from Kmita and the Radzivills themselves. Now it
+occurred to her that he was the man who had advised, when he caught
+Kmita in Billeviche, to seek safety in the Byalovyej wilderness.
+
+And he spoke wisely! Rogovsk and Zyelonka are too near the Radzivills,
+and near Byalovyej stands that Sapyeha who rubbed from the face of the
+earth the most terrible Radzivill.
+
+To Byalovyej then, to Byalovyej, even to-day, to-morrow! Only let her
+uncle come, she would not delay.
+
+The dark depths of Byalovyej will protect her, and afterward, when the
+storm passes, the cloister. There only can be real peace and
+forgetfulness of all men, of all pain, sorrow, and contempt.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLII.
+
+
+The sword-bearer of Rossyeni returned a few days later. In spite of the
+safe-conduct of Boguslav, he went only to Rossyeni; to Billeviche
+itself he had no reason to go, for it was no longer in the world. The
+house, the buildings, the village, everything was burned to the ground
+in the last battle, which Father Strashevich, a Jesuit, had fought at
+the head of his own detachment against the Swedish captain Rossa. The
+inhabitants were in the forests or in armed parties. Instead of rich
+villages there remained only land and water.
+
+The roads were filled with "ravagers,"--that is, fugitives from various
+armies, who, going in considerable groups, were busied with robbery, so
+that even small parties of soldiers were not safe from them. The
+sword-bearer then had not even been able to convince himself whether
+the barrels filled with plate and money and buried in the garden were
+safe, and he returned to Taurogi, very angry and peevish, with a
+terrible animosity in his heart against the destroyers.
+
+He had barely put foot out of his carriage, when Olenka hurried him to
+her own room, and recounted all that Hassling-Kettling had told her.
+
+The old soldier shivered at the recital, since, not having children of
+his own, he loved the maiden as his daughter. For a while he did
+nothing but grasp his sword-hilt, repeating, "Strike, who has courage!"
+At last he caught himself by the head, and began to say,--
+
+"_Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa_ (It is my fault, my greatest fault); for
+at times it came into my head, and this and that man whispered that
+that hell-dweller was melting from love of you, and I said nothing, was
+even proud, thinking: 'Well, he will marry! We are relatives of the
+Gosyevskis, of the Tyzenhauzes; why should we not be relatives of the
+Radzivills?' For pride, God is punishing me. The traitor prepared a
+respectable relationship. That's the kind of relative he wanted to be.
+I would he were killed! But wait! this hand and this sabre will moulder
+first."
+
+"We must think of escape," said Olenka.
+
+"Well, give your plans of escape."
+
+The sword-bearer, having finished panting, listened carefully; at last
+he said,--
+
+"Better collect my subjects and form a party! I will attack the Swedes
+as Kmita did Hovanski. You will be safer in the forest and in the field
+than in the court of a traitor and a heretic."
+
+"That is well," answered the lady.
+
+"Not only will I not oppose," said the sword-bearer, "but I will say
+the sooner the better. And I lack neither subjects nor scythes. They
+burned my residence, never mind that! I will assemble peasants from
+other villages. All the Billeviches in the field will join us. We will
+show you relationship, young man,--we will show what it is to attack
+the Billevich honor. You are a Radzivill! What of that? There are no
+hetmans in the Billevich family, but there are also no traitors! We
+shall see whom all Jmud will follow! We will put you in Byalovyej and
+return ourselves," said he, turning to Olenka. "It cannot be otherwise!
+He must give satisfaction for that affair, for it is an injustice to
+the whole estate of nobles. Infamous is he who does not declare for us!
+God will help us, our brethren will help us, citizens will help us, and
+then fire and sword! The Billeviches will meet the Radzivills! Infamous
+he who is not with us! infamous he who will not flash his sword in the
+eyes of the traitor! The king is with us; so is the Diet, so is the
+whole Commonwealth."
+
+Here the sword-bearer, red as blood and with bristling forelock, fell
+to pounding the table with his fist.
+
+"This war is more urgent than the Swedish, for in us the whole order of
+knighthood, all laws, the whole Commonwealth is injured and shaken in
+its deepest foundations. Infamous is he who does not understand this!
+The land will perish unless we measure out vengeance and punishment on
+the traitor!"
+
+And the old blood played more and more violently, till Olenka was
+forced to pacify her uncle. He sat calmly, then, though he thought that
+not only the country, but the whole world was perishing when the
+Billeviches were touched; in this he saw the most terrible precipice
+for the Commonwealth, and began to roar like a lion.
+
+But the lady, who had great influence over him, was able at last to
+pacify her uncle, explaining that for their safety and for the success
+of their flight it was specially needful to preserve the profoundest
+secrecy, and not to show the prince that they were thinking of
+anything.
+
+He promised sacredly to act according to her directions; then they took
+counsel about the flight itself. The affair was not over-difficult, for
+it seemed that they were not watched at all. The sword-bearer decided
+to send in advance a youth, with letters to his overseers to assemble
+peasants at once from all the villages belonging to him and the other
+Billeviches, and to arm them.
+
+Six confidential servants were to go to Billeviche, as it were, for the
+barrels of money and silver, but really to halt in the Girlakol
+forests, and wait there with horses, bags, and provisions. They decided
+to depart from Taurogi in sleighs and accompanied by two servants, as
+if going merely to the neighboring Gavna; afterward they would mount
+horses and hurry on with all speed. To Gavna they used to go often to
+visit the Kuchuk-Olbrotovskis, where sometimes they passed the night;
+they hoped therefore that their journey would not attract the attention
+of any one, and that no pursuit would follow, unless two or three days
+later, at which time they would be in the midst of armed bands and in
+the depth of impenetrable forests. The absence of Prince Boguslav
+strengthened them in this hope.
+
+Meanwhile the sword-bearer was greatly busied with preparations. A
+messenger with letters went out on the following morning. The day after
+that, Pan Tomash talked in detail with Patterson of his buried money,
+which, as he said, exceeded a hundred thousand, and of the need of
+bringing it to safe Taurogi. Patterson believed easily; for Billevich
+was a noble and passed as a very rich man, which he was in reality.
+
+"Let them bring it as soon as possible," said the Scot; "if you need
+them, I will give you soldiers."
+
+"The fewer people who see what I am bringing the better. My servants
+are faithful, and I will order them to cover the barrels with hemp,
+which is brought often from our villages to Prussia, or with staves
+which no one will covet."
+
+"Better with staves," said Patterson; "for people could feel with a
+sabre or a spear through the hemp that there was something else in the
+wagon. But you would better give the coin to the prince on his
+recognition. I know, too, that he needs money, for his revenues do not
+come regularly."
+
+"I should like so to serve the prince that he would never need
+anything," answered the old man.
+
+The conversation ended there, and all seemed to combine most favorably,
+for the servants started at once, while the sword-bearer and Olenka
+were to go next morning. But in the evening Boguslav returned most
+unexpectedly at the head of two regiments of Prussian cavalry. His
+affairs seemed to advance not too favorably, for he was angry and
+fretful.
+
+That evening he summoned a council of war, which was composed of the
+representatives of the elector. Count Seydevitz, Patterson, Sakovich,
+and Kyritz, a colonel of cavalry. They sat till three in the morning;
+and the object of their deliberation was the campaign to Podlyasye
+against Sapyeha.
+
+"The elector and the King of Sweden have reinforced me in proportion
+to their strength," said the prince. "One of two things will
+happen,--either I shall find Sapyeha in Podlyasye, and in that event I
+must rub him out; or I shall not find him, and I shall occupy Podlyasye
+without resistance. For all this, however, money is needed; and money
+neither the elector nor the King of Sweden has given me, for they
+haven't it themselves."
+
+"Where is money to be found if not with your highness?" asked
+Seydevitz. "Through the whole world men speak of the inexhaustible
+wealth of the Radzivills."
+
+"Pan Seydevitz," answered Boguslav, "if I received all the income from
+my inherited estates, I should surely have more money than five of your
+German princes taken together. But there is war in the country;
+revenues do not come in, or are intercepted by rebels. Ready money
+might be obtained for notes from the Prussian towns; but you know best
+what is happening in them, and that purses are opened only for Yan
+Kazimir."
+
+"But Koenigsberg?"
+
+"I took what I could get, but that was little."
+
+"I think myself fortunate to be able to serve you with good counsel,"
+said Patterson.
+
+"I would rather you served me with ready money."
+
+"My counsel means ready money. Not longer ago than yesterday Pan
+Billevich told me that he had a good sum hidden in the garden of
+Billeviche, and that he wishes to bring it here for safety, and give it
+to your highness for a note."
+
+"Well, you have really fallen from heaven to me, and this noble as
+well!" cried Boguslav. "But has he much money?"
+
+"More than a hundred thousand, besides silver and valuables, which are
+worth perhaps an equal amount."
+
+"The silver and valuables he will not wish to turn into money, but they
+can be pawned. I am thankful to you, Patterson, for this comes to me in
+time. I must talk to Billevich in the morning."
+
+"Then I will forewarn him, for he is preparing to go to-morrow with the
+lady to Gavna to the Kuchuk-Olbrotovskis."
+
+"Tell him not to go till he sees me."
+
+"He has sent the servants already; I am only alarmed for their safety."
+
+"A whole regiment can be sent after them; but we will talk later. This
+is timely for me, timely! And it will be amusing if I rend Podlyasye
+from the Commonwealth with the money of this royalist and patriot."
+
+Then the prince dismissed the council, for he had to put himself yet in
+the hands of his chamber attendants, whose task it was every night
+before he went to rest to preserve his uncommon beauty with baths,
+ointments, and various inventions known only in foreign lands. This
+lasted usually an hour, and sometimes two; besides, the prince was
+road-weary and the hour late.
+
+Early in the morning Patterson detained Billevich and Olenka with the
+announcement that the prince wished to see them. It was necessary to
+defer their journey; but this did not disturb them over-much, for
+Patterson told what the question was.
+
+An hour later the prince appeared. In spite of the fact that Pan Tomash
+and Olenka had promised each other most faithfully to receive him in
+former fashion, they could not do so, though they tried with every
+effort.
+
+Olenka's countenance changed, and blood came to the face of the
+sword-bearer at sight of Prince Boguslav; for a time both stood
+confused, excited, striving in vain to regain their usual calmness.
+
+The prince, on the contrary, was perfectly at ease. He had grown a
+little meagre about the eyes, and his face was less colored than
+common; but that paleness of his was set off wonderfully by the
+pearl-colored morning dress, interwoven with silver. He saw in a moment
+that they received him somewhat differently, and were less glad than
+usual to see him. But he thought at once that those two royalists had
+learned of his relations with the Swedes; hence the coolness of the
+reception. Therefore he began at once to throw sand in their eyes, and,
+after the compliments of greeting, said,--
+
+"Lord Sword-bearer, my benefactor, you have heard, without doubt, what
+misfortunes have met me."
+
+"Does your highness wish to speak of the death of Prince Yanush?" asked
+the sword-bearer.
+
+"Not of his death alone. That was a cruel blow; still, I yielded to the
+will of God, Who, as I hope, has rewarded my cousin for all the wrongs
+done him; but He has sent a new burden to me, for I must be leader in a
+civil war; and that for every citizen who loves his country is a bitter
+portion."
+
+The sword-bearer said nothing; he merely looked a little askance at
+Olenka. But the prince continued,--
+
+"By my labor and toil, and God alone knows at what outlay, I had
+brought peace to the verge of realization. It was almost a question of
+merely signing the treaties. The Swedes were to leave Poland, asking no
+remuneration save the consent of the king and the estates that after
+the death of Yan Kazimir Karl Gustav would be chosen to the throne of
+Poland. A warrior so great and mighty would be the salvation of the
+Commonwealth. And what is more important, he was to furnish at once
+reinforcements for the war in the Ukraine and against Moscow. We should
+have extended our boundaries; but this was not convenient for Pan
+Sapyeha, for then he could not crush the Radzivills. All agreed to this
+treaty. He alone opposes it with armed hand. The country is nothing to
+him, if he can only carry out his personal designs. It has come to
+this, that arms must be used against him. This function has been
+confided to me, according to the secret treaty between Yan Kazimir and
+Karl Gustav. This is the whole affair! I have never shunned any
+service, therefore I must accept this; though many will judge me
+unjustly, and think that I begin a brother-killing war from pure
+revenge only."
+
+"Whoso knows your highness," said the sword-bearer, "as well as we do
+will not be deceived by appearances, and will always be able to
+understand the real intentions of your highness."
+
+Here the sword-bearer was so delighted with his own cunning and
+courtesy, and he muttered so expressively at Olenka, that she was
+alarmed lest the prince should notice those signs.
+
+And he did notice them. "They do not believe me," thought he. And
+though he showed no wrath on his face, Billevich had pricked him to the
+soul. He was convinced with perfect sincerity that it was an offence
+not to believe, a Radzivill, even when he saw fit to lie.
+
+"Patterson has told me," continued he, after a while, "that you wish to
+give me ready money for my paper. I agree to this willingly; for I
+acknowledge that ready money is useful to me at the moment. When peace
+comes, you can do as you like,--either take a certain sum, or I will
+give you a couple of villages as security, so that the transaction will
+be profitable for you.--Pardon," said the prince, turning to Olenka,
+"that in view of such material questions we are not speaking of sighs
+or ideals. This conversation is out of place; but the times are such
+that it is impossible to give their proper course to homage and
+admiration."
+
+Olenka dropped her eyes, and seizing her robe with the tips of her
+fingers, made a proper courtesy, not wishing to give an answer.
+Meanwhile the sword-bearer formed in his mind a project of unheard-of
+unfitness, but which he considered uncommonly clever.
+
+"I will flee with Olenka and will not give the money," thought he.
+
+"It will be agreeable to me to accommodate your highness. Patterson has
+not told of all, for there is about half a pot of gold ducats buried
+apart, so as not to lose all the money in case of accident. Besides,
+there are barrels belonging to other Billeviches; but these during my
+absence were buried under the direction of this young lady, and she
+alone is able to calculate the place, for the man who buried them is
+dead."
+
+Boguslav looked at him quickly. "How is that? Patterson said that you
+have already sent men; and since they have gone, they must know where
+the money is."
+
+"But of the other money no one knows, except her."
+
+"Still it must be buried in some definite place, which can be described
+easily in words or indicated on paper."
+
+"Words are wind; and as to pictures, the servants know nothing of them.
+We will both go; that is the thing."
+
+"For God's sake! you must know your own gardens. Therefore go alone.
+Why should Panna Aleksandra go?"
+
+"I will not go alone!" said Billevich, with decision.
+
+Boguslav looked at him inquiringly a second time; then he seated
+himself more comfortably, and began to strike his boots with a cane
+which he held in his hand.
+
+"Is that final?" asked he. "Well! In such an event I will give a couple
+of regiments of cavalry to take you there and bring you back."
+
+"We need no regiments. We will go and return ourselves. This is our
+country. Nothing threatens us here."
+
+"As a host, sensitive to the good of his guests, I cannot permit that
+Panna Aleksandra should go without armed force. Choose, then. Either go
+alone, or let both go with an escort."
+
+Billevich saw that he had fallen into his own trap; and that brought
+him to such anger that, forgetting all precautions, he cried,--
+
+"Then let your highness choose. Either we shall both go unattended, or
+I will not give the money!"
+
+Panna Aleksandra looked on him imploringly; but he had already grown
+red and begun to pant. Still, he was a man cautious by nature, even
+timid, loving to settle every affair in good feeling; but when once the
+measure was exceeded in dealing with him, when he was too much excited
+against any one, or when it was a question of the Billevich honor, he
+hurled himself with a species of desperate daring at the eyes of even
+the most powerful enemy. So that now he put his hand to his left side,
+and shaking his sabre began to cry with all his might,--
+
+"Is this captivity? Do they wish to oppress a free citizen, and trample
+on cardinal rights?"
+
+Boguslav, with shoulders leaning against the arms of the chair, looked
+at him attentively; but his look became colder each moment, and he
+struck the cane against his boots more and more quickly. Had the
+sword-bearer known the prince better, he would have known that he was
+bringing down terrible danger on his own head.
+
+Relations with Boguslav were simply dreadful. It was never known when
+the courteous cavalier, the diplomat accustomed to self-control, would
+be overborne by the wild and unrestrained magnate who trampled every
+resistance with the cruelty of an Eastern despot. A brilliant education
+and refinement, acquired at the first courts of Europe; reflection and
+studied elegance, which he had gained in intercourse with men,--were
+like wonderful and strong flowers under which was secreted a tiger.
+
+But the sword-bearer did not know this, and in his angry blindness
+shouted on,--
+
+"Your highness, dissemble no further, for you are known! And have a
+care, for neither the King of Sweden nor the elector, both of whom you
+are serving against your own country, nor your princely position, will
+save you before the law; and the sabres of nobles will teach you
+manners, young man!"
+
+Boguslav rose; in one instant he crushed the cane in his iron hands,
+and throwing the pieces at the feet of the sword-bearer, said with a
+terrible, suppressed voice,--
+
+"That is what your rights are for me! That your tribunals! That your
+privileges!"
+
+"Outrageous violence!" cried Billevich.
+
+"Silence, paltry noble!" cried the prince. "I will crush you into
+dust!" And he advanced to seize the astonished man and hurl him against
+the wall.
+
+Now Panna Aleksandra stood between them. "What do you think to do?"
+inquired she.
+
+The prince restrained himself. But she stood with nostrils distended,
+with flaming face, with fire in her eyes like an angry Minerva. Her
+breast heaved under her bodice like a wave of the sea, and she was
+marvellous in that anger, so that Boguslav was lost in gazing at her;
+all his desires crept into his face, like serpents from the dens of his
+soul.
+
+After a time his anger passed, presence of mind returned; he looked
+awhile yet at Olenka. At last his face grew mild; he bent his head
+toward his breast, and said,--
+
+"Pardon, angelic lady! I have a soul full of gnawing and pain,
+therefore I do not command myself." Then he left the room.
+
+Olenka began to wring her hands; and Billevich, coming to himself,
+seized his forelock, and cried,--
+
+"I have spoiled everything; I am the cause of your ruin!"
+
+The prince did not show himself the whole day. He even dined in his own
+room with Sakovich. Stirred to the bottom of his soul, he could not
+think so clearly as usual. Some kind of ague was wasting him. It was
+the herald of a grievous fever which was to seize him soon with such
+force that during its attacks he was benumbed altogether, so that his
+attendants had to rub him most actively. But at this time he ascribed
+his strange state to the power of love, and thought that he must either
+satisfy it or die. When he had told Sakovich the whole conversation
+with the sword-bearer, he said,--
+
+"My hands and feet are burning, ants are walking along my back, in my
+mouth are bitterness and fire; but, by all the horned devils, what is
+this? Never has this attacked me before!"
+
+"Your highness is as full of scruples as a baked capon of buckwheat
+grits. The prince is a capon, the prince is a capon. Ha, ha!"
+
+"You are a fool!"
+
+"Very well."
+
+"I don't need your ideas."
+
+"Worthy prince, take a lute and go under the windows of the maiden.
+Billevich may show you his fist. Tfu! to the deuce! is that the kind of
+bold man that Boguslav Radzivill is?"
+
+"You are an idiot!"
+
+"Very well. I see that your highness is beginning to speak with
+yourself and tell the truth to your own face. Boldly, boldly! Pay no
+heed to rank."
+
+"You see, Sakovich, that my Castor is growing familiar with me; as it
+is, I kick him often in the ribs, but a greater accident may meet you."
+
+Sakovich sprang up as if red with anger, like Billevich a little while
+before; and since he had an uncommon gift of mimicry, he began to cry
+in a voice so much like that of Billevich that any one not seeing who
+was talking, might have been deceived.
+
+"What! is this captivity? Do they wish to oppress a free citizen, to
+trample on cardinal rights?"
+
+"Give us peace! give us peace!" said the prince, fretfully. "She
+defended that old fool with her person, but here there is one to defend
+you."
+
+"If she defended him, she should have been taken in pawn!"
+
+"There must be some witchcraft in this place! Either she must have
+given me something, or the constellations are such that I am simply
+leaving my mind. If you could have seen her when she was defending that
+mangy old uncle of hers! But you are a fool! It is growing cloudy in my
+head. See how my hands are burning! To love such a woman, to gain
+her--with such a woman to--"
+
+"To have posterity!" added Sakovich.
+
+"That's so, that's so!--as if you knew that must be; otherwise I shall
+burst as a bomb. For God's sake! what is happening to me? Must I marry,
+or what, by all the devils of earth and hell?"
+
+Sakovich grew serious. "Your princely highness, you must not think of
+that!"
+
+"I am thinking of just that, precisely because I wish it. I will do
+that, though a regiment of Sakoviches repeated a whole day to me, 'Your
+princely highness must not think of that!'"
+
+"Oh, I see this is no joke."
+
+"I am sick, enchanted."
+
+"Why do you not follow my advice at last?"
+
+"I must follow it,--may the plague take all the dreams, all the
+Billeviches, all Lithuania with the tribunals, and Yan Kazimir to boot!
+I shall not succeed otherwise; I see that I shall not! I have had
+enough of this, have I not? A great question! And I, the fool, was
+considering both sides hitherto; was afraid of dreams, of Billeviches,
+of lawsuits, of the rabble of nobles, the fortune of Yan Kazimir. Tell
+me that I am a fool! Do you hear? I command you to tell me that I am a
+fool!"
+
+"But I will not obey, for now you are really Radzivill, and not a
+Calvinist minister. But in truth you must be ill, for I have never seen
+you so changed."
+
+"True! In the most difficult positions I merely waved my hand and
+whistled, but now I feel as if some one were thrusting spurs into my
+sides."
+
+"This is strange, for if that maiden has given you something
+designedly, she has not done so to run away afterward; but still, from
+what you say, it seems that they wish to flee in secret."
+
+"Ryff told me that this is the influence of Saturn, on which burning
+exhalations rise during this particular month."
+
+"Worthy prince, rather take Jove as a model, for he was happy without
+marriage. All will be well; only do not think of marriage, unless of a
+counterfeit one."
+
+All at once the starosta of Oshmiana struck his forehead.
+
+"But wait, your highness! I have heard of such a case in Prussia."
+
+"Is the Devil whispering something into your ear? Tell me!"
+
+But Sakovich was silent for a long time; at last his face brightened,
+and he said,--
+
+"Thank the fortune that gave you Sakovich as friend."
+
+"What news, what news?"
+
+"Nothing. I will be your highness's best man" (here Sakovich
+bowed),--"no small honor for such a poor fellow!"
+
+"Don't play the jester; speak quickly!"
+
+"There is in Tyltsa one Plaska, or something like that, who in his time
+was a priest in Nyevorani, but who falling away from the faith became a
+Lutheran, got married, took refuge under the elector, and now is
+dealing in dried fish with people of this region. Bishop Parchevski
+tried to lure him back to Jmud, where in good certainty there
+was a fire waiting for him; but the elector would not yield up a
+fellow-believer."
+
+"How does that concern me? Do not loiter."
+
+"How does that concern your highness? In this way it must concern you;
+for he will sew you and her together with stitches on the outside, you
+understand? And because he is a fool of a workman, and does not belong
+to the guild, it will be easy to rip the work after him. Do you see?
+The guild does not recognize this sewing as valid; but still there will
+be no violence, no outcry; you can twist the neck of the workman
+afterward, and you will complain that you were deceived, do you
+understand? But before that time _crescite et multiplicamini_. I'll be
+the first to give you my blessing."
+
+"I understand, and I don't understand," said the prince. "The devil I
+understand there perfectly. Sakovich, you must have been born, like a
+witch, with teeth in your mouth. The hangman is waiting for you; it
+cannot be otherwise, O Starosta! But while I live a hair will not fall
+from your head; a fitting reward will not miss you. I then--"
+
+"Your highness will make a formal proposal to Panna Billevich, to her
+and to her uncle. If they refuse, if they do not consent, then give
+command to tear the skin from me, make sandal strings out of it, and go
+on a pilgrimage of penance to--to Rome. It is possible to resist a
+Radzivill if he wishes simply to be a lover; but if he wishes to marry,
+he need not try to please any noble. You must only tell Billevich and
+the lady that out of regard for the elector and the King of Sweden, who
+want you to marry the Princess of Bipont, your marriage must remain
+secret till peace is declared. Besides, you will write the marriage
+contract as you like. Both churches will be forced to declare it
+invalid. Well, what do you think?"
+
+Boguslav was silent for a while, but on his face red fever-spots
+appeared under the paint; then he cried,--
+
+"There is no time in three days. I must move against Sapyeha."
+
+"That is just the position! Were there more time, it would be
+impossible to justify the pretext. Is not this true? Only through lack
+of time can you explain that the first priest at hand officiates, as
+happens in sudden emergencies, and marries on a bolting-cloth. They
+will think too, 'It is sudden, for it must be sudden!' She is a
+knightly maiden; you can take her with you to the field. Dear
+bridegroom, if Sapyeha conquers, even then you will have half the
+victories of the campaign."
+
+"That is well, that is well!" said the prince.
+
+But at that moment the first paroxysm seized him so that his jaws
+closed and he could not say another word. He grew rigid, and then began
+to quiver and flounder like a fish out of water. But before the
+terrified Sakovich could bring the physician, the paroxysm had passed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLIII.
+
+
+After his conversation with Sakovich, Prince Boguslav betook himself on
+the afternoon of the morrow directly to Billevich.
+
+"My benefactor," said he, to begin with, "I was grievously to blame the
+last time we met, for I fell into anger in my own house. It is my
+fault, and all the more so that I gave this affront to a man of a
+family friendly to the Radzivills. But I come to implore forgiveness.
+Let a sincere confession be satisfaction to you, and my atonement. You
+know the Radzivills of old; you know that we are not in haste to beg
+pardon; still, since I was to blame before age and dignity, I come
+without considering who I am, with a penitent head. And you, old friend
+of our house, will not refuse me your hand, I am certain."
+
+Then he extended his hand; and Billevich, in whose soul the first
+outburst had passed, did not dare to refuse his own, though he gave it
+with hesitation.
+
+"Your highness, return to us our freedom; that will be the best
+satisfaction."
+
+"You are free, and may go, even to-day."
+
+"I thank your highness," said the astonished Billevich.
+
+"I interpose only one condition, which you, God grant, will not
+reject."
+
+"What is that?" asked Billevich, with fear.
+
+"That you listen patiently to what I am going to say."
+
+"If that is all, I will listen even till evening."
+
+"Do not give me your answer at once, but think an hour or two."
+
+"God sees that if I receive my freedom I wish peace."
+
+"You will receive your freedom; but I do not know whether you will use
+it, or whether you will be urgent to leave my threshold. I should be
+glad were you to consider my house and all Taurogi as your own; but
+listen to me now. Do you know, my benefactor, why I was opposed to the
+departure of Panna Billevich? This is why,--because I divined that you
+wished to flee simply; and I have fallen in love with your niece, so
+that to see her I should be ready to swim a Hellespont each day, like
+Leander."
+
+Billevich grew red again in a moment. "Does your highness dare to say
+that to me?"
+
+"To you especially, my benefactor."
+
+"Worthy prince, seek your fortune with court ladies, but touch not
+noble maidens. You may imprison her, you may confine her in a vault,
+but you may not disgrace her."
+
+"I may not disgrace her," said the prince; "but I may bow down to the
+old man Billevich, and say to him, 'Listen, father, give me your niece
+as wife, for I cannot live without her.'"
+
+The sword-bearer was so amazed that he could not utter a word; for a
+time he merely moved his mustaches, and his eyes were staring; then he
+began to rub his hands and look, now on the prince, now around the
+room; at last he said,--
+
+"Is this in a dream, or is it real?"
+
+"Do not hasten! To convince you still better, I will repeat with all
+the titles: I, Boguslav, Prince Radzivill, Marshal of the Grand
+Principality of Lithuania, ask you, Tomash Billevich, sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni, for the hand of your niece, Panna Aleksandra, chief-hunter's
+daughter."
+
+"Is this true? In God's name! have you considered the matter?"
+
+"I have considered; now do you consider, my benefactor, whether the
+cavalier is worthy of the lady."
+
+"My breath is stopped from wonder."
+
+"Now see if I had any evil intentions."
+
+"And would your highness not consider our small station?"
+
+"Are the Billeviches so cheap? Do you value your shield of nobility and
+the antiquity of your family thus? Does a Billevich say this?"
+
+"I know, gracious prince, that the origin of our family is to be sought
+in ancient Rome; but--"
+
+"But," interrupted the prince, "you have neither hetmans nor
+chancellors. That is nothing! You are soldiers, like my uncle in
+Brandenburg. Since a noble in our Commonwealth may be elected king,
+there are no thresholds too lofty for his feet. My sword-bearer and,
+God grant, my uncle, I was born of a Brandenburg princess; my father's
+mother was an Ostrogski; but my grandfather of mighty memory, Kryshtof
+I., he whom they called Thunder, grand hetman, chancellor, and voevoda
+of Vilna, was married the first time to Panna Sobek; but for this
+reason the coronet did not fall from his head, for Panna Sobek was a
+noble woman, as honorably born as others. When my late father married
+the daughter of the elector, they wondered why he did not remember his
+own dignity, though he allied himself with a reigning house. Such is
+the devilish pride of you nobles! But acknowledge, my benefactor, you
+do not think a Sobek better than a Billevich, do you?"
+
+Speaking thus, the prince began to tap the old man on the shoulder with
+great familiarity. The noble melted like wax, and answered,--
+
+"God reward your highness for honorable intentions! A weight has fallen
+from my heart! But now, if it were not for difference of faith!"
+
+"A Catholic priest will perform the ceremony. I do not want another
+myself."
+
+"I shall be thankful for this all my life, since here it is a question
+of the blessing of God, which certainly the Lord Jesus would withdraw
+if some vile--"
+
+Here the old man bit his tongue, for he saw that he was saying
+something disagreeable to the prince. But Boguslav did not notice it;
+he smiled graciously and said,--
+
+"And as to posterity, I shall not be stubborn; for there is nothing
+that I would not do for that beauty of yours."
+
+Billevich's face grew bright as if a ray of the sun had fallen on it;
+"Indeed, God has not been sparing of beauty to her, it is true. Oh!
+there will be a shout all over Jmud. And what will the Sitsinskis say
+when the Billeviches increase so? They would not leave the old colonel
+at rest, though he was a man of Roman mould, respected by the whole
+Commonwealth."
+
+"We will drive them out of Jmud, worthy Sword-bearer,"
+
+"O great God, merciful God! undiscoverable are Thy judgments; but if in
+them it lies that the Sitsinskis are to burst from envy, then let Thy
+will be done!"
+
+"Amen!" added Boguslav.
+
+"Your highness, do not take it ill that I do not clothe myself in
+dignity, as befits a person of whom a man asks a maiden, and that I
+show too evident rejoicing. But we have been here in vexation, not
+knowing what was awaiting us and interpreting everything for the worst.
+It came to this that we thought evil of your highness, until it turns
+out that our fears and judgments were not just, and that we may return
+to our previous homage. I say this as if some one had taken a burden
+from my shoulders."
+
+"And did Panna Aleksandra judge me thus?"
+
+"She? Even Cicero could not have described properly her previous
+admiration for your highness. I think that only virtue and a certain
+inborn timidity stood in the way of love. But when she hears of the
+sincere intentions of your highness, then I am sure she will at once
+give the reins to her heart."
+
+"Cicero could not have said that better!" said Boguslav.
+
+"With happiness comes eloquence. But since your highness has been
+pleased to listen to everything I have said, then I will be sincere to
+the last."
+
+"Be sincere, Pan Billevich."
+
+"Though this maiden is young, she is a woman with a man's cast of mind
+altogether; it is wonderful what a character she has. Where more than
+one man of experience would hesitate, she hesitates not a moment. What
+is evil she puts on the left, what is good on the right, and goes
+herself to the right as if it were sweet. When she has once chosen the
+road, even though there were cannon before her, that is nothing to her!
+She would not go aside for the cannon. She is like her grandfather and
+me. Her father was a born soldier, but mild; her mother, from the house
+of Voynillovich, was also strong-willed."
+
+"I am glad to hear this, Pan Billevich."
+
+"Your highness will not believe how incensed she is against the Swedes,
+and all enemies of the Commonwealth. If she held any one guilty of
+treason, she would feel an utter detestation of him, though he were an
+angel and not a human being. Your highness,--forgive an old man who
+might be your father in years, if not in dignity,--leave the Swedes;
+they are worse for the country than Tartars! Move your troops against
+such sons, and not only I, but she, will follow you to the field.
+Pardon me, your highness, pardon me. Now I have said what I had on my
+mind."
+
+Boguslav mastered himself after a moment's silence, and said: "My
+benefactor, you might have supposed yesterday, but you may not suppose
+to-day that I wish merely to throw sand in your eyes, when I say that I
+am on the side of the king and the country. Here under oath to you as a
+relative I repeat that what I stated touching peace and its conditions
+was the pure truth. I, too, should prefer to march to the field, for my
+nature draws me thither; but because I saw that salvation was not in
+the field, I was forced through simple devotion to seize another
+method. And I can say that I have accomplished an unheard of thing; for
+after a last war to conclude a peace of such kind that the conquering
+power serves the conquered,--of this Mazarin, the most cunning of men,
+need not be ashamed. Not Panna Aleksandra alone, but I equally with
+her, bear hatred to the enemy. But what is to be done? How save this
+country? Not even Hercules against many can conquer. Therefore I
+thought thus, 'Instead of destroying, which would be easier and more
+amusing, it is needful to save.' And since I had practised in affairs
+of this kind with great statesmen, since I am a relative of the
+elector, and since, by reason of my cousin Yanush, I am well considered
+by the Swedes, I began negotiations; and what their course was and what
+the benefit to the Commonwealth was, that you know,--an end of the war,
+freedom from oppression for your Catholic faith, for churches, for
+clergy, for the estate of nobles, and for the common people; the
+assistance of the Swedes in the war against Moscow and the Cossacks;
+and, God grant, an extension of boundary. And this all on one
+condition,--that Karl Gustav be king after Yan Kazimir. Whoso has done
+more for his country in these times, let him stand before my eyes."
+
+"True, a blind man could see that; but it will be very sad for the
+nobles that a free election will cease."
+
+"And which is more important,--an election or the country?"
+
+"They are the same, your highness; for an election is the main basis of
+the Commonwealth. And what is the country, if not a collection of laws,
+privileges, and liberties serving the nobles? A king can be found even
+in a foreign land."
+
+Anger and disgust flew like lightning over Boguslav's face.
+
+"Karl Gustav," said he, "will sign the _pacta conventa_, as his
+predecessors have signed it; and after his death we will elect whom we
+choose, even that Radzivill who will be born of your niece."
+
+The sword-bearer stood for a while as if dazzled by the thought; at
+last he raised his hand and cried with great enthusiasm,--
+
+"_Consentior_ (I agree)!"
+
+"I think, too, that you would agree, even if the throne should become
+hereditary in our family. Such are you all! But that is a later
+question. Now it is necessary that the stipulations come to reality.
+You understand, my uncle?"
+
+"As true as life, it is necessary!" repeated Billevich, with deep
+conviction.
+
+"They must for this reason,--that I am a mediator agreeable to his
+Swedish Majesty, and do you know for what reasons? Karl Gustav has one
+sister married to De la Gardie, and another, Princess Bipont, still
+unmarried; and he wishes to give her to me, so as to be allied to our
+house and have a party in Lithuania. Hence his favor toward me, to
+which my uncle, the elector, inclines him."
+
+"How is that?" asked the disquieted sword-bearer.
+
+"I would give all the princesses of Bipont[7] for your dove, together
+with the principalities, not only of the two, but of all the bridges in
+the world. But I may not anger the Swedish beast, therefore I give
+willing ear to their discussions; but only let them sign the treaty,
+then we shall see."
+
+"Would they be ready then not to sign if they should discover that you
+were married?"
+
+"Worthy sword-bearer," said the prince, with seriousness, "you have
+condemned me of crookedness toward the country; but I, as a true
+citizen, ask you, have I a right to sacrifice public affairs to my
+private interests?"
+
+Pan Tomash listened. "What will happen then?"
+
+"Think to yourself what must happen."
+
+"As God is true, I see already that the marriage must be deferred; and
+the proverb says; 'What is deferred, escapes.'"
+
+"I will not change my heart, for I have fallen in love for life. You
+must know that for faithfulness I could put to shame the most enduring
+Penelope."
+
+Billevich was alarmed still more; for he had an entirely opposite
+opinion touching the prince's constancy, confirmed as it was by
+Boguslav's general reputation. But the prince added, as if for a
+finishing stroke,--
+
+"You are right, that no one is sure of his to-morrow. I may fall ill;
+nay, some kind of sickness is coming on me even now, for yesterday I
+grew so rigid that Sakovich barely saved me. I may fall in a campaign
+against Sapyeha; and what delays, what troubles and vexations there
+will be, could not be written on an ox-hide."
+
+"By the wounds of God, give advice, your highness."
+
+"What advice can I give?" asked the prince. "Though I should be glad
+myself to have the latch fall as soon as possible."
+
+"Well, let it fall. Marry, and then what will be, will be."
+
+Boguslav sprang to his feet.
+
+"By the holy Gospel! With your wit you should be chancellor of
+Lithuania. Another man would not have thought out in three days what
+has come to your mind in a twinkle. That is it! marry, and remain
+quiet. There is sense in that! As it is, I shall march in two days
+against Sapyeha, for I must. During that time secret passages to the
+lady's chamber can be made; and then to the road! That is the head of a
+statesman! We will let two or three confidants into the secret, and
+take them as witnesses, so that the marriage may be formal. I will
+write a contract, secure the jointure, to which I will add a bequest;
+and let there be silence for the time. My benefactor, I thank you; from
+my heart, I thank you. Come to my arms, and then go to my beauty. I
+will wait for her answer, as if on coals. Meanwhile I will send
+Sakovich for the priest. Be well, father, and, God grant soon, the
+grandfather of a Radzivill."
+
+When he had said this, he let the astonished noble go from his embrace,
+and rushed out of the room.
+
+"For God's sake!" said the sword-bearer, recovering himself. "I gave
+such wise advice that Solomon himself would not be ashamed of it, and I
+should prefer to do without it. A secret is a secret; but break your
+head, crush your forehead against a wall, it cannot be otherwise. A
+blind man can see that! Would that the frost might oppress and kill
+those Swedes to the last! If it were not for those negotiations, the
+marriage would take place with ceremony, and all Jmud would come to the
+wedding. But here a husband must walk to his wife on felt, so as not to
+make noise. Tfu, to the deuce! The Sitsinskis will not burst so soon.
+Yet, praise be to God! that bursting will not miss them."
+
+When he had said this, he went to Olenka. Meanwhile the prince was
+taking further counsel with Sakovich.
+
+"The old man danced on two paws like a bear," said the prince; "but he
+tormented the life out of me. Uf! but I squeezed him so that I thought
+that the boots and straw would fly off his feet. And when I called him
+'Uncle,' his eyes stuck out, as if a keg of cabbage hash were choking
+him. Tfu! tfu! wait! I will make you uncle; but I have scores upon
+scores of such uncles throughout the whole world. Sakovich, I see how
+she is waiting for me in her room; and she will receive me with her
+eyes closed and her hands crossed. Wait, I will kiss those eyes for
+you--Sakovich, you will receive for life the estate of Prudy, beyond
+Oshmiana. When can Plaska be here?"
+
+"Before evening. I thank your highness for Prudy."
+
+"That is nothing! Before evening? That means any moment. If the
+ceremony could be performed to-day, even before midnight! Have you the
+contract ready?"
+
+"I have. I was liberal in the name of your highness. I assigned Birji
+as the jointure of the lady. The sword-bearer will howl like a dog when
+it is taken from him afterward."
+
+"He will sit in a dungeon, then he will be quiet."
+
+"Even that will not be needed. As soon as the marriage is invalid, all
+will be invalid. But did I not tell you that they would agree?"
+
+"He did not make the least difficulty. I am curious to know what she
+will say. I care nothing about him!"
+
+"Oh, they have fallen each into the arms of the other, are weeping from
+emotion, are blessing your highness, and are carried away by your
+kindness and beauty."
+
+"I don't know that they are by my beauty; for in some way I look
+wretched. I am all the time out of health, and I am afraid that
+yesterday's numbness will come again."
+
+"No; you will take something warm."
+
+The prince was already before the mirror.
+
+"It is blue under my eyes. And that fool, Fouret, darkened my eyebrows
+crooked. See if they are not crooked! I'll give orders to thumbscrew
+him, and make a monkey my body-servant. Why does the old man not come?
+I should like to go to the lady now, for she will permit me to kiss her
+before the marriage. How quickly it grows dark to-day! If Plaska
+flinches, we must put pincers into the fire."
+
+"Plaska will not flinch. He is a scoundrel from under a dark star."
+
+"And he will perform the marriage in scoundrel fashion?"
+
+"A scoundrel will perform the marriage for a scoundrel in scoundrel
+fashion."
+
+The prince fell into good humor, and said,--
+
+"When there is a pander for best man, there cannot be another kind of
+marriage."
+
+For a while they were silent; then both began to laugh. But their
+laughter sounded with marvellous ill-omen through the dark room. Night
+fell deeper and deeper.
+
+The prince began to walk through the room, striking audibly with his
+hammer-staff, on which he leaned heavily, for his feet did not serve
+him well after the last numbness.
+
+Now the servants brought in candelabra with candles, and went out; but
+the rush of air bent the flames of the candles, so that for a long time
+they did not burn straight upward, melting meanwhile much wax.
+
+"See how the caudles are burning!" said the prince. "What do you
+prophesy from that?"
+
+"That one virtue will melt to-day like wax."
+
+"It is wonderful how long that talk lasts."
+
+"Maybe the spirit of old Billevich is flying over the flames."
+
+"You are a fool!" answered Boguslav, abruptly. "You have chosen a time
+to talk of spirits!"
+
+Silence followed.
