With Fire and Sword, Henryk Sienkiewicz [year 7 reading list txt] 📗

silence. Now a noise was heard louder and more solemn than the rustle of the reeds. Skshetuski came near screaming with joy⁠—the woods were on both sides of the river.

He turned then to the bank and came out of the reeds. The pine-forest began here, beyond the rushes and reeds. The odor of rosin came to his nostrils; here and there in the depths shone the fern, like silver. He fell a second time on his knees, and kissed the earth in prayer. He was saved!

Then he entered the forest darkness, asking himself where he should go, where those forests would take him, where the king and the army were. His journey was not finished; it was not easy, it was not safe; but when he thought that he had come out of Zbaraj⁠—that he had stolen through the guards, swamps, tabors, and almost half a million of enemies⁠—then it seemed to him that all dangers were passed, that that forest was a clear highway which would lead him straight to his Majesty the King; and that wretched-looking, hungry, shivering man, bespattered with his own blood, with red filth, and black mud, passed on with joy in his heart, and hope that he would soon return in different circumstances and with greater power.

“They will not be left hungry and hopeless,” thought he of his friends in Zbaraj, “for the king will come.”

His heart rejoiced at the near rescue of the prince, the commanding officers, Volodyovski, Zagloba, and all those heroes confined in the ramparts. The forest depths opened before him and covered him with their shade.

LXII

In the drawing-room of the Court at Toporoff sat three magnates one evening in secret consultation. A number of bright lights were burning on a table covered with maps of the surrounding country; near them lay a tall cap with a dark plume, a field-glass, and a sword with hilt set in pearls, on which was thrown a handkerchief embroidered with a crown, and a pair of elk-skin gloves. Near the table, in a high-armed chair, sat a man about forty years of age, rather small and slender, but powerfully built. He had a swarthy, sallow, wearied face, black eyes, and a Swedish wig of the same color, with long locks falling on his neck and shoulders; a thin black mustache, trimmed upward at the ends, adorned his upper lip. His lower lip with his beard protruded strongly, giving his whole physiognomy a characteristic mark of pride and stubbornness. It was not a beautiful face, but unusually lofty. A sensuous expression, indicating an inclination to pleasure, was combined in it with a certain sleepy torpor and coldness. The eyes were as if smouldering; but it was easy to guess that in a moment of exaltation, joy, or anger they could cast lightnings which not every eye might meet. At the same time kindness and affability were depicted on his countenance.

The black dress, composed of a satin doublet with lace ruffles, from under which a gold chain was visible, increased the distinction of this uncommon figure. On the whole, in spite of sadness and anxiety evident in the face and form, there was something majestic in them. In fact it was the king himself, Yan Kazimir Vaza, who had succeeded his brother Vladislav somewhat less than a year before.

A little behind him, in the half-shade, sat Hieronim Radzeyovski, the starosta of Lomjin, a thick, corpulent, low-set, red-visaged man with the unblushing face of a courtier; and opposite him, at the table, a third personage, leaning on his elbow, looking at the maps representing the country around, raising from time to time his eyes to the king. His face had less majesty, but almost more official distinction, than that of the king. The cool and reasoning face of the statesman was furrowed with cares and thought, the severity of which had not marred his unusual beauty. He had penetrating blue eyes; his complexion was delicate, in spite of his age; a magnificent Polish dress, a beard trimmed in Swedish fashion, and the lofty tuft above his forehead, added still something of senatorial dignity to his features, regular as if chiselled from stone.

This was Yerzy Ossolinski, chancellor of the Crown, a prince of the Roman Empire, an orator, and a diplomat admired by the courts of Europe⁠—the famous opponent of Yeremi Vishnyevetski.

His unusual abilities turned upon him early in life the attention of preceding reigns, and soon raised him to the highest offices, in virtue of which he guided the ship of state, at the present moment near its final wreck.

But still the chancellor was as if created to be the helmsman of such a ship. Laborious, enduring, wise, looking to the distant future, calculating for long years, he would have directed any other State but the Commonwealth to a safe harbor with a sure and steady hand; for every other State he would have secured internal power and long years of strength⁠—if he had only been the absolute minister of such a monarch, for example, as the King of France or Spain.

Reared beyond the boundaries of his own country, furnished with foreign models, in spite of all his innate quickness of mind, in spite of long years of practice, he was unable to accustom himself to the helplessness of government in the Commonwealth; and all his life he could not learn to reckon with it, though that was the rock on which all his plans, designs, and efforts were wrecked, though by reason of this he saw now in the future a precipice and ruin, and later died with despair in his heart.

He was a genial theorist who did not know how to be genial in practice, and he fell into a circle of errors without issue. Possessing an idea which might give fruit in the future, he went to the realization of it with the stubbornness of a fanatic, not observing that that idea, saving in theory, might, in view