“From the time that Pan Kmita’s Tartars took me captive at Warsaw, he has been nothing; for although he is a great lord, he is a perverse and malicious man. I saw enough of him when he plotted in Taurogi against that being superior to earth.”
“How superior to earth? What are you talking of, man? She is of clay, and may be broken like any clay vessel. But that is no matter.”
Here Zagloba grew purple from rage, till the eyes were starting from his head. “Imagine to yourself, that ruffian is a deputy!”
“Who?” asked in astonishment Ketling, whose mind was still on Olenka.
“Boguslav Radzivill! But the verification of powers,—what is that for? Listen: you are a deputy; you can raise the question. I will roar to you from the gallery in support; have no fear on that point. The right is with us; and if they try to degrade the right, a tumult may be raised in the audience that will not pass without blood.”
“Do not do that, your grace, for God’s sake! I will raise the question, for it is proper to do so; but God preserve us from stopping the Diet!”
“I will go to Hrapovitski, though he is lukewarm; but no matter, much depends on him as the future marshal. I will rouse the Patses. At least I will mention in public all Boguslav’s intrigues. Moreover, I have heard on the road that that ruffian thinks of seeking the crown for himself.”
“A nation would have come to its final decline and would not be worthy of life if such a man could become king,” said Ketling. “But rest now, and on some later day we will go to the marshal of the kingdom and inquire about our friend.”
CHAPTER V.
Some days later came the opening of the Diet, over which, as Ketling had foreseen, Pan Hrapovitski was chosen to preside; he was at that time chamberlain of Smolensk, and afterward voevoda of Vityebsk. Since the only question was to fix the time of election and appoint the supreme Chapter, and as intrigues of various parties could not find a field in such questions, the Diet was carried on calmly enough. The question of verification roused it merely a little in the very beginning. When the deputy Ketling challenged the election of the secretary of Belsk and his colleague, Prince Boguslav Radzivill, some powerful voice in the audience shouted “Traitor! foreign official!” After that voice followed others; some deputies joined them; and all at once the Diet was divided into two parties,—one striving to exclude the deputies of Belsk, the other to confirm their election. Finally a court was appointed to settle the question, and recognized the election. Still, the blow was a painful one to Prince Boguslav. This alone, that the Diet was considering whether the prince was qualified to sit in the chamber; this alone, that all his treasons and treacheries in time of the Swedish invasion were mentioned in public,—covered him with fresh disgrace in the eyes of the Commonwealth, and undermined fundamentally all his ambitious designs. For it was his calculation that when the partisans of Condé, Neuburgh, and Lorraine, not counting inferior candidates, had injured one another mutually, the choice might fall easily on a man of the country. Hence, pride and his sycophants told him that if that were to happen, the man of the country could be no other than a man endowed with the highest genius, and of the most powerful and famous family,—in other words, he himself.