Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/654

 216 vain did the comturs of the border urge war with all their might. He, when the fire was just ready to burst forth, always withdrew at the last moment, and then gave thanks to God at Malborg that he had been able to arrest the sword raised above the Order.

But he knew that war must come. Hence that knowledge that the Order was built, not on the justice of God, but on injustice and calumny, and that feeling of an approaching day of destruction, made him one of the most unhappy men on earth. He would beyond doubt have given his life and blood could it have been otherwise, and were there time yet to turn to a way of justice; but he felt that it was late then. To turn would mean to give to the rightful owners all those rich and fertile lands seized by the Order, God knows how long since, and with them a multitude of cities as rich as Dantzig. And that was not all! It would mean to renounce the Jmud region; to renounce attacks on Lithuania; to put the sword in the scabbard; finally, to remove altogether from those regions in which there were no more people for the Order to Christianize, and settle in Palestine a second time, or on some of the Grecian islands, to defend the Cross there from real Saracens. But this was impossible, since it would have been equivalent to a sentence of destruction to the Order. Who would agree to that? What Grand Master would ask for it? The soul and life of Conrad were covered with a shadow, but if a man were to appear with an advice of this sort, the Master would be the first to condemn him to a dark chamber as one who had lost his senses. The Order had to go on and on till the day when God himself should fix the limit.

So Conrad advanced, but in gloom and in suffocating sorrow. The hair on his chin and temples had grown silvery, and his eyes, once quick, were half covered with their heavy drooping lids. Zbyshko did not note a smile even once on his countenance. The Master's face was not severe nor even overcast; it was only tortured, as if by silent suffering. In his armor, with a cross on his breast, in the centre of which was a black eagle on a quadrangular field, and in a great white mantle also adorned with the Cross, he produced the impression of dignity, of majesty and sorrow. Conrad had been a joyous man, he had loved jests, and even at that time he was not averse to splendid feasts, spectacles, and tournaments, nay, he even took part in them; but neither in the throng of brilliant knights, who came as guests to