With Fire and Sword Henryk Sienkiewicz (different e readers .TXT) 📖

seat, pulled his hair, stamped with his feet, crying that there must be war, for he had already received absolution and a blessing for it; he had nothing to do with commissions and commissioners, he would not allow a suspension of arms.

Seeing at length the terror of the commissioners, and recollecting that if they went away at once, war would begin in the winter, consequently at a time when the Cossacks, not being able to entrench themselves, fought badly in the open field, he calmed down a little and again sat on the bench, dropped his head on his breast, rested his hands on his knees, and breathed hoarsely. Finally he took a glass of vudka.

“To the health of the king!” cried he.

“To his glory and health!” repeated the colonels.

“Now, Kisel, don’t be gloomy,” said the hetman, “and don’t take to heart what I say, for I’ve been drinking. Fortune-tellers inform me that there must be war, but I’ll wait till next grass. Let there be a commission then; I will free the captives at that time. They tell me that you are ill, so let this be to your health!”

Again Hmelnitski dropped into momentary tenderness, and resting his hand on the shoulder of the voevoda brought his enormous red face to the pale, emaciated cheeks of Kisel.

After him came other colonels, and approaching the commissioners with familiarity shook their hands, clapped them on the shoulders, repeated after the hetman: “Till next grass.” The commissioners were in torment. The peasant breaths, filled with the odor of gorailka, came upon the faces of those nobles of high birth, for whom the pressure of those sweating hands was as unendurable as an affront. Threatenings also were not lacking among the expressions of vulgar cordiality. Some cried to the voevoda: “We want to kill Poles, but you are our man!” Others said: “Well, in times past, you killed our people, now you ask favors! Destruction to you!” “You white hands!” cried Ataman Vovk, formerly miller in Nestervar, “I slew my landlord. Prince Chertvertinski.” “Give us Yeremi,” said Yashevski, rolling along, “and we will let you off!”

It became stifling in the room and hot beyond endurance. The table covered with remnants of meat, fragments of bread, stained with vudka and mead, was disgusting. At last the fortune-tellers came in⁠—conjurers with whom the hetman usually drank till late at night, listening to their predictions⁠—strange forms, old, bent, yellow, or in the vigor of youth, soothsaying from wax, grains of wheat, fire, water, foam, from the bottom of a flask or from human fat. Among the colonels and the youngest of them there was frolicking and laughing. Kisel came near fainting.

“We thank you, Hetman, for the feast, and we bid you goodbye,” said he, with a weak voice.

“Kisel, I will come to you tomorrow to dine,” answered Hmelnitski, “and now return home. Donyéts with his men will attend you, so that nothing may happen to you from the crowd.”

The commissioners bowed and went out. Donyéts with the Cossacks was waiting at the door.

“O God! O God! O God!” whispered Kisel, quietly, raising his hands to his face.

The party moved in silence to the quarters of the commissioners. But it appeared that they were not to stop near one another. Hmelnitski had assigned them purposely quarters in different parts of the town, so that they could not meet and counsel easily.

Kisel, suffering, exhausted, barely able to stand, went to bed immediately, and permitted no one to see him till the following day; then before noon he ordered Pan Yan to be called.

“Have you acted wisely?” asked he. “What have you done? You might have exposed our lives and your own to destruction.”

“Serene voevoda, mea culpa! but delirium carried me away, and I preferred to perish a hundred times rather than behold such things.”

“Hmelnitski saw the slight put on him, and I was barely able to pacify the wild beast and explain your act. He will be with me today, and will undoubtedly ask for you. Then tell him that you had an order from me to lead away the soldiers.”

“From today forth Bjozovski takes the command, for he is well.”

“That is better; you are too stubborn for these times. It is difficult to blame you for anything in this act except lack of caution; but it is evident that you are young and cannot bear the pain that is in your breast.”

“I am accustomed to pain, serene voevoda, but I cannot endure disgrace.”

Kisel groaned quietly, just like an invalid when touched on the sore spot. Then he smiled with a gloomy resignation, and said⁠—

“Such words are daily bread for me, which for a long time I eat moistened with bitter tears; but now the tears have failed me.”

Pity rose in Skshetuski’s heart at the sight of this old man with his martyr’s face, who was passing the last days of his life in double suffering, for it was a suffering both of the mind and the body.

“Serene voevoda,” said he, “God is my witness that I was thinking only of these fearful times when senators and dignitaries of the Crown are obliged to bow down before the rabble, for whom the empaling stake should be the only return for their deeds.”

“God bless you, for you are young and honest. I know that you have no evil intention. But that which you say your prince says, and with him the army, the nobles, the Diets, half the Commonwealth; and all that burden of scorn and hatred falls upon me.”

“Each serves the country as he understands, and let God judge intentions. As to Prince Yeremi, he serves the country with his health and his property.”

“Applause surrounds him, and he walks in it as in the sunlight,” answered the voevoda. “And what comes to me? Oh, you have spoken justly! Let God judge intentions, and may he give even a quiet grave