Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/653

 citizens, and even on the clergy and on nobles living by feudal right on lands of the Order; hence near Malborg this or that citizen or land-tiller might be not only well-to-do, but wealthy; while in more remote places the tyranny, cruelty, and disorder of the comturs trampled justice, spread oppression and extortion, squeezed out the last copper by means of taxes imposed without warrant and even without pretext, pressed out tears, and often blood, so that in whole extensive regions there was one groan, universal wretchedness, and universal complaint. If even the good of the Order commanded greater mildness, as at times in Jmud, those commands came to naught in view of the disorder of the comturs and their native cruelty. So Conrad von Jungingen felt like a charioteer who is driving maddened horses and has dropped the reins from his hands, abandoning his chariot to the will of fate. Hence evil forebodings mastered his soul frequently, and frequently those prophetic words occurred to him: "I established them as bees of usefulness; I settled them on the threshold of Christian lands; but they have risen against me. They care not for the souls, and they have no compassion for the bodies, of the people who turned from error to the Catholic faith, and to me. They have made slaves of those people, and by neglecting to teach them the commands of God, and by depriving them of the holy sacraments, they expose them to greater torments of hell than if they had continued Pagans, They make wars to satisfy their own greed, hence the hour will come when their teeth will be broken, and the right hand will be cut from them, and their right leg shall be lame, so that they will confess their offences."

The Master knew that those reproaches, which the mysterious Voice uttered against the Order in the vision to Saint Bridget, were true. He understood that, that edifice, reared on the land of another, and on wrong done another, that edifice, resting on calumny, treachery, and tyranny, could not endure. He feared that, undermined for whole years by blood and by tears, it would fall from one blow of the strong Polish hand; he felt that the chariot drawn by raging horses would end in the abyss, so he strove that at least the hour of judgment, defeat, wrath, and suffering should come as late as possible. In spite of his weakness, he presented therefore in one thing an invincible opposition to his insolent and haughty counsellors: he would not permit a war with Poland. In vain did they reproach him with fear and incompetence; in