Page:Henryk Sienkiewicz - Potop - The Deluge (1898 translation by Jeremiah Curtin) - Vol 2.djvu/599

Rh destruction. One surpassed the other: and since they could not take captives, they swam from morning till evening in blood.

Kmita himself, having in his heart no little fierceness, gave it full freedom, and though he did not steep his own hands in the blood of defenceless people, he looked with pleasure on the flow of blood. In his soul he was at rest, and conscience reproached him with nothing; for this was not Polish blood, and besides it was the blood of heretics; therefore he judged that he was doing a work pleasing to God, and especially to the saints of the Lord.

The elector, a vassal, therefore a servant of the Commonwealth and living from its bounties, was the first to raise his sacrilegious hand against it; therefore punishment was his due, and Kmita was purely an instrument of God's vengeance.

For this reason, when in the evening he was repeating his Litany in peace by the blaze of burning German settlements, and when the screams of the murdered interrupted the tally of his prayers, he began again from the beginning, so as not to burden his soul with the sin of inattention to the service of God.

But he did not cherish in his heart savage feelings alone; for, besides piety, various other feelings moved it, connected by memory with distant years. Therefore those times came frequently to his mind when he attacked Hovanski with such glory, and his tonner comrades stood as if alive before his eyes, — Kokosinski ; the gigantic Kulvyets-Hippocentaurus; the spotted Ranitski, with senatorial blood in his veins; Uhlik, playing on the flageolet; Rekuts, on whom human blood was not weighing; and Zend, imitating birds and every kind of beast.

They all, save perhaps Rekuta alone, were burning in hell; and behold, it they were living now, they might wallow in blood without bringing sin on their souls, and with profit to the Commonwealth.

Here Pan Andrei sighed at the thought of how destructive a thing license is, since in the morning of youth it stops the road for the ages of ages to beautiful deeds.

But he sighed more than all for Olenka. The deeper he entered the Prussian country, the more fiercely did the wounds of his heart burn him, as if those fires which he kindled roused at the same time his old love. Almost every day then he said in his heart to the maiden, —