The Deluge. Vol. 1

"Not a word, even if a man were to pull my teeth," answered Pan Andrei.

"That is too bad, for we wished to ask you to join our conversation." Then he turned to Lisola.

"There is a strange noble here, but he does not understand German; we can speak freely."

"I have no secret to tell," said Lisola; "but as I am a Catholic too, I should not like to see such injustice done to a sacred place. And because I am certain that the most serene emperor has the same feeling, I shall beg his Grace the King of Sweden to spare the monks. And do not hurry with the occupation until there is a new decision."

"I have express, though secret, instructions; but I shall not withhold them from your excellency, for I wish to serve faithfully my lord the emperor. I can assure your excellency that no profanation will come to the sacred place. I am a Catholic."

Lisola laughed, and wishing to extort the truth from a man less experienced than himself, asked jokingly, -

"But you will shake up their treasury for the monks? It will not pass without that, will it?"

"That may happen," answered Count Veyhard. "The Most Holy Lady will not ask for thalers from the priors' caskets. When all others pay, let the monks pay too."

"But if the monks defend themselves?"

The count laughed. "In this country no man will defend himself, and to-day no man is able. There was a time for defence, – now it is too late."

"Too late," repeated Lisola.

The conversation ended there. After supper they went away. Kmita remained alone. This was for him the bitterest night that he had spent since leaving Kyedani. While listening to the words of Count Veyhard, Kmita had to restrain himself with all his power to keep from shouting at him, "Thou liest, thou cur!" and from falling on him with his sabre. But if he did not do so, it was unhappily because he felt and recognized truth in the words of the foreigner, – awful truth burning like fire, but genuine.

"What could I say to him?" thought he; "with what could I offer denial except with my fist? What reasons could I bring? He snarled out the truth. Would to God he were slain! And that statesman of the emperor acknowledged to him that in all things and for all defence it was too late."

Kmita suffered in great part perhaps because that "too late" was the sentence not only of the country, but of his own personal happiness. And he had had his fill of suffering; there was no strength left in him, for during all those weeks he had heard nothing save, "All is lost, there is no time left, it is too late." No ray of hope anywhere fell into his soul.

Ever riding farther, he had hastened greatly, night and day, to escape from those prophecies, to find at last some place of rest, some man who would pour into his spirit even one drop of consolation. But he found every moment greater fall, every moment greater despair. At last the words of Count Veyhard filled that cup of bitterness and gall; they showed to him clearly this, which hitherto was an undefined feeling, that not so much the Swedes, the Northerners, and the Cossacks had killed the country, as the whole people.

"The mad, the violent, the malicious, the venal, inhabit this land," repeated Kmita after Count Veyhard, "and there are no others! They obey not the king, they break the diets, they pay not the taxes, they help the enemy to the conquest of this land. They must perish.

"In God's name, if I could only give him the lie! Is there nothing good in us save cavalry; no virtue, nothing but evil itself?"

Kmita sought an answer in his soul. He was so wearied from the road, from sorrows, and from everything that had passed before him, that it grew cloudy in his head. He felt that he was ill and a deathly sickness seized possession of him. In his brain an ever-growing chaos was working. Faces known and unknown pushed past him, – those whom he had known long before and those whom he had met on this journey. Those figures spoke, as if at a diet, they quoted sentences, prophecies; and all was concerning Olenka. She was awaiting deliverance from Kmita; but Count Veyhard held him by the arms, and looking into his eyes repeated: "Too late! what is Swedish is Swedish!" and Boguslav Radzivill sneered and supported Count Veyhard. Then all of them began to scream: "Too late, too late, too late!" and seizing Olenka they vanished with her somewhere in darkness.

It seemed to Pan Andrei that Olenka and the country were the same, that he had ruined both and had given them to the Swedes of his own will. Then such measureless sorrow grasped hold of him that he woke, looked around in amazement and listening to the wind which in the chimney, in the walls, in the roof, whistled in various voices and played through each cranny, as if on an organ.

