Demetrius | Page 3

curiosity and wonder.?They set me free, and questioned me; yet still?I could not call to memory a time?I had not worn the jewel on my person.?Now it so happened that three Boiars who?Had fled from the resentment of their Czar?Were on a visit to my lord at Sambor.?They saw the trinket,--recognized it by?Nine emeralds alternately inlaid?With amethysts, to be the very cross?Which Ivan Westislowsky at the font?Hung on the neck of the Czar's youngest son.?They scrutinized me closer, and were struck?To find me marked with one of nature's freaks,?For my right arm is shorter than my left.?Now, being closely plied with questions, I?Bethought me of a little psalter which?I carried from the cloister when I fled.?Within this book were certain words in Greek?Inscribed there by the Igumen himself.?What they imported was unknown to me,?Being ignorant of the language. Well, the psalter?Was sent for, brought, and the inscription read.?It bore that Brother Wasili Philaret?(Such was my cloister-name), who owned the book,?Was Prince Demetrius, Ivan's youngest son,?By Andrei, an honest Diak, saved?By stealth in that red night of massacre.?Proofs of the fact lay carefully preserved?Within two convents, which were pointed out.?On this the Boiars at my feet fell down,?Won by the force of these resistless proofs,?And hailed me as the offspring of their Czar.?So from the yawning gulfs of black despair?Fate raised me up to fortune's topmost heights.?And now the mists cleared off, and all at once?Memories on memories started into life?In the remotest background of the past.?And like some city's spires that gleam afar?In golden sunshine when naught else is seen,?So in my soul two images grew bright,?The loftiest sun-peaks in the shadowy past.?I saw myself escaping one dark night,?And a red lurid flame light up the gloom?Of midnight darkness as I looked behind me?A memory 'twas of very earliest youth,?For what preceded or came after it?In the long distance utterly was lost.?In solitary brightness there it stood?A ghastly beacon-light on memory's waste.?Yet I remembered how, in later years,?One of my comrades called me, in his wrath?Son of the Czar. I took it as a jest,?And with a blow avenged it at the time.?All this now flashed like lightning on my soul,?And told with dazzling certainty that I?Was the Czar's son, so long reputed dead.?With this one word the clouds that had perplexed?My strange and troubled life were cleared away.?Nor merely by these signs, for such deceive;?But in my soul, in my proud, throbbing heart?I felt within me coursed the blood of kings;?And sooner will I drain it drop by drop?Than bate one jot my title to the crown.
ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN.?And shall we trust a scroll which might have found?Its way by merest chance into your hands?Backed by the tale of some poor renegades??Forgive me, noble youth! Your tone, I grant,?And bearing, are not those of one who lies;?Still you in this may be yourself deceived.?Well may the heart be pardoned that beguiles?Itself in playing for so high a stake.?What hostage do you tender for your word?
DEMETRIUS.?I tender fifty, who will give their oaths,--?All Piasts to a man, and free-born Poles?Of spotless reputation,--each of whom?Is ready to enforce what I have urged.?There sits the noble Prince of Sendomir,?And at his side the Castellan of Lublin;?Let them declare if I have spoke the truth.
ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN.?How seem these things to the august Estates??To the enforcement of such numerous proofs?Doubt and mistrust, methinks, must needs give way.?Long has a creeping rumor filled the world?That Dmitri, Ivan's son, is still alive.?The Czar himself confirms it by his fears.?--Before us stands a youth, in age and mien?Even to the very freak that nature played,?The lost heir's counterpart, and of a soul?Whose noble stamp keeps rank with his high claims.?He left a cloister's precincts, urged by strange,?Mysterious promptings; and this monk-trained boy?Was straight distinguished for his knightly feats.?He shows a trinket which the Czarowitsch?Once wore, and one that never left his side;?A written witness, too, by pious hands,?Gives us assurance of his princely birth;?And, stronger still, from his unvarnished speech?And open brow truth makes his best appeal.?Such traits as these deceit doth never don;?It masks its subtle soul in vaunting words,?And in the high-glossed ornaments of speech.?No longer, then, can I withhold the title?Which he with circumstance and justice claims?And, in the exercise of my old right,?I now, as primate, give him the first voice.
ARCHBISHOP OF LEMBERG.?My voice goes with the primate's.
SEVERAL VOICES.
So does mine.
SEVERAL PALATINES.?And mine!
ODOWALSKY.
And mine.
DEPUTIES.
And all!
SAPIEHA.
My gracious sirs!?Weigh well ere you decide! Be not so hasty!?It is not meet the council of the realm?Be hurried on to----
ODOWALSKY.
There is nothing here?For us to weigh; all has been fully weighed.?The proofs demonstrate incontestably.?This is not Moscow, sirs! No despot here?Keeps our free souls in manacles. Here truth?May walk by day or night with brow erect.?I will not think, my lords, in Cracow here,?Here in the