“I have express, though secret, instructions; but I shall not withhold them from your excellency, for I wish to serve faithfully my lord the emperor. I can assure your excellency that no profanation will come to the sacred place. I am a Catholic.”
Lisola laughed, and wishing to extort the truth from a man less experienced than himself, asked jokingly,—
“But you will shake up their treasury for the monks? It will not pass without that, will it?”
“That may happen,” answered Count Veyhard. “The Most Holy Lady will not ask for thalers from the priors’ caskets. When all others pay, let the monks pay too.”
“But if the monks defend themselves?”
The count laughed. “In this country no man will defend himself, and to-day no man is able. There was a time for defence,—now it is too late.”
“Too late,” repeated Lisola.
The conversation ended there. After supper they went away. Kmita remained alone. This was for him the bitterest night that he had spent since leaving Kyedani. While listening to the words of Count Veyhard, Kmita had to restrain himself with all his power to keep from shouting at him, “Thou liest, thou cur!” and from falling on him with his sabre. But if he did not do so, it was unhappily because he felt and recognized truth in the words of the foreigner,—awful truth burning like fire, but genuine.
“What could I say to him?” thought he; “with what could I offer denial except with my fist? What reasons could I bring? He snarled out the truth. Would to God he were slain! And that statesman of the emperor acknowledged to him that in all things and for all defence it was too late.”
Kmita suffered in great part perhaps because that “too late” was the sentence not only of the country, but of his own personal happiness. And he had had his fill of suffering; there was no strength left in him, for during all those weeks he had heard nothing save, “All is lost, there is no time left, it is too late.” No ray of hope anywhere fell into his soul.