CHAPTER II.

After the burial of Danusia Zbysnko was not confined to his bed, but he lived in torpor. For a few days at first he was not in such an evil condition: he walked about, he conversed with his dead bride, he visited Yurand and sat near him. He told the priest of Matsko's captivity, and they decided to send Tolima to Prussia and Malborg, to learn where the old knight was and ransom him, paying at the same time for Zbyshko the sum agreed on with Arnold von Baden and his brother. In the cellars of Spyhov there was no lack of silver, which Yurand in his time had received from his lands or had captured, so Father Kaleb supposed that the Knights if they received the money would liberate the old man without trouble, and would not require the young knight to appear in person.

“Go to Plotsk,“ said the priest to Tolima at starting, “and take from the prince there a letter of safe conduct. Otherwise the first comtur on the way will rob and imprison thee.“

“Oh! I know them myself,“ said Tolima. “They are able to rob even those who have letters.“

And he went his way. But Father Kaleb was sorry, soon after, that he had not sent Zbyshko. He had feared, it is true, that in the first moments of suffering the young man would not be able to conduct himself in the way needed, or that he might burst out against the Knights of the Cross and expose himself to peril; he knew also that it would be difficult for him to leave immediately the tomb of the beloved with his recent loss and fresh sorrow, and just after such a terrible and painful journey as that which he had made from Gotteswerder to Spyhov. But later he was sorry that he had taken all this into consideration, for Zbyshko had grown duller day by day. He had lived till Danusia's death in dreadful effort, he had used all his strength desperately: he had ridden to the ends of the earth, he had fought, he had saved his wife, he had passed through wild forests; and on a sudden all was ended as if some one had cut it off with a sword-stroke, and naught was left but the knowledge that what he had done had been done in vain, that his toils had been useless,—that in truth they had passed, but with them a part of his life had gone; hope had gone, good had gone, loving had perished, and nothing was left to him. Every man lives in the morrow, every man plans somewhat and lays aside one or another thing for use in the future, but for Zbyshko to-morrow had become valueless; as to the future, he had the same kind of feeling that Yagenka had had, while riding out of Spyhov, when she said, “My happiness is behind, not before me.“ But, besides, in his soul that feeling of helplessness, emptiness, misfortune, and evil fate had risen on the ground of great pain and of ever-increasing grief for Danusia. That grief penetrated him, mastered him, and at the same time was ever stiffening in him. So at last there was no place in Zbyshko's heart for another feeling. Hence he thought of it only; he nursed it in himself and lived with it solely, insensible to everything else, shut up in himself, sunk, as it were, in a half dream, oblivious of all that was happening around him. All the powers of his soul and his body, his former activity and valor, dropped into quiescence. In his look and movements there appeared a kind of senile heaviness. Whole days and nights he sat, either in the vault with Danusia's coffin, or before the house, warming himself in sunlight during the hours after midday. At times he so forgot himself that he did not answer questions. Father Kaleb, who loved him, began to fear that pain might consume the man as rust consu