But the visions returned, Olenka and the country were blended again in his thoughts in one person whom Count Veyhard was conducting away saying: "Too late, too late!"

So Pan Andrei spent the night in a fever. In moments of consciousness he thought that it would come to him to be seriously ill, and at last he wanted to call Soroka to bleed him. But just then dawn began; Kmita sprang up and went out in front of the inn.

The first dawn had barely begun to dissipate the darkness; the day promised to be mild; the clouds were breaking into long stripes and streaks on the west, but the east was pure; on the heavens, which were growing pale gradually, stars, unobscured by mist, were twinkling. Kmita roused his men, arrayed himself in holiday dress, for Sunday had come and they moved to the road.

After a bad sleepless night, Kmita was wearied in body and spirit. Neither could that autumn morning, pale but refreshing, frosty and clear, scatter the sorrow crushing the heart of the knight. Hope in him had burned to the last spark, and was dying like a lamp in which the oil is exhausted. What would that day bring? Nothing! – the same grief, the same suffering, rather it will add to the weight on his soul; of a surety it will not decrease it.

He rode forward in silence, fixing his eyes on some point which was then greatly gleaming upon the horizon. The horses were snorting; the men fell to singing with drowsy voices their matins.

Meanwhile it became clearer each moment, the heavens from pale became green and golden and that point on the horizon began so to shine that Kmita's eyes were dazzled by its glitter. The men ceased their singing and all gazed in that direction, at last Soroka said, -

"A miracle or what? – That is the west, and it is as if the sun were rising."

In fact, that light, increased in the eyes: from a point it became a ball, from a ball a globe; from afar you would have said that some one had hung above the earth a giant star, which was scattering rays immeasurable.

Kmita and his men looked with amazement on that bright, trembling, radiant vision, not knowing what was before their sight. Then a peasant came along from Krushyn in a wagon with a rack. Kmita turning to him saw that the peasant, holding his cap in his hand and looking at the light, was praying.

"Man," asked Pan Andrei, "what is that which shines so?"

"The church on Yasna Gora."

"Glory to the Most Holy Lady!" cried Kmita. He took his cap from his head, and his men removed theirs.

After so many days of suffering, of doubts, and of struggles, Pan Andrei felt suddenly that something wonderful was happening in him, Barely had the words, "the church on Yasna Gora," sounded in his ears when the confusion fell from him as if some hand had removed it.

A certain inexplicable awe seized hold of Pan Andrei, full of reverence, but at the same time a joy unknown to experience, great and blissful. From that church shining on the height in the first rays of the sun, hope, such as for a long time Pan Andrei had not known, was beating, – a strength invincible on which he wished to lean. A now life, as it were, entered him and began to course through his veins with the blood. He breathed as deeply as a sick man coming to himself out of fever and unconsciousness.

But the church glittered more and more brightly, as if it were taking to itself all the light of the sun. The whole region lay at its feet, and the church gazed at it from the height; you would have said, "'Tis the sentry and guardian of the land."

For a long time Kmita could not take his eyes from that light; he satisfied and comforted himself with the sight of it. The faces of his men had grown serious, and were penetrated with awe. Then the sound of a bell was heard in the silent morning air.

"From your horses!" cried Pan Andrei.

All sprang from their saddles, and kneeling on the road began the litany. Kmita repeated it, and the soldiers responded together.

Other wagons came up. Peasants seeing the praying men on the road joined them, and the crowd grew greater continually. When at length the prayers were finished Pan Andrei rose, and after him his men; but they advanced on foot, leading their horses and singing: "Hail, ye bright gates!"

Kmita went on with alertness as if he had wings on his shoulders. At the turns of the road the church vanished, then came out again. When a height or a mist concealed it, it seemed to Kmita that light had been captured by darkness; but when it gleamed forth again all faces were radiant.

