♦Hostility of the Pospolite to Sobieski.♦ Yet the leaders of the Pospolite at Golemba, who dreaded nothing so much as a long campaign, were loud in his defence. Suspecting that Sobieski would not accept the peace, they renewed against him the sentence of proscription, and confiscated his estates. On receiving intelligence of these attacks, Louis XIV. offered him a French dukedom and a marshal’s bâton; but Sobieski would not forsake his country. Indeed his position did not justify it; for his party grew stronger day by day, while the Pospolite, ill-furnished with provisions, and rent in pieces by faction, gradually melted away. At length the queen took on herself the part of a mediator, and she was seconded by the Lithuanians, who were weary of anarchy. It then appeared how strong a hold Sobieski had upon the affections of the people. ♦Popularity of Sobieski.♦ When his exploits during the war became generally known there was an immense reaction in his favour. ♦Plot against him.♦ His personal enemies, among whom may be reckoned the king, viewed this with the utmost uneasiness, and a few of them concocted an atrocious plot against him. They suborned a poor noble, named Lodzinski, to come forward in the Diet and declare that Sobieski had sold Kaminiec to the Turks for 1,200,000 florins, and that this money had been seen in waggons on the way to its destination. This calumny raised the Diet to the highest pitch of excitement, and they would have put the slanderer in irons but for the intervention of the king. The army declared that they would wash out the insult with blood; but Sobieski calmed them, and proceeded to Warsaw to demand a trial. He was welcomed with acclamations; the palace of Wiasdow, decorated with all the trophies of Zolkiewski, was placed at his disposal; and Michael sent the Grand Chamberlain to pay him his compliments. ♦Discovered and punished.♦ Lodzinski, when brought before a tribunal of senators and deputies, lost all courage, and confessed that he had invented the story for the sum of 1,000 francs--promised him by certain of the nobles. He was condemned to death; but the sentence could not be carried out without the consent of the Grand Marshal, and he was therefore suffered to live. The nobles who had been his instigators had to ask pardon on their knees.