[120] Letter xxix.
[121] This we learn from a letter of Sobieski to the Pope, dated from Javarow, August 15th, 1684. Having 60,000 men (two-thirds of them Cossacks), he started with large hopes. “Me ad Turcarum regiam [illos] ducturum.... Liberator Orientis rediturus vel pro Christi fide moriturus.” Sooner than give up the crusade, he announced that he would resign the crown “tamquam ut humillimus miles vitam in Hungaricis agminibus funderem.”
[122] Said to have been the same Paz with whom he fought a duel in his youth.
[123] A letter of the king to Jablonowski after this defeat, in which he gently complains of his coldness, shows his character in a most amiable light. “Whether I have merited your indifference or not, come promptly to dissipate the cloud which has covered our intimate friendship, and believe that your presence will be more efficacious towards my speedy recovery than all the art of my physicians.”
[124] Chèvremont (p. 116) says that both she and the king received bribes from France, but as secretary to the Duke of Lorraine he is an Austrian authority. He admits that even on the morrow of the battle of Vienna the Emperor had no intention of fulfilling this promise of the hand of the archduchess.
[125] The dangers of this expedition did not deter John from antiquarian researches. Passing an ancient mound he ascended it, and after examination pronounced it to be the work of Decebalus, king of Dacia.
[126] All the orders of the realm sat together while the Diet lasted.
[127] He seems to have been in favour of John Casimir’s attempt to name a successor.
[128] Candles were not allowed in the Diet, and the session having lasted a long time, a Lithuanian took advantage of the dusk to smack a bishop in the face, and a tumult ensued. About the same time Sapieha, the Lithuanian general, had a grave quarrel with the Bishop of Wilna. One party used excommunication, and the other violence, and no efforts of the king could reconcile them.
[129] She was always intriguing in the Diet, and did her utmost to dissolve that of Grodno. She was accused of selling offices of state, and binding the recipient to support one of her sons at the next election (Connor). She certainly had a control over the king’s appointments, and he so loved domestic peace that he generally followed her advice.