Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/284

260 as only Knights of the Cross knew how to receive guests from distant regions. He had grown strangely attached to them, and, not having a fortune, intended to enter their ranks. Meanwhile he had lived in Malborg; he had visited known localities, seeking in journeys amusement and adventures. Having come shortly before to Lubov with the wealthy Bregov, and hearing of Yurand, he had become excited with the desire to measure himself with a man who roused universal terror. The arrival of Meinegger, who had come out victorious from every encounter, hastened the adventure. The comtur of Lubov had given them men, but had told the three knights not only of the fierceness, but the stratagems and perfidy of Yurand, so that when the latter had asked them to send away their men they would not agree, fearing that should they do so he would surround and destroy them, or throw them into the dungeons of Spyhov. Yurand, thinking that they had in mind not only a knightly struggle, but robbery, attacked them offensively and inflicted a dreadful defeat.

De Fourcy saw Bregov overturned with his horse, he saw Meinegger with a broken lance in his bowels, he saw men simply begging for pity. He had been barely able himself to break away, and had wandered for days over roads and through forests where he might have died of hunger, or fallen a prey to wild beasts had he not come by chance to Tsehanov, where he found Gottfried and Rotgier. From the whole expedition he brought away a feeling of humiliation and hatred together with sorrow for Bregov, who was a near friend of his. He joined, therefore, heartily in the complaint of the Knights of the Cross when they demanded punishment for Yurand and liberation for their unfortunate comrade, and when that complaint found no attention, he was ready at the first moment to use every means of vengeance against Yurand. But now sudden scruples were roused in him. More than once while listening to conversations of the knights, and especially to Hugo's words, he could not avoid astonishment. Having become acquainted more intimately in the course of years with the Knights of the Cross, he saw really that they were not what in Germany and in the West they claimed to be. In Malborg he had known a few just and strict knights, those same who had often made charges against the corruption of the Brotherhood, against their profligacy and want of discipline, and De Fourcy felt that these charges were true; but being himself profligate