Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/395

Rh suspicion and doubt is contained in them. But confident in the justice of God and the power of truth, I ask your Princely Grace: Did Yurand himself suspect us of this deed, and if he suspected us why did he, before we invited him to Schytno, search the whole boundary for bandits so as to ransom his daughter from them?"

"Well," said the prince, "as to truth, though thou hide it from people, thou wilt not hide it from God. Yurand held you guilty at first, but afterward—afterward he had another idea."

"See how the brightness of truth conquers darkness," said Rotgier. And he looked around the hall with the glance of a victor, for he thought that in the heads of the Knights of the Cross there was more wit and keenness than in Polish heads, and that the Polish race would serve always as plunder and nourishment for the Order, just as a fly must be plunder and nourishment for a spider. So, casting aside his former pliancy, he approached the prince, and demanded in a voice which was haughty and insistent,—

"Reward us, Lord, for our losses, for the injustice inflicted on us, for our tears and our blood! This son of hell was thy subject, hence in the name of God, from whom comes the power of kings and princes, in the name of justice and the Cross, repay us for our wrongs and our blood!"

The prince looked at him with amazement.

"By the dear God," said he, "what dost thou wish? If Yurand shed blood in his rage, must I answer for his rage?"

"He was thy subject, in thy principality are his lands, his villages, and his castle in which he imprisoned servants of the Order; hence let those lands at least and that godless castle become henceforth the property of the Order. Of course this will be no fitting return for the noble blood shed by him, of course it will not raise the dead to life, but it may even in part still God's anger and wipe away the infamy which otherwise will fall on this whole principality. O Lord! Everywhere the Order possesses lands and castles with which the favor and piety of Christian princes have endowed it, but it has not a hand's-breadth in your dominions. Let the injustice done us, which calls to God for vengeance, be redeemed even in this way, so that we may say that here too live people who have in their hearts the fear of God."

The prince was astonished still more on hearing this, and only after long silence did he answer,—