“Because the Swedes have cut up a great many cabbage-heads!”
“There you are! You are already criticising us. It is a pity they did not cut you up too.”
“I was with a leader under whom we are the cutters, not the cut.”
“The hangman take you! if they had even clipped your tongue!”
“Then I should have nothing to proclaim Sapyeha’s victory with.”
“Ah, lord brother, spare me! The majority already forget my service to the country, and belittle me altogether. I know too that there are many who make a great outcry against my person; still, had it not been for that rabble of a general militia, affairs might have gone differently. They say that I have neglected the enemy for night feasting; but the whole Commonwealth has not been able to resist that enemy.”
Zagloba was somewhat moved at the words of the hetman, and answered,—
“Such is the custom with us, always to put the blame on the leader. I am not the man to speak evil of feasting, for the longer the day, the more needful the feast. Pan Charnyetski is a great warrior; still, according to my head, he has this defect,—that he gives his troops for breakfast, for dinner, and for supper nothing but Swedes’ flesh. He is a better leader than cook; but he acts ill, for from such food war may soon become disgusting to the best cavaliers.”
“Was Charnyetski very much enraged at me?”
“No, not very! In the beginning he showed a great change; but when he discovered that the army was unbroken, he said at once: ‘The will of God, not the might of men! That is nothing! any general may lose a battle. If we had Sapyehas only in the land, we should have a country in which every man would be an Aristides.’”