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TARAS BULBA 
 
 A TALE OF THE COSSACKS 
 
 TRANSLATED FROM 
 THE RUSSIAN OF 
 
 NICOLAI V. GOGOL 
 
 By ISABEL F. HAPGOOD 
 WITH AN INTRODUCTION 
 
 ALFRED A. KNOPF 
 NEW YORK MCMXVII 
 
RESERVATION 
 ;OPY ADDED 
 )R{GINAL TO BE 
 lETAlNED 
 
 APR 1 8 Yiy 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1^15, BY 
 ISABEL F. HAPGOOD 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 
 
P6^ 33 33 
 
 T3 
 
 INTRODUCTION 
 
 41€S92 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 The famous old Kazak, Taras Bulba, Is one of 
 the great character-creations which speak for them- 
 selves, and require no extraneous comment or 
 " interpretation." Indeed, his overflowing vital- 
 ity embraces not only his sons, but all his comrades, 
 with their typical Little Russian nomenclature end- 
 ing in ko^ and the reader's interest in Kazakdom 
 in general and the Zaporozhtzi In particular, Is 
 kindled to a very unusual degree. He Immedi- 
 ately wishes to know : Where was — and Is — the 
 Ukraina? Where was Zaporozhe? Where — 
 and what — was its capital, The Syech? Where 
 did the Kazaks get their name, and what does it 
 mean? 
 
 Complete answers to these questions can be 
 found only in Russian authorities. Historians and 
 specialists have interested themselves so deeply and 
 so long in these and allied questions, that the data 
 available are confusingly abundant. I shall not 
 bewilder the reader by giving him a choice of 
 numerous theories : I shall autocratically select the 
 
 7 
 
8 A ; ; .; .•; INTRODUCTION 
 
 one which appears to me to be most rational, best 
 founded, most satisfactory for all practical pur- 
 poses, and offer It for his consideration If not his 
 adoption. 
 
 The Ukralna, briefly stated, Is — the Border 
 Marches. Naturally It has varied, In different 
 epochs, just as our Western Frontier (pretty 
 nearly Its exact equivalent) varied at different 
 periods In the briefer history of the United States, 
 and was pushed further and further away from the 
 Eastern centre of civilisation. In the case of Rus- 
 sia, Moscow represented that centre. 
 
 The line was never fixed, never definite. At 
 one period It ran not very far south of Moscow, 
 although the region beyond a line beginning two 
 or three hundred miles south of Moscow — 
 Southwest Russia, with Kiev as Its centre — con- 
 tains, roughly stated, its variations and general lo- 
 cation, so far as the " Ukralna " of Gogol's de- 
 lightful Tales, and the exquisite poetry and music 
 of The Ukralna are concerned. 
 
 When I was visiting the late Count L. N. 
 Tolstoy at Yasnaya Polyana, the young men of the 
 family often played on their balalaikas (among 
 other Russian folk-songs) a dance-song which 
 irresistibly incited one to laughter, and set one's 
 feet to patting. When I inquired the words to 
 this " Barynya-Sudarynya " (Lady-Madam) I 
 
INTRODUCTION 9 
 
 was told that they were not only fragmentary but 
 really quite shocking. 
 
 No one, it appears, had ever cared much for the 
 words of " Barynya-Sudarynya," and the four or 
 live couplets generally known of the other repre- 
 hensible tune, the famous " Kamarynskaya," had 
 been so badly damaged by careless repetition and 
 reproduction that even the learned had come to 
 look upon both songs as purely scandalous, useless, 
 unworthy of notice. But one day it was discov- 
 ered that *' Barynya-Sudarynya '' Is a sequel to the 
 *' Kamarynskaya,'' — and that the words are scan- 
 dalous in part only, while the two combined chron- 
 icle an Interesting epoch of that strenuous life of 
 the Border Marches — the Ukraina — which, for 
 many centuries, was the chronic condition of the 
 Tzardom of Muscovy as It evolved triumphantly 
 to the present Empire of Russia. 
 
 The heroes of both songs are strictly historical 
 personages, and their abode was the Southern 
 Frontier — the Ukraina of Moscow — which, dur- 
 ing the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries meant the 
 present Government of Orel (pronounced Aryol)^ 
 and so continued, with the addition of an unflatter- 
 ing adjective, until Little Russia, the Cradle of the 
 Empire, temporarily conquered by Poland, was re- 
 united to Moscow. During this second period a 
 prominent place was occupied by the District of 
 
lo INTRODUCTION 
 
 Kamaritzkaya (also known as Kamarnitzkaya, or 
 Kamarynskaya, from the word, komdr, a mousquito 
 or gnat. Whether the region derived its appella- 
 tion from the fact that it was mousquito-ridden, or 
 because of the stinging powers of its inhabitants, I 
 am unable to state). During this epoch, the dis- 
 trict in question was teeming with the germs of 
 many important historical events, and offered a 
 favourable field for the development of the fool- 
 hardy, dissolute scapegrace of a peasant who ac- 
 quired the name of the region and became immor- 
 talised with it in the most famous of Russian folk- 
 songs, whose air was first arranged for orchestra 
 by Glinka, the father of modern Russian secular 
 Music, and to whom, in great measure, it is in- 
 debted for its present world-wide fame. 
 
 The Ukraina of that day may be said to have 
 extended to the Caucasus (Kavkaz) on the east, 
 the Black Sea and the Sea of Azov on the south, 
 and into present Poland and Galicia on the west 
 — in fact, it occupied the region which the present- 
 day "Ukrainians" (a political, semi-German- 
 Austrian party into whose quarrels and aspirations 
 I cannot enter) would like to see erected into a 
 separate kingdom, alien to Russia. The Kama- 
 rynskaya District became the property of Moscow 
 in 1508, having previously, for a long time, 
 belonged to Lithuania ; and for many years it was 
 
INTRODUCTION ii 
 
 the most dangerous spot in the whole vast Border 
 Marches, subject to raids and deeds of violence 
 from both its former and its present owners, as 
 well as from the Tatars of the Crimea, and the 
 Poles. The Inhabitants lived a semi-savage life, 
 and were famed for the roughness of their ways — 
 even In that rough age. They were few In num- 
 ber, and the situation grew so acute after the con- 
 quest of Kazan from the Tatars (1552), that it 
 became an imperative necessity to populate the 
 district, in order to protect Moscow from the 
 Tatars of the Crimea, who were enraged by the 
 overthrow of their brethren on the Volga. 
 
 Moscow decided that strong towns must be 
 founded, at any cost; and, at last, Tzar Ivan the 
 Terrible {Grozny Is the Russian word which is al- 
 ways, by custom, translated, " terrible " ; but. In 
 connection with Ivan IV, it really signified, as al- 
 ways when applied to Tzars, " daring, august, 
 imperious, one who inspires his enemies with terror 
 and holds his people In obedience ")j^ who accom- 
 4)li&hed such incalculable work for the unification of 
 Russia, set about the task. All the colonists who 
 could be collected, by hook or by crook, were de- 
 spatched thither, without regard to their moral 
 character, fighting qualities alone being taken Into 
 consideration. Young men were chosen, the 
 more reckless and enterprising the better. In fact, 
 
12 INTRODUCTION 
 
 the Ukralna of that age played the part taken by 
 Siberia at a later day, and received all criminals 
 and undesirable persons banished to protect the 
 rights of others, to save the peace, and to settle 
 the Border Marches : the " bad men " were given 
 a chance to rehabihtate themselves In a prison 
 whose roof was the sky, whose walls were the 
 horizon. With modifications, the description of 
 conditions applies, with much accuracy to our own 
 Western frontier, save that residence there was not 
 compulsory. The local authorities were strictly 
 forbidden to tamper with these wild colonists. 
 
 Then, when Tzar Boris Godunov, after usurp- 
 ing the throne, instituted serfdom (about 1592) 
 — almost, under prevailing conditions, justifiable 
 as a measure of state — every peasant who re- 
 belled against being bound to the glebe fled to the 
 Kamarynskaya. The Great Famine of 160 1-3 
 sent more recruits. The district was conveniently 
 near home for the Immigrants, and fell Into the 
 category of '^ Crown Lands,'' so that serfdom was 
 not established there. Naturally, also, no one was 
 particularly anxious to own the sort of people who 
 belonged there. In this throng, which comprised 
 all sorts and conditions of men, the criminal ele- 
 ment predominated. The scum came to the sur- 
 face in the form of robber-bands, before whom the 
 few peaceful inhabitants of the Ukralna — and 
 
INTRODUCTION 13 
 
 even of Moscow Itself — quaked with fear. It 
 was a clear case of sowing the wind and reaping 
 the whirlwind! In the end Moscow sent armed 
 expeditions against these bandits — to little effect, 
 so well had she weeded out her black sheep into 
 this rich border pasture — although many men 
 were caught and hanged, as a certain Bandit Ballad 
 narrates. 
 
 The smouldering fires broke out into a dis- 
 astrous conflagration when the first False Dmitry 
 
 — the Pretender — laid claim to the throne. 
 These dare-devils pricked up their ears: their 
 nostrils scented a fine feast, exactly to their taste : 
 
 — and when the False Dmitry, the renegade monk, 
 Grigory Otreplev, made his appearance among 
 them, they acknowledged him as their Tzar, In the 
 face of positive proof that the lad Dmitry was 
 dead and buried; and they settled the domestic 
 question by throwing their forces against Moscow 
 in his favour. In like manner, after Otrepiev's 
 death, they supported another pretender, *' The 
 Bandit of Tushino," as he Is called. No one de- 
 rived any advantage from this — except the False 
 Dmitry. Truth to tell, the course of these des- 
 peradoes was not so mad as It appears on first 
 sight. If they had pronounced against this Pre- 
 tender, the Poles, who were pushing his claims and 
 prowling about the Ukralna, would have annihi- 
 
 i 
 
14 INTRODUCTION: 
 
 lated them. Moscow was too far away, and pow- 
 erless to protect them. So, with keen Instinct for 
 politics and for self-preservation, the lowest 
 classes, brigands, fugitive serfs and peasants — the 
 ** thews and sinews " of the Ukraina — flocked to 
 the standard of the Bandit of Tushino, robbing and 
 murdering all who opposed or did not join them, — 
 which meant, chiefly, the landed gentry and the cit- 
 izens of the towns. The women, in particular, the 
 Bdrynya and hdryshnya — wives and daughters of 
 the gentry — were compelled to marry these 
 scoundrels. All these things, naturally, inspired 
 such terror in the landed gentry of the Ukraina 
 that they deserted their estates and fled to Mos- 
 cow. 
 
 It Is this last phase of the story which " Barynya- 
 Sudarynya '' depicts — the situation of the " Lady- 
 Madam-Lady " (to give It another version) — In 
 the refrain of the songs. Thus, evidently, it sets 
 forth one side of the story, while the " Kamaryn- 
 skaya " depicts the other, or the morals and man- 
 ners of that particular Ukraina as a whole, the 
 actors In both songs being identical. Probably the 
 author of these ballads, with their free, untram- ^ 
 melled form and ancient " Kamarynskaya naked- | 
 ness ** — was, like their hero, a composite — the 
 entire population of the Kamarynskaya Ukraina. 
 
