When he had said this, Pan Sobieski stood erect in all his grandeur; on his face there was a radiance such as must have been on that of Godfrey de Bouillon when he burst in over the walls of Jerusalem, shouting, “God wills it!” Pan Bogush seemed to himself dust before those words, and Azya seemed to him dust before Pan Sobieski, and the fiery plans of the young Tartar grew black and became suddenly in the eyes of Bogush something dishonest and altogether infamous. For what could he say after the statement of the hetman that it was better to fall than to betray the service of God? What argument could he bring? Therefore he did not know, poor knight, whether to fall at the knees of the hetman, or to beat his own breast, repeating, “Mea culpa, mea maxima culpa.”
But at that moment the sound
