“True!” cried Kmita, violently. “If I have lost my soul, if I must be damned, it is through the Radzivills. But I give myself to the mercy of God, and I would rather lose my soul, I would rather burn eternally, than to sin longer with knowledge and willingly,—than to serve longer, knowing that I serve sin and treason. May God have mercy on me! I prefer to burn, I prefer a hundred times to burn; I should burn surely, if I remained with you. I have nothing to lose; but at least I shall say at the judgment of God: ‘I knew not what I was swearing, and had I discovered that I had sworn treason to the country, destruction to the Polish name, I should have broken the oath right there.’ Now let the Lord God be my judge.”
“To the question, to the question!” said Boguslav, calmly.
But Pan Andrei breathed heavily, and rode on some time in silence, with frowning brow and eyes fixed on the earth, like a man bowed down by misfortune.
“To the question!” repeated the prince.
Kmita roused himself as if from a dream, shook his head, and said,—
“I believed the prince hetman as I would not have believed my own father. I remember that banquet at which he announced his union with the Swedes. What I suffered then, what I passed through, God will account to me. Others, honorable men, threw their batons at his feet and remained with their country; but I stood like a stump with the baton, with shame, with submission, with infamy, in torture, for I was called traitor to my eyes. And who called me traitor? Oi, better not say, lest I forget myself, go mad, and put a bullet right here in the head of your highness. You are the men, you the traitors, the Judases, who brought me to that.”
Here Kmita gazed with a terrible expression on the prince, and hatred came out on his face from the bottom of his soul, like a dragon which had crawled out of a cave to the light of day; but Boguslav looked at the young man with a calm, fearless eye. At last he said,—
“But that interests me, Pan Kmita; speak on.”
Kmita dropped the bridle of the prince’s horse, and removed his cap as if wishing to cool his burning head.
“That same night,” continued he, “I went to the hetman, for he gave command to call me. I thought to myself, ‘I will renounce his service, break my oath, suffocate him, choke him with these hands, blow up Kyedani with powder, and then let happen what may.’ He knew too that was ready for anything, knew what I was; I saw well that he was fingering a box in which there were pistols. ‘That is nothing,’ thought I to myself; ‘either he will miss me or he will kill me.’ But he began to reason, to speak, to show such a prospect to me, simpleton, and put himself forward as such a savior, that your highness knows what happened.”