But the Judge said: “Hurry up, my dear Count, for it is already late!” And the Monk Robak called out with a threatening mien: “Enough of this; hurry up!” Thus the orders of the Judge and the Monk separated the tender pair and drove them from the room.
Meanwhile Thaddeus had embraced his uncle with tears and was kissing Robak’s hand. Robak, pressing the lad’s brow to his breast and hying his palms crosswise on his head, gazed aloft and said: “My son, may God be with you!” Then he began to weep. But Thaddeus was already beyond the threshold.
“What, brother?” asked the Judge, “will you tell him nothing? not even now? Shall the poor lad still remain in ignorance, now that he is going to leave us!”
“No, nothing!” said the Monk, after a long interval of weeping, his face covered by his hands. “Why should the poor fellow know that he has a father who has hidden himself from the world as a scoundrel and a murderer? God sees how I longed to tell him, but of that consolation I will make an offering to God, to expiate my former sins.”
“Then,” said the Judge, “it is now time for you to think of yourself. Pray reflect that a man of your age, in your weak condition, would be unable to emigrate along with the others. You have said that you know a little house where you must hide; tell me where it is. We must hasten, the waggon is waiting, ready harnessed; would it not be better to go to the woods, to the forester’s hut?”
“Early to-morrow morning will be time enough,” said Robak, nodding his head. “Now, my brother, send for the priest to come here as quickly as may be with the viaticum; send off every one but the Warden, and shut the door.”
The Judge carried out Robak’s instructions and sat down on the bed beside him; but Gerwazy remained standing, resting his elbow on the pommel of his sword, and leaning his bent brow on his hands.
Robak, before beginning to speak, riveted his gaze on the face of the Warden and remained mysteriously silent. But as a surgeon first lays a gentle hand on the body of a sick man before he makes a cut with the knife, so Robak softened the expression of his sharp eyes, which he allowed to hover for a long time over the eyes of Gerwazy; finally, as if he wished to strike a blind blow, he covered his eyes with his hand and said with a powerful voice: —
“I am Jacek Soplica.”
At these words the Warden turned pale, bowed down, and, with half his body bent forward, remained fixed in this position, hung upon one foot, like a stone flying from on high but checked in its course. He raised his eyelids and opened wide his mouth with its threatening white teeth; his mustaches bristled; his sword dropped from his hands, but he caught it near the floor with his knees and held the pommel with his right hand, gripping it convulsively: the long black blade of the sword stretched out behind him and shook back and forth. And the Warden was like a wounded lynx, about to spring from a tree into the very face of a hunter: it puffs itself into a ball, growls, flashes fire from its bloody eyeballs, twitches its whiskers and lashes its tail.
“Pan Rembajlo,” said the Monk, “I am no longer alarmed by the wrath of men, for already I am under the hand of God. I adjure thee in the name of Him who saved the world, and on the cross blessed His murderers and accepted the prayer of the robber, that you relent, and hear in patience what I have to say. I have myself declared my name; to ease my conscience I must gain or at least beg forgiveness. Hear my confession; then you will do with me as you wish.”
Here he joined his two hands as though in prayer; the Warden drew back amazed, smote his hand on his brow and shrugged his shoulders.
And the Monk began to tell of his former intimacy with the Horeszko and of the love between him and the Pantler’s daughter, and of the enmity between the two men that thence arose. But he spoke confusedly; often he mixed accusations and complaints in his confession, often he interrupted his speech as though he had ended, and then began anew.
The Warden, who was thoroughly familiar with the story of the Horeszkos, straightened out in his mind the whole tale, though it was sadly tangled, and could fill up the gaps in it; but the Judge entirely failed to understand many points. Both listened attentively, bending their heads forward; but Jacek spoke more and more slowly, and often interrupted himself.
* * * * * * * *
“You already know, my dear Gerwazy, how often the Pantler used to invite me to banquets; he would propose my health, and many a time he cried, raising his beaker aloft, that he had no better friend than Jacek Soplica. How he would embrace me! All who saw it thought that he shared his very soul with me. He a friend? He knew what then was passing within my soul!
