“I have done ill!” answered Kmita; “for I missed. He is on his feet again and hastens farther. Oh! why did it go over him?” Here he turned to Zamoyski. “Though I had hit him in the loins, they could not have proved that we fired at him purposely, and God knows I could not hold the match in my fingers; it came down of itself. Never should I have fired at an envoy who was a Swede, but at sight of Polish traitors my entrails revolt.” “Oh, curb yourself; for there would be trouble, and they would be ready to injure our envoys.” But Charnyetski was content in his soul; for Kmita heard him mutter, “At least that traitor will be sure not to come on an embassy again.” This did not escape the ear of Zamoyski, for he answered: “If not this one, others will be found; and do you, gentlemen, make no opposition to their negotiations, do not interrupt them of your own will; for the more they drag on, the more it results to our profit. Succor, if God sends it, will have time to assemble, and a hard winter is coming, making the siege more and more difficult. Delay is loss for the enemy, but brings profit to us.” Zamoyski then went to the chamber, where, after the envoy’s departure, consultation was still going on. The words of the traitor had startled men; minds and souls were excited. They did not believe, it is true, in the abdication of Yan Kazimir; but the envoy had held up to their vision the power of the Swedes, which previous days of success had permitted them to forget. Now it confronted their minds with all that terror before which towns and fortresses not such as theirs had been frightened,—Poznan, Warsaw, Cracow, not counting the multitude of castles which had opened their gates to the conqueror; how could Yasna Gora defend itself in a general deluge of defeats? “We shall defend ourselves a week longer, two, three,” thought to themselves some of the nobles and some of the monks; “but what farther, what end will there be to these efforts?” The whole country was like a ship already deep in the abyss, and that cloister was peering up like the top of a mast through the waves. Could those wrecked ones, clinging to the mast, think not merely of saving themselves, but of raising that vessel from under the ocean? According to man’s calculations they could not, and still, at the moment when Zamoyski re-entered the hall, Kordetski was saying,—