So they went on for a long time. The cloister and the walls surrounding it came out more distinctly, became more imposing, more immense. At last they saw the town in the distance, and under the mountain whole lines of houses and cottages, which, compared with the size of the church, seemed as small as birds' nests.

It was Sunday; therefore when the sun had risen well the road was swarming with wagons, and people on foot going to church. From the lofty towers the bells great and small began to peal, filling the air with noble sounds. There was in that sight and in those metal voices a strength, a majesty immeasurable, and at the same time a calm. That bit of land at the foot of Yasna Gora resembled in no wise the rest of the country.

Throngs of people stood black around the walls of the church. Under the hill were hundreds of wagons, carriages, and equipages; the talk of men was blended with the neighing of horses tied to posts. Farther on, at the right, along the chief road leading to the mountain, were to be seen whole rows of stands, at which were sold metal offerings, wax candles, pictures, and scapulars. A river of people flowed everywhere freely.

The gates were wide open; whoso wished entered, whoso wished went forth; on the walls, at the guns, were no soldiers. Evidently the very sacredness of the place guarded the church and the cloister, and perhaps men trusted in the letters of Karl Gustav in which he guaranteed safety.

CHAPTER XXXIX

From the gates of the fortress peasants and nobles, villagers from various neighborhoods, people of every age, of both sexes, of all ranks, pressed forward to the church on their knees, singing prayerful hymns. That river flowed slowly, and its course was stopped whenever the bodies of people crowded against one another too densely. At times the songs ceased and the crowds began to repeat a litany, and then the thunder of words was heard from one end of the place to the other. Between hymn and litany, between litany and hymn, the people were silent, struck the ground with their foreheads, or cast themselves down in the form of a cross. At these moments were heard only the imploring and shrill voices of beggars, who sitting at both banks of the human river exposed their deformed limbs to public gaze. Their howling was mingled with the clinking of coppers thrown into tin and wooden dishes. Then again the river of heads flowed onward, and again the hymns thundered.

As the river flowed nearer to the church door, excitement grew greater, and was turned into ecstasy. You could see hands stretched toward heaven, eyes turned upward, faces pale from emotion or glowing with prayer. Differences of rank disappeared: the coat of the peasant touched the robe of the noble, the jacket of the soldier the yellow coat of the artisan.

In the church door the crush was still greater. The bodies of men had become not a river, but a bridge, so firm that you might travel on their heads and their shoulders without touching the ground with a foot. Breath failed their breasts, space failed their bodies; but the spirit which inspired gave them iron endurance. Each man was praying; no one thought of aught else. Each one bore on himself the pressure and weight of the whole of that mass, but no man fell; and pressed by those thousands he felt in himself power against thousands, and with that power he pushed forward, lost in prayer, in ecstasy, in exaltation.

Kmita, creeping forward in the first ranks with his men, reached the church with the earliest; then the current carried him too to the chapel of miracles, where the multitude fell on their faces, weeping, embracing the floor with their hands, and kissing it with emotion. So also did Pan Andrei; and when at last he had the boldness to raise his head, delight, happiness, and at the same time mortal awe, almost took from him consciousness.

In the chapel there was a ruddy gloom not entirely dispersed by the rays of candles burning on the altar. Colored rays fell also through the window-panes; and all those gleams, red, violet, golden, fiery, quivered on the walls, slipped along the carvings and windings, made their way into dark depths bringing forth to sight indistinct forms buried as it were in a dream. Mysterious glimmers ran along and united with darkness, so undistinguishable that all difference between light and darkness was lost. The candles on the altar had golden halos; the smoke from the censers formed purple mist; the white robes of the monks serving Mass played with the darkened colors of the rainbow. All things there were half visible, half veiled, unearthly; the gleams were unearthly, the darkness unearthly, mysterious, majestic, blessed, filled with prayer, adoration, and holiness.

From the main nave of the church came the deep sound of human voices, like the mighty sound of the sea; but in the chapel deep silence reigned, broken only by the voice of the priest chanting Mass.