+
+"They say in England," said the prince, "that when there is a spirit in
+the room every light burns blue; but see, now they are burning yellow,
+as usual."
+
+"Trash!" answered Sakovich. "There are people in Moscow--"
+
+"But be still!" interrupted Boguslav. "The sword-bearer is coming. No!
+that is the wind moving the shutters. The devils have brought that old
+maid of an aunt, Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus! Has any one ever heard of the
+like? And she looks like a chimera."
+
+"If you wish, your highness, I'll marry her; then she will not be in
+the way, Plaska will solder us while you are waiting."
+
+"Well, I will give her a maple spade as a marriage present, and you a
+lantern, so as to have something to light her way."
+
+"I will not be your uncle--Bogus."
+
+"Remember Castor," answered the prince.
+
+"Do not stroke Castor, my Pollux, against the grain, for he can bite."
+
+Further conversation was interrupted by the sword-bearer and Panna
+Kulvyets. The prince stepped up to him quickly, leaning on his hammer.
+Sakovich rose.
+
+"Well, what? May I go to Olenka?" asked the prince.
+
+The sword-bearer spread out his arms and dropped his head on his
+breast.
+
+"Your highness, my niece says that Colonel Billevich's will forbids her
+to decide her own fate; and even if it did not forbid, she would not
+marry your highness, not having the heart to do so."
+
+"Sakovich, do you hear?" said Boguslav, with a terrible voice.
+
+"I too knew of that will," continued the sword-bearer, "but at the
+first moment I did not think it an invincible impediment."
+
+"I jeer at the wills of you nobles," said the prince; "I spit on your
+wills! Do you understand?"
+
+"But we do not jeer at them," said the aroused Pan Tomash; "and
+according to the will the maiden is free to enter the cloister or marry
+Kmita."
+
+"Whom, you sorry fellow? Kmita? I'll show you Kmita! I'll teach you!"
+
+"Whom do you call sorry fellow,--a Billevich?"
+
+And the sword-bearer caught at his side in the greatest fury; but
+Boguslav, in one moment, struck him on the breast with his hammer, so
+that Billevich groaned and fell to the floor. The prince then kicked
+him aside, to open a way to the door, and rushed from the room without
+a hat.
+
+"Jesus! Mary! Joseph!" cried Panna Kulvyets.
+
+But Sakovich, seizing her by the shoulder, put a dagger to her breast,
+and said,--
+
+"Quiet, my little jewel, quiet, dearest dove, or I will cut thy sweet
+throat, like that of a lame hen. Sit here quietly, and go not upstairs
+to thy niece's wedding."
+
+But in Panna Kulvyets there was knightly blood too; therefore she had
+barely heard the words of Sakovich, when straightway her terror passed
+into despair and frenzy.
+
+"Ruffian! bandit! pagan!" cried she; "slay me, for I will shout to the
+whole Commonwealth. The brother killed, the niece disgraced, I do not
+wish to live! Strike, slay, robber! People, come see!"
+
+Sakovich stifled further words by putting his powerful hand over her
+month.
+
+"Quiet, crooked distaff, dried rue!" said he; "I will not cut thy
+throat, for why should I give the Devil that which is his anyhow? But
+lest thou scream like a peacock before roosting, I will tie up thy
+pretty mouth with thy kerchief, and take a lute and play to thee of
+'sighs.' It cannot be but thou wilt love me."
+
+So saying, the starosta of Oshmiana, with the dexterity of a genuine
+pickpocket, encircled the head of Panna Kulvyets with her handkerchief,
+tied her hands in the twinkle of an eye, and threw her on the sofa;
+then he sat by her, and stretching himself out comfortably, asked her
+as calmly as though he had begun an ordinary conversation,--
+
+"Well, what do you think? I suppose Bogus will get on as easily as I
+have."
+
+With that he sprang to his feet, for the door opened, and in it
+appeared Panna Aleksandra. Her face was as white as chalk, her hair was
+somewhat dishevelled, her brows were frowning, and threat was in her
+eyes. Seeing her uncle on the floor, she knelt near him and passed her
+hand over his head and breast.
+
+The sword-bearer drew a deep breath, opened his eyes, half raised
+himself, and began to look around in the room, as if roused from sleep;
+then resting his hand on the floor, he tried to rise, which he did
+after a while with the help of the lady; then he came with tottering
+step to a chair, into which he threw himself. Only now did Olenka see
+Panna Kulvyets lying on the sofa.
+
+"Have you murdered her?" asked she of Sakovich.
+
+"God preserve me!" answered the starosta of Oshmiana.
+
+"I command you to unbind her!"
+
+There was such power in that voice that Sakovich said not a word, as if
+the command had come from Princess Radzivill herself, and began to
+unbind the unconscious Panna Kulvyets.
+
+"And now," said the lady, "go to your master, who is lying up there."
+
+"What has happened?" cried Sakovich, coming to himself. "You will
+answer for him!"
+
+"Not to thee, serving-man! Be off!"
+
+Sakovich sprang out of the chamber as if possessed.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLIV.
+
+
+Sakovich did not leave Boguslav's bedside for two days, the second
+paroxysm being worse than the first. The prince's jaws closed so firmly
+that attendants had to open them with a knife to pour medicine into his
+mouth. He regained consciousness immediately after; but he trembled,
+quivered, floundered in the bed, and stretched himself like a wild
+beast mortally wounded. When that had passed, a wonderful weakness
+came; he gazed all night at the ceiling without saying a word. Next
+day, after he had taken drugs, he fell into a sound sleep, and about
+midday woke covered with abundant perspiration.
+
+"How does your highness feel?" asked Sakovich.
+
+"I am better. Have any letters come?"
+
+"Letters from the elector and Steinbock are lying on the table; but the
+reading must be put off till later, for you have not strength enough
+yet."
+
+"Give them at once!--do you hear?"
+
+Sakovich brought the letters, and Boguslav read them twice; then he
+thought awhile and said,--
+
+"We will move for Podlyasye to-morrow."
+
+"You will be in bed to-morrow, as you are to-day."
+
+"I will be on horseback as well as you. Be silent, no interference!"
+
+The starosta ceased, and for a while silence continued, broken only by
+the tick-tick of the Dantzig clock.
+
+"The advice was stupid, the idea was stupid, and I too was stupid to
+listen."
+
+"I knew that if it did not succeed the blame would fall on me,"
+answered Sakovich.
+
+"For you blundered."
+
+"The counsel was clever; but if there is some devil at their service
+who gives warning of everything, I am not to blame."
+
+The prince rose in the bed. "Do you think that they employ a devil?"
+asked he, looking quickly at Sakovich.
+
+"But does not your highness know the Papists?"
+
+"I know, I know! And it has often come into my head that there might be
+enchantment. Since yesterday I am certain. You have struck my idea;
+therefore I asked if you really think so. But which of them could enter
+into company with unclean power? Not she, for she is too virtuous; not
+the sword-bearer, for he is too stupid."
+
+"But suppose the aunt?"
+
+"That may be."
+
+"To make certain I bound her yesterday, and put a dagger to her throat;
+and imagine,--I look to-day, the dagger is as if melted in fire."
+
+"Show it."
+
+"I threw it into the river, though there was a good turquoise in the
+hilt. I preferred not to touch it again."
+
+"Then I'll tell you what happened to me yesterday. I ran into her room
+as if mad. What I said I do not remember; but I know this,--that she
+cried, 'I'll throw myself into the fire first.' You know what an
+enormous chimney there is there; she sprang right into it, I after her.
+I dragged her out on the floor. Her clothes were already on fire. I had
+to quench the fire and hold her at the same time. Meanwhile dizziness
+seized me, my jaws became fixed,--you would have said that some one had
+torn the veins in my neck; then it seemed to me that the sparks flying
+near us were turned into bees, were buzzing like bees. And this is as
+true as that you see me here."
+
+"And what came later?"
+
+"I remember nothing, but such terror as if I were flying into an
+immense well, into some depth without bottom. What terror! I tell you
+what terror! Even now the hair is standing on my head. And not terror
+alone, but--how can I explain it?--an emptiness, a measureless
+weariness and torment beyond understanding. Luckily the powers of
+heaven were with me, or I should not be speaking with you this day."
+
+"Your highness had a paroxysm. Sickness itself often brings visions
+before the eye; but for safety's sake we may have a hole cut in the
+river ice, and let the old maid float down."
+
+"Oh, devil take her! We will march to-morrow in any event, and
+afterward spring will come; there will soon be other stars, and the
+nights will be short, weakening every unclean power."
+
+"If we must march to-morrow, then you would better let the girl go."
+
+"Even if I wished not, I must. All desire has fallen away from me."
+
+"Never mind them; let them go to the devil!"
+
+"Impossible!"
+
+"Why?"
+
+"The old man has confessed that he has a tremendous lot of money buried
+in Billeviche. If I let them alone, they will dig up the money and go
+to the forests. I prefer to keep them here, and take the money in
+requisition. There is war now, and this is permissible. Besides, he
+offered it himself. We shall give orders to dig up the whole garden,
+foot by foot; we must find the money. While Billevich is sitting here,
+at least, he will not make a noise and shout over all Lithuania that he
+is plundered. Rage seizes me when I think how much I have spent on
+those amusements and tournaments,--and all for nothing, for nothing!"
+
+"Rage against that maiden seized me long ago. And I tell your highness
+that when she came yesterday and said to me, as to the last camp
+follower, 'Be off, serving-man! go up, for thy master is lying there!'
+I came near twisting her head like a starling; for I thought that she
+had stabbed you with a knife or shot you from a pistol."
+
+"You know that I do not like to have any one manage in my house like a
+gray goose. It is well that you did not do as you say, for I should
+have given orders to nip you with those pincers which were heated for
+Plaska. Keep away from her!"
+
+"I sent Plaska back. He was terribly astonished, not knowing why he was
+brought nor why he was sent home. He wanted something for his fatigue,
+'because this,' said he, 'is loss in my trade;' but I told him, 'You
+bear home a sound skin as reward.' Do we really march to-morrow for
+Podlyasye?"
+
+"As God is in heaven. Are the troops sent off according to my orders?"
+
+"The cavalry has gone already to Kyedani, whence it is to march to
+Kovno and wait there. Our Polish squadrons are here yet; I did not like
+to send them in advance. The men seem reliable; still they might meet
+the confederates. Glovbich will go with us; also the Cossacks under
+Vrotynski. Karlstroem marches with the Swedes in the vanguard. He has
+orders to exterminate rebels, and especially peasants on the way."
+
+"That is well."
+
+"Kyritz with infantry is to march slowly, so that we may have some one
+to fall back upon in difficulty. If we are to advance like a
+thunderbolt,--and our entire calculation lies in swiftness,--I do not
+know whether the Prussian and Swedish cavalry will be useful. It is a
+pity that the Polish squadrons are not reliable; for between us, there
+is nothing superior to Polish cavalry."
+
+"Has the artillery gone?"
+
+"It has."
+
+"And Patterson too?"
+
+"No, Patterson is here; he is nursing Kettling, of whom he is very
+fond, and who wounded himself rather badly with his own sword. If I did
+not know Kettling to be a daring officer, I should think that he had
+cut himself of purpose to avoid the campaign."
+
+"It will be needful to leave about a hundred men here, also in Rossyeni
+and in Kyedani. The Swedish garrisons are small, and De la Gardie, as
+it is, is asking men every day from Loewenhaupt. Besides, when we march
+out, the rebels, forgetting the defeat of Shavli, will raise their
+heads."
+
+"They are growing strong as it is. I have heard again that the Swedes
+are cut down in Telshi."
+
+"By nobles or peasants?"
+
+"By peasants under the leadership of a priest; but there are parties of
+nobles, particularly near Lauda."
+
+"The Lauda men have gone out under Volodyovski."
+
+"There is a multitude of youths and old men at home. These have taken
+arms, for they are warriors by blood."
+
+"The rebellion can do nothing without money."
+
+"But we shall get a supply of that in Billeviche."
+
+"A man must be a genius like your highness to find means in
+everything."
+
+"There is more esteem in this country," said Boguslav, with a bitter
+smile, "for the man who can please the queen and the nobles. Neither
+genius nor virtue has value. It is lucky that I am also a prince of the
+Empire, and therefore they will not tie me by the legs to a pine-tree.
+If I could only have the revenues regularly from my estates, I should
+not care for the Commonwealth."
+
+"But will they not confiscate these estates?"
+
+"We will first confiscate Podlyasye, if not all Lithuania. Now summon
+Patterson."
+
+Sakovich went out, and returned soon with Patterson. At Boguslav's
+bedside a council was held, at which it was determined to move before
+daylight next morning and go to Podlyasye by forced marches. The prince
+felt so much better in the evening that he feasted with the officers
+and amused himself with jests till late, listening with pleasure to the
+neighing of horses and the clatter of arms in the squadrons preparing
+to march. At times he breathed deeply, and stretched himself in the
+chair.
+
+"I see that this campaign will bring back my health," said he to the
+officers, "for amid all these negotiations and amusements I have
+neglected the field notably. But I hope in God that the confederates
+and our ex-cardinal (the king) in Poland will feel my hand."
+
+To this Patterson made bold to answer: "It is lucky that Delilah did
+not clip Samson's hair."
+
+Boguslav looked at him for a while with a strange expression, from
+which the Scot was growing confused; but after a time the countenance
+of the prince grew bright with a threatening smile, and he said,--
+
+"If Sapyeha is my pillar, I will shake him so that the whole
+Commonwealth will fall on his head."
+
+The conversation was carried on in German; therefore all the foreign
+officers understood it perfectly, and answered in chorus,--
+
+"Amen!"
+
+The column, with Boguslav at the head of it, marched before daybreak
+next morning. The Prussian nobles whom the brilliant court attracted,
+began at the same time to return to their homes. After them marched to
+Tyltsa those who in Taurogi had sought refuge from the terrors of war,
+and to whom now Tyltsa seemed safer. Only Billevich, Olenka, and Panna
+Kulvyets remained, not counting Kettling and the old officer Braun, who
+held command over the slender garrison.
+
+Billevich, after that blow of the hammer, lay for some days bleeding
+from the mouth at intervals; but since no bone was broken, he recovered
+by degrees and began to think of flight.
+
+Meanwhile an official came from Billeviche with a letter from Boguslav
+himself. The sword-bearer did not wish at first to read the letter, but
+soon changed his mind, following in this the advice of Olenka, who
+thought it better to know all the plans of the enemy.
+
+
+VERY GRACIOUS PAN BILLEVICH!--_Concordia res parvae crescunt; discordia
+maximae dillabuntar_ (By concord small things grow great; by discord the
+greatest are ruined)! The fates brought it about that we did not part
+in such harmony as my love for you and your charming niece demands, in
+which God knows I am not to blame, for you know yourself that you fed
+me with ingratitude in return for my sincere intentions. But for
+friendship's sake what in done in anger should not be remembered; I
+think, therefore, that you will excuse my deeds of impulse, because of
+the injustice which I experienced at your hands. I, too, forgive you
+from my heart, as Christian charity enjoins, and I wish to return to a
+good understanding. To give you a proof that no offence has remained in
+my heart, I have not thought it proper to refuse the service which you
+have asked of me, and I accept your money.
+
+
+Here Billevich stopped reading, struck the table with his fist, and
+cried,--
+
+"He will see me in dreams rather than receive one coin from my
+caskets!"
+
+"Read on!" said Olenka.
+
+Billevich raised the letter again to his eyes.
+
+
+"Not wishing to trouble you and expose your health to hazard in the
+present stormy times while getting this money, we have ordered
+ourselves to get it and count it."
+
+
+At this point Billevich's voice failed, and the letter fell from his
+hands to the floor. For a while it seemed that speech was taken from
+the noble, for he only caught after his hair and pulled it with all his
+power.
+
+"Strike, whoso believes in God!" cried he at last.
+
+"One injustice the more, the punishment of God nearer; for the measure
+will soon be filled," said Olenka.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER XLV.
+
+
+The despair of the sword-bearer was so great that Olenka had to comfort
+him, and give assurance that the money was not to be looked on as lost,
+for the letter itself would serve as a note; and Radzivill, the master
+of so many estates in Lithuania and Russia, had something from which to
+recover.
+
+But since it was difficult to foresee what might still meet them,
+especially if Boguslav returned to Taurogi victorious, they began to
+think of flight the more eagerly.
+
+Olenka advised to defer everything till Kettling's recovery; for Braun
+was a gloomy and surly old soldier, carrying out commands blindly, and
+it was impossible to influence him.
+
+As to Kettling, the lady knew well that he had wounded himself to
+remain in Taurogi; hence her deep faith that he would do everything to
+aid her. It is true that conscience disturbed her incessantly with the
+question whether for self-safety she had the right to sacrifice the
+career, and perhaps the life, of another; but the terrors hanging over
+her in Taurogi were so dreadful that they surpassed a hundredfold the
+dangers to which Kettling could be exposed.
+
+Kettling, as an excellent officer, might find service, and a more noble
+service, elsewhere, and with it powerful protectors, such as the king.
+Pan Sapyeha, or Pan Charnyetski; and he would, besides, serve a just
+cause, and would find a career grateful to that country which had
+received him as an exile. Death threatened him only in case he fell
+into Boguslav's hands; but Boguslav did not command yet the whole
+Commonwealth.
+
+Olenka ceased to hesitate; and when the health of the young officer had
+improved, she sent for him.
+
+Kettling stood before her, pale, emaciated, without a drop of blood in
+his face, but always full of respect, homage, and submission. At sight
+of him tears came to Olenka's eyes; for he was the only friendly soul
+in Taurogi, and at the same time so thin and suffering that when Olenka
+asked how his health was, he answered,--
+
+"Alas, my lady, health is returning, and it would be so pleasant to
+die."
+
+"You should leave this service," said she, looking at him with
+sympathy; "for such an honorable man needs assurance that he is serving
+a just cause and a worthy master."
+
+"Alas!" repeated the officer.
+
+"When will your service end?"
+
+"In half a year."
+
+Olenka was silent awhile; then she raised her wonderful eyes, which at
+that moment had ceased to be stern, and said,--
+
+"Listen to me. I will speak to you as to a brother, as to a sincere
+confidant. You can, and you should resign."
+
+When she had said this, she confessed to him everything,--both their
+plans of escape, and that she relied on his assistance. She represented
+to him that he could find service everywhere, and a service as good as
+was his spirit, and honorable as knightly honor could obtain. At last
+she finished with the following words:--
+
+"I shall be grateful to you till death. I wish to take refuge under the
+guardianship of God, and to make a vow to the Lord in a cloister. But
+wherever you may be, far or near, in war or in peace, I shall pray for
+you. I will implore God to give peace and happiness to my brother and
+benefactor; for I can give him nothing save gratitude and prayer."
+
+Here her voice trembled; and the officer listened to her words, growing
+pale as a kerchief. At last he knelt, put both hands to his forehead,
+and said, in a voice like a groan,--
+
+"I cannot, my lady; I cannot!"
+
+"Do you refuse me?" asked Olenka, with amazement.
+
+"O great, merciful God!" said he. "From childhood no lie has risen on
+my lips, no unjust deed has ever stained me. While still a youth, I
+defended with this weak hand my king and country. Why, Lord, dost Thou
+punish me so grievously, and send on me suffering for which, as Thou
+seest, strength fails me?" Here he turned to Olenka: "My lady, you do
+not know what an order is for a soldier. In obedience is not only his
+duty, but his honor and reputation. An oath binds me, my lady,--and
+more than an oath, the word of a knight,--that I shall not throw up my
+service before the time, and that I will fulfil what belongs to it
+blindly. I am a soldier and a noble; and, so help me God, never in my
+life will I follow the example of those who betray honor and service.
+And I will not break my word, even at your command, at your prayer,
+though I say this in suffering and pain. If, having an order not to let
+any one out of Taurogi, I were on guard at the gate, and if you
+yourself wished to pass against the order, you would pass only over my
+corpse. You did not know me, my lady; and you were mistaken in me. But
+have pity on me; understand that I cannot aid you to escape. I ought
+not to hear of such a thing. The order is express, for Braun and the
+five remaining officers of us here have received it. My God, my God! if
+I had foreseen such an order, I should have preferred to go on the
+campaign. I shall not convince you; you will not believe me. And still
+God sees--let God judge me after death whether it is true--that I would
+give my life without hesitation. But my honor--I cannot, I cannot!"
+
+Then Kettling wrung his hands, was silent from exhaustion, and began to
+breathe quickly.
+
+Olenka had not recovered yet from her amazement. She had not time to
+pause, or estimate properly that spirit, exceptional in its nobleness.
+She felt only that the last plank of salvation was slipping from her
+hands, the only means of escape from hated captivity was failing her.
+But still she tried to resist.
+
+"I am," said she, after a while, "the granddaughter and the daughter of
+a soldier. My grandfather and father also valued honor above life; but,
+precisely for that reason, they would not let themselves be used
+blindly for every service."
+
+Kettling drew, with trembling hand, from his coat a letter, gave it to
+Olenka, and said,--
+
+"Judge, my lady, if this command does not concern service."
+
+Olenka cast her eyes over the letter, and read as follows:--
+
+
+"Since it has come to our knowledge that Billevich, the sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni, intends to leave our residence in secret, with plans hostile
+to us,--namely, to excite his acquaintances, connections, relatives,
+and clients to rebellion against his Swedish Majesty and us,--we
+recommend to the officers remaining in garrison at Taurogi to guard
+Billevich and his niece as hostages and prisoners of war, and not to
+permit their flight under pain of loss of honor and court-martial,"
+etc.
+
+
+"The order came from the first stopping-place after the departure of
+the prince," said Kettling; "therefore it is in writing."
+
+"The will of God be done!" said Olenka, after a while. "It is
+accomplished!"
+
+Kettling felt that he ought to go; still he did not stir. His pale lips
+moved from moment to moment, as if he wished to say something and could
+not get the voice.
+
+He was oppressed by the desire to fall at her feet and implore
+forgiveness; but on the other hand he felt that she had enough of her
+own misfortune, and he found a certain wild delight in this,--that he
+was suffering and would suffer without complaint.
+
+At last he bowed and went out in silence; but in the corridor he tore
+the bandages from his fresh wound, and fell fainting to the floor. When
+an hour later the palace guard found him lying near the staircase and
+took him to the barracks, he became seriously ill and did not leave his
+bed for a fortnight.
+
+Olenka, after the departure of Kettling, remained some time as if
+dazed. Death had seemed to her more likely to come than that refusal;
+and therefore, at first, in spite of all her firm temper of spirit,
+strength, energy failed her; she felt weak, like an ordinary woman, and
+though she repeated unconsciously, "Let the will of God be done!"
+sorrow for the disappointment rose above her resignation, copious and
+bitter tears flowed from her eyes.
+
+At that moment her uncle entered, and looking at his niece, divined at
+once that she had evil news to impart; hence he asked quickly,--
+
+"For God's sake, what is it?"
+
+"Kettling refuses!"
+
+"All here are ruffians, scoundrels, arch-curs! How is this? And he will
+not help?"
+
+"Not only will he not help," answered she, complaining like a little
+child, "but he says that he will prevent, even should it come to him to
+die."
+
+"Why? by the Lord's wounds, why?"
+
+"For such is our fate! Kettling is not a traitor; but such is our fate,
+for we are the most unhappy of all people."
+
+"May the thunderbolts crush all those heretics!" cried Billevich. "They
+attack virtue, plunder, steal, imprison. Would that all might perish!
+It is not for honest people to live in such times!"
+
+Here he began to walk with hurried step through the chamber,
+threatening with his fists; at last he said, gritting his teeth,--
+
+"The voevoda of Vilna was better; I prefer a thousand times even Kmita
+to these perfumed ruffians without honor and conscience."
+
+When Olenka said nothing, but began to cry still more, Billevich grew
+mild, and after a while said,--
+
+"Do not weep. Kmita came to my mind only because that he at least would
+have been able to wrest us out of this Babylonian captivity. He would
+have given it to all the Brauns, Kettlings, Pattersons, to Boguslav
+himself! But they are all the same type of traitors. Weep not! You can
+do nothing with weeping; here it is necessary to counsel. Kettling will
+not help,--may he be twisted! We will do without him. You have as it
+were a man's courage in you, but in difficulty you are only able to
+sob. What does Kettling say?"
+
+"He says that the prince has given orders to guard us as prisoners of
+war, fearing, Uncle, that you would collect a party and go to the
+confederates."
+
+Billevich put his hands on his hips: "Ha, ha, ha! he is afraid, the
+scoundrel! And he is right, for I will do so, as God is in heaven."
+
+"Having a command relating to service, Kettling must carry it out on
+his honor."
+
+"Well! we shall get on without the assistance of heretics."
+
+Olenka wiped her eyes. "And does my uncle think it is possible?"
+
+"I think it is necessary; and if it is necessary it is possible, though
+we had to let ourselves down by ropes from these windows."
+
+"It was wrong for me to shed tears; let us make plans as quickly as we
+can."
+
+Her tears were dry, her brows contracted again from thought and her
+former endurance and energy.
+
+It appeared, in fact, that Billevich could find no help, and that the
+imagination of the lady was much richer in means. But it was difficult
+for her, since it was clear that they were guarded carefully.
+
+They determined, therefore, not to try before the first news came from
+Boguslav. In this they placed all their hope, trusting that the
+punishment of God would come on the traitor and the dishonorable man.
+Besides, he might fall, he might be confined to his bed, he might be
+killed by Sapyeha, and then without fail there would rise in all
+Taurogi a panic, and the gate would not be guarded so carefully.
+
+"I know Sapyeha," said Billevich, comforting himself and Olenka; "he is
+a slow warrior, but accurate and wonderfully stubborn. An example of
+this, his loyalty to the king and country. He pledged and sold
+everything, and thus has gained a power before which Boguslav is as
+nothing. One is a dignified senator, the other a fop; one a true
+Catholic, the other a heretic; one is cleverness itself, the other a
+water-burner. With whom may victory and the blessing of God be? This
+Radzivill might well yield to Sapyeha's day. Just as if there are not
+punishment and justice in this world! We will wait for news, and pray
+for Sapyeha's success."
+
+Then they began to wait; but a month passed--long, wearisome for
+afflicted hearts--before the first courier came; and he was sent not to
+Taurogi, but to Steinbock in Royal Prussia.
+
+Kettling, who from the time of the last conversation dared not appear
+before Olenka's eyes, sent her at once a card with the following
+announcement:--
+
+
+"Prince Boguslav has defeated Pan Kryshtof Sapyeha near Bransk; some
+squadrons of cavalry and infantry are cut to pieces. He is marching on
+Tykotsin, where Horotkyevich is stationed."
+
+
+For Olenka this was simply a thunderbolt. The greatness of a leader and
+the bravery of a knight meant for her the same thing. Since she had
+seen Boguslav, at Taurogi, overcoming the most valiant knights with
+ease, she imagined him to herself, especially after that news, as an
+evil but invincible power, against which no one could stand.
+
+The hope that Boguslav might be defeated died in her completely. In
+vain did her uncle quiet her and comfort her with this,--that the
+prince had not yet met Sapyeha; in vain did he guarantee to her that
+the very dignity of hetman with which the king had invested him
+recently, must give positive preponderance over Boguslav; she did not
+believe this, she dared not.
+
+"Who can conquer Boguslav; who can meet him?" asked she, continually.
+
+Further news seemed to confirm her fears.
+
+A few days later Kettling sent another card with information touching
+the defeat of Horotkyevich and the capture of Tykotsin. "All
+Podlyasye," writes he, "is in the hands of the prince, who, without
+waiting for Sapyeha, is moving against him with forced marches."
+
+"And Sapyeha will be routed!" thought the maiden.
+
+Meanwhile news from other directions flew to them, like a swallow
+heralding spring-time. To that seashore of the Commonwealth this news
+came late; but because of its lateness it was decked in all the rainbow
+gleams of wonderful legend from the first ages of Christianity, when
+saints proclaiming truth and justice still travelled over the earth.
+
+"Chenstohova! Chenstohova!" was repeated by every mouth.
+
+Ice thawed from hearts which bloomed like flowers in the earth warmed
+by the sun of spring. "Chenstohova has defended itself. Men had seen
+the Queen of Poland Herself (the Virgin Mary) shielding the walls with
+Her heavenly mantle; the bombs of the robbers at Her holy feet,
+crouching like house-dogs; the hands of the Swedes were withered, their
+muskets grew fast to their faces, till they retreated in terror and
+shame."
+
+Men, strangers to one another, when they heard these tidings fell the
+one into the embraces of the other, weeping from delight. Others
+complained that the tidings came too late.
+
+"But we were here in weeping," said they, "we were in pain, we lived in
+torment so long, when we should have been rejoicing."
+
+Then it began to roar through the whole Commonwealth, and terrible
+thunders were heard from the Euxine to the Baltic, so that the waves of
+both seas were trembling; then faithful people, pious people rose up
+like a storm in defence of their queen. Consolation entered all hearts,
+all eyes were flashing with fire; what hitherto had seemed terrible and
+invincible grew small in their eyes.
+
+"Who will finish him?" said Billevich. "Who will be his equal? Now do
+you know who? The Most Holy Lady."
+
+The old man and his niece lay for whole days in the form of a cross,
+thanking God for his mercy on the Commonwealth, and doubting their own
+rescue no longer.
+
+But for a long period there was silence concerning Boguslav, as if he
+with all his forces had fallen into water. The officers remaining in
+Taurogi began to be disquieted and to think of their uncertain future.
+They would have preferred defeat to that deep silence. But no news
+could come, for just then the terrible Babinich was rushing with his
+Tartars in front of the prince and stopping all couriers.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLVI.
+
+
+But a certain day Panna Anusia Borzobogati arrived at Taurogi with a
+convoy of some tens of soldiers.
+
+Braum received her very politely, for he had to do so, since he was
+thus commanded by a letter from Sakovich, signed by Boguslav himself,
+enjoining him to have every regard for this lady-in-waiting of Princess
+Griselda Vishnyevetski. The young lady herself was full of vivacity;
+from the first moment she began to pierce Braun with her eyes, so that
+the sullen German moved about as if some one were touching him with
+fire; she began also to command other officers,--in a word, to manage
+in Taurogi as in her own house. In the evening of the same day she made
+the acquaintance of Olenka, who received her with distrust, it is true,
+but politely, in the hope that she would get news from her.
+
+In fact, Anusia had news in plenty. Her conversation began with
+Chenstohova, since the prisoners in Taurogi were most eager for that
+news. The sword-bearer listened with special diligence; he held his
+hands behind his ears so as to lose no word, merely interrupting
+Anusia's narrative from time to time with the exclamation,--
+
+"Praise be to God on high!"
+
+"It is a wonder to me," said Anusia, at last, "that news of these
+miracles of the Most Holy Lady have only just reached you, for that is
+an old story. I was still in Zamost, and Pan Babinich had not come for
+me--ai! how many weeks was it before that? Then they began to beat the
+Swedes everywhere, in Great Poland and with us; but most of all Pan
+Charnyetski, before whose very name they fly."
+
+"Oh, Charnyetski!" cried the sword-bearer, rubbing his hands; "he will
+give them pepper! I heard of him even from the Ukraine, as of a great
+warrior."
+
+Anusia merely shook her dress, and exclaimed to herself with aversion,
+as if it were a question of the smallest matter: "Oh, it is all over
+with the Swedes!"
+
+Old Pan Tomash could not restrain himself. Seizing her small hand, he
+buried the little thing entirely in his enormous mustaches and kissed
+it eagerly; at last he cried,--
+
+"Oh, my beauty! honey flows from your mouth, as God is dear to me! It
+cannot be but an angel has come to Taurogi."
+
+Anusia began at once to twist the ends of her tresses, tied with rosy
+ribbons, and cutting with her eyes from under her brows, said,--
+
+"Oh, it is far from me to the angels! But the hetmans of the kingdom
+have begun to beat the Swedes, and all the quarter soldiers with them,
+and the knights; and they have formed a confederation in Tyshovtsi. The
+king has joined it, and they have given out manifestoes; even the
+peasants are beating the Swedes, and the Most Holy Lady gives Her
+blessing."
+
+She spoke as if a bird were warbling, but from that warbling
+Billevich's heart grew soft, though some of the news was already known
+to him. He bellowed at last like an aurochs from delight; tears, too,
+began to flow over the face of Olenka, silent and many.
+
+Seeing this, Anusia, having a good heart from nature, sprang to her at
+once, and putting her arms around her neck, began to say quickly,--
+
+"Do not cry; I am sorry for you, and cannot see you shed tears. Why do
+you weep?"
+
+There was so much sincerity in her voice that Olenka's distrust
+vanished at once; but the poor girl wept still more.
+
+"You are so beautiful," said Anusia, comforting her. "Why do you cry?"
+
+"From joy," answered Olenka, "but also from suffering; for we are here
+in grievous captivity, knowing neither the day nor the hour."
+
+"How is that? Are you not with Prince Boguslav?"
+
+"That traitor! that heretic!" roared Billevich.
+
+"The same has happened to me," said Anusia; "but I do not cry for that
+reason. I do not deny that the prince is a traitor and a heretic; but
+he is a courteous cavalier, and respects our sex."
+
+"God grant that in hell they will respect him in the same fashion!
+Young lady, you know him not, for he has not attacked you as he has
+this maiden. He is an arch-ruffian, and that Sakovich is another. God
+give Sapyeha to defeat them both!"
+
+"As to defeating, he will defeat them. Prince Boguslav is terribly
+sick, and he has not a great force. It is true that he advanced
+quickly, scattered some squadrons, and took Tykotsin and me; but it is
+not for him to measure with the forces of Pan Sapyeha. You may trust
+me, for I saw both armies. With Pan Sapyeha are the greatest cavaliers,
+who will be able to manage Prince Boguslav."
+
+"Well, do you see! have I not told you?" asked the old man, turning to
+Olenka.
+
+"I know Prince Boguslav from of old," continued Anusia, "for he is a
+relative of the Vishnyevetskis and Zamoyski; he came once to us at
+Lubni, when Prince Yeremi himself was campaigning against the Tartars
+in the Wilderness. He remembered that I was at home there and nearest
+the princess. I was such a little thing then, not as I am to-day. My
+God! who could think at that time that he would be a traitor? But
+grieve not; for either he will fail to return, or we shall escape from
+this place in some way."
+
+"We have tried that already," said Olenka.
+
+"And you did not succeed?"
+
+"How could we?" asked Billevich. "We told the secret to an officer whom
+we thought ready to aid us; but it turned out that he was ready to
+hinder, not to help. Seniority over all here is with Braun,--the Devil
+himself could not win that man."
+
+Anusia dropped her eyes.
+
+"Maybe I can. If Pan Sapyeha would only come, so that we might have
+some one with whom to take refuge."
+
+"God give him at the earliest," answered Pan Tomash, "for among his men
+we have many relatives, acquaintances, and friends. Among them, too,
+are former officers of the great Yeremi,--Volodyovski, Skshetuski,
+Zagloba,--I know them."
+
+"But they are not with Sapyeha. Oh, if they were, especially
+Volodyovski, for Shshetuski is married, I should not be here, for Pan
+Volodyovski would not let himself be picked up as Pan Kotchyts did."
+
+"He is a great cavalier," said Billevich.
+
+"The glory of the whole Commonwealth," added Olenka.
+
+"Have they not fallen, since you did not see them?"
+
+"Oh, no!" answered Anusia, "for the loss of such knights would be
+spoken of; but nothing was said. You do not know them, they will never
+yield; only a bullet will kill them, for no man can stand before
+Skshetuski, Zagloba, or Pan Michael. Though Pan Michael is small, I
+remember what Prince Yeremi said of him,--that if the fate of the whole
+Commonwealth depended on a battle between one man and another, he would
+choose Pan Michael for the battle. He was the man who conquered Bogun.
+Oh, no, Pan Michael will help himself always."
+
+Billevich, satisfied that he had some one with whom to talk, began to
+walk with long strides through the room, asking,--
+
+"Well, well! Then do you know Pan Volodyovski so intimately?"
+
+"Yes; for we lived in the same place so many years."
+
+"Indeed! Then certainly not without love!"
+
+"I'm not to blame for that," answered Anusia, taking a timid posture;
+"but before this time surely Pan Michael is married."
+
+"And he is just not married."
+
+"Even if he were, it is all one to me."
+
+"God grant you to meet! But I am troubled because you say that they are
+not with the hetman, for with such soldiers victory would be easier."
+
+"There is some one there who is worth them all."
+
+"Who is he?"
+
+"Pan Babinich from Vityebsk. Have you heard of him?"
+
+"Not a word; which is a wonder to me."
+
+Anusia began to relate the history of her departure from Zamost, and
+everything that happened on the road. Babinich grew in her narrative to
+such a mighty hero that the sword-bearer was at a loss to know who he
+was.
+
+"I know all Lithuania," said he. "There are houses, it is true, with
+similar names, such as Babonaubek, Babill, Babinovski, Babinski, and
+Babiski. Babinich I have not heard, and I think it must be an assumed
+name; for many who are in parties take such names, so that their
+property and relatives may not suffer from the enemy. Hm! Babinich! He
+is some fiery cavalier, since he was able to settle Zamoyski in that
+fashion."
+
+"Oh, how fiery!" cried Anusia.
+
+The old man fell into good humor. "How is that?" asked he, stopping
+before Anusia and putting his hands on his hips.
+
+"If I tell you, you'll suppose God knows what"
+
+"God preserve me, I will suppose nothing."
+
+"Barely had we come out of Zamost when Pan Babinich told me that some
+one else had occupied his heart, and though he received no rent, still
+he did not think of changing the tenant."
+
+"And do you believe that?"
+
+"Of course I believe it," answered Anusia, with great vivacity;
+"he must be in love to his ears, since after so long a
+time--since--since--"
+
+"Oh, there is some 'since he would not,'" said the old man, laughing.
+
+"But I say that," repeated Anusia, stamping her foot, "since-- Well, we
+shall soon hear of him."
+
+"God grant it!"
+
+"And I will tell you why. As often as Pan Babinich mentioned Prince
+Boguslav, his face grew white, and his teeth squeaked like doors."
+
+"He will be our friend!" said the sword-bearer,
+
+"Certainly! And we will flee to him, if he shows himself."
+
+"If I could escape from this place, I would have my own party, and you
+would see that war is no novelty to me either, and that this old hand
+is good for something yet."
+
+"Go under command of Pan Babinich."
+
+"You have a great wish to go under his command."
+
+They chatted yet for a long time in this fashion, and always more
+joyously; he that Olenka, forgetting her grief, became notably more
+cheerful, and Anusia began at last to laugh loudly at the sword-bearer.
+She was well rested; for at the last halting-place in Rossyeni she had
+slept soundly; she left them then only late in the evening.
+
+"She is gold, not a maiden!" said Billevich, after she had gone.
+
+"A sincere sort of heart, and I think we shall soon come to
+confidence," answered Olenka.
+
+"But you looked at her frowningly at first."
+
+"For I thought that she was some one sent here. Do I know anything
+surely? I fear every one in Taurogi."
+
+"She sent? Perhaps by good spirits! But she is as full of tricks as a
+weasel. If I were younger I don't know to what it might come; even as
+it is a man is still desirous."
+
+Olenka was delighted, and placing her hands on her knees, she put her
+head on one side, mimicking Anusia, and looking askance at her uncle.
+
+"So, dear uncle! you wish to bake an aunt for me out of that flour?"
+
+"Oh, be quiet, be quiet!" said the sword-bearer.
+
+But he laughed and began to twist his mustache with his whole hand;
+after a time he added,--
+
+"Still she roused such a staid woman as you; I am certain that great
+friendship will spring up between you."
+
+In truth, Pan Tomash was not deceived, for in no long time a very
+lively friendship was formed between the maidens; and it grew more and
+more, perhaps just for this reason,--that the two were complete
+opposites. One had dignity in her spirit, depths of feeling, invincible
+will, and reason; the other, with a good heart and purity of thought,
+was a tufted lark. One, with her calm face, bright tresses, and an
+unspeakable repose and charm in her slender form, was like an ancient
+Psyche; the other, a real brunette, reminded one rather of an _ignis
+fatuus_, which in the night hours entices people into pathless places
+and laughs at their vexation. The officers in Taurogi, who looked at
+both every day, were seized with the desire to kiss Olenka's feet, but
+Anusia's lips.
+
+Kettling, having the soul of a Scottish mountaineer, hence full of
+melancholy, revered and adored Olenka; but from the first glance he
+could not endure Anusia, who paid him in kind, making up for her losses
+on Braun and others, not excepting the sword-bearer of Rossyeni
+himself.
+
+Olenka soon won great influence over her friend, who with perfect
+sincerity of heart said to Pan Tomash,--
+
+"She can say more in two words than I in a whole day."
+
+But the dignified lady could not cure her vain friend of one defect,
+coquetry; for let Anusia only hear the rattle of spurs in the corridor,
+immediately she would pretend that she had forgotten something, that
+she wanted to see if there were tidings from Sapyeha; would rush into
+the corridor, fly like a whirlwind, and coming up against an officer,
+cry out,--
+
+"Oh, how you frightened me!"
+
+Then a conversation would begin, intermingled with twisting of her
+skirts, glancing from under her brows, and various artful looks,
+through the aid of which the hardest heart may be conquered.
+
+This coquetry Olenka took ill of her, all the more that Anusia after a
+few days confessed to a secret love for Babinich. They discussed this
+among themselves more than once.
+
+"Others beg like minstrels," said Anusia; "but this dragon chose to
+look at his Tartars rather than at me, and he never spoke otherwise
+than in command,--'Come out, my lady! eat, my lady! drink, my lady!'
+And if he had been rude at the same time, but he was not; if he had not
+been painstaking, but he was! In Krasnystav I said to myself, 'Do not
+look at me--wait!' And in Lanchna I was so overcome that it was
+terrible. I tell you that when I looked into his blue eyes, and when he
+laughed, gladness seized me, such a prisoner was I."
+
+Olenka dropped her head, for blue eyes came to her memory too; and that
+one spoke in the same way, and he had command ever on his lips,
+activity ever in his face, but neither conscience nor the fear of God.