 The tradition did not die out. The gentry did 
 
INTRODUCTION 15 
 
 not all flee before the representatives of perfect 
 freedom — and did not escape contamination. 
 To that sad fact a decidedly racy historical inci- 
 dent bears witness. I cannot forbear citing it, to 
 complete the picture, although this leaf from the 
 chronicles of a noble family refers to a later date. 
 — About ten miles from Konotop, in the Govern- 
 ment of Kursk, is a spot noted in history, called 
 Kosachya Sloboda {slohodd meaning a large vil- 
 lage on the high road with the adjective of kazdk 
 added) , because there, in 1672, took place the elec- 
 tion of Ivan Samoilovich to the office of Hetman 
 of Little Russia. Our concern, however, is not 
 with the Hetman, but with the exploits of a lady 
 who lived near the village — whose alternative 
 name, by the way, was Kosachya Dubrova, or The 
 Kazaks' Oak-forest. This strip of the Ukraina 
 of Moscow, adjoining the Hetmanshschlna (the 
 Hetman's Domain), was, for a long time, the 
 arena of Insubordination and high-handed deeds 
 which the landed proprietors permitted themselves 
 to Indulge in, taking advantage of their remoteness 
 from the long arm of justice and the possibility of 
 effecting a speedy escape, in case of need, to the 
 Hetmanshschlna. The names of noble families 
 which still exist are mentioned in the complaints to 
 the Crown of their victims. Among the noble 
 families was that of Durov. Tradition has pre- 
 
i6 INTRODUCTION 
 
 served the memory of Marfa Durov (or Durova) 
 as a famous brigand. Few men can have rivalled 
 — or even equalled — her. She flourished in the 
 reign of the Empress Anna Ivannovna (1730- 
 1740). The family was influential; Marfa was 
 wealthy and extraordinarily cantankerous. On be- 
 ing left a widow, she recruited her lovers from her 
 own peasants and neighbouring residents; and she 
 occupied her abundant leisure with highway rob- 
 bery. Recruiting her band from her peasants, she 
 made raids upon her neighbours. Mounted cross- 
 saddle, man-fashion, with a gun slung across her 
 shoulder, a pistol in her pocket, and a sword girt 
 at her side, she galloped at the head of her horde, 
 and behind followed with carts, to transport the 
 booty, more peasants. She ordered them not to 
 sow or reap, telling them it was not worth while 
 to sweat and bake in the hot sun : they could obtain 
 all they needed gratis, provided by the labours of 
 other people. Marfa was in the habit of making 
 her raids in July and August, chiefly, and her 
 slaves, at her bidding, carried home ricks of 
 freshly-reaped grain, stacks of hay, and droves of 
 horned cattle, sheep and pigs — whatever they en- 
 countered, in short. She went shares with them 
 when the plunder reached her estate. The shep- 
 herds dared offer no resistance. Sometimes, by 
 way of variety, Marfa would make a raid on a 
 
INTRODUCTION 117 
 
 settlement, or the manor of a land-owner — and 
 if resistance was difficult, the victims submitted. 
 Then Marfa would order them to give her minions 
 food and drink and would content herself with 
 tribute. She frequently broke into the chests and 
 store-houses of the nobility, and selected for her 
 own use whatever she required; after which she 
 compelled the sufferers to take a solemn oath (and 
 confirm it by kissing a holy picture), that they 
 would not proceed against her for robbery. If 
 they refused, she threatened to call again and ruin 
 them completely, or '* let loose the red cock " — 
 that Is to say, set fire to their buildings. A good 
 many were wise enough to keep their oath, and 
 them Marfa, as a rule, troubled no further. But 
 those who violated their oath and complained of 
 her suffered for It. The authorities were greedy 
 for bribes, and Marfa Durov was lavish when 
 occasion demanded. All the rural police of the 
 county gave her a free hand, as they did to other 
 insubordinate persons of noble rank, because they 
 grew rich thereby. When complaints were lodged 
 against Marfa, they were generally reported " not 
 proved," because of the impossibility of discover- 
 ing that the robbery had been perpetrated by none 
 other than Marfa In person. She, like several 
 others in the county, paid regular graft to the 
 police. So the petitioner gained nothing by his 
 
i8 INTRODUCTION 
 
 complaint, and Marfa felt secure in meting out to 
 him the punishment which she had promised. 
 
 Sometimes these noble bandits disagreed among 
 themselves, and civil war broke out. Once such a 
 nobly-born robber attacked Marfa's home with 
 some of his horde, and a bloody combat ensued, 
 which ended in the defeat of Marfa, and the reduc- 
 tion of her buildings and her whole village to ashes. 
 She and her sons (who were still minors) made 
 their escape by hiding In a swamp. But Marfa 
 assembled her horde again (several of her capable 
 assistants had been slain in that fray), and, before 
 proceeding to rebuild her village, she raided her 
 rival's estate, burned his manor to ashes, and slew 
 him with her own hand, her men following her ex- 
 ample with his men who had accompanied him In 
 his call upon her. 
 
 But Marfa made handsome amends, according 
 to her lights — she had his name and the names 
 of all the people who were slain in this affair, in- 
 scribed in a Book of Remembrance, with the com- 
 mentary, *' slain." This was, also, the practice of 
 Ivan the Terrible in regard to his victims; and In 
 keeping with It was the ardent piety of both Tzar 
 Ivan and Marfa. The souls of their murdered 
 victims are prayed for to the present day, and will 
 be, forever. 
 
 Marfa was noted for her external devoutness, 
 
INTRODUCTION 19 
 
 for she observed all the fasts appointed by the 
 Church (and they are onerously numerous in the 
 Orthodox Russian Church!), never missed a 
 church service on Sundays and Holy Days, and was 
 very zealous in the matter of money donations and 
 of gifts to the Church. When she was about to 
 set out on a piratical expedition, she was accus- 
 tomed to go first to the priest at Kosachya Du- 
 brova, and order him to hold a Prayer-Service, and 
 entreat God to grant success to her undertaking. 
 "Hearken, bdtkof she would say to the priest, 
 " if we are successful, we'll bring you a present, 
 because that will mean that you have obtained suc- 
 cess for us from God by your prayers. But if we 
 are not successful, then you must excuse me, but 
 we'll warm your hide for you ! " So when the 
 priest heard that Marfa Durov had been unsuc- 
 cessful he apprehended disaster for himself; and 
 she would ride up and administer a sound horse- 
 whipping, because he had not understood how to 
 pray luck for her from God ! — Probably she 
 made him hold a Te Deum service In case of suc- 
 cess. Assuredly, the unhappy priest of Kosachya 
 Dubrova had on his hands one of the most compli- 
 cated cases of conscience and faith upon record! 
 
 When Marfa's sons grew up they participated In 
 their mother's crimes — and she instigated them to 
 forms of crime which she could not perpetrate her- 
 
20 INTRODUCTION 
 
 self. Things went on in this fashion — the priest, 
 unless already reduced to a moral jelly by previous 
 experiences, must have been quite shocked by his 
 power with God — for six or seven years. Then 
 one of the sons proposed something which bettered 
 his mother's teaching — a crime against which 
 Marfa herself revolted; and he also fell out with 
 his brothers. So far, the authorities had never 
 been able to catch Marfa and her gang in the very 
 act of crime, as would be necessary if they were to 
 deal with her effectively. Now, this son secretly 
 gave information in proper quarters as to the time 
 when Marfa and his brothers, with their minions, 
 were intending to " go a-hunting " (as Marfa was 
 wont, pleasantly, to express it), and she was cap- 
 tured, tried, condemned and exiled to Siberia. 
 This third son, who had refrained from taking part 
 in her final *' hunt,'' after betraying her and his 
 brothers, remained the sole heir of the ancestral 
 estate. But he did not reign over it long. His 
 mother, at her departure into exile, had cursed him. 
 Burdened with this curse, he fell into melancholy, 
 and committed suicide. Evidently he, like the 
 priest of Kosachya Dubrova, was afflicted with a 
 complicated case of conscience. 
 
 In the famous Epic Songs of Russia, composed, 
 probably, in the tenth, eleventh and twelfth centu- 
 ries, the greatest of the Bogatyri (Heroes), Ilya 
 
INTRODUCTION 21 
 
 of Murom, Is always referred to as " the old 
 Kazak." But in ancient times, as any peasant of 
 the far-away locaHties in the North where these 
 Epics still are sung, will explain, heroic deeds were 
 performed indifferently by men and women, the 
 men being called "'bogatyri " and the women 
 " polyanitzi." So perhaps Marfa Durov ranks — 
 by courtesy, at least — as a Polyanitza. At any 
 rate, she was more or less distantly related to 
 Taras Bulba ! 
 
 TTie Kazakdom of Little Russia — which Is, in 
 general, the region dealt with in Gogol's story — 
 bore the. same general character as that of Great 
 Russia which acknowledged the authority of the 
 Kingdom of Moscow. The Epic Songs, and 
 " The Old Kazak, Ilya of Murom," originated 
 there. Kazak and fugitive serf came to be, prac- 
 tically, synonymous terms. 
 
 The term " kazak " is ancient, — and the most 
 rational of the explanations of it Is, that of old, 
 among the Turks, it was applied to a mounted 
 warrior, lightly armed, — and somehow Inferior 
 as a soldier. In the Polovetzk Dictionary of the 
 year 1303 the word Is written " kozak." Among 
 the Tatars, with whom the Ukraina was compelled 
 to live In such close contact, on such close terms of 
 enmity, from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century, 
 *' kozak " has the meaning of a fine man, an Inde- 
 
22 INTRODUCTION 
 
 pendent military adventurer — again of low grade 
 :(the Turks and Tatars belong to the same Ural- 
 Altaic stock, along with the Hungarians and the 
 Finns) , — with shades of meaning indicating a vag- 
 abond, a partisan, a homeless roamer, a nomad. 
 Altogether, it seems to describe the kazak of the 
 early periods very thoroughly. With the status of 
 the kazak as an agriculturist, with a fixed home, a 
 soldier of the Russian Army, and with the divisions 
 Into kazaks of the Don, the Ural, the Terek, the 
 Kuban and so forth, and the conditions of his 
 service, it is not necessary here to deal. 
 
 The one appellation which is lost in the present 
 divisions is precisely the historic one of the Zapo- 
 rozhtzi. Zaporozhe, the domain of the kazaks of 
 our story, Is somewhat difficult to delimit (without 
 entering into too much detail) on the present map 
 of Russia. A large slice — practically all of the 
 present Government of Tauris (not counting the 
 Crimea), starting from the lagoon of Ochakov at 
 the southwest point, bounded on the south by the 
 Black Sea and the Sea of Azov, and. In a curving 
 line, northeast, east, south again, by the Dnyeper, 
 the Konskaya and the Berda rivers — was the ter- 
 ritory of the Nogai Tatars. Zaporozhe lay to the 
 west, north and east of this Tatar territory. Be- 
 ginning with Ochakov, at the western point of the 
 Dnyeper lagoon, Zaporozhe was enclosed on the 
 
INTRODUCTION 23 
 
 west by the river Bug and the Sinlukha, curving 
 northeast just above Novomlrgorod and to a point 
 just above Kremenchug on the Dnyeper; southeast 
 along the Dnyeper, to the mouth of the Orel; 
 northeast, following the Orel but some distance to 
 the north of It, and with a long point northeast to 
 about BorkI (northeast of Poltava) ; thence south- 
 east, to a point about at Bakhmat on the Northern 
 Don; then slightly southwest to Mariupol on the 
 Sea of Azov, where It again joins the Territory of 
 the Nogal Tatars. The Territory of the Kazaks 
 of the Don was its eastern neighbour ; but there was 
 no real differentiation between the Don Kazaks 
 and those of Zaporozhe. It was not uncommon 
 for men of either camp to go to the other and dwell 
 there, unquestioned, perfectly welcome, like mem- 
 bers of the organisation, at pleasure, returning 
 home when affairs or Inclination called. 
 
 The actual origin of the Kazaks of Zaporozhe 
 and its date, cannot be determined. In all prob- 
 ability, their pioneers were the men who, loving a 
 free life, followed the calling of fishermen on the 
 lower Dnyeper, and hunted wild animals on the 
 surrounding steppe of the region, known as 
 Nizovya — the lowlands — near the Black Sea. 
 In course of time they organised, to repel the raids 
 of the Turks, [Tatars and Poles. In short, they 
 were the result of the eternal conflict between the 
 
24 INTRODUCTION 
 
 settled, agricultural life, and the nomadic free- 
 booter life of the plains. 
 
