But after the prince, most eyes were turned on Zagloba, who, noticing that he was the centre of admiration, looked with such haughtiness and pride, and turned his eyes so threateningly that it was whispered at once in the crowd: “This must be the foremost knight of them all!” And others said: “He must have let a power of souls out of their bodies; he is as fierce as a dragon!” When words like these came to the ears of Zagloba, his only thought was to conceal his inward delight by still greater fierceness. Sometimes he answered the crowd, sometimes he joked with them, but especially with squadrons of the Lithuanian escort, in which the men of the heavy cavalry wore golden, and of the light, silver loops on their shoulders. At sight of this Zagloba would call out, “Pan Loop, there is a hook on you!” More than one officer frowned, gritted his teeth, and grasped his sabre; but remembering that that was a warrior from the squadron of the voevoda of Rus who took such liberty, he spat at last, and let the matter drop.
Nearer Warsaw the throng became so dense that it was only possible to push forward at a walk. The election promised to be more crowded than usual; for nobles from remote Russian and Lithuanian districts, who by reason of the distance could not have come for the election itself, assembled now at Warsaw for safety. The day of election was still distant, for the first sessions of the Diet had barely begun; but they had assembled a month or two in advance, so as to locate themselves in the city, renew acquaintance with this one and that, seek for promotion here and there, eat and drink at the houses of great lords, and enjoy luxury in the harvest of the capital.
The prince looked with sadness through the windows of his carriage on those crowds of knights, soldiers, and nobles, on that wealth and luxury of costume, thinking what forces could be formed of them, what armies could be put in the field. “Why is this Commonwealth, so powerful, populous, and rich, filled with valiant knights, so weak that it is not able to settle with one Hmelnitski and the Tartar savagery? Why is this? The legions of Hmelnitski could be answered with other legions if those nobles, those soldiers, that wealth and substance, those regiments and squadrons were willing to serve public as well as private interests. Virtue is perishing in the Commonwealth,” thought the prince, “and the great body is beginning to decay. Manhood has long since begun to disappear in pleasant leisure; it is not warlike toil that the army and the nobles love!” The prince was right so far; but of the shortcomings of the Commonwealth he thought only as a warrior and a chieftain who wanted to turn all men into soldiers and lead them against the enemy. Bravery could be found, and was found, when wars a hundred times greater threatened soon after. It lacked still something more, which the soldier-prince at that moment saw not, but which his enemy, the chancellor of the Crown, an abler statesman than Yeremi, did see.
But behold in the gray and azure distance appeared indistinctly the pointed towers of Warsaw. Further meditations of the prince ceased. He issued orders, which the officer on duty bore immediately to Volodyovski. In consequence of these orders Pan Michael galloped from the carriage of Anusia, around which he had been hovering hitherto, to bring up the squadrons which had lagged considerably in the rear, to strengthen the line and lead it on in order. He had ridden barely a few paces when he heard some one rushing after him. It was Pan Kharlamp, captain of the light cavalry of the voevoda of Vilna, Anusia’s worshipper.
Volodyovski held in his horse; for he understood at once that it would surely come to some quarrel, and Pan Michael loved such things from his soul. Kharlamp came up with him, and at first said nothing; he only puffed, and moved his mustaches threateningly, as if looking for words.
“With the forehead, with the forehead, Pan Dragoon!”
“With the forehead, Pan Escort!”
“How do you dare to call me Escort,” demanded Kharlamp, grinding his teeth,—"me an officer and a captain, hei?”
Volodyovski began to throw up a hatchet which he held in his hand, turning his whole attention as it were to catching it by the handle after every turn, and answered as if unwillingly. “For I am not able to recognize rank by the loop.”
“You offend a whole body of officers with whom you are not equal.”
“How is that?” asked with pretended simplicity the rogue Volodyovski?
“For you serve in the foreign levy.”
“Put yourself to rest,” said Pan Michael. “Though I serve in the dragoons, I belong to that body of officers not of the light, but of the heavy cavalry of the voevoda. You can talk with me therefore as with an equal or as with a superior.”
Kharlamp reined himself in a little, seeing that he had not to do with so insignificant a person as he had thought; but he did not cease to grit his teeth, for the coolness of Pan Michael brought him to still greater rage.
