‘Our God hath crushed the tyrant, our God hath raised the slave,
And mocked the wisdom of the wise, and the valor of the brave.'
LORD MACAULAY.
OVER the soldier's grave in which Ostrodek was laid was heard the sound, not of weeping and lamentation, but of joy and triumph. This was well; he would have had it so if he could have chosen. The city, suddenly delivered from overwhelming fear and danger, went literally mad with joy. The churches could scarce contain the multitudes that crowded into them, and made their walls resound all day long with the glorious strains of the Te Deum Laudamus. From morning until night the streets were filled with the long processions of men and women and little children, singing psalms and hymns of praise to Him who saved them from the hands of the enemy.
With shouting and with laughing,
And noise of weeping loud,'
friend embraced friend, brother, wrung the hand of brother. Fathers took their children in their arms, and, with the rare tears of manhood, gave thanks to God that these tender little ones were not to be thrown into the flames before their eyes. Peals of triumph sounded from every bell in the great city. The rich feasted the poor, the poor blessed the rich. Feuds and differences were forgotten; in this great joy all became as brothers.
The Pihel men and the friends of the other rescued prisoners filled the cap of young Solomon the Jew with good silver groschen, and Zisca's own hand flung upon the top a broad piece of gold. Hubert asked the physician what they could do for him—should they send him back again with a safe escort to the Kaiser?
Dr. Nathan Solito shook his head. ‘You would not have taken me if I had not willed to be taken,' he said. ‘The truth is, Master Hubert—nay, I crave your pardon, Sir Hubert—the things I have seen in yonder camp are such as it is not good for a man to see. Good wits are not to be bought again with gold, if once they are lost or disordered—even supposing the gold to be forthcoming, the which I am disposed to doubt,' the Jew added thoughtfully. ‘So I return to my own people, who are here in this city, and shall abide with them for a season.'
‘We owe to you the rescue of our friends,' said Hubert. ‘I would we could show you we are grateful.'
‘It was well for the other ten,' returned the Jew, ‘that I recognized Ostrodek, having known him at Pihel. Poor lad! it was hard he should have been the only victim, after all.'
‘Nay,' said Hubert, ‘it is well with him.'
The Jew fumed away, then turned back again, and spoke in low, hurried tones, as if ashamed of himself. ‘Sir Knight, I will confess one thing to you,' he said. ‘The Name that was on his lips in dying is like no other name on earth.'
‘True,' said Hubert, eagerly. ‘It is the one name at which every knee shall bow. Good friend, wilt not thou be won for Him also? '
‘Nay, Sir Hubert, I abide with my own people: as, I think, every man ought to do. That is clear to me, though much else is dark.'
Hubert smiled. ‘What if I say to thee what thou saidst once to me—the darkness is on earth, at thine own feet; in the heavens above thee there is light? But at least I will pray for thy conversion.'
‘To thy Christ? I pray of thee, good Sir Hubert, do not any such thing.'
‘Why, in Heaven's name? If it do thee no good, at least in thine own showing it can do thee no harm, He being, as thou blasphemously supposeth, only a dead man? '
‘I am not so sure,' said the Jew, as though the words escaped him unawares. ‘It looks as if for that poor girl at Leitmeritz, for those four-and-twenty who died there, and for Ostrodek, He lives.'
—‘Of whom it is witnessed that He liveth,' said Hubert.
‘Well, there be mysteries,' the Jew allowed. ‘Fare you well, Sir Hubert, and the God of our fathers bless you!’ Three days afterward, the festivities of the rejoicing city culminated in a grand illumination, which flushed the midnight sky with a redder light than that of day. But the citizens had not contrived or compassed it. They stood upon their ramparts awe-struck and spell-bound, and watched the raging of the flames. The imperial camp was on fire. None knew then, or ever, how or by whom the brand had been flung that kindled the vast conflagration. But it was no marvel if the whisper passed from lip to— ‘This is the finger of God.'
Men remembered the days of old. They recalled the smitten thousands of Sennacherib. They thought of
‘The storm that slumbered till the host
Of blood-stained Pharaoh left his trembling coast,
Then bade the deep in wild commotion flow,
And heaved an ocean on his march below.'
Meet and right it was that He whose waves and billows worked His will upon the oppressors of Israel should call now upon His servant Fire, the strong and terrible. Meet and right it was that the Angel of the element they had used for their fiendish cruelties—delivering up to it young men and maidens, old men and children—should arise in avenging fury and pursue them with the terrors of His curse. At the stars in their courses fought against Sisera—as in later ages the stormy wind fulfilled the purpose of God upon the hosts of Spain,—as, later yet, He sent forth His ice-like morsels, and in Russia the millions of Napoleon could not stand before His frost—so in Bohemia Sigismund and the crusaders of Rome suffered, according to His righteous judgment, the vengeance of the fire.
One sad blot, and one only, tarnished the glory and the joy of the Bohemian triumph. Hubert, Vaclav, and others with them, stood for hours guarding the door of the Council House, where the imperialist prisoners were kept. But in vain: the lowest of the population of the great city and the fiercest and wildest of Zisca's Taborites forced open the door, and dragged out sixteen trembling, terrified captives. These they led forth to a high place outside the walls, and burned them in one great fire in the sight of their brother crusaders who had inflicted the same fate on so many Bohemians. Only one escaped, the monk who had been taken at the rescue of Ostrodek, and who promised henceforth to administer the sacrament in, both kinds. ‘Burning for burning, wound for wound, stripe for stripe.' It was very natural, and very human. Still, we look across the gulf of nearly five hundred years, and wish—oh, how earnestly!—that it had not been.
Hubert's deep regret at this affair was driven partially out of his thoughts by a great pleasure. The next day Karel Sandresky rode into Prague, immensely proud of having been allowed to undertake the journey, in spite of its risks, which were very imperfectly known at Pihel, or he would never have obtained the permission. He brought the welcome tidings that Chlum was out of danger: moreover, the Pánna bade him greet her brother in her name, and sent ‘a token' to Master Hubert, desiring to hear of his health and welfare. ‘Sir Hubert, for answer, took off his golden spurs, and bade Karel lay them in his name at the feet of the Pánna. He added that he hoped shortly to return to Pihel, as the campaign, to all appearance, was near its end.
In this, as well as in many other ways, his expectations were fulfilled. After the defeat of Sigismund and the first crusade, the land had rest for a little while. There was a breathing-space—though it was a short and fitful one, broken by contentions and alarms.
Still, even in brief intervals of sunshine the birds sing, the flowers raise their drooping heads, the heavens smile, and the earth is glad. During those days of peace in the midst of trouble, Pihel was the scene of wedding festivities. They were much more grave and quiet than was at all usual in those boisterous days, yet they were bright with sober joy, and with steadfast faith and hope. Zedenka rewarded the long and patient waiting of Hubert; and Chlum bestowed his castle of Svatkov upon the bride and bridegroom.
Days of warfare came again, all too soon. When Hubert had to go forth once more to fight under Zisca beneath the standard of the Cup, he left his young wife at Pihel with her father. Vaclav was his well-beloved brother-in-arms, who went out and came in with him, and stood gallantly by his side in many a well-fought field.
So passed the days and years, with their fears and hopes, their joys and sorrows. But the hopes prevailed over the fears, the joys were more than the sorrows. Often did Zedenka think—with a tender, loving remembrance that had no pain in it—of the words of her dear, dead mother: 'I can wish thee no better lot for this world than just such a life as mine.'