CHAPTER XXI.
ARRAIGNMENT OF ZAWIS AND JAROSLAV.
The sudden imprisonment of Zawis, and the expected interposition of imperial troops in concerns that had hitherto fallen exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Bohemian crown created some excitement. The barons shunned the palace, and incurred the enmity of the court party. The fatal temptation of imperial favor, although utterly insincere, had begun to produce its effect. A semblance of judicial proceedings must be maintained.
Accordingly a full council assembled; and Zawis and Nicolas Jaroslav appeared, the former heavily manacled.
The latter, emboldened by his own integrity, adopted an injured tone, and demanded that some accusation, to which he might answer, should be presented. “Such has ever been the law and custom in Bohemia,” he averred.
“Before any man can be held to trial, or even made prisoner, a statement of the charge against him must be lodged in court. I demand a procedure according to the ancient rights of Bohemia.”
“Do you not believe,” inquired bishop Tobias, “that the lords spiritual and temporal here assembled are animated by the spirit of justice; and that they will judge uprightly in all matters submitted to them?”
“Such,” replied Nicolas, himself a notarius and well learned in all the judicature of his country, “has ever been the pretense whereby men have been persuaded to surrender their own self-government; and intrusted their lives and fortunes to the hands of men who thus attempt to substitute their own fancies for the law of the land. That law is supreme even over those commissioned to administer it. It commands them to obey the procedure it prescribes.”
“There are principles and subjects over which your law can exercise no control,” replied Tobias. “Matters of conscience and of secret motive can not be reached by law passed ky the states. Such law can only affect outward and coarse things. The law divine, interpreted by the ministers of God, is alone applicable to unavowed motives and opinions. The sacredness of morality falls not within the domain of your law. Only God’s law can reach it.”
“An extremely narrow and uninspired notion of morality,” rejoined Nicolas. “All truth falls within the empire of morality. The man who testifies truly and expresses his full knowledge out of regard for truth, on the simplest subject of evidence, obeys the law of morals as fully as the man who pretends to propound mysteries.
“All truth is perfect; and the element of sincere truthfulness in a matter of slight moment is as pure and as heavenly, to its extent, as in a subject of the largest importance. The man who expresses the truth from a conscience devoted to truth obeys the divine law in its essence; and every man who does this interprets and administers God’s law for himself. He needs no agent to do it for him. By such subterfuges the law of the land, in many countries, has been set aside in order that alien decrees may be insidiously introduced.”
“The lords spiritual and temporal who have been selected by the king, are your lawful judges, and their authority is fromthe fountain of all law in this land,” rejoined Tobias.
“The king never has been the fountain of all law in Bohemia,” rejoined Nicolas. “He is himself the servant and administrator of the law. By it his authority is conferred. All the lords spiritual and temporal here present will in brief time depart from life. After them will arise other lords whose judgment must necessarily differ from that of the present lords, as their minds will be different. The law is for permanence, that all men may be judged alike before the same standard. As all men are directed to conform their actions tothe rule prescribed, they must be judged by that rule which has been held up as their guide.
“Thus only can the sentiment of the nation be expressed; and thus only can it derive the right to punish. I am not to be judged here by a law I know not of, by a law that no lord spiritual or temporal has even ventured to proclaim, that is to say, a law of his own devising after the act he undertakes to investigate. Such a law can be made to suit the policy, the vengeance, the folly, or the covetousness of the hour. The law of the momentary feelings of lords spiritual or temporal is too liable to fluctuation and the influence of passion to be accepted even for an emergency.”
“You will answer the questions put to you,” replied Tobias.
“I will answer a formal accusation and none other” replied Nicolas.
After a short consultation Duke Nicolas said: “The cause of Nicolas Jaroslav is deferred for the present. He will be examined, however, as a witness in the cause of Zawis of Falkenstein. Is the person of Zawis of Rosenberg, called also of Falkenstein, before this tribunal?”
