“You are a Radzivill!” cried Boguslav. And they grasped each other’s hands.
After a while Boguslav went to rest. Yanush remained alone. Once, and a second time he passed through the room with heavy steps. At last he clapped his hands. A page entered the room.
“Let the astrologer come in an hour to me with a ready figure,” said he.
The page went out, and the prince began again to walk and repeat his Calvinistic prayers. After that he sang a psalm in an undertone, stopping frequently, for his breath failed him, and looking from time to time through the window at the stars twinkling in the sky.
By degrees the lights were quenched in the castle; but besides the astrologer and the prince one other person was watching in a room, and that was Olenka Billevich.
Kneeling before her bed, she clasped both hands over her head, and whispered with closed eyes,—
“Have mercy on us! Have mercy on us!”
The first time since Kmita’s departure she would not, she could not pray for him.
CHAPTER XXXVI.
Kmita had, it is true, Radzivill’s passes to all the Swedish captains, commandants, and governors, to give him a free road everywhere, and make no opposition, but he did not dare to use those passes; for he expected that Prince Boguslav, immediately after Pilvishki, had hurried off messengers in every direction with information to the Swedes of what had happened, and with an order to seize him. For this reason Pan Andrei had assumed a strange name, and also changed his rank. Avoiding therefore Lomja and Ostrolenko, to which the first warning might have come, he directed his horses and his company to Pjasnysh, whence he wished to go through Pultusk to Warsaw.