The Deluge. Vol. 1

"Pan Banneret of Orsha, I grieve that the Radzivills are losing a man like you, for with such men much might be done. If it were not a question of myself-h'm! I would spare nothing to win you."

"Too late!" said Kmita.

"That is to be understood," answered the prince. "Much too late! But I tell you beforehand that I will order you only to be shot, for you are worthy to die a soldier's death. What an incarnate devil to carry me off from the midst of my men!"

Kmita made no answer; the prince meditated awhile, then cried, -

"If you free me at once, I will not take vengeance. Only give me your word that you will tell no one of this, and command your men to be silent."

"Impossible!" replied Kmita.

"Do you want a ransom?"

"I do not."

"What the devil, then, did you carry me off for? I cannot understand it."

"It would take a long time to tell. I will tell your highness later."

"But what have we to do on the road unless to talk? Acknowledge, Cavalier, one thing: you carried me off in a moment of anger and desperation, and now you don't know well what to do with me."

"That is my affair!" answered Kmita; "and if I do not know what to do, it will soon be seen."

Impatience was depicted on Prince Boguslav's face.

"You are not over-communicative, Pan Banneret of Orsha; but answer me one question at least sincerely: Did you come to me, to Podlyasye, with a plan already formed of attacking my person, or did it enter your head in the last moment?"

"To that I can answer your highness sincerely, for my lips are burning to tell you why I left your cause; and while I am alive, while there is breath in my body, I shall not return to it. The prince voevoda of Vilna deceived me, and in advance brought me to swear on the crucifix that I would not leave him till death."

"And you are keeping the oath well. There is nothing to be said on that point."

"True!" cried Kmita, violently. "If I have lost my soul, if I must be damned, it is through the Radzivills. But I give myself to the mercy of God, and I would rather lose my soul, I would rather burn eternally, than to sin longer with knowledge and willingly, – than to serve longer, knowing that I serve sin and treason. May God have mercy on me! I prefer to burn, I prefer a hundred times to burn; I should burn surely, if I remained with you. I have nothing to lose; but at least I shall say at the judgment of God: 'I knew not what I was swearing, and had I discovered that I had sworn treason to the country, destruction to the Polish name, I should have broken the oath right there.' Now let the Lord God be my judge."

"To the question, to the question!" said Boguslav, calmly.

But Pan Andrei breathed heavily, and rode on some time in silence, with frowning brow and eyes fixed on the earth, like a man bowed down by misfortune.

"To the question!" repeated the prince.

Kmita roused himself as if from a dream, shook his head, and said, -

"I believed the prince hetman as I would not have believed my own father. I remember that banquet at which he announced his union with the Swedes. What I suffered then, what I passed through, God will account to me. Others, honorable men, threw their batons at his feet and remained with their country; but I stood like a stump with the baton, with shame, with submission, with infamy, in torture, for I was called traitor to my eyes. And who called me traitor? Oi, better not say, lest I forget myself, go mad, and put a bullet right here in the head of your highness. You are the men, you the traitors, the Judases, who brought me to that."

Here Kmita gazed with a terrible expression on the prince, and hatred came out on his face from the bottom of his soul, like a dragon which had crawled out of a cave to the light of day; but Boguslav looked at the young man with a calm, fearless eye. At last he said, -

"But that interests me, Pan Kmita; speak on."

Kmita dropped the bridle of the prince's horse, and removed his cap as if wishing to cool his burning head.

"That same night," continued he, "I went to the hetman, for he gave command to call me. I thought to myself, 'I will renounce his service, break my oath, suffocate him, choke him with these hands, blow up Kyedani with powder, and then let happen what may.' He knew too that was ready for anything, knew what I was; I saw well that he was fingering a box in which there were pistols. 'That is nothing,' thought I to myself; 'either he will miss me or he will kill me.' But he began to reason, to speak, to show such a prospect to me, simpleton, and put himself forward as such a savior, that your highness knows what happened."

"He convinced the young man," said Boguslav.

"So that I fell at his feet," cried Kmita, "and saw in him the father, the one savior, of the country; so that I gave myself to him soul and body as to a devil. For him, for his honesty I was ready to hurl myself headlong from the tower of Kyedani."

"I thought such would be the end," said Boguslav.