 The Falls or Rapids from which the actors In 
 Gogol's story derived their name, Zaporozhtzl — 
 the Kazaks of *' Beyond the Rapids" — begin 
 about ten miles betow Yekatefinoslav (Katherine's 
 Glory), on the Dnyeper, the worst of them, about 
 half a mile in length, bearing the suggestive title of 
 " Nenasytetz," the Insatiable. In the tract below 
 the Insatiable was situated the famous capital of 
 Zaporozhe, the Syech — or, In the soft. Little Rus- 
 sian variant of Russia, the SIcha. Syech or SIcha 
 means, simply, a cutting or clearing in the forest. 
 Obviously, that was precisely the origin of the 
 name. As there existed, at different times, at least 
 eight Syechs (possibly ten) , It is not surprising that 
 the location of the capital should appear to the 
 reader decidedly indefinite, m 
 
 About one hundred and sixty-five miles below 
 Yekaterinoslav, opposite Alexandrovsk, in the 
 Dnyeper, lies the Island of Khortitza, where stood 
 the first Syech. Originally — so the ancient Greek 
 chronicles state — this beautiful island held a mon- 
 astery inhabited by many monks. The Russians, 
 it is said, had regarded it as a sacred place, and 
 (before the introduction of Christianity) sacri- 
 ficed there to their deities birds, and even the 
 highly-prized dogs of the sort now known as 
 
INTRODUCTION 25 
 
 Borzoi, or Russian Wolf-hounds. Here, in the 
 beginning of 1550, Dmitry Vishnevetzky built a 
 fortress, and assembled kazakdom around him. 
 Vishnevetzky was a fairly wealthy magnate, owner 
 of several villages in southern Volhynla. Instead 
 of following the example of the men of his day and 
 modestly increasing and rounding out his *' for- 
 tune," he devoted himself to the fashionable sport 
 of the period on the Border Marches — fighting 
 the Tatars. He entered the public arena in 1540, 
 but, not content with defensive fighting, such as 
 was carried on by the Border Chieftains, and mag- 
 nates, he made up his mind to realise, in concrete 
 form, the idea evidently cherished by many people 
 of that epoch, but, so far, not put into execution, 
 and built a castle on the Islands of the Dnyeper, as 
 a bulwark against the Tatars. This Idea of 
 Vishnevetzky to found a permanent, strongly-forti- 
 fied position on an Island of the Dnyeper, did not 
 fail to exercise an influence on the existing tend- 
 ency to connect the winter camps of the hunters and 
 fishermen into a chain of small fortresses defended 
 by stockades, which, in turn, connected with a cen- 
 tral kosh, or camp, whose ruler was the Koshevoi 
 — the chief of the camp — on the Lowlands. 
 But Vishnevetzky's experiment with Khortitza 
 Castle proved that no reliance could be placed on 
 strong walls and cannon as defences against the 
 
26 INTRODUCTION 
 
 Turks and the Tatars, who would find means for 
 overcoming them. In January, 1557, the Khan of 
 the Crimea attacked Khortitza Castle, in vain: but 
 it was evident that some inaccessible location must 
 be chosen; so the Sicha began to lead a nomadic 
 life, like its inhabitants. The original kuren, 
 which came, in the end, to signify a large barrack 
 (and the troop which occupied it), was a small 
 wooden shack, mounted on wheels, which enabled 
 it to gallop after its owner, when the Sicha began 
 its wanderings among the labyrinth of islands, 
 shallows and bays, where the estuary of the 
 Dnyeper ebbed and flowed. Such a Sicha could 
 not, obviously, be made a centre all at once, and its 
 origin, in the usual sense, must be ascribed to the 
 ten years or so following Vishnevetzky's experi- 
 ment and failure. It moved on down the Dyneper 
 in agile bounds — and then returned, apparently, 
 twice, to locations close to some previously occu- 
 pied and abandoned. 
 
 The pathetic picture of the old Kazak gazing out 
 across the Black Sea and mourning for his Ostap 
 would suggest that the Syech to which Bulba re- 
 turned after the defeat might have been Number 
 Seven — the one situated at Aleshki, twelve miles 
 from Kherson, on the salty lagoon of the Dnyeper 
 — one of the famous '' limans " in the neighbour- 
 hood of the Black Sea, whose bottom-slime consti- 
 
INTRODUCTION 27 
 
 tutes a famous remedy for scrofula, gout, rheu- 
 matism, nervous and cutaneous diseases. This 
 Syech, which lasted for twenty-five years (their 
 existence was, as a rule, rather brief), was the 
 only one within easy riding distance of the Black 
 Sea. But the statement that the Syech was then 
 situated at Khortitza contradicts such a theory. 
 That statement also proves that the *' Union '* 
 alluded to was the political arrangement described 
 in my Footnote. Another " Union " equally fa- 
 mous and productive of battle deserves mention 
 under existing circumstances, although later in 
 date by at least thirty years (presumably) than 
 the death of Taras. 
 
 That " Union,'* originated by a couple of Bish- 
 ops in southwest Russia, who had good cause to 
 apprehend expulsion at the hands of the authori- 
 ties of the Orthodox Greco-Russian Church, began 
 in 1596, and consisted of a so-called union with the 
 Roman Church. These bishops acknowledged 
 the headship of the Pope of Rome, and stipulated 
 not only that they were to retain their places, but 
 that their " Uniate '* Church was to retain its own 
 language — Old Church Slavonic — and its own 
 customs. They promised, in return (in the cus- 
 tomary over-confident, grandiloquent style), the 
 adhesion of the whole Russian Church to this un- 
 authorised, secret compact. They were never 
 
28 INTRODUCTION 
 
 able to keep the bargain, and a suggestion of 
 the intense hatred and opposition to that hybrid 
 church, and of the increased bitterness towards the 
 Roman Church, is conveyed in this story. 
 
 In the course of the centuries which have fol- 
 lowed this hybrid church has been imposed, by mis- 
 representation and by force, on many inhabitants 
 of Galicia, and Orthodox Slavs along the western 
 borderland; and the compact regarding the reten- 
 tion of their customs has been violated by the im- 
 position of the newest Roman dogmas, — the infal- 
 libility of the Pope, the Immaculate Conception, 
 and others. That " Uniate " Church is more com- 
 monly known as '* the Greek Catholic Church," 
 meaning " the Roman Church of the Greek Rite," 
 In contradistinction to the ancient, original Chris- 
 tian church, the Orthodox Greco-Russian Catholic 
 Apostolic Church of the East. Thousands of 
 immigrants to the United States from Galicia 
 belong to this church — and many thousands of 
 them, including their priests, who did belong to It 
 in the old country, have abandoned It here and 
 returned to the church of their fathers, the Rus- 
 sian Orthodox Church, chiefly In consequence of 
 the attempts which have been made here to 
 deprive them of the last remnants of their ancient 
 customs, including their married priesthood, and 
 
INTRODUCTION 29 
 
 the Chrismation (Confirmation) of infants at 
 their Baptism. The question of this " Uniate " 
 Church is playing a very large role in the present 
 great European War, which is known in Russia 
 (partly because of this point which worried old 
 Taras) as *' The War of Liberation." 
 
 Of Gogol and his work in general, and of Taras 
 Bulba In particular, it is not necessary to speak at 
 length. It is less indispensable now than it was 
 when, many years ago, I published translations of 
 Dead Souls; some of the Tales from a Farm-house 
 near Dikanko and its sequel Mirgorod; and of 
 Taras Bulba, which forms part of the last-named 
 volume. (The present version of Taras Bulba 
 has been so completely revised that it is practically 
 new.) 
 
 It will suffice to say that Nikolai V. Gogol was 
 born in the hamlet of Sorochintzl, situated on the 
 borders of Poltava and Mirgorod counties, In the 
 Government of Poltava, on March 12 (some say 
 March 19), Old Style, 1 809^ and died on February 
 21 (Old Style), 1852. The first of his Tales 
 from a Farm-house was published In 1830. 
 Mirgorod, the fresh series, came out in book form 
 In 1835. Taras Bulba and most of the tales In 
 that volume, as In the first, were of the same gen- 
 eral romantic or fantastic character. The rest 
 
30 INTRODUCTION 
 
 were of the naturalistic type which earned for him, 
 — in conjunction with the rest — the position of 
 Founder of the modern Realistic School. 
 
 Isabel F. Hapgood. 
 
 August 9, 1915. 
 New York, 
 
CHAPTER ONE 
 
viV. 
 
TARAS BULBA 
 
 H 
 
 I 
 
 "^ "IT EY there, son, turn round. How ridic- 
 ulous you look I What's that priest's 
 cassock you're wearing? Do all the 
 fellows in the Academy go around In that style? " 
 
 With such words did old Bulba greet his two 
 sons who had been studying In the Kiev prepara- 
 tory school, and had just returned home to their 
 father. 
 
 His boys had only just dismounted from 
 their horses. They were a pair of stalwart lads, 
 who still wore a sheepishly distrustful look, like 
 students just out of school. Their strong, healthy 
 faces were covered with the first down, which, as 
 yet, had never been touched by the razor. They 
 were very much upset by such a reception on the 
 part of their father, and stood stock-still, with their 
 eyes fixed upon the earth. 
 
 " Stand still 1 Stand still I Let me have a good 
 look at you," he continued, turning them round, 
 
 33 
 
34 TARAS BULBA 
 
 "How long your svitkas ^ are. What svitkas! 
 There never were such svitkas in the world before. 
 Just run, one of you! I'll see whether he won't 
 get wound up in the skirts, and tumble on the 
 ground ! " 
 
 *' Don't laugh, Dad! " said the elder of them, 
 at last. 
 
 " See how touchy they are ! Why shouldn't I 
 laugh?" 
 
 " Because you shan't, although you are my dad; 
 but if you do laugh, by God, I'll thrash you ! " 
 
 "A nice sort of son you are! What! Your 
 dad? " said Taras Bulba, retreating several paces 
 in amazement. 
 
 ** Yes, even my father. I don't stop to consider 
 who deals the insult, and I spare no one." 
 
 *' So you want to fight me ? With your fists ? " 
 
 " Any way." 
 
 " Well, come on with your fists," said Taras 
 Bulba, stripping up his sleeves. " I'll see what 
 sort of a fellow you are at a fight." 
 
 And father and son, in place of a friendly greet- 
 ing after long separation, began to plant heavy 
 blows on each other's ribs, back and chest, now re- 
 treating and taking each other's measure with side- 
 long glances, now attacking afresh. 
 
 lA half-long upper garment of cloth, used by the South 
 Russians. I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 35 
 
 " Look, good people ! The old man has gone 
 mad! he has lost his wits completely! " screamed 
 their thin, pale old mother, who was standing on 
 the threshold and had not yet managed to embrace 
 her darling boys. " The children have come 
 home, we have not seen them for over a year; and 
 now the Lord only knows what he has taken into 
 his head — he's pummelling them! " 
 
 " Yes, he's a glorious fighter," said Bulba, paus- 
 ing; " by God! that was a good one! " he contin- 
 ued, somewhat as though he were excusing him- 
 self; " yes, although he has never tried his hand at 
 it before. He'll make a good kazak ! Now, wel- 
 come, my lad, let's greet each other; " and father 
 and son began to exchange kisses. " Good, little 
 son ! see that you thrash every one else as you have 
 thrashed me; don't you knuckle under to any one. 
 All the same, your outfit is ridiculous — What's 
 this rope hanging here ? — And you, you clumsy 
 lout, why are you standing there with your arms 
 dangling?" said he, turning to the younger lad. 
 " How about you, you son of a dog — why don't 
 you also give me a licking? " 
 
 *' There's another of his crazy ideas ! " said the 
 mother, who had managed, in the meantime, to em- 
 brace the younger boy. " Who ever heard of such 
 a thing as a man's own children beating him? 
 That will do for the present: the child is young, he 
 
36 TARAS BULBA 
 
 has had a long journey, he is tired." (The child 
 was over twenty, and about seven feet tall. ) " He 
 ought to rest and eat something; and he sets him to 
 fighting ! " 
 
 " Oho, I see that youVe been raised a pet ! '' said 
 Bulba. *' Don't listen to your mother, my son; 
 she's a woman, she doesn't know anything. What 
 do you want with petting? Your petting is a clear 
 field and a good horse, — that's what it is ! And 
 do you see this sword? that's your mother! All 
 the rest of the things with which they stuff your 
 head is rubbish; the academy, books, primers, 
 philosophy, and all that, the devil only knows what, 
 I spit upon it all ! " And here Bulba added a word 
 which is not used in print *' But here, now, this 
 is the best of all : I'll take you to Zaporozhe ^ 
 next week. There's where you'll find the sort of 
 science that's the real thing. That's the school for 
 you: only there will you acquire sense." 
 
 " And are they to stay at home only one week? " 
 said the thin, old mother piteously, with tears in her 
 eyes. " The poor boys will have no chance to go 
 about, no chance to get acquainted with the home 
 where they were born ; I shall not have a chance to 
 feast my eyes upon them to the full." 
 
 " Stop that, stop your howling, old woman ! A 
 
 ^The Kazak country beyond (za) the Rapids (porozhe) of 
 the Dnyeper. I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 37 
 
 kazak is not born to run around with women. 
 You'd like to hide them both under your petticoat, 
 and sit upon them as if they were hen's eggs. Go, 
 get along with you, and let us have everything there 
 is on the table in a trice. We don't want any pas- 
 try puffs, honey-cakes, poppy-cakes, or any other 
 messes: bring us a whole sheep, give us a goat, 
 mead forty years old, and as much corn-brandy as 
 possible, not with raisins and all sorts of frills, but 
 plain, sparkling brandy, which foams and hisses 
 like mad." 
 
