Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/30

6 sick, or their milk will grow bloody, or there will be harm to the harvest.' Many act in this way, and fall under suspicion. But they act thus through ignorance and through fear of devils. Formerly those devils had pleasant lives. They had their groves, their houses, horses to ride on, and they received tithes. But now the groves are cut down, they have nothing to eat; bells are rung in the towns, so this vileness is confined in the deepest forests and howls there in anguish. If a Lithuanian goes to the forest among pines, one devil or another pulls him by the coat, and says 'Give!' Some give, but there are bold fellows who give nothing, and even catch the devils. One man poured roasted peas into an ox bladder, and thirteen devils crawled in right away. He shut them in with a service wood plug and took them for sale to the Franciscan monks in Vilno, who gave him twenty groshes with gladness, so as to destroy the enemies of Christ's name. I myself saw that bladder, and a disgusting odor entered a man's nostrils at a distance from it; by such odors do foul spirits express their terror of holy water."

"But who counted the thirteen devils?" asked the merchant Gamroth, cleverly.

"A Lithuanian who saw them crawl in counted. It was evident that they were there, for that was shown by the stench, but no one would take out the plug."

"Those are wonders, wonders!" cried one of the nobles.

"I have looked my fill at great wonders not a few. We cannot say that those Lithuanian people are pleasant, everything about them is strange. They are shaggy, and hardly a prince among them curls his hair; they eat roasted turnips, preferring them to all other food, for they say that turnips increase bravery. They live in the same house with their cattle and their serpents, they know no moderation in eating and drinking. They hold married women in no esteem, but maidens they reverence highly and recognize great power in them; so if any maiden rubs a man's stomach with dried sycamore, gripes leave him that moment."

"Well, one would not be sorry to have the gripes if the maiden were shapely," called out Eyertreter.

"Ask Zbyshko," replied Matsko of Bogclanets.

Zbyshko laughed till the bench shook beneath him. "There are wonderful maidens among them!" said he. "Was not wonderful?"

"What Ryngalla? Some gay one? Tell us immediately."