A CROWD OF VOICES.
War! War with Moscow!

SAPIEHA.
Nay, I will be heard.
Ho, marshal, do your duty!

[Great tumult within and outside the hall.

GRAND MARSHAL.
'Tis, you see,
Quite fruitless.

SAPIEHA.
What? The marshal's self suborned?
Is this our Diet, then, no longer free?
Throw down your staff, and bid this brawling cease;
I charge you, on your office, to obey!

[The GRAND MARSHAL casts his baton into the centre
of the hall; the tumult abates.

What whirling thoughts, what mad resolves are these?
Stand we not now at peace with Moscow's Czar?
Myself, as your imperial envoy, made
A treaty to endure for twenty years;
I raised this right hand, that you see, aloft
In solemn pledge, within the Kremlin's walls;
And fairly hath the Czar maintained his word.