“The person mentioned, whether you know him under one name or the other, is present,” answered Zawis, “but I deny that the persons in my presence constitute a tribunal. The laws of this kingdom are too well known, and too long established to be infringed successfully by a body of self-constituted intruders. I observe not the king’s presence, and by no inferior authority can I be legally arraigned. I perceive here still further proofs that an alien and an illegitimate assertion of power have conspired first to degrade the kingdom by the abrogation of all judicial precedent, next to rebel against the king’s, authority by usurping his place and his prerogative, and last to commit a judicial murder under the pretended sanction of legal proceedings. The persons in my presence form only an insolent intrusion into the assumed office of jurists and of judges. Only to the king, representing the majesty of Bohemia, will any baron ever present the least explanation of his conduct. In the assertion of this legal right I am the only person here who does not act as a conspirator and a traitor.”
“The lords spiritual and temporal,” answered Tobias, “embody the justice of the realm. They are moved by the highest dictates of conscientious equity, and barons of every rank may well submit themselves to their sentence.”
“I observe herein,” replied Zawis, “an insidious effort to substitute the usurped authority of an alien for the fundamental law of this land. To permit, or even to think of any such innovation, constitutes a treason against the autonomy of Bohemia. The assumption of such functions as are attempted here, during the king’s necessary absence at Eger and at Erfurt is another proof that unauthorized intruders have begun a system of perversion of the laws of the land, and of subversion of the king’s authority that threatens the extinction of public right. The substitution of alien instructions for the permanent expression and formulated exercise of the nation’s will is the beginning of that subjection of Bohemia, as it would be of any other land, to the mometary convenience of foreign despots that has its originin the great conspiracy that attempts to dominate all nations through spiritual intervention. Not with me shall be begun this overthrow of the law and constitution of Bohemia. I am the less inclined to recognize any such authority, as I see it attempted by one who stands in the same position towards legitimate functions here as he does toward a legal and recognized status in the king’s household.”
“The entire course of your proceedings,” answered Nicolas, frowning, “from the day when you aspired to the hand of Queen Kunigunde, whom I cannot recognize as lawful queen, although she bore the name as being my father’s married consort, to the criminal hour when you purloined fifty thousand marks from the public treasury; and further to the ambitious attempts to engage the King of Hungary in your criminal projects against the crown, has been marked by deceit, treason, and open combination with other conspirators against the king’s authority.”
“All of this insolent falsification,” replied Zawis scornfully, “only means that as Queen Margaret could not hope for an heir, you expected to impose yourself on the estates as king of Bohemia; or threaten civil dissensions to which you had, and you have now formed a party.
“Your traitor’s soul thus denies to your king the right to reign as being illegitimate, according to your treasonable assertions. Your wrath directed against me in alliance with other traitors whose purpose you are too stupid to perceive and too treacherous to oppose if you did perceive them, is based on a bitter disappointment of your criminal designs thus flagrantly avowed. You are base enough to combine with any enemy in order to further your own illegitimate ambition; and your present associates are disloyal enough to promote your schemes in return for treasonable concessions to their insidious and usurped authority. They do with you as they have done in all lands. They promise their aid in order to ride into power by your means, only tosecure within the kingdom a more perfidious and insinuating pretense than formerly they dared assert. But Bohemia knows her right; her heart is still sound, although her hand is feeble; and never shall the unshaken resolution of this land stoop before the foul machinations of an alien intruder and a bastard ”
“To me,” added Nicolas Jaroslav, “the facts are known; I registered and recorded them; and I avow the absolute innocence of the Lord Zawis in that much repeated matter of the fifty thousand marks. I did preserve the original grant by King Otakar to his Queen Kunigunde. It has for the present disappeared; but I warn the duke of Troppau, that the perpetrator of that treason and that robbery shall yet be revealed, to his infinite shame and confusion.”
Here Benes of Wartenberg interposed; and at his instance a secret consultation took place. Consternation seemed to possess the assembly. Tobias only preserved aserene countenance. At length Benes said: “Intelligence of a very startling character has arrived from Eger The king seeks from the emperor formal confirmation in all his lands and kingdoms. Very serious representations have been made to the emperor that some informalities are observable in the records of the late king’s marriage with Queen Kunigunde.
