“What brows! What a queenly look, so that respect seizes one! Whence is there such a girl, such well-nigh royal majesty? I saw once in Antwerp, splendidly embroidered on Gobelin tapestry Diana hunting the curious Actaeon with dogs. She was like this one as cup is like cup.”
“Look out that Kmita does not publish the letters, for then the dogs would gnaw us to death.”
“Not true! I will turn Kmita into an Actaeon, and hunt him to death. I have struck him down on two fields, and it will come to battle between us yet.”
Further conversation was interrupted by the entrance of a page with a letter. The voevoda of Vilna took the letter in his hand and made the sign of the cross. He did that always to guard against evil tidings; then, instead of opening, he began to examine it carefully. All at once his countenance changed.
“Sapyeha’s arms are on the seal!” exclaimed he; “it is from the voevoda of Vityebsk.”
“Open quickly!” said Boguslav.
The hetman opened and began to read, interrupting himself from time to time with exclamations.
“He is marching on Podlyasye! He asks if I have no messages for Tykotsin! An insult to me! Still worse; for listen to what he writes further—
“ ‘Do you wish civil war, your highness? do you wish to sink one more sword in the bosom of the mother? If you do, come to Podlyasye. I am waiting for you, and I trust that God will punish your pride with my hands. But if you have pity on the country, if conscience stirs within you, if you value your deeds of past times and you wish to make reparation, the field is open before you. Instead of beginning a civil war, summon the general militia, raise the peasants, and strike the Swedes while Pontus, feeling secure, suspects nothing and is exercising no vigilance. From Hovanski you will have no hindrance, for reports come to me from Moscow that they are thinking there of an expedition against Livonia, though they keep that a secret. Besides, if Hovanski wished to undertake anything I hold him in check, and if I could have sincere trust I would certainly help you with all my forces to save the country. All depends on you, for there is time yet to turn from the road and efface your faults. Then it will appear clearly that you did not accept Swedish protection for personal purposes, but to avert final defeat from Lithuania. May God thus inspire you; for this I implore him daily, though your highness is pleased to accuse me of envy.
“Have you heard?” asked Prince Yanush, when he had finished reading.
“I have heard—and what?” answered Boguslav, looking quickly at his cousin.
“It would be necessary to abjure all, leave all, tear down our work with our own hands.”
“Break with the powerful Karl Gustav, and seize the exiled Yan Kazimir by the feet, that he might deign to forgive and receive us back to his service, and also implore Sapyeha’s intercession.”
Yanush’s face was filled with blood.
“Have you considered how he writes to me: ‘Correct yourself, and I will forgive you,’ as a lord to an underling.”
“He would write differently if six thousand sabres were hanging over his neck.”
“Still—” Here Prince Yanush fell to thinking gloomily.
“Still, what?”
“Perhaps for the country it would be salvation to do as Sapyeha advises.”
“But for you—for me, for the Radzivills?”
Yanush made no answer; he dropped his head on his fists and thought.
“Let it be so!” said he, at last; “let it be accomplished!”
“What have you decided?”
“Tomorrow I march on Podlyasye, and in a week I shall strike on Sapyeha.”
“You are a Radzivill!” cried Boguslav. And they grasped each other’s hands.
After a while Boguslav went to rest. Yanush remained alone. Once, and a second time he passed through the room with heavy steps. At last he clapped his hands. A page entered the room.
“Let the astrologer come in an hour to me with a ready figure,” said he.
The page went out, and the prince began again to walk and repeat his Calvinistic prayers. After that he sang a psalm in an undertone, stopping frequently, for his breath failed him, and looking from time to time through the window at the stars twinkling in the sky.
By degrees the lights were quenched in the castle; but besides the astrologer and the prince one other person was watching in a room, and that was Olenka Billevich.
Kneeling before her bed, she clasped both hands over her head, and whispered with closed eyes—
“Have mercy on us! Have mercy on us!”
The first time since Kmita’s departure she would not, she could not pray for him.
XXXVI
Kmita had, it is true, Radzivill’s passes to all the Swedish captains, commandants, and governors, to give him a free road everywhere, and make no opposition, but he did not dare to use those passes; for he expected that Prince Boguslav, immediately after Pilvishki, had hurried off messengers in every direction with information to the Swedes of what had happened, and with an order to seize him. For this reason Pan Andrei had assumed a strange name, and also changed his rank. Avoiding therefore Lomja and Ostrolenko, to which the first warning might have come, he directed his horses and his company to Pjasnysh, whence he wished to go through Pultusk to Warsaw.
But before he reached Pjasnysh he made a bend on the Prussian boundary through Vansosh, Kolno, and Myshynyets, because the Kyemliches, knowing those wildernesses well, were acquainted with the forest trails, and besides had their “cronies” among the Bark-shoes,29 from whom they might expect aid in case