“Why do you get in my way?”
“I see that you are seeking a quarrel.”
“Maybe I am; and I will tell you this [here Kharlamp bent to the ear of Volodyovski and finished in a lower voice], that I’ll trim your ears if you come in my way before Panna Anna.”
Volodyovski began again to throw up the hatchet very diligently, as if that were the special time for such amusement, and answered in a tone of persuasiveness: “Oh, my benefactor, permit me to live a little yet; let me go!”
“Oh, no! Nothing will come of that; you won’t escape me!” said Kharlamp, seizing the little knight by the sleeve.
“I will not get away from you,” said Pan Michael, with a mild voice; “but now I am on service, and am going with the order of the prince my master. Let go my sleeve, let go, I beg you; for otherwise what shall I, poor devil! do unless I go at you with this hatchet and tumble you from the horse?”
Here the voice of Volodyovski, submissive at first, hissed with such venom that Kharlamp looked at him with involuntary astonishment and dropped his sleeve. “Oh, it is all one!” said he. “You will give me a chance in Warsaw, I’ll look after you!”
“I won’t hide; but how can we fight in Warsaw, be so kind as to instruct me. I have never been there yet in my life; I am a simple soldier, but I have heard of court-martials which execute a man for drawing his sabre in the presence of the king or during an interregnum.”
“It is evident that you have never been in Warsaw, and that you are an ignorant clown, since you are afraid of court-martials and don’t know that in the interregnum a chapter is in session with which the question is easier, and you may be sure they won’t take my head for your ears.”
“Thank you for the information, and I will ask you for information frequently; for I see that you are a man of no ordinary experience, and I, since I practise only the lowest of the rudiments, am barely able to make an adjective agree with a noun, and if I wanted to call (which God forbid) your Honor a fool, then I know that I should say ‘stultus,’ and not ‘stulta’ or ‘stultum.’”
Here Volodyovski began again to throw up the hatchet, and Kharlamp was astonished again. The blood rushed to his face, and he pulled his sabre out of the scabbard; but in the twinkle of an eye the little knight, putting his hatchet under his knee, drew his own. For a moment they looked at each other, like two stags, with distended nostrils, and with fire in their eyes; but Kharlamp considered that he would have an affair with the voevoda himself if he fell upon his officer going with an order, therefore he sheathed his sabre.
“Oh, I’ll find you, you son of a such a one!” said he.
“You’ll find me, you’ll find me, you fish-broth!” said the little knight.
And they parted,—one going to the cavalcade, the other to the squadrons, which had approached considerably during this time, so that through the clouds of dust was heard the clatter of the hoofs on the hard road. Volodyovski straightened the cavalry and the infantry to the proper line, and moved to the head. After a while Zagloba trotted up to him.
“What did that scarecrow of the sea want of you?” asked he of Volodyovski.
“Oh, nothing!—he called
me out to a duel.”
“Here is trouble for you; he will punch a hole through you with his nose. Look out, Pan Michael, that you don’t cut off the biggest nose in the Commonwealth, for you will have to raise a separate mound over it. Happy is the voevoda of Vilna! Others must send scouting-parties out to look for the enemy, but this one could scent them for miles. But why did he challenge you?”
“Because I rode by the carriage of Anusia Borzobogata.”
“You ought to have told him to go to Pan Longin at Zamost. He would have dressed him with pepper and ginger. That fish-broth fellow has struck badly; it is evident that he has less luck than his nose.”
“I said nothing to him about Pan Podbipienta,” said Volodyovski, “for he might have dropped me. I’ll pay court now to Anusia with redoubled fervor out of spite. I want to have my sport too; what better employment can we have in Warsaw?”
“We’ll find it, Pan Michael, we’ll find it,” said Zagloba, winking. “When in my younger years I was a deputy from the squadron in which I served, I travelled through the whole country, but such life as I found in Warsaw I found nowhere else.”
“You say it is different from what we have in the Trans-Dnieper?”
“Of course it is!”
“I am very curious,” said Pan Michael. After a while he added: “Still, I’ll trim the mustaches of that fish-broth, for they are too long.”
CHAPTER XLIV.
