Therefore she turned her joyful face toward the girl.
"Danusia! Danusia! Do you wish to have your own knight?"
The fair-haired Danusia after jumping three times in her red shoes, seized the princess by the neck and began to scream with joy, as though they were promising her some pleasure permitted to the older people only.
"I wish, I wish----!"
The princess' eyes were filled with tears from laughing and the whole court laughed with her; then the lady said to Zbyszko: "Well, make your vow! Make your vow! What will you promise her?"
But Zbyszko, who preserved his seriousness undisturbed amidst the laughter, said with dignity, while still kneeling: "I promise that as soon as I reach Krakow, I will hang my spear on the door of the inn, and on it I will put a card, which a student in writing will write for me. On the card I will proclaim that Panna Danuta Jurandowna is the prettiest and most virtuous girl among all living in this or any other kingdom. Anyone who wishes to contradict this declaration, I will fight until one of us dies or is taken into captivity."
"Very well! I see you know the knightly custom. And what more?"
"I have learned from Pan Mikolaj of Dlugolas that the death of Panna Jurandowna's mother was caused by the brutality of a German who wore the crest of a peacock. Therefore I vow to gird my naked sides with a hempen rope, and even though it eat me to the bone, I will wear it until I tear three such tufts of feathers from the heads of German warriors whom I kill."
Here the princess became serious.
"Don't make any joke of your vows!"
And Zbyszko added: "So help me God and holy cross, this vow I will repeat in church before a priest."
"It is a praiseworthy thing to fight against the enemy of our people; but I pity you, because you are young, and you can easily perish."
At that moment Macko of Bogdanice approached, thinking it proper to reassure the princess.
"Gracious lady, do not be frightened about that. Everybody must risk being killed in a fight, and it is a laudable end for a wlodyka, old or young. But war is not new nor strange to this man, because although he is only a youth, he has fought on horseback and on foot, with spear and with axe, with short sword and with long sword, with lance and without. It is a new custom, for a knight to vow to a girl whom he sees for the first time; but I do not blame Zbyszko for his promise. He has fought the Germans before. Let him fight them again, and if during that fight a few heads are broken, his glory will increase."