 Bulba led his sons into the best room of the 
 cottage; and two handsome women servants, in 
 coin necklaces, who were putting the rooms in 
 order, ran out quickly. Evidently, they were 
 frightened by the arrival of the young men, who 
 did not care to be familiar with any one; or else 
 they merely wanted to maintain their feminine 
 custom of screaming and rushing off headlong at 
 the sight of a man, and then screening their lively 
 shame for a long time with their sleeves. The 
 room was furnished in accordance with the fashion 
 of that period, — concerning which vivid hints 
 still linger in the songs and epic lyrics, that are no 
 longer sung in the Ukraina, by bearded old blind 
 men, to the gentle thrumming of the bandura, in 
 the presence of the people thronging about them, 
 — in the taste of that warlike and troublous time, 
 
38 TARAS BULBA 
 
 when skirmishes and battles began to occur in the 
 Ukraina over the Union/ Everything was neat, 
 plastered with coloured clay. On the walls hung 
 sabres, kazak whips, nets for birds, fishing-nets 
 and guns, cleverly carved powder-horns, gilded 
 bits for horses, and hobble-chains with silver disks. 
 The windows were small, with round, dull panes, 
 such as are to be found nowadays only in ancient 
 churches, through which it was impossible to see 
 without raising the one movable pane. Around 
 the windows and doors ran incised bands painted 
 red. On shelves in the corners stood jugs, bottles 
 and flasks of green and blue glass, carved silver 
 cups, and gilded goblets of various makes, — Vene- 
 tian, Turkish, Cherkessian, — which had ar- 
 rived in Bulba's cottage by various roads, at third 
 and fourth hand, something which was quite of 
 common occurrence in those doughty days. 
 There were birch benches all round the walls, a 
 huge table under the holy pictures in the corner of 
 honour, and a capacious oven all covered with 
 parti-coloured tiles, with projections, recesses and 
 an annex at the rear. All this was extremely 
 familiar to our two young men, who had come 
 home every year during the holidays — and had 
 come because they had no horses, as yet, and be- 
 
 1 The projected union between Poland and Lithuania, to in- 
 clude also Little Russia: (effected in 1569, at Liublin). I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 39 
 
 cause It was not customary to permit the students 
 to ride on horseback. All they had was long 
 scalp-locks, which every kazak who bore arms was 
 entitled to pull. It was only at the end of their 
 course that Bulba sent them, from his stud, a 
 couple of young staUions. 
 
 Bulba, to celebrate the arrival of his sons, or- 
 dered all the Sotniks ^ and all the officers of the 
 troop who were of any consequence, to be sum- 
 moned; and when two of them arrived with the 
 Yesaul ^ Dmitro Tovkach, his old comrade, he 
 Immediately presented his boys, saying: "Just 
 look at them; aren't they gallant lads ! I shall send 
 them to the Syech ^ shortly." The guests con- 
 gratulated Bulba and both the young men, and 
 told them they were engaged in good business, and 
 that there was no better knowledge for a young 
 man than a knowledge of the Zaporozhian Syech. 
 
 " Now, my friends, seat yourselves, each where 
 It pleases him best, at table. Now, my lads, first 
 of all let's have a drink of brandy ! " Thus spake 
 Bulba. " God's blessing be on us ! Welcome, 
 dear sons; you, Ostap, and you, Andrii. God 
 grant that you may always be successful in war! 
 That you may beat the Mussulmans, and beat the 
 
 1 Lieutenant in the rest of the army. I. F. H. 
 
 2 Captain of Kazaks. I. F. H. 
 
 2 A"he headquarters of the Zaporozhian Kazaks. I. F. H. 
 
40 TARAS BULBA I 
 
 Turks, and beat the Tatars; and. when the Poles 
 undertake any expedition against our Faith, then 
 may you give the Poles a drubbing also. Now, 
 hold out your glasses, — well, and is the brandy 
 good? What's brandy In Latin? Somehow, my 
 lad, the Latins were stupid : they didn't know there 
 was such a thing in the world as corn-brandy. 
 What the deuce was the name of the man who used 
 to write Latin rhymes? Pm not very strong on 
 reading and writing, so I don't quite remember. 
 Was it Horace? " 
 
 " Did any one ever see such a dad! '' thought 
 the elder son, Ostap. " The old dog knows every- 
 thing, but he's always shamming." 
 
 " I don't believe the Archimandrite ^ allowed 
 you so much as a smell of brandy," Taras went on. 
 " Come, confess, my lads, they beat you with fresh 
 birch-switches on your backs and everything else 
 that a kazak owns; and perhaps when you grew 
 conceited with what you knew, they flogged you 
 with whips. And not on Saturday only, I fancy, 
 but of a Wednesday and a Thursday, as well." 
 
 " There's no good in recalling the past, Dad," 
 replied Ostap; " that's all over and done with." 
 
 " Just let 'em try it now I " said Andrii. " Just 
 
 1 Abbot. Education was in the hands of the monasteries of 
 that day in Kiev. I. F. H, 
 
TARAS BULBA 41 
 
 let anybody meddle with me now; just let any 
 Tatar gang come along now and they'll learn what 
 a kazak's sword is like." 
 
 " Good, my son, by God, good! And when it 
 comes to that, I'll go with you; by God, I will! 
 Why the devil should I tarry here ? To become a 
 sower of buckwheat and a housekeeper, to tend 
 sheep and swine, and fondle my wife? Devil take 
 them ! Tm a kazak ; Til have none of them ! I'll 
 go* with you to Zaporozhe to carouse, by God, I 
 will! " And Bulba gradually grew warmer and 
 warmer, and at last rose from the table, and in a 
 thorough rage, striking a majestic pose, he 
 stamped his foot. " We'll go to-morrow ! Why 
 tarry? What enemy can we besiege here? 
 What's this cottage to us? What do we want of 
 all this? What are pots to us? " So saying, he 
 began to smash the pots and flasks, and hurl them 
 about. 
 
 The poor old woman, well used to such be- 
 haviour on the part of her husband, looked sadly 
 on from her seat on the wall-bench. She did not 
 dare to say anything; but when she heard the de- 
 cbion which was so terrible for her, she could 
 not refrain from tears. She looked at her chil- 
 dren, from whom so speedy a separation was 
 thn^atened, and It Is impossible to describe the 
 
 I 
 
42 TARAS BULBA 
 
 full force of the speechless grief that seemed 
 to quiver in her eyes and on her lips, which were 
 convulsively pressed together. 
 
 Bulba was terribly headstrong. His was one 
 of those characters which could arise only in that 
 troublous sixteenth century, in that half-nomadic 
 corner of Europe, when the whole of Southern, 
 primeval Russia, deserted by its Princes, was laid 
 waste, burned to ashes by savage hordes of Mon- 
 golian bandits; when a man, deprived of house 
 and home became recklessly brave here; when, 
 amid conflagrations, in sight of threatening neigh- 
 bours, and eternal danger, he settled down and 
 grew used to looking them squarely in the face, 
 having unlearned the knowledge that there was 
 such a thing as fear in the world; when the an- 
 cient, peaceable Slav spirit was seized with a war- 
 like flame, and there was instituted Kazakdom, — 
 a free, wild manifestation of Russian nature, — 
 and when all the river-country, the lands down 
 stream, the slopes of the river banks and con- 
 venient sites were populated by kazaks whose num- 
 ber no man knew, and whose bold comrades had 
 a right to reply to the Sultan's inquiry as to hew 
 many there were of them, "Who knows? We 
 are scattered all over the steppe: wherever there 
 is a hillock, there, also is a Kazak." It was., in 
 fact, a most remarkable manifestation of Ru^isian 
 
TARAS BULBA 43 
 
 strength; dire necessity wrested it from the bosom 
 of the people. In place of the original princi- 
 palities were small towns filled with huntsmen and 
 dog-keepers, in place of the warring and bartering 
 petty Princes in cities, there arose great colonies, 
 hamlets, and districts bound together by a com- 
 mon danger, and by hatred toward the heathen 
 robbers. Every one already knows from history 
 how their incessant fighting and roving life saved 
 Europe from the savage invasions which threat- 
 ened to overwhelm her. The Polish Kings, find- 
 ing themselves, in place of the Appanage Princes, 
 sovereigns — though distant and feeble, — over 
 those vast territories, understood, nevertheless, 
 the significance of the kazaks, and the advantages 
 of this warlike, lawless life. They encouraged 
 them and flattered this propensity. Under their 
 distant rule, the Hetmans, chosen from among 
 the kazaks themselves, transformed the districts 
 and hamlets into regiments and uniform provinces. 
 It was not an army in the regulation sense, no one 
 would have noticed its existence; but in case of a 
 war or a general uprising, it required a week and 
 no more, for every man to make his appearance 
 on horseback, fully armed, receiving only one 
 ducat in payment from the King; and in two weeks, 
 such an army was assembled as no recruiting of- 
 ficers would ever have been able to collect. When 
 
44 TARAS BULBA 
 
 the campaign was ended, the warrior went back to 
 the fields and meadows, and the lower reaches of 
 the Dnyeper, fished, traded, brewed his beer, and 
 was a free kazak once more. His foreign con- 
 temporaries rightly marvelled at his wonderful 
 qualities. There was no trade which the kazak 
 did not know; he could distil brandy, build a peas- 
 ant cart, make powder, do blacksmithing and lock- 
 smithing — and, in addition, amuse himself 
 madly, drinking and carousing as only a Russian 
 can, — all this he was equal to. Besides the regis- 
 tered kazaks, who considered themselves bound 
 to present themselves in time of war, it was pos- 
 sible to collect at any time, in case of dire need, a 
 whole army of volunteers. All that was required 
 was that the Captains should traverse all the 
 market-places and squares of the villages and ham- 
 lets, and shout at the top of their voices, as they 
 stood erect in their carts : *' Hey, ye beer-sellers 
 and beer-brewers ! Have done with brewing and 
 with lolling on your ovens, and feeding the flies 
 with your fat bodies ! Go, win glory and knightly 
 honour I Ye ploughmen, ye sowers of buckwheat, 
 cease to follow the plough and to soil your yellow 
 buskins in the earth, and court women, and waste 
 your knightly strength! 'Tis time to win kazak 
 glory I " and these words acted like sparks falling 
 on dry wood. The husbandman broke his plough, 
 
TARAS BULBA 45 
 
 the beer-sellers threw away their casks, the brewers 
 destroyed their barrels; the mechanic and the 
 merchant sent trade and shop to the devil, smashed 
 the pots in their houses, and, every man jack of 
 them, mounted his horse. In short, the Russian 
 character here acquired a broad, mighty scope, a 
 powerful exterior. 
 
 Taras was one of the band of old, original Colo- 
 nels; he was born for warlike emotions, and was 
 noted for the rough uprightness of his character. 
 At that period the influence of Poland was be- 
 ginning to make itself felt among the Russian 
 nobility. Many had already adopted Polish cus- 
 toms, had introduced luxury, splendid staffs of 
 servants, hawks, huntsmen, dinners and pal- 
 aces. This was not to the taste of Taras. He 
 liked the simple life of the kazaks, and quarrelled 
 with those of his comrades who inchned to the 
 Warsaw party, calling them the serfs of the Polish 
 nobles. Ever turbulent, he regarded himself as a 
 legal defender of the Faith. He would enter arbi- 
 trarily into villages where the sole complaint was 
 with regard to the oppression of the revenue 
 farmers, and the imposition of fresh taxes on each 
 hearth. He and his kazaks would execute justice 
 on them; and he laid down the rule for himself, 
 that In three cases It was always proper to have 
 recourse to the sword: namely, when warrant- 
 
46 TARAS BULBA 
 
 officers did not show due respect for their superior 
 officers, and stood with their caps on in the latter's 
 presence; or when any one made light of the 
 Orthodox Faith ^ and did not observe the customs 
 of his ancestors ; and, finally, when the enemy were 
 Mussulmans or Turks, against whom he consid- 
 ered it permissible, in every case, to unsheath the 
 sword for the glory of Christianity. 
 
