Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/661

 Rh At the north wall were to he seen other stables for the horses of knights, and for choice steeds of the Master. At the opposite side of the quadrangle were dwellings for various managers and officials of the Order; again storehouses, granaries, bakeries, rooms for clothing, foundries, a great arsenal, prisons, the old cannon foundry,—each building so strong and so fortified that in each it was possible to make a stand as in a separate fortress, and all were surrounded by a wall, and by a crowd of tremendous bastions; outside the wall was a moat; outside the moat a circle of great palisades; beyond the palisades, on the west, rolled the yellow waves of the Nogat. On the north and west gleamed the surface of a broad lake, and on the south towered up the still more strongly fortified Middle and High Castles.

A most terrible nest, which had an expression of immense strength, and in which were joined the two greatest powers known to man in that century,—the power of the church and the power of the sword. Whoso resisted the first, was cut down by the second. Whoso lifted an arm against both, against him rose a shout through all Christendom, that he had raised that arm against the Cross of the Saviour. And straightway knights rushed together from all lands to give aid. That nest, therefore, was swarming at all times with armed men and artisans, and in it, at all times, activity buzzed as in a beehive. Before the great buildings, in the passages, at the gates, in the workshops, there was everywhere movement, as at a fair. Echo bore about the sound of hammers and chisels fashioning stone cannonballs, the roar of wind-mills and tread-mills, the neighing of horses, the rattle of arms and of armor, the sound of trumpets and fifes, calls and commands. On those squares all languages were heard, and one might meet warriors from every nation; hence the unerring English archers, who pierced a pigeon tied to a pole a hundred yards distant, and whose arrows went through breastplates as easily as through woollen stuff, and the terrible Swiss infantry who fought with double-handed swords, and the Danes, valiant, though immoderate in food and drink, and the French knights, inclined equally to laughter and to quarrel, the silent and haughty Spanish nobles, the brilliant knights of Italy, the most skilful swordsmen of all, dressed in silk and satin, and during war in impenetrable armor forged in Venice, Florence, and Milan, the knights of Burgundy, Friesland, and finally Germans from every German country. The