Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/564

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words of the young daughter of the starosta of Sohachev filled Kmita with great consolation, and for three days they did not leave his head. In the daytime on horseback, in the night on the bed, he was thinking of what had happened to him, and he came always to the conclusion that this could not be simple chance, but an indication from God, and a presage that if he would hold out, if he would not leave the good road, that same road which Olenka had shown him, she would keep faith and give him her former affection.

"If the starosta's daughter," thought Kmita, "keeps faith with her Andrei, who has not begun to grow better, there is still hope for me, with my honest intention of serving virtue, the country, and the king."

But, on the other hand, suffering was not absent from Pan Andrei. He had an honest intention, but had it not come too late? Was there yet any road, were there yet any means? The Commonwealth seemed to sink deeper each day, and it was difficult to close one's eyes to the terrible truth that for it there was no salvation. Kmita wished nothing more intently than to begin some kind of work, but he saw no willing people. Every moment new figures, every moment new faces, passed before him in the time of his journey; but the sight of them, their talk and discussions, merely took from him the remnant of his hopes.

Some had gone body and soul to the Swedish camp, seeking in it their own profit; these people drank and caroused as at a wake, drowning, in cups and in riot, shame and the honor of nobles; others told, with blindness beyond understanding, of that power which the Commonwealth would form in union with Sweden, under the sceptre of the first warrior on earth; and these were the most dangerous, for they were sincerely convinced that the whole earth must bow before such an alliance. A third party, like the starosta of Sohachev, honorable people and wishing well to the country, sought signs on the earth and in the heavens, re-