* * * * * * * *
“Meanwhile the neighbourhood was already whispering; gossips would say to me: ‘Ah, Pan Soplica, your suit is vain; the threshold of a dignitary is too high for the feet of Jacek the Cup-Bearer’s son.’ I laughed, pretending that I mocked at magnates and their daughters, and that I cared nothing for aristocrats; that if I often visited them, I did it out of mere friendship, and that I would never marry outside my own station in life. And yet these jests pricked my soul to the quick: I was young and daring, and the world was open to me in a land where, as you know, one born a simple gentleman may be chosen king just as freely as the most powerful lord. Once Tenczynski asked in marriage a daughter of a royal house, and the King gave her to him without shame. Are not the Soplicas of equal merit with the Tenczynskis, through their blood, through their ancient crest, and through their faithful service to the Commonwealth!
* * * * * * * *
“How easily a man may ruin the happiness of others in a single instant; and in a long lifetime he cannot restore it! One word from the Pantler, and how happy we should have been! Who knows? Perhaps we should be living still; perhaps he too, with his belovèd child — with his fair Eva — and with her grateful husband, would have grown old in peace! perhaps he would have rocked to sleep his grandchildren! But now? He has destroyed us both — and he himself — and that murder — and all the consequences of that crime, all my sufferings and transgressions! I have no right to accuse him, I am his slayer; I have no right to accuse him, I forgive him from my heart — but he too ——
* * * * * * * *
“If he had but once openly refused me — for he knew our feelings — if he had not received my visits, then who knows? Perhaps I should have gone away, have become enraged, have cursed him, and finally have left him in peace. But he, the proud and cunning lord, formed a new plan; he pretended that it had never even entered his head that I could strive for such a union. But he needed me, I had influence among the gentry and every one in the district liked me. So he feigned not to notice my love; he welcomed me as before and even insisted that I should come more often; but whenever we were alone together, seeing my eyes darkened with tears and my heart over-full and ready to burst forth, the sly old man would suddenly throw in some indifferent word about lawsuits, district diets, or hunting ——
* * * * * * * *
“Ah, often over the winecups, when he was in a melting mood, when he clasped me so closely and assured me of his friendship, since he needed my sabre or my vote at the diet, and when in return I was forced to clasp him in friendly wise, then anger would so boil up within me that I would turn the spittle within my lips and clasp my sword hilt with my hand, longing to spit upon this friendship and to draw the sword at once. But Eva, noticing my glance and my bearing, would guess, I know not how, what was passing within me, and would gaze at me imploringly, and her face would turn pale; and she was so fair and meek a dove, and she had so gentle and serene a glance! — so angel-like that — I know not how — but I lacked the courage to anger or alarm her — and I held my peace. And I, a roistering champion famous through all Lithuania, before whom the greatest lords had been wont to tremble, who had not lived a day without a battle, who would not have allowed the Pantler, no, not the King himself, to do me wrong; I, who was driven to fury by the least disagreement — I, then, though angry and drunken, held my peace like a lamb! — as though I had suddenly beheld the consecrated
Host!
* * * * * * * *
“How many times did I wish to open my heart and even to humble myself to implore him; but when I looked into his eyes and met his gaze cold as ice, I felt shame for my emotion; I hastened once more to discourse as coldly as I might of suits at law and of the district diets, and even to jest. All this, to be sure, was from pride, in order not to debase the name of the Soplicas, in order not to lower myself before a magnate by a vain request and receive a refusal — for what gossip there would have been among the gentry, if they had known that I, Jacek ——
* * * * * * * *
“The Horeszkos refuse a wench to a Soplica! They serve me, Jacek, with black soup!
“Finally, not knowing myself what way to turn, I bethought me of gathering together a little company of gentry, and of leaving forever this district and my Fatherland; of going off somewhere or other, to Moscow or to the land of the Tatars, and beginning a war. I rode over to bid the Pantler farewell, in the hope that when he saw his faithful partisan, his former friend, a man almost of his own household, with whom he had caroused and made war for so many long years, now bidding him farewell and riding off to the ends of the earth — that the old man might be moved and show me at least a trace of a human soul, as a snail shows its horns!