A number of weeks passed. The nobles assembled in greater and greater numbers for the election. The population of the city increased tenfold; for with the crowds of nobles poured in thousands of merchants and shopkeepers of the whole world, from distant Persia to England beyond the sea. On the field of Vola a booth was built for the senate, and around it whitened already thousands of tents, with which the spacious meadows were entirely covered. No one could tell yet which of the two candidates—Prince Kazimir, the cardinal, or Karl Ferdinand, the bishop of Plotsk—would be elected. On both sides great were the efforts and exertions made. Thousands of pamphlets were given to the world, relating the merits and defects of the candidates. Both had numerous and powerful adherents. On the side of Karl stood, as is known, Prince Yeremi, who was the more terrible for his opponents, as it was always likely that he would draw after him the inferior nobles, who were enamoured of him; and with the inferior nobles lay the ultimate decision. But neither did Kazimir lack power. Seniority was in his favor. On his side was the influence of the chancellor; the primate appeared to incline to him. On his side stood the majority of the magnates, each of whom had numerous clients; and among the magnates also was Prince Dominik Zaslavski Ostrogski, voevoda of Sandomir, with greatly injured reputation after Pilavtsi and even threatened with prosecution, but always the greatest lord in the Commonwealth, nay, even in all Europe, and able at any moment to throw the immense weight of his wealth into the scale of his candidate.
Still the adherents of Kazimir more than once had bitter hours of doubt; for as has been said, everything depended on the inferior nobles, who, beginning from the 4th of October, had camped in crowds around Warsaw and were coming still in thousands from every side of the Commonwealth, and who in an incalculable majority declared for Prince Karl, attracted by the magic of Vishnyevetski’s name and the liberality of the prince in public objects. Karl was a good manager and wealthy; he did not hesitate at that moment to devote considerable sums to the formation of new regiments which were to be placed under command of Yeremi. Kazimir would have followed his example willingly; it was certainly not greed that held him back, but just the opposite,—excessive liberality, the immediate result of which was an insufficiency, and continual lack of money in his treasury.
Meanwhile both sides were canvassing. Every day messengers were flying between Nyeporente and Yablonna. Kazimir in the name of his own seniority and brotherly affection adjured Karl to resign; but the bishop held back, answering that it would not become him to contemn, the fortune which might meet him, since that fortune was in the free gift of the Commonwealth, and was his to whom the Lord had designed it. Time passed; the term of six weeks was approaching, and together with it the Cossack storm. News had come that Hmelnitski, having raised the siege of Lvoff, which had ransomed itself after a number of assaults, had invested Zamost, and night and day was storming that last rampart of the Commonwealth.
It was said too that besides the delegates whom Hmelnitski had sent to Warsaw with a letter and declaration that as a noble of Poland he would give his vote to Kazimir, there were nobles hidden among the crowd, and that the city itself was full of disguised Cossack elders whom no one could detect, for they had come like regular and wealthy nobles, differing in nothing, even in speech, from other electors, especially those from the Russian provinces. Some, as was said, had crept in through simple curiosity to look at the election and Warsaw; others to spy, to obtain news, to hear talk about the war,—how many troops the Commonwealth thought of putting in the field, and what grants it proposed for the levies. Perhaps there was much truth in the reports concerning these guests; for among the Zaporojian elders were many nobles who had become Cossacks, who had picked up some Latin and therefore were not to be recognized in any way. Besides, in the distant steppes Latin did not flourish as a rule, and such princes as the Kurtsevichi did not know it any better than Bogun and other atamans.
But reports like these with which the election field as well as the city were filled, together with news of the movements of Hmelnitski and the Cossack-Tartar expeditions,—which had reached, it was said, the Vistula,—filled people’s minds with alarm, and more than once became causes of tumult. In the crowd of nobles to cast on a man the suspicion of being a Zaporojian in disguise was enough to insure his being sabred into small pieces before he could show who he was. In this way innocent men might perish and the dignity of deliberations be destroyed, especially since with the custom of the time sobriety was not too much observed. The chapter “propter securitatem loci” (concerning public peace) was inadequate to stop the endless quarrels in which people were cut down for the slightest cause. But if those tumults, sabre-slashings, and drinking-bouts alarmed orderly people, penetrated with a love of good and peace, through the danger with which they threatened the country, on the other hand the reckless, the disorderly, the gamblers and disturbers felt as it were in their element; they considered this as their own special season, their day of harvest, and the more boldly permitted themselves various misdeeds.
