Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/223

Rh up to him, he was hardly able to sit on his horse. "If I had met her somewhere and said farewell and embraced her on the road," said he to himself, "she might have let me;" then he felt that that was untrue, and that she would not have let him, for at the very thought of such a parting sparks passed along his body, though there was frost in the world at that moment.

At last he was frightened at those recollections, too much resembling desires, and he shook them from his soul as he would dry snow from an overcoat.

"I am going to Danusia, to my dearest," said he to himself. And he remarked at once that that was another love, as it were,—more pious, and passing less through the bones. Gradually, too, in proportion as his feet became chilled in the stirrups, and the cold wind cooled his blood, all his thoughts flew to Danusia. To her in truth he owed them. Had it not been for her, his head would have fallen long before on the square of Cracow. For when she said, in presence of knights and citizens, "He is mine," she took him by those words from the hands of the executioner, and thenceforth he belonged to her as much as a slave to his master. It was not he who had taken her, it was she who had taken him; no opposition from Yurand could avail against that fact. She alone could release him, as a lady might release a servant, though he in that case would not go far, for he was bound by his vow. But he thought that she would not release, that she would rather go with him even from the Mazovian court to the end of the world; and thinking thus he began in his soul to praise her to the prejudice of Yagenka, as if it were Yagenka's fault exclusively that temptations had attacked him, and that his heart had been divided. It did not occur to him now that Yagenka had cured old Matsko, and besides, without her aid, perhaps the bear that night would have taken the skin from his head; and he was deliberately indignant at Yagenka, thinking that he was serving Danusia in that way, and justifying himself in his own eyes.

But now appeared the Cheh, Hlava, who had been sent by Yagenka, and who brought with him a pack-horse.

"Let Him be praised!" said he, bowing low.

Zbyshko had seen the man once or twice at Zyh's house, but did not recognize him; so he said,—

"Praised for the ages of ages! But who art thou?"

"Your attendant, renowned lord."