+
+Anusia, following her own thoughts, continued,--
+
+"When he flew over the field on his horse, with his baton, I thought,
+That is an eagle or some hetman. The Tartars feared him more than fire.
+When he came, there had to be obedience; and when there was a battle,
+fires were striking him from desire of blood. I saw many worthy
+cavaliers in Lubni, but one such that fear seized me in his presence I
+have never seen."
+
+"If the Lord God has predestined him to you, you will get him; but that
+he did not love you, I cannot believe."
+
+"As to love, he loves me a little, but the other more. He told me
+himself more than once, 'It is lucky that I am not able to forget or
+cease loving, for it would be better to confide a kid to a wolf than
+such a maiden as you are to me."
+
+"What did you say to that?"
+
+"I said, 'How do you know that I would return your love?' And he
+answered, 'I should not have asked you.' Now, what are you to do with
+such a man? That other woman is foolish not to love him, and she must
+have callousness in her heart. I asked what her name is, but he would
+not tell me. 'Better,' said he, 'not to touch that, for it is a sore;
+and another sore,' said he, 'is the Radzivills,--the traitors!' And
+then he made such a terrible face that I would have hidden in a
+mouse-hole. I simply feared him. But what is the use in talking? He is
+not for me!"
+
+"Ask Saint Michael for him; I know from Aunt Kulvyets that he is the
+best aid in such cases. Only be careful not to offend the saint by
+duping more men."
+
+"I never will, except so much,--the least little bit."
+
+Here Anusia showed on her finger how much; and she indicated at most
+about half the length of the nail, so as not to anger Saint Michael.
+
+"I do not act so from waywardness," explained she to Billevich, who
+also had begun to take her frivolity to heart; "but I must, for if
+these officers do not help us we shall never escape."
+
+"Braun will not let us out."
+
+"Braun is overcome!" replied Anusia, with a thin voice, dropping her
+eyes.
+
+"But Fitz-Gregory?"
+
+"He is overcome too!" with a voice still thinner.
+
+"And Ottenhagen?"
+
+"Overcome!"
+
+"And Von Irhen?"
+
+"Overcome!"
+
+"May the forest surround you! I see that Kettling is the only man whom
+you could not manage."
+
+"I cannot endure him! But some one else will manage him. Besides, we
+can go without his permission."
+
+"And you think that when we wish to flee they will not hinder?"
+
+"They will go with us!" said Anusia, stretching her neck and blinking.
+
+"For God's sake! then why do we stay here? I should like to be far away
+this day."
+
+But from the consultation which followed at once, it appeared needful
+to await the decision of Boguslav's fate and Pan Sapyeha's arrival in
+the neighborhood of Jmud. Otherwise they would be threatened by
+terrible destruction from even their own people. The society of foreign
+officers not only would not be a defence, but would add to their
+danger; for the peasants were so terribly envenomed against foreigners
+that they murdered without mercy every one who did not wear a Polish
+dress. Even Polish dignitaries wearing foreign costume, not to speak of
+Austrian and French diplomats, could not travel save under the
+protection of powerful bodies of troops.
+
+"You will believe me, for I have passed through the whole country,"
+said Anusia. "In the first village, in the first forest, ravagers would
+kill us without asking who we are. It is impossible to flee except to
+an army."
+
+"But I shall have my own party."
+
+"Before you could collect it, before you could reach a village where
+you are known, you would lose your life. News from Prince Boguslav must
+come soon. I have ordered Braun to inform me at once."
+
+But Braun reported nothing for a long time.
+
+Kettling, however, began to visit Olenka; for she, meeting him on a
+certain day, extended her hand to him. The young officer prophesied
+evil from this profound silence. According to him the prince, out of
+regard for the elector and the Swedes, would not hold silence touching
+the least victory, and would rather exaggerate by description than
+weaken by silence the significance of real successes.
+
+"I do not suppose that he is cut to pieces," said the young officer;
+"but he is surely in such a difficult position that it is hard to find
+a way out."
+
+"All tidings arrive here so late," said Olenka, "and the best proof is
+that we learned first from Panna Borzobogati, the particulars of the
+miraculous defence of Chenstohova."
+
+"I, my lady, knew of that long ago, but, as a foreigner, not knowing
+the value which that place has for Poles, I did not mention it. That in
+a great war some small castle defends itself for a time, and repulses a
+number of storms, happens always, and importance is not attached to it
+usually."
+
+"But still for me that would have been the most welcome news!"
+
+"I see in truth that I did ill; for from what has happened since the
+defence, as I hear now, I know that to be an important event, which may
+influence the whole war. Still, returning to the campaign of the prince
+in Podlyasye, it is different. Chenstohova is far away, Podlyasye is
+nearer. And when the prince succeeded at first, you remember how
+quickly news came. Believe me, my lady, I am a young man, but from the
+fourteenth year of my life I am a soldier, and experience tells me that
+this silence, is prophetic of evil."
+
+"Rather good," said the lady,
+
+"Let it be good!" answered Kettling. "In half a year my service will be
+ended. In half a year my oath will cease."
+
+A few days after this conversation news came at last. It was brought by
+Pan Byes of the shield Kornie; called, at Boguslav's court,
+Cornutus.[8] He was a Polish noble, but altogether foreignized; for
+serving in foreign armies almost from years of boyhood, he had wellnigh
+forgotten Polish, or at least spoke it like a German. He had also a
+foreignized soul, hence was greatly attached to Prince Boguslav. He was
+going on an important mission to Koenigsberg, and stopped in Taurogi
+merely to rest.
+
+Braun and Kettling brought him at once to Olenka and Anusia, who at
+that time lived and slept together.
+
+Braun stood like a soldier before Anusia; then turned to Byes and
+said,--
+
+"This lady is a relative of Pan Zamoyski, therefore of the prince our
+lord, who has commanded to show her every attention; and she wishes to
+hear news from the mouth of an eyewitness."
+
+Pan Byes in his turn stood erect, as if on service, and awaited the
+questions.
+
+Anusia did not deny relationship with Boguslav, for the homage of the
+military pleased her; therefore she motioned to Pan Byes to sit down.
+When he had taken his place she asked,--
+
+"Where is the prince at present?"
+
+"The prince is retreating on Sokolka, God grant successfully," said the
+officer.
+
+"Tell the pure truth: how is it with him?"
+
+"I will tell the pure truth and hide nothing, thinking that your
+worthiness will find strength in your soul to hear news less
+favorable."
+
+"I will!" said Anusia, striking one heel against the other under her
+robe, with satisfaction that she was called "worthiness," and that the
+news was "less favorable."
+
+"At first everything went well with us," said Byes. "We rubbed out on
+the road several bands of peasants; we scattered the forces of the
+younger Sapyeha, and cut up two squadrons of cavalry with a regiment of
+good infantry, sparing no one. Then we defeated Pan Horotkyevich, so
+that he barely escaped, and some say that he was killed. After that we
+occupied the ruins of Tykotsin."
+
+"We know all this. Tell us quickly the unfavorable news," interrupted
+Anusia, on a sudden.
+
+"Be pleased, my lady, to listen calmly. We came to Drohichyn, and there
+the map was unfolded. We had news that Sapyeha was still far away;
+meanwhile two of our scouting parties were as if they had sunk through
+the earth. Not a witness returned from the slaughter. Then it appeared
+that some troops were marching in front of us. A great confusion rose
+out of that. The prince began to think that all preceding information
+was false, and that Sapyeha had not only advanced, but had cut off the
+road. Then we began to retreat, for in that way it was possible to
+catch the enemy and force him to a general battle, which the prince
+wished absolutely. But the enemy did not give the field; he attacked
+and attacked without ceasing. From that everything began to melt in our
+hands; we had rest neither day nor night. The roads were ruined before
+us, the dams cut, provisions intercepted. Reports were soon circulated
+that Charnyetski himself was crushing us. The soldiers did not eat, did
+not sleep; their courage fell. Men perished in the camp itself, as if
+the ground were swallowing them. In Byalystok the enemy seized a whole
+party again, camp-chests, the prince's carriages and guns. I have never
+seen anything like it. It was not seen in former wars, either. The
+prince was changed. He wanted nothing but a general battle, and he had
+to fight ten small ones every day, and lose them. Order became relaxed.
+And how can our confusion and alarm be described when we learned that
+Sapyeha himself had not come up yet, and that in front of us was merely
+a strong party which had caused so many disasters? In this party were
+Tartar troops."
+
+Further words of the officer were interrupted by a scream from Anusia,
+who, throwing herself suddenly on Olenka's neck, cried,--
+
+"Pan Babinich!"
+
+The officer was surprised when he heard the name; but he judged that
+terror and hatred had wrested this cry from the breast of the worthy
+lady; so only after a while did he continue his narrative:--
+
+"To whomsover God has given greatness, he has given also strength to
+bear grievous misfortunes; be pleased, therefore, my lady, to calm
+yourself. Such indeed is the name of this hell-dweller who has
+undermined the success of the whole expedition, and become the cause of
+other immense evils. His name, which your worthiness has divined with
+such wonderful quickness, is repeated now with fear and rage by every
+mouth in our camp."
+
+"I saw that Babinich at Zamost," said Anusia, hastily; "and could I
+have guessed--"
+
+Here she was silent, and no one knew what would have happened in such
+an event. The officer, after a moment's silence, continued,--
+
+"Thaws and heat set in, despite, it may be said, the regular order of
+nature; for we had news that in the south of the Commonwealth there was
+still severe winter; but we were wading in spring mud, which fastened
+our heavy cavalry to the earth. But he, having light troops, advanced
+with more ease. We lost wagons and cannon at every step, and were
+forced at last to go on horseback. The inhabitants round about, in
+their blind venom, favored the attackers. What God gives will happen;
+but I left the whole camp in a desperate condition, as well as the
+prince himself, whom a malignant fever does not leave, and who loses
+his power for whole days. A general battle will come quickly; but how
+it will end, God knows. If He favors, we may hope for wonders."
+
+"Where did you leave the prince?"
+
+"A day's journey from Sokolka. The prince intends to intrench himself
+at Suhovola or Yanov and receive battle. Sapyeha is two days distant.
+When I came away, we had a little more freedom; for from a captured
+informant we learned that Babinich himself had gone to the main camp;
+without him the Tartars dare not attack, satisfying themselves with
+annoying scouting parties. The prince, who is an incomparable leader,
+places all his hopes on a general battle, but, of course, when he is
+well; if the fever seizes him, he must think of something else, the
+best proof of which is that he has sent me to Prussia."
+
+"Why do you go?"
+
+"Either the prince will win the battle or lose it. If he loses it, all
+Electoral Prussia will be defenceless, and it may happen easily that
+Sapyeha will pass the boundaries, force the elector to a decision,--I
+say this, for it is no secret, I go to forewarn them to have some
+defence prepared for those provinces; for the unbidden guests may come
+in too great numbers. That is the affair of the elector and the Swedes,
+with whom the prince is in alliance, and from whom he has the right to
+expect rescue."
+
+The officer finished.
+
+Anusia heaped a multitude of other questions on him, preserving with
+difficulty dignity sufficient. When he went out, she gave way to
+herself completely. She fell to striking her skirts with her hands,
+turning on her heels like a top, kissing Olenka on the eyes, pulling
+Billevich by the sleeves, and crying,--
+
+"Well, now, what did I say? Who has crushed Prince Boguslav? Maybe Pan
+Sapyeha? A fig for Sapyeha! Who will crush the Swedes in the same
+style? Who will exterminate traitors? Who is the greatest cavalier, who
+is the greatest knight? Pan Andrei, Pan Andrei!"
+
+"What Andrei?" asked Olenka, growing pale suddenly.
+
+"Have I not told you that his name is Andrei? He told me that himself.
+Pan Babinich! Long life to Babinich! Volodyovski could not have done
+better!--What is the matter, Olenka?"
+
+Panna Billevich shook herself as if wishing to throw off a burden of
+grievous thoughts. "Nothing! I was thinking that traitors themselves
+bear that name. For there was one who offered to sell the king,
+dead or alive, to the Swedes or to Boguslav; and he had the same
+name,--Andrei."
+
+"May God condemn him!" roared Billevich. "Why mention traitors at
+night? Let us be glad when we have reason."
+
+"Only let Pan Babinich come here!" added Anusia. "That's what is
+needed! I will fool Braun still more. I will, I will, of purpose to
+raise the whole garrison, and go over with men and horses to Pan
+Babinich."
+
+"Do that, do that!" cried Billevich, delighted.
+
+"And afterward--a fig for all those Germans! Maybe he will forget that
+good-for-nothing woman, and give me his lo--"
+
+Then again her thin voice piped; she covered her face with her hands.
+All at once an angry thought must have come to her, for she clapped her
+hands, and said,--
+
+"If not, I will marry Volodyovski!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLVII.
+
+
+Two weeks later it was boiling in all Taurogi. On a certain evening
+disorderly parties of Boguslav's troops came in,--thirty or forty
+horsemen in a body, reduced, torn, more like spectres than men,--and
+brought news of the defeat of Boguslav at Yanov. Everything had
+been lost,--arms, horses, cannon, the camp. Six thousand choice men
+went out on that expedition with the prince; barely four hundred
+returned,--these the prince himself led out of the ruin.
+
+Of the Poles no living soul came back save Sakovich; for all who had
+not fallen in battle, all whom the terrible Babinich had not destroyed
+in his attacks, went over to Sapyeha. Many foreign officers chose of
+their own will to stand at the chariot of the conqueror. In one word,
+no Radzivill had ever yet returned from an expedition more crushed,
+ruined, and beaten.
+
+And as formerly court adulation knew no bounds in exalting Boguslav as
+a leader, so now all mouths sounded loudly an unceasing complaint
+against the incompetent management of the war. Among the remaining
+soldiers there was endless indignation, which in the last days of the
+retreat brought complete disorder, and rose to that degree that the
+prince considered it wiser to remain somewhat in the rear.
+
+The prince and Sakovich halted in Rossyeni. Kettling, hearing of this
+from soldiers, went immediately with the news to Olenka.
+
+"The main thing," said she, when the news came, "is whether Sapyeha and
+that Babinich are pursuing the prince, and whether they intend to bring
+the war to this region."
+
+"I could learn nothing from the statements of the soldiers," answered
+Kettling, "for fear exaggerates every danger. Some say even that
+Babinich is here; but since the prince and Sakovich have remained
+behind, I infer that the pursuit cannot be rapid."
+
+"Still it must come, for it is difficult to think otherwise. Who after
+victory would not pursue the defeated enemy?"
+
+"That will be shown. I wished to speak of something else. The prince by
+reason of illness and defeat must be irritated, therefore inclined to
+deeds of violence. Do not separate now from your aunt and Panna
+Borzobogati. Do not consent to the journey of your uncle to Tyltsa, as
+the last time, before the campaign."
+
+Olenka said nothing. Her uncle had, in fact, not been sent to Tyltsa;
+he had merely been ill for some days after the hammer-stroke given by
+Prince Boguslav. Sakovich, to hide the prince's deed from the people,
+spread the report that the old man had gone to Tyltsa. Olenka preferred
+to be silent on this before Kettling, for the proud maiden was ashamed
+to confess that any man living had struck a Billevich.
+
+"I thank you for the warning," said she, after a moment's silence.
+
+"I considered it my duty."
+
+But her heart swelled with bitterness; for not long before Kettling
+might have enabled her to avoid this new danger. If he had consented to
+the flight, she would have been far away, free of Boguslav forever.
+
+"It is really fortunate for me," said she, "that this warning does not
+touch your honor, that the prince has not issued an order for you not
+to warn me."
+
+Kettling understood the reproach, and uttered a speech which Olenka did
+not expect of him:--
+
+"As to what touches my military service, to guard which my honor
+commands, I will accomplish that or forfeit my life. Other choice I
+have not, and do not wish to have. Outside my service I am free to
+provide against lawlessness. Therefore, as a private man, I leave with
+you this pistol, and I say, Defend yourself, for danger is near; in
+case of need, kill! Then my oath will be at an end, and I will hasten
+to save you."
+
+He bowed and turned toward the door, but Olenka detained him.
+
+"Cavalier, free yourself from that service! Defend a good cause; defend
+the injured, for you are worthy to do so; you are honorable. It is a
+pity that you should be lost on a traitor!"
+
+"I should have freed myself long since, and resigned," said Kettling,
+"had I not thought that by remaining I might serve you. Now it is too
+late. If the prince had returned victorious, I should not have
+hesitated a moment; but when he is coming back conquered,--when,
+perhaps, the enemy is pursuing him,--it would be cowardice to ask for
+dismissal before the end of the term itself will free me. You will see
+sufficiently how people of small heart desert in crowds a defeated man.
+This pistol will send a ball even through armor with ease."
+
+Kettling went out, leaving on the table the weapon, which Olenka
+secreted at once. Fortunately the previsions of the young officer and
+her own fear proved groundless.
+
+The prince arrived in the evening with Sakovich and Patterson, but so
+crushed and ill that he was barely able to hold himself on his feet.
+Besides, he did not know well whether Sapyeha was advancing or had sent
+Babinich in pursuit with the light squadrons. Boguslav had overthrown,
+it is true, the latter in his attack, together with his horse; but he
+dared not hope that he had killed him, since it seemed to him that the
+double-handed sword had turned in the blow on Babinich's helmet.
+Besides, he had fired before from a pistol straight into his face, and
+that had not taken effect.
+
+The prince's heart was aching at the thought of what such a Babinich
+would do with his estates should he reach them with his Tartars,--and
+he had nothing with which to defend them; and not only his estates, but
+his own person. Among his hirelings there were not many like Kettling,
+and it was just to suppose that at the first news of the coming of
+Sapyeha's troops they would desert him to a man.
+
+The prince did not purpose to remain in Taurogi longer than two or
+three days, for he had to hasten to Royal Prussia to the elector and
+Steinbock, who might furnish him with new forces, and employ him either
+in capturing Prussian towns, or send him to aid the king himself, who
+intended an expedition to the heart of the Commonwealth.
+
+In Taurogi he had to leave some one of the officers to bring order into
+the remnant of the army, ward off patriot peasants and nobles, defend
+the property of the two Radzivills, and continue the understanding with
+Loewenhaupt, commander-in-chief of the Swedes in Jmud.
+
+With this object, after he had come to Taurogi, and after a night's
+rest, the prince summoned to council Sakovich, the only man whom he
+could trust, and to whom alone he could open his heart.
+
+That first "good day" in Taurogi was wonderful, when the two friends
+saw each other after the ill-starred campaign. For some time they gazed
+on each other without a word. The prince broke the silence first,--
+
+"Well, the devils! they carried the day."
+
+"They carried the day!" repeated Sakovich.
+
+"It must have been so with such weather. If I had had more light
+squadrons, or if some devil had not brought that Babinich,--twice the
+same man! The gallow's bird changed his name. Do not tell any one of
+him, so as not to increase his glory."
+
+"I will not tell. But will not the officers trumpet it, for you
+presented him before your boots as Banneret of Orsha?"
+
+"The German officers know nothing of Polish names. It is all one to
+them,--Kmita or Babinich. But by the horns of Lucifer, if I could get
+him! I had him; and the scoundrel brought my men into rebellion,
+besides leading off Glovbich's troops. He must be some bastard of our
+blood; it cannot be otherwise! I had him, and he escaped,--that gnaws
+me more than the whole lost campaign."
+
+"You had him, Prince, but at the price of my head."
+
+"I tell you sincerely that I would let them flay you, if I might make a
+drum out of Kmita's skin!"
+
+"Thank you, Bogus; I could not expect less from your friendship."
+
+The prince laughed: "But you would have squirmed on Sapyeha's gridiron.
+All your scoundrelism would have been fried out of you. I should have
+been glad to see that!"
+
+"I should be glad to see you in the hands of Kmita, your dear relative.
+You have a different face, but in form you are like each other, and you
+have feet of the same size; you are sighing for the same maiden, only
+she without experience divines that he is stronger, and that he is a
+better soldier."
+
+"I could manage two such as you, and I rode over his breast. If I had
+had two minutes' time, I should be able to give you my word now that my
+cousin is not living. You have always been rather dull, hence I took a
+fancy to you; but in these recent days your wit has left you
+completely."
+
+"You have always had your wit in your heels, and therefore you swept
+away in such fashion before Sapyeha that I have lost all fancy for you,
+and am ready myself to go to Sapyeha."
+
+"On a rope?"
+
+"On that with which they will bind Radzivill."
+
+"Enough!"
+
+"At the service of your highness!"
+
+"It would be well to shoot some of the noisiest of those horsemen, and
+introduce order."
+
+"I commanded this morning to hang six of them. They are cold now, and
+are dancing stubbornly on the ropes, for the wind is fierce."
+
+"You have done well. But listen! Do you wish to remain in the garrison
+at Taurogi, for I must leave some one here?"
+
+"I do, and I ask for that office. No one can manage better. The
+soldiers fear me more than others, for they know that with me there is
+no trifling. With respect to Loewenhaupt, it is necessary that some one
+be here more important than Patterson."
+
+"Can you manage the rebels?"
+
+"I assure your highness that the pine-trees of Jmud will bear weightier
+fruit than the cones of last year. I will form about two regiments of
+infantry out of the peasants, and train them in my fashion. I will have
+my eyes on the estates; and if the rebels attack one of them, I will
+throw suspicion immediately on some rich noble and squeeze him like
+cheese in a bag. At first I shall need merely money to pay wages and
+equip the infantry."
+
+"I will leave what I can."
+
+"From the dowry money?"
+
+"How is that?"
+
+"That means from the Billevich money which you took out of the dowry
+for yourself in advance."
+
+"If you could only twist the neck of old Billevich in some polite way,
+it would be well; for it could be done easily, and he has my letter."
+
+"I will try. But the point is in this,--has he not sent the note
+somewhere, or has the maiden not sewed it into her shift? Would you not
+like to discover?"
+
+"It will come to that; but now I must go, and besides that cursed fever
+has taken all my strength."
+
+"Your highness, envy me for staying in Taurogi."
+
+"You have a strange kind of wish; but if you meanwhile-- I should have
+you torn apart with hooks. Why do you insist on this office?"
+
+"For I want to marry."
+
+"Whom?" asked the prince, sitting up in bed. "Panna Borzobogati."
+
+"That is a good idea, an excellent idea!" said Boguslav. "I have heard
+of some will."
+
+"There is a will from Pan Longin Podbipienta. Your highness knows what
+a powerful family that is, and the estates of Pan Longin are in a
+number of districts. It is true that the Moscow troops have occupied
+some; there will be lawsuits, fights, disputes, and attacks without
+number; but I will help myself, and will not yield one point to any
+man. Besides, the girl has pleased me greatly; she is pretty and
+enticing. I noticed in a moment when we captured her that she feigned
+terror, and shot at me with her eyes at the same time. Only let me stay
+here as commandant, and from idleness alone the love-making will
+begin."
+
+"One thing I tell you. I will not forbid you to marry; but listen
+well,--no excesses, you understand? That maiden is from the
+Vishnyevetskis; she is a confidant of Princess Griselda herself; and
+because of my esteem for the princess, I do not wish to offend her, nor
+do I wish to offend Pan Zamoyski."
+
+"There is no need of warning," answered Sakovich; "for since I wish to
+marry regularly, I must make regular approaches."
+
+"I wish you might get a refusal."
+
+"-I know a man who got a refusal, though he is a prince; but I think
+that that will not come to me. That eye-cutting gives me great
+consolation."
+
+"Don't tell that man who got a refusal not to give you horns! I will
+give an addition to your shield, or you will receive a surname,
+Sakovich Rogaty.[9] She is Borzobogaty, and he is Bardzorogaty. You
+will be a chosen pair. But marry, yes, marry, and let me know of the
+wedding. I will be your best man."
+
+Fierce anger appeared on Sakovich's face, terrible without that. His
+eyes were covered for a moment as if by smoke; but he soon recovered,
+and turning the prince's words into a jest, he said,--
+
+"Poor man! you are not able to go downstairs alone, and you make
+threats. You have your Panna Billevich here; go your way, skeleton! go
+your way! You'll nurse Babinich's children yet!"
+
+"God break your tongue, such a son! You are making sport of the
+sickness which came within a hair of killing me. I would you were
+enchanted as I was."
+
+"What enchantments are there here? At times, when I see how everything
+goes in the natural world, I think enchantment is stupid."
+
+"You are stupid yourself! Be silent! do not summon the Devil. You
+disgust me more and more."
+
+"Would that I were not the last Pole who has remained faithful to your
+highness! For my loyalty you feed me with ingratitude. I will return to
+my dens at home, and sit quietly awaiting the end of the war."
+
+"Oh, give us peace! You know that I love you."
+
+"It is grievous for me to see that. The Devil thrust this love for your
+highness on me. If there is enchantment in anything, it is in that."
+
+The starosta told the truth; for he loved Boguslav really. The prince
+knew this, and therefore paid him, if not with strong attachment, with
+gratitude, which vain people ever have for those who do them homage.
+Therefore Boguslav agreed willingly to Sakovich's plans touching
+Anusia, and determined to aid him in person. In view of this, about
+midday, when he felt better, he had himself dressed and went to Anusia.
+
+"I have come because of old acquaintance," said he, "to inquire after
+your health and ask if the visit to Taurogi has pleased you."
+
+"In captivity one must be pleased with all things," answered Anusia,
+sighing.
+
+The prince laughed. "You are not in captivity. You were taken together
+with Sapyeha's soldiers, that is true; and I gave orders to send you
+here, but only for safety. Not a hair will fall from your head. Be
+convinced that there are few people whom I respect as I do Princess
+Griselda, to whose heart you are near; and the Vishnyevetskis and
+Zamoyskis are connections of mine. You will find here every freedom and
+every care. I come to you as a well-wishing friend, and I say if you
+wish to go I will give you an escort, though I have few soldiers
+myself. I advise you to stay. You, as I have heard, were sent here to
+seek property willed to you. Be assured that this is not the time to
+think of such business; and even in time of peace the aid of Sapyeha
+would not avail in these regions, for he could act only in Vityebsk;
+here he can do nothing. I shall not touch that affair personally, but
+through an agent. You need a friendly man, and adroit, esteemed, and
+feared. If such a man were to take up this matter, surely he would not
+let people thrust straw instead of grain into his hand."
+
+"Where shall I, an orphan, find such a protector?" asked Anusia.
+
+"Precisely in Taurogi."
+
+"Your highness would be pleased yourself--"
+
+Here Anusia put her hands together, and looked so prettily into
+Boguslav's eyes that if the prince had not been wearied and broken, he
+would surely have begun to think less sincerely of Sakovich's cause;
+but since he had no gallantry in his head at that moment, he said
+quickly,--
+
+"Could I do it myself, I should not intrust such a pleasant office to
+any man; but I am going away, for I must go. I leave in my place, as
+commandant of Taurogi, the starosta of Oshmiana, Pan Sakovich, a great
+cavalier, a famous soldier, and a man so adroit that there is not
+another such in all Lithuania. So I repeat: Stay in Taurogi, for you
+have no place to go to, since every point is full of ravagers and
+ruffians, while rebels infest all the roads. Sakovich will protect you
+here; Sakovich will defend you. Sakovich will see what can be done to
+obtain those estates; and once he undertakes the affair, I guarantee
+that no man on earth could bring it to a favorable issue sooner. He is
+my friend, therefore I know him, and I will say only this: if I had
+taken those estates from you, and afterward learned that Sakovich was
+coming to oppose me, I would give them up of my own will, for it is
+dangerous to struggle with him."
+
+"If Pan Sakovich would be ready to come to the aid of an orphan--"
+
+"Only be not unjust to him, and he will do anything for you, for your
+beauty has touched his heart deeply. He is going around sighing now--"
+
+"How could I touch the heart of any man?"
+
+"She is a rascal, the maiden!" thought the prince. But he added aloud:
+"Let Sakovich explain how that happened. Only do him no wrong; for he
+is a worthy man and of a noted family, therefore I do not wish that
+disdain should be shown such a person."
+
+
+
+
+                            CHAPTER XLVIII.
+
+
+Next morning the prince received a summons from the elector to go with
+all speed to Konigsberg to take command of the newly levied troops
+which were to march to Marienburg or Dantzig. The letter contained also
+news of the daring campaign of Karl Gustav through the whole length of
+the Commonwealth to Russian regions. The elector foresaw a disastrous
+end to the campaign; but just for that reason he desired to be at the
+head of as many troops as possible, that he might in case of need be
+indispensable to one side or the other, sell himself dearly, and decide
+the fate of the war. For those reasons he enjoined on the young prince
+all possible haste, so greatly was he concerned about avoiding delay;
+but after the first courier he sent a second, who arrived twelve hours
+later.
+
+The prince, therefore, had not a moment to lose, and not time enough to
+rest, for the fever returned with its previous violence. Still he had
+to go. So when he had delegated his authority to Sakovich, he said,--
+
+"Perhaps we shall have to transport Billevich and the maiden to
+Koenigsberg. There it will be easier in quiet to handle a hostile man
+firmly; but the girl I will take to the camp, for I have had enough of
+these ceremonies."
+
+"It is well, and the cavalry may be increased," answered Sakovich at
+parting.
+
+An hour later the prince was no longer in Taurogi. Sakovich remained,
+an unlimited despot, recognizing no power above himself but that of
+Anusia. And he began to blow away the dust from before her feet, as on
+a time the prince had before the feet of Olenka. Restraining his wild
+nature, he was courteous, anticipating her wishes, divining her
+thoughts, and at the same time he held himself at a distance, with all
+the respect which a polished cavalier should have toward a lady for
+whose hand and heart he is striving.
+
+It must be confessed that this reigning in Taurogi pleased Anusia; it
+was grateful to her to think that when evening came, in the lower
+halls, in the corridors, in the barracks, in the garden still covered
+with winter frost, the sighs of old and young officers were heard; that
+the astrologer was sighing while looking at the stars from his tower;
+that even old Billevich interrupted his evening rosary with sighs.
+
+While the best of maidens, she was still glad that those swift
+affections went not to Olenka, but to her. She was glad also with
+respect to Babinich; for she felt her power, and it came to her head
+that if no man had resisted her anywhere, she must have burned on his
+heart also permanent marks with her eyes.
+
+"He will forget that woman, it cannot be otherwise, for she feeds him
+with ingratitude; and when he forgets her he knows where to seek
+me,--and he will seek me, the robber!"
+
+Then she threatened him in her soul: "Wait! I will pay you before I
+console you."
+
+Meanwhile, though not in real truth caring much for Sakovich, she saw
+him with pleasure. It is true that he justified himself in her eyes
+from reproaches of treason in the same way in which Boguslav had
+explained himself to the sword-bearer. He said, therefore, that peace
+was already concluded with the Swedes; that the Commonwealth might
+recover and flourish, had not Pan Sapyeha ruined everything for his own
+private ends.
+
+Anusia, not knowing over-much of these matters, let the words pass her
+ears; but she was struck by something else in Sakovich's narrative.
+
+"The Billeviches," said he, "scream in heaven-piercing voices of
+injustice and captivity; but nothing has happened to them here, and
+nothing will happen. The prince has not let them go from Taurogi, it is
+true; but that is for their good, for three furlongs beyond the gate
+they would perish from ravagers or forest bandits. He has not let them
+go also, because he loves Panna Billevich, and that also is true. But
+who will not justify him? Who would act otherwise, who had a feeling
+heart and a breast burdened with sighs? If he had had less honorable
+intentions, being such a powerful man, he might have given rein to
+himself; but he wanted to marry her, he wanted to elevate that stubborn
+lady to his princely estate, to cover her with happiness, place the
+coronet of the Radzivills on her head; and these thankless people are
+hurling invectives at him, thus trying to diminish his honor and fame."
+
+Anusia, not believing this greatly, asked Olenka that same day if the
+prince wished to marry her. Olenka could not deny; and because they had
+become intimate, she explained her reasons for refusal. They seemed
+just and sufficient to Anusia; but still she thought to herself that it
+was not so grievous for the Billeviches in Taurogi, and that the prince
+and Sakovich were not such criminals as Pan Tomash had proclaimed.
+
+Then, also, came news that Sapyeha and Babinich were not only not
+approaching Taurogi, but had gone with forced marches against the King
+of Sweden, faraway toward Lvoff. Anusia fell into a rage at first, and
+then began to understand that if the hetman and Babinich had gone,
+there was no reason to flee from Taurogi, for they might lose their
+lives, or in the most favorable event change a quiet existence into a
+captivity full of dangers.
+
+For this reason it came to disputes between her on one side, and Olenka
+and Billevich on the other; but even they were forced to admit that the
+departure of Sapyeha rendered their flight very difficult, if not quite
+impossible, especially since the country was growing more and more
+excited, and no inhabitant could be certain of the morrow. Finally,
+even should they not accept Anusia's reason, flight without her aid was
+impossible, in view of the watchfulness of Sakovich and the other
+officers. Kettling alone was devoted to them, but he would not let
+himself be involved in any plot against his service; besides, he was
+absent often, for Sakovich was glad to employ him against armed bands
+of confederates and ravagers, since he was an experienced soldier and a
+good officer, therefore he sent him frequently from Taurogi.
+
+But it was pleasanter and pleasanter for Anusia. Sakovich made a
+declaration to her a month after the departure of the prince; but, the
+deceiver! she answered cunningly that she did not know him, that men
+spoke variously concerning him, that she had not time yet to love, that
+without permission of Princess Griselda she could not marry, and
+finally, that she wished to subject him to a year's trial.
+
+The starosta gnawed his anger, gave orders that day to give three
+thousand stripes to a cavalry soldier for a trifling offence,--after
+this the poor soldier was buried; but the starosta had to agree to
+Anusia's conditions. She told the lordling that if he would serve still
+more faithfully, diligently, and obediently, in a year he would receive
+whatever love she had.
+
+In this way she played with the bear; and she so succeeded in mastering
+him that he stifled even his growling. He merely said,--
+
+"With the exception of treason to the prince, ask anything of me, even
+ask me to walk on my knees."
+
+If Anusia had seen what terrible results of Sakovich's impatience were
+falling on the whole neighborhood, she would not have teased him so
+greatly. Soldiers and residents in Taurogi trembled before him, for he
+punished grievously and altogether without cause, punished beyond every
+measure. Prisoners died in chains from hunger, or were burned with hot
+iron.
+
+More than once it seemed that the wild starosta wished to cool in the
+blood of men his spirit, at once raging and burning with love, for he
+started up suddenly and went on an expedition. Victory followed him
+nearly everywhere. He cut to pieces parties of rebels, and ordered, as
+an example, that the right hands be cut from captured peasants, who
+were then sent home free.
+
+The terror of his name girded Taurogi as with a wall; even the most
+considerable bodies of patriots did not dare to go beyond Rossyeni.
+Peace was established in all parts, and he formed new regiments of
+German vagrants and the local peasants with the money extorted from
+neighboring citizens and nobles, and increased in power so as to
+furnish men to the prince in case of urgent necessity.
+
+A more loyal and terrible servant Boguslav could not have found.
+
+But Sakovich gazed more and more tenderly at Anusia with his terrible,
+pale-blue eyes, and played to her on a lute. Life, therefore, in
+Taurogi passed for Anusia joyously and with amusement; for Olenka it
+was sore and monotonous. From one there went gleams of gladness, like
+that light which issues at night from the firefly; the face of the
+other grew paler and paler, more serious, sterner; her dark brows were
+contracted more resolutely on her white forehead, so that finally they
+called her a nun. And she had something in her of the nun; she began to
+accept the thought that she would become one,--that God himself would
+through suffering and disappointment lead her to peace behind the
+grating. She was no longer that maiden with beautiful bloom on her face
+and happiness in her eyes; not that Olenka who on a time while riding
+in a sleigh with her betrothed, Andrei Kmita, cried, "Hei! hei!" to the
+pine woods and forests.
+
+Spring appeared in the world. A wind strong and warm shook the
+waters of the Baltic, now liberated from ice; later on, trees bloomed,
+flowers shot out from their harsh leafy enclosures; then the sun grew
+hot, and the poor girl was waiting in vain for the end of Taurogi
+captivity,--for Anusia did not wish to flee, and in the country it was
+ever more terrible.
+
+Fire and sword were raging as though the pity of God were never to be
+manifest. Nay more, whoso had not seized the sabre or the lance in
+winter, seized it in spring; snow did not betray his tracks, the pine
+wood gave better concealment, and warmth made war the easier.
+
+News flew swallow-like to Taurogi,--sometimes terrible, sometimes
+comforting; and to these and to those the maiden devoted her prayers,
+and shed tears of sorrow or joy.
+
+Previous mention had been made of a terrible uprising of the whole
+people. As many as the trees in the forests of the Commonwealth, as
+many as the ears of grain waving on its fields, as many as the stars
+shining on it at night between the Carpathians and the Baltic, were the
+warriors who rose up against the Swedes. These men, being nobles, were
+born to the sword and to war by God's will and nature's order; those
+who cut furrows with the plough, sowed land with grain; those who were
+occupied with trade and handicraft in towns; those who lived in the
+wilderness, from bee-keeping, from pitch-making, who lived with the axe
+or by hunting; those who lived on the rivers and labored at fishing;
+those who were nomads in the steppes with their cattle,--all seized
+their weapons to drive out the invader.
+
+The Swede was now drowning in that multitude as in a swollen river.
+
+To the wonder of the whole world, the Commonwealth, powerless but a
+short time before, found more sabres in its defence than the Emperor of
+Germany or the King of France could have.
+
+Then came news of Karl Gustav,--how he was marching ever deeper into
+the Commonwealth, his feet in blood, his head in smoke and flames, his
+lips blaspheming. It was hoped any moment to hear of his death and the
+destruction of all the Swedish armies.
+
+The name of Charnyetski was heard with increasing force from boundary
+to boundary, transfixing the enemy with terror, pouring consolation
+into the hearts of the Poles.
+
+"He routed them at Kozyenitsi!" was said one day. "He routed them at
+Yaroslav!" was repeated a few weeks later; a distant echo repeated: "He
+has beaten them at Sandomir!" The only wonder was where so many Swedes
+could still come from after so many defeats.
+
+Finally a new flock of swallows flew in, and with them the report of
+the imprisonment of the king and the whole Swedish army in the fork of
+the rivers. It seemed that the end was right there. Sakovich stopped
+his expeditions; he merely wrote letters at night and sent them in
+various directions.
+
+Billevich seemed bewildered. He rushed in every evening with news to
+Olenka. Sometimes he gnawed his hands, when he remembered that he had
+to sit in Taurogi. The old soldier soul was yearning for the field. At
+last he began to shut himself up in his room, and to ponder over
+something for hours at a time. Once he seized Olenka in his arms, burst
+out into great weeping, and said,--"You are a dear girl, my only
+daughter, but the country is dearer." And next day he vanished, as if
+he had fallen through the earth. Olenka found merely a letter, and in
+it the following words:--
+
+
+"God bless thee, beloved child! I understood well that they are
+guarding thee and not me, and that it would be easier for me to escape
+alone. Let God judge me, thou poor orphan, if I did this from hardness
+of heart and lack of fatherly love for thee. But the torment surpassed
+my endurance. I swear, by Christ's wounds, that I could endure no
+longer. For when I thought that the best Polish blood was flowing in a
+river _pro patria el libertate_ (for the country and liberty), and in
+that river there was not one drop of my blood, it seemed to me that the
+angels of heaven were condemning me. If I had not been born in our
+sacred Jmud, where love of country and bravery are cherished, if I had
+not been born a noble, a Billevich, I should have remained with thee
+and guarded thee. But thou, if a man, wouldst have done as I have;
+therefore thou'lt forgive me for leaving thee alone, like Daniel in the
+lions' den, whom God in His mercy preserved; so I think that the
+protection of our Most Holy Lady the Queen will be better over thee
+than mine."
+
+
+Olenka covered the letter with tears: but she loved her uncle still
+more because of this act, for her heart rose with pride. Meanwhile no
+small uproar was made in Taurogi. Sakovich himself rushed to the maiden
+in great fury, and without removing his cap asked,--
+
+"Where is your uncle?"
+
+"Where all, except traitors, are,--in the field!"
+
+"Did you know of this?" cried he.
+
+But she, instead of being abashed, advanced some steps and measuring
+him with her eyes, said with inexpressible contempt,--
+
+"I knew--and what?"
+
+"Ah, if it were not for the prince! You will answer to the prince!"
+
+"Neither to the prince nor to his serving-lad. And now I beg you--" And
+she pointed to the door.
+
+Sakovich gnashed his teeth and went out.
+
+That same day news of the victory at Varka was ringing through Taurogi,
+and such fear fell on all partisans of the Swedes that Sakovich himself
+dared not punish the priests who sang publicly in the neighboring
+churches _Te Deum_.
+
+A great burden fell from his heart, when a few weeks later a letter
+came from Boguslav, who was before Marienburg, with information that
+the king had escaped from the river sack. But the other news was very
+disagreeable. The prince asked reinforcements, and directed to leave in
+Taurogi no more troops than were absolutely needed for defence.
+
+All the cavalry ready marched the next day, and with it Kettling,
+Oettingen, Fitz-Gregory,--in a word, all the best officers, except
+Braun, who was indispensable to Sakovich.
+
+Taurogi was still more deserted than after the prince's departure.
+Anusia grew weary, and annoyed Sakovich all the more. The starosta
+thought of removing to Prussia; for parties, made bold by the departure
+of the troops, began again to push beyond Rossyeni. The Billeviches
+themselves had collected about five hundred horse, small nobles and
+peasants. They had inflicted a sensible defeat on Buetzov, who had
+marched against them, and they ravaged without mercy all villages
+belonging to Radzivill.
+
+Men rallied to them willingly; for no family, not even the Hleboviches,
+enjoyed such general honor and respect. Sakovich was sorry to leave
+Taurogi at the mercy of the enemy; he knew that in Prussia it would be
+difficult for him to get money and reinforcements, that he managed here
+as he liked, there his power must decrease; still he lost hope more and
+more of being able to maintain himself.