It is needless to add that among these Zagloba was first. His primacy was secured by his great fame as a knight, his unquenchable thirst upheld by a supply of drink, a tongue so tanned that it had no equal, and by a self-confidence which nothing could shake. But he had at times his attacks of “melancholy;” then he shut himself up in a room or a tent, and did not go out, or if he did go he was in angry humor, inclined to quarrels and genuine fighting. It happened, in fact, that in such a humor he hacked up Pan Dunchevski badly, only because he had knocked against his sabre in passing. At such times he endured only the presence of Pan Michael, to whom he complained that a longing for Skshetuski and the “poor young lady” was devouring him. “We have deserted her, Pan Michael,” he used to say; “we have betrayed her like Judas into godless hands. Don’t excuse yourself to me with your nemine excepto. What is happening to her, Pan Michael, tell me that?”
In vain Pan Michael explained that had it not been for Pilavtsi, they would have been searching for “the poor young lady,” but that now when the whole power of Hmelnitski separated them from her it was an impossible thing. Zagloba did not yield himself to consolation, but fell into still greater passion, cursing by what the world stands on,—"Feather-bed,” “Baby,” and “Latin."[16]
But these periods of gloom were of short duration. When they were over Zagloba, as if wishing to reward himself for lost time, generally revelled and drank more than ever. He spent his time in taverns in company with the mightiest drinkers or with women of the capital, in
which occupation Pan Michael held him trusty companionship.
Pan Michael, a soldier and a splendid officer, possessed not, however, a farthing’s worth of that seriousness which misfortune and suffering had developed, for instance, in Skshetuski. Volodyovski understood his duty to the Commonwealth in this way: he killed whomsoever he was ordered to kill,—cared for naught else. He knew nothing of public questions; he was always ready to bewail a military defeat, but it never entered his head that quarrels and tumults were as harmful to public affairs as defeats; in one word, he was a thoughtless young man who, having entered the bustle of the capital, sank in it to his ears, and stuck like a thistle to Zagloba, for he was his master in license. He went therefore with him among the nobles, to whom Zagloba at his cups related things uncreated, winning at the same time adherents for Prince Karl; he drank with him, protected him when necessary; they both circled around in the field of election and the city like flies in a pot, and there was no corner into which they did not crawl. They were at Nyeporente and in Yablonna; they were at all the feasts and dinners given by magnates; they were at taverns,—they were everywhere, and took part in everything. Pan Michael’s youthful hand was restive; he wanted to exhibit himself, and to prove at the same time that the nobility of the Ukraine was better than any other and that the soldiers of the prince were higher than all. They went therefore to seek adventures on purpose among the Poles of the kingdom, as the most skilled with the sword, and specially among the partisans of Prince Dominik Zaslavski, for whom both felt a particular hatred. They engaged only with the most celebrated champions, men of undoubted and settled fame, and plotted the quarrels beforehand. “You pick the quarrel,” said Pan Michael, “and then I will step in.” Zagloba, very skilful in fence and by no means timid in duelling with a brother noble, did not always agree to have a substitute, especially in affairs with adherents of Zaslavski; but when it was a question with some famous swordsman, he halted in the dispute; if the noble was eager for the sword and challenged, Zagloba said: “My good sir, I should be without conscience if I were to expose you to evident death by fighting with you myself; better try my little son and pupil here, and I am not sure that you will be able to manage him.” After such words Volodyovski appeared on the scene with his little upturned mustaches, nose in the air, and gaping face. Whether accepted or not, he opened the fight, and being in truth a master above masters, he generally stretched out his antagonist after a few blows. In this fashion the two found sport from which their fame increased among restless spirits and the nobles, but especially the fame of Pan Zagloba, for it was said: “If the pupil is such a man, what must the master be!” Pan Kharlamp was the one person that Volodyovski could not find for a long time. He thought: “Perhaps they have sent him back to Lithuania on business of some sort.”
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