“I think, General,” answered the colonel, “that Kmita was one of the greatest soldiers of this age, and that our position is desperate.”
“But you were in favor of withdrawing from the fortress?”
“With permission of your worthiness, I was only in favor of not beginning the siege. That is a thing quite different.”
“Then what do you advise now?”
“Now I give the floor to Count Veyhard.”
Miller swore like a pagan.
“Count Veyhard will answer for this unfortunate affair,” said he.
“My counsels have not all been carried out,” answered the count, insolently. “I can boldly cast responsibility from myself. There were men who with a wonderful, in truth an inexplicable, good-will for the priests, dissuaded his worthiness from all severe measures. My advice was to hang those envoy priests, and I am convinced that if this had been done terror would have opened to us before this time the gates of that hen-house.”
Here the count looked at Sadovski; but before the latter had answered, the Prince of Hesse interfered: “Count, do not call that fortress a hen-house, for the more you decrease its importance the more you increase our shame.”
“Nevertheless I advised to hang the envoys. Terror and always terror, that is what I repeated from morning till night; but Pan Sadovski threatened resignation, and the priests went unharmed.”