“Ah! if one has at the bottom of his heart the faintest spark of feeling for a friend, that spark will break forth when he bids him farewell, like the last flame of life before a man expires! The coldest eye, when for the last time it touches the brow of a friend, will often shed a tear!
* * * * * * * *
“The poor girl, hearing that I was about to leave the country, turned pale, and fell in a swoon, almost dead; she could not speak, but from her eyes there streamed a flood of tears — I learned how dear I was to her.
* * * * * * * *
“I remember that for the first time in my life I shed tears, for joy and for despair; I forgot myself, I went mad; I was ready once more to fall at her father’s feet, to cling like a serpent about his knees, to cry out, ‘Dear father, take me for your son or slay me!’ Then the Pantler, sullen, cold as a pillar of salt, polite and indifferent, began a discourse — of what? of what? Of his daughter’s wedding! At that moment? O Gerwazy, dear friend, consider; you have a human heart!
“The Pantler said: ‘Pan Soplica, a wooer has just come to me on behalf of the Castellan’s son; you are my friend, what do you say to that? You know, sir, that I have a daughter, fair and rich — and the Castellan of Witepsk! That is a low, parvenu seat in the Senate; what do you advise me, brother?’ I have entirely forgotten what I said in reply to that, probably nothing at all — I mounted my horse and fled!”
* * * * * * * *
“Jacek!” cried the Warden, “you are clever at finding excuses! Well? They do not lessen your guilt! For it has happened many a time ere now that a man has fallen in love with the daughter of a lord or king, and has tried to capture her by force; has planned to steal her away or to avenge himself openly — but so stealthily to kill him! a Polish lord, in Poland, and in league with the Muscovites!”
“I was not in league with them,” answered Jacek in a voice full of sorrow. “Seize her by force? I might have; from behind gratings and locks I would have snatched her; I would have shattered this castle of his into dust! I had behind me Dobrzyn and four other hamlets. Ah, would that she had been such as our plain gentlewomen, strong and vigorous! Would that she had not dreaded flight and the pursuit and could have borne the sound of clashing arms! But the poor child! Her parents had shielded her so carefully that she was frail and timid! She was but a little spring caterpillar — the larva of a butterfly! And to snatch her thus, to touch her with an armed hand, would have been to kill her. I could not! No!
“To avenge myself openly, and tumble the castle into ruins by an assault, I was ashamed, for they would have said that I was avenging myself for my rejection! Warden, your honest heart cannot feel what hell there is in wounded pride.
“The demon of pride began to suggest to me better plans: to take a bloody revenge, but to hide the reason for my vengeance; to frequent the castle no more and to root out my love from my heart; to dismiss Eva from my memory and to marry another; and then later to find some pretext for a quarrel, and to take vengeance.
“At first I thought that I had succeeded in overcoming my heart, and I was glad of that fancied change, and — I married the first poor girl that I met! I did evil, and how cruelly was I punished for it! I loved her not, Thaddeus’s poor mother, my most devoted wife and the most upright soul — but I was strangling in my heart my former love and my anger. I was like a madman; in vain I forced myself to work at farming or at business; all was of no avail. Possessed by the demon of vengeance, morose and passionate, I could find no comfort in anything in the world — and thus I passed from one sin to another; I began to drink.
“And so in no long time my wife died of grief, leaving me that child; and despair consumed me!
