The Deluge

the throne. It will be the same this time. The Poles can call to the throne only him who will be reigning here. They cannot and will not call another, for they would perish, because the breath would not remain in their breasts between the Germans and the Turks, and as it is, the Cossack cancer is gnawing the kingdom. They can call no one else! Blind is he who does not see this; foolish who does not understand it. Both countries will unite again and become one power in my house. Then I shall see if those kinglets of Scandinavia will remain in their Prussia and Great Poland acquired today. Then I will say to them, Quos ego! and with this foot will crush their lean ribs, and create a power such as the world has not seen, such as history has not described; perhaps I may carry the cross with fire and sword to Constantinople, and in peace at home terrify the enemy. Thou great God, who orderest the circuits of the stars, grant me to save this ill-fated land, for thy glory and that of all Christendom; give me men to understand my thought, men to put their hands to salvation. There is where I stand!” Here the prince opened his arms, and raised his eyes aloft: “Thou seest me, thou judgest me!”

“Mighty prince, mighty prince!” cried Kmita.

“Go, desert me, cast the baton at my feet, break your oath, call me traitor! Let no thorn be lacking in that prickly crown which they have put on my head. Destroy ye the country, thrust it over the precipice, drag away the hand that could save it, and go to the judgment of God! Let him decide between us.”

Kmita cast himself on his knees before Radzivill. “Mighty prince, I am with you to the death! Father of the country, savior!”

Radzivill put both hands on his head, and again followed a moment of silence. Only the owl hooted unceasingly on the tower.

“You will receive all that you have yearned for and wished,” said the prince, with solemnity. “Nothing will miss you, and more will meet you than your father and mother desired. Rise, future grand hetman and voevoda of Vilna!”

It had begun to dawn in the sky.

XVI

Pan Zagloba had his head mightily full when he hurled the word “traitor” thrice at the eyes of the terrible hetman. At an hour nearer morning, when the wine had evaporated from his bald head, and he found himself with the two Skshetuskis and Pan Michael in a dungeon of Kyedani Castle, he saw, when too late, the danger to which he had exposed his own neck and the necks of his comrades, and was greatly cast down.

“But what will happen now?” asked he, gazing with dazed look on the little knight, in whom he had special trust in great peril.

“May the devil take life! it is all one to me!” answered Volodyovski.

“We shall live to such times and such infamy as the world and this kingdom have not seen hitherto!” said Pan Yan.

“Would that we might live to them!” answered Zagloba; “we could restore virtue in others by our good example. But shall we live? That is the great question.”

“This is a terrible event, passing belief!” said Pan Stanislav. “Where has the like of it happened? Save me, gentlemen, for I feel that there is confusion in my head. Two wars⁠—a third, the Cossack⁠—and in addition treason, like a plague: Radzyovski, Opalinski, Grudzinski, Radzivill! The end of the world is coming, and the day of judgment; it cannot be otherwise! May the earth open under our feet! As God is dear to me, I am losing my mind!”

And clasping his hands at the back of his head, he began to pace the length and width of the cellar, like a wild beast in a cage.

“Shall we begin to pray, or what?” asked he at last. “Merciful God, save us!”

“Be calm!” said Zagloba; “this is not the time to despair.”

Pan Stanislav ground his teeth on a sudden; rage carried him away. “I wish you were killed!” cried he to Zagloba. “It was your thought to come to this traitor. May vengeance reach you and him!”

“Bethink yourself, Stanislav,” said Pan Yan, sternly. “No one could foresee what has happened. Endure, for you are not the only man suffering; and know that our place is here, and not elsewhere. Merciful God! pity, not us, but the ill-fated country.”

Stanislav made no answer, but wrung his hands till the joints were cracking.

They were silent. Pan Michael, however, began to whistle through his teeth, in despair, and feigned indifference to everything happening around him, though, in fact, he suffered doubly⁠—first, for the misfortune of the country, and secondly, because he had violated his obedience to the hetman. The latter was a terrible thing for him, a soldier to the marrow of his bones. He would have preferred to die a thousand times.

“Do not whistle, Pan Michael,” said Zagloba.

“All one to me!”

“How is it? Is no one of you thinking whether there are not means of escape? It is worth while to exercise one’s wits on this. Are we to rot in this cellar, when every hand is needed for the country, when one man of honor must settle ten traitors?”

“Father is right,” said Pan Yan.

“You alone have not become stupid from pain. What do you suppose? What does that traitor think of doing with us? Surely he will not punish us with death?”

Pan Michael burst out in a sudden laugh of despair. “But why not? I am curious to learn! Has he not authority, has he not the sword? Do you not know Radzivill?”

“Nonsense! What right do they give him?”

“Over me, the right of a hetman; over you, force!”

“For which he must answer.”

“To whom⁠—to the King of Sweden?”

“You give me sweet consolation; there is no denying that!”

“I have no thought of consoling you.”

They were silent, and for a time