But when Pan Kmita examined more closely and carefully, he saw on many houses the traces of plundering hands. These were the houses of those citizens who had fled from the city, not wishing to endure foreign rule, or who had offered resistance when the Swedes were breaking over the walls.
Of the lordly structures in the jurisdictions those only retained their former splendor the owners of which stood soul and body with the Swedes. Therefore the Kazanovski Palace remained in all its magnificence, for Radzeyovski had saved that, his own, and the palace of Konyetspolski, the standard-bearer, as well as the edifice reared by Vladislav IV, and which was afterward known as the Kazimirovski Palace. But edifices of the clergy were injured considerably; the Denhof Palace was half wrecked; the chancellor’s or the so-called Ossolinski Palace, on Reformatski Street, was plundered to its foundations. German hirelings looked out through its windows; and that costly furniture which the late chancellor had brought from Italy at such outlay—those Florentine leathers, Dutch tapestry, beautiful cabinets inlaid with mother-of-pearl, pictures, bronze and marble statues, clocks from Venice and Dantzig, and magnificent glasses were either lying in disordered heaps in the yard, or, already packed, were waiting to be taken, when the time came, by the Vistula to Sweden. Guards watched over these precious things, but meanwhile they were being ruined under the wind and rain.
In other cities the same thing might be seen; and though the capital had yielded without battle, still thirty gigantic flatboats were ready on the Vistula to bear away the plunder.
The city looked like a foreign place. On the streets foreign languages were heard more than Polish; everywhere were met Swedish soldiers, German, French, English, and Scottish mercenaries, in the greatest variety of uniforms—in hats, in lofty helmets, in kaftans, in breastplates, half breastplates, in stockings, or Swedish boots, with legs as wide as water-buckets. Everywhere a foreign medley, foreign garments, foreign faces, foreign songs. Even the horses had forms different from those to which the eye was accustomed. There had also rushed in a multitude of Armenians with dark faces, and black hair covered with bright skullcaps; they had come to buy plundered articles.
But most astonishing of all was the incalculable number of gypsies, who, it is unknown for what purpose, had gathered after the Swedes from all parts of the country. Their tents stood at the side of the Uyazdovski Palace, and along the monastery jurisdiction, forming as it were a special town of linen houses within a town of walled structures.
In the midst of these various-tongued throngs the inhabitants of the city almost vanished; for their own safety they sat gladly enclosed in their houses, showing themselves rarely, and then passing swiftly along the streets. Only occasionally the carriage of some magnate, hurrying from the Krakow suburbs to the castle, and surrounded by haiduks, Turkish grooms, or troops in Polish dress, gave reminder that the city was Polish.
Only on Sundays and holidays, when the bells announced services, did crowds come forth from the houses, and the capital put on its former appearance—though even then lines of foreign soldiers stood hedgelike in front of the churches, to look at the women or pull at their dresses when, with downcast eyes, they walked past them. These soldiers laughed, and sometimes sang vile songs just when the priests were singing Mass in the churches.
All this flashed past the astonished eyes of Pan Kmita like jugglery; but he did not warm his place long in Warsaw, for not knowing any man he had no one before whom to open his soul. Even with those Polish nobles who were stopping in the city and living in public houses built during the reign of King Sigismund III on Dluga Street, Pan Andrei did not associate closely. He conversed, it is true, with this one and that, to learn the news; but all were fanatical adherents of the Swedes, and waiting for the return of Karl Gustav, clung to Radzeyovski and the Swedish officers with the hope of receiving starostaships, confiscated private estates, and profits from church and other recoupments. Each man of them would have been served rightly had someone spat in his eyes, and from this Kmita did not make great effort to restrain himself.
From the townspeople Kmita only heard that they regretted past times, and the good king of the fallen country. The Swedes persecuted them savagely, seized their houses, exacted contributions, imprisoned them. They said also that the guilds had arms secreted, especially the linen-weavers, the butchers, the furriers, and the powerful guild of tailors; that they were looking continually for the return of Yan Kazimir, did not lose hope, and with assistance from outside were ready to attack the Swedes.
Hearing this, Kmita did not believe his own ears. It could not find place in his head that men of mean station and rank should exhibit more love for the country and loyalty to their lawful king than nobles, who ought to bring those sentiments into the world with their birth.
But it was just the nobles and magnates who stood by the Swedes, and the common people who for the greater part wished to resist; and more than once it happened that when the Swedes were driving common people to work at fortifying Warsaw, these common people chose to endure flogging, imprisonment, even death itself, rather than aid in confirming Swedish power.
Beyond Warsaw the country was as noisy as in a beehive. All the roads, the towns, and the hamlets were occupied by soldiers, by attendants of great lords and nobles, and by lords and nobles serving
