Page:Pantadeuszorlast00mick.djvu/288

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THE EMIGRATION. JACEK
261

"Alas!" said Telimena with a mournful glance, "I see that nothing will restrain you! My knight, when you enter the lists of battle, turn a feeling gaze on the colours of your belovèd." (Here she tore a ribbon from her dress, made a cockade, and pinned it on the Count's bosom.) "May these colours guide you against fiery cannon, against shining spears and sulphurous rains; and when you make yourself famous by warlike deeds, and when you shade with immortal laurels your blood-stained helmet and your casque, bold in victory, even then look once more on this cockade! Remember whose hand pinned upon you these colours!"

Here she offered him her hand. The Count knelt and kissed it; Telimena raised her handkerchief to one eye, but with the other eye she looked down on the Count, who was bidding her farewell with deep emotion. She sighed, but shrugged her shoulders.

But the Judge said: "Hurry up, my dear Count, for it is already late!" And the Monk Robak called out with a threatening mien: "Enough of this; hurry up!" Thus the orders of the Judge and the Monk separated the tender pair and drove them from the room.

Meanwhile Thaddeus had embraced his uncle with tears and was kissing Robak's hand. Robak, pressing the lad's brow to his breast and hying his palms crosswise on his head, gazed aloft and said: "My son, may God be with you!" Then he began to weep. But Thaddeus was already beyond the threshold.

"What, brother?" asked the Judge, "will you tell him nothing? not even now? Shall the poor lad still remain in ignorance, now that he is going to leave us!"

"No, nothing!" said the Monk, after a long interval of weeping, his face covered by his hands. "Why should the poor fellow know that he has a father who has hidden