And thinking thus, though wretched, weak, covered with dust, emaciated by hunger, I felt immeasurable majesty within myself, as if I had been looking from some height on this world. The Kalmucks began to lash me with rawhides, and soon I was swimming in blood.
"Wilt thou fall on thy face?" asked they.
"I am a Polish noble," I answered.
Then they lashed me again; others lighted slow fires at my feet, so that, while burning, I should cry the sooner for mercy. In fact, I began to yield, but not in soul, only in body, for great weakness passed through my bones, and the light of day paled before my eyes. Seeing that death was approaching, I raised my head with the remnant of my strength, and cried in the direction of the Commonwealth, "Dost thou see me; dost thou hear me?"
Then suddenly, as it were, across all the steppe and through Perekop, came to me the voice, "I see." In the distance something began to seem hazy; the heavens and the air ran together; out of this came a woman with a sweet face and stood near me. The fire ceased to burn me; the rawhide whistled above me no more, and I felt that I was flying, borne on the hand of that woman. With her was a legion of angels singing, "Not in a kontush and with a sabre, but in wounds, O knight, knight manful in battle, enduring in torture! O Paladin of Christ, faithful son of the bloody land! Welcome to peace! welcome to happiness! welcome to joy!" And so we flew onward to heaven, and what I saw there my sinful lips cannot utter to mortal ears.
CHAPTER V.
A WAGON squeaks under me, and a fresh, cool breeze blows around. I open my eyes; I see not Kizlich, but a steppe,—a steppe like the sea. Then I close my lids, thinking that a dream is presenting some puppet-show before me. I look again; I see the old face of Kimek, Pan Tvoryanski's house-steward, and behind him a number of attendants.
"Praise be to God," he says, "you have recovered!"
I ask whither I am going.