Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/555

Rh In other cities the same thing might be seen; and though the capital had yielded without battle, still thirty gigantic flat-boats were ready on the Vistula to bear away the plunder.

The city looked like a foreign place. On the streets foreign languages were heard more than Polish; everywhere were met Swedish soldiers, German, French, English, and Scottish mercenaries, in the greatest variety of uniforms, — in hats, in lofty helmets, in kaftans, in breastplates, half breastplates, in stockings, or Swedish boots, with legs as wide as water-buckets. Everywhere a foreign medley, foreign garments, foreign faces, foreign songs. Even the horses had forms different from those to which the eye was accustomed. There had also rushed in a multitude of Armenians with dark faces, and black hair covered with bright skull-caps; they had come to buy plundered articles.

But most astonishing of all was the incalculable number of gypsies, who, it is unknown for what purpose, had gathered after the Swedes from all parts of the country. Their tents stood at the side of the Uyazdovski Palace, and along the monastery jurisdiction, forming as it were a special town of linen houses within a town of walled structures.

In the midst of these various-tongued throngs the inhabitants of the city almost vanished; for their own safety they sat gladly enclosed in their houses, showing themselves rarely, and then passing swiftly along the streets. Only occasionally the carriage of some magnate, hurrying from the Cracow suburbs to the castle, and surrounded by haiduks, Turkish grooms, or troops in Polish dress, gave reminder that the city was Polish.

Only on Sundays and holidays, when the bells announced services, did crowds come forth from the houses, and the capital put on its former appearance, — though even then lines of foreign soldiers stood hedgelike in front of the churches, to look at the women or pull at their dresses when, with downcast eyes, they walked past them. These soldiers laughed, and sometimes sang vile songs just when the priests were singing Mass in the churches.

All this flashed past the astonished eyes of Pan Kmita like jugglery; but he did not warm his place long in Warsaw, for not knowing any man he had no one before whom to open his soul. Even with those Polish nobles who were stopping in the city and living in public houses built during