Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/479

Rh in her presence a man who could relate the whole course of events most minutely.

And Matsko, who had determined earlier to win the protection and aid of the powerful princess by every means possible, seeing with what attention she listened, told her willingly of the sad fate of Zbyshko and Danusia, and almost moved her to tears, and this the more quickly since he himself felt more keenly than any one the misfortune of his nephew, and grieved with his whole soul over it.

"I have heard nothing more touching in my life," said the princess at last, "and the greatest pity seizes me for this cause, that, having married the girl, she was his; still he knew no happiness with her. But do you know surely that he did not?"

"Ei, mighty God!" answered Matsko, "would that he had; but he married her at night, when he was tied to his bed with grievous illness, and at daybreak they took her."

"Do you think that Knights of the Cross took her? For here they talk about robbers who deceived the Knights of the Cross by giving them another girl. They speak also of a letter from Yurand—"

"Not the judgment of people has decided this now, but the judgment of God. They say that that Rotgier was a great knight, who brought down the doughtiest, and still he fell at the hand of a stripling."

"Yes, such a stripling," said the princess, smiling, "that it would be very safe for any man not to creep into his way. An injustice was done, it is true, and you complain with reason; but still of those four three are no longer living, and that old man who remains barely escaped death, as I hear."

"But Danusia, where is she? and where is Yurand?"asked Matsko; "where are they? God knows, too, whether some evil may not have befallen Zbyshko, who went to Malborg."

"I know, but really the Knights are not such scoundrels as you deem them. In Malborg, near the Grand Master and his brother Ulrich, who is a knightly person, nothing evil can have happened to your nephew; he has a safe-conduct and letters from Prince Yanush. Unless he challenged some knight there and fell, for in Malborg there is always a number of the most renowned knights from all countries."

"Ei, I do not fear that greatly," answered the old man. "If they do not shut him up in a dungeon, or slay him treacherously, and he has some iron in his grasp, I am not