“The emperor desires that all records of the event shall be at once presented to him by the hand if possible of the notarius who engrossed and certified to them. He does not require the presence of the attesting lords. I believe that Nicolas Jaroslav is the person in question. He will therefore be permitted to depart under guard with such records as the king requires.”
Nicolas at once selected the documents in question; and set forth on his journey to Eger.
Arrived at this place, where Rudolph waited with great impatience, Nicolas was instantly ushered into the imperial presence.
“Representations have been made to me,” said Rudolph, “that certain informalities have been discovered in the proceedings recorded of the marriage of the late king and the Queen Kunigunde. I believe that Bishop Tobias and the duke of Troppau are mistaken. But I feel compelled, in presence of the embarrassing condition of affairs that should result should these statements prove true, to make an investigation.” Rudolph examined the documents, received the sworn answers and explanations as to the professed technicalities of Nicolas, and concluded by an impatient exclamation: “I have a new meaning of my often repeated maxim, ‘Suum cuique,’ and that is that a bishop, and an ambitious intriguer, if he happens to belong to the wrong side of the house, will each exhibit his professional and special peculiarities, and make mischief according to his own devices.”
Wenzel received his investiture; and could do ne less than not only liberate Nicolas, but confer on him a continuance of his official position of notarius in the palace.
Zawis returned to his dungeon. Here he entertained his weary hours with such solace as his ample store of mental wealth and companionship could confer.
According to the custom of the time, he had cultivated something of the art of the troubadour; and the walls oi his dungeon long presented the results of his meditations, in compositions that associated his name with the familiar poesy of the day in Moravia. Among others the following lines testify to his taste and philosophy:
TRUTH AND FALSEHOOD.
Moravian mountains knew my tread
In youth, at dawning day,
As through the dewy glades I sped
Where stags in covert lay;
And coursing vein and freshening morn
Inspired the glad career,
While eager steed and sounding horn
Quickened the bounding deer.
The mellow light within my eye,
And breeze that thrilled my frame,
Filled me with life from that good sky
Whence conscious gladness came;
And I felt one before the day
With beauteous things that grew;
I breathed the same glad breath as they,
All constant, good, and true,
Softly as plays the genial sun
In warmth within the tree,
Imparting motioned life begun
In starry coursings free,
And spreads through branch and blushing spray
The essences they know,
That mingle heaven’s own tinting ray
In blossoms’ lustrous glow:—
Thus gently through my sentient soul,
Inspiring vernal youth,
Beamed the full meaning of the whole,
Its oneness and its truth.
Bird, blade, each clung in conscious grace
To its own sameness there;
The aurochs,—grandest of his race;
The elk within his lair.
That unity of guiding mind
Which moves through every line
Fixed an impress of equal kind
Within and moulded mine.
A rent, a break distressed my sight;—
A gaping wound laid bare;—
A dark streak in a vision bright,
Else all conjoined and fair.
Thus truth found nurture in my soul,
Sourced in that unity
That moved it with a grand control
And blent all life with me.
Truth isthat essence all divine
By whose eternal flow
The flowers bloom, the planets shine,
Man lives and speaks below.
A. falsehood is a crumbling stone,
A fissure in the wall;
A limb torn from the fairest grown
Most graceful tree of all;
A pang that wrings in ceaseless pain;
A wound that will not heal;
A fractured link in life’s bright chain
That tearful eyes reveal.
A falsehood is the coward heart
That hides the grace it feels.
A falsehood works the tyrant’s part;—
To dungeon’s night appeals.
In the strong honor of my trust
A falsehood bound me here;
But the firm truth within me must
In heaven’s fixed light appear.
And that poor pittance that she gave—
Loved Kunigunde lost—
Tells mother sforesight from her grave,
Though rueful now the cost.
Yet even here each word from me
Must speak high truth alone;—
That gift her prince’s grace and free,
In love’s glad day her own.