+
+Buetzov, defeated, took refuge under him; and the tidings which he
+brought of the power and growth of the rebellion made Sakovich decide
+at last on the Prussian journey.
+
+As a positive man, and one loving to bring into speedy effect that
+which he had planned, he finished his preparations in ten days, issued
+orders, and was ready to march.
+
+Suddenly he met with an unlooked for resistance, and from a side from
+which he had least expected it,--from Anusia Borzobogati.
+
+Anusia did not think of going to Prussia. She was comfortable in
+Taurogi. The advances of confederate "parties" did not alarm her in the
+least; and if the Billeviches had attacked Taurogi itself, she would
+have been glad. She understood also that in a strange place, among
+Germans, she would be at Sakovich's mercy completely, and that she
+might the more easily be brought there to obligation, for which she had
+no desire; therefore she resolved to insist on remaining. Olenka, to
+whom she explained her reasons, not only confirmed the justness of
+them, but implored with all her power, with tears in her eyes, to
+oppose the journey.
+
+"Here," said she, "salvation may come,--if not to-day, to-morrow; there
+we should both be lost utterly."
+
+"But see, you almost abused me because I wanted to conquer the
+starosta, though I knew of nothing; as I love Princess Griselda, it
+only came somehow of itself. But now would he regard my resistance were
+he not in love? What do you think?"
+
+"True, Anusia, true," responded Olenka.
+
+"Do not trouble yourself, my most beautiful flower! We shall not stir a
+foot out of Taurogi; besides, I shall annoy Sakovich terribly."
+
+"God grant you success!"
+
+"Why should I not have it? I shall succeed, first, because he cares for
+me, and second, as I think he cares for my property. It is easy for him
+to get angry with me; he can even wound me with his sabre; but then all
+would be lost."
+
+And it turned out that she was right. Sakovich came to her joyful and
+confident; but she greeted him with disdainful mien.
+
+"Is it possible," asked she, "that you wish to flee to Prussia from
+dread of the Billeviches?"
+
+"Not before the Billeviches," answered he, frowning; "not from fear;
+but I go there from prudence, so as to act against those robbers with
+fresh forces."
+
+"Then a pleasant journey to you."
+
+"How is that? Do you think that I will go without you, my dearest
+hope?"
+
+"Whoso is a coward may find hope in flight, not in me."
+
+Sakovich was pale from anger. He would have punished her; but seeing
+before whom he was standing, he restrained himself, softened his fierce
+face with a smile, and said, as if jesting,--
+
+"Oh, I shall not ask. I will seat you in a carriage and take you
+along."
+
+"Will you?" asked she. "Then I see that I am held here in captivity
+against the will of the prince. Know then, sir, that if you do that, I
+shall not speak another word to you all my life, so help me the Lord
+God! for I was reared in Lubni, and I have the greatest contempt for
+cowards. Would that I had not fallen into such hands! Would that Pan
+Babinich had carried me off for good into Lithuania, for he was not
+afraid of any man!"
+
+"For God's sake!" cried Sakovich. "Tell me at least why you are
+unwilling to go to Prussia."
+
+But Anusia feigned weeping and despair.
+
+"Tartars as it were have taken me into captivity, though I was reared
+by Princess Griselda, and no one had a right to me. They seize me,
+imprison me, take me beyond the sea by force, will condemn me to exile.
+It is soon to be seen how they will tear me with pincers! O my God! my
+God!"
+
+"Have the fear of that God on whom you are calling!" cried the
+starosta. "Who will tear you with pincers?"
+
+"Oh, save me, all ye saints!" cried Anusia, sobbing.
+
+Sakovich knew not what to do; he was choking with rage. At times he
+thought that he would go mad, or that Anusia had gone mad. At last he
+threw himself at her feet and said that he would stay in Taurogi. Then
+she began to entreat him to go away, if he was afraid; with which she
+brought him to final despair, so that, springing up and going out, he
+said,--
+
+"Well! we shall remain in Taurogi, and whether I fear the Billeviches
+will soon be seen."
+
+And collecting that very day the remnant of Buetzov's defeated troops
+and his own, he marched, but not to Prussia, only to Rossyeni, against
+the Billeviches, who were encamped in the forests of Girlakol. They did
+not expect an attack, for news of the intended withdrawal of the troops
+from Taurogi had been repeated in the neighborhood for several days.
+The starosta struck them while off their guard, cut them to pieces, and
+trampled them. The sword-bearer himself, under whose leadership the
+party was, escaped from the defeat; but two Billeviches of another line
+fell, and with them a third part of the soldiers; the rest fled to the
+four points of the world. The starosta brought a number of tens of
+prisoners to Taurogi, and gave orders to slay every one, before Anusia
+could intercede in their defence.
+
+There was no further talk of leaving Taurogi; and the starosta had no
+need of doing so, for after this victory parties did not go beyond the
+Dubisha.
+
+Sakovich put on airs and boasted beyond measure, saying that if
+Loewenhaupt would send him a thousand good horse he would rub out the
+rebellion in all Jmud. But Loewenhaupt was not in those parts then.
+Anusia gave a poor reception to this boasting.
+
+"Oh, success against the sword-bearer was easy," said she; "but if he
+before whom both you and the prince fled had been there, of a certainty
+you would have left me and fled to Prussia beyond the sea."
+
+These words pricked the starosta to the quick.
+
+"First of all, do not imagine to yourself that Prussia is beyond the
+sea, for beyond the sea is Sweden; and second, before whom did the
+prince and I flee?"
+
+"Before Pan Babinich!" answered she, courtesying with great ceremony.
+
+"Would that I might meet him at a sword's length!"
+
+"Then you would surely lie a sword's depth in the ground; but do not
+call the wolf from the forest."
+
+Sakovich, in fact, did not call that wolf with sincerity; for though he
+was a man of incomparable daring, he felt a certain, almost
+superstitious, dread of Babinich,--so ghastly were the memories that
+remained to him after the recent campaign. He did not know, besides,
+how soon he would hear that terrible name.
+
+But before that name rang through all Jmud, there came in time other
+news,--for some the most joyful of joyful, but for Sakovich most
+terrible,--which all mouths repeated in three words throughout the
+whole Commonwealth,--
+
+"Warsaw is taken!"
+
+It seemed that the earth was opening under the feet of traitors; that
+the whole Swedish heaven was falling on their heads, together with all
+the deities which had shone in it hitherto like suns. Ears would not
+believe that the chancellor Oxenstiern was in captivity; that in
+captivity were Erskine, Loewenhaupt, Wrangel; in captivity the great
+Wittemberg himself, who had stained the whole Commonwealth with blood,
+who had conquered one half of it before the coming of Karl Gustav; that
+the king, Yan Kazimir, was triumphing, and after the victory would pass
+judgment on the guilty.
+
+And this news flew as if on wings; roared like a bomb through the
+Commonwealth; went through villages, for peasant repeated it to
+peasant; went through the fields, for the wheat rustled it; went
+through the forest, for pine-tree told it to pine-tree; the eagles
+screamed it in the air; and all living men still the more seized their
+weapons.
+
+In a moment the defeat of Girlakol was forgotten around Taurogi. The
+recently terrible Sakovich grew small in everything, even in his own
+eyes. Parties began again to attack bodies of Swedes; the Billeviches,
+recovering after their last defeat, passed the Dubisha again, at the
+head of their own men and the remainder of the Lauda nobles.
+
+Sakovich knew not himself what to begin, whither to turn, from what
+side to look for salvation. For a long time he had no news from Prince
+Boguslav, and he racked his head in vain. Where was he, with what
+troops could he be? And at times a mortal terror seized him: had not
+the prince too fallen into captivity? He called to mind the prince's
+saying that he would turn his tabor toward Warsaw, and that if they
+would make him commandant over the garrison in the capital, he would
+prefer to be there, for he could look more easily on every side.
+
+There were not wanting also people who asserted that the prince must
+have fallen into the hands of Yan Kazimir.
+
+"If the prince were not in Warsaw," said they, "why should our gracious
+lord the king exclude him alone from amnesty, which he extended in
+advance to all Poles in the garrison? He must be already in the power
+of the king; and since it is known that Prince Yanush's head was
+destined for the block, it is certain that Prince Boguslav's will
+fall."
+
+In consequence of these thoughts Sakovich came to the same conviction,
+and wrestled with despair,--first, because he loved the prince; second,
+because he saw that if this powerful protector were dead, the wildest
+beast would more easily find a place to hide its head in the
+Commonwealth than he, the right hand of the traitor.
+
+All that seemed left to him was to flee to Prussia without regard to
+Anusia's opposition, and seek there bread, service.
+
+"But what would happen?" asked the starosta of himself more than once,
+"if the elector, fearing the anger of Yan Kazimir, should give up all
+fugitives?"
+
+There was no issue but to seek safety beyond the sea, in Sweden itself.
+
+Fortunately, after a week of this torment and doubt, a courier came
+from Prince Boguslav with a long autograph letter.
+
+
+"Warsaw is taken from the Swedes," wrote the prince. "My tabor and
+effects are lost. It is too late for me to recede, for the king's
+advisers are so envenomed against me that I was excepted from amnesty.
+Babinich harassed my troops at the very gates of Warsaw. Kettling is in
+captivity. The King of Sweden, the elector, and I, with Steinbock and
+all forces, are marching to the capital, where there will be a general
+battle soon. Karl Gustav swears that he will win it, though the skill
+of Yan Kazimir in leading armies confounds him not a little. Who could
+have foreseen in that ex-Jesuit such a strategist? But I recognized him
+as early as Berestechko, for there everything was done with his head
+and Vishnyevetski's. We have hope in this,--that the general militia,
+of which there are several tens of thousands with Yan Kazimir, will
+disperse to their homes, or that their first ardor will cool and they
+will not fight as at first. God grant some panic in that rabble; then
+Karl Gustav can give them a general defeat, though what will come later
+is unknown, and the generals themselves tell one another in secret that
+the rebellion is a hydra on which new heads are growing every moment.
+First of all, 'Warsaw must be taken a second time.' When I heard this
+from the mouth of Karl, I asked, 'What next?' He said nothing. Here our
+strength is crumbling, theirs is increasing. We have nothing with which
+to begin a new war. And courage is not the same; no Poles will join the
+Swedes as at first. My uncle the elector is silent as usual; but I see
+well that if we lose a battle, he will begin to-morrow to beat the
+Swedes, so as to buy himself into Yan Kazimir's favor. It is bitter to
+bow down, but we must. God grant that I be accepted, and come out whole
+without losing my property. I trust only in God; but it is hard to
+escape fear, and we must foresee evil. Therefore what property you can
+sell or mortgage for ready money, sell and mortgage; even enter into
+relations with confederates in secret. Go yourself with the whole tabor
+to Birji, as from there to Courland is nearer. I should advise you to
+go to Prussia; but soon it will not be safe from fire and sword in
+Prussia, for immediately after the taking of Warsaw Babinich was
+ordered to march through Prussia to Lithuania, to excite the rebellion
+and burn and slay on the road. And you know that he will carry out that
+order. We tried to catch him at the Bug; and Steinbock himself sent a
+considerable force against him, of which not one man returned to give
+news of the disaster. Do not try to measure yourself with Babinich, for
+you will not be able, but hasten to Birji.
+
+"The fever has left me entirely; here there are high and dry plains,
+not such swamps as in Jmud. I commit you to God, etc."
+
+
+The starosta was as much grieved at the news as he was rejoiced that
+the prince was alive and in health; for if the prince foresaw that the
+winning of a general battle could not much better the shattered fortune
+of Sweden, what could be hoped for in future? Perhaps the prince might
+save himself from ruin under the robe of the crafty elector, and he,
+Sakovich, under the prince; but what could be done in the mean while?
+Go to Prussia?
+
+Pan Sakovich did not need the advice of the prince to restrain him from
+meeting Babinich. Power and desire to do that were both lacking. Birji
+remained, but too late for that also. On the road was a Billevich
+party; then a second party,--nobles, peasants, people of the prince,
+and God knows what others,--who at a mere report would assemble and
+sweep him away as a whirlwind sweeps withered leaves; and even if they
+did not assemble, even if he could anticipate them by a swift and bold
+march, it would be needful to fight on the road with others; at every
+village, at every swamp, in every field and forest, a new battle. What
+forces should he have to take even thirty horses to Birji? Was he to
+remain in Taurogi? That was bad, for meanwhile the terrible Babinich
+would come at the head of a powerful Tartar legion; all the parties
+would fly to him; they would cover Taurogi as with a flood, and wreak a
+vengeance such as man had not heard of till that day.
+
+For the first time in his life the hitherto insolent starosta felt that
+he lacked counsel in his head, strength in undertaking, and decision in
+danger; and the next day he summoned to counsel Buetzov, Braun, and some
+of the most important officers.
+
+It was decided to remain in Taurogi and await tidings from Warsaw.
+
+But Braun from that council went straight to another, to one with
+Anusia.
+
+Long, long did they deliberate together. At last Braun came out with
+face greatly moved; but Anusia rushed like a storm to Olenka,--
+
+"Olenka, the time has come!" cried she, on the threshold. "We must
+flee!"
+
+"When?" asked the valiant girl, growing a little pale, but rising at
+once in sign of immediate readiness.
+
+"To-morrow, to-morrow! Braun has the command, and Sakovich will sleep
+in the town, for Pan Dzyeshuk has invited him to a banquet. Pan
+Dzyeshuk was long ago prepared, and he will put something in Sakovich's
+wine. Braun says that he will go himself and take fifty horse. Oh,
+Olenka, how happy I am! how happy!"
+
+Here Anusia threw herself on Panna Billevich's neck, and began to press
+her with such an outburst of joy that she asked,--
+
+"What is the matter, Anusia? You might have brought Braun to this long
+ago."
+
+"I might, I might. I have told you nothing yet! O my God! my God! Have
+you heard of nothing? Pan Babinich is marching hither! Sakovich and all
+of them are dying of fear! Pan Babinich is marching, burning, and
+slaying. He has destroyed one party, has beaten Steinbock himself, and
+is advancing with forced marches, so as to hurry. And to whom can he
+hurry hither? Tell me, am I not a fool?"
+
+Here tears glistened in Anusia's eyes. Olenka placed her hands together
+as if in prayer, and raising her eyes said,--
+
+"To whomsoever he is hastening, may God straighten his paths, bless
+him, and guard him!"
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER XLIX.
+
+
+Kmita, wishing to pass from Warsaw to Royal Prussia and Lithuania, had
+really no easy task in the very beginning, for not farther from Warsaw
+than Serotsk was a great Swedish force. Karl Gustav in his time had
+commanded it to take position there purposely to hinder the siege of
+the capital. But since Warsaw was captured, that army had nothing
+better to do than stop the divisions which Yan Kazimir might send to
+Lithuania or Prussia. At the head of the Swedish force were two Polish
+traitors, Radzeyovski and Radzivill, with Douglas, a skilful warrior,
+trained as no other of the Swedish generals in sudden warfare; with
+them were two thousand chosen infantry and cavalry, with artillery of
+equal number. When the leaders heard of Kmita's expedition, since it
+was necessary for them in every event to approach Lithuania to save
+Tykotsin, besieged anew by Mazovians and men of Podlyasye, they spread
+widely their nets for Pan Andrei in the triangle on the Bug, between
+Serotsk on one side and Zlotorya on the other, and Ostrolenko at the
+point.
+
+Kmita had to pass through that triangle, for he was hurrying, and there
+lay his nearest road. He noticed in good season that he was in a net,
+but because he was accustomed to that method of warfare he was not
+disconcerted. He counted on this,--that the net was too greatly
+extended, and therefore the meshes in it were so widely stretched that
+he would be able to pass through them. What is more, though they hunted
+him diligently, not only did he double back, not only did he escape,
+but he hunted them. First, he passed the Bug behind Serotsk, pushed
+along the bank of the river to Vyshkov in Branshchyk; he cut to pieces
+three hundred horse sent on a reconnoissance, so that, as the prince
+had written, not a man returned to give account of the disaster.
+Douglas himself pushed him into Dlugosyodle; but Kmita, dispersing the
+cavalry, turned back, and instead of fleeing with all his might, went
+straight to the eyes of the enemy as far as the Narev, which he crossed
+by swimming. Douglas stood on the bank waiting for boats; but before
+they were brought Kmita returned in the dark through the river, and
+striking the vanguard of the Swedes brought panic and disorder to
+Douglas's whole division.
+
+The old general was amazed at this movement; but next day his amazement
+was greater, when he learned that Kmita had gone around the whole army,
+and doubling back to the spot from which they had started him like a
+wild beast, had seized at Branshchyk Swedish wagons following the army,
+together with booty and money, cutting down at the same time fifty men
+of the infantry convoy.
+
+Sometimes the Swedes saw Kmita's Tartars for whole days with the naked
+eye on the edge of the horizon, but could not reach them. Still Pan
+Andrei carried off something every moment. The Swedish soldiers were
+wearied, and the Polish squadrons which held yet with Radzeyovski,
+though formed of dissenters, served unwillingly. But the population
+served Kmita with enthusiasm. He knew every movement of the smallest
+scouting-party, of each wagon which went forward or remained in the
+rear. Sometimes it seemed that he was playing with the Swedes, but that
+was tiger-play. He spared no prisoners; he ordered the Tartars to hang
+them, for the Swedes did the same. At times you would say that
+irrepressible fury had come upon him, for he hurled himself with blind
+insolence on superior forces.
+
+"An insane man leads that division!" said Douglas.
+
+"Or a mad dog!" said Radzeyovski.
+
+Boguslav thought he was one and the other, but underneath both a
+consummate soldier. The prince related boastingly to the generals that
+he had hurled that cavalier twice to the earth, with his own hand.
+
+In fact, Babinich attacked Boguslav most furiously. He sought him
+evidently; the pursued became himself the pursuer.
+
+Douglas divined that there must be some personal hatred in the matter.
+
+The prince did not deny this, though he gave no explanations. He paid
+Babinich with the same coin; for following the example of Hovanski, he
+put a price on his head; and when that availed nothing, he thought to
+take advantage of Kmita's hatred and through it bring him into a trap.
+
+"It is a shame for us to bother so long with this robber," said he to
+Douglas and Radzeyovski; "he is prowling around us like a wolf around a
+sheepfold. I will go against him with a small division as a decoy; and
+when he strikes me I will detain him till you come up; then we will not
+let the craw-fish out of the net."
+
+Douglas, whom this chase had long since annoyed, made only small
+opposition, asserting that he could not and should not expose the life
+of such a great dignitary and relative of kings to the chance of being
+seized by one marauder. But when Boguslav insisted, he agreed.
+
+It was determined that the prince should go with a detachment of five
+hundred troopers, that each man should have behind him a foot soldier
+with a musket. This stratagem was to lead Babinich into error.
+
+"He will not restrain himself when he hears of only five hundred
+horsemen, and he will attack undoubtedly," said the prince. "When the
+infantry spit in his eyes, his Tartars will scatter like sand; he will
+fall himself, or we shall take him alive."
+
+This plan was carried out quickly and with great accuracy. First, news
+was sent out, two days in advance, that a party of five hundred horse
+was to march under Prince Boguslav. The generals calculated with
+certainty that the local inhabitants would inform Babinich of this. In
+fact, they did inform him.
+
+The prince marched in the deep and dark night toward Vansosh and
+Yelonka, passed the river at Cherevino, and leaving his cavalry in the
+open field, stationed his infantry in the neighboring groves, whence
+they might issue unexpectedly. Meanwhile Douglas was to push along by
+the bank of the Narev, feigning to march on Ostrolenko. Radzeyovski was
+in advance, with the lighter cavalry from Ksyenjopole.
+
+Neither of the three leaders knew well where Babinich was at that
+moment, for it was impossible to learn anything from the peasants, and
+the cavalry were not able to seize Tartars. But Douglas supposed that
+Babinich's main forces were in Snyadovo, and he wished to surround
+them, so that if Babinich should move on Boguslav, he would intercept
+him on the side of the Lithuanian boundary and cut off his retreat.
+
+Everything seemed to favor the Swedish plans. Kmita was really in
+Snyadovo; and barely had the news of Boguslav's approach reached him,
+when he fell at once into the forest, so as to come out unexpectedly
+near Cherevino.
+
+Douglas, turning aside from the Narev, struck in a few days upon the
+traces of the Tartar march, and advanced by the same road, therefore
+from the rear after Babinich. Heat tormented the horses greatly, as
+well as the men encased in iron armor; but the general advanced without
+regard to those hindrances, absolutely certain that he would come upon
+Babinich's army unexpectedly and in time of battle.
+
+Finally, after two days' march he came so near Cherevino that the smoke
+of the cottages was visible. Then he halted, and occupying all the
+passages and narrow pathways, waited.
+
+Some officers wished to advance as a forlorn hope and strike at once;
+but Douglas restrained them, saying,--
+
+"Babinich, after attacking the prince, when he sees that he has to do
+not with cavalry alone, but also with infantry, will be obliged to
+retreat; and as he can retreat only by the old road, he will fall as it
+were into our open arms."
+
+In fact, it seemed that all they had to do was to listen, and soon
+Tartar howling would be heard, and the first discharges of musketry.
+
+Meanwhile one day passed, and in the forests of Cherevino it was as
+silent as if a soldier's foot had never been in it.
+
+Douglas grew impatient, and toward night sent forward a small party to
+the field, enjoining on them the utmost caution.
+
+The party returned in the depth of the night, without having seen or
+done anything. At daylight Douglas himself advanced with his whole
+force. After a march of some hours he reached a place filled with
+traces of the presence of soldiers. His men found remnants of biscuits,
+broken glass, bits of clothing, and a belt with cartridges such as the
+Swedish infantry use; it became certain that Boguslav's infantry had
+stopped in that place, but they were not visible anywhere. Farther on
+in the damp forest Douglas's vanguard found many tracks of heavy
+cavalry horses, but on the edge tracks of Tartar ponies; still farther
+on lay the carcass of a horse, from which the wolves had recently torn
+out the entrails. About a furlong beyond they found a Tartar arrow
+without the point, but with the shaft entire. Evidently Boguslav was
+retreating, and Babinich was following him.
+
+Douglas understood that something unusual must have happened. But what
+was it? To this there was no answer. Douglas fell to pondering.
+Suddenly his meditation was interrupted by an officer from the
+vanguard.
+
+"Your worthiness!" said the officer, "through the thicket about a
+furlong away are some men in a crowd. They do not move, as if they were
+on watch. I have brought the guard to a halt, so as to report to you."
+
+"Cavalry or infantry?" asked Douglas.
+
+"Infantry. There are four or five of them in a group; it was not
+possible to count them accurately, for the branches hide them. But they
+seem yellow, like our musketeers."
+
+Douglas pressed his horse with his knees, pushed forward quickly to the
+vanguard, and advanced with it. Through the thickets, now thinner, were
+to be seen in the remoter deep forest a group of soldiers perfectly
+motionless, standing under a tree.
+
+"They are ours, they are ours!" said Douglas. "The prince must be in
+the neighborhood."
+
+"It is a wonder to me," said the officer; "they are on watch, and none
+of them calls, though we march noisily."
+
+Here the thickets ended, and the forest was clean of undergrowth. The
+men approached and saw four persons standing in a group, one at the
+side of the other, as if they were looking at something on the ground.
+From the head of each one rose a dark strip directly upward.
+
+"Your worthiness!" said the officer at once, "these men are hanging."
+
+"That is true!" answered Douglas.
+
+They sprang forward, and stood for a while near the corpses. Four
+foot-soldiers were hanging together by ropes, like a bunch of thrushes,
+their feet barely an inch above the ground, for they were on the lower
+branches.
+
+Douglas looked at them indifferently enough; then said as if to
+himself, "Now we know that the prince and Babinich have passed this
+way."
+
+Then he fell to thinking again, for he did not know well whether to
+continue on by the forest path or go out on the Ostrolenko highway.
+
+Half an hour later they found two other corpses. Evidently they were
+marauders or sick men whom Babinich's Tartars had seized while pursuing
+the prince.
+
+"But why did the prince retreat?"
+
+Douglas knew him too well--that is, both his daring and his military
+experience--to admit even for a moment that the prince had not
+sufficient reasons. Therefore something must have intervened.
+
+Only next day was the affair explained. Pan Byes Kornie had come from
+Prince Boguslav, with a party of thirty horse, to report that Yan
+Kazimir had sent beyond the Bug against Douglas the full hetman Pan
+Gosyevski, with six thousand Lithuanians and Tartar horse.
+
+"We learned this," said Pan Byes, "before Babinich came up; for he
+advanced very carefully and attacked frequently, therefore annoyingly.
+Gosyevski is twenty or twenty-five miles distant. When the prince
+received the tidings, he was forced to retreat in haste, so as to join
+Radzeyovski, who might be cut to pieces easily. But by marching quickly
+we made the junction. The prince sent out at once parties of a few tens
+of men in every direction, with a report to your worthiness. Many of
+them will fall into Tartar or peasant hands, but in such a war it
+cannot be otherwise."
+
+"Where are the prince and Radzeyovski?"
+
+"Ten miles from here, at the river."
+
+"Did the prince bring back all his forces?"
+
+"He was forced to leave the infantry, which is coming through the
+thickest forest, so as to escape the Tartars."
+
+"Such cavalry as the Tartar is made to go through the densest forests.
+I do not expect to see that infantry again. But no one is to blame, and
+the prince acted like an experienced leader."
+
+"The prince threw out one party the most considerable to Ostrolenko, to
+lead Gosyevski into error. He will go to Ostrolenko at once, thinking
+that our whole force is there."
+
+"That is well!" said Douglas, comforted. "We will manage Gosyevski."
+
+And he marched without delay to join Boguslav and Radzeyovski. They met
+that same day, to the great delight, especially, of Radzeyovski, who
+feared captivity more than death, for he knew that as a traitor and the
+originator of all the misfortunes of the Commonwealth he would have to
+give a terrible answer. But now, after the junction with Douglas, the
+Swedish army had more than four thousand men; therefore it was able to
+offer an effective resistance to the forces of the full hetman. He had,
+it is true, six thousand cavalry; but Tartars--except those of
+Babinich, who were trained--could not be used in offensive battle, and
+Pan Gosyevski himself, though a skilled and learned warrior, was not
+able, like Charnyetski, to inspire men with an enthusiasm which nothing
+could resist.
+
+But Douglas was at a loss to understand why Yan Kazimir should send the
+full hetman beyond the Bug. The Swedish king with the elector was
+marching on Warsaw; a general battle must therefore follow, sooner or
+later. And though Yan Kazimir was at the head of a force superior in
+numbers to the Swedes and the Brandenburgers, still six thousand men
+formed too great a force for the King of Poland to set aside
+voluntarily.
+
+It is true that Gosyevski had saved Babinich from trouble, but still
+the king did not need to send out a whole division to the rescue of
+Babinich. Hence there was in this expedition some secret object, which
+the Swedish general, despite all his penetration, could not divine.
+
+In the letter of the King of Sweden sent a week later great alarm was
+evident, and as it were astonishment caused by that expedition, but a
+few words explained the reasons of this. According to the opinion of
+Karl Gustav, the hetman was not sent to attack Douglas's army, nor to
+go to Lithuania to aid the uprising there, for in Lithuania the Swedes,
+as it was, were not able to do anything but to threaten Royal Prussia,
+namely, the eastern part of it, which was completely stripped of
+troops.
+
+"The calculation is," wrote the king, "to make the elector waver in
+faithfulness to the treaty of Marienburg and to us; which may easily
+happen, since the elector is ready to enter into alliance with Christ
+against the Devil and at the same time with the Devil against Christ,
+so as to win something from both."
+
+The letter ended by enjoining on Douglas to strive with all his forces
+not to let the hetman go to Prussia, "who if he cannot reach there in
+the course of a few weeks, will be forced beyond doubt to return to
+Warsaw."
+
+Douglas saw that the task given him did not surpass his powers at all.
+Not so long before he had met with a certain success in opposing
+Charnyetski himself; therefore Gosyevski was not terrible. The Swedish
+general did not hope, it is true, to crush Gosyevski's division, but he
+felt certain that he would be able to stop him and curb all his
+movements.
+
+In fact, from that moment began very skilful approaches of the two
+armies, which, avoiding on both sides a general battle, endeavored each
+to flank the other. Both leaders emulated each other; but the
+experienced Douglas was in so far superior that he did not let
+Gosyevski advance beyond Ostrolenko. But Babinich, saved from
+Boguslav's attack, did not hasten to join the Lithuanian division, for
+he occupied himself with great zeal on that infantry which Boguslav in
+his hurried march to Radzeyovski was forced to leave behind. Babinich's
+Tartars, guided by local woodmen, pursued night and day, finishing
+every moment the incautious or those who dropped into the rear. Lack of
+provisions forced the Swedes at last to separate into small detachments
+which could find food more easily; this was all that Babinich was
+waiting for.
+
+He divided his forces into three commands, under lead of Akbah Ulan,
+Soroka, and himself, and in a few days he destroyed the greater part of
+that infantry. It was an untiring hunt after men in forest thickets, in
+willows, in reeds,--a hunt full of noise, uproar, shouting, shooting,
+and death.
+
+Widely did it spread the glory of Babinich's name among the Mazovians.
+Bands collected and joined Gosyevski at Ostrolenko itself, when the
+full hetman, whose march was only a demonstration, received a command
+from the king to march back to Warsaw. For a short period only could
+Babinich rejoice with his acquaintances; namely, with Zagloba and
+Volodyovski, who at the head of the Lauda squadron attended the hetman.
+But they greeted one another very cordially, for great friendship and
+intimacy existed already between them. The young colonels were sharply
+annoyed that they could not act now against Boguslav; but Zagloba
+consoled them by pouring frequently into their glasses, and saying,--
+
+"That is nothing! My head has been working since May over stratagems,
+and I have never racked it over anything in vain. I have a number
+ready,--very excellent stratagems; but there is no time to apply them,
+unless at Warsaw, whither we are all marching."
+
+"I must go to Prussia," said Babinich, "and cannot be at Warsaw."
+
+"Can you reach Prussia?" asked Volodyovski.
+
+"As God is in heaven, I shall spring through; and I promise you
+sacredly to make not the worst cabbage-hash, for I shall say to my
+Tartars, 'Riot, my soul!' They would be glad even here to draw the
+knife across people's throats; but I have told them that pay for every
+violence is the rope. But in Prussia I will give way even to my own
+will. Why should I not spring through? You were not able; but that is
+another thing, for it is easier to stop a large force than such a party
+as mine, with which it is easy to hide. More than once was I sitting in
+the rushes, and Douglas's men passed right there, knowing nothing of
+me. Douglas too will surely follow you, and leave the field free to
+me."
+
+"But, as we hear, you have wearied him out too," said Pan Michael, with
+satisfaction.
+
+"Ah, the scoundrel!" added Zagloba. "He had to change his shirt every
+day, he sweated so. You never stole up to Hovanski better than to him,
+and I must acknowledge that I could not have done better myself,
+though, in his time, Konyetspolski said that Zagloba in partisan
+warfare was unsurpassed."
+
+"It seems to me," said Pan Michael to Kmita, "that if Douglas returns
+he will leave Boguslav here to attack you."
+
+"God grant it! I have the same hope," answered Kmita, quickly. "Were I
+to seek him, and he me, we should find each other. He will not pass
+through me a third time; and if he does, then I shall not rise again. I
+remember your secrets well; and all the Lubni thrusts I have in memory
+like 'Our Father.' Every day, too, I try them with Soroka, so as to
+train my hand."
+
+"What are stratagems good for?" exclaimed Pan Michael; "the sabre is
+the main thing."
+
+This maxim touched Zagloba somewhat; therefore he said at once: "Every
+windmill thinks that the main thing is to whirl its wings. Do you know
+why, Michael? Because it has chaff under its roof; that is, in its
+head. Military art rests on stratagems; if not, Roh Kovalski might be
+grand hetman and you full hetman."
+
+"And what is Pan Kovalski doing?" asked Kmita.
+
+"Pan Kovalski has now an iron helmet on his head, and justly, for
+cabbage is best out of a pot. He has grown rich on plunder in Warsaw,
+has come into good repute, and gone to the hussars, to Prince
+Polubinski, and all so as to be able to put a spear into Karl Gustav.
+He comes every day to our tent, and stares to see if the neck of the
+decanter is sticking out of the straw. I cannot break that lad of
+drinking. Good example goes for nothing; but I prophesied to him that
+this desertion of the Lauda squadron would turn out evil. The rogue!
+the thankless fellow! in return for all the benefits which I have shown
+him, such a son for a lance!"
+
+"But did you rear him?"
+
+"My dear sir, do not make me a bear-trainer! To Sapyeha, who asked me
+the same question. I answered that he and Roh had the same preceptor,
+but not me; for I in youthful years was a cooper, and knew how to set
+staves very well."[10]
+
+"To begin with, you would not dare to tell that to Sapyeha," said
+Volodyovski; "and secondly, though you grumble at Kovalski, you love
+him as the apple of your eye."
+
+"I prefer him to you, Pan Michael; for I could never endure May-bugs,
+nor soapy little fellows who at the sight of the first woman who comes
+along play antics like German dogs."
+
+"Or like those monkeys in the Kazanovski Palace, with which you were
+carrying on war."
+
+"Oh, laugh, laugh! You can take Warsaw without me next time."
+
+"Was it you, then, who took Warsaw?"
+
+"But who captured the Cracow Gate? Who invented captivity for the
+generals? They are sitting now on bread and water in Zamost; and when
+Wittemberg looks at Wrangel, he says, 'Zagloba put us here!' and both
+fall to weeping. If Sapyeha were not ill, and if he were present, he
+would tell you who first drew the Swedish claw from the skin of
+Warsaw."
+
+"For God's sake!" said Kmita, "do this for me,--send news of that
+battle for which they are preparing at Warsaw. I shall be counting the
+days and nights on my fingers till I know something certain."
+
+Zagloba put his finger to his forehead. "Listen to my forecast," said
+he, "for what I tell you will be accomplished as surely as that this
+glass is standing before me-- Is it not standing before me?"
+
+"It is, it is! Speak on."
+
+"We shall either lose this general battle, or we shall win it--"
+
+"Every man knows that!" put in Volodyovski.
+
+"You might be silent, Michael, and learn something. Supposing that we
+lose this battle, do you know what will happen? You see you do not
+know, for you are moving those little awls under your nose like a
+rabbit. Well, I will tell you that nothing will happen--"
+
+Kmita, who was very quick, sprang up, struck his glass on the table,
+and said,--
+
+"You are beating around the bush!"
+
+"I say nothing will happen!" repeated Zagloba. "You are young,
+therefore you do not know. As affairs now stand, our king, our dear
+country, our armies may lose fifty battles one after another, and the
+war will go on in the old fashion,--the nobles will assemble, and with
+them the lower ranks. But if they do not succeed one time, they will
+another, until the enemy's force has melted away. But when the Swedes
+lose one great battle, the Devil will take them without salvation, and
+with them the elector to boot."
+
+Here Zagloba grew animated, emptied his glass, struck it on the table,
+and continued,--
+
+"Listen,--for you will not hear this from every mouth, for not
+every one knows how to take a general view of things. Many a man is
+thinking, 'What is waiting for us now? how many battles, how many
+defeats,'--which, in warring with Karl, are not unlikely,--'how many
+tears, how much bloodshed, how many grievous paroxysms?' And many a one
+will doubt and blaspheme against the mercy of God and the Most Holy
+Mother. But I tell you this: do you know what is waiting for those
+vandal enemies?--destruction; do you know what is waiting for
+us?--victory! If they beat us one hundred times, very well; but we will
+beat them the hundred and first time, and that will be the end."
+
+When he had said this, Zagloba closed his eyes for a moment, but soon
+opened them. He looked ahead with gleaming vision, and suddenly shouted
+with the whole force of his breast: "Victory! victory!"
+
+Kmita was flushed from delight: "In God's name, he is right, he speaks
+justly. It cannot be otherwise! Such an end has to come!"
+
+"It must be acknowledged that you are not lacking here," said
+Volodyovski, putting his finger on his forehead. "The Commonwealth may
+be occupied; but to stay in it is impossible, so at last the Swedes
+will have to go out."
+
+"Well, is that it? I am not lacking!" said Zagloba, rejoiced at the
+praise. "If that is true, then I will prophesy further. God is with the
+just!" Here he turned to Kmita. "You will finish the traitor Radzivill;
+you will go to Taurogi, recover the maiden, marry her, rear posterity.
+May I have the pip on my tongue if this will not happen as I say! But
+for God's sake, don't smother me!"
+
+Zagloba was rightfully cautious, for Kmita seized him in his arms,
+raised him, and began to hug him so that the old man's eyes were
+bursting out. He had barely come to his feet and recovered breath, when
+Pan Michael, greatly delighted, seized him by the hand,--
+
+"It is my turn! Tell what awaits me."
+
+"God bless you, Michael! your pretty tufted lark will hatch out a whole
+brood,--never fear. Uf!"
+
+"Vivat!" cried Volodyovski.
+
+"But first, we will make an end of the Swedes," added Zagloba.
+
+"We will, we will!" cried the young colonels, shaking their sabres.
+
+"Vivat! victory!"
+
+
+
+
+                               CHAPTER L.
+
+
+A Week later Kmita crossed the boundaries of Electoral Prussia at
+Raygrod. It came to him easily enough; for before the departure of the
+full hetman he disappeared in the woods so secretly that Douglas felt
+sure that his party too had marched with the whole Tartar-Lithuanian
+division to Warsaw, and he left merely small garrisons in the castles
+for the defence of those parts.
+
+Douglas, with Radzeyovski and Radzivill, followed Gosyevski.
+
+Kmita heard of this before passing the boundary, and grieved greatly
+that he could not meet his mortal enemy eye to eye, and lest punishment
+might come to Boguslav from other hands,--namely, from Volodyovski, who
+also had made a vow against him.
+
+Hence, not being able to wreak vengeance on the person of the traitor
+for the wrongs done the Commonwealth and himself, he wreaked it in
+terrible fashion on the lands of the elector.
+
+That very night in which the Tartars had passed the boundary pillar,
+the heavens grew red from flames. An uproar was heard, with the weeping
+of people trampled by the foot of war. Whoso was able to beg for mercy
+in the Polish tongue was spared at command of the leader; but German
+settlements, colonies, villages, and hamlets were turned into a river
+of fire, and the terrified inhabitants went under the knife.
+
+And not so swiftly does oil spread over the sea when the sailor pours
+it to pacify the waves, as that chambul of Tartars and volunteers
+spread over quiet and hitherto safe regions. It seemed that every
+Tartar was able to double and treble himself, to be at the same time in
+a number of places, to burn, to slay. They spared not even grain in the
+field, nor trees in the gardens.
+
+Kmita had held his Tartars so long in the leash that at last, when he
+let them free like a flock of birds of prey, they grew almost wild in
+the midst of slaughter and destruction. One surpassed the other; and
+since they could not take captives, they swam from morning till evening
+in blood.
+
+Kmita himself, having in his heart no little fierceness, gave it full
+freedom, and though he did not steep his own hands in the blood of
+defenceless people, he looked with pleasure on the flow of blood. In
+his soul he was at rest, and conscience reproached him with nothing;
+for this was not Polish blood, and besides it was the blood of
+heretics; therefore he judged that he was doing a work pleasing to God,
+and especially to the saints of the Lord.
+
+The elector, a vassal, therefore a servant of the Commonwealth and
+living from its bounties, was the first to raise his sacrilegious hand
+against it; therefore punishment was his due, and Kmita was purely an
+instrument of God's vengeance.
+
+For this reason, when in the evening he was repeating his Litany in
+peace by the blaze of burning German settlements, and when the screams
+of the murdered interrupted the tally of his prayers, he began again
+from the beginning, so as not to burden his soul with the sin of
+inattention to the service of God.
+
+But he did not cherish in his heart savage feelings alone; for,
+besides piety, various other feelings moved it, connected by memory
+with distant years. Therefore those times came frequently to his
+mind when he attacked Hovanski with such glory, and his former
+comrades stood as if alive before his eyes,--Kokosinski; the gigantic
+Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus; the spotted Ranitski, with senatorial blood in
+his veins; Uhlik, playing on the flageolet; Rekuts, on whom human blood
+was not weighing; and Zend, imitating birds and every kind of beast.
+
+They all, save perhaps Rekuts alone, were burning in hell; and behold,
+if they were living now, they might wallow in blood without bringing
+sin on their souls, and with profit to the Commonwealth.
+
+Here Pan Andrei sighed at the thought of how destructive a thing
+license is, since in the morning of youth it stops the road for the
+ages of ages to beautiful deeds.
+
+But he sighed more than all for Olenka. The deeper he entered the
+Prussian country, the more fiercely did the wounds of his heart burn
+him, as if those fires which he kindled roused at the same time his old
+love. Almost every day then he said in his heart to the maiden,--
+
+"Dearest dove, you may have forgotten me, or if you remember, disgust
+fills your heart; but I, at a distance or near, in the night or the
+day-time, in labor for the country and toils, am thinking ever of you,
+and my soul flies to you over pine-woods and waters, like a tired bird,
+to drop down at your feet. Only to the country and to you would I give
+all my blood; but woe is me, if in your heart you proclaim me an outlaw
+forever."
+
+Thus meditating, he went ever farther to the north along the boundary
+belt. He burned and slew, sparing no one. Sadness throttled him
+terribly. He would like to be in Taurogi on the morrow; but the road
+was still long and difficult, for at last they began to ring all the
+bells in the province of Prussia.
+
+Every one living seized arms to resist the dreadful destroyers;
+garrisons were brought in from towns the remotest, regiments were
+formed of even village youths, and soon they were able to place twenty
+men against every Tartar.
+
+Kmita rushed at these commands like a thunderbolt, beat them, hanged
+men, escaped, hid, and again sailed out on a wave of fire; but still he
+could not advance so swiftly as at first. More than once it was
+necessary to attack in Tartar fashion, and hide for whole weeks in
+thickets or reeds at the banks of a lake. The inhabitants rushed forth
+more and more numerously, as if against a wolf; and he bit too like a
+wolf,--with one snap of his jaws he gave death, and not only defended
+himself, but did not desist from attack.
