Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 1.djvu/574

544 his eyes repeated: "Too late! what is Swedish is Swedish!" and Boguslav Radzivill sneered and supported Count Veyhard. Then all of them began to scream: "Too late, too late, too late!" and seizing Olenka they vanished with her somewhere in darkness.

It seemed to Pan Andrei that Olenka and the country were the same, that he had ruined both and had given them to the Swedes of his own will. Then such measureless sorrow grasped hold of him that he woke, looked around in amazement and listening to the wind which in the chimney, in the walls, in the roof, whistled in various voices and played through each cranny, as if on an organ.

But the visions returned, Olenka and the country were blended again in his thoughts in one person whom Count Veyhard was conducting away saying: "Too late, too late!"

So Pan Andrei spent the night in a fever. In moments of consciousness he thought that it would come to him to be seriously ill, and at last he wanted to call Soroka to bleed him. But just then dawn began; Kmita sprang up and went out in front of the inn.

The first dawn had barely begun to dissipate the darkness; the day promised to be mild; the clouds were breaking into long stripes and streaks on the west, but the east was pure; on the heavens, which were growing pale gradually, stars, unobscured by mist, were twinkling. Kmita roused his men, arrayed himself in holiday dress, for Sunday had come and they moved to the road.

After a bad sleepless night, Kmita was wearied in body and spirit. Neither could that autumn morning, pale but refreshing, frosty and clear, scatter the sorrow crushing the heart of the knight. Hope in him had burned to the last spark, and was dying like a lamp in which the oil is exhausted. What would that day bring? Nothing! — the same grief, the same suffering, rather it will add to the weight on his soul; of a surety it will not decrease it.

He rode forward in silence, fixing his eyes on some point which was then greatly gleaming upon the horizon. The horses were snorting; the men fell to singing with drowsy voices their matins.

Meanwhile it became clearer each moment, the heavens from pale became green and golden and that point on the horizon began so to shine that Kmita's eyes were dazzled