In the small, bare inner chamber the man, who had upset kingdoms and altered the face of North Europe for no other reason than pride and the desire for military glory, laid himself again on his straw mattress and hard pillow.
Augustus was conquered as effectually as had been Frederic; it had taken longer, years instead of weeks, but it had been done.
And Patkul, the arch conspirator, would finally be punished.
There remained only Peter....
Karl turned on his rude pillow and fell asleep, dreaming of the downfall of the Czar, his last and greatest enemy.
CHAPTER IV
WHEN M. Pfingsten returned to Poland with the articles of peace that no amount of interviews with Count Piper had served to alter, he found his master once again in Varsovia, in the midst of “Te Deums” and bell-ringings for the first victory over the Swedes that had been attained during the course of this long war.
The envoy from Saxony, almost confounded by this change of fortune, learned that the Muscovites under Prince Mentchikoff had defeated the Swedes under General Mardenfeldt who found himself in the Palatinate of Posnania with 10,000 men against the combined Saxon and Russian forces amounting to nearly 40,000.
But what surprised M. Pfingsten was the fact that the Elector had been in this battle and had irritated Karl in this manner at the very moment when he was imploring that monarch’s mercy.
He hastened through the ruined capital now being pillaged by the Muscovites to the ancient palace where Augustus was again in residence.