* * * * * * * *
“How ardently I must have loved that poor girl! for so many years! Where have I not been! And yet I have never been able to forget her, and still does her belovèd form stand before mine eyes as if painted! I drank, but I have not been able to drink down her memory for one instant; nor to free myself from it, though I have traversed so many lands! Now I am in the dress of God’s servant, on my bed, and bleeding — I have spoken of her so long — at this moment to speak of such things! God will forgive me! You must learn now in what sorrow and despair I committed ——
“That was but a short time after her betrothal. Everywhere the talk was of nothing but her betrothal; they said that when Eva took the ring from the hand of the Wojewoda she swooned, that she had been seized with a fever, that she had symptoms of consumption, that she sobbed continually; they conjectured that she was secretly in love with some one else. But the Pantler, calm and gay as ever, gave balls in his castle and assembled his friends; me he no longer invited — in what way could I be useful to him? My scandalous life at home, my misery, my disgraceful habits had brought upon me the contempt and mockery of the world! Me, who once, I may say, had made all the district tremble! Me, whom Radziwill had called ‘my dear’! Me, who, when I rode forth from my hamlet, had led with me a train more numerous than a prince’s! And when I drew my sabre, then many thousand sabres had glittered round about, striking terror to the lords’ castles, — But now the very children of the peasant boors laughed at me! So paltry had I quickly made myself in the eyes of men! Jacek Soplica! He who knows the feeling of pride — —”
Here the Bernardine grew weak and fell back on the bed, and the Warden said, deeply moved: —
“Great are the judgments of God! It is the truth! the truth! So is it you? and are you Jacek? the Soplica? in a monk’s cowl? Have you been living a beggar’s life! You, whom I remember when you were strong and rosy, a handsome gentlemen, when lords flattered you, when women went mad over you! The mustachioed champion! That was not so long ago! it is grief that has aged you thus! How could I fail to recognise you from that shot, when you hit the bear with so sure an aim? For our Lithuania had no better marksman than you, and next to Maciek you were also the foremost swordsman! It is the truth! Once the gentlewomen sang of you: —
When Jacek twirls his whisker, men tremble far and near;
‘Gainst whom he knots his whisker, that man feels mortal fear —
Though he be Prince Radziwill, to fight he will not dare.
You tied a knot against my lord! Unhappy man! And is it you? Fallen to such a state! The mustachioed Jacek a monkish alms-gatherer! Great are the judgments of God! And now! ha! you cannot escape the penalty; I have sworn, he who has shed a drop of the Horeszkos’ blood — —”
Meanwhile the Monk had raised himself to a sitting posture on the bed; and he thus concluded: —
“I rode around the castle; who can tell the names of all the devils that filled my head and heart! The Pantler? Is he slaying his own child as he has already slai
n and ruined me? — I rode up to the gate; a demon enticed me there. Look how he revels! Every day a drinking bout in the castle! How many candles there are in the windows, what music peals through the halls! And shall not this castle crash down upon his bald head?
“Think of vengeance, and a demon will at once furnish you a weapon. Hardly had I thought of it, when the demon sent the Muscovites. I stood gazing; you know how they stormed your castle.
* * * * * * * *
“For it is false that I was in any league with the Muscovites.
* * * * * * * *
“I gazed; various thoughts passed through my head: at first with a stupid laugh I gazed as a child upon a burning house; then I felt a murderous joy, expecting that speedily it would begin to blaze and totter; at times I was prompted to leap in and save her — even the Pantler ——
* * * * * * * *
“Your defence, as you know, was vigorous and prompt. I was amazed; the Muscovites kept falling close by me; the beasts aimed poorly. — At the sight of their overthrow hatred again overcame me. — That Pantler a victor! And shall he prosper thus in his every purpose? And shall he triumph even over this fearful assault? I was riding away, smitten with shame. — Day was just dawning; suddenly I beheld him and recognised him; he stepped out on the balcony and his diamond buckle glittered in the sun; proudly he twirled his mustache and proudly gazed around; and it seemed to me that he mocked at me above all others, that he had recognised me and that thus he pointed his hand at me, scoffing and threatening, — I seized a carbine from a Muscovite; I barely raised it to my shoulder, scarcely aimed — it went off! You know the rest!
“Cursed firearms! He who slays with the sword must take his stand and press on; he parries and flourishes; he may disarm his enemy and check his sword halfway. But with these firearms it is enough to hold the gun; an instant, a single spark ——
* * * * * * * *
“Did I flee when you aimed at me from above? I levelled my eyes at the two barrels of your gun. What despair! A strange grief pinned me to the earth! Why, Gerwazy, ah why did you miss at that time? You would have done me a kindness! — evidently as a penance for my sin I must needs — —”
Adam Mickiewicz Collected Poetical Works Page 67