+
+Loving genuine work, he did not leave a given district, in spite of
+pursuit, until he had annihilated it for miles around with fire and
+sword. His name reached, it is unknown by what means, the mouths of the
+people, and bearing terror and fright, thundered on to the shores of
+the Baltic.
+
+Babinich might, it is true, return within the boundaries of the
+Commonwealth, and in spite of Swedish detachments, move quickly to
+Taurogi; but he did not wish to do so, for he desired to serve not only
+himself but the country.
+
+Now came news which gave courage for defence and revenge to the people
+in Prussia, but pierced the heart of Babinich with savage sorrow. News
+came like a thunderclap of a great battle at Warsaw, which the King of
+Poland had lost. "Karl Gustav and the elector have beaten all the
+troops of Yan Kazimir," people repeated to one and another with delight
+throughout Prussia. "Warsaw is recaptured!" "This is the greatest
+victory of the war, and now comes the end of the Commonwealth!" All men
+whom the Tartars seized and put on the coals to obtain information,
+repeated the same; there was also exaggerated news, as is common in
+time of war and uncertainty. According to this news the Poles were cut
+to pieces, the hetmans had fallen, and Yan Kazimir was captured.
+
+Was all at an end, then? Was that rising and triumphing Commonwealth
+naught but an empty illusion? So much power, so many troops, so many
+great men and famous warriors; the hetmans, the king, Charnyetski with
+his invincible division, the marshal of the kingdom, other lords with
+their attendants,--had all perished, had all rolled away like smoke?
+And are there no other defenders of this hapless country, save detached
+parties of insurgents who certainly at news of the disaster will pass
+away like a fog?
+
+Kmita tore the hair from his head and wrung his hands; he seized the
+wet earth, pressed palms-full of it to his burning head.
+
+"I shall fall too," said he; "but first this land will swim in blood."
+
+And he began to fight like a man in despair. He did not hide longer, he
+did not attack in the forest and reeds, he sought death; he rushed like
+a madman on forces three times greater than his own, and cut them to
+pieces with sabres and hoofs. In his Tartars all traces of human
+feeling died out, and they were turned into a herd of wild beasts. A
+predatory people, but not over-much fitted for fighting in the open
+field, without losing their genius for surprises and ambush, they, by
+continual exercise, by continual conflict, had trained themselves so
+that breast to breast they could hold the field against the first
+cavalry, and scatter quadrangles even of the Swedish guard. In their
+struggles with the armed mob of Prussia, a hundred of those Tartars
+scattered with ease two and even three hundred sturdy men armed with
+spears and muskets.
+
+Kmita weaned them from weighting themselves with plunder; they took
+only money and gold, which they sewed up in their saddles, so that when
+one of them fell the survivors fought with rage for his horse and his
+saddle. Growing rich in this manner, they lost none of their swiftness,
+well-nigh superhuman. Recognizing that under no leader on earth could
+they find such rich harvests, they grew attached to Babinich, as hounds
+to the hunter, and with real Mohammedan honesty placed after battle in
+the hands of Soroka and the Kyemliches the lion's share of the plunder
+which belonged to the "bagadyr."
+
+"Allah!" said Akbah Ulan, "few of them will see Bagche-Serai, but all
+who go back will be murzas."
+
+Babinich, who from of old knew how to live upon war, collected great
+riches; but death, which he sought more than gold, he found not.
+
+A month passed again in battles and labors surpassing belief. The
+Tartar horses, though fed with barley and Prussian wheat, needed
+absolutely even a couple of days' rest; therefore the young colonel,
+wishing also to gain news and fill the gaps in his ranks with fresh
+volunteers, withdrew, near Dospada, to the Commonwealth.
+
+News soon came, and so joyful that Kmita almost lost his wits. It
+turned out to be true that the equally valiant and unfortunate Yan
+Kazimir had lost a great three-days' battle at Warsaw, but for what
+reason?
+
+The general militia in an immense majority had gone home, and the part
+which remained did not fight with such spirit as at the taking of
+Warsaw, and on the third day of the battle a panic set in. But for the
+first two days the victory was inclining to the side of Poland. The
+regular troops, not in sudden partisan warfare, but in a great battle
+with the most highly trained soldiers of Europe, exhibited such skill
+and endurance that amazement seized the Swedish and Brandenburg
+generals themselves.
+
+Yan Kazimir had won immortal glory. It was said that he had shown
+himself a leader equal to Karl Gustav, and that if all his commands had
+been carried out the enemy would have lost the general battle, and the
+war would have been ended.
+
+Kmita received these tidings from eye-witnesses, for he had stumbled
+upon nobles who, serving in the general militia, had taken part in the
+battle. One of them told him of the brilliant attack of the hussars,
+during which Karl himself, who, despite the entreaties of his generals,
+would not withdraw, came near perishing. All showed the falsehood of
+the report that the army had been routed or the hetmans had fallen. On
+the contrary, the whole force, except the general militia, remained
+intact, and withdrew in good order along the country.
+
+From the bridge of Warsaw which was giving way cannon had fallen; but
+they were pulled through the Vistula in a breath. The army swore by
+everything that under such a leader as Yan Kazimir they would, in the
+coming battle, conquer Karl Gustav, the elector, and whomsoever it
+might be necessary to conquer. As to the recent battle it was only a
+trial, though unfavorable, but full of solace for the future.
+
+Kmita was at a loss to know how the first news could have been so
+terrible. They explained to him that Karl Gustav had sent out
+exaggerated reports purposely; in fact, he did not know well what to
+do. The Swedish officers whom Pan Andrei seized a week later confirmed
+this opinion.
+
+He learned also from them that beyond others the elector lived in fear,
+and was thinking more and more of his own safety; for a multitude of
+his men had fallen at Warsaw, and disease had seized those remaining so
+terribly that it was destroying them more quickly than battles. At the
+same time the men of Great Poland, eager to make good Uistsie and all
+wrongs, had attacked the monarchy of Brandenburg itself, burning and
+slaying, leaving nothing behind them but land and water. According to
+the officers, the hour was near in which the elector would abandon the
+Swedes, and join the more powerful.
+
+"It is needful to touch him with fire somewhat," thought Kmita, "so
+that he may do this the more quickly."
+
+And since his horses were rested already, and he had made good the
+losses among his men, he passed the boundary again at Dospada, and
+rushed on the German settlements like a spirit of destruction.
+
+Various "parties" followed his example. He found a weaker defence;
+hence he accomplished more. News came ever more joyful, more
+gladdening, so that it was difficult to believe it.
+
+First of all, it was said that Karl Gustav, who, after the Warsaw
+battle, had pushed on to Radom, was retreating at breakneck speed to
+Royal Prussia. What had happened? Why was he retreating? There was no
+answer to this for a time, till at last the name of Charnyetski
+thundered again through the Commonwealth. He was victorious at Lipets,
+victorious at Stjemeshno; at Rava itself he had cut to pieces the
+rearguard of the retreating Karl; then, learning that two thousand
+cavalry were returning from Cracow, he attacked that body, and did not
+let one man escape to announce the defeat. Colonel Forgell, brother of
+the general, thirteen captains, and twenty-four lieutenants went into
+captivity. Others gave the numbers as twice greater; some insisted in
+their enthusiasm that Yan Kazimir had not suffered a defeat, but had
+won a victory at Warsaw, and that his march along the country was only
+a stratagem for the destruction of the enemy.
+
+Kmita himself began to think the same; for being a soldier from
+youthful years, he understood war, but had never heard of a victory
+after which the victor was in a worse condition than before. The Swedes
+were evidently in a worse condition, and just after the battle at
+Warsaw.
+
+Pan Andrei called to mind at that moment the words of Zagloba, when at
+their last meeting he said that victories would not improve the Swedish
+cause, but that one defeat might destroy it.
+
+"That is a chancellor's head," pondered Kmita, "which reads in the
+future as in a book."
+
+Here he remembered the further predictions,--how he, Kmita or Babinich,
+would go to Taurogi, find his Olenka, persuade her, marry her, and have
+descendants to the glory of the Commonwealth. When he remembered this,
+fire entered his veins; he wished not to lose a moment, but to leave
+Prussians and slaughter for a time, and fly to Taurogi.
+
+On the eve of his starting there came to him a noble of Lauda, of
+Volodyovski's squadron, with a letter from the little knight.
+
+
+"We are going with Sapyeha and Prince Michael Radzivill against
+Boguslav and Waldeck," wrote Pan Michael. "Join us, since a field for
+just vengeance will be found, and it is proper to pay the Prussians for
+harm done the Commonwealth."
+
+
+Pan Andrei could not believe his own eyes, and for some time he
+suspected the noble of being sent by some Prussian or Swedish
+commandant of purpose to lead him with the chambul into ambush. Had
+Gosyevski come a second time to Prussia? It was impossible not to
+believe. The handwriting was Volodyovski's, the arms Volodyovski's, and
+Pan Andrei remembered the noble too. Then he inquired where Gosyevski
+was, and to what point he intended to go.
+
+The noble was rather dull. It was not for him to know whither the
+hetman was marching; he knew only that he was two days distant, and
+that the Lauda squadron was with him. Charnyetski had borrowed it for a
+while, but had sent it back long ago, and now it was marching under
+lead of the hetman. "They say," concluded the noble, "that we must go
+to Prussia, and the soldiers are greatly delighted. But our work is to
+obey and to strike."
+
+Kmita, when he had heard the narrative, did not hesitate long. He
+turned his chambul, went with forced marches to the hetman, and after
+two days fell late at night into the arms of Volodyovski, who, pressing
+him, said at once,--
+
+"Count Waldeck and Prince Boguslav are in Prostki, making intrenchments
+to secure themselves with a fortified camp. We shall march on them."
+
+"To-day?" asked Kmita.
+
+"To-morrow before daybreak,--that is, in two or three hours."
+
+Here they embraced each other again. "Something tells me that God will
+give him into our hands!" exclaimed Kmita, with emotion. "And I think
+so too."
+
+"I have made a vow to fast till death on the day in which I meet him."
+
+"The protection of God will not fail you," said Volodyovski. "I shall
+not be envious, either, if this lot falls to you, for your wrong is
+greater. Yendrek, let me look at you! You have grown perfectly black
+from the weather; but you have acquitted yourself. The whole division
+looks with the greatest esteem on your labor. Nothing behind you but
+ruins and corpses! You are a born soldier; and it would go hard with
+Zagloba himself, were he here, to invent in self-praise deeds better
+than those you have done."
+
+"But where is Zagloba?"
+
+"He remained with Sapyeha; for he fell into weeping and despair after
+Kovalski."
+
+"Then has Kovalski fallen?"
+
+Volodyovski pressed his lips. "Do you know who killed him?"
+
+"Whence should I know? Tell me!"
+
+"Prince Boguslav!"
+
+Kmita turned in his place, as if thrust with a point, and began to draw
+in air with a hiss; at last he gritted his teeth, and casting himself
+on the bench, rested his head on his palms in silence.
+
+Volodyovski clapped his hands, and ordered the attendant to bring
+drink; then he sat near Kmita, filled a cup for him, and began,--
+
+"Ron Kovalski died such a cavalier's death that God grant any man of us
+to die no worse. It is enough to inform you that Karl Gustav himself
+after the battle celebrated his funeral, and a whole regiment of the
+guards fired a salute over his coffin."
+
+"If only not at those hands, at those hellish hands!" exclaimed Kmita.
+
+"Yes, at the hands of Boguslav; we know that from hussars who with
+their own eyes saw the sad end."
+
+"Were you not there then?"
+
+"In battle places are not chosen, but a man stands where he is ordered.
+If I had been there, either I should not be here now, or Boguslav would
+not be making trenches at Prostki."
+
+"Tell me how it all happened. It will only increase the anger."
+
+Pan Michael drank, wiped his yellow mustaches, and began:--
+
+"Of a certainty you are not lacking in narratives of the Warsaw battle,
+for every one is speaking of it; therefore I shall not dwell on it too
+long. Our gracious lord--God give him health and long years! for under
+another king the country would have perished amid disasters--has shown
+himself a famous leader. Had there been such obedience as there was
+command, had we been worthy of the king, the chroniclers would have to
+describe a new Polish victory at Warsaw equal to those at Gruenwald and
+Berestechko. Speaking briefly, on the first day we beat the Swedes; on
+the second, fortune inclined now to one, now to the other, but still we
+were uppermost. At that time the Lithuanian hussars, in which Kovalski
+served under Prince Polubinski, a great soldier, went to the attack.
+When they were passing I saw them as I see you this moment, for I was
+with the Lauda men on a height near the intrenchments. They were twelve
+hundred strong,--men and horses such as the world had not seen. They
+passed twenty rods distant from our flank; and I tell you that the
+earth trembled under them. We saw the Brandenburg infantry planting
+their pikes in the ground in a hurry, to meet the first onrush. Then
+began firing from muskets, till the smoke covered them entirely. We
+looked. The hussars had given rein to their horses. O God, what a
+sweep! They fell into the smoke,--disappeared! My soldiers began to
+shout, 'They will break them, they will break them!' For a while the
+hussars were invisible; then something thundered, and there was a sound
+as if in a thousand forges men were beating anvils with hammers. We
+look. Jesus! Mary! The elector's men are lying like stones on a street,
+like wheat through which a tempest has passed; and the hussars far away
+beyond, their streamers glittering. They are bearing down on the
+Swedes! They struck cavalry; the cavalry were down like a pavement!
+They struck a second regiment; they left that like a pavement! There
+was a roar, cannon were thundering; we saw them when the wind bore the
+smoke aside. They were smashing Swedish infantry. Everything was
+fleeing, rolling, opening; they went on as if over a highway. They had
+passed almost through the whole army, when they struck a regiment of
+the horse-guard, in which was Karl Gustav himself; and like a whirlwind
+they scattered the horse-guard."
+
+Here Pan Michael stopped, for Kmita had closed his eyes with his fists
+and was exclaiming,--
+
+"O Mother of God! To see such a thing once and then die!"
+
+"Such an attack my eyes will never see again," continued the little
+knight. "We too were commanded to spring forward. I saw no more, but
+what I tell I heard from the mouth of a Swedish officer who was at the
+side of Karl and saw with his own eyes the end. That Forgell who fell
+into our hands afterward at Rava, rushed up to Karl. 'O King,' cried
+he, 'save Sweden! save yourself! Aside, aside! Nothing can stop them!'
+But Karl answered: 'No use to yield; we must meet them or perish.'
+Other generals rush up, implore, entreat, in vain. The king moved
+forward; they strike. The Swedes are broken more quickly than you can
+count ten. One fell, another was trampled, others were scattered like
+peas. The king defended himself single-handed. Kovalski rode up and
+knew Karl Gustav, for he had seen him twice before. A horseman shielded
+the king; but those who were present said that lightning does not kill
+more quickly than Kovalski cut him in two. Then the king rushed at Pan
+Roh."
+
+Volodyovski again interrupted his narrative and breathed deeply; but
+Kmita cried at once,--
+
+"Oh, finish, or the soul will go out of me!"
+
+"They rushed at each other so that the breasts of the horses struck.
+They raged. 'I look,' said the officer; 'the king with his horse is on
+the ground.' He freed himself, touched the trigger of his pistol,
+missed. The king's hat had fallen. Roh then made for the head of Karl
+Gustav,--had his sword raised; the Swedes were weak from terror, for
+there was no time to save Karl, when Boguslav rose as if from under the
+earth, fired into the very ear of Kovalski, broke his head and his
+helmet."
+
+"O my God! he had not time to bring down the sword?" screamed Pan
+Andrei, tearing his hair.
+
+"God did not grant him that grace," said Pan Michael. "Zagloba and I
+talked of what had happened. The man had served with the Radzivills
+from years of youth; he considered them his masters, and at sight of
+Radzivill it must be that he was confused. Perhaps the thought had
+never come to his head to raise a hand on Radzivill. It happens that
+way! Well, he paid with his life. Zagloba is a wonderful man, for he is
+not Roh's uncle at all, and not his relative; still another man would
+not have been in such despair for a son. And, to tell the truth, there
+was no reason, for one might envy Kovalski such a glorious death; a
+noble and a soldier is born to give his life, if not on the present day
+then on the morrow; men will write of Kovalski, and posterity will
+celebrate his name."
+
+Pan Michael was silent; after a while he made the sign of the cross and
+said,--
+
+"Eternal rest give him, O Lord, and may light shine on him forever!"
+
+"For the ages of ages!" said Kmita.
+
+Both whispered prayers for a certain time, maybe asking for themselves
+a similar death, if only not at the hands of Prince Boguslav. At last
+Pan Michael said,--
+
+"Father Pyekarski assured us that Roh went straight to heaven."
+
+"Of course he did, and our prayers are not needed for him."
+
+"Prayers are always needed; for they are inscribed to the credit of
+others, and maybe to our own."
+
+"My hope is in the mercy of God," said Kmita, sighing. "I trust that
+for what I have done in Prussia, even a couple of years will be taken
+from me in purgatory."
+
+"Everything there is reckoned. What a man works out here with his
+sabre, the heavenly secretary records."
+
+"I too served with Radzivill," said Kmita, "but I shall not be confused
+at sight of Boguslav. My God, my God! Prostki is not far away!
+Remember, O Lord, that he is Thy enemy too, for he is a heretic who
+more than once has blasphemed Thy true faith."
+
+"And is an enemy of the country," added Pan Michael. "We have hope that
+his end is approaching. Zagloba, speaking in grief and in tears and as
+if inspired, foretold the same after that attack of the hussars. He
+cursed Boguslav so that the hair stood on the head of every man
+listening. Prince Michael Radzivill, who is marching with us against
+him, saw also in a dream two golden trumpets, which the Radzivills have
+on their shield, gnawed by a bear, and he said at once next day,
+'Misfortune will meet me or some other Radzivill.'"
+
+"By a bear?" asked Kmita, growing pale.
+
+"By a bear."
+
+Pan Andrei's face became clear as if a gleam of the morning dawn had
+fallen on it; he raised his eyes, stretched his hands toward heaven and
+said with a solemn voice,--
+
+"I have a bear on my shield. Praise to Thee, O Lord on high! Praise to
+Thee, Most Holy Mother! O Lord, O Lord! I am not worthy of this grace."
+
+When he heard this Pan Michael was greatly moved, for he recognized at
+once that that was an omen from heaven.
+
+"Yendrek!" cried he, "to make sure, press the feet of Christ before the
+battle; and I will implore him against Sakovich."
+
+"Prostki! Prostki!" repeated Kmita, as in a fever. "When do we move?"
+
+"Before day, and soon it will begin to dawn."
+
+Kmita approached the broken window of the cottage and cried: "The stars
+are paling already. _Ave, Maria_."
+
+Then came the distant crowing of a cock, and with it low trumpeting. A
+few "Our Fathers" later, movement began in the whole village. The
+clatter of steel was heard, and the snorting of horses. Dark masses of
+cavalry assembled on the highway.
+
+The air began to be filled with light; a pale gleam was silvering the
+points of the spears, twinkling on the naked sabres, bringing out of
+the shade mustached threatening faces, helmets, kolpaks, Tartar
+sheepskin caps, fur cloaks, quivers. At last the advance with Kmita in
+the vanguard was moving toward Prostki; the troops stretched in a long
+line over the road, and marched quickly.
+
+The horses in the first ranks fell to snorting greatly, after them
+others, as a good portent for the soldiers.
+
+White mists hid the meadows yet, and the fields.
+
+Round about was silence; only land-rails were playing in the grass, wet
+with dew.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LI.
+
+
+September 6, the Polish troops arrived at Vansosh and disposed
+themselves for rest, so that before battle horses and men might gain
+strength. Pan Gosyevski, the hetman, decided to halt there four or five
+days; but events interfered with his reckoning.
+
+Babinich, as a man knowing the boundary well, was sent on a
+reconnoissance; he was given two light Lithuanian squadrons and a fresh
+chambul of Tartars, for his own Tartars were over-much wearied.
+
+Gosyevski enjoined on him earnestly, before starting, to obtain an
+informant and not to return empty-handed. But Babinich merely laughed,
+thinking to himself that he needed no urging, and that he would bring
+prisoners, even if he had to find them in the intrenchments of Prostki.
+
+In fact, he returned in forty-eight hours, bringing a number of
+Prussians and Swedes, and among them an officer of note, Von Roessel,
+captain in a Prussian regiment under Boguslav.
+
+The party was received in the camp with great applause. There was no
+need of torturing the captain, for Babinich had already done that on
+the road by putting the sword-point to his throat. From his statements
+it transpired that not only the Prussian regiments of Count Waldeck
+were in Prostki, but also six Swedish regiments under command of
+Major-General Israel; of these, four were of cavalry under Peters,
+Frytjotson, Tauben, and Ammerstein, with two of infantry under the
+brothers Engel. Of Prussian regiments, which were very well equipped,
+besides that of Count Waldeck himself, there were four,--those of the
+Prince of Wismar, Bruntsl, Konnaberg, General Wahlrat,--with four
+squadrons of Boguslav's command, two being of Prussian nobles, and two
+of his own men.
+
+Supreme command was held by Count Waldeck; in reality, however, he
+obeyed in everything Prince Boguslav, to whose influence the Swedish
+general Israel also yielded.
+
+But the most important intelligence given by Roessel was this,--that two
+thousand chosen infantry of Pomerania were hastening from Elko to
+reinforce Prostki; but Count Waldeck, fearing lest these men might be
+taken by the horde, wished to leave the fortified camp, join the
+Pomeranians, and then make intrenchments a second time. Boguslav,
+according to Roessel, was so far rather strongly opposed to leaving
+Prostki, and only during the last days began to incline toward this
+action. Gosyevski on hearing this news was greatly rejoiced, for he was
+certain that victory would not miss him. The enemy might defend
+themselves for a long time in the intrenchments, but neither the
+Swedish nor the Prussian cavalry could resist the Poles in the open
+field.
+
+Prince Boguslav seemed to understand this fact as well as Gosyevski,
+and for this special reason he did not much approve Waldeck's plans.
+But he was too vain not to yield before even the reproach of excessive
+caution. Besides, he was not distinguished for patience. It might be
+reckoned almost with certainty that he would grow weary of waiting in
+trenches, and would seek fame and victory in the open field. Gosyevski
+had simply to hasten his advance on the enemy at the moment when they
+were leaving the intrenchments.
+
+So thought he; so thought other colonels, such as Hassan Bey, who led
+the horde; Voynillovich, who led the king's regiment; Korsak, a
+light-horse colonel; Volodyovski, Kotvich, and Babinich. All agreed on
+one point,--that it was necessary to give up further rest, and march in
+the night; that is, in a few hours. Meanwhile Korsak sent his banneret,
+Byeganski, to Prostki to inform the advancing army every hour of what
+was taking place in the camp. Volodyovski and Babinich took Roessel to
+their quarters to learn something more of Boguslav. The captain was
+greatly alarmed at first, for he felt still at his throat Kmita's
+sabre-point, but wine soon loosened his tongue. Since he had served
+once in the Commonwealth in a foreign command, he had learned Polish;
+therefore he was able to answer the questions of the little knight, who
+did not know German.
+
+"Have you been long in the service of Prince Boguslav?" asked
+Volodyovski.
+
+"I do not serve in his army," answered Roessel, "but in the elector's
+regiment, which was put under his command."
+
+"Then do you know Pan Sakovich?"
+
+"I have seen him in Koenigsberg."
+
+"Is he with the prince?"
+
+"He is not; he remained in Taurogi."
+
+Volodyovski sighed and moved his mustaches. "I have no luck, as usual,"
+said he.
+
+"Be not grieved, Michael," said Babinich. "You will find him; if not, I
+shall."
+
+Then he turned to Roessel: "You are an old soldier; you have seen both
+armies, and you know our cavalry of old: what do you think,--on whose
+side will be victory?"
+
+"If they meet you outside the trenches, on yours; but you cannot take
+the trenches without infantry and cannon, especially since everything
+is done there with Radzivill's head."
+
+"Then do you consider him such a great leader?"
+
+"Not only is that my opinion, but it is the general opinion in both
+armies. They say that at Warsaw the Most Serene King of Sweden followed
+his advice, and therefore won a great battle. The prince, as a Pole,
+has a better knowledge of your method of warfare and can manage more
+quickly. I saw myself that the King of Sweden after the third day of
+battle embraced him in front of the army and kissed him. It is true
+that he owed his life to him; for had it not been for the shot of the
+prince-- But it is a terror to think of it! He is besides an
+incomparable knight, whom no man can meet with any weapon."
+
+"H'm!" said Volodyovski, "maybe there is such a man."
+
+When he had said this, his mustaches trembled threateningly. Roessel
+looked at him, and grew suddenly red. For a time it seemed that either
+he would burst a blood-vessel or break into laughter; but at last he
+remembered that he was in captivity, and controlled himself quickly.
+But Kmita with his steel eyes looked at him steadily and said,--
+
+"That will be shown to-morrow."
+
+"But is Boguslav in good health?" asked Volodyovski; "for the fever
+shook him a long time, and must have weakened him."
+
+"He is, and has been this long time, as healthy as a fish, and takes no
+medicine. The doctor at first wanted to give him many preservatives,
+but immediately after the first came a paroxysm. Prince Boguslav gave
+orders to toss that doctor up from sheets; and that helped him, for the
+doctor himself got a fever from fright."
+
+"To toss him up from sheets?" asked Volodyovski.
+
+"I saw it myself," answered Roessel. "Two sheets were placed one above
+the other, and the doctor put in the centre of them. Four strong
+soldiers took the sheets by the corners, and threw up the poor doctor.
+I tell you, gentlemen, that he went nearly ten ells into the air, and
+he had hardly come down when they hurled him up again. General Israel,
+Count Waldeck, and the prince were holding their sides from laughter.
+Many of the officers too were looking at the spectacle, till the doctor
+fainted. Then the prince was free of his fever, as if some hand had
+removed it."
+
+Though Pan Michael and Babinich hated Boguslav, still they could not
+restrain themselves from laughter when they heard of this joke.
+Babinich struck his knees and cried,--
+
+"Ah, the scoundrel! how he helped himself!"
+
+"I must tell Zagloba of this medicine," said Pan Michael.
+
+"It cured him of the fever," said Roessel; "but what is that, when the
+prince does not restrain sufficiently the impulses of his blood, and
+therefore will not live to ripe age?"
+
+"I think so too," muttered Babinich. "Such as he do not live long."
+
+"Does he give way to himself in the camp?" asked Pan Michael.
+
+"Of course," answered Roessel. "Count Waldeck laughed, saying that his
+princely grace takes with him waiting-maids. I saw myself two handsome
+maidens; his attendants told me that they were there to iron his
+lace--but God knows."
+
+Babinich, when he heard this, grew red and pale; then he sprang up, and
+seizing Roessel by the arm began to shake him violently.
+
+"Are they Poles or Germans?"
+
+"Not Poles," said the terrified Roessel. "One is a Prussian noblewoman;
+the other is a Swede, who formerly served the wife of General Israel."
+
+Babinich looked at Pan Michael and drew a deep breath; the little
+knight was relieved too, and began to move his mustaches.
+
+"Gentlemen, permit me to rest," said Roessel. "I am dreadfully tired,
+for the Tartar led me ten miles with a lariat."
+
+Kmita clapped his hands for Soroka, and committed the prisoner to him;
+then he turned with quick step to Pan Michael.
+
+"Enough of this!" said he. "I would rather perish a hundred times than
+live in this ceaseless alarm and uncertainty. When Roessel mentioned
+those women just now, I thought that some one was going at my temple
+with a club."
+
+"It is time to finish!" said Volodyovski, shaking his sabre.
+
+At that moment trumpets sounded at the hetman's quarters; soon trumpets
+answered in all the Lithuanian squadrons, and pipes in the chambuls.
+
+The troops began to assemble, and an hour later were on the march.
+
+Before they had gone five miles a messenger hurried up from Byeganski
+of Korsak's squadron, with intelligence for the hetman that a number of
+troopers had been seized from a considerable body occupied in
+collecting on that side of the river all the wagons and horses of the
+peasants. Interrogated on the spot, they acknowledged that the tabor of
+the whole army was to leave Prostki about eight o'clock in the morning,
+and that commands were issued already.
+
+"Let us praise God and urge on our horses," said Gosyevski. "Before
+evening that army will be no longer in existence."
+
+He sent the horde neck and head to push with utmost endeavor between
+Waldeck's troops and the Pomeranian infantry hastening to aid them.
+After the horde went Lithuanians; being mainly of the light squadrons,
+they came right after the horde.
+
+Kmita was in the front rank of the Tartars, and urged on his men till
+the horses were steaming. On the road he bowed down on the saddle,
+struck his forehead on the neck of his horse, and prayed with all the
+powers of his soul,--
+
+"Grant me, O Christ, to take vengeance, not for my own wrongs, but for
+the insults wrought on the country! I am a sinner; I am not worthy of
+Thy grace; but have mercy on me! Permit me to shed the blood of
+heretics, and for Thy praise I will fast and scourge myself every week
+on this day till the end of my life."
+
+Then to the Most Holy Lady of Chenstohova, whom he had served with his
+blood, and to his own patron besides, did he commit himself; and strong
+with such protection, he felt straightway that an immense hope was
+entering his soul, that an uncommon power was penetrating his limbs,--a
+power before which everything must fall in the dust. It seemed to him
+that wings were growing from his shoulders; joy embraced him like a
+whirlwind, and he flew in front of his Tartars, so that sparks were
+scattered from under the hoofs of his steed. Thousands of wild warriors
+bent forward to the necks of their ponies, and shot along after him.
+
+A river of pointed caps rose and fell with the rush of the horses; bows
+rattled behind the men's shoulders; in front went the sound from the
+tramp of iron hoofs; from behind flew the roar of the oncoming
+squadrons, like the deep roar of a great swollen river.
+
+And thus they flew on in the rich starry night which covered the roads
+and the fields. They were like a mighty flock of ravening birds which
+had smelled blood in the distance. Fields, oak-groves, meadows, sped
+past, till at last the waning moon became pale and inclined in the
+west. Then they reined in their beasts, and halted for final
+refreshment. It was not farther now than two miles from Prostki.
+
+The Tartars fed their horses with barley from their hands, so that the
+beasts might gain strength before battle; but Kmita sat on a fresh pony
+and rode farther to look at the camp of the enemy.
+
+After half an hour's ride he found in the willows the light-horse party
+which Korsak had sent to reconnoitre.
+
+"Well," asked Kmita, "what is to be heard?"
+
+"They are not sleeping, they are bustling like bees in a hive,"
+answered the banneret. "They would have started already, but have not
+wagons sufficient."
+
+"Can the camp be seen from some point near at hand?"
+
+"It can from that height which is covered with bushes. The camp lies
+over there in the valley of the river. Does your grace wish to see it?"
+
+"Lead on."
+
+The banneret put spurs to his horse, and they rode to the height. Day
+was already in the sky, and the air was filled with a golden light; but
+along the river on the opposite low bank there lay still a dense fog.
+Hidden in the bushes, they looked at that fog growing thinner and
+thinner.
+
+At last about two furlongs distant a square earthwork was laid bare.
+Kmita's glance was fixed on it with eagerness; but at the first moment
+he saw only the misty outlines of tents and wagons standing in the
+centre along the intrenchments. The blaze of fires was not visible; he
+saw only smoke rising in lofty curls to the sky in sign of fine
+weather. But as the fog vanished Pan Andrei could distinguish through
+his field-glass blue Swedish and yellow Prussian banners planted on the
+intrenchments; then masses of soldiers, cannon, and horses.
+
+Around there was silence, broken only by the rustle of bushes moved by
+the breeze, and the glad morning twitter of birds; but from the camp
+came a deep sound.
+
+Evidently no one was sleeping, and they were preparing to march, for in
+the centre of the intrenchment was an unusual stir. Whole regiments
+were moving from place to place; some went out in front of the
+intrenchments; around the wagons there was a tremendous bustle. Cannon
+also were drawn from the trenches.
+
+"It cannot be but they are preparing to march," said Kmita.
+
+"All the prisoners said: 'They wish to make a junction with the
+infantry; and besides they do not think that the hetman can come up
+before evening; and even if he were to come up, they prefer a battle in
+the open field to yielding that infantry to the knife.'"
+
+"About two hours will pass before they move, and at the end of two
+hours the hetman will be here."
+
+"Praise be to God!" said the banneret.
+
+"Send to tell our men not to feed too long."
+
+"According to order."
+
+"But have they not sent away parties to this side of the river?"
+
+"To this side they have not sent one. But they have sent some to their
+infantry, marching from Elko."
+
+"It is well!" said Kmita.
+
+And he descended the height, and commanding the party to hide longer in
+the rushes, moved back himself with all the breath in his horse to the
+squadron.
+
+Gosyevski was just mounting when Babinich arrived. The young knight
+told quickly what he had seen and what the position was; the hetman
+listened with great satisfaction, and urged forward the squadrons
+without delay.
+
+Babinich's party went in advance; after it the Lithuanian squadrons;
+then that of Voynillovich, that of Lauda, the hetman's own, and others.
+The horde remained behind; for Hassan Bey begged for that with
+insistence, fearing that his men might not withstand the first onset of
+the heavy cavalry. He had also another reckoning.
+
+He wished, when the Lithuanians struck the enemy's front, to seize the
+camp with his Tartars; in the camp he expected to find very rich
+plunder. The hetman permitted this, thinking justly that the Tartars
+would strike weakly on the cavalry, but would fall like madmen on the
+tabor and might raise a panic, especially since the Prussian horses
+were less accustomed to their terrible howling.
+
+In two hours, as Kmita had predicted, they halted in front of that
+elevation from which the scouting-party had looked into the
+intrenchments, and which now concealed the march of all the troops. The
+banneret, seeing the troops approaching, sprang forward like lightning
+with intelligence that the enemy, having withdrawn the pickets from
+this side of the river, had already moved, and that the rear of the
+tabor was just leaving the intrenchments.
+
+When he heard this, Gosyevski drew his baton from the holsters of the
+saddle, and said,--
+
+"They cannot return now, for the wagons block the way. In the name of
+the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost! There is no reason to hide longer!"
+
+He beckoned to the bunchuk-bearer; and he, raising the horse-tail
+standard aloft, waved it on every side. At this sign all the horse-tail
+standards began to wave, trumpets thundered, Tartar pipes squeaked, six
+thousand sabres were gleaming in the air, and six thousand throats
+shouted,--
+
+"Jesus! Mary!"
+
+"Allah uh Allah!"
+
+Then squadron after squadron rose in a trot from behind the height. In
+Waldeck's camp they had not expected guests so soon, for a feverish
+movement set in. The drums rattled uninterruptedly; the regiments
+turned with front to the river.
+
+It was possible to see with the naked eye generals and colonels flying
+between the regiments; they hurried to the centre with the cannon, so
+as to bring them forward to the river.
+
+After a while both armies were not farther than a thousand yards from
+each other. They were divided only by a broad meadow, in the centre of
+which a river flowed. Another moment, and the first streak of white
+smoke bloomed out from the Prussian side toward the Poles.
+
+The battle had begun.
+
+The hetman himself sprang toward Kmita's troops,--
+
+"Advance, Babinich! advance in God's name against that line!" And he
+pointed with his baton to the gleaming regiment of cavalry.
+
+"Follow me!" commanded Pan Andrei. And pressing his horse with spurs,
+he moved at a gallop toward the river.
+
+More swiftly than an arrow from a bow did they shoot forward. The
+horses had gained their highest speed, and were running with ears
+dropped back, and bodies stretched out like the bodies of hounds. The
+riders bent forward to the manes of their horses, and howling, lashed
+onward the beasts, which now did not seem to touch earth; they rushed
+with that impetus into the river. The water did not restrain them, for
+they came upon a broad ford, level and sandy; they reached the other
+bank, and sprang on in a body.
+
+Seeing this, the regiment of armored cavalry moved toward them, first
+at a walk, then at a trot, and did not go faster; but when Kmita's
+front had come within twenty yards, the command "Fire!" was heard, and
+a thousand arms with pistols were stretched forward.
+
+A line of smoke ran from one end of the rank to the other; then the two
+bodies struck each other with a crash. The horses reared at the first
+blow; over the heads of the combatants glittered sabres through the
+whole length of the line. A serpent as it were of lightning flew from
+end to end. The ominous clang of blades against helmets and
+breastplates was heard to the other side of the river. It seemed as if
+hammers were ringing in forges on plates of steel. The line bent in one
+moment into a crescent; for since the centre of the German cavalry
+yielded, pushed back by the first onset, the wings, against which less
+force was directed, kept their places. But the armored soldiers did not
+let the centre be broken, and a terrible slaughter began. On one side
+enormous men covered with armor resisted with the whole weight of
+horses; on the other the gray host of Tartars pushed with the force of
+accumulated impetus, cutting and thrusting with an inconceivable
+rapidity which only uncommon activity and ceaseless practice can give.
+As when a host of woodcutters rush at a forest of pine-trees there is
+heard only the sound of axes, and time after time some lofty tree falls
+to the ground with a fearful crash, so every moment some one of the
+cavalry bent his shining head and rolled under his horse. The sabres of
+Kmita's men glittered in their eyes, cut around their faces, eyes,
+hands. In vain does a sturdy soldier raise his heavy sword; before he
+can bring it down, he feels a cold point entering his body; then the
+sword drops from his hand, and he falls with bloody face on the neck of
+his horse. When a swarm of wasps attack in an orchard him who is
+shaking down fruit, vainly does the man ward them off with his hands,
+try to free himself, dodge aside; they reach his face skilfully, reach
+his neck, and each one drives into him a sharp sting. So did Kmita's
+raging men, trained in so many battles, rush forward, hew, cut, thrust,
+spread terror and death more and more stubbornly, surpassing their
+opponents as much as a skilful craftsman surpasses the sturdiest
+apprentice who is wanting in practice. Therefore the German cavalry
+began to fall more quickly; and the centre, against which Kmita himself
+was fighting, became so thin that it might break at any moment.
+Commands of officers, summoning soldiers to shattered places, were lost
+in the uproar and wild shouting; the line did not come together quickly
+enough, and Kmita pressed with increasing power. Wearing chain-mail, a
+gift from Sapyeha, he fought as a simple soldier, having with him the
+young Kyemliches and Soroka. Their office was to guard their master;
+and every moment some one of them turned to the right or the left,
+giving a terrible blow; but Kmita rushed on his chestnut horse to the
+thickest of the fight, and having all the secrets of Pan Michael, and
+gigantic strength, he quenched men's lives quickly. Sometimes he struck
+with his whole sabre; sometimes he barely reached with the point;
+sometimes he described a small circle merely, but quick as lightning,
+and a horseman flew head downward under his beast, as if a thunderbolt
+had hurled him from the saddle. Others withdrew before the terrible
+man.
+
+At last Pan Andrei slashed the standard-bearer in the temple; he gave
+forth a sound like that which a cock gives if his throat is cut, and
+dropped the standard from his hand. At that moment the centre broke,
+and the disordered wings forming two chaotic bodies fled swiftly to the
+farther lines of the Prussian army.
+
+Kmita looked through the broken centre into the depth of the field, and
+saw at once a regiment of red dragoons flying like wind to the aid of
+the broken cavalry.
+
+"That is nothing!" thought he; "Volodyovski will cross the ford in a
+moment to aid me."
+
+At that instant was heard the thunder of cannon so loud that the earth
+trembled in its foundations; musketry rattled from the intrenchment to
+those ranks of the Poles who had pushed forward most. The whole field
+was covered with smoke, and in that smoke Kmita's volunteers and
+Tartars closed with the dragoons.
+
+But from the side of the river no one came with assistance.
+
+The enemy had let Kmita pass the ford purposely, and then covered the
+ford with such a dreadful shower from cannons and muskets that no
+living foot could pass through it.
+
+The troops of Pan Korsak tried first, and turned back in disorder; next
+the squadron of Voynillovich went to the middle of the ford, and turned
+back,--slowly, it is true, for that was the king's regiment, one of the
+most valiant in the army, but with a loss of twelve noted nobles and
+nineteen soldiers.
+
+The water in the ford which was the only passage through the river was
+plashing under the blows of balls as under a dense pouring rain.
+Cannon-balls flew to the other bank, casting around clouds of sand.
+
+Gosyevski himself rode up on a gallop, and when he had seen this, he
+knew that it was impossible for one living man to reach the opposite
+bank.
+
+And still that might decide the fate of the battle. Then the forehead
+of the hetman frowned sternly. For a while he looked through his glass
+along the whole line of the enemy's troops, and cried to the orderly,--
+
+"Rush to Hassan Bey; let the horde pass the deep bank as it can, and
+strike the tabor. What they find in the wagons will be theirs! There
+are no cannon there; it will be only hand to hand."
+
+The horseman sprang forward with what breath was in his horse; but the
+hetman advanced to where under willows on the meadow stood the Lauda
+squadron, and halted before it.
+
+Volodyovski was at the head of the squadron, gloomy and silent; but he
+looked in the eyes of the hetman, and his mustaches quivered.
+
+"What do you think?" asked the hetman; "will the Tartars cross?"
+
+"The Tartars will cross, but Kmita will perish!" answered the little
+knight.
+
+"As God lives!" cried the hetman, suddenly; "this Kmita, if he had a
+head on his shoulders, might win the battle, not perish!"
+
+Volodyovski said nothing; still he thought: "It was necessary either
+not to send any regiment across the river, or to send five."
+
+The hetman looked awhile yet through his glass at the distant confusion
+which Kmita was making beyond the river; but the little knight, not
+being able to endure any longer, drew near him, and holding his
+sabre-point upward, said,--
+
+"Your worthiness, if there were an order, I would try the ford again."
+
+"Stop!" said Gosyevski, rather sharply; "it is enough that those will
+perish."
+
+"They are perishing already," replied Volodyovski.
+
+And in truth the uproar was becoming more definite and greater every
+moment. Evidently Kmita was retreating to the river.
