With Fire and Sword by Henryk Sienkiewicz (big ebook reader .txt) 📕

upon them. He took farewell of the Greek clergy with similar words; after that came the hour of parting. Then was heard throughout the whole castle the weeping and lamentation of servants; the young ladies and ladies in waiting fainted, and they were barely able to restore Anusia Borzobogata to her senses. The princess herself was the only woman who entered a carriage with dry eyes and uplifted head, for the proud lady was ashamed to show the world that she suffered. Crowds of people stood near the castle; all the bells in Lubni were tolling; the Russian priests blessed with their crosses the departing company; the line of carriages and equipages could scarcely squeeze through the gates of the castle.

Finally the prince mounted his horse. The regimental flags were lowered before him; cannon were fired from the walls. The sounds of weeping, the bustle and shouting of crowds were mingled with the sounds of bells and guns, with the blare of trumpets and the rattle of drums. The procession moved on.

In advance went the Tartar regiments, under Roztvorovski and Vershul; then the artillery of Pan Vurtsel, the infantry of Makhnitski; next came the princess with her ladies, then the whole court, and wagons with valuables; after them the Wallachian regiment of Pan Bykhovets; finally, the body of the army, the picked regiments of heavy artillery, the armored regiments, and hussars; the rear was brought up by the dragoons and the Cossacks.

After the army came an endless train of wagons, many-colored as a serpent, and carrying the families of all those nobles who after the departure of the prince would not remain east of the Dnieper.

The trumpets sounded throughout the regiments; but the hearts of all were straitened. Each one looking at those walls thought to himself: “Dear houses, shall I see you again in life?” It is easy to depart, but difficult to return; and each left as it were a part of his soul in those places, and a pleasant memory. Therefore all turned their eyes for the last time on the castle, on the town, on the towers of the Polish churches, on the domes of the Russian, and on the roofs of the houses. Each one knew what he was leaving behind, but did not know what was waiting there in that blue distance toward which the tabor was moving.

Sadness therefore was in the soul of each person. The town called to the departing ones with the voices of bells, as if beseeching and imploring them not to leave it exposed to uncertainty, to the evil fortune of the future; it called out as if by those sad sounds it wished to say farewell and remain in their memory.

Though the procession moved away, heads were turned toward the town, and in every face could be read the question: “Is this the last time?”

It was the last time. Of all the army and throng of thousands who in that hour were going forth with Prince Vishnyevetski, neither he himself nor any one of them was ever to look again upon that town or that country.

The trumpets sounded. The tabor moved on slowly, but steadily; and after a time Lubni began to be veiled in a blue haze, the houses and roofs were blended into one mass brightly distinct. Then the prince urged his horse ahead, and having ridden to a lofty mound stood motionless and gazed long. That town gleaming there in the sun, and all that country visible from the mound was the work of his ancestors and himself. For the Vishnyevetskis had changed that gloomy wilderness of the past into a settled country, opened it to the life of people, and it may be said, created the Trans-Dnieper. And the greater part of that work the prince had himself accomplished. He built those Polish churches whose towers stood there blue over the town; he increased the place, and joined it with roads to the Ukraine; he felled forests, drained swamps, built castles, founded villages and settlements, brought in settlers, put down robbers, defended from Tartar raids, maintained the peace necessary to husbandman and merchant, and introduced the rule of law and justice. Through him that country had lived, grown, and flourished⁠—he was the heart and soul of it; and now he had to leave all.

And it was not that colossal fortune, great as an entire German principality, which the prince regretted, but he had become attached to the work of his hands. He knew that when he was absent everything was absent; that the labor of years would be destroyed at once; that toil would go for nothing, ferocity would be unchained, flames would embrace villages and towns, the Tartar would water his horse in those rivers, woods would grow out of ruins; that if God granted him to return everything would have to be begun anew, and perhaps his strength would fail, time be wanting, and confidence such as he had enjoyed at first would not be given him. Here passed the years which were for him praise before men, merit before God; and now the praise and the merit are to roll away in smoke.

Two tears flowed slowly down his face. These were his last tears, after which remained in his eyes only lightning.

The prince’s horse stretched out his neck and neighed, and this neighing was answered immediately by other steeds under the banners. These sounds roused the prince from his revery and filled him with hope. And so there remains to him yet six thousand faithful comrades⁠—six thousand sabres with which the world is open to him, and to which the prostrate Commonwealth is looking as the only salvation. The idyl beyond the Dnieper is at an end; but where cannon are thundering, where villages and towns are in flames, where by night the wail of captives, the groans of men, women, and children are mingled with the neighing of Tartar horses and Cossack tumult, there is an open field, and there