Patience is needful, and long experience; and your grace has only friendship for Michael, which in such a contingency is not enough. But be not offended, for you must confess that Yan and I are older friends, and have passed through more adventures with him than you have. Dear God! how many are the times in which I saved him, and he me, from disaster!"
"I will resign my functions as a deputy," interrupted Pan Yan.
"Yan, that is public service!" retorted Zagloba, with sternness.
"God sees," said the afflicted Pan Yan, "that I love my cousin Stanislav with true brotherly affection; but Michael is nearer to me than a brother."
"He is nearer to me than any blood relative, especially since I never had one. It is not the time now to discuss our affection. Do you see, Yan, if this misfortune had struck Michael recently, perhaps I would say to you, 'Give the Chapter to the Devil, and go!' But let us calculate how much time has passed since Kharlamp reached Jmud from Chenstohova, and while Pan Andrei was coming from Jmud here to us. Now, it is needful not only to go to Michael, but to remain with him; not only to weep with him, but to persuade him; not only to show him the Crucified as an example, but to cheer his heart and mind with pleasant jokes. So you know who ought to go,—I! and I will go, so help me God! If I find him in Chenstohova, I will bring him to this place; if I do not find him, I will follow him even to Moldavia, and I will not cease to seek for him while I am able to raise with my own strength a pinch of snuff to my nostrils."
When they had heard this, the two knights fell to embracing Pan Zagloba; and he grew somewhat tender over the misfortune of Pan Michael and his own coming fatigues. Therefore he began to shed tears; and at last, when he had embraces enough, he said,—
"But do not thank me for Pan Michael; you are not nearer to him than I."
"Not for Pan Michael do we thank you," said Kmita; "but that man must have a heart of iron, or rather one not at all human, who would be unmoved at sight of your readiness, which in the service of a friend makes no account of fatigue and has no thought for age. Other men in your years think only of a warm corner; but you speak of a long journey as if you were of my years or those of Pan Yan."
Zagloba did not conceal his years, it is true; but, in general, he did not wish people to mention old age as an attendant of incapability. Hence, though his eyes were still red, he glanced quickly and with a certain dissatisfaction at Kmita, and answered,—
"My dear sir, when my seventy-seventh year was beginning, my heart felt a slight sinking, because two axes[7] were over my neck; but when the eighth ten of years passed me, such courage entered my body that a wife tripped into my brain. And had I married, we might see who would be first to have cause of boasting, you or I."
"I am not given to boasting," said Kmita; "but I do not spare praises on your grace."
"And I should have surely confused you as I did Revera Pototski, the hetman, in presence of the king, when he jested at my age. I challenged him to show who could make the greatest number of goat-springs one after the other. And what came of it? The hetman made three; the haiduks had to lift him, for he could not rise alone; and I went all around with nearly thirty-five springs. Ask Pan Yan, who saw it all with his own eyes."
Pan Yan, knowing that Zagloba had had for some time the habit of referring to him as an eye-witness of everything, did not wink, but spoke again of Pan Michael. Zagloba sank into silence, and began to think of some subject deeply; at last he dropped into better humor and said after supper,—
"I will tell you a thing that not every mind could hit upon. I trust in God that our Michael will come out of this trouble more easily than we thought at first."
"God grant! but whence did that come to your head?" inquired Kmita.
"H'm! Besides an acquaintance with Michael, it is necessary to have quick wit from nature and long experience, and the latter is not possible at your years. Each man has his own special qualities. When misfortune strikes some men, it is, speaking figuratively, as if you were to throw a stone into a river. On the surface the water flows, as it were, quietly; but the stone lies at the bottom and hinders the natural current, and stops it and tears it terribly, and it will lie there and tear it till all the water of that river flows into the Styx. Yan, you may be counted with such men; but there is more suffering in the world for them, since the pain, and the memory of what caused it, do not leave them. But others receive misfortune as if some one had struck them with a fist on the shoulder. They lose their senses for the moment, revive later on, and when the black-and-blue spot is well, they forget it. Oi! such a nature is better in this world, which is full of misfortune."
The knights listened with attention to the wise words of Zagloba; he was glad to see that they listened with such respect, and continued,—
"I know Michael through and through; and God is my witness that I have no wish to find fault with him now, but it seems to me that he grieves more for the loss of the marriage than of the maiden. It is nothing that terrible despair has come, though that too, especially for him, is a misfortune above misfortunes. You cannot even imagine what a wish that man had to marry. There is not in him greed or ambition of any kind, or selfishness: he has left what he had, he has as good as lost his own fortune, he has not asked, for his salary; but in return for all his labors and services he expected, from the Lord God and the Commonwealth, only a wife. And he reckoned in his soul that such bread as that belonged to him; and he was about to put it to his mouth, when right there, as it were, some one sneered at him, saying, 'You have it now! Eat it!' What wonder that despair seized him? I do not say that he did not grieve for the maiden; but as God is dear to me, he grieved more for the marriage, though he would himself swear to the opposite."
"That may be true," said Pan Yan.
"Wait! Only let those wounds of his soul close and heal; we shall see if his old wish will not come again. The danger is only in this, that now, under the weight of despair, he may do something or make some decision which he would regret later on. But what was to happen has happened, for in misfortune decision comes quickly. My attendant is packing my clothes. I am not speaking to dissuade you from going; I wished only to comfort you."
"Again, father, you will be a plaster to Michael," said Pan Yan.
"As I was to you, you remember? If I can only find him soon, for I fear that he may be hiding in some hermitage, or that he will disappear somewhere in the distant steppes to which he is accustomed from childhood. Pan Kmita, your grace criticises my age; but I tell you that if ever a courier rushed on with despatches as I shall rush, then command me when I return to unravel old silk, shell peas, or give me a distaff. Neither will hardships detain me, nor wonders of hospitality tempt me; eating, even drinking, will not stop me. You have not yet seen such a journey! I can now barely sit in my place, just as if some one were pricking me from under the bench with an awl. I have even ordered that my travelling-shirt be rubbed with goats' tallow, so as to resist the serpent."
CHAPTER IV.
Pan Zagloba did not drive forward so swiftly, however, as he had promised himself and his comrades. The nearer he was to Warsaw, the more, slowly he travelled. It was the time in which Yan Kazimir, king, statesman, and great leader, having extinguished foreign conflagration and brought the Commonwealth, as it were, from the depths of a deluge, had abdicated lordship. He had suffered everything, had endured everything, had exposed his breast to every blow which came from a foreign enemy; but when later on he aimed at internal reforms and instead of aid from the nation found only opposition
