Page:Sienkiewicz - The knights of the cross.djvu/735

 Rh him a document. Then the king's patience failed him at last."

"By my faith it must have failed him!" exclaimed Zbyshko.

"It is as Zyndram said," added Matsko. "Drezdenko is only a stone over which the blind man stumbled."

"If the Germans give up Drezdenko, what will happen?"

"Another stone will be discovered. But the Order will not give up that which it has once swallowed, unless we open its stomach, and God grant us soon to do that."

"No!" cried Zbyshko, strengthened in spirit, "Conrad might have surrendered it, Ulrich will not. He is a true knight on whom there is no stain, but he is terribly passionate."

So they conversed with each other, and meanwhile an event came like a stone which, pushed down a steep mountain-path by the foot of a traveller, rushes to the abyss with ever growing impetus. Suddenly the news thundered throughout the whole country that the Knights had attacked and plundered Santok, which had been mortgaged to the Yohánites. The new Grand Master, Ulrich, when the Polish envoys came to congratulate him on his election, left Malborg purposely. From the first moment of his government he commanded to use German instead of Latin in communications with the king and Poland, and thus showed at last what he was. The lords at Cracow, who were urging to war in secret, understood that he was urging to it publicly, and not only publicly, but blindly and with such insolence toward the Polish people as the Grand Masters had never shown, even when their power was really greater and the kingdom was less than at that time.

But dignitaries of the Order, less passionate and craftier than Ulrich, men who knew Vitold, strove to win him to their side by gifts, and used flattery which passed every measure so that one would have had to seek for its like in those times when temples and altars were reared to Roman Cæsars while still living. "The Order has two benefactors," said the envoys of the Order as they bowed down before the viceroy of Yagello: "the first is God, the second Vitold, for this reason every wish and every word of Vitold is sacred for the Knights of the Cross." And they implored Vitold to mediate in the affair of Drezdenko with this idea, that if, as a subject of the king, he would undertake to judge his superior, he would offend him thereby, and