Meanwhile Pan Michael, or rather Brother Yerzy, appeared; but Zagloba did not recognize the approaching man, for Pan Michael had changed greatly. To begin with, he seemed taller in the long white habit than in the dragoon jacket; secondly, his mustaches, pointing upward toward his eyes formerly, were hanging down now, and he was trying to let out his beard, which formed two little yellow tresses not longer than half a finger; finally, he had grown very thin and meagre, and his eyes had lost their former glitter. He approached slowly, with his hands hidden on his bosom under his habit, and with drooping head.
Zagloba, not recognizing him, thought that perhaps the prior himself was coming; therefore he rose from the bench and began, “Laudetur—” Suddenly he looked more closely, opened his arms, and cried, “Pan Michael! Pan Michael!”
Brother Yerzy let himself be seized in the embrace; something like a sob shook his breast, but his eyes remained dry. Zagloba pressed him a long time; at last he began to speak,—
“You have not been alone in weeping over your misfortune. I wept; Yan and his family wept; the Kmitas wept. It is the will of God! be resigned to it, Michael. May the Merciful Father comfort and reward you! You have done well to shut yourself in for a time in these walls. There is nothing better than prayer and pious meditation in misfortune. Come, let me embrace you again! I can hardly see you through my tears.”
And Zagloba wept with sincerity, moved at the sight of Pan Michael. “Pardon me for disturbing your meditation,” said he, at last; “but I could not act otherwise, and you will do me justice when I give you my reasons. Ai, Michael! you and I have gone through a world of evil and of good. Have you found consolation behind these bars?”
“I have,” replied Pan Michael,—“in those words which I hear in this place daily, and repeat, and which I desire to repeat till my death, memento mori. In death is consolation for me.”
“H’m! death is more easily found on the battlefield than in the cloister, where life passes as if some one were unwinding thread from a ball, slowly.”
“There is no life here, for there are no earthly questions; and before the soul leaves the body, it lives, as it were, in another world.”
“If that is true, I will not tell you that the Belgrod horde are mustering in great force against the Commonwealth; for what interest can that have for you?”
Pan Michael’s mustaches quivered on a sudden, and he stretched his right hand unwittingly to his left side; but not finding a sword there, he put both hands under his habit, dropped his head, and repeated, “Memento mori!”