“How is this?” asked Kmita. “They are persecuting some nobles and crushing them, while with others they enter into friendship. It must be that those citizens whom I see among the soldiers are fanatical traitors?”
“Not merely fanatical traitors, but worse, for they are heretics,” answered the noble. “They are more grievous to us Catholics than the Swedes; they are the men who plunder most, burn houses, carry off maidens, commit private offences. The whole country is in alarm from them, for everything drops from these men altogether without punishment, and it is easier to get justice from Swedish commanders against a Swede, than against one of our own heretics. Every commandant, if you utter a word, will answer at once, ‘I have no right to touch him, for he is not my man; go to your own tribunals.’ And what tribunals are there here now, and what execution of law when everything is in Swedish hands? Where the Swede cannot go the heretics will take him, and they are the men chiefly who incite the Swedes against churches and clergy. This is the way in which they punish the country, our mother, for having given them refuge here and freedom for their blasphemous faith when they were persecuted in other Christian lands justly, for their intrigues and abominations.”
The noble stopped and looked with alarm at Kmita—
“But you say that you are from Electoral Prussia, so you may be a Lutheran?”
“God save me from that,” answered Pan Andrei. “I am from Prussia, but of a family Catholic for ages, for we went from Lithuania to Prussia.”
“Then praise to the Most High, for I was frightened. My dear sir, as to Lithuania there is no lack of dissidents there; and they have a powerful chief in Radzivill, who has turned out so great a traitor that he can come into comparison with Radzeyovski alone.”
“May God grant the devils to pull the soul out through his throat before the New Year!” exclaimed Kmita, with venom.
“Amen!” answered the noble, “and also the souls of his servants, his assistants, his executioners, of whom tidings have come even to us, and without whom he would not have dared to bring destruction on this country.”
Kmita grew pale and said not a word. He did not ask even—he did not dare to ask—of what assistants, servants, and executioners that noble was speaking.
Travelling slowly, they came to Pultusk late in the evening; there they called Kmita to the bishop’s palace or castle to give answer to the commandant.
“I am furnishing horses to the army of his Swedish Grace,” said Pan Andrei, “and I have orders with which I am going to Warsaw for money.”
Colonel Israel (such was the name of the commandant) smiled under his mustaches and said—
“Oh, make haste, make haste, and take a wagon for the return, so as to have something to carry that money in!”
“I thank you for the counsel,” answered Pan Andrei. “I understand that you are jeering at me; but I will go for my own, even if I have to go to his grace the king!”
“Go! don’t give away your own; a very nice sum belongs to you.”
“The hour will come when you’ll pay me,” retorted Kmita, going out.
In the town itself he came on celebrations again, for rejoicing over the capture of Krakow was to last three days. He learned, however, that in Pjasnysh the Swedish triumph was exaggerated, perhaps by design. Charnyetski, the castellan of Kiev, had not fallen into captivity, but had obtained the right of marching from the city with his troops, with arms and lighted matches at the cannon. It was said that he was to retire to Silesia. This was not a great consolation, but still a consolation.
In Pultusk there were considerable forces which were to go thence to the Prussian boundary, under command of Colonel Israel, to alarm the elector; therefore neither the town nor the castle, though very spacious, could furnish lodging for the soldiers. Here too, for the first time, Kmita saw soldiers encamped in a church—in a splendid Gothic structure, founded almost two hundred years before by Bishop Gijytski, were quartered hireling German infantry. Inside the sanctuary it was flaming with light as on Easter, for on the stone floor were burning fires kindled in various places. Kettles were steaming over the fires. Around kegs of beer were groups of common soldiers—hardened robbers, who had plundered all Catholic Germany, and of a certainty were not spending their first night in a church. In the church were heard talking and shouting. Hoarse voices were singing camp songs; there sounded also the outcry and merriment of women, who in those days straggled usually in the wake of an army.
Kmita stood in the open door; through the smoke in the midst of ruddy flames he saw the red, mustached faces of soldiers who, inflamed with drink, were sitting on kegs and quaffing beer; some throwing dice or playing cards, some selling church vestments, others embracing low women dressed in bright garments. Uproar, laughter, the clatter of tankards, the sound of muskets, the echoes thundering in the vaults deafened him. His head whirled; he could not believe what his eyes saw; the breath died in his breast; hell would not have more greatly amazed him. At last he clutched his hair and ran out repeating as if in bewilderment—
“O God, aid us! O God, correct us! O God, deliver us!”
XXXVII
In Warsaw the Swedes had been managing for a long time. Wittemberg, the real governor of the city and the commander of the garrison, was at that moment in Krakow; Radzeyovski carried on the government in his place. Not less than two thousand soldiers
