“Gracious King and Queen, permit. Let some man go aside with me, for it would be grievous for me to live here in suspicion.”
“I will go,” said Pan Tyzenhauz, a young attendant of the king. So saying, he conducted Kmita to another room, and on the way said to him, “I do not go because I do not believe you, for I believe; but to speak with you. Have we met somewhere in Lithuania? I cannot remember your name, for it may be that I saw you when a youth, and I myself was a youth then?”
Kmita turned away his face somewhat to hide his sudden confusion.
“Perhaps at some provincial diet. My late father took me with him frequently to see public business.”
“Perhaps. Your face is surely not strange to me, though at that time it had not those scars. Still see how memoria fragilis est (weak memory is); also it seems to me you had a different name.”
“Years dull the memory,” answered Pan Andrei.
They went to another room. After a while Tyzenhauz returned to the royal pair.
“He is roasted, Gracious King, as on a spit,” said he; “his whole side is burned.”
When Kmita in his turn came back, the king rose, pressed his head, and said,—
“We have never doubted that you speak the truth, and neither your pain nor your services will pass unrewarded.”