Skshetuski, like a true Christian knight, dropped his head obediently; but the princess rose, shook her tresses, a glow came in her face, her eyes were gleaming with pride,--for this knight was to be her husband, and the glory of the husband falls on the wife like the light of the sun on the earth.
Late at night the assembly parted, going in two directions. Vitovski, Pshiyemski, and Sobieski marched with their regiments toward Toporoff; but Skshetuski, with the princess and the squadron of Volodyovski, to Tarnopol. The night was clear as day. Myriads of stars shone in the sky; the moon rose and illuminated the fields covered with spider-webs. The soldiers began to sing. Then white mists rose from the meadows and turned the land as it were into one gigantic lake, shining in the light of the moon.
On such a night Skshetuski once went forth from Zbaraj, and on such a night now he felt the heart of Kurtsevichovna beating near his own.
EPILOGUE.
But this tragedy of history was finished neither at Zborovo nor Zbaraj, and not even the first act of it. Two years later all Cossackdom rushed forth to do battle with the Commonwealth. Hmelnitski rose mightier than ever before; and with him marched the Khan of all the hordes, attended by the same leaders who had fought at Zbaraj,--the wild Tugai Bey, Urum Murza, Artimgirei, Nureddin, Galga, Amurat, and Subahazi. Pillars of flame and groans of men went on before them; thousands of warriors covered the fields, filled the forests; half a million of mouths sent forth shouts of war, and it seemed to men that the end of the Commonwealth had come.
But the Commonwealth had risen from its lethargy, had broken with the past policy of the chancellor, with treaties and negotiations. It was seen at last that the sword alone could win enduring peace. When the king therefore marched against the hostile inundation, there went with him an army of one hundred thousand soldiers and nobles, besides legions of irregulars and attendants.
No one living of the personages in the foregoing narrative was absent. Prince Yeremi Vishnyevetski was there with his whole division, in which were serving, as of old, Skshetuski and Volodyovski, with the volunteer Zagloba; both hetmans, Pototski and Kalinovski, were there, ransomed at that time from Tartar captivity. There were present also Stephen Charnetski, later on the crusher of Karl Gustav, the Swedish king; Pan Pshiyemski, commander of all the artillery; General Ubald: Pan Artsishevski; Marek Sobieski, starosta of Krasnostav, with his brother, Yan Sobieski, starosta of Yavorov, afterward King Yan III.; Ludvik Weyher, voevoda of Pomorie; Yakob, voevoda of Marienburg; Konyetspolski, the standard-bearer; Prince Dominik Zaslavski; the bishops, the dignitaries of the Crown, the senators,--the whole Commonwealth, with its supreme leader the king.
On the fields of Berestechko those many legions met at last, and there was fought one of the greatest battles of history,--a battle the echoes of which thundered through all contemporary Europe. It lasted for three days. During the first two the fates wavered; on the third a general engagement decided the victory.
Prince Yeremi began that engagement; and he was seen in front of the entire left wing as, armorless and bareheaded, he swept like a hurricane over the field against those gigantic legions, formed of all the mounted heroes of the Zaporojie, and all the Tartars,--Crimean, Nogai, and Bélgorod,--of Silistrian and Rumelian Turks, Urumbalis, Janissaries, Serbs, Wallachians, Periotes, and other wild warriors assembled from the Ural, the Caspian, and the swamps of Mæotis to the Danube. As a river vanishes from the eye in the foaming waves of the sea, so vanished from the eye the regiments of the prince in that sea of the enemy. A cloud of dust moved on the plain like a mad whirlwind and covered the combatants.
The whole army and the king stood gazing on this superhuman struggle. Leshchinski, the vice-chancellor, raised aloft the wood of the Holy Cross, and with it blessed the perishing.