 Now he rejoiced In anticipation at the thought 
 of how he would present himself with his two sons 
 in the Syech, and say: " See what fine young fel- 
 lows I have brought you! " how he would intro- 
 duce them to all his old comrades, steeled in war; 
 how he would watch their first exploits in the art 
 of war, and in carousing, which was regarded as 
 one of the chief qualities of a knight. At first 
 he had intended to send them forth alone; but at 
 the sight of their freshness, stature and robust per- 
 sonal beauty, his martial spirit flamed up within 
 him, and he resolved to go with them himself, the 
 very next day, although there was no necessity for 
 this except his obstinate self-will. He began at 
 once to bustle about and give orders; he selected 
 horses and trappings for his young sons, inspected 
 the stables and storehouses, and chose servants to 
 
 1 Orthodox means, specifically, in Russia, a member of the 
 Greco-Russian Church, or anything connected with that Church 
 — the Catholic Church of the East. I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 47 
 
 accompany them on the morrow. He delegated 
 his power to Captain Tovkach, and gave, along 
 with it, a strict command to appear with his entire 
 troop the very Instant he should receive a message 
 from him at the Syech. Although he was half- 
 seas over, and the effects of his drinking-bout still 
 lingered in his brain, he forget nothing; he even 
 gave orders that the horses should be watered, 
 their cribs filled, and that they should be fed with 
 the largest and best wheat; and then he came into 
 the house, fatigued with all his labours. 
 
 " Well, boys 1 We must sleep now, but to- 
 morrow we shall do as God appoints. Don't pre- 
 pare a bed for us! We need no bed; we'll sleep 
 out doors." 
 
 Night had only just clasped the heavens in her 
 embrace, but Taras always went to bed early. He 
 threw himself down on a rug, and covered himself 
 with a sheepskin coat; for the night air was quite 
 sharp, and Bulba liked to be warmly covered when 
 he was at home. He was soon snoring and the 
 whole household speedily followed his example. 
 All snored and grunted as they lay In different 
 corners. The watchman went to sleep the first of 
 all, because he had drunk more than any one else, 
 in honour of his young masters' homecoming. 
 
 The poor mother alone slept not. She bent 
 over the pillow of her darling boys as they lay side 
 
48 TARAS BULBA 
 
 by side; with a comb she smoothed their carelessly- 
 tangled young curls, and moistened them with her 
 tears. She gazed at them with her whole being, 
 with her every sense; she merged herself wholly in 
 that gaze, and still she could not gaze enough. 
 She had nourished them at her own breast, she had 
 reared them and petted them ; and now to see them 
 only for an instant ! " My sons ! my darling sons, 
 what will become of you? what awaits you? " she 
 said, and tears stood in the furrows which dis- 
 figured her once beautiful face. In truth, she was 
 to be pitied, as was every woman in that valorous 
 epoch. She had lived only for a moment in love, 
 only during the first fever of passion, only during 
 the first flush of youth ; and then her grim betrayer 
 had deserted her for the sword, for his comrades 
 and his carouses. She had seen her husband for 
 two or three days in the course of a year, and then 
 for a period of several years there had been no 
 news of him. And when she had seen him, when 
 they had lived together, what sort of a life had 
 been hers? She had endured insults, even beat- 
 ings; she had seen caresses bestowed merely out of 
 pity; she had been a strange object amid that mob 
 of heartless cavaliers, upon which the dissolute life 
 of the Zaporozhe had cast a grim colouring of its 
 own. Her pleasureless youth had flitted swiftly 
 by; and her beautiful rosy cheeks and her bosom 
 
TARAS BULBA 49 
 
 had withered away unklssed, and become covered 
 with premature wrinkles. All her love, all her 
 feeling, everything that is tender and passionate in 
 a woman had, in her case, been converted into the 
 one sentiment of maternal love. With ardour, 
 with passion, with tears, she hovered over her 
 boys, like a gull of the steppe. Her sons, her 
 darling sons, were being taken from her, — taken 
 from her in such a way that she might never see 
 them again! Who knows? Perchance a Tatar 
 would cut off their heads in the very first skirmish, 
 and she would never know where their deserted 
 bodies lay, torn by the beasts of prey; and yet for 
 each drop of their blood she would gladly give her 
 whole self. Sobbing, she gazed into their eyes, 
 even when all-powerful sleep began to close them, 
 and said to herself : *' Perhaps when Bulba wakes 
 he will put off their departure for a brief day or 
 two ; perhaps he took it into his head to go so soon 
 because he had been drinking hard." 
 
 The moon, from the height of heaven, had long 
 since illuminated the whole courtyard filled with 
 sleepers, the dense clump of willows, and the tall 
 steppe grass which hid the wattled hedge. She 
 still sat by the heads of her beloved sons, never 
 removing her eyes from them for a moment, or 
 even thinking of sleep. Already the horses, divin- 
 ing the approaeh of dawn, had ceased eating, and 
 
50 TARAS BULBA 
 
 lain down upon the grass; the topmost leaves of 
 the willows began to rustle softly, and little by 
 little the rippling rustle descended to their very 
 bases. She sat there, unwearied, until daylight, 
 and wished in her heart that the night might last 
 as long as possible. From the steppe came the 
 ringing neigh of a stallion; red tongues darted 
 brightly athwart the sky. 
 
 Bulba suddenly awoke and sprang to his feet. 
 He remembered perfectly well all that he had or- 
 dered the night before. " Now, my lads, time's 
 up! you've slept enough! Water the horses! 
 And where's the old woman? " (This was what 
 he generally called his wife.) "Hurry up, old 
 woman, get us something to eat; we've a long trip 
 ahead of us." 
 
 The poor old woman, deprived of her last hope, 
 slipped sadly into the cottage. While with tears 
 she prepared what was needed for breakfast, 
 Bulba issued his orders, went to the stable, and 
 himself selected his best trappings for his boys. 
 
 The collegians were suddenly transformed. 
 Red morocco boots with silver heels replaced their 
 dirty old foot-gear; trousers wide as the Black 
 Sea, with thousands of folds and plaits, were sup- 
 ported by golden girdles; from the girdles hung 
 long, slender thongs, with tassels and other jingling 
 things for pipes. The kazak coat, of brilhant 
 
TARAS BULBA 51 
 
 scarlet cloth, was confined by a flowered belt; em- 
 bossed Turkish pistols were thrust into the belt; 
 their swords clanged at their heels. Their faces, 
 already slightly sunburned, seemed to have grown 
 handsomer and whiter; their little black mous- 
 taches now set off more distinctly both their pallor 
 and their strong, healthy, youthful complexions. 
 Very handsome were they, beneath their black 
 sheepskin caps, with golden crowns. 
 
 When their poor mother saw them she could not 
 utter a word, and tears stood in her eyes. 
 
 " All ready there, now, sons I No time to 
 waste! " said Bulba, at last. " Now we must all 
 sit down together, in accordance with our Christian 
 custom before a journey." 
 
 All seated themselves, not excepting the serv- 
 ants, who had been standing respectfully at the 
 door. 
 
 *' Now, Mother, bless your children," said Bul- 
 ba. " Pray God that they may always fight 
 bravely, always uphold knightly honour, always 
 defend the faith of Christ; and if not, that they 
 may perish, and their breath be no longer in the 
 world. — ■ Come to your mother, my boys; a moth- 
 er's prayer saves on land and sea." 
 
 The mother, weak as all mothers are, embraced 
 them, drew out two small holy images, and sob- 
 bing, hung one round each neck — *' May God's 
 
52 TARAS BULBA 
 
 Mother . . . keep you ! My dear little sons, 
 forget not your mother . . . send some little 
 word of yourselves ..." she could say no 
 more. 
 
 " Now boys, let's go ! " said Bulba. 
 
 By the porch stood the horses, ready saddled. 
 Bulba sprang upon his " Devil " which jumped 
 madly rearward, feeling upon his back a load of 
 twenty puds,^ for Taras was extremely stout and 
 heavy. 
 
 When the mother saw that her sons also were 
 mounted on their horses, she flung herself toward 
 the younger, whose features expressed somewhat 
 more gentleness than those of his brother. She 
 grasped his stirrup, clung to his saddle, and, with 
 despair in her eyes, would not loose him from 
 her hands. Two husky kazaks seized her care- 
 fully, and carried her Into the cottage. But 
 when they had already ridden through the gate, 
 with all the agility of a wild goat, utterly out of 
 keeping with her years, she rushed through the 
 gate, with Irresistible strength stopped a horse, 
 and embraced one of her sons with a sort of sense- 
 less vehemence. Then they led her away once 
 more. 
 
 The young kazaks rode on sadly, repressing 
 their tears out of fear of their father who, on his 
 
 1 A pud is about forty pounds. I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 53 
 
 side, was somewhat agitated, although he strove 
 not to show it. The day was grey; the greenery 
 shone brightly; the birds twittered rather discord- 
 antly. They glanced back as they rode away. 
 Their farm seemed to have sunk Into the earth. 
 All that was visible above the surface was the two 
 chimneys of their modest cottage, and the crests 
 of the trees up which they had been wont to climb 
 like squirrels; before them still stretched the 
 meadow by which they could recall the whole his- 
 tory of their lives, from the years when they had 
 rolled In its dewey grass, up to the years when 
 they had awaited in it a black-bowed kazak 
 maiden, who ran timidly across it with her quick, 
 young feet. And now only one pole above the 
 well, with the cart-wheel fastened on top, rises 
 solitary against the sky; already the plain across 
 which they have been riding appears a hill in the 
 distance, and has concealed everything. Fare- 
 well childhood, and games, and everything — 
 farewell I 
 
CHAPTER TWO 
 
II 
 
 ALL three horsemen rode on In silence. 
 Old Taras was thinking of the distant 
 past; before him passed his youth, his 
 years — his vanished years, over which the kazak 
 always weeps, wishing that his life might be all 
 youth. He wondered whom of his former com- 
 rades he should meet In the Syech. He reckoned 
 up how many were already dead, how many were 
 still alive. Tears formed slowly In his eyes, and 
 his grey head drooped dejectedly. 
 
 His sons were occupied with other thoughts. 
 But we must speak more at length of his sons. 
 They had been sent at the age of twelve years to 
 the academy at Kiev, because all honourable offi- 
 cials of that epoch considered It Indispensable 
 to give their children an education, even if It 
 were utterly forgotten afterwards. Like all who 
 entered the free academy, they were then wild, 
 having been reared in unrestricted freedom; and 
 there, for the first time, they were generally 
 smoothed down a bit, and acquired a certain some- 
 thing common to them all, which caused them 
 
 57 
 
S8 TARAS BULBA 
 
 to bear a sort of universal resemblance to one 
 another. 
 
 The elder, Ostap, began his career by running 
 away In the course of the first year. He was 
 brought back, terribly flogged, and set down again 
 to his books. Four times did he bury his primer 
 In the earth; and four times, after bestowing upon 
 him an inhuman thrashing, did they buy him a 
 new one. But he would have repeated his per- 
 formance for the fifth time, doubtless, had not his 
 father given him a solemn assurance that he 
 would keep him at service in the monastery for 
 twenty years, and had he not sworn to start with, 
 that he should never behold Zaporozhe so long 
 as he lived, unless he learned all the sciences In the 
 academy. The odd point about It was, that he 
 who said this was that same Taras Bulba who con- 
 demned all learning, and counselled his boys, as 
 we have seen, not to trouble themselves about It 
 at all. From that moment, Ostap began to sit 
 over his tiresome books with extraordinary assi- 
 duity, and before long he stood on a level with the 
 best. The style of education In that age was 
 widely at variance with the manner of life : these 
 scholastic, grammatical and theological subtleties 
 never were used and never were met with in 
 real life. Those who studied them — even the 
 most scholastic of the lot — could never put their 
 
TARAS BULBA 59 
 
 knowledge to any practical use whatsoever. The 
 most learned men of those days were even more 
 Ignorant than the rest, because they were entirely 
 removed from all experience. Moreover, the 
 republican constitution of the academy, the appal- 
 ling multitude of young, stalwart, healthy fellows, 
 — all these factors combined, were bound to 
 arouse in them an activity quite outside the limits 
 of their studies. Sometimes the poor fare, some- 
 times the frequent punishments of fasting, some- 
 times the numerous requirements which arise in 
 fresh, strong, healthy young men, combined to 
 arouse In them that spirit of enterprise which aft- 
 erwards received further development in Zapo- 
 rozhe. The hungry bursary ^ ran about the 
 streets of Kiev, and forced every one to be on his 
 guard. The huckstresses who sat In the bazaar 
 always covered their patties, their greasy crack- 
 nels, and their squash-seeds ^ with their hands, like 
 eagles protecting their young. If they but caught a 
 glimpse of a passing student. The monitor who 
 was bound by his official duty to control his com- 
 rades who were intrusted to his care, had such 
 
 ^A student who receives a stipend for his support — a free 
 student. Still called bursar in Scotland; at Cambridge Uni- 
 versity, sizar; at Oxford, servitor. I. F. H. 
 
