Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/215

Rh "Why didst thou not mention that?"

"I was ashamed. I thought that they would challenge me, as became knights, to battle on foot, or on horseback; but they are robbers, not knights. First, Vilk took a plank from the table, Stan took another, and at me! What was I to do? I caught up a bench, well—you know what!"

"But didst thou leave them alive?" asked Matsko.

"Alive, though they fainted. But they regained breath before I left the inn."

The abbot listened, rubbed his forehead, then sprang up suddenly from the box on which he had been sitting for better thought, and cried,—

"Wait! I will tell thee something now."

"And what will you tell?" inquired Zbyshko.

"I will tell thee this, that if thou hast fought for Yagenka, and broken men's heads for her, thou art her knight, not the knight of another, and thou must take her."

Saying this, he put his hands on his sides, and looked triumphantly at Zbyshko.

But Zbyshko only smiled and said, "Hei, I knew well why you wished to set me at them; but it has failed you completely."

"How failed me?—Tell!"

"I told them to acknowledge that the most beautiful and most virtuous maiden in the world was Danusia, the daughter of Yurand; and they took the part of Yagenka exactly, and that was the cause of the battle."

When he heard this, the abbot stood in one place for a while, as if petrified, and only by the blinking of his eyes was it possible to know that he was alive yet. All at once he turned in his place, pushed the door open with his foot, rushed into the front room, seized the hooked staff from the hands of the pilgrim, and began to belabor his "play men," bellowing meanwhile like a wounded bison,—

"To horse, ye buffoons! to horse, dog-faiths! A foot of mine will never be in this house again. To horse, whoso believes in God! to horse!—"

And opening another door he went out, the terrified, wondering clerics followed after. So moving with an uproar to the sheds, they fell to saddling the horses in haste. Matsko ran out after the abbot in vain, in vain did he beg him, implore him, declare in God's name that no fault attached to him—nothing availed! The abbot cursed the house, the people, the fields; and when they gave him his horse, he