"What I lost in his cause I will not say, but I rendered him important services. I held in obedience my squadron, which is in Kyedani now, – God grant to his ruin! Others, who mutinied, I cut up badly. I stained my hands in brothers' blood, believing that a stern necessity for the country. Often my soul was pained at giving command to shoot honest soldiers; often the nature of a noble rebelled against him, when one time and another he promised something and did not keep his word. But I thought: 'I am simple, he is wise! – it must be done so.' But to-day, when I learned for the first time from those letters of the poisons, the marrow stiffened in my bones. How? Is this the kind of war? You wish to poison soldiers? And that is to be in hetman fashion? That is to be the Radzivill method, and am I to carry such letters?"

"You know nothing of politics, Cavalier," interrupted Boguslav.

"May the thunders crush it! Let the criminal Italians practise it, not a noble whom God has adorned with more honorable blood than others, but at the same time obliged him to war with a sabre and not with a drug-shop."

"These letters, then, so astonished you that you determined to leave the Radzivills?"

"It was not the letters, – I might have thrown them to the hangman, or tossed them into the fire, for they refer not to my duties; it was not the letters. I might have refused the mission without leaving the cause. Do I know what I might have done? I might have joined the dragoons, or collected a party again, and harried Hovanski as before. But straightway a suspicion came to me: 'But do they not wish to poison the country as well as those soldiers?' God granted me not to break out, though my head was burning like a grenade, to remember myself, to have the power to think: 'Draw him by the tongue, and discover the whole truth; betray not what you have at heart, give yourself out as worse than the Radzivills themselves, and draw him by the tongue.'"

"Whom, – me?"

"Yes! God aided me, so that I, simple man, deceived a politician, – so that your highness, holding me the last of ruffians, hid nothing of your own ruffianism, confessed everything, told everything, as if it had been written on the hand. The hair stood on my head, but I listened and listened to the end. O traitors! arch hell-dwellers! O parricides! How is it, that a thunderbolt has not stricken you down before now? How is it that the earth has not swallowed you? So you are treating with Hmelnitski, with the Swedes, with the elector, with Rakotsy, and with the devil himself to the destruction of this Commonwealth? Now you want to cut a mantle out of it for yourself, to sell it to divide it, to tear your own mother like wolves? Such is your gratitude for all the benefits heaped on you, – for the offices, the honors, the dignities, the wealth, the authority, the estates which foreign kings envy you? And you were ready without regard to those tears, torments, oppression. Where is your conscience, where your faith, where your honesty? What monster brought you into the world?"

"Cavalier," interrupted Boguslav, coldly, "you have me in your hand, you can kill me; but I beg one thing, do not bore me."

Both were silent.

However, it appeared plainly, from the words of Kmita, that the soldier had been able to draw out the naked truth from the diplomat, and that the prince was guilty of great incautiousness, of a great error in betraying his most secret plans and those of the hetman. This pricked his vanity; therefore, not caring to hide his ill-humor, he said, -

"Do not ascribe it to your own wit merely, Pan Kmita, that you got the truth from me. I spoke openly, for I thought the prince voevoda knew people better, and had sent a man worthy of confidence."

"The prince voevoda sent a man worthy of confidence," answered Kmita, "but you have lost him. Henceforth only scoundrels will serve you."

"If the way in which you seized me was not scoundrelly, then may the sword grow to my hand in the first battle."

"It was a stratagem! I learned it in a hard school. You wish, your highness, to know Kmita. Here he is! I shall not go with empty hands to our gracious lord."

"And you think that a hair of my head will fall from the hand of Yan Kazimir?"

"That is a question for the judges, not for me."

Suddenly Kmita reined in his horse: "But the letter of the prince voevoda, – have you that letter on your person?"

"If I had, I would not give it. The letter remained in Pilvishki."

"Search him!" cried Kmita.

The soldiers seized the prince again by the arms. Soroka began to search his pockets. After a while he found the letter.

"Here is one document against you and your works," said Pan Andrei, taking the letter. "The King of Poland will know from it what you have in view; the Swedish King will know too, that although now you are serving him, the prince voevoda reserves to himself freedom to withdraw if the Swedish foot stumbles. All your treasons will come out, all your machinations. But I have, besides, other letters, – to the King of Sweden, to Wittemberg, to Radzeyovski. You are great and powerful; still I am not sure that it will not be too narrow for you in this Commonwealth, when both kings will prepare a recompense worthy of your treasons."