Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/547

Rh "They have plundered us, brought us to poverty!"

But Pan Andrei was glad to find the road open before him, for he foresaw that the Swedes would not pay for the horses in Warsaw, and in all likelihood they would pay nowhere, — hence he would be able to go on continually as it were seeking for justice, even to the Swedish king, who was at Cracow occupied with the siege of the ancient capital.

Meanwhile Kmita resolved to pass the night in Pjasnysh to give his horses rest, and without changing his assumed name to throw aside his exterior of a poor noble. He saw that all despised a poor horse-dealer, that any one might attack him more readily and have less fear to answer for injustice to an insignificant man. It was more diflicult in that dress to have approach to important nobles, and therefore more difficult to discover what each one was thinking.

He procured therefore clothing answering to his station and his birth, and went to an inn so as to talk with his brother nobles. But he was not rejoiced at what he heard. In the taverns and public houses the nobles drank to the health of the King of Sweden, and to the success of the protector, struck glasses with the Swedish officers, laughed at the jokes which these officers permitted themselves to make at the expense of Yan Kazimir and Charnyetski.

Fear for their own lives and property had debased people to such a degree that they were affable to the invaders, and hurried to keep up their good humor. Still even that debasement had its limits. The nobles allowed themselves, their king, the hetmans, and Pan Charnyetski to be ridiculed, but not their religion; and when a certain Swedish captain declared that the Lutheran faith was as good as the Catholic, Pan Grabkovski, sitting near him, not being able to endure that blasphemy, struck him on the temple with a hatchet, and taking advantage of the uproar, slipped out of the public house and vanished in the crowd.

They fell to pursuing him, but news came which turned attention in another direction. Couriers arrived with news that Cracow had surrendered, that Pan Charnyetski was in captivity, and that the last barrier to Swedish dominion was swept away.

The nobles were dumb at the first moment, but the Swedes began to rejoice and cry "Vivat." In the church of the Holy Ghost, in the church of the Bernardines, and in the cloister of Bernardine nuns, recently erected by Pani Muskovski, it was ordered to ring the bells. The infantry and