Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/176

146 "Your grace assures me," said he, "that with these forces it is possible to break the army occupying Uistsie?"

The man with the light wig smiled and answered: "Your grace may rely completely on my words, for which I am ready to pledge my head. If at Uistsie there were regular troops and some one of the hetmans, I first would give counsel not to hasten, but to wait till his royal Grace should come with the whole army; but against the general militia and those gentlemen of Great Poland our forces will be more than sufficient."

"But have not reinforcements come to them?"

"Reinforcements have not come for two reasons, — first, because all the regular troops, of which there are not many, are occupied in Lithuania and the Ukraine; second, because in Warsaw neither the King Yan Kazimir, the chancellor, nor the senate will believe to this moment that his royal Grace Karl Gustav has really begun war in spite of the truce, and notwithstanding the last embassies and his readiness to compromise. They are confident that peace will be made at the last hour, — ha, ha!"

Here the rear man removed his hat, wiped the sweat from his red face, and added: "Trubetskoi and Dolgoruki in Lithuania, Hmelnitski in the Ukraine, and we entering Great Poland, — behold what the government of Yan Kazimir has led to."

Wittemberg gazed on him with a look of astonishment, and asked, "But, your grace, do you rejoice at the thought?"

"I rejoice at the thought, for my wrong and my innocence will be avenged; and besides I see, as on the palm of my hand, that the sabre of your grace and my counsels will place that new and most beautiful crown in the world on the head of Karl Gustav."

Wittemberg turned his glance to the distance, embraced with it the oak-groves, the meadows, the grain-fields, and after a while said: "True, it is a beautiful country and fertile. Your grace may be sure that after the war the king will give the chancellorship to no one else but you."

The man in the rear removed his cap a second time. "And I, for my part, wish to have no other lord," added he, raising his eyes to heaven.

The heavens were clear and fair; no thunderbolt fell and crushed to the dust the traitor who delivered his country,