 2 Russians of the lower classes are extremely fond of chew- 
 ing sunflower-seeds. Squash-seeds are more expensive, — and, so 
 to speak, — more aristocratic. I. F. H. 
 
6o TARAS BULBA 
 
 frightfully wide pockets to his full trousers, that 
 he could stow away the entire contents of a sloth- 
 ful huckstress's stall. These students constituted 
 an entirely separate world by themselves: they 
 were not admitted to the highest circles, composed 
 of Polish and Russian nobles. Even the Voevod, 
 Adam Kisel, in spite of the patronage he bestowed 
 upon the academy, did not introduce them into 
 society, and gave orders that they were to be 
 ruled as strictly as possible. This command was 
 entirely superfluous, for neither the Rector nor 
 the monk-professors spared the rod or the whip; 
 and the lictors sometimes, by their orders, whipped 
 their monitors so severely that the latter rubbed 
 their trousers for weeks afterwards. This was 
 a mere nothing to many of them, and seemed only 
 a little stronger than good vodka with pepper; 
 others, at last, grew thoroughly tired of such con- 
 stant thrashings, and ran away to Zaporozhe, if 
 they could find the road, and if they were not 
 caught on the way. Ostap Bulba, although he 
 began to study logic and even theology with 
 much zeal, did not escape the merciless rod. 
 Naturally, all this was bound in some degree to 
 embitter his character, and impart to it that firm- 
 ness which distinguishes the kazaks. Ostap was 
 always regarded as one of the best students. 
 He rarely led the others into audacious enter- 
 
TARAS BULBA 6i 
 
 prises, such as robbing other people's gardens or 
 orchards; but, on the other hand, he was always 
 among the first to join the standard of an adven- 
 turous student, and never, under any circum- 
 stances whatsoever, did he betray his comrades; 
 neither whips nor rods could make him do it. He 
 bore himself sternly towards all temptations except 
 those of war and wild carouses: at any rate, he 
 almost never thought of anything else. He was 
 frank with his equals. He was kind-hearted in 
 the only way that kindness of heart could exist in 
 such a character and at such an epoch. He was 
 sincerely touched by his poor mother's tears; and 
 this one thing only troubled him and caused him to 
 hang his head thoughtfully. 
 
 His younger brother, Andrii, had rather live- 
 lier and more developed feelings. He studied 
 more willingly, and without that effort with which 
 strong, heavy characters generally apply them- 
 ,selves. He was more inventive than his brother, 
 and frequently appeared as the leader of decidedly 
 dangerous expeditions, and sometimes, thanks to 
 the ingenious turn of his mind, he contrived to 
 escape all punishment, while his brother Ostap, 
 abandoning all concern, stripped off his coat, and 
 lay down upon the floor without a thought of beg- 
 ging for mercy. He, also, was seething with the 
 thirst for action; but, at the same time, his soul 
 
62 TARAS BULBA 
 
 was accessible to other sentiments. The demand 
 for love flamed ardently within him; when he had 
 attained his eighteenth year woman began to pre- 
 sent herself more frequently in his burning 
 dreams: while listening to philosophical discus- 
 sions he beheld her each moment, rosy, black-eyed, 
 tender; before him flitted constantly her gleam- 
 ing, elastic bosom, her soft, beautiful bare arms; 
 the very gown which clung about her virginal yet 
 vigorous limbs exhaled, in his visions, a certain 
 Inexpressible sensuousness. He carefully con- 
 cealed from his comrades this impulse of his pas- 
 sionate young soul, because. In that age, It was 
 considered shameful and dishonourable for a 
 kazak to think of love and a wife before he had 
 tasted battle. On the whole, during the conclud- 
 ing years of his course, he served more rarely 
 as the leader of a gang; but he roamed about more 
 frequently alone In the remote corners of Kiev, 
 buried In cherry-orchards, among low-roofed little 
 houses, which peeped forth alluringly along the 
 street. Sometimes he betook himself to the street 
 of the aristocrats, in the old Kiev of to-day, where 
 dwelt little Russian and Polish nobles, and where 
 the houses were built In somewhat fanciful style. 
 Once as he was thus lounging along, a huge, old- 
 fashioned carriage, belonging to some Polish 
 nobleman, almost drove over him; and the coach- 
 
TARAS BULBA 63 
 
 man, with very terrible moustaches, who sat on the 
 box, gave him a decidedly sharp cut with his whip. 
 The young student boiled with rage; with reckless 
 daring, he seized a hind-wheel with his powerful 
 hand, and brought the carriage to a halt. But the 
 coachman, fearing a reckoning, lashed his horses; 
 they leaped forward, and Andrii although, fortu- 
 nately, he succeeded in freeing his hand, was flung 
 full-length on the ground, with his face flat in the 
 mud. The most resonant and melodious of laughs 
 rang out from overhead. He raised his eyes and 
 saw, standing at a window, a beauty such as he had 
 never beheld before in all his life, black-eyed and 
 white as the snow illumined by the dawning flush 
 of the sun. She was laughing heartily, and her 
 laughter lent sparkling force to her dazzling love- 
 liness. He was taken aback; he gazed at her in 
 utter confusion, abstractedly wiping the mud from 
 his face, by which means it became still further 
 smeared. Who could this beauty be? He tried 
 to find out from the servants who, in rich liveries, 
 stood beside the gate in a crowd, surrounding a 
 young bandura player; but the servants raised a 
 laugh when they saw his besmeared face, and 
 deigned him no reply. At last he learned that 
 she was the daughter of the Voevod of Kovno, who 
 had come hither for a time. The following night, 
 with the daring characteristic of the student alone, 
 
64 TARAS BULBA 
 
 he crept through the hedge into the garden, and 
 climbed a tree which spread its branches over the 
 very roof of the house. From the tree he 
 crawled ugion the roof, and made his way through 
 the chimney straight into the bedroom of the 
 beauty, who, at the moment, was seated before a 
 candle, engaged in removing the costly earrings 
 from her ears. The beautiful Pole was so 
 alarmed on suddenly beholding a strange man 
 before her, that she could not utter a single word; 
 but when she perceived that the student stood 
 before her with downcast eyes, not daring to move 
 a hand through timidity, when she recognised in 
 him the one who had fallen headlong in the street 
 before her, laughter again overpowered her. 
 
 Moreover, there was nothing terrible in Andrii's 
 features; he was very handsome. The beauty 
 was giddy, like all Poles; but her eyes, her 
 wondrous, clear, piercing eyes, darted a glance — 
 a glance as long as constancy. The student could 
 not move a hand, but stood bound as in a sack, 
 when the Voevod's daughter approached him 
 boldly, placed upon his head her glittering diadem, 
 hung her earrings on his lips, and flung over him a 
 transparent muslin chemise, with gold-embroidered 
 garlands. She tricked him out, and played a 
 thousand foolish pranks, with the unconstraint of a 
 child, which distinguishes the giddy Poles, and 
 
 1 
 
TARAS BULBA 65 
 
 which threw the poor student into still greater agi- 
 tation. He presented a ridiculous figure, as he 
 stood staring fixedly, with wide-open mouth, into 
 her dazzling eyes. At that moment, a knock at 
 the door startled her. She ordered him to con- 
 ceal himself under the bed, and, as soon as the dis- 
 turbance was past, called her maid, a Tatar captive, 
 and gave her orders to conduct him to the garden 
 with caution, and thence send him away over the 
 hedge. But this time our student did not pass the 
 hedge so successfully. The watchman woke up, 
 and caught him firmly by the leg; and the servants, 
 assembling, beat him for a long time, even in the 
 street, until his swift legs rescued him. After that 
 it was very dangerous to pass the house, because 
 the Voevod's servitors were numerous. He en- 
 countered her once more, in a Roman Catholic 
 church. She saw him, and smiled very pleasantly, 
 as at an old acquaintance. He saw her yet again, 
 by chance; and shortly afterwards the Voevod of 
 Kovno took his departure, and instead of the beau- 
 tiful, black-eyed Pole, some fat face or other 
 gazed from the window. That was what Andrii 
 was thinking about when he hung his head, and 
 dropped his eyes on his horse's mane. 
 
 In the meantime, the steppe had long since 
 received them into its green embrace; and the 
 tall grass, closing in around them, concealed them, 
 
66 TARAS BULBA 
 
 so that only their black kazak caps were visible 
 among its spikes. 
 
 '* Come, come, why are you so quiet, my 
 lads?" said Bulba at last, waking from his own 
 revery. " You're like monks. Come, send all 
 thinking to the Devil on the spot! Take your 
 pipes in your lips, and we'll smoke, and spur on 
 our horses, and fly so swiftly that no bird can over- 
 take us." 
 
 And the kazaks, bending low over their horses, 
 disappeared in the grass. Their black caps were 
 no longer visible; a wake of trodden grass alone 
 showed a trace of their swift flight. 
 
 The sun had long since peered forth from the 
 clear heavens and inundated the steppe with his 
 vitalising, warming light. All that was dim and 
 sleepy in the minds of the kazaks fled away in a 
 twinkling; their hearts fluttered like birds. The 
 further they penetrated into the steppe, the more 
 beautiful did it become. At that time all the 
 South, all that region which now constitutes New 
 Russia, even to the Black Sea, was a green, virgin 
 wilderness. No plough had ever passed over the 
 immeasurable waves of wild growth; horses alone, 
 hiding themselves in it as in a forest, trod it down. 
 Nothing in Nature could be finer. The whole 
 surface of the earth looked like a green-gold 
 ocean, upon which were sprinkled millions of dif- 
 
TARAS BULBA 67 
 
 ferent flowers. Through the tall, slender stems 
 of the grass peeped light-blue, dark-blue and lilac 
 corn-flowers ; the yellow broom thrust up Its pyra- 
 midal head ; the parasol-shaped white flowers of the 
 yarrow dotted its surface. A wheat-ear, brought 
 God knows whence, was filling out to ripening. 
 About their slender roots ran partridges, with 
 necks outstretched. The air was filled with the 
 notes of a thousand different birds. In the sky, 
 motionless, hung the hawks, with wings out- 
 spread, and eyes rivetted intently on the grass. 
 The cries of a vast flock of wild ducks moving up 
 on one side, were echoed from God knows what 
 distant lake. From the grass a gull arose with 
 measured sweep and bathed luxuriously In the blue 
 waves of air; and now she has vanished on high, 
 and appears only as a black dot! Now she has 
 turned her wings, and shimmers In the sunlight. 
 Devil take you, Steppe, how beautiful you are ! . . . 
 Our travellers halted only a few minutes for 
 dinner: their escort of ten kazaks sprang from 
 their horses, unbound the wooden casks of brandy 
 and the gourds which were used for drinking ves- 
 sels. They ate only bread and lard, or dry 
 wheaten cakes; they drank but one cup apiece, 
 merely to strengthen them (for Taras Bulba 
 never permitted intoxication on the road), and 
 then continued their journey until evening. 
 
68 TARAS BULBA 
 
 In the evening the whole steppe completely 
 changed its aspect. Its whole variegated expanse 
 was bathed in the last bright glow of the sun; 
 and it darkened gradually, so that the shadow 
 could be seen as it flitted across it, and it became 
 dark-green. The mist rose more densely; each 
 flower, each blade of grass, emitted a fragrance as 
 of amber, and an incense of perfume was wafted 
 like smoke across the whole steppe. Wide 
 streaks of rosy gold were flung athwart the dark- 
 blue sky, as with a gigantic brush; here and there 
 gleamed white tufts of light, and transparent 
 clouds; and the coolest, most bewitching of little 
 breezes barely rocked the tops of the grass-blades 
 like sea waves, and only just caressed the cheek. 
 All the music which had resounded throughout the 
 day had died away, and given place to another. 
 The striped marmots crept out of their holes, 
 stood erect on their hind legs, and filled the steppe 
 with their whistling. The whirr of the grasshop- 
 pers became more distinctly audible. Sometimes 
 the cry of a swan was audible from some distant 
 lake, and rang through the air like silver. The 
 travellers halted in the middle of the plain, 
 selected a spot for their night encampment, made 
 a fire, hung over it a kettle in which they cooked 
 their buckwheat groats; the steam rose and 
 floated aslant in the air. Having supped, the 
 
TARAS BULBA 69 
 
 kazaks lay down to sleep, after hobbling their 
 horses, and turning them out to graze. They lay 
 down on their cloth coats. The nocturnal stars 
 gazed directly down upon them. They heard 
 the countless myriads of insects which filled the 
 grass; all their rasping, whistling, and whirring 
 resounded clearly through the night, purified by 
 the cool air, and lulled the drowsy ear. If one 
 of them rose and stood for a while, the steppe 
 presented itself to him spangled with the sparks 
 of glow-worms. At times the night sky was 
 illumined in spots by the glare of dry reeds which 
 were burning along pools or river-bank; and a 
 dark file of swans flying northward, was suddenly 
 lighted up by the silvery-rose hued gleam, and then 
 it seemed as though crimson kerchiefs were float- 
 ing across the dark heavens. 
 
