As the most effectual method of at once removing the errors of this infatuated people, Wladislas ordered the forests to be cut down, the serpents to {152} be crushed under the feet of his soldiers, and, after extinguishing with his own hand the sacred fires, he caused the temples to be demolished; thus demonstrating to the Lithuanians the impotency of their gods. With the cowardice ever attendant on ignorance and superstition, the pagans cast themselves with their faces to the earth, expecting to see the sacrilegious strangers blasted by the power of the profaned element; but, no such results following, they gradually lost confidence in their deities, and of their own free will desired to be instructed in the doctrines of Christ. Their theological knowledge was necessarily confined to the Lord's Prayer and the Creed, and a day was fixed for the commencement of the ceremony of baptism. As, on account of the number of catechumens, it was impossible to administer the sacrament to each individual separately, the nobles and their families, after leaving the sacred font, prepared to act as sponsors to the people, who, being divided into groups of either sex, were sprinkled by the bishops and priests, every division receiving the same name. Hedwige had accompanied her husband to Lithuania, and was gratified by witnessing the zeal with which he assisted the priests in their arduous undertaking; whilst Wladislas, aware of the value of his young auxiliary, was not disappointed by the degree of enthusiastic veneration with which the new Christians regarded the sovereign who, at the age of sixteen, had conferred upon them peace and the light of the true faith. Hedwige was admirably adapted for this task: in her character there was no alloy of passion, pride, or frivolity; an enemy to the luxury and pomp which her sex and rank might have seemed to warrant, her fasts were rigid and her bodily mortifications severe. Neither did her fervor abate during her sojourn in the duchy. By her profuse liberality the cathedral of St. Stanislas of Wilna was completed. Nor did she neglect the other churches and religious foundations which, by her advice, her husband commenced in the principal cities of his kingdom. Before quitting Lithuania, the queen's heart was wrung by the intelligence she received of a domestic tragedy of the deepest dye. Her mother, the holy and virtuous Elizabeth of Hungary, had during a popular insurrection been put to a cruel death; whilst her sister Maria, who had fallen into the power of the rebel nobles, having narrowly escaped the same fate, was confined in an isolated fortress, subject to the most rigorous and ignominious treatment.