Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/51

Rh

CHAPTER III. Anna Danuta, Matsko, and Zbyshko, had been in Tynets before, but in the retinue were courtiers who saw it for the first time, and these, when they raised their eyes, looked with astonishment on the magnificent abbey, on the indented walls running along cliffs above precipices, on edifices standing now on the slopes of the mountain, now within battlements piled up, lofty, and shining in gold from the rising sun. By these noble walls, edifices, houses, and buildings destined for various uses, and the gardens lying at the foot of the mountain, and carefully cultivated fields which the eye took in from above, it was possible at the first glance to recognize ancient inexhaustible wealth, to which people from poor Mazovia were not accustomed, and at which they must unavoidably be astonished. There existed, it is true, old and wealthy Benedictine monasteries in other parts of the kingdom, as, for example, in Lubush on the Odra, in Plotsk, in Great Poland, in Mogilno, and other places, but none could compare with Tynets, whose possessions exceeded not only dependent principalities, but whose incomes might rouse envy even in kings at that period.

Among the courtiers, therefore, astonishment increased, and some of them were almost unwilling to believe their own eyes. Meanwhile the princess, wishing to shorten the road for herself, and rouse the curiosity of her attendant damsels, fell to begging one of the monks to relate the old and terrible tale of Valger the Charming, which had been told her in Cracow, though not with much detail.

Hearing this, the damsels gathered in a close flock around the lady and walked up the mountain-side slowly in the early rays of the sun, looking like a troop of moving flowers.

"Let the tale of Valger be told by Brother Hidulf, to whom he appeared on a certain night," said one monk, looking at another, a man of gray years already, who with a body somewhat bent walked at the side of Pan Mikolai.

"Have you seen him with your own eyes, pious father?" asked the princess