 The travellers rode onward without any adven- 
 tures. They came across no villages. There 
 was nothing but the same boundless, undulating, 
 wondrously beautiful steppe. At intervals the 
 crests of forests loomed blue in the distance, on 
 one hand, where they stretched along the banks of 
 the Dnyeper. But once Taras pointed out to his 
 sons a small black speck far away in the grass, 
 saying, ** Look, boys! yonder gallops a Tatar." 
 The tiny moustached head fixed its eyes straight 
 upon them, from the distance, sniffing the air like 
 
70 TARAS BULBA 
 
 a greyhound, then disappeared, like a stag, on per- 
 ceiving that the kazaks were thirty strong. 
 *' And now, my lads, try to overtake the Tatar ! 
 But don't try: you would never catch him to all 
 eternity; his horse is swifter than my Devil." 
 Nevertheless, Bulba took precautions, fearing 
 there might be hidden ambushes here or there. 
 They galloped to a small stream called the 
 Tatarka, which emptied into the Dnyeper, rode 
 their horses into the water, and swam down it a 
 long time to conceal their trail; and then, climbing 
 out on the shore, they continued on their way. 
 
 Three days later they were not far from the 
 place which formed the goal of their journey. 
 The air grew suddenly colder: they could feel the 
 vicinity of the Dnyeper. And yonder it gleamed 
 afar off, distinguishable as a dark streak against 
 the horizon. It exhaled waves of cold air, and 
 spread nearer, nearer, and finally embraced half 
 the entire surface of the earth. This was the part 
 of the Dnyeper where the river, hitherto confined 
 by the rapids, at last forced its way freely, and 
 roared like the sea, pouring forth at will where 
 the islands, flung into its midst, pressed it further 
 from the shores, and its waves spread broadly 
 over the earth, encountering neither cliffs nor hills. 
 The kazaks ahghted from their horses, entered 
 the ferry-boat, and after a sail of three hoyrs' 
 
TARAS BULBA 71 
 
 duration, arrived at the shore of the Island of 
 Khortitza, where, at that time, was situated the 
 Syech, which so often changed its location. 
 
 A throng of people on the shore were quarrel- 
 ling with the ferrymen. The kazaks made ready 
 their horses. Taras assumed a stately air, pulled 
 his belt tighter, and drew his hand proudly over 
 his moustache. His young sons also inspected 
 themselves from head to foot, with some appre- 
 hension and an undefined feeling of satisfaction; 
 then all set out together for the suburb, which was 
 half a verst ^ from the Syech. On their arrival 
 they were deafened by fifty blacksmiths' hammers 
 beating upon twenty-five anvils sunk in the earth, 
 and concealed with turf. Stalwart tanners sat on 
 the street beneath their sloping roofs, scraping 
 ox-hides with their strong hands; shopkeepers sat 
 in their booths with piles of flints, steel and 
 powder; an Armenian had hung out rich kerchiefs; 
 a Tatar was turning mutton-coUops on a spit; a 
 Jew, with head thrust forward, was filtering corn- 
 brandy from a cask. But the first man they met 
 was a Zaporozhetz who was sleeping in the very 
 middle of the road, with legs and arms out- 
 stretched. Taras Bulba could not refrain from 
 halting to admire him. 
 
 " Eh, how splendidly developed he Is I phew, 
 
 1 A verst is two-thirds of a mile. I. F. If. 
 
72 TARAS BULBA 
 
 what a magnificent figure ! " he said, reining In his 
 horse. The Zaporozhetz had stretched himself 
 out in the road like a lion; his scalp-lock, thrown 
 proudly behind him, extended over half an arshin 
 of ground; ^ his trousers, of costly scarlet cloth, 
 were spotted with tar, to show his utter disdain 
 for them. Having admired him to his heart's 
 content, Bulba passed on through the narrow 
 street, which was crowded with mechanics pur- 
 suing their trades, and with men of all nationali- 
 ties, who thronged this suburb of the Syech, which 
 resembled a fair, and fed and clothed Syech that 
 knew only how to revel and to discharge guns. 
 
 At last they left the suburb behind them, and 
 perceived some scattered kurens ^ covered with 
 turf, or with felt, In Tatar fashion. Some were 
 furnished with cannon. Nowhere were any 
 fences visible, or any of those low-roofed houses 
 with sloping porch-roofs supported on short 
 wooden pillars, such as there were in the suburb. 
 A small rampart and abatis totally unguarded, 
 showed a terrible degree of recklessness. Stal- 
 wart Zaporozhtzi lying, pipe In mouth, In the very 
 road, glanced at them with great Indifference, but 
 did not stir from their places. Taras threaded 
 
 1 An arshin is twenty-eight inches. I. F. H. 
 
 2 Enormous wooden sheds or barracks, each inhabited by a 
 troop or kuren. I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 73 
 
 his way carefully among them, with his sons, say- 
 ing, *' Good morning, noble sirs.'* " Good day to 
 you," answered the Zaporozhtzi. Picturesque 
 groups of men were scattered all over the plain. 
 It was evident, from their weather-beaten faces, 
 that all were steeled In battle, and had undergone 
 every sort of reverse. 
 
 And there it was, the Syech! There was the 
 nest from which all those men, strong and proud 
 as lions, had issued forth ! There was the place 
 whence poured forth liberty and kazaks, all over 
 the Ukralna. 
 
 The travellers emerged into the great square, 
 where the Council generally assembled. On a 
 huge overturned cask sat a Zaporozhetz without 
 his shirt; he was holding it in his hands, and 
 slowly sewing up the holes. Again their way was 
 barred by a regular crowd of musicians, in the 
 middle of whom a young Zaporozhetz was danc- 
 ing, with head thrown back and arms outstretched. 
 He kept shouting: ^' Play faster, musicians! 
 Begrudge not brandy to these Orthodox Chris- 
 tians, Foma ! " And Foma, with his blackened 
 eye, went on measuring out, without stint, a huge 
 jugful, to every one who presented himself. 
 
 About the youthful Zaporozhetz four old men 
 were moving their feet quite briskly, leaping like 
 a whirlwind to one side, almost upon the heads 
 
74 TARAS BULBA 
 
 of the musicians, then, suddenly retreating, they 
 continued to dance In a squatting posture, and beat 
 the hard-trodden earth rapidly and vigorously with 
 their silver heels. The earth hummed dully all 
 about the neighbourhood, and afar, through the 
 air, resounded the hopak and the trepak, beaten 
 out by the ringing heels of their boots. 
 
 But one shouted more vivaciously than all the 
 rest, and flew after the others in the dance. His 
 scalp-lock streamed in the wind, his powerful 
 chest was all uncovered; his warm winter fur coat 
 was hanging by the sleeves, and the perspiration 
 poured from him like hail, as though from a 
 bucket. 
 
 *' Take off your jacket!" said Taras, at last: 
 "Just see how he's steaming!" — ''I can't!" 
 shouted the kazak — *'Why?" — "I can't: my 
 character is such that whatever I take off I drink 
 up " — and the young man had not had a cap for 
 a long time past, nor a belt to his kaftan, nor an 
 embroidered kerchief: all had travelled the fated 
 road. 
 
 The throng Increased: more men joined the 
 dance; and it was impossible to observe without 
 inward emotion, how it swept everything before 
 it, that dance, the freest, the wildest the world has 
 ever seen, which Is called from its mighty origina- 
 tors, the Kazachka. 
 
TARAS BULBA 75 
 
 ** Eh, if It wasn't for my horse Vd strike out 
 myself, that I would! " exclaimed Taras. 
 
 Meanwhile, there began to appear among the 
 throng men who were respected for their prowess 
 throughout the entire Syech, — old greyheads, 
 who had been leaders more than once. Taras 
 soon encountered a number of familiar faces. 
 Ostap and Andrii heard nothing but greetings. — 
 " Ah, so it's you, Pecheritza ! — Good day, Kozo- 
 lup ! — Whence has God brought you, Taras ? — 
 How did you come here, Doloto ? — Health to 
 you, Kirdyaga ! — Hail to you, Gustyl ! — Who 
 would ever have thought of seeing you, Remen? " 
 And the heroes assembled from all the dissolute 
 population of Eastern Russia, fell to kissing one 
 another, and questions began to fly back and forth. 
 — " But what has become of Kasyan? — Where is 
 Borodavka? and Koloper? and Pidsytok?" — 
 And, in reply, Taras learned that Borodavka had 
 been hanged In Tolopan, that Koloper had been 
 flayed alive near Kiziklrmen, that PIdsytok's head 
 had been salted down In a cask and sent to Tzar- 
 grad.^ Old Bulba hung his head, and said 
 thoughtfully, " They were good kazaks! " 
 
 ^ The sole Russian word for Constantinople, as Petrograd has 
 always been the genuine Russian form for (St.) Petersburg. I. 
 F. H. 
 
CHAPTER THREE 
 
Ill 
 
 TARAS BULBA and his sons had been In 
 the Syech about a week. Ostap and 
 Andrii occupied themselves very little 
 with the school of war. The Syech was not 
 fond of troubling itself with warlike exercises and 
 wasting time. The young generation grew up, 
 and learned these by experience alone, in the very 
 heat of battles, which were, accordingly, almost 
 incessant. The kazaks thought it a nuisance to 
 fill up the intervals of this instruction with any 
 sort of drill, except, perhaps, shooting at a target, 
 and, on rare occasions, with horse-racing and wild- 
 beast hunts on the steppe and in the forests. All 
 the rest of the time they devoted to revelry, — a 
 sign of the wide diffusion of spiritual liberty. 
 The Syech, as a whole, presented an unusual phe- 
 nomenon: it was a sort of unbroken revel; a ball 
 noisily begun, which had lost its end. Some 
 busied themselves with crafts, others kept little 
 shops and traded; but the majority caroused from 
 morning until night, if the wherewithal jingled in 
 their pockets, and if the booty they had captured 
 
 1^ 
 
8o TARAS BULBA 
 
 had not passed Into the hands of the shopkeepers 
 and dram-shop keepers. There was a certain fas- 
 cination about this universal revelry. It was not 
 an assembly of topers, who drank to drown sor- 
 row, but simply a wild revelry of joy. Every one 
 who came thither forgot everything, abandoned 
 everything which had hitherto interested him. 
 He — so to speak — spat on all his past, and 
 gave himself up recklessly to freedom and the 
 good-fellowship of men of the same stamp as him- 
 self, — revellers, who had neither relatives nor 
 home, nor family, — nothing save the free sky and 
 the eternal feast of their souls. This gave rise to 
 that wild gaiety which could not have come from 
 any other source. The tales and chatter among 
 the assembled crowd which reposed lazily on the 
 ground were often so droll, and breathed forth 
 such a power of vivid narration, that It required 
 all the Indifferent exterior cultivated by a Zaporo- 
 zhetz to maintain his Immovable expression of 
 countenance, without so much as a twitch of the 
 moustache, — a sharply-accentuated peculiarity 
 which to this day distinguishes the Southern Rus- 
 sian from his brethren. It was drunken, noisy 
 mirth; but withal it was no black ale-house, where 
 a man forgets himself In darkly-seducing merri- 
 ment : It was an intimate circle of schoolboys. 
 The only difference was, that. Instead of sitting 
 
TARAS BULBA 8i 
 
 under the pointer and threadbare doctrines of a 
 teacher, they made a raid on five thousand horses; 
 in place of the field where scholars played ball, 
 they had the boundless, untrammelled border- 
 marches; and at sight of them the Tatar showed 
 his alert head, and the Turk, in his green turban, 
 gazed phlegmatically, grimly. The difference 
 was, that in place of the forced freedom which 
 had united them at school, of their own free-will 
 they had deserted their fathers and mothers and 
 fled from their parental homes; that here wera 
 those about whose necks a rope was already 
 dangling, and who, instead of pale death, had 
 seen life, and life in all its intensity; that here 
 were those who, from patrician habit, could never 
 keep a kopek in their pockets; that here were 
 those who had hitherto regarded a ducat as 
 wealth, whose pockets, thanks to the Jew revenue- 
 farmers, could have been turned wrong-side out 
 without any danger of anything falling from them. 
 Here all were students who could not endure the 
 academic rod, and had not carried away a single 
 letter from the school; but with them, also, were 
 some who knew about Horace, and Cicero, and 
 the Roman Republic. Many of them were 
 officers who afterwards distinguished themselves 
 in the King's armies; and there were numerous 
 educated and experienced partisans, who cherished 
 
82 TARAS BULBA 
 
 a noble conviction that it was of no consequence 
 where they fought so long as they did fight, 
 because it was a disgrace to an honourable man to 
 exist without fighting. Many there were who had 
 come to the Syech for the sake of being able to 
 say later on that they had been in the Syech, and 
 were, therefore, steeled warriors. But who all 
 was not there? This strange republic was an 
 inevitable outgrowth of the epoch. Lovers of a 
 warlike life, of golden beakers and rich brocades, 
 of ducats and gold pieces, could always find em- 
 ployment there. The lovers of women alone 
 could find nothing there, for no woman dared to 
 show herself in the suburbs of the Syech. 
 
