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But their hearts were particularly strengthened by the action of Zbyszko's follower, the Bohemian Hlawa, who, on the eve of the combat, hearing how van Krist was talking about Rotgier's unheard-of victories, and being a hasty youth, caught van Krist by the beard, pulled his head up, and said: "If it is no shame to lie before men, then look up, so that God also may hear you!"
Then one could see the broad highway extending between the two black walls of forest, and upon it a lonely horseman. Zygfried moved on in a semi-conscious condition, consumed by fever. Despair had lacerated his heart since Rotgier's death and filled it with crimes of revenge.
But he will perish by Rotgier's hand. After that, there will only be investigations, inquiries, correspondence, and accusations from the prince. But this very procedure will greatly retard the affair, and it will be confused and obscured, and it goes without saying, it will be infinitely delayed.
Then he stretched out his hand and pushed his emaciated talon-like fingers under the cloak, uncovered Rotgier's breast and began to feel about it, looking everywhere at the middle and sides below the ribs and along the shoulder-blades: at last he touched the rent in the clothing which extended from the top of the right shoulder down to the armpit, his fingers penetrated and felt along the whole length of the wound, then he cried with a loud voice which sounded like a complaint: "Oh!... What merciless thing is this!... Yet thou saidst that fellow was quite a child!... The whole arm!
A whole group of curious ones stood around Rotgier's corpse, and he lay on his back with a face as white as snow, with gaping mouth and with a bloody arm so terribly shorn from the neck down to the armpit, that it scarcely held by a few shreds. Therefore, others again said: "He was alive just now and walked upon the earth with arrogance, but now he cannot even move a finger."
Just then, a knight, whose entrance nobody had yet observed, and who for some time had listened at the door to the conversation, advanced to the centre, raised the gauntlet and said: "I will!" and so saying, he stared directly into Rotgier's face, and then began to speak with a voice which in that universal silence resounded like thunder through the hall: "Before God, before the august prince and all the honorable knighthood of this land, I tell you, Teuton, that you bark like a dog against justice and truth and I challenge you to a combat on foot, or horseback, with lance or axe, short or long weapons, and not unto imprisonment but unto the last gasp, unto death!"
She related how Zygfried avenged himself for Rotgier's death; how the old comthur intended to destroy Danusia for Rotgier to drink her innocent blood; and how the executioner defended her. She even told them of Macko's hopes to find Danusia, with Zbyszko's assistance, rescue her, bring her to Spychow; and for that very reason he had gone to Zbyszko and ordered her to remain here.
"Now I take leave of you ... and look into your face for the last time; perhaps I shall be able to see in your face whether you are pleased with my promises.... The last time." Then he uncovered Rotgier's face, but suddenly he retreated. "You are smiling, ..." he said, "but you are smiling terribly...." In fact, the frozen corpse, which was covered with the mantle, had thawed.
But now Zygfried reentered the chapel and, kneeling in front of the coffin, he laid at Rotgier's feet Jurand's bleeding hand; that last joy which startled him was only for a moment and quickly disappeared, for the last time, from his face. "You see," he said, "I have done more than we agreed to do. For King John of Luxemburg, although he was blind, kept on fighting and perished gloriously.
But as he could not then get Zbyszko, he ordered Jurand to be tortured in the meanwhile and then placed Jurand's tongue and hand in Rotgier's coffin, who began to devour it...." "It is terrible to hear. In the name of the Father, Son and Holy Ghost, amen," said Jagienka. Then she got up and threw a log of wood on the fire because it was night already.
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