Pan Michael: An Historical Novel of Poland, the Ukraine, and Turkey; a Sequel to "With Fire and Sword" and "The Deluge".

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Little, Brown, 1898 - Poland - 527 pages
 

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Page 508 - Ah! Ketling hastened, not waiting even till the troops had marched out: for at that moment the bastions quivered, an awful roar rent the air; bastions, towers, walls, horses, guns, living men, corpses, masses of earth, all torn upward with a flame, and mixed, — pounded together, as it were, into one dreadful cartridge, flew toward the sky. Thus died Volodyovski, the Hector of Kamenyets, the first soldier of the Commonwealth. In the monastery of St. Stanislav stood a lofty catafalque in the centre...
Page 508 - By a marvellous fortune, no man was lacking of those who had sat on the evening benches around the hearth at Hreptyoff ; all had brought their heads safely out of that war, except the man who was their leader and model. That good and just knight, terrible to the enemy, loving to his own ; that swordsman above swordsmen, with the heart of a dove, — lay there high among the tapers, in glory immeasurable, but in the silence of death. Hearts hardened through war were crushed with sorrow at that sight;...
Page 509 - But that was not yet the end of the ceremony. The knights had prepared many speeches to be spoken at the lowering of the coffin; meanwhile Father Kaminski ascended the pulpit, — the same who had been in Hreptyoff frequently, and who in time of Basia's illness had prepared her for death. People in the church began to spit and cough, as is usual before preaching; then they were quiet, and all eyes were turned to the pulpit. The rattling of a drum was heard on the pulpit. The hearers were astonished....
Page 482 - The night was in August, warm and fragrant. The moon illuminated the niche with a silver light; the faces of the little knight and Basia were bathed in its rays. Lower down, in the court of the castle, were groups of sleeping soldiers and the bodies of those slain during the cannonade; for there had been no time yet for their burial. The calm light of the moon crept over those bodies, as if that hermit of the sky wished to know who was sleeping from weariness merely, and who had fallen into the eternal...
Page 510 - Lord; thou hast turned thy face from us, and given us into the power of the foul Turk. Inscrutable are thy decrees; but who, O Lord, will resist the Turk now ? What armies will war with him on the boundaries ? Thou, from whom nothing in the world is concealed, — thou knowest best that there is nothing superior to our cavalry! What cavalry can move for thee, O Lord, as ours can ? Wilt thou set aside defenders behind whose shoulders all Christendom might glorify thy name? O kind Father, do not desert...
Page 220 - The horde seek in vain to escape singly ; in vain they circle around ; they rush to the right, to the left, to the front, to the rear ; the circle is closed up completely ; the robbers come therefore more closely together in spite of themselves.
Page 483 - ... of the slain. Their lanterns were gleaming on the place of combat like fireflies. Some of them called to one another; and one was singing in an undertone a sweet song not beseeming the work to which he was given at the moment : — " Nothing is silver, nothing is gold to me now, Nothing is fortune. Let me die at the fence, then, of hunger, If only near thee.
Page 507 - Lord, to endure this patiently; give her peace!" Ah! Ketling hastened, not waiting even till the troops had marched out; for at that moment the bastions quivered, an awful roar rent the air, bastions, towers, walls, horses, guns, living men, corpses, masses of earth, all torn upward with a flame, and mixed, pounded together, as it were, into one dreadful cartridge, flew toward the sky.

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