 It seemed exceedingly strange to Ostap and 
 Andrii that, although a crowd of persons had 
 come to the Syech with them, not a soul inquired, 
 "Whence come these men? Who are they and 
 what are their names? " They had come thither 
 as though returning to their own home whence 
 they had departed only an hour previously. A 
 newcomer merely presented himself to the 
 Koshevol, who generally said: " Welcome! Do 
 you believe in Christ? " — '* I do," replied the new 
 arrival. — " And do you believe In the Holy Trin- 
 ity? "_'' I do."—" And do you go to church? " 
 _<' I do."—" Well, now, cross yourself." The 
 newcomer crossed himself. — " Very good," said 
 
TARAS BULBA 83 
 
 the Koshevol.^ " Enter whichever barrack you 
 like." This comprised the entire ceremony. And 
 the entire Syech prayed in one church, and were 
 wilHng to defend it to the last drop of their blood, 
 although they would not hear to fasting or absti- 
 nence. Only Jews, Armenians and Tatars, in- 
 spired by strong greed, took the liberty of living 
 and trading in the suburbs; for the Zaporozhtzi 
 never cared to haggle, and paid whatever money 
 their hand chanced to grasp in their pockets. 
 Moreover, the lot of these gain-loving traders 
 was pitiable in the extreme. They resembled peo- 
 ple who had settled at the foot of Vesuvius; for 
 when the Zaporozhtzi lacked money, the bold 
 adventurers broke down their booths, and seized 
 everything gratis. The Syech consisted of over 
 sixty kurens, which greatly resembled separate, 
 independent republics, but still more a boys' 
 school or a college, living care-free, with all their 
 expenses paid. No one provided himself with 
 anything; no one retained anything for himself. 
 Everything was in the hands of the ataman of the 
 barrack, who, on that account, generally went by 
 the name of Batko.^ In his hands were deposited 
 the money, clothes, all the provisions, dried oat- 
 meal, buckwheat groats, even the firewood. They 
 
 *The chief over all the commanders. I. F. H. 
 2 Father. 
 
84 TARAS BULBA 
 
 gave him the money to take care of. Quarrels in 
 the barracks among their inhabitants, were not 
 infrequent; in such cases, they proceeded at once 
 to blows. The inmates of the barracks swarmed 
 out upon the square, and smashed in one another's 
 ribs with their fists until one side finally prevailed 
 and gained the upper hand, when the revelry 
 began. Such was the Syech, which had such an 
 attraction for young men. 
 
 Ostap and Andrii flung themselves into this sea 
 of dissipation with all the ardour of youth, and 
 forgot, in a twinkling, their father's house, the 
 seminary, and everything which had hitherto per- 
 turbed their souls, and gave themselves up to their 
 new life. Everything interested them, — the jo- 
 vial habits of the Syech, and the not very compli- 
 cated laws, which even seemed to them too strict 
 for such a free republic. If a kazak stole the 
 smallest trifle, it was regarded as a disgrace to 
 the whole kazak community: he was tied to a 
 pillar of shame, and an oaken club was laid beside 
 him, with which each passer-by was bound to deal 
 him a blow, until, in this manner, he was beaten to 
 death. He who did not pay his debts was chained 
 to a cannon, where he was forced to sit until some 
 one of his comrades decided to ransom him by 
 paying his debts for him. 
 
 But what made the deepest impression upon 
 
TARAS BULBA 85 ' 
 
 Andrii was the terrible punishment decreed for 
 murder. A hole was dug in the murderer's 
 presence, he was lowered into it, and over him 
 was placed a coffin which enclosed the corpse of 
 the man whom he had killed, after which earth 
 was heaped upon both. Long afterwards the 
 frightful ceremony of this horrible execution clung 
 to his mind, and the man who had been buried 
 alive appeared to him with his terribly coffin. 
 
 Both the young kazaks took a good standing 
 among the kazaks. They frequently went out on 
 the steppe with comrades from their barrack, and 
 sometimes with the entire barrack, or with neigh- 
 bouring barracks, to shoot the innumerable steppe- 
 birds of every sort, and deer and goats; or they 
 went out upon the lakes, the river and its tribu- 
 taries, assigned by lot to each barrack, to cast 
 their bag-nets and drag-nets, and draw out rich 
 prey for the enjoyment of the whole kuren. 
 Although a kazak was not tested there by any 
 apprenticeship, yet they were soon remarked on 
 among the other youths for their dogged bravery, 
 and their skill in everything. Vigorously and 
 accurately they fired at a target; they swam across 
 the Dnyeper against the current, — a deed for 
 which a novice was triumphantly received into the 
 circle of kazaks. 
 
 But old Taras had planned a different sort of 
 
86 TARAS BULBA 
 
 activity for them. Such an idle existence was not 
 to his mind: he wanted actual work. He medi- 
 tated incessantly how he might stir up the Syech 
 to some bold enterprise, wherein a man could 
 carouse as became a knight. At last he went one 
 day to the Koshevoi and said plainly: 
 
 ** Well, Koshevoi, 'tis time for the Zaporozhtzi 
 to make a little excursion." 
 
 " Nowhere to go," replied the Koshevoi, re- 
 moving his short pipe from his mouth, and spit- 
 ting to one side. 
 
 " What d'ye mean by nowhere ? We can make 
 a raid on the Turks and the Tatars." 
 
 " Impossible to raid either the Turks or the 
 Tatars," returned the Koshevoi, putting his pipe 
 coolly into his mouth again. 
 
 " Why is it impossible? " 
 
 " Because it is. We've promised the Sultai 
 peace." 
 
 " But he's a Mussulman; and God and the Holyl 
 Scriptures command us to slay the Mussulmans." 
 
 " We have no right. If we had not sworn by 
 our holy Faith then, perhaps, it might be done; 
 but now 'tis impossible." 
 
 "How is it impossible? How can you say 
 that we have no right? Here are my two sons, 
 both young men grown. Neither one has been 
 to war; and you say that we have no right, and 
 
TARAS BULBA 87 
 
 k 
 
 you say that there Is no necessity for the Zaporo- 
 zhtzi to set out on an expedition." 
 
 " Well, 'tis not fitting." 
 
 ** Then It must be fitting that kazak strength 
 should be wasted In vain, that a man should dis- 
 appear like a dog without having done a single 
 good deed, without having been of any use to his 
 country or to Christianity! Then why do we 
 live? What the devil do we live for? Just tell 
 me that. You're a sensible man, you were not 
 elected as Koshevol without reason: just explain 
 to me what we live for? " 
 
 To this question the Koshevol made no reply. 
 He was a headstrong kazak. He remained silent 
 for a while, then said : *' Anyway, there shall be 
 no war." 
 
 "There shall be no war?" Taras repeated. 
 
 "No." 
 
 " Then there's no use In thinking about it? " 
 
 "No; no use." 
 
 " Just wait, you damned pigheaded brute ! " 
 said Taras to himself: " I'll teach you to know 
 me!" and he immediately resolved to revenge 
 himself on the Koshevol. 
 
 Having entered into an agreement with one 
 man here, another man there, he gave a drinking- 
 bout for everybody; and several of the kazaks. In 
 a state of Intoxication, staggered straight to the 
 
88 TARAS BULBA 
 
 square where on a post hung the kettle-drums 
 which were generally beaten to summon the Coun- 
 cil ; not finding the sticks, which were always kept 
 by the drummer, they seized a billet of wood, and 
 began to thump. The first to respond to the drum- 
 beat was the drummer, a tall man with but one eye, 
 and a frightfully sleepy eye, at that. 
 
 '* Who dares to beat the drum?" he shouted. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! Take your sticks, and 
 beat when you're ordered! " replied the drunken 
 men. 
 
 The drummer immediately took from his pocket 
 the sticks which he had brought with him, being 
 very well aware what would be the result of such 
 proceedings. The drums began to thunder, and 
 ere long black bunches of kazaks began to collect, 
 like swarms of bees, in the square. All formed 
 in a ring; and, at last, after the third summons, 
 the chiefs began to arrive, — the Koshevoi with 
 his mace, the symbol of his office, in his hand; the 
 Judge, with the seal of the Army; the Scribe, with 
 his inkhorn; and the Yesaul with his staff. The 
 Koshevoi and the chiefs doffed their caps, and 
 bowed on all sides to the kazaks, who stood 
 proudly, with their arms akimbo. 
 
 " What means this assemblage? What is your 
 wish, noble sirs?" said the Koshevoi. Shouts 
 and abuse interrupted his speech. 
 
TARAS BULBA 89 
 
 " Give up your mace ! Give up your mace this 
 moment, you son of the Devil! We'll have no 
 more of you!" shouted kazaks in the crowd. 
 Some of the sober ones appeared to wish to oppose 
 this, but the barracks, sober and drunken, fell to 
 blows. The shouting and uproar became general. 
 
 The Koshevoi made an attempt to speak; but 
 knowing that the headstrong multitude, if enraged, 
 might beat him to death, as almost always hap- 
 pened in such cases, he bowed very low, laid down 
 his mace, and hid himself in the crowd. 
 
 " Do you command us, noble sirs, to resign our 
 insignia of office? " said the Judge, the Scribe and 
 the Yesaul; and they prepared to give up the Ink- 
 horn, the seal of the Army and the staff, on the 
 spot. 
 
 ''No, remain! " was shouted from the crowd. 
 " We only want to drive out the Koshevoi because 
 he's a woman, and we want a man for Koshevoi." 
 
 *' Whom do you elect as Koshevoi? '* asked the 
 chiefs. 
 
 " Elect Kukubenko," shouted some. 
 
 " We won't have Kukubenko ! " yelled another 
 party: " he's too young; the milk isn't dry on his 
 lips yet." 
 
 " Let Shilo be ataman ! " shouted some : " make 
 Shilo the Koshevoi." 
 
 " None of your Shilo! " yelled the crowd; " a 
 
90 TARAS BULBA 
 
 nice sort of kazak he is I that son of a dog is as 
 thievish as a Tatar ! To the devil in a sack with 
 your drunken Shilo I " 
 
 " Borodaty ! let's make Borodaty Koshevoi ! " 
 
 " We won't have Borodaty ! To the devil's 
 mother with Borodaty I " 
 
 " Shout Kirdyaga," whispered Taras Bulba to 
 several. 
 
 " Kirdyaga, Kirdyaga ! " shouted the crowd. 
 
 "Borodaty I Borodaty I Kirdyaga! Kirdyaga I 
 Shilo I Away with Shilo I Kirdyaga I " 
 
 All the candidates, the moment they heard their 
 names mentioned, stepped out of the crowd, in 
 order not to give any one a chance to suppose that 
 they were taking a part personally in their elec- 
 tion. 
 
 ** Kirdyaga, Kirdyaga!" rang out more 
 strongly than the rest. 
 
 "Borodaty!" 
 
 They proceeded to decide the matter by a show 
 of fists, and Kirdyaga won. 
 
 " Go for Kirdyaga ! " they shouted. Half a 
 score of kazaks immediately stepped out from the 
 crowd, — some of them could hardly keep their 
 feet, so intoxicated were they, — and went directly 
 to Kirdyaga to notify him of his election. 
 
 Kirdyaga, although very old, was a very 
 shrewd kazak, and had been sitