The Knights of the Cross

The dawn was just beginning to whiten the trees, bushes and boulders scattered in the fields, when the hired guide, walking beside Jurand's horse, stopped and said: "Permit me to rest, knight, for I am out of breath. It is thawing and foggy, but it is not far now."

"You will conduct me to the road, and then return," replied Jurand.

"The road will be to the right behind the forest, and you will soon see the castle from the hill."

Then the peasant commenced to strike his hands against his armpits, because he was chilled with the morning dampness; he then sat on a stone, because this exercise made him still more breathless.

"Do you know whether the count is in the castle?" inquired Jurand.

"Where else could he be, since he is ill?"

"What ails him?"

"People say that the Polish knights gave him a beating," replied the old peasant. And there was a feeling of satisfaction in his voice. He was a Teuton subject, but his Mazovian heart rejoiced over the superiority of the Polish knights.

He presently added: "Hej! our lords are strong, but they have a hard task with them."

But immediately after saying this, he looked sharply at the knight, as if to convince himself that nothing bad would happen to him for the words which he had heedlessly let slip and said: "You, lord, speak our language; you are no German?"

"No," replied Jurand; "but lead on."

The peasant arose, and again began to walk beside the horse. On the way, he now and then put his hand into a leathern pouch, pulled out a handful of unground corn, and put it into his mouth, and when he had thus satisfied his first hunger, he began to explain why he ate raw grains, although Jurand was too much occupied with his own misfortune and his own thoughts, to heed him.

"God be blessed for that," he said. "A hard life under our German lords! They lay such taxes upon grist, that a poor man must eat the grain with the chaff, like an ox. And when they find a hand-mill in a cottage, they execute the peasant, take whatever he has, bah! they do not pardon even women and children.... They fear neither God nor the priests. They even put the priest in chains for blaming them for it. Oh, it is hard under the Germans! If a man does grind some grains between two stones, then he keeps that handful of flour for the holy Sunday, and must eat like birds on Friday. But God be blessed for even that, because two or three months before the harvest there will not be even that much. It is not permitted to catch fish ... nor kill animals ... It is not as it is in Mazowsze."