Though Kettling was near the person of Prince Boguslav, he did not know all, and could not tell of all that was done in Taurogi, for he was blinded himself by love for Panna Billevich.
Boguslav had also another confidant, Pan Sakovich, the starosta of Oshmiana; and he alone knew how deeply the prince was involved by love for his charming captive, and what means he was using to gain her heart and her person.
That love was merely a fierce desire, for Boguslav’s heart was not capable of other feelings; but the desire was so violent that that experienced cavalier lost his head. And often in the evening, when alone with the starosta, he seized his own hair and cried,—
“I am burning, Sakovich, I am burning!”
Sakovich found means at once.
“Whoso wishes to take honey must drug the bees,” said he. “And has your physician few of such intoxicating herbs? Give him the word to-day, and to-morrow the affair will be over.”
But the prince did not like such a method, and that for various reasons. First, on a time, old Heraclius Billevich, the grandfather of Olenka, appeared to him in a dream, and standing at his pillow, looked with threatening eyes till the first crowing of the cocks. Boguslav remembered the dream; for that knight, without fear, was superstitious, dreaded charms, dream warnings, and supernatural apparitions so much that a shiver passed through him at thought of the terror and the shape in which that phantom might come a second time should he follow Sakovich’s counsel. The starosta of Oshmiana himself, who did not believe greatly in God, but who, like the prince, dreaded dreams and enchantments, staggered somewhat in giving advice.
The second reason of Boguslav’s delay was that the “Wallachian woman” was living with her step-daughter in Taurogi. They called Princess Radzivill, the wife of Yanush, “the Wallachian woman.” That lady, coming from a country in which her sex have rather free manners, was not, in truth, over-stern; nay, maybe she understood too well the amusements of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting; still she could not endure that at her side a man, the coming husband of her step-daughter, should do a deed calling to heaven for vengeance.
But even later, when through the persuasions of Sakovich, and with the consent of the prince voevoda of Vilna, “the Wallachian woman” went with Yanush’s daughter to Courland, Boguslav did not dare to do the deed. He feared the terrible outcry which would rise throughout all Lithuania. The Billeviches were wealthy people; they would not fail to crush him with a prosecution. The law punished such deeds with loss of property, honor, and life.
The Radzivills, it is true, were powerful, and might trample on law; but when victory in war was inclining to the side of Yan Kazimir, the young prince might fall into serious difficulties, in which he would lack power, friends, and henchmen. And just then it was hard to foresee how the war would end. Forces were coming every day to Yan Kazimir; the power of Karl Gustav was decreasing absolutely by the loss of men and the exhaustion of money.