+
+"As God lives, I wanted that!" cried the hetman, suddenly; and he
+sprang like a thunderbolt to Voynillovich's squadron.
+
+In fact, Kmita was retreating. After they had met the red dragoons, his
+men fought with their last strength; but the breath was already failing
+in their breasts, their wearied hands were drooping, and bodies were
+falling faster and faster; only hope that aid might come any moment
+from beyond the river kept courage in them yet.
+
+Half an hour more passed, and the cry of "Strike!" was heard no longer;
+but to the aid of the red dragoons sprang Boguslav's regiment of heavy
+cavalry.
+
+"Death is coming!" thought Kmita, seeing them approaching from the
+flank.
+
+But he was a soldier who never had a doubt, for a moment, not only of
+his life, but of victory. Long and hazardous practice had given him
+also great knowledge of war; therefore lightning at dusk does not flash
+and then die out so quickly as the following thought flashed to the
+head of Pan Andrei: Evidently the Poles could not cross the ford to the
+enemy; and since they could not, he would lead the enemy to them.
+
+Boguslav's regiment was coming on at full sweep, and not more than a
+hundred yards distant; in a moment they could strike and scatter his
+Tartars. Pan Andrei raised the pipe to his mouth, and whistled so
+shrilly that the nearest dragoon horses rose on their haunches.
+
+That instant other pipes of the Tartar leaders repeated the whistle;
+and not so swiftly does the whirlwind twist the sand as that chambul
+turned its horses in flight.
+
+The remnant of the mailed cavalry, the red dragoons, and Boguslav's
+regiment sprang after them with all speed.
+
+The shouts of the officers--"Naprzod (Forward)!" and "Gott mit uns (God
+with us)!"--rang like a storm, and a marvellous sight was seen then.
+Over the broad meadow rushed the disordered and confused chambul of
+Tartars, straight to the ford, which was rained on with bullets and
+balls; and they tore onward, as if carried with wings. Every Tartar lay
+on the horse, flattened himself, hid himself in the mane and the neck,
+in such fashion that had it not been for the cloud of arrows flying
+back toward the cavalry, it might be said that the horses were rushing
+on riderless; after them, with roaring, shouting, and trampling,
+followed gigantic men, with upraised swords gleaming in their right
+hands.
+
+The ford was nearer and nearer; there was half a furlong left yet, and
+evidently the Tartar horses were using their last strength, for the
+distance between them and the cavalry was quickly decreasing.
+
+A few moments later the front ranks of the pursuers began to cut with
+their swords the Tartars closing the rear. The ford was right there; it
+seemed that in a few springs the horses would be in it.
+
+Suddenly something wonderful happened.
+
+Behold, when the chambul had run to the ford, a shrill whistle of pipes
+was heard again on the wings, and the whole body, instead of rushing
+into the river to seek safety on the other bank, opened in two, and
+with the speed of swallows sprang to the right and left, with and
+against the flow of the river.
+
+But the heavy regiments, rushing right on their shoulders with the
+highest horse-speed, raced into the ford with the same force, and only
+when in the water did the horsemen begin to hold in their furious
+beasts.
+
+The cannon, which up to that moment had been showering a rain of iron
+on the gravel, were silent in a second; the gunners had to spare their
+own army.
+
+But Gosyevski was waiting for precisely that instant as for salvation.
+
+The cavalry were hardly in the water when the terrible royal squadron
+of Voynillovich rushed at it like a hurricane; then the Lauda, the
+Korsak, the two squadrons of the hetman, and the volunteer squadron;
+after that, the armored squadron of Prince Michael Radzivill.
+
+A terrible shout, "Kill, slay!" thundered in the air; and before the
+Prussian regiments could halt, concentrate, use their swords, the
+Voynillovich squadron had scattered them as a whirl of air scatters
+leaves; they crushed the red dragoons, pushed back Boguslav's regiment,
+cut it in two, and drove it over the field toward the main army of
+Prussia.
+
+In one moment the river was red with blood. The cannon began to play
+again; but too late, for eight squadrons of Lithuanian cavalry were
+sweeping with thunder and roar over the meadow, and the whole battle
+was transferred to the other side of the river.
+
+The hetman was flying with one of his own squadrons, his face radiant
+with joy, and with fire in his eyes; for once he had the cavalry beyond
+the river, he was certain of victory.
+
+The squadrons, emulating one another in slashing and thrusting, drove
+before them the remnant of the dragoons and the cavalry, which fell in
+a dense body; for the heavy horses were not able to flee swiftly, and
+merely covered the pursuers against missiles from the front.
+
+Meanwhile Waldeck, Boguslav, Radzivill, and Israel sent forward all
+their cavalry to restrain the onset, and hastened themselves to put the
+infantry in line. Regiment after regiment ran out of the tabor, and
+took their places on the plain. They thrust the butts of their heavy
+spears into the earth, with the heads pointing forward, inclined like a
+fence to the enemy.
+
+In the next rank musketeers stretched forward the barrels of their
+muskets. Between the quadrangles of regiments they placed cannon in hot
+haste. Neither Boguslav nor Waldeck nor Israel flattered themselves
+that their cavalry could restrain that of the Poles very long, and
+their whole hope was in the artillery and the infantry. Meanwhile in
+front of the infantry the mounted regiments struck breast against
+breast. But that happened which the Prussian leaders foresaw.
+
+The pressure of the Lithuanian cavalry was so terrible that their
+opponents could not restrain them for one moment, and the first hussar
+regiments split them as a wedge splits wood, and went without breaking
+a lance through the dense mass, as a ship driven by strong wind goes
+through waves. The streamers were visible nearer and nearer; at times
+the heads of the hussar horses rose above the throng of the Prussians.
+
+"On your guard!" cried the officers, standing in the quadrangle of
+infantry.
+
+At this word the Prussian soldiers braced themselves more firmly on
+their feet, and strained their arms holding the spears; and all hearts
+were beating violently, for the terrible hussars had come wholly in
+sight, and were bearing down straightway against them.
+
+"Fire!" was the word of command.
+
+Muskets rattled in the second and third ranks of the quadrangle. Smoke
+covered the men. A moment later the roar of the coming squadron was
+nearer. They are right there! All at once, amid the smoke, the first
+rank of infantry see there above them, almost over their heads,
+thousands of horses' hoofs, wide nostrils, inflamed eyes; a crash of
+broken spears is heard; a fearful shout rends the air; Polish voices
+shouting, "Slay!" and German voices, "Gott erbarme Dich meiner (God
+have mercy on me)!"
+
+That regiment is broken, crushed; but in the spaces between other
+regiments cannon begin to play. Other squadrons come up. Each one
+strikes after a moment on a forest of lances; but perhaps not every one
+will break the forest which it strikes, for none has such terrible
+force as Voynillovich's squadron. Shouting increases on the whole field
+of battle. Nothing can be seen; but from the mass of combatants groups
+of yellow infantry escape in disorder, fleeing from some regiment which
+evidently was also beaten.
+
+Horsemen in gray colors pursue, cut, and trample these men, and
+shout,--
+
+"Lauda! Lauda!"
+
+That was Volodyovski, who with his squadron had fought against a second
+quadrangle.
+
+But others were "sticking" yet; victory might still incline to the
+Prussians, especially as at the tabor stood two regiments intact,
+which, since the tabor was safe, might be summoned at any moment.
+
+Waldeck had in truth lost his head. Israel was not present, for he had
+been sent with the cavalry; but Boguslav was watching and managing
+everything. He led the whole battle, and seeing the increase of great
+peril, sent Pan Byes for those regiments.
+
+Byes urged on his horse, and half an hour later returned bareheaded,
+with terror and despair in his face.
+
+"The horde is in the tabor!" shouted he, hurrying up to Boguslav.
+
+At that moment unearthly howling was heard on the right wing; this
+howling came nearer and nearer.
+
+Suddenly appeared crowds of Swedish horsemen approaching in terrible
+panic; after them were fleeing weaponless, bareheaded infantry; after
+the infantry, in confusion and disorder, came wagons drawn by wild and
+terrified horses. All this mass was rushing at random from the tabor
+toward the infantry in the meadow. In a moment they fell on the
+infantry, put them into disorder, scattered them, especially when in
+front they were pressed by Lithuanian cavalry.
+
+"Hassan Bey has reached the tabor!" cried Gosyevski, with ecstasy; and
+he let out his last two squadrons like falcons from their rest.
+
+At the same moment that these two squadrons strike the infantry in
+front, their own wagons rush against them on the flank. The last
+quadrangles burst as if under the stroke of a hammer. Of the whole
+brilliant Swedish-Prussian army there is formed one gigantic mass, in
+which the cavalry are mingled with the infantry. Men are overturning,
+trampling, and suffocating one another; they throw off their clothing,
+cast away their arms. The cavalry press them, cut them, crush them,
+mash them. It is no longer a battle lost; it is a ruin, one of the most
+ghastly of the war.
+
+Boguslav, seeing that all was lost, resolved to save at least himself
+and some of the cavalry. With superhuman exertion he collected a few
+hundred horsemen, and was fleeing along the left wing in the direction
+of the river's course.
+
+He had already escaped from the main whirl, when Prince Michael
+Radzivill, leading his own hussars, struck him on the flank and
+scattered his whole detachment at a blow. After this Boguslav's men
+fled singly or in small groups. They could be saved only by the speed
+of their horses.
+
+In fact, the hussars did not pursue, but struck on the main body of
+infantry, which all the other squadrons were cutting to pieces. The
+broken detachment fled over the field like a scattered herd of deer.
+
+Boguslav, on Kmita's black steed, is rushing like the wind, striving in
+vain by cries to gather around him even a few tens of men. No one obeys
+him; each man flees on his own account, glad that he has escaped from
+the disaster, and that he has no enemy in front of him. But rejoicing
+was vain. They had not gone a thousand yards when howling was heard in
+front, and a gray host of Tartars sprang forth from the river, near
+which they had been lurking till then.
+
+This was Kmita with his men. Leaving the field, after he had brought
+the enemy to the ford, he turned so as to cut off retreat to the
+fugitives.
+
+The Tartars, seeing the cavalry scattered, scattered themselves in a
+moment to catch them more easily, and a murderous pursuit began. Two or
+three Tartars cut off one trooper, and he rarely defended himself; more
+frequently he seized his rapier by the point, and extended the hilt to
+the Tartars, calling for mercy. But the Tartars, knowing that they
+could not lead these prisoners home, took only officers who could give
+ransom; the common soldiers received a knife in the throat, and died,
+unable to say even "God!" Those who fled to the last were stabbed in
+the back and shoulders; those under whom the horses did not fall were
+caught with lariats.
+
+Kmita rushed for a time over the field, hurling down horsemen and
+seeking Boguslav with his eyes; at last he beheld him, and knew him at
+once by the horse, by the blue ribbon, and the hat with black ostrich
+feathers.
+
+A cloud of white steam surrounded the prince; for just the moment
+before two Nogais had attacked him. One he killed with a pistol-shot,
+and the other he thrust through with a rapier; then seeing a larger
+party rushing from one side, and Kmita from the other, he pressed his
+horse with spurs, and shot on like a hunted deer followed by hounds.
+
+More than fifty men rushed in a body after him; but not all the horses
+ran equally, so that soon the fifty formed a long serpent, the head of
+which was Boguslav and the neck Kmita.
+
+The prince bent forward in his saddle; the black horse appeared not to
+touch the earth with his feet, but was black over the green grass, like
+a swallow sweeping close to the ground; the chestnut stretched his neck
+like a crane, put back his ears, and seemed as if trying to spring from
+his skin. Single willows, clumps of them, groups of alder, shot past;
+the Tartars were behind, a furlong, two, three furlongs, but they ran
+and ran. Kmita threw his pistols from the holsters to lighten the
+horse's burden; with eyes fastened on Boguslav, with fixed lips, he
+almost lay on the neck of the horse, pricked his foaming sides with
+spurs, till soon the foam falling to the earth became rose-colored.
+
+But the distance between him and the prince not only did not decrease a
+single inch, but began to increase.
+
+"Woe!" thought Pan Andrei, "no horse on earth can overtake that one."
+
+And when after a few springs the distance increased still more, he
+straightened himself in the saddle, let the sword drop on its pendant,
+and putting his hands around his mouth, shouted in a trumpet-like
+voice: "Flee, traitor, flee before Kmita! I will get you, if not
+to-day, to-morrow."
+
+These words had barely sounded in the air, when on a sudden the prince,
+who heard them, looked around, and seeing that Kmita alone was
+pursuing, instead of fleeing farther described a circle, and with
+rapier in hand rushed upon him.
+
+Pan Andrei gave forth a terrible cry of joy, and without lessening
+speed raised his sabre for a blow.
+
+"Corpse! corpse!" shouted the prince; and wishing to strike the more
+surely, he restrained his horse.
+
+Kmita, when he had come up, held in his own beast till his hoofs sank
+in the earth, and rapier met sabre.
+
+They closed in such fashion that the two horses formed almost one body.
+A terrible sound of steel was heard, quick as thought; no eye could
+catch the lightning-like movement of rapier and sabre, nor distinguish
+the prince from Kmita. At times Boguslav's hat appeared black, at times
+Kmita's steel morion gleamed. The horses whirled around each other. The
+swords clinked more and more terribly.
+
+Boguslav, after a few strokes, ceased to despise his opponent. All the
+terrible thrusts which he had learned from French masters were parried.
+Sweat was now flowing freely from his face with the rouge and white; he
+felt weariness in his right arm already. Wonder seized him, then
+impatience, then rage; therefore he determined to finish, and he thrust
+so terribly that the hat fell from his head.
+
+Kmita warded with such force that the prince's rapier flew to the side
+of the horse; and before Boguslav could defend himself again, Kmita cut
+him with the very end of the sabre in the forehead.
+
+"Christ!" cried the prince in German, rolling to the earth.
+
+He fell on his back.
+
+Pan Andrei was as if stunned for the moment, but recovered quickly. He
+dropped his sabre on its pendant, made the sign of the cross, sprang
+from his horse, and seizing the hilt, again approached the prince.
+
+He was terrible; for pale as a sheet from emotion, his lips were
+pressed, and inexorable hatred was in his face.
+
+Behold his mortal enemy, and such a powerful one, lying now at his feet
+in blood, still alive and conscious, but conquered, and not with
+foreign weapons nor with foreign aid.
+
+Boguslav looked at him with widely opened eyes, watching carefully
+every move of the victor; and when Kmita stood there above him, he
+cried quickly,--
+
+"Do not kill me! Ransom!"
+
+Kmita, instead of answering, stood with his foot on Boguslav's breast,
+and pressed with all his power; then he placed the point of his sabre
+on the prince's throat so that the skin yielded under the point,--he
+only needed to move his hand, to press more firmly. But he did not kill
+him at once. He wished to sate himself yet with the sight, and make the
+death of his enemy more grievous. He transfixed Boguslav's eyes with
+his own eyes, and stood above him, as a lion stands above an overthrown
+buffalo.
+
+The prince, from whose forehead blood was flowing more and more
+copiously, so that the whole upper part of his head was as if in a
+pool, spoke again, but now with a greatly stifled voice, for the foot
+of Pan Andrei was crushing his breast,--
+
+"The maiden--listen--"
+
+Barely had Pan Andrei heard these words when he took his foot from
+Boguslav's breast, and raised his sword. "Speak!" said he.
+
+But Boguslav only breathed deeply for a time; at last, with a voice now
+stronger, he said,--
+
+"The maiden will die, if you kill me. The orders are given."
+
+"What have you done with her?" asked Kmita. "Spare me, and I will give
+her to you. I swear on the Gospel."
+
+Pan Andrei struck his forehead with his fist. It was to be seen for a
+time that he was struggling with himself and with his thoughts; then he
+said,--
+
+"Hear me, traitor! I would give a hundred such degenerate ruffians for
+one hair of hers. But I do not believe you, you oath-breaker!"
+
+"On the Gospel!" repeated the prince. "I will give you a safe-conduct
+and an order in writing."
+
+"Let it be so. I will give you your life, but I will not let you out of
+my hands. You will give me the letter; but meanwhile I will give you to
+the Tartars, with whom you will be in captivity."
+
+"Agreed," answered Boguslav.
+
+"Remember," said Pan Andrei, "your princely rank did not preserve you
+from my hand, nor your army, nor your fencing. And be assured that as
+many times as you cross my path, or do not keep word, nothing will save
+you,--even though you were made Emperor of Germany. Recognize me! Once
+I had you in my hands, now you are lying under my feet!"
+
+"Consciousness is leaving me," said the prince. "Pan Kmita, there must
+be water near by. Give me to drink, and wash my wound."
+
+"Die, parricide!" answered Kmita.
+
+But the prince, secure of life, recovered all his self-command, and
+said,--
+
+"You are foolish, Pan Kmita. If I die, she too--" Here his lips grew
+pale.
+
+Kmita ran to see if there was not some ditch near at hand, or even some
+pool. The prince fainted, but for a short time; he revived, happily for
+himself, when the first Tartar, Selim, son of Gazi Aga, the banneret
+among Kmita's Tartars, was coming up, and seeing the enemy weltering in
+blood, determined to pin him to the earth with the spear-point of the
+banner. The prince in that terrible moment still had strength
+sufficient to seize the point, which, being loosely fastened, fell from
+the staff.
+
+The sound of that short struggle brought back Pan Andrei.
+
+"Stop! son of a dog!" cried he, running from a distance.
+
+The Tartar, at the sound of the familiar voice, pushed up to his horse
+with fear. Kmita commanded him to go for water, and remained himself
+with the prince; for from afar were to be seen approaching at a gallop
+the Kyemliches, Soroka, and the whole chambul, who, after they had
+caught all the horsemen, came to seek their leader.
+
+Seeing Pan Andrei, the faithful Nogais threw up their caps with loud
+shouts.
+
+Akbah Ulan sprang from his horse and began to bow to him, touching with
+his hand his forehead, his mouth, and his breast. Others smacking their
+lips, in Tartar fashion, looked with greediness into the eyes of the
+conquered; some rushed to seize the two horses, the chestnut and the
+black, which were running at a distance each with flying mane.
+
+"Akbah Ulan," said Kmita, "this is the leader of the army which we
+conquered this morning, Prince Boguslav Radzivill. I give him to you;
+and do you keep him, for dead or alive they will pay you for him
+liberally. Now take care of him; put on him a lariat, and lead him to
+camp."
+
+"Allah! Allah! We thank the leader! We thank the conqueror!" cried all
+the Tartars in one voice; and again was heard the smacking of a
+thousand lips.
+
+Kmita mounted and went with a part of the Tartars to the field of
+battle. From a distance he saw the standard-bearers with their
+standards, but of the squadrons there were only a few men present; the
+rest had gone in pursuit of the enemy. Crowds of camp servants were
+busy on the battle-field, plundering the corpses and fighting here and
+there with the Tartars, who were plundering also. The latter looked
+specially terrible, with knives in their hands, and with arms stained
+to the elbows. You would have said that a flock of crows had dropped
+from the clouds to the battle-plain. Their wild laughter and shouts
+were heard over the whole meadow.
+
+Some holding in their lips knives still steaming drew with both hands
+dead men by the feet; others in sport threw at one another severed
+heads. Some were filling bags; others, as in a bazaar, were holding up
+bloody garments, praising their value, or examining the weapons which
+they had taken.
+
+Kmita passed over the field where he had first met the cavalry. Bodies
+of men and horses, cut with swords, lay scattered there; but where
+squadrons had cut infantry, there were whole piles of corpses, and
+pools of stiffened blood plashed under foot like muddy water in a
+swamp.
+
+It was difficult to advance through the fragments of broken lances,
+muskets, corpses, overturned wagons, and troops of Tartars pushing
+around.
+
+Gosyevski was still on the intrenchment of the fortified camp, and with
+him were Prince Michael Radzivill, Voynillovich, Volodyovski, Korsak,
+and a number of men. From this height they took in with their eyes the
+field far away to its uttermost edges, and were able to estimate the
+whole extent of the victory and the enemy's defeat.
+
+Kmita, on beholding these gentlemen, hastened his pace; and Gosyevski,
+since he was not only a fortunate warrior but an honorable man without
+a shadow of envy in his heart, had barely seen Pan Andrei, when he
+cried,--
+
+"Here comes the real victor! He is the cause of winning the day. I
+first declare this in public. Gracious gentlemen, thank Pan Babinich;
+for had it not been for him we could not have crossed the river."
+
+"Vivat Babinich!" cried a number of voices. "Vivat, vivat!"
+
+"Where did you learn war, O soldier," cried the hetman, with
+enthusiasm, "that you know what to do in a moment?"
+
+Kmita did not answer, for he was too tired. He merely bowed on every
+side, and passed his hand over his face, soiled with sweat and with
+powder-smoke. His eyes gleamed with an uncommon light, and still the
+vivats sounded incessantly. Division after division returned from the
+field on foaming horses; and those who came joined their voices from
+full breasts in honor of Babinich. Caps flew into the air; whoso had a
+pistol still loaded gave fire.
+
+Suddenly Kmita stood in the saddle, and raising both hands high,
+shouted,--
+
+"Vivat Yan Kazimir, our lord and gracious father!"
+
+Here there was such a shout as if anew battle had begun. Unspeakable
+enthusiasm seized all. Prince Michael ungirded his sabre, which had a
+hilt set with diamonds, and gave it to Kmita. The hetman threw his
+own costly cloak on the shoulders of the hero, who again raised his
+hands,--
+
+"Vivat our hetman, victorious leader!"
+
+"May he increase and flourish!" answered all, in a chorus.
+
+Then they brought together the captured banners, and thrust them into
+the embankment at the feet of the leaders. The enemy had not taken one
+of theirs. There were Prussian, Prussian of the general militia,
+nobles', Swedish, and Boguslav flags; the whole rainbow of them was
+waving at the embankment.
+
+"One of the greatest victories of this war!" cried the hetman. "Israel
+and Waldeck are in captivity, the colonels have fallen or are in
+captivity, the army is cut to pieces." Here he turned to Kmita: "Pan
+Babinich, you were on that side, you must have met Boguslav; what has
+happened to him?"
+
+Here Pan Michael looked diligently into Kmita's eyes, but Kmita said
+quickly,--
+
+"God has punished Boguslav with this hand." Then he stretched forth his
+right hand; but at that moment the little knight threw himself into his
+arms.
+
+"Yendrek," cried he, "I am not envious! May God bless you!"
+
+"You formed my hand!" answered Pan Andrei, with effusion.
+
+But a further expression of brotherly feeling was stopped by Pan
+Michael Radzivill.
+
+"Is my cousin killed?" asked he, quickly.
+
+"Not killed," answered Kmita, "for I granted him life; but he is
+wounded and captive, and over there my Nogais are bringing him."
+
+At these words astonishment was depicted on Volodyovski's face, and the
+eyes of the knight were turned to the plain, on which appeared a party
+of some tens of Tartars approaching slowly; at last, when they had
+passed a group of broken wagons, they came within some tens of yards of
+the intrenchment.
+
+The hetman and the officers saw that the Tartar riding in advance was
+leading a prisoner; all recognized Boguslav, but in what a change of
+fortune!
+
+He, one of the most powerful lords in the Commonwealth; he, who even
+yesterday was dreaming of independent rule; he, a prince of the German
+Empire,--was walking now with a lariat around his neck, at the side of
+a Tartar horse, without a hat, with bloody head bound in a filthy rag!
+But such was the venom in the hearts of the knights against this
+magnate that his terrible humiliation did not excite the pity of any,
+and nearly all mouths shouted at the same moment,--
+
+"Death to the traitor! Bear him apart on sabres! Death, death!"
+
+Prince Michael covered his eyes with his hand, for still that was a
+Radzivill led with such humiliation. Suddenly he grew red and
+shouted,--
+
+"Gracious gentlemen! that is my cousin, that is my blood, and I have
+spared neither life nor property for the country. He is my enemy who
+will raise a hand against that ill-fated man."
+
+The knights were silent at once.
+
+Prince Michael was universally beloved for his bravery, liberality, and
+devotion to the country. Even when all Lithuania fell into the hands of
+the Northerners, he alone defended himself in Nyesvyej, and in the time
+of the Swedish wars he contemned the persuasions of Prince Yanush, and
+was one of the first to join the confederacy of Tyshovtsi. His voice
+therefore found hearing at once. Finally, it may be that no one wished
+to oppose so powerful a man; it is enough that the sabres were placed
+at once in the scabbards, and even some officers, clients of the
+Radzivills, exclaimed,--
+
+"Take him from the Tartars! Let the Commonwealth judge him, but let not
+honorable blood be insulted by Pagans."
+
+"Take him from the Tartars!" repeated the prince; "we will find surety,
+and he will pay the ransom himself. Pan Voynillovich, move your men and
+let them take him by force, if it is impossible otherwise."
+
+"I offer myself as a surety to the Tartars," said Pan Gnoinski.
+
+Then Volodyovski pushed up to Kmita and said: "Yendrek, what have you
+done? He will go safely out of this trouble!"
+
+Kmita sprang forward like a wounded wild-cat.
+
+"With the permission of your highness," cried he. "This is my prisoner!
+I granted him life, but under conditions to which he swore by his
+heretical gospel; and may I fall dead here if he will go out of the
+hands into which I gave him before he fulfils everything!"
+
+When he had said this, he struck his horse, blocked the road, and his
+inborn impulsiveness had almost carried him away; for his face began to
+writhe, he distended his nostrils, and his eyes began to cast
+lightning.
+
+Meanwhile Voynillovich pressed him with his horse. "Aside, Pan
+Babinich!" cried he.
+
+"Aside, Pan Voynillovich!" roared Kmita, and struck with the hilt of
+his sabre Voynillovich's horse with such force that the steed tottered
+on his legs as if struck by a ball and dug the ground with his
+nostrils. Then there rose a fierce shout among the knights, so that
+Gosyevski pushed forward and cried,--
+
+"Silence, gentlemen! Gracious prince, in virtue of my authority as
+hetman, I declare that Pan Babinich has a right to the prisoner, and
+that whoso wishes to free him from Tartar hands must give guarantee to
+his conqueror."
+
+Prince Michael mastered his indignation, calmed himself, and said,
+directing his speech to Pan Andrei,--
+
+"Say what you wish."
+
+"That he observe the conditions with me before he leaves captivity."
+
+"But he will keep them when he is free."
+
+"Impossible! I do not believe him."
+
+"Then I swear for him, by the Most Holy Mother, whom I recognize, and
+on the word of a knight, that all will be observed to you. In the
+opposite case you may make demand on my honor and property."
+
+"That is sufficient for me!" said Kmita. "Let Pan Gnoinski go as
+hostage, for otherwise the Tartars will make resistance. I will give
+way on your word."
+
+"I thank you, Cavalier!" answered Prince Michael. "Do not fear, either,
+that he will receive his freedom at once, for I will give him to the
+hetman by right, and he will remain a prisoner until the king
+pronounces sentence."
+
+"That will be so!" answered the hetman; and ordering Voynillovich to
+sit on a fresh horse, for that one was hardly able to stand, he sent
+him with Pan Gnoinski for the prince.
+
+But the affair did not pass easily yet; for Hassan Bey made a terrible
+resistance, and only the sight of Pan Gnoinski and the promise of a
+ransom of a hundred thousand thalers could pacify him.
+
+In the evening Prince Boguslav found himself in the tents of Gosyevski.
+He was cared for with attention; two physicians did not leave him for a
+moment, and both guaranteed his life, for the wound, since it had been
+given with the very end of the sabre, was not too serious.
+
+Volodyovski could not forgive Kmita for having granted the prince his
+life, and from sorrow avoided him all day. It was only in the evening
+that Pan Andrei himself went to Pan Michael's tent.
+
+"Fear the wounds of God!" cried the little knight, at sight of him; "I
+should have expected this of any other than of you, to let that traitor
+go alive!"
+
+"Listen to me, Michael, before you condemn me," said Kmita, gloomily.
+"I had him under my foot and held my sabre point at his throat, and
+then do you know what the traitor said? That there were commands given
+to kill Olenka in Taurogi if he should be slain. What had I,
+unfortunate man, to do? I purchased her life with his life. What had I
+to do? By the cross of Christ, what had I to do?"
+
+Here Pan Andrei began to pull his hair, to stamp, from bewilderment;
+and Volodyovski thought for awhile, then said,--
+
+"I understand your despair; but still--you see, you have let go a
+traitor who may bring grievous suffering to the country. There is no
+denying, Yendrek, that you have rendered wonderful service to-day; but
+at last you sacrificed the public good to your own private ends."
+
+"And what would you have done if you were told that there was a knife
+at the throat of Panna Anusia?"
+
+Pan Michael's mustaches quivered fiercely. "I do not offer myself as an
+example. H'm! what would I have done? But Pan Yan, who has a Roman
+soul, would not have let him live; and besides, I am certain that God
+would not have let innocent blood flow for the reason he mentioned."
+
+"Let me do penance. Punish me, O God, not according to my heavy sin,
+but according to Thy mercy; for to sign a sentence against that dove--"
+Here Kmita closed his eyes. "Angels forefend! Never, never!"
+
+"It is passed," said Volodyovski.
+
+Here Pan Andrei took a paper out of his bosom. "See, Michael, what I
+obtained. This is a command to Sakovich, to all the officers of
+Radzivill, and to the Swedish commandants. We forced him to write it,
+though he could barely move his hand. Prince Michael himself saw to
+that. This is freedom for her, safety for her. I will lie in the form
+of a cross every day for a year, I will have myself scourged, I will
+build a church, but I will not sacrifice her life. I have not a Roman
+soul. Well, I am not a Cato like Pan Yan, true! But I will not
+sacrifice her; no, by a hundred thunders, I will not, even if at last I
+am roasted in hell on a spit--"
+
+Kmita did not finish, for Pan Michael sprang up to him and stopped his
+mouth with his hand, crying in a terrified voice,--
+
+"Do not blaspheme, for you will draw the vengeance of God on her. Beat
+your breast, quickly, quickly!"
+
+And Pan Andrei began to beat his breast: "Mea culpa! mea culpa! mea
+maxima culpa!" At last the poor soldier burst into loud weeping, for he
+did not know himself what to do.
+
+Pan Michael let him have his cry out; then he pacified him, and
+asked,--
+
+"And what will you undertake now?"
+
+"I will go with my men whither I am sent, as far as Birji. Only let the
+men and horses draw breath first. On the road I will shed as much
+heretical blood as I can, to the glory of God."
+
+"And you will have your merit. Do not lose heart, Yendrek. God is
+merciful!"
+
+"I will go directly ahead. All Prussia is open at present; only here
+and there shall I light upon small garrisons."
+
+Pan Michael sighed: "Oh, I would go with you as gladly as to paradise.
+But I must keep my command. You are fortunate to lead volunteers.
+Yendrek, listen, brother! and when you find both, take care of that
+one, so that no evil befall her. God knows, she may be predestined to
+me."
+
+When he had said this, the little knight cast himself into the arms of
+Pan Andrei.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LII.
+
+
+Olenka and Anusia, having freed themselves from Taurogi, under the
+protection of Braun, came successfully to the sword-bearer's party,
+which at that time was near Olsha, therefore not very far from Taurogi.
+
+The old noble when he saw them both in good health would not believe
+his eyes at first; then he fell to weeping from delight, and finally
+came to such military enthusiasm that for him danger existed no longer.
+Let not only Boguslav appear, but the King of Sweden himself with all
+his power, Pan Billevich was ready to defend his maidens against every
+enemy.
+
+"I will fall," said he, "before a hair shall drop from your heads. I am
+no longer the man whom you knew in Taurogi, and I think that the Swedes
+will long remember Girlakole, Yasvoynya, and those beatings which I
+gave them at Rossyeni itself. It is true that the traitor Sakovich
+attacked us unawares and routed us, but you see several hundred sabres
+on service."
+
+Pan Billevich did not exaggerate greatly, for in truth it was difficult
+to recognize in him the former prisoner of Taurogi fallen in courage.
+He had another mind now; his energy had revived in the field, on his
+horse; he found himself in his element, and being a good soldier, he
+had really handled the Swedes several times roughly. And since he had
+great authority in the neighborhood, the nobles and common people
+flocked to him willingly, and even from some remote districts a
+Billevich brought him now between ten and twenty horsemen, now some
+tens of horsemen.
+
+Pan Tomash's party was composed of three hundred peasant infantry and
+about five hundred horsemen. It was rare that any man in the infantry
+had a gun; the greater number were armed with scythes and forks. The
+cavalry was a collection of the wealthier nobles, who betook themselves
+to the forest with their attendants, and of the poorer nobles from
+villages. Their arms were better than those of the infantry, but
+greatly varied. Hop-poles served as lances for many; some carried rich
+family weapons, but frequently of a past age; the horses, of various
+breeds and quality, were not fitted for one rank.
+
+With such troops the sword-bearer could block the road to Swedish
+patrols, he might cut off even detachments of cavalry, he might clear
+forests and villages of plunderers, whose numerous bands, composed of
+Swedish fugitives, Prussian and local ruffians, were busied with
+robbery; but he could not attack any town.
+
+The Swedes had grown wiser. Immediately after the outbreak of the
+rebellion those who were scattered in quarters in the villages were cut
+down throughout Jmud and Lithuania; but now those who had survived
+remained mostly in fortified towns, which they left only for short
+expeditions. Therefore the fields, forests, hamlets, and smaller towns
+were in Polish hands; but the larger towns were held by Swedes, and
+there was no power to dislodge them.
+
+The sword-bearer's party was one of the best; others could effect still
+less than he. On the boundary of Livonia the insurgents had grown so
+bold, it is true, that they besieged Birji twice, and at the second
+attack it was forced to surrender; but that temporary preponderance
+came from this,--that Pontus de la Gardie had assembled to the defence
+of Riga against the forces of the Tsar all the troops from the
+neighboring districts of Livonia.
+
+His brilliant victories, rarely equalled in history, caused the belief,
+however, that war in that quarter would soon be at an end, and that he
+would bring to Jmud new Swedish troops intoxicated with triumphs. Still
+there was safety enough in the forests at that time; and numerous
+parties of insurgents capable of undertaking little alone might still
+be certain that the enemy would not seek them in deep wildernesses.
+
+Therefore Pan Billevich rejected the thought of hiding in Byalovyej;
+for the road to it was very long, and on the way were many considerable
+places with large garrisons.
+
+"The Lord God has given a dry autumn," said he to the maidens,
+"therefore it is easier to live _sub Jove_ (in the open air). I will
+have a regular tent made for you; I will find a woman to wait on you,
+and you will stay in the camp. In these times there is no safer refuge
+than the forest. My Billeviche is burned to the ground; country houses
+are infested by ravagers and sometimes even by Swedish parties. Where
+could you incline your heads more safely than with me, who have several
+hundred sabres at my command? Rains will come later, then some cabin
+will be found for you in the forest."
+
+This idea pleased Panna Anusia greatly; for in the party were many
+young Billeviches, polite cavaliers, and besides it was said
+continually that Pan Babinich was marching in that direction.
+
+Anusia hoped that when he came he would drive out the Swedes in a
+twinkle, and then--then would be what God would give. Olenka judged
+also that it was safest with the party; but she wished to retreat far
+from Taurogi, fearing the pursuit of Sakovich.
+
+"Let us go to Vodokty," said she; "there we shall be among our own
+people. Although it is burned, Mitruny and all the neighboring villages
+are there. It is impossible that the whole country is turned into a
+desert. Lauda will defend us in case of danger."
+
+"But all the Lauda men have gone with Volodyovski," said Yur Billevich,
+in opposition.
+
+"The old men and the youths have remained, and even the women there are
+able to defend in case of need. Besides, forests are greater there than
+here; the Domasheviches, the hunters, or the Smoky Gostyeviches will
+take us to Rogovsk, where no enemy will find us."
+
+"And when I have secured the camp and you, I will attack the Swedes,
+and cut to pieces those who dare to touch the rim of the wilderness,"
+said Pan Billevich. "This is an excellent idea! We have nothing to do
+here; it is possible to render greater service."
+
+Who knows whether the sword-bearer did not seize that idea of Olenka so
+quickly because he too in his soul was somewhat afraid of Sakovich, who
+brought to despair, might be terrible?
+
+The advice, however, was wise in itself; therefore it pleased all
+immediately. The sword-bearer sent out infantry that very day under
+command of Yur Billevich, so as to push forward by the forest in the
+direction of Krakinov; but he went forward himself with the cavalry two
+days later, obtaining in advance reliable intelligence as to whether
+there had not gone out from Kyedani or Rossyeni, between which he had
+to march, some considerable bodies of Swedish troops.
+
+Pan Billevich marched slowly and carefully. The ladies travelled in
+peasants' wagons, and sometimes on ponies which the sword-bearer had
+provided.
+
+Anusia, who had received as a gift from Yur Billevich a light sabre,
+hung it bravely at her side, and in a cap, placed jauntily on her head,
+brought up the squadron like some captain. The march amused her, the
+sabres glittering in the sun, and the fires disposed around at night.
+Young officers and soldiers were greatly pleased with the lady, and she
+shot her eyes around in every direction on the march; she let her
+tresses fall so as to braid them three times daily over the banks of
+bright brooks, which for her took the place of a mirror. She said often
+that she wished to see a battle, so as to give an example of bravery;
+but in very truth she did not want a battle at all. She wanted only to
+subdue the hearts of all the young warriors; in fact, she did subdue an
+unreckoned number of them.
+
+Olenka too revived again, as it were, after leaving Taurogi. There the
+uncertainty of her future and continual fear were killing her; now in
+the depths of the forest she felt safer. The wholesome air brought back
+her strength. The sight of soldiers, of weapons, the movement and
+bustle of camp life, acted like balsam on her wearied soul. And the
+march of troops acted agreeably on her also; possible dangers did not
+alarm her in the least, for knightly blood was in her veins. Appearing
+less frequently before the soldiers, not permitting herself to gallop
+on a pony in front of the ranks, she attracted fewer glances, but
+general respect surrounded her. The mustached faces of the soldiers
+were laughing at sight of Anusia; heads were uncovered when Olenka drew
+near the fires. That was changed later to homage. But it did not pass
+without this,--that some heart beat for her in a youthful breast; but
+eyes did not dare to gaze at her so directly as at that brunette of the
+Ukraine.
+
+They advanced through forests and thickets, often sending scouts ahead;
+and only on the seventh day did they arrive late at night in Lyubich,
+which, lying on the border of the Lauda region, formed as it were the
+entrance to it. The horses were so tired that in spite of Olenka's
+opposition it was impossible to go farther; Billevich therefore
+forebade the lady to find fault, and disposed his party for the halt.
+He himself with the young ladies occupied the house, for the night was
+foggy and very cold. By a marvellous chance the house had not been
+burned. The enemy had spared it probably through the command of Prince
+Yanush Radzivill, because it was Kmita's; and though the prince learned
+later of Pan Andrei's secession, he forgot or had not time to give a
+new order. The insurgents considered the estate as belonging to the
+Billeviches; the ravagers did not dare to plunder near Lauda. Therefore
+nothing had changed in it. Olenka went under that roof with a terrible
+feeling of bitterness and pain. She knew every corner there, but almost
+with each one was bound up some memory of Kmita's betrayal. Before her
+is the dining-hall ornamented with the portraits of the Billeviches and
+with skulls of wild beasts of the forest; the skulls cracked with
+bullets are still on the nails; the portraits slashed with sabres are
+gazing from the walls, as if wishing to say, "Behold, O maiden! behold,
+our granddaughter! it was he who slashed with sacrilegious hand the
+pictures of our earthly forms, now resting long in their graves."
+
+Olenka felt that she could not close an eye in that branded house. It
+seemed to her that in the dark corners of the rooms were prowling
+around yet the ghosts of those terrible comrades breathing fire from
+their nostrils. And how quickly that man, so loved by her, had passed
+from violence to transgression, from transgression to crimes, from the
+slashing of portraits to profligacy, to the burning of Upita and
+Volmontovichi, to carrying her off from Vodokty; further to the service
+of Radzivill, to treason, crowned with the promise of raising his hand
+against the king, against the father of the whole Commonwealth!
+
+The night went on swiftly, but sleep did not seize the lids of unhappy
+Olenka. All the wounds of her soul were reopened and began to burn
+painfully. Shame again was scorching her cheeks; her eyes dropped no
+tears in that time, but immeasurable grief surrounded her heart,
+because it could not find place within that poor heart. Grief for what?
+For what might have been had he been other,--if with his bad habits,
+wildness, and violence, he had even had an honest heart; if finally he
+had even a measure in his crimes, if there existed some boundary over
+which he was incapable of passing? And her heart would have forgiven so
+much.
+
+Anusia saw the suffering of her companion, and understood the cause;
+for the old sword-bearer had detailed the whole history to her
+previously. Since she had a kind heart, she came up to Panna Billevich,
+and throwing her arms around her neck, said,--
+
+"Olenka, you are writhing from pain in this house."
+
+Olenka at first did not wish to speak; then her whole body trembled
+like an aspen leaf, and at last a terrible, despairing cry burst from
+her bosom. Seizing Anusia's hand convulsively, she rested her bright
+head on that maiden's shoulder; sobbing now tore her as a whirlwind
+tears a thicket.
+
+Anusia had to wait long before it passed; at last she whispered when
+Olenka was pacified somewhat, "Let us pray for him."
+
+Olenka covered her eyes with both hands. "I--cannot," said she, with an
+effort.
+
+After a while, gathering back feverishly the hair which had fallen on
+her forehead, she began to speak with a gasping voice,--
+
+"You see--I cannot-- You are happy; your Babinich is honorable, famous,
+before God and the country. You are happy; I am not free even to
+pray-- Here, everywhere, is the blood of people, and here are burned
+ruins. If at least he had not betrayed the country, if he had not
+undertaken to sell the king! I had forgiven everything before, in
+Kyedani; for I thought--for I loved him with my whole heart. But now I
+cannot--O merciful God! I cannot! I could wish not to live myself, and
+that he were not living."
+
+"It is permitted to pray for every soul," said Anusia; "for God is more
+merciful than men, and knows reasons which often men do not know."
+
+When she had said this, Anusia knelt down to pray, and Olenka threw
+herself on the floor in the form of a cross, and lay thus till
+daybreak.
+
+Next morning the news thundered through the neighborhood that Pan
+Billevich was in Lauda. At that news all who were living came forth
+with greeting. Therefore out of the neighboring forests issued decrepit
+old men, and women with small children. For two years no one had sowed
+any seed, no one had ploughed any land. The villages were partly burned
+and were deserted. The people lived in the forests. Men in the vigor of
+life had gone with Volodyovski or to various parties; only youths
+watched and guarded the remnant of cattle, and guarded well, but under
+cover of the wilderness.
+
+They greeted the sword-bearer then as a savior, with a great cry of
+joy; for to those simple people it seemed that if the sword-bearer had
+come and the "lady" was returning to the ancient nest, then there must
+be an end to war and disasters. In fact, they began at once to return
+to the villages, and to drive out the half-wild cattle from the deepest
+forest inclosures.
+
+The Swedes, it is true, were not far away, defended by intrenchments in
+Ponyevyej; but in presence of Billevich's forces and other neighboring
+parties which might be summoned in case of need, less attention was
+paid to them.
+
+Pan Tomash even intended to attack Ponyevyej, so as to clear out the
+whole district; but he was waiting for more men to rally to his banner,
+and waiting especially till guns were brought to his infantry. These
+guns the Domasheviches had secreted in considerable number in the
+forest; meanwhile he examined the neighborhood, passing from village to
+village.
+
+But that was a gloomy review at Vodokty. The mansion was burned, and
+half the village; Mitruny in like manner; Volmontovichi of the Butryms,
+which Kmita had burned in his time, and which had been rebuilt after
+the fire, by a marvellous chance was untouched; but Drojeykani and
+Mozgi of the Domasheviches was burned to the ground; Patsuneli was half
+consumed, and Morezi altogether. Goshchuni experienced the harshest
+fate; for half the people were cut to pieces, and all the men to boys
+of a few years had their hands cut off by command of Colonel Rossa.
+
+So terribly had war trampled those neighborhoods! such were the results
+of the treason of Yanush Radzivill!
+
+But before Billevich had finished his review and stationed his
+infantry, fresh tidings came, at once joyful and terrible, which rang
+with thousand-fold echo from cottage to cottage.
+
+Yurek Billevich, who had gone with a few tens of horses on a
+reconnoissance to Ponyevyej and had seized some Swedes, was the first
+to learn of the battle at Prostki. Then every report brought more
+details, so wondrous that they resembled a fable.
+
+Pan Gosyevski, it was said, had routed Count Waldeck, Israel, and
+Prince Boguslav. The army was cut to pieces, the leaders in captivity.
+All Prussia was blazing in one conflagration.
+
+A few weeks later the mouths of men began to repeat one terrible
+name,--the name of Babinich.
+
+Babinich, said they, was the main cause of the victory at Prostki.
+Babinich cut down with his own hand and captured Prince Boguslav. The
+next news was: "Babinich is burning Electoral Prussia, is advancing
+like death toward Jmud, slaying, leaving behind only earth and sky."
+
+Then came the end: "Babinich has burned Taurogi. Sakovich has fled
+before him, and is hiding in forests." The last event had happened too
+near to remain long in doubt. In fact, the news was verified perfectly.
+
+Anusia during the whole time that news was arriving lived as if dazed;
+she laughed and wept in turn, stamped her feet when no one believed,
+and repeated to every one, whether that one would listen or not,--
+
+"I know Pan Babinich. He brought me from Zamost to Pan Sapyeha. He is
+the greatest warrior in the world. I do not know whether Pan
+Charnyetski is his equal. He is the man who serving under Sapyeha
+crushed Boguslav utterly in the first campaign. He--I am sure that it
+is no other--conquered him at Prostki. Yes, he can finish Sakovich and
+ten like Sakovich; and he will sweep out the Swedes in a month from all
+Jmud."
+
+In fact, her assurances began to be justified speedily. There was not
+the least doubt that the terrible warrior called Babinich had moved
+forward from Taurogi toward the northern country.
+
+At Koltyni he defeated Colonel Baldon and cut his troops to pieces; at
+Varni he scattered the Swedish infantry, which retreated before him at
+Telshi; at Telshi he won a greater victory over two colonels, Norman
+and Hudenskioeld, in which the latter fell, and Norman with the
+survivors did not halt till he reached Zagori, on the very boundary of
+Jmud.
+
+From Telshi Babinich marched to Kurshani, driving before him smaller
+divisions of Swedes, who took refuge in haste with the more important
+garrisons.
+
+From Taurogi and Polangi to Birji and Vilkomir the name of the victor
+was ringing. They told of the cruelties which he permitted himself
+against the Swedes. It was said that his forces, composed at first of a
+small chambul of Tartars and little squads of volunteers, increased day
+after day; for all who were living rushed to him, all parties joined
+him, but he bound them in bonds of iron and led them against the enemy.
+
+Minds were so far occupied by his victories that tidings of the defeat
+which Pan Gosyevski had sustained from Steinbock at Filipovo passed
+almost without an echo. Babinich was nearer, and with Babinich they
+were more occupied.
+
+Anusia implored Billevich daily to advance and join the great warrior.
+Olenka supported her; all the officers and nobles urged, excited by
+curiosity alone.
+
+But to join the warrior was not easy. First, Babinich was in another
+district; second, he often disappeared, and was not heard of for weeks,
+and then appeared again with news of a new victory; third, all the
+Swedish soldiers and garrisons, protecting themselves from him, had
+stopped the road with large forces; finally, beyond Rossyeni a
+considerable body of troops had appeared under Sakovich, of whom
+tidings were brought saying that he was destroying everything before
+him, and torturing people terribly while questioning them concerning
+Billevich's party.
+
+The sword-bearer not only could not march to Babinich, but he feared
+that it would soon be too narrow for him near Lauda. Not knowing
+himself what to begin, he confided to Yurek Billevich that he intended
+to withdraw to the forest of Rogovsk on the east. Yurek immediately
+gave this information to Anusia, and she went straight to the
+sword-bearer.
+
+"Dearest uncle," said she, for she always called him uncle when she
+wanted to gain something from him, "I hear that we have to flee. Is it
+not a shame for so celebrated a warrior to flee at the mere report of
+an enemy?"
+
+"Your ladyship must thrust your three coppers into everything," said
+the anxious sword-bearer. "This is not your affair."
+
+"Very well, then, retreat, but I will stay here."
+
+"So that Sakovich will catch you,--you'll see!"
+
+"Sakovich will not catch me, for Pan Babinich will defend me."
+
+"Especially when he knows where you are. I have said already that we
+are unable to go to him."
+
+"But he can come to us. I am his acquaintance; if I could only send a
+letter to him, I am certain he would come here, after he had beaten
+Sakovich. He loved me a little, and he would come to rescue me."
+
+"But who will undertake to carry a letter?"
+
+"It can be sent through the first peasant that comes."
+
+"It will do no harm, it will do no harm; in no case will it do harm.
+Olenka has quick wit, but neither are you without it. Even if we had to
+retreat to the woods this moment before superior force, it would still
+be well to have Babinich come to these parts, for we can then join him
+more easily. Try! Messengers will be found, and trusty men."
+
+The delighted Anusia began to try so well that that same day she found
+two messengers,--and not peasants; for one was Yurek Billevich, the
+other Braun. Each was to take a letter of the same contents as that
+which the other carried, so that if one failed the other might deliver
+the missive to Babinich. With the letter itself Anusia had more
+trouble; but at last she wrote it in the following words:--
+
+
+"In the last extremity I write to you. If you remember me, though I
+doubt if you do, come to rescue me. By the kindness which you showed me
+on the road from Zamost, I dare to hope that you will not leave me in
+misfortune. I am in the party of Pan Billevich, the sword-bearer of
+Rossyeni, who gave me refuge because I brought his relative, Panna
+Billevich, out of captivity in Taurogi. And him and us both the enemy,
+namely, the Swedes, have surrounded on every side, and a certain Pan
+Sakovich, before whose sinful importunities I had to flee and seek
+safety in the camp. I know that you did not love me, though God sees
+that I did you no harm. I wished you well, and I shall wish you well
+from my whole heart. But though you do not love, rescue a poor orphan
+from the savage hand of the enemy. God will reward you for it a hundred
+fold, and I will pray for you, whom to-day I call only my good
+protector, but hereafter my savior."
+
+
+When the messengers were leaving the camp, Anusia, considering to what
+dangers they were exposed, was alarmed, and at last wished to stop
+them. Even with tears in her eyes she began to implore the sword-bearer
+not to permit them to go; for peasants might carry the letters, and it
+would be easier for the peasants to deliver them.
+
+But Braun and Yurek Billevich were so stubborn that no remonstrance
+could avail. One wished to surpass the other in readiness to serve, but
+neither foresaw what was awaiting him. A week later Braun fell into the
+hands of Sakovich, who gave command to flay him; but poor Yurek was
+shot beyond Ponyevyej while fleeing before a Swedish party.
+
+Both letters fell into the hands of the enemy.
+
+
+
+
+                             CHAPTER LIII.
+
+
+Sakovich, after he had seized and flayed Braun, arranged at once a
+joint attack on the Billevich party with Hamilton, the commandant of
+Ponyevyej, an Englishman in the Swedish service.
+
+Babinich had just disappeared somewhere in the forest, and for a number
+of days no report of him had come. But Sakovich would not have regarded
+him, even had he been in the neighborhood. He had, it is true, in spite
+of all his daring, a certain instinctive dread of Babinich; but this
+time he was ready to perish himself, if he could accomplish his
+vengeance. From the time of Anusia's flight rage had not ceased for a
+moment to tear his soul. Deceived calculations, and wounded love
+especially, brought him to frenzy; and besides the heart was suffering
+in him. At first he wished to marry Anusia only for the property willed
+her by her first betrothed, Pan Podbipienta; but later he fell in love
+with her blindly, and to the death, as only such a man can fall in
+love. And it went so far that he who feared no one on earth save
+Boguslav, he before whose glance alone people grew pale, gazed like a
+dog into the eyes of that maiden, yielded to her, endured her caprices,
+carried out all her wishes, strove to divine her thoughts.
+
+She used and abused her influence, deluding him with words, with a
+look; used him as a slave, and finally betrayed him.
+
+Sakovich was of those men who consider that only as good and virtuous
+which is good for them, and as evil and criminal that which brings them
+harm. In his eyes, therefore, Anusia had committed the most terrible
+crime, and there was no punishment sufficiently great for her. If the
+mishap had met another, the starosta would have laughed and jeered at
+the man; but when it touched his own person, he roared as a wounded
+wild beast, and thought only of vengeance. He wished to get the guilty
+woman into his hands, dead or alive. He would have preferred her alive,
+for then he could exercise a cavalier's vengeance before her death; but
+if the maiden had to fall in time of attack, he cared little, if only
+she did not come into possession of another.
+
+Wishing to act with certainty, he sent a bribed man to the sword-bearer
+with a letter as if from Babinich, in which he announced, in the name
+of the latter, that he would be in Volmontovichi in the course of a
+week.
+
+Billevich believed easily, trusting therefore in the invincible power
+of Babinich; and he made no secret of the arrangement. He not only took
+up his headquarters for good in Volmontovichi, but by the announcement
+of the news he attracted almost all the population of Lauda. What
+remained of it assembled from the forests,--first, because the end of
+autumn had come, and there were heavy frosts; and second, through pure
+curiosity alone to see the great warrior.
+
+Meanwhile, from the direction of Ponyevyej marched toward Volmontovichi
+Hamilton's Swedes, and from the direction of Kyedani was stealing
+forward in wolf-fashion Sakovich.
+
+But Sakovich had no suspicion that on his tracks was advancing in
+wolf-fashion also a third man, who without invitation had the habit of
+coming where people expected him least.
+
+Kmita knew not that Olenka was with the Billevich party. In Taurogi,
+which he ruined with fire and sword, he learned that she had gone with
+Anusia; but he supposed that they had gone to Byalovyej, where Pan
+Yan's wife was in hiding as well as many other noble women. He might
+the more easily suppose this, since he knew that Billevich had long
+intended to take his niece to those impassable forests.
+
+It tortured Pan Andrei immensely that he had not found her in Taurogi,
+but at the same time he was glad that she had escaped from the hands of
+Sakovich, and would find safe refuge till the end of the war. Not being
+able to go for her at once to the wilderness, he determined to attack
+and destroy the enemy in Jmud, until he had crushed them completely.
+And fortune went with him. For a month and a half victory followed
+victory; armed men rushed to him in such numbers that soon his chambul
+was barely one fourth of his force. Finally, he drove the enemy out of
+all western Jmud; but hearing of Sakovich, and having old scores to
+settle with the starosta, he set out for his own former district, and
+followed him. In this way both were now drawing near Volmontovichi.
+
+Billevich, who at first had taken a position not far from the village,
+had been living there a week, and the thought did not even come to his
+head that he would soon have such terrible guests. One evening the
+youthful Butryms, herding horses beyond Volmontovichi, informed him
+that troops had issued from the forest, and were advancing from the
+south. Billevich was too old and experienced a soldier not to take
+precautions. Some of his infantry, partly furnished with fire-arms by
+the Domasheviches, he placed in the houses recently rebuilt, and some
+he stationed at the gate; with the cavalry he took possession himself
+of a broad pasture somewhat in the rear, beyond the fences, and which
+touched with one side the river. He did this mainly to gain the praise
+of Babinich, who must understand skilful dispositions; the place he had
+chosen was really a strong one.
+
+After Kmita had burned Volmontovichi, in vengeance for the slaughter of
+his comrades, the village was rebuilt by degrees; but as later on the
+Swedish war had stopped work on it, a multitude of beams, planks, and
+boards were lying on the principal street. Whole piles of them rose up
+near the gate; and infantry, even slightly trained, might make a
+protracted defence from behind them.
+
+In every case the infantry protected the cavalry from the first onset.
+Billevich was so eager to exhibit his military skill to Babinich, that
+he sent forward a small party to reconnoitre.
+
+What was his amazement, and at the first moment alarm, when from a
+distance and beyond the grove there came to him the sound of musketry;
+then his party appeared on the road, but coming at a gallop, with a
+crowd of enemies at its shoulders.
+
+The sword-bearer sprang at once to the infantry to give final orders;
+but from the grove rushed forth dense groups of the enemy, and advanced
+locust-like toward Volmontovichi, with arms glittering in the setting
+sun.
+
+The grove was near. When they had approached somewhat, the cavalry
+pushed forward at once on a gallop, wishing to pass the gate at a blow;
+but the sudden fire of the infantry stopped them on the spot. The first
+ranks fell back, and even in considerable disorder; only a few brought
+their horses' breasts to the defences.
+
+The sword-bearer recovered meanwhile, and galloping to the cavalry
+ordered all who had pistols or guns to advance to the aid of the
+infantry.
+
+Evidently the enemy were equally provided with muskets; for after the
+first onset they began a very violent, though irregular fire.
+
+From both sides it thundered now more quickly, now more slowly; the
+balls whistling came up to the cavalry, struck on the houses, fence,
+piles of timber; the smoke rose over Volmontovichi, the smell of powder
+filled the street.
+
+Anusia had what she wanted,--a battle. Both ladies mounted ponies at
+the first moment, by command of Billevich, so that at a given signal
+they might retreat with the party should the enemy's forces turn out
+too great. They were stationed therefore in the rear ranks of the
+cavalry.
+
+But though Anusia had a small sabre at her side and a lynx-skin cap on
+her head, her soul fled at once into her arms. She who knew so well how
+to take counsel in peace with officers, had not one pinch of energy
+when she had to stand eye to eye with the sons of Bellona in the field.
+The whistle and knocking of balls terrified her; the uproar, the racing
+of orderlies, the rattle of muskets, and the groans of the wounded took
+away her presence of mind, and the smell of powder stopped the breath
+in her breast. She grew faint and weak, her face became pale as a
+kerchief, and she squirmed and whimpered like a little child, till
+young Pan Olesha from Kyemnar had to hold her by the arms. He held her
+firmly, more firmly than was needed; and he was ready to hold her in
+that way to the end of the world.
+
+The soldiers around her began to laugh. "A knight in petticoats!"
+called voices. "Better set hens and pluck feathers!" Others cried: "Pan
+Olesha, that shield has come to your arm; but Cupid will shoot you all
+the more easily through it!" And good-humor seized the soldiers.
+
+But others preferred to look at Olenka, who bore herself differently.
+At first, when bullets flew past at some distance she grew pale too,
+not being able to forbear inclining her head and closing her eyes; but
+later knightly blood began to act in her, then with face flushed like a
+rose she reared her head and looked forward with fearless eye. Her
+distended nostrils drew in as it were with pleasure the smell of
+powder. Since the smoke grew thicker and thicker at the gate and
+decreased the view greatly, the daring lady, seeing that the officers
+were advancing, went with them, to follow more accurately the course of
+battle, not even thinking of what she was doing.
+
+In the throng of cavalry there rose a murmur of praise.
+
+"Oh, that is blood! that is the wife for a soldier; she is the right
+kind of volunteer!"
+
+"Vivat Panna Billevich!"
+
+"Let us hasten, gracious gentlemen, for it is worth while before such
+eyes."
+
+"The Amazons did not meet muskets better!" cried one of the younger
+men, forgetting in his enthusiasm that the Amazons lived before the
+invention of powder.
+
+"It is time to finish. The infantry have borne themselves well, and the
+enemy are seriously shattered!"
+
+In fact, the enemy could do nothing with their cavalry. Every moment
+they urged on their horses, attacked the gate, but after a salvo drew
+back in disorder. And as a wave which has fallen upon the flat shore
+leaves behind mussels, stones, and dead fish, so after each attack a
+number of bodies of horses and men were left on the road before the
+gate.
+
+At last the onsets ceased. Only volunteers came up, firing in the
+direction of the village with pistols and guns rather thickly, so as to
+occupy the attention of Billevich's men. But the sword-bearer, coming
+out along the gutter of the house, saw a movement in the rear ranks of
+the enemy toward the fields and thickets extending along the left side
+of Volmontovichi.
+
+"They will try from that side!" cried he; and sent immediately a part
+of the cavalry between the houses so as to give resistance to the enemy
+from the gardens.
+
+In half an hour a new battle was begun on the left wing of the party
+and also with fire-arms. The fenced gardens rendered difficult a
+hand-to-hand struggle, and equally difficult for both sides.
+
+The enemy, however, being extended over a longer line, were less
+exposed to bullets.
+
+The battle was becoming more stubborn and more active, and the enemy
+did not cease to attack the gate.
+
+Billevich was growing uneasy. On the right flank he had a field behind
+him still free, ending with a stream not very wide, but deep and
+swampy, through which a passage, especially if in haste, might be
+difficult. In one place only was there a trodden road to a flat shore
+along which villagers drove cattle to the forest.
+
+The sword-bearer began to look around oftener toward that side. All at
+once among willows which could be seen through, for they had lost their
+leaves, he saw in the evening light glittering weapons and a dark cloud
+of soldiers.
+
+"Babinich is coming!" thought he.
+
+But at that moment Pan Hjanstovski, who led the cavalry, rushed up to
+him.
+
+"Swedish infantry are visible from the river!" cried he, in terror.
+
+"Some treason!" cried Pan Tomash. "By Christ's wounds, gallop with your
+cavalry against that infantry; otherwise it will attack us on the
+flank."
+
+"There is a great force!" answered Hjanstovski.
+
+"Oppose it even for an hour, and we will escape in the rear to the
+forests."
+
+The officer galloped away, and was soon rushing over the field at the
+head of two hundred men; seeing which the enemy's infantry began to
+form in the willows to receive the Poles. The squadron urged the
+horses, and in the willow-bushes a musketry fire was soon rattling.
+
+Billevich had doubts, not only of victory, but of saving his own
+infantry. He might withdraw to the rear with a part of the cavalry with
+the ladies, and seek safety in the forest; but such a withdrawal would
+be a great defeat, for it meant leaving to the enemy's sword most of
+the party and the remnant of the population of Lauda, which had
+collected in Volmontovichi to see Billevich. Volmontovichi itself would
+be levelled to the ground. There remained still the lone hope that
+Hjanstovski would break the infantry. Meanwhile it was growing dark in
+the sky; but in the village the light increased every moment, for the
+chips, splinters, and shavings, lying in a heap at the first house near
+the gate, had caught fire. The house itself caught fire from them, and
+a red conflagration was rising.
+
+By the light of the burning Billevich saw Hjanstovski's cavalry
+returning in disorder and panic; after it the Swedish infantry were
+rushing from the willows, advancing to the attack on a run.
+
+He understood then that he must retreat by the only road open. He
+rushed to the rest of the cavalry, waved his sword and cried,--
+
+"To the rear, gentlemen, and in order, in order!"
+
+Suddenly shots were heard in the rear also, mingled with shouts of
+soldiery.
+
+Billevich saw then that he was surrounded, that he had fallen as it
+were into a trap from which there was neither issue nor rescue. It
+remained for him only to perish with honor; therefore he sprang out
+before the line of cavalry, and cried,--
+
+"Let us fall one upon the other! Let us not spare our blood for the
+faith and the country!"
+
+Meanwhile the fire of the infantry defending the gate and the left side
+of the village had grown weak, and the increasing shout of the enemy
+announced their near victory.
+
+But what mean those hoarse trumpet sounds in the ranks of Sakovich's
+party, and the rattle of drums in the ranks of the Swedes?
+
+Outcries shriller and shriller are heard, in some way wonderful,
+confused, as if not triumph but terror rings through them.
+
+The fire at the gate stops in a moment, as if some one had cut it off
+with a knife. Groups of Sakovich's cavalry are flying at break-neck
+speed from the left flank to the main road. On the right flank the
+infantry halt, and then, instead of advancing, begin to withdraw to the
+willows. "What is this?" cried Billevich.
+
+Meanwhile the answer comes from that grove out of which Sakovich had
+issued; and now emerge from it men, horses, squadrons, horsetail
+standards, sabres, and march--no, they fly like a storm, and not like a
+storm,--like a tempest! In the bloody gleams of the fire they are as
+visible as a thing on the hand. They are hastening in thousands! The
+earth seems to flee from beneath them, and they speed on in dense
+column; one would say that some monster had issued from the oak-grove,
+and is sweeping across the fields to the village to swallow it. The air
+flies before them, driven by the impetus; with them go terror and ruin.
+They are almost there! Now the attack! Like a whirlwind they scatter
+Sakovich's men.
+
+"O God! O great God!" cries Billevich, in bewilderment; "these are
+ours! That must be Babinich!"
+
+"Babinich!" roared every throat after him.
+
+"Babinich! Babinich!" called terrified voices in Sakovich's party.
+
+And all the enemy's cavalry wheel to the right, to escape toward the
+infantry. The fence is broken with a sharp crash, under the pressure
+of horses' breasts. The pasture is filled with the fleeing; but the
+new-comers, on their shoulders already, cut, slash,--cut without
+resting, cut without pity. The whistling of sabres, cries, groans, are
+heard. Pursuers and pursued fall upon the infantry, overturn, break,
+and scatter them. At last the whole mass rolls on toward the river,
+disappears in the brush, clambers out on the opposite bank. Men are
+visible yet; the chasing continues, with cutting and cutting. They
+recede. Their sabres flash once again; then they vanish in bushes, in
+space, and in darkness.
+
+Billevich's infantry began to withdraw from the gate and the houses,
+which needed no further defence. The cavalry stood for a time in such
+wonder that deep silence reigned in the ranks; and only when the
+flaming house had fallen with a crash was some voice heard on a
+sudden,--
+
+"In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, the storm has gone
+by!"
+
+"Not a foot will come out alive from that hunt!" said another voice.
+
+"Gracious gentlemen!" cried the sword-bearer, suddenly, "shall we not
+spring at those who came at us in the rear? They are retreating, but we
+will come up."
+
+"Kill, slay!" answered a chorus of voices.
+
+All the cavalry wheeled around and urged their horses after the last
+division of the enemy. In Volmontovichi remained only old men, women,
+children, and "the lady" with her friend.
+
+They quenched the fire in a twinkle; joy inconceivable seized all
+hearts. Women with weeping and sobbing raised their hands heavenward,
+and turning to the point where Babinich had rushed away, cried,--
+
+"God bless thee, invincible warrior! savior who rescued us, with our
+children and houses, from ruin!"
+
+The ancient, decrepit Butryms repeated in chorus,--
+
+"God bless thee, God guide thee! Without thee this would have been the
+end of Volmontovichi."
+
+Ah, had they known in that crowd that the very same hand that had now
+saved the village from fire and the people from steel had two years
+before brought fire and the sword to that Volmontovichi!
+
+After the fire was quenched, all began to collect in Billevich's
+wounded; the youths in a rage ran through the battle-field, and killed,
+with poles from wagon-racks, the wounded left by the Swedes and
+Sakovich's ravagers.
+
+Olenka took command of the nursing. Ever keeping her presence of mind,
+full of energy and power, she did not cease her labor till every
+wounded man was resting in a cottage, with dressed wounds. Then all the
+people followed her example in repeating at the cross a litany for the
+dead. Through the whole night no one closed an eye in Volmontovichi;
+all were waiting for the return of the sword-bearer and Babinich,
+hurrying around at the same time to prepare for the victors a fitting
+reception. Oxen and sheep, herded in the forests, went under the knife;
+and fires were roaring till morning.
+
+Anusia alone could take no part in anything; for at first fear deprived
+her of power, and later her joy was so great that it had the seeming of
+madness. Olenka had to care for her; she was laughing and weeping in
+turn, and again she threw herself in the arms of her friend, repeating
+without system or order,--
+
+"Well, what? Who saved Billevich and the party and all Volmontovichi?
+Before whom did Sakovich flee; who overwhelmed him, and the Swedes with
+him? Pan Babinich! Well, now! I knew he would come, for I wrote to him.
+But he did not forget! I knew, I knew he would come. It was I who
+brought him! Olenka, Olenka! I am happy. Have I not told you that no
+one could conquer him? Charnyetski is not his equal. O my God, my God!
+Is it true that he will return? Will it be to-day? If he was not going
+to return, he would not have come, is it not true? Do you hear, Olenka?
+Horses are neighing in the distance!"
+
+But in the distance nothing was neighing. Only toward morning a tramp
+was heard, shouting, singing, and Billevich came back. The cavalry on
+foaming horses filled the whole village. There was no end to the songs,
+to the shouts, to the stories.
+
+The sword-bearer, covered with blood, panting, but joyful, related till
+sunrise how he had broken a body of the enemy's cavalry, how he had
+followed them ten miles, and cut them almost to pieces.
+
+Billevich, as well as the troops and all the Lauda people, were
+convinced that Babinich might return at any moment. The forenoon came;
+then the sun went to the other half of the sky, and was descending; but
+Babinich came not.
+
+Anusia toward evening had sunburned spots on her face. "If he cared
+only for the Swedes, and not for me!" thought she, in her soul; "still,
+he got the letter, for he came to the rescue!"
+
+Poor woman! she knew not that the souls of Yurek Billevich and Braun
+were long since in the other world, and that Babinich had received no
+letter; for if he had received the letter he would have returned like a
+lightning-flash to Volmontovichi,--but not for thee, Anusia.
+
+Another day passed. Billevich did not lose hope yet, and did not leave
+the village. Anusia held stubborn silence.
+
+"He has belittled me terribly! But it is good for me, for my giddiness
+and my sins!" said she to herself.
+
+On the third day Billevich sent some men on a reconnoissance. They
+returned four days later with information that Babinich had taken
+Ponyevyej, and spared not a Swede. Then he marched on, it was unknown
+whither, for tidings of him had ceased.
+
+"I shall not find him till he comes up again," said Billevich.
+
+Anusia became a nettle; whoever of the nobles or younger officers
+touched her drew back quickly. But the fifth day she said to Olenka,--
+
+"Pan Volodyovski is just as good a soldier, but less rude."
+
+"And maybe," answered Olenka, meditatively, "maybe Pan Babinich has
+retained his constancy for that other woman, of whom he spoke to you on
+the road from Zamost."
+
+"Well, all one to me!" said Anusia.
+
+But she told not the truth; for it was not all one to her yet, by any
+means.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LIV.
+
+
+Sakovich's forces were cut up to such a degree that he was barely able
+himself to take refuge in the forests near Ponyevyej with four other
+men. Then he wandered through the forests disguised as a peasant for a
+whole month, not daring to put his head out into the open light.
+
+But Babinich rushed upon Ponyevyej, cut down the infantry posted there
+as a garrison, and pursued Hamilton, who was unable to flee to Livonia
+because of the considerable Polish forces assembled in Shavli, and
+farther on, near Birji, turned toward the east in hope of being able to
+break through to Vilkomir. He had doubts about saving his own regiment,
+but did not wish to fall into the hands of Babinich; for the report was
+spread everywhere that that stern warrior, not to burden himself, gave
+orders to slay every prisoner.
+
+The ill-fated Englishman therefore fled like a deer hunted by wolves,
+and Babinich hunted him all the more venomously. Hence he did not
+return to Volmontovichi, and he did not even inquire what party it was
+that he had saved.
+
+The first hoar-frosts had begun to cover the earth in the morning;
+escape became more difficult thereby, for the tracks of hoofs remained
+on the earth. In the forest there was no pasture, in the field the
+horses suffered stern hunger. The foreign cavalry did not dare to
+remain longer in villages, lest the stubborn enemy might reach them any
+moment.
+
+At last their misery surpassed all bounds; they lived only on leaves,
+bark, and those of their own horses which fell from fatigue. After a
+week they began to implore their colonel to turn, face Babinich, and
+give him battle, for they chose to die by the sword rather than by
+hunger. Hamilton yielded, and drew up for battle in Andronishki. The
+Swedish forces were inferior to that degree that the Englishman could
+not even think of victory, especially against such an opponent. But he
+was himself greatly wearied, and wanted to die. The battle, begun at
+Andronishki, ended near Trouepi, where fell the last of the Swedes.
+
+Hamilton died the death of a hero, defending himself at a cross by the
+roadside against a number of Tartars, who wished at first to take him
+alive, but infuriated by his resistance bore him apart on their sabres
+at last.
+
+But Babinich's squadrons were so wearied too that they had neither the
+strength nor the wish to advance even to the neighboring Trouepi; but
+wherever one of them stood during battle there it prepared at once for
+the night's rest, kindling fires in the midst of the enemy's corpses.
+After they had eaten, all fell asleep with the sleep of stones. Even
+the Tartars themselves deferred till next morning the plunder of
+corpses.
+
+Kmita, who was concerned mainly about the horses, did not oppose that
+rest. But next morning he rose rather early, so as to count his own
+loss after the stubborn conflict and divide the spoils justly.
+Immediately after eating he stood on the eminence, at that same cross
+under which Hamilton had died; the Polish and Tartar officers came to
+him in their turn, with the loss of their men notched on staffs, and
+made reports. He listened as a country proprietor listens in summer to
+his overseers, and rejoices in his heart at the plentiful harvest.
+
+Then Akbah Ulan came up, more like a fright than a human being, for his
+nose had been broken at Volmontovichi by the hilt of a sabre; he bowed,
+gave Kmita a bloody paper, and said,--
+
+"Effendi, some papers were found on the Swedish leader, which I give
+according to order."
+
+Kmita had indeed given a rigorous order that all papers discovered on
+corpses should be brought to him straightway after battle, for often he
+was able to learn from them the plans of the enemy, and act
+accordingly.
+
+But at this time he was not so urgent; therefore he nodded and put the
+paper in his bosom. But Akbah Ulan he sent to the chambul with the
+order to move at once to Trouepi, where they were to have a longer rest.
+
+The squadrons then passed before him, one after the other. In advance
+marched the chambul, which now did not number five hundred completely;
+the rest had been lost in continual battles; but each Tartar had so
+many Swedish riks thalers, Prussian thalers and ducats sewed up in his
+saddle, in his coat, and in his cap, that he was worth his own weight.
+They were in no wise like common Tartars, for whoso of them was weaker
+had perished from hardship; there remained only men beyond praise,
+broad-shouldered, of iron endurance, and venomous as hornets. Continual
+practice had so trained them that in hand-to-hand conflict they could
+meet even the regular cavalry of Poland; on the heavy cavalry or
+dragoons of Prussia, when equal in number, they rushed like wolves upon
+sheep. In battle they defended with terrible fierceness the bodies of
+their comrades, so as to divide afterward their booty. They passed now
+before Kmita with great animation, sounding their trumpets, blowing
+their pipes, and shaking their horse-tail standard; they went in such
+order that regular troops could not have marched better.
+
+Next came the dragoons, formed with great pains by Pan Andrei from
+volunteers of every description, armed with rapiers and muskets. They
+were led by the old sergeant, Soroka, now raised to the dignity of
+officer, and even to that of captain. The regiment, dressed in one
+fashion in captured uniforms taken from Prussian dragoons, was composed
+chiefly of men of low station; but Kmita loved specially that kind of
+people, for they obeyed blindly and endured every toil without uttering
+a murmur.
+
+In the two following squadrons of volunteers only smaller and higher
+nobles served. They were stormy spirits and restive, who under another
+leader would have been turned into a herd of robbers, but in Kmita's
+iron hands they had become like regular squadrons, and gladly called
+themselves "light horsemen." These were less steady under fire than the
+dragoons, but were more terrible in their first fury, and were more
+skilful in hand-to-hand conflict, for they knew every point of fencing.
+
+After these marched, finally, about a thousand fresh volunteers,--good
+men, but over whom it was needful to work yet to make them like regular
+troops.
+
+Each of these squadrons in passing raised a shout, saluting meanwhile
+Pan Andrei with their sabres. And he was more and more rejoiced. That
+was a considerable and not a poor force. He had accomplished much with
+it, had shed much of the enemy's blood, and God knows how much he might
+do yet. His former offences were great, but his recent services were
+not slight. He had risen from his fall, from his sin; and had gone to
+repent, not in the church, but in the field.--not in ashes, but in
+blood. He had defended the Most Holy Lady, the country, and the king;
+and now he felt that it was easier in his soul and more joyous. Nay,
+the heart of the young man swelled with pride, for not every one would
+have been able to make head as he had.
+
+For how many fiery nobles are there, how many cavaliers in that
+Commonwealth! and why does no one of them stand at the head of such
+forces,--not even Volodyovski, nor Pan Yan? Besides, who defended
+Chenstohova, who defended the king in the pass, who slashed down
+Boguslav, who first brought fire and sword into Electoral Prussia? And
+behold even now in Jmud there is hardly an enemy.
+
+Here Pan Andrei felt what the falcon feels, when, stretching his wings,
+he rises higher and higher. The passing squadrons greeted him with a
+thundering shout, and he raised his head and asked himself, "Whither
+shall I fly?" And his face flushed, for in that moment it seemed to him
+that within himself he bore a hetman. But that baton, if it comes to
+him, will come from the field, from wounds, from service, from praise.
+No traitor will flash it before his eyes as in his time Prince Yanush
+had done, but a thankful country will place it in his hand, with the
+will of the king. But it is not for him to think when it will come, but
+to fight, and to fight to-morrow as he fought yesterday!
+
+Here the excited imagination of the cavalier returned to reality.
+Whither should he march from Trouepi, in what new place strike the
+Swedes?
+
+Then he remembered the letter given him by Akbah Ulan and found on the
+body of Hamilton. He put his hand in his bosom, took it out and looked,
+and astonishment at once was reflected on his face; for on the letter
+was written plainly, in a woman's hand: "To his Grace Pan Babinich,
+Colonel of Tartar forces and volunteers."
+
+"For me!" said Pan Andrei.
+
+The seal was broken; therefore he opened the letter quickly, struck the
+paper with the back of his hand, and began to read. But he had not
+finished when his hands began to quiver, his face changed, and he
+cried,--
+
+"Praised be the name of the Lord! O merciful God, the reward comes to
+me from Thy hand!"
+
+Here he seized the foot of the cross with both hands, and began to beat
+his yellow hair against the wood. In another manner he was not able to
+thank God at that moment; he found no other words for prayer, because
+delight like a whirlwind had seized him and borne him far, far away to
+the sky.
+
+That letter was from Anusia. The Swedes had found it on the body of
+Yurek Billevich, and now it had come to Kmita's hands through a second
+corpse. Through Pan Andrei's head thousands of thoughts were flying
+with the speed of Tartar arrows.
+
+Therefore Olenka was not in the wilderness, but in Billevich's party;
+and he had just saved her, and with her that Volmontovichi which on a
+time he had sent up in smoke in avenging his comrades. Evidently the
+hand of God had directed his steps, so that with one blow he had made
+good all wrongs done Olenka and Lauda. Behold, his offences are washed
+away! Can she refuse now to forgive him, or can that grave brotherhood
+of Lauda? Can they refuse to bless him? And what will she say, that
+beloved maiden who holds him a traitor, when she learns that that
+Babinich who brought down Radzivill, who waded to his girdle in German
+and Swedish blood, who crushed the enemy out of Jmud, destroyed them,
+drove them to Prussia and Livonia, was he,--was Kmita; no longer,
+however, the disorderly, the outlaw, the traitor, but the defender of
+the faith, of the king, of the country?
+
+Immediately after he had crossed the boundary of Jmud, Pan Andrei
+wished to proclaim to the four sides of the world who that far-famed
+Babinich was; and if he did not do so, it was only because he feared
+that at the very sound of his real name all would turn from him, all
+would suspect him, would refuse him aid and confidence. Two years had
+barely passed, since bewildered by Radzivill he had cut down those
+squadrons which were not willing to rise with Radzivill against king
+and country. Barely two years before, he had been the right hand of the
+traitor.
+
+Now all was changed. Now, after so many victories, in such glory, he
+had a right to come to the maiden and say, "I am Kmita, but your
+savior." He had a right to shout to all Jmud, "I am Kmita, but thy
+savior!"
+
+Besides, Volmontovichi was not distant. Kmita had followed Hamilton a
+week; but Kmita would be at the feet of Olenka in less time than a
+week. Here Pan Andrei stood up, pale with emotion, with flaming eyes,
+with gleaming face, and cried to his attendant,--
+
+"My horse quickly! Be alive, be alive!" The attendant brought the black
+steed, and sprang down to hold the stirrup; but when he had reached the
+ground he said,--
+
+"Your grace, some strange men are approaching from Trouepi with Pan
+Soroka, and they are coming at a trot."
+
+"I do not care for them!" answered Pan Andrei.
+
+Now both horsemen approached to within some yards; then one of them
+with Soroka pushed forward on a gallop, arrived, and removing his
+panther-skin cap, uncovered a head red as fire.
+
+"I see that I am standing before Pan Babinich!" said he; "I am glad
+that I have found you."
+
+"With whom have I the honor to speak?" asked Kmita, impatiently.
+
+"I am Vyershul, once captain of the Tartar squadron with Prince Yeremi
+Vishnyevetski. I come to my native place to make levies for a new war;
+and besides I bring you a letter from the grand hetman, Sapyeha."
+
+"For a new war?" asked Kmita, frowning. "What do you say?"
+
+"This letter will explain better than I," replied Vyershul, giving the
+letter of the hetman. Kmita opened the letter feverishly. It read as
+follows:--
+
+
+My Very Dear Pan Babinich,--A new deluge is on the country. A league of
+Sweden with Rakotsy has been concluded, and a division of the
+Commonwealth agreed upon. Eighty thousand Hungarians, Transylvanians,
+Wallachians, and Cossacks may cross the southern boundary at any
+moment. And since in these last straits it is necessary for us to exert
+all our forces so as to leave even a glorious name after our people for
+coming ages, I send to your grace this order, according to which you
+are to turn straight to the south without losing a moment of time, and
+come to us by forced marches. You will find us in Brest, whence we will
+send you farther without delay. This time _periculum in mora_ (there is
+danger in delay). Prince Boguslav is freed from captivity; but Pan
+Gosyevski is to have an eye on Prussia and Jmud. Enjoining haste on you
+once more, I trust that love for the perishing country will be your
+best spur.
+
+
+When Kmita had finished reading, he dropped the letter to the earth,
+and began to pass his hands over his moistened face; at last he looked
+wanderingly on Vyershul, and inquired in a low, stifled voice,--
+
+"Why is Pan Gosyevski to remain in Jmud, and why must I go to the
+south?"
+
+Vyershul shrugged his shoulders: "Ask the hetman in Brest for his
+reason; I answer nothing."
+
+All at once terrible anger seized Pan Andrei by the throat. His eyes
+flashed, his face was blue, and he cried with a shrieking voice: "I
+will not go from here! Do you understand?"
+
+"Is that true?" asked Vyershul. "My office was to deliver the order;
+the rest is your affair. With the forehead, with the forehead! I wished
+to beg your company for a couple of hours, but after what I have heard
+I prefer to look for another."
+
+Then he wheeled his horse and rode off. Pan Andrei sat again under the
+cross, and began to look around on the sky, as if wishing to take note
+of the weather. The attendant drew back some distance with the horses,
+and stillness set in all around.
+
+The morning was clear, pale, half autumnal, half wintry. The wind was
+not blowing, but from the birch bushes growing at the foot of the
+crucifix the last leaves were dropping noiselessly, yellow and
+shrivelled from frost. Countless flocks of crows and jackdaws were
+flying over the forest; some were letting themselves down with mighty
+cawing right there near the crucifix, for the field and the road were
+covered with corpses of Swedes still unburied. Pan Andrei looked at
+those dark birds, blinking his eyes; you would say that he wanted to
+count them. Then he closed his lids and sat long without motion; at
+last he shuddered, frowned; presence of mind came back to his face, and
+he began to speak thus to himself,--
+
+"It cannot be otherwise! I will go in two weeks, but not now. Let
+happen what may. It was not I who brought Rakotsy. I cannot! What is
+too much is too much! Have I hammered and pounded but little, passed
+sleepless nights in the saddle, shed my own blood and that of other
+men? What reward for this? If I had not received the first letter, I
+should have gone; but both have come in one hour, as if for the greater
+pain, the greater sorrow. Let the world perish, I will not go! The
+country will not be lost in two weeks; and besides the anger of God is
+evidently on it, and it is not in the might of man to oppose that. O
+God! the Hyperboreans [Northern Russians], the Swedes, the Prussians,
+the Hungarians, the Transylvanians, the Wallachians, the Cossacks, and
+all of them at once! Who can resist? O Lord, in what has this
+unfortunate land offended, in what this pious king, that Thou hast
+turned from them Thy face, and givest neither mercy nor rescue, and
+sendest new lashes? Is the bloodshed yet too little, the tears too few?
+People here have forgotten to rejoice,--so the wind does not blow here,
+it groans; so the rains do not fall, they weep,--and Thou art lashing
+and lashing! Mercy, O Lord! Salvation, O Father! We have sinned, but
+still repentance has come. We have yielded our fortunes, we have
+mounted our horses, we are fighting and fighting. We have abandoned
+violence, we have abjured private ends. Why not pardon us? Why not
+comfort us?"
+
+Here conscience seized him by the hair suddenly, and shook him till he
+screamed; for at the same time it seemed to him that he heard some
+strange voice from the whole dome of heaven, saying,--
+
+"Have you abandoned private ends? But, unfortunate, what are you doing
+at this moment? You are exalting your services; and when the first
+moment of trial comes, you rise like a wild horse, and shout, 'I will
+not go!' The mother is perishing; new swords are piercing her breast,
+and you turn away from her. You do not wish to support her with your
+arm; you are running after your own fortune, and crying, 'I will not
+go!' She is stretching forth bleeding hands; she is just falling, just
+fainting, just dying, and with her last voice cries, 'Rescue me,
+children!' But you answer, 'I will not go!' Woe to you! Woe to such
+people, woe to the Commonwealth!"
+
+Here terror raised the hair on Pan Andrei's head, and his whole body
+began to tremble as if fever had seized it; and that moment he fell
+with his face to the earth, and began not to cry, but to scream in
+terror,--
+
+"O Jesus, do not punish! Jesus, have mercy! Thy will be done! I will
+go, I will go!"
+
+Then he lay some time without speaking, and sobbed; and when he rose at
+last, he had a face full of resignation and perfectly calm; and thus he
+prayed further,--
+
+"Wonder not, O Lord, that I grieve, for I was on the eve of my
+happiness; but let it be as Thou hast ordained. I understand now that
+Thou didst wish to try me, and therefore didst place me as it were on
+the parting of the roads. Let Thy will be done. Once more I will not
+look behind. To Thee, O Lord, I offer this my terrible sorrow, this my
+yearning, this my grievous suffering. Let it all be accounted to me in
+punishment because I spared Prince Boguslav, at which the country wept.
+Thou seest now, O Lord, that that was my last work for self-interest.
+There will be no other. O merciful Father! But now I will kiss once
+more this beloved earth; yes, I will press Thy bleeding feet again, and
+I go, O Christ! I go--"
+
+And he went.
+
+In the heavenly register in which are written the evil and good deeds
+of men, his sins were at that moment all blotted out, for he was
+completely corrected.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LV.
+
+
+It is written in no book how many battles the armies, the nobles, and
+the people of the Commonwealth fought with the enemy. They fought in
+forests, in fields, in villages, in hamlets, in towns; they fought in
+Prussia, in Mazovia, in Great Poland, in Little Poland, in Russia, in
+Lithuania, in Jmud; they fought without resting, in the day or the
+night.
+
+Every clod of earth was drenched in blood. The names of knights, their
+glorious deeds, their great devotion, perished from the memory; for the
+chronicler did not write them down, and the lute did not celebrate
+them. But under the force of these exertions the power of the enemy
+bent at last. And as when a lordly lion, pierced the moment before with
+missiles, rises suddenly, and shaking his kingly mane, roars mightily,
+pale terror pierces straightway the hunters, and their feet turn to
+flight; so that Commonwealth rose ever more terrible, filled with anger
+of Jove, ready to meet the whole world. Into the bones of the
+aggressors there entered weakness and fear; not of plunder were they
+thinking then, but of this only,--to bear away home from the jaws of
+the lion sound heads.
+
+New leagues, new legions of Hungarians, Transylvanians, Wallachians,
+and Cossacks were of no avail. The storm passed once more, it is true,
+between Brest, Warsaw, and Cracow; but it was broken against Polish
+breasts, and soon was scattered like empty vapor.
+
+The King of Sweden, being the first to despair of his cause, went home
+to the Danish war; the traitorous elector, humble before the strong,
+insolent to the weak, beat with his forehead before the Commonwealth,
+and fell upon the Swedes; the robber legions of Rakotsy's
+"slaughterers" fled with all power to their Transylvanian reed-fields,
+which Pan Lyubomirski ruined with fire and sword.
+
+But it was easier for them to break into the Commonwealth than to
+escape without punishment; therefore when they were attacked at the
+passage, the Counts of Transylvania, kneeling before Pototski,
+Lyubomirski, and Charnyetski, begged for mercy in the dust.
+
+"We will surrender our weapons, we will give millions!" cried they;
+"only let us go!"
+
+And receiving the ransom, the hetmans took pity on that army of
+unfortunate men; but the horde trampled them under hoofs at the very
+thresholds of their homes.
+
+Peace began to return gradually to the plains of Poland. The king was
+still taking Prussian fortresses; Charnyetski was to take the Polish
+sword to Denmark, for the Commonwealth did not wish to limit itself to
+driving out the enemy.
+
+Villages and towns were rebuilt on burned ruins; the people returned
+from the forests; ploughs appeared in the fields.
+
+In the autumn of 1657, immediately after the Hungarian war, it was
+quiet in the greater part of the provinces and districts; it was quiet
+especially in Jmud.
+
+Those of the Lauda men who in their time had gone with Volodyovski,
+were still somewhere far off in the field; but their return was
+expected.
+
+Meanwhile in Morezi, in Volmontovichi, in Drojeykani, Mozgi, Goshchuni,
+and Patsuneli, women, boys, and girls, with old men, were sowing the
+winter grain, building with joint efforts houses in those
+"neighborhoods" through which fire had passed, so that the warriors on
+their return might find at least roofs over their heads, and not be
+forced to die of hunger.
+
+Olenka had been living for some time at Vodokty, with Anusia and the
+sword-bearer. Pan Tomash did not hasten to his Billeviche,--first,
+because it was burned, and second, because it was pleasanter for him
+with the maidens than alone. Meanwhile, with the aid of Olenka, he
+managed Vodokty.
+
+The lady wished to manage Vodokty in the best manner, for it was to be
+with Mitruny her dowry for the cloister; in other words, it was to
+become the property of the Benedictine nuns, with whom on the very day
+of the coming New Year poor Olenka intended to begin her novitiate.
+
+For after she had considered everything that had met her,--those
+changes of fortune, disappointments, and sufferings,--she came to the
+conviction that thus, and not otherwise, must be the will of God. It
+seemed to her that some all-powerful hand was urging her to the cell,
+that some voice was saying to her,--
+
+"In that place is the best pacification, and the end of all earthly
+anxiety."
+
+She had determined therefore to follow that voice. Feeling, however, in
+the depth of her conscience that her soul had not been able yet to tear
+itself from the earth with completeness, she desired first to prepare
+it with ardent piety, with good works and labor. Frequently also in
+those efforts echoes from the world hindered her.
+
+For example, people began to buzz around that that famous Babinich was
+Kmita. Some contradicted excitedly; others repeated the statement with
+stubbornness.
+
+Olenka believed not. All Kmita's deeds, Kmita and his service with
+Yanush Radzivill, were too vividly present in her memory to let her
+suppose for one instant that he was the crusher of Boguslav, and such a
+trusty worker for the king, such an ardent patriot. Still her peace was
+disturbed, and sorrow with pain rose up afresh in her bosom.
+
+This might be remedied by a hurried entrance to the cloister; but the
+cloisters were scattered. The nuns who had not perished from the
+violence of soldiers during wartime were only beginning to assemble.
+
+Universal misery reigned in the land, and whoso wished to take refuge
+behind the walls of a convent had not only to bring bread for personal
+use, but also to feed the whole convent.
+
+Olenka wished to come with bread to the cloister,--to become not merely
+a sister, but a nourisher of nuns.
+
+The sword-bearer, knowing that his labor was to go to the glory of God,
+labored earnestly.
+
+He went around the fields and the buildings, carrying out the labors of
+the autumn which with the coming spring were to bear fruit. Sometimes
+he was accompanied by Anusia, who, unable to endure the affront which
+Babinich had put upon her, threatened also to enter the cloister, and
+said she was merely waiting for Volodyovski to bring back the Lauda
+men, for she wished to bid adieu to her old friend. But more frequently
+the sword-bearer went with Olenka only on these circuits, for land
+management was irksome to Anusia.
+
+A certain time both rode out on ponies to Mitruny, where they were
+rebuilding barns and cow-houses burned in time of war.
+
+On the road they were to visit the church; for that was the anniversary
+of the battle of Volmontovichi, in which they were saved from the last
+straits by the coming of Babinich. The whole day had passed for them in
+various occupations, so that only toward evening could they start from
+Mitruny. In going there they went by the church-road, but in returning
+they had to pass through Lyubich and Volmontovichi. Panna Aleksandra
+had barely looked at the first smoke of Lyubich when she turned aside
+her eyes and began to repeat prayers to drive away painful thoughts;
+but the sword-bearer rode on in silence, and only looked around. At
+last, when they had passed the gate, he said,--
+
+"That is land for a senator! Lyubich is worth two like Mitruny."
+
+Olenka continued to say her prayers.
+
+But in Pan Tomash was roused the old landlord by nature, and perhaps
+also he was given somewhat to lawsuits; for after a while he said
+again, as if to himself,--
+
+"And yet it is ours by right,--old Billevich property, our sweat, our
+toil. That unfortunate man must have perished long since, for he has
+not announced himself; and if he had, the right is with us." Here he
+turned to Olenka: "What do you think?"
+
+"That is a cursed place," answered she. "Let happen with it what may!"
+
+"But you see the right is with us. The place was cursed in bad hands,
+but it will be blessed in good ones. The right is with us."
+
+"Never! I do not wish to know anything of it. My grandfather willed it
+without restriction; let Kmita's relatives take it."
+
+Then she urged on the pony. Billevich put spurs also to his beast, and
+they did not slacken speed till they were in the open field. Meanwhile
+night had fallen; but there was perfect light, for an enormous red moon
+had risen from behind the forest of Volmontovichi and lighted up the
+whole region with a golden shining.
+
+"Well! God has given a beautiful night," said the sword-bearer, looking
+at the circle of the moon.
+
+"How Volmontovichi gleams from a distance!" said Olenka.
+
+"For the wood in the houses has not become black."
+
+Their further conversation was interrupted by the squeaking of a wagon,
+which they could not see at first, for the road was undulating; soon,
+however, they saw a pair of horses, and following behind them a pair at
+a pole, and at the end of the pole a wagon surrounded by a number of
+horsemen.
+
+"What kind of people can these be?" asked the sword-bearer; and he held
+in his horse. Olenka stopped at his side.
+
+"Halt!" cried Billevich. "Whom are you carrying there?"
+
+One of the horsemen turned to them and said,--
+
+"We are bringing Pan Kmita, who was shot by the Hungarians at
+Magyerovo."
+
+"The word has become flesh!" said Billevich.
+
+The whole world went around suddenly in Olenka's eyes; the heart died
+within her, breath failed her breast. Certain voices were calling in
+her soul: "Jesus! Mary! that is he!" Then consciousness of where she
+was or what was happening left her entirely.
+
+But she did not drop from the horse to the ground, for she seized
+convulsively with her hand the wagon-rack; and when she came to herself
+her eyes fell on the motionless form of a man lying in the wagon. True,
+that was he,--Pan Andrei Kmita, the banneret of Orsha; and he was lying
+on his back in the wagon. His head was bound in a cloth, but by the
+ruddy light of the moon his pale and calm face was perfectly visible.
+His eyes were deeply sunk and closed; life did not discover itself by
+the least movement.
+
+"With God!" said Billevich, removing his cap.
+
+"Stop!" cried Olenka. And she asked with a low but quick voice, as in a
+fever: "Is he alive or dead?"
+
+"He is alive, but death is over him."
+
+Here the sword-bearer, looking at Kmita's face, said: "You will not
+take him to Lyubich?"
+
+"He gave orders to take him to Lyubich without fail, for he wants to
+die there."
+
+"With God! hasten forward."
+
+"We beat with the forehead!"
+
+The wagon moved on; and Olenka with Billevich galloped in the opposite
+direction with what breath was in their horses. They flew through
+Volmontovichi like two night phantoms, and came to Vodokty without
+speaking a word on the road; only when dismounting, Olenka turned to
+her uncle,--
+
+"It is necessary to send a priest to him," said she, with a panting
+voice; "let some one go this moment to Upita."
+
+The sword-bearer went quickly to carry out her wish; she rushed into
+her room, and threw herself on her knees before the image of the Most
+Holy Lady.
+
+A couple of hours after, in the late evening, a bell was heard beyond
+the gate at Vodokty. That was the priest passing on his way with the
+Lord Jesus to Lyubich.
+
+Panna Aleksandra was on her knees continually. Her lips were repeating
+the litany for the dying. And when she had finished she struck the
+floor three times with her head, repeating: "Reckon to him, O God, that
+he dies at the hands of the enemy; forgive him, have mercy on him!"
+
+In this way the whole night passed for her. The priest remained in
+Lyubich till morning, and on his way home called at Vodokty. Olenka ran
+out to meet him.
+
+"Is it all over?" asked she; and could say no more, for breath failed
+her.
+
+"He is alive yet," answered the priest.
+
+During each of the following days a number of messengers flew from
+Vodokty to Lyubich, and each returned with the answer that the banneret
+was "alive yet." At last one brought the intelligence, which he had
+heard from the barber brought from Kyedani, that he was not only alive,
+but would recover; for the wounds were healing successfully, and
+strength was coming back to the knight.
+
+Panna Aleksandra sent bountiful offerings to Upita for a thanksgiving
+Mass; but from that day messengers ceased to visit Lyubich, and a
+wonderful thing took place in the maiden's heart. Together with peace,
+the former pity for Kmita began to rise. His offences came to her mind
+again every moment, so grievous that they were not to be forgiven.
+Death alone could cover them with oblivion. If he returned to health,
+they weighed on him anew. But still everything that could be brought to
+his defence Olenka repeated to herself daily.
+
+So much had she suffered in these days, so many conflicts were there in
+her soul, that she began to fail in health. This disturbed Pan Tomash
+greatly; hence on a certain evening when they were alone, he said,--
+
+"Olenka, tell me sincerely, what do you think of the banneret of
+Orsha?"
+
+"It is known to God that I do not wish to think of him."
+
+"For see, you have grown thin-- H'm! Maybe that you still-- I insist on
+nothing, but I should be glad to know what is going on in your mind. Do
+you not think that the will of your grandfather should be
+accomplished?"
+
+"Never!" answered Olenka. "My grandfather left me this door open, and I
+will knock at it on the New Year. Thus will his will be accomplished."
+
+"Neither do I believe at all," answered Billevich, "what some buzz
+around here,--that Babinich and Kmita are one; but still at Magyerovo
+he was with the country, fought against the enemy, and shed his blood.
+The reform is late, but still it is a reform."
+
+"Even Prince Boguslav is serving the king and the country now,"
+answered the lady, with sorrow. "Let God forgive both, and especially
+him who shed his blood; but people will always have the right to say
+that in the moment of greatest misfortune, in the moment of disaster
+and fall, he rose against the country, and returned to it only when the
+enemy's foot was tottering, and when his personal profit commanded him
+to hold to the victor. That is their sin! Now there are no traitors,
+for there is no profit from treason! But what is the merit? Is it not a
+new proof that such men are always ready to serve the stronger? Would
+to God it were otherwise, but Magyerovo cannot redeem such
+transgression."
+
+"It is true! I cannot deny it," answered Billevich. "It is a bitter
+truth, but still true. All the former traitors have gone over in a
+chambul to the king."
+
+"On the banneret of Orsha," continued the lady, "there rests a still
+more grievous reproach than on Boguslav, for Pan Kmita offered to raise
+his hand against the king, at which act the prince himself was
+terrified. Can a chance shot remove that? I would let this hand be cut
+off had that not happened; but it has, and it will never drop away. It
+seems clear that God has left him life of purpose for penance. My
+uncle, my uncle! we should be tempting our souls if we tried to beat
+into ourselves that he is innocent. And what good would come of this?
+Will conscience let itself be tempted? Let the will of God be done.
+What is broken cannot be bound again, and should not. I am happy that
+the banneret is alive, I confess; for it is evident that God has not
+yet turned from him His favor altogether. But that is sufficient for
+me. I shall be happy when I hear that he has effaced his fault; but I
+wish for nothing more, I desire nothing more, even if my soul had to
+suffer yet. May God assist him!"
+
+Olenka was not able to speak longer, for a great and pitiful weeping
+overpowered her; but that was her last weeping. She had told all that
+she carried in her heart, and from that time forth peace began to
+return to her anew.
+
+
+
+
+                              CHAPTER LVI.
+
+
+The horned, daring soul in truth was unwilling to go out of its bodily
+enclosure, and did not go out. In a month after his return to Lyubich
+Pan Andrei's wounds began to heal; but still earlier he regained
+consciousness, and looking around the room, he saw at once where he
+was. Then he called the faithful Soroka.
+
+"Soroka," said he, "the mercy of God is upon me. I feel that I shall
+not die."
+
+"According to order!" answered the old soldier, brushing away a tear
+with his fist.
+
+And Kmita continued as if to himself: "The penance is over,--I see that
+clearly. The mercy of God is upon me!"
+
+Then he was silent for a moment; only his lips were moving in prayer.
+
+"Soroka!" said he again, after a time.
+
+"At the service of your grace!"
+
+"Who are in Vodokty?"
+
+"The lady and the sword-bearer of Rossyeni."
+
+"Praised be the name of the Lord! Did any one come here to inquire
+about me?"
+
+"They sent from Vodokty until we told them that you would be well."
+
+"And did they stop then?"
+
+"Then they stopped."
+
+"They know nothing yet, but they shall know from me," said Kmita. "Did
+you tell no one that I fought as Babinich?"
+
+"There was no order," answered the soldier.
+
+"And the Lauda men with Pan Volodyovski have not come home yet?"
+
+"Not yet; but they may come any day."
+
+With this the conversation of the first day was at an end. Two weeks
+later Kmita had risen and was walking on crutches; the following week
+he insisted on going to church.
+
+"We will go to Upita," said he to Soroka; "for it is needful to begin
+with God, and after Mass we will go to Vodokty."
+
+Soroka did not dare to oppose; therefore he merely ordered straw to be
+placed in the wagon. Pan Andrei arrayed himself in holiday costume, and
+they drove away.
+
+They arrived at an hour when there were few people yet in the church.
+Pan Andrei, leaning on Soroka's arm, went to the high altar itself, and
+knelt in the collator's seat; his face was very thin, emaciated, and
+besides he wore a long beard which had grown during the war and his
+sickness. Whoever looked at him thought that he was some passing
+personage who had come in to Mass; for there was movement everywhere,
+the country was full of passing nobles who were going from the field to
+their own estates.
+
+The church filled slowly with people and with neighboring nobles; then
+owners of inherited land from a distance began to arrive, for in many
+places churches had been burned, and it was necessary to come to Mass
+as far as Upita.
+
+Kmita, sunk in prayer, saw no one. He was roused first from his pious
+meditation by the squeaking of footstools under the tread of persons
+entering the pew. Then he raised his head, looked, and saw right there
+above him the sweet, sad face of Olenka.
+
+She also saw him, and recognized him that moment; for she drew back
+suddenly, as if frightened. First a flush, and then a deathly pallor
+came out on her face; but with the greatest exercise of will she
+overcame her emotion, and knelt there near him; the third place was
+occupied by the sword-bearer.
+
+And Kmita and she bowed their heads, and rested their faces on their
+hands; they knelt there in silence side by side, and their hearts beat
+so that both heard them perfectly. At last Pan Andrei spoke,--
+
+"May Jesus Christ be praised!"
+
+"For the ages of ages," answered Olenka, in an undertone. And they said
+no more. Now the priest came out to preach. Kmita listened to him; but
+in spite of his efforts he could not distinguish the words, he could
+not understand the preacher. Here she is, the desired one, for whom he
+had yearned during years, who had not left his mind nor his heart; she
+was here now at his side. He felt her near; and he dared not turn his
+eyes to her, for he was in the church, but closing his lids, he caught
+her breathing with his ear.
+
+"Olenka! Olenka is near me!" said he to himself, "see, God has
+commanded us to meet in the church after absence." Then his thoughts
+and his heart repeated without ceasing: "Olenka, Olenka, Olenka!"
+
+And at moments a weeping joy caught him by the throat, and again he was
+carried away by such an enthusiasm of thankful prayer that he lost
+consciousness of what was happening to him.
+
+She knelt continually, with her face hidden in her hands.
+
+The priest had finished the sermon, and descended from the pulpit.
+
+All at once a clatter of arms was heard in front of the church, and a
+tramp of horses' hoofs. Some one cried before the threshold of the
+church, "Lauda returning!" and suddenly in the sanctuary itself were
+heard murmurs, then a bustle, then a still louder calling,--
+
+"Lauda! Lauda!"
+
+The crowd began to sway; all heads were turned at once toward the door.
+
+With that there was a throng in the door, and a body of armed men
+appeared in the church. At the head of them marched with a clatter of
+spurs Volodyovski and Zagloba. The crowd opened before them; they
+passed through the whole church, knelt before the altar, prayed a short
+time, and then entered the vestry.
+
+The Lauda men halted half-way, not greeting any one, out of respect for
+the place.
+
+Ah, what a sight! Grim faces, swarthy from winds, grown thin from toils
+of war, cut with sabres of Swedes, Germans, Hungarians, and
+Wallachians! The whole history of the war and the glory of God-fearing
+Lauda was written on them with swords. There were the gloomy Butryms,
+the Stakyans, the Domasheviches, the Gostsyeviches, a few of all; but
+hardly one fourth returned of those who on a time had left Lauda.
+
+Many women are seeking in vain for their husbands, many old men are
+searching in vain for their sons; therefore the weeping increases, for
+those too who find their own are weeping from joy. The whole church is
+filled with sobbing. From time to time some one cries out a beloved
+name, and is silent; and they stand in glory, leaning on their sabres,
+but over their deep scars tears too are falling on their mustaches.
+
+Now a bell, rung at the door of the vestry, quieted the weeping and the
+murmur. All knelt; the priest came to finish Mass, and after him
+Volodyovski and Zagloba.
+
+But the priest was so moved that when he turned to the people, saying,
+"_Dominus vobiscum!_" his voice trembled. When he came to the Gospel,
+and all the sabres were drawn at once from the scabbards, as a sign
+that Lauda was ever ready to defend the faith, and in the church it was
+bright from steel, the priest had barely strength to finish the Gospel.
+
+Then amid universal emotion the concluding prayer was sung, and Mass
+was ended; but the priest, when he had placed the sacrament in the
+tabernacle, turned, after the last Gospel, to the people, in sign that
+he wished to say something.
+
+There was silence, therefore, and the priest with cordial words greeted
+first the returning soldiers; then he gave notice that he would read a
+letter from the king, brought by the colonel of the Lauda squadron.
+
+The silence grew deeper, and after a while the voice from the altar was
+heard through the whole church,--
+
+
+"We, Yan Kazimir, King of Poland, Grand Duke of Lithuania, Mazovia,
+Prussia, etc., etc., etc. In the name of the Father, Son, and Holy
+Ghost, Amen!
+
+"Since wicked people must receive punishment in this temporal life for
+their crimes against king and country before they stand in presence of
+the heavenly tribunal, it is equally just that virtue receive a reward,
+which should add the lustre of glory to virtue itself, and give
+posterity the desire to follow its examples.
+
+"Therefore we make it known to the whole order of knighthood, namely,
+to men of arms and civilians having office, together with all the
+inhabitants of the Grand Principality of Lithuania and our Starostaship
+of Jmud, that whatever accusations have rested on Pan Andrei Kmita, the
+banneret of Orsha, who is greatly beloved by us, are to vanish from the
+memory of men, in view of the following services and merit, and are to
+detract in nowise from the honor and glory of the said banneret of
+Orsha."
+
+
+Here the priest ceased to read, and looked toward the bench on which
+Pan Andrei was sitting. Kmita rose for a moment, and sitting down
+again, rested his haggard head on the railing and closed his lids, as
+if in a faint.
+
+But all eyes were turned to him; all lips began to whisper,--
+
+"Pan Kmita! Kmita! There, near the Billeviches."
+
+But the priest beckoned, and began to read on amid deep silence,--
+
+
+"Which banneret of Orsha, though in the beginning of this unfortunate
+Swedish invasion he declared himself on the side of the prince voevoda,
+did it not from any selfishness, but from the purest good-will to the
+country, brought to this error by Prince Yanush Radzivill, who
+persuaded him that no road of safety remained to the Commonwealth save
+that which the prince himself took.
+
+"But when he visited Prince Boguslav, who, thinking him a traitor,
+discovered to him clearly all the hostile intrigues against the
+country, the said banneret of Orsha not only did not promise to raise
+his hand against our person, but with armed force carried away Prince
+Boguslav himself, so as to avenge us and the suffering country."
+
+
+"O God, be merciful to me, a sinner!" cried the voice of a woman right
+there near Pan Andrei; and in the church there broke out anew a murmur
+of amazement.
+
+The priest read on,--
+
+
+"He was shot by Boguslav, but had barely recovered when he went to
+Chenstohova, and there defended with his own breast that most sacred
+Retreat, giving an example of endurance and valor to all; there, in
+danger of his life and health, he blew up with powder the greatest
+siege-gun. Seized after that daring deed, he was condemned to death by
+cruel enemies, and tortured with living fire."
+
+
+With this the weeping of women was heard here and there through the
+church. Olenka was trembling as in a paroxysm of fever.
+
+
+"But rescued by the power of the Queen of the Angels from those
+terrible straits, he came to us in Silesia, and on our return to this
+dear country, when the treacherous enemy prepared an ambush for us, the
+said banneret of Orsha rushed himself, with his three attendants, on
+the whole power of the enemy, to save our person. There, cut down and
+thrust through with rapiers, swimming in his own blood, he was borne
+from the field as if lifeless--"
+
+
+Olenka placed both her hands on her temples, and raising her head,
+began to catch the air into her parted lips. From her bosom came out
+the groan,--
+
+"O God! O God! O God!"
+
+And again the voice of the priest sounded, also more and more moved:--
+
+
+"And when with our endeavors he returned to health, he did not rest,
+but continued the war, standing forth with immeasurable praise in every
+necessity, held up as a model to knighthood by the hetmans of both
+people, till the fortunate capture of Warsaw, after which he was sent
+to Prussia under the assumed name of Babinich--"
+
+
+When that name was heard in the church, the noise of the people changed
+as it were into the roar of a river.
+
+"Then he is Babinich? Then he is that crusher of the Swedes, the savior
+of Volmontovichi, the victor in so many battles,--that is Kmita?"
+
+The murmur increased still more; throngs began to push toward the altar
+to see him more closely.
+
+"God bless him! God bless him!" said hundreds of voices.
+
+The priest turned to the seat and blessed Pan Andrei, who, leaning
+continually against the railing, was more like a dead than a living
+man, for the soul had gone out of him with happiness and had risen
+toward the sky.
+
+The priest read on,--
+
+
+"He visited the enemy's country with fire and sword, was the main cause
+of the victory at Prostki; with his own hand he overthrew and captured
+Prince Boguslav. Called late to our starostaship of Jmud, what immense
+service he rendered there, how many towns and villages he saved from
+the hands of the enemy, must be known to the inhabitants of that
+starostaship better than to others."
+
+
+"It is known, it is known, it is known!" was thundered through the
+whole church.
+
+"Silence!" said the priest, raising the king's letter.
+
+
+"Therefore we, considering all his services to us and the country, so
+many that a son could not have done more for his father and his mother,
+have determined to publish them in this our letter, so that so great a
+cavalier, so great a defender of the faith, of king and Commonwealth,
+should no longer be pursued by the ill-will of men, but go clothed with
+the praise and universal love proper to the virtuous. Before then the
+next Diet, confirming these our wishes, shall remove from him every
+stain, and before we shall reward him with the starostaship of Upita,
+which is vacant, we ask earnestly of the inhabitants dear to us of our
+starostaship of Jmud to retain in their hearts and thoughts these our
+words, which justice itself, the foundation of States, has commanded us
+to put into their memory."
+
+
+Here the priest concluded, and turning to the altar began to pray; but
+Pan Andrei felt on a sudden that a soft hand was seizing his hand. He
+looked. It was Olenka; and before he had time to come to himself, to
+withdraw his hand, she had raised it and pressed it to her lips in
+presence of all, before the altar and the people.
+
+"Olenka!" cried the astonished Kmita.
+
+But she had arisen, and covering her face with a veil, said to old
+Billevich,--
+
+"Uncle, let us go, let us go from here quickly!"
+
+And they went out through the door of the vestry.
+
+Pan Andrei tried to rise to follow her, but he could not. His strength
+left him entirely.
+
+But a quarter of an hour later he was in front of the church, supported
+on one side by Pan Volodyovski, on the other by Zagloba.
+
+The throng of people, small nobles and common men, crowded around.
+Women, some barely able to tear away from the breast of a husband
+returned from the war, led by curiosity special to the sex, ran to look
+at that Kmita, once terrible, now the savior of Lauda and the coming
+starosta. The throng became greater every instant, till the Lauda men
+had at last to surround him and protect him from the crush.
+
+"Pan Andrei!" cried Zagloba, "see, we have brought you a present. You
+did not expect such a one. Now to Vodokty, to Vodokty, to the betrothal
+and the wedding!"
+
+Further words of Zagloba were lost in the thundering shout raised at
+once by the Lauda men, under the leadership of Yuzva Footless,--
+
+"Long life to Pan Kmita!"
+
+"Long life!" repeated the crowd. "Long life to our starosta of Upita!
+Long life!"
+
+"All to Vodokty!" roared Zagloba, again.
+
+"To Vodokty! to Vodokty!" shouted a thousand throats. "As best men to
+Vodokty with Pan Kmita, with our savior! To the lady! to Vodokty!"
+
+And an immense movement began. Lauda mounted its horses; every man
+living rushed to wagons, carts, ponies. People on foot began to run
+across field and forest. The shout "To Vodokty!" rang through the whole
+place. The roads were thronged with many-colored crowds.
+
+Kmita rode in his little wagon between Volodyovski and Zagloba, and
+time after time he embraced one or the other of them. He was not able
+to speak yet, he was too much excited; but they pushed on as if Tartars
+were attacking Upita. All the wagons and carts rushed in like manner
+around them.
+
+They were well outside the place, when Pan Michael suddenly bent to
+Kmita's ear. "Yendrek," asked he, "but do you not know where the other
+is?"
+
+"In Vodokty."
+
+Then, whether it was the wind or excitement that began to move the
+mustaches of Pan Michael, is unknown; it is enough that during the
+whole way they did not cease to thrust forward like two awls, or like
+the feelers of a Maybug.
+
+Zagloba was singing with delight in such a terrible bass voice that he
+frightened the horses,--
+
+
+           "There were two of us, Kasyenko, two in this world;
+            But methinks, somehow, that three are now riding."
+
+
+Anusia was not at church that Sunday, for she had in her turn to stay
+with the weakly Panna Kulvyets, with whom she and Olenka remained on
+alternate days.
+
+The whole morning she had been occupied with watching and taking care
+of the sick woman, so that it was late when she could go to her
+prayers. Barely had she said the last "Amen," when there was a
+thundering before the gate, and Olenka rushed into the room like a
+storm.
+
+"Jesus! Mary! What has happened?" screamed Anusia, looking at her.
+
+"Anusia, you do not know who Pan Babinich is? He is Pan Kmita!"
+
+Anusia sprang to her feet: "Who told you?"
+
+"The king's letter was read--Pan Volodyovski brought it--the Lauda
+men--"
+
+"Has Pan Volodyovski returned?" screamed Anusia; and she threw herself
+into Olenka's arms.
+
+Olenka took this outburst of feeling as a proof of Anusia's love for
+her; for she had become feverish, was almost unconscious. On her face
+were fiery spots, and her breast rose and fell as if from great pain.
+
+Then Olenka began to tell without order and in a broken voice
+everything which she had heard in the church, running at the same time
+through the room as if demented, repeating every moment, "I am not
+worthy of him!" reproaching herself terribly, saying that she had done
+him more injustice than all others, that she had not even been willing
+to pray for him, when he was swimming in his own blood in defence of
+the Holy Lady, the country, and the king.
+
+In vain did Anusia, while running after her through the room, endeavor
+to comfort her. She repeated continually one thing,--that she was not
+worthy of him, that she would not dare to look in his eyes; then again
+she would begin to speak of the deeds of Babinich, of the seizure of
+Boguslav, of his revenge, of saving the king, of Prostki,
+Volmontovichi, and Chenstohova; and at last of her own faults, of her
+stubbornness, for which she must do penance in the cloister.
+
+Further reproaches were interrupted by Pan Tomash, who, falling into
+the room like a bomb, cried,--
+
+"In God's name, all Upita is rolling after us! They are already in the
+village, and Babinich is surely with them!"
+
+Indeed, a distant shout at that moment announced the approach of the
+crowds. The sword-bearer, seizing Olenka, conducted her to the porch;
+Anusia rushed after them.
+
+At that moment the throng of men and horses looked black in the
+distance; and as far as the eye could reach the whole road was packed
+with them. At last they reached the yard. Those on foot were storming
+over ditches and fences; the wagons rolled in through the gates, and
+all were shouting and throwing up their caps.
+
+At last appeared the crowd of armed Lauda men, and the wagon, in which
+sat three persons,--Kmita, Volodyovski, and Zagloba.
+
+The wagon stopped at some distance, for so many people had crowded up
+before the entrance that it was impossible to approach. Zagloba and
+Volodyovski sprang out first, and helping Kmita to descend, took him at
+once by the arms.
+
+"Give room!" cried Zagloba.
+
+"Give room!" repeated the Lauda men.
+
+The people pushed back at once, so that in the middle of the crowd
+there was an open road along which the two knights led Kmita to the
+porch. He was very pale, but walked with head erect, at once confused
+and happy.
+
+Olenka leaned against the door-post, and dropped her arms without
+control at her sides; but when he was near she looked into the face of
+the emaciated man,--who after such a time of separation approached,
+like Lazarus, without a drop of blood in his face,--then sobbing, rent
+her breast again. He, from weeping, from happiness, and from confusion,
+did not know himself what to say,--
+
+"What, Olenka, what?"
+
+But she dropped suddenly to his knees,--
+
+"Yendrek!" cried she, "I am not worthy to kiss thy wounds!"
+
+At that moment strength came back to the knight; he seized her from the
+ground like a feather, and pressed her to his bosom.
+
+One immense shout, from which the walls of the house trembled and the
+last of the leaves fell from the trees, dinned every ear. The Lauda men
+began to fire from pistols; caps flew into the air; around nothing was
+to be seen but faces carried away by joy, gleaming eyes, and open
+mouths shouting,--
+
+"Vivat Kmita! vivat Panna Billevich! vivat the young couple!"
+
+"Vivat two couples!" roared Zagloba; but his voice was lost in the
+general storm.
+
+Vodokty was turned as it were into a camp. All day they were
+slaughtering oxen and sheep at command of the sword-bearer, and digging
+out of the ground barrels of mead and beer. In the evening all sat down
+to a feast,--the oldest and most noted in the rooms, the younger in the
+servants' hall; the simple people rejoiced equally at fires in the
+yard.
+
+At the chief table the cup went around in honor of two happy pairs; but
+when good feeling had reached the highest degree, Zagloba raised the
+following toast:--
+
+"To thee I return, worthy Pan Andrei, and to thee old friend, Pan
+Michael! It was not enough to expose your breasts, to shed blood, to
+cut down the enemy! Your work is not finished; for since a multitude of
+people have fallen in time of this terrible war, you must now give new
+inhabitants, new defenders to this Commonwealth. For this I think you
+will not lack either in manhood or good will. Worthy gentlemen! to the
+honor of those coming generations! May God bless them, and permit them
+to guard this legacy which we leave them, restored by our toil, by our
+sweat, by our blood. When grievous times come, let them remember us and
+never despair, considering that there are no straits out of which it is
+impossible to rise, with united forces and the help of God."
+
+
+Pan Andrei not long after his marriage served in a new war which broke
+out on the eastern side of the Commonwealth; but the thundering victory
+of Charnyetski and Sapyeha over Hovanski and Dolgoruki, and the hetmans
+of the kingdom over Sheremetyeff, soon brought it to an end. Then Kmita
+returned, covered with fresh glory, and settled down permanently in
+Vodokty. After him his cousin Yakub became banneret of Orsha,--Yakub,
+who afterward belonged to the unfortunate confederation of the army;
+but Pan Andrei, standing soul and heart with the king, rewarded with
+the starostaship of Upita, lived long in exemplary harmony and love
+with Lauda, surrounded by universal respect. His ill-wishers--for who
+has them not?--said, it is true, that he listened over-much to his wife
+in everything. He was not ashamed of that, however, but acknowledged
+himself that in every important affair he sought her advice.
+
+
+
+                               FOOTNOTES:
+
+[Footnote 1: This name is derived from _baba_ an old woman.]
+
+[Footnote 2: Sapyeha.]
+
+[Footnote 3: Lvoff.]
+
+[Footnote 4: Self-lord Zamoyski.]
+
+[Footnote 5: Zamoyski was starosta of Kaluj.]
+
+[Footnote 6: "Strachy na Lachy" (Terror on Poles) is a Polish saying,
+about equivalent to "impossible."]
+
+[Footnote 7: "Two-bridged" or "of two bridges," from _bis_ and _pons_.]
+
+[Footnote 8: Byes means "devil," so Byes Cornutus is "horned devil."]
+
+[Footnote 9: Rogaty means "horned." Borzobogaty means "quickly rich."
+Bardzorogaty means "greatly horned."]
+
+[Footnote 10: This means that if Zagloba had been preceptor to the
+hetman or Kovalski, they would have had better wit. "Having a stave
+loose or lacking in his barrel," means, in Polish, that a man's mind is
+not right.]
+
+
+
+                                THE END.
+
+
+
+                         _THE ZAGLOBA ROMANCES_
+                _by Henryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from
+                    the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin_.
+
+                          WITH FIRE AND SWORD
+An Historical Novel of Poland and Russia. Illustrated. Crown 8vo.
+$1.50 _net_.
+
+The first of the famous trilogy of historical romances of Poland,
+Russia, and Sweden. Their publication has been received as an event in
+literature. Charles Dudley Warner, in  _Harper's Magazine_,  affirms
+that the Polish author has in Zagloba  _given a new creation to
+literature_.
+
+_A capital story_.  The only modern romance with which it can be
+compared for fire, sprightliness, rapidity of action, swift changes,
+and absorbing interest is "The Three Musketeers" of Dumas.--_New York
+Tribune_.
+
+
+                               THE DELUGE
+
+An Historical Novel  of  Poland, Sweden, and Russia. A Sequel to "With
+Fire and Sword." With map. 2 vols. Crown 8vo. $3.00 _net_.
+
+Marvellous in its grand descriptions.--_Chicago Inter-Ocean_.
+
+Has the humor of a Cervantes and the grim vigor of Defoe.--_Boston
+Gazette_.
+
+
+                              PAN MICHAEL
+
+An Historical Novel of Poland, Russia, and the Ukraine. A Sequel to
+"With Fire and Sword" and "The Deluge." Crown 8vo. $1.50 _net_.
+
+The interest of the trilogy, both historical and romantic, is
+splendidly sustained.--_The Dial_,  Chicago.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+                  LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers
+                         Boston, Massachusetts
+
+
+                               QUO VADIS
+
+A Narrative of the Time of Nero. By Henryk Sienkiewicz. Translated from
+the Polish by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. $1.50 _net_.
+
+One of the most remarkable books of the decade. It burns upon the brain
+the struggles and triumphs of the early Church.--_Boston Daily
+Advertiser_.
+
+It will become recognized by virtue of its own merits as the one heroic
+monument built by the modern novelist above the ruins of decadent Rome,
+and in honor of the blessed martyrs  of  the early Church.--_Brooklyn
+Eagle_.
+
+Our debt to Sienkiewicz is not less than our debt to his translator
+and friend, Jeremiah Curtin. The diversity of the language, the rapid
+flow of thought, the picturesque imagery of the descriptions are all
+his.--_Boston Transcript_.
+
+
+                          _By the same Author_
+
+                        THE KNIGHTS OF THE CROSS
+
+An Historical Romance of Poland and Germany. Translated from the Polish
+by Jeremiah Curtin. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. $1.75 _net_.
+
+The construction of the story is beyond praise. It is difficult
+to conceive of any one who will not pick the book up with
+eagerness.--_Chicago Evening Post_.
+
+A book that holds your almost breathless attention as in a vise from
+the very beginning, for in it love and strife, the most thrilling of
+all worldly subjects, are described masterfully.--_The Boston Journal_.
+
+Another remarkable book. His descriptions are tremendously effective;
+one can almost hear the sound of the carnage; to the mind's eye the
+scene of battle is unfolded by a master artist.--_The Hartford
+Courant_.
+
+Thrillingly dramatic, full of strange local color and very faithful to
+its period, besides having that sense of the mysterious and weird that
+throbs in the Polish blood and infects alike their music and
+literature.--_The St. Paul Globe_.
+
+                           *   *   *   *   *
+                  LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY, Publishers
+                         Boston, Massachusetts
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's The Deluge, Vol. II. (of 2), by Henryk Sienkiewicz
+
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