Ah! Ketling hastened, not waiting even till the troops had marched out; for at that moment the bastions quivered, an awful roar rent the air; bastions, towers, walls, horses, guns, living men, corpses, masses of earth, all torn upward with a flame, and mixed, pounded together, as it were, into one dreadful cartridge, flew toward the sky.
Thus died Volodyovski, the Hector of Kamenyets, the first soldier of the Commonwealth.
In the monastery of St. Stanislav stood a lofty catafalque in the centre of the church; it was surrounded with gleaming tapers, and on it lay Pan Volodyovski in two coffins, one of lead and one of wood. The lids had been fastened, and the funeral service was just ending.
It was the heartfelt wish of the widow that the body should rest in Hreptyoff; but since all Podolia was in the hands of the enemy, it was decided to bury it temporarily in Stanislav, for to that place the “exiles” of Kamenyets had been sent under a Turkish convoy, and there delivered to the troops of the hetman.
All the bells in the monastery were ringing. The church was filled with a throng of nobles and soldiers, who wished to look for the last time at the coffin of the Hector of Kamenyets, and the first cavalier of the Commonwealth. It was whispered that the hetman himself was to come to the funeral; but as he had not appeared so far, and as at any moment the Tartars might come in a chambul, it was determined not to defer the ceremony.
Old soldiers, friends or subordinates of the deceased, stood in a circle around the catafalque. Among others were present Pan Mushalski, the bowman. Pan Motovidlo, Pan Snitko, Pan Hromyka, Pan Nyenashinyets, Pan Novoveski, and many others, former officers of the stanitsa. By a marvellous fortune, no man was lacking of those who had sat on the evening benches around the hearth at Hreptyoff; all had brought their heads safely out of that war, except the man who was their leader and model. That good and just knight, terrible to the enemy, loving to his own; that swordsman above swordsmen, with the heart of a dove,—lay there high among the tapers, in glory immeasurable, but in the silence of death. Hearts hardened through war were crushed with sorrow at that sight; yellow gleams from the tapers shone on the stern, suffering faces of warriors, and were reflected in glittering points in the tears dropping down from their eyelids.
Within the circle of soldiers lay Basia, in the form of a cross, on the floor, and near her Zagloba, old, broken, decrepit, and trembling. She had followed on foot from Kamenyets the hearse bearing that most precious coffin, and now the moment had come when it was necessary to give that coffin to the earth. Walking the whole way, insensible, as if not belonging to this world, and now at the catafalque, she repeated with unconscious lips, “This life is nothing!” She repeated it because that beloved one had commanded her, for that was the last message which he had sent her; but in that repetition and in those expressions were mere sounds, without substance, without truth, without meaning and solace. No; “This life is nothing” meant merely regret, darkness, despair, torpor, merely misfortune incurable, life beaten and broken,—an erroneous announcement that there was nothing above her, neither mercy nor hope; that there was merely a desert, and it will be a desert which God alone can fill when He sends death.
They rang the bells; at the great altar Mass was at its end. At last thundered the deep voice of the priest, as if calling from the abyss: “Requiescat in pace!” A feverish quiver shook Basia, and in her unconscious head rose one thought alone, “Now, now, they will take him from me!” But that was not yet the end of the ceremony. The knights had prepared many speeches to be spoken at the lowering of the coffin; meanwhile Father Kaminski ascended the pulpit,—the same who had been in Hreptyoff frequently, and who in time of Basia’s illness had prepared her for death.