“And on what will your lordship put the seal?” asked Volodyovski.
“In such a confidential company you may address me as in old times. The seal will not be used by me, but by my chancellor,—keep that in mind, to begin with!”
Here Zagloba looked with pride and importance at those present, till Jendzian sprang up from the bench, and Pan Stanislav muttered,—
“Honores mutant mores (honors change manners)!”
“What do I want of a chancellery? But listen to me!” said Zagloba. “Know this, to begin with, that those misfortunes which have fallen upon our country, according to my understanding, have come from no other causes than from license, unruliness, and excesses—Mead, Pan Michael!—and excesses, I say, which like a plague are destroying us; but first of all, from heretics blaspheming with ever-growing boldness the true faith, to the damage of our Most Holy Patroness, who may fall into just anger because of these insults.”
“He speaks truly,” said the knights, in chorus; “the dissidents were the first to join the enemy, and who knows if they did not bring the enemy hither?”
“For example, the grand hetman of Lithuania!”
“But in this province, where I am commander, there is also no lack of heretics, as in Tykotsin and other towns; therefore to obtain the blessing of God on our undertaking at its inception, a manifesto will be issued, that whoso is living in error must turn from it in three days, and those who will not do that will have their property confiscated to the army.”
The knights looked at one another with astonishment. They knew that there was no lack of adroit reason and stratagem in Zagloba, but they did not suppose him to be such a statesman and judge of public questions.
“And you ask,” continued Zagloba, with triumph, “where we shall get money for the army? But the confiscations, and all the wealth of the Radzivills, which by confiscation will become army property?”