“Which, though it is winter, we must eat like mouldy biscuits,” put in the Prince of Hesse. “This explains why your princely highness drinks so much wine,” said Count Veyhard; “and though it does not take the place of native wit, it helps you to a happy digestion of even disgrace. But no matter! I know well that there is a party in the fortress which is long desirous of surrender, and that only our weakness on one side and the superhuman stubbornness of the prior on the other keep it in check. New terror will give this party new power; for this purpose we should show that we make no account of the loss of the gun, and storm the more vigorously.” “Is that all?” “Even if it were all, I think that such counsel is more in accordance with the honor of Swedish soldiers than barren jests at cups, or than sleeping after drinking-bouts. But that is not all. We should spread the report among our soldiers, and especially among the Poles, that the men at work now making a mine have discovered the old underground passage leading to the cloister and the church.” “That is good counsel,” said Miller. “When this report is spread among the soldiers and the Poles, the Poles themselves will persuade the monks to surrender, for it is a question with them as with the monks, that that nest of superstitions should remain intact.” “For a Catholic that is not bad!” muttered Sadovski. “If he served the Turks he would call Rome a nest of superstitions,” said the Prince of Hesse. “Then, beyond doubt, the Poles will send envoys to the priests,” continued Count Veyhard,—“that party in the cloister, which is long anxious for surrender will renew its efforts under the influence of fear; and who knows but its members will force the prior and the stubborn to open the gates?” “The city of Priam will perish through the cunning of the divine son of Laertes,” declaimed the Prince of Hesse. “As God lives, a real Trojan history, and he thinks he has invented something new!” said Sadovski. But the advice pleased Miller, for in very truth it was not bad. The party which the count spoke of existed really in the cloister. Even some priests of weaker soul belonged to it. Besides, fear might extend among the garrison, including even those who so far were ready to defend it to the last drop of blood. “Let us try, let us try!” said Miller, who like a drowning man seized every plank, and from despair passed easily to hope. “But will Kuklinovski or Zbrojek agree to go again as envoys to the cloister, or will they believe in that passage, and will they inform the priests of it?” “In every case Kuklinovski will agree,” answered the count; “but it is better that he should believe really in the existence of the passage.” At that moment they heard the tramp of a horse in front of the quarters. “There, Pan Zbrojek has come!” said the Prince of Hesse, looking through the window.