Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/664

 226 discipline; and the whole Order appeared more commanding, more inexhaustible for coming ages, than it had been at any time; and no man among princes, no man among knightly guests, no man even among Knights of the Order, save the Grand Master Conrad, understood that from the hour when Lithuania had become Christian, something of such character had happened as if those currents of the Nogat, which defended on one side the formidable fortress, had begun to undermine its walls in silence and irresistibly. No man understood that, though power remained yet in that enormous body, the soul had flown from it; whoso came freshly and looked at that Marienburg reared ex luto, at those walls, bastions, black crosses on gates, mantlerooms, and storehouses, thought, first of all, that even the gates of hell would not prevail against the Cross there, in its northern capital.

With a similar thought did not only Povala and Zbyshko look at it, they who had been there previously, but also Zyndram, a man far keener of mind than they were. Even he, as he gazed at that armored swarming place of soldiers, embraced by the circle of bastions and by gigantic palisades, grew dark in the face, and to his mind came, in spite of him, the insolent words with which the Knights of the Cross had threatened Kazimir, the Polish king,—

"Our force is greater; if thou yield not, we will hunt thee to Cracow itself with our sword-blades."

Meanwhile the comtur of the castle conducted the knights farther on, to the Middle Castle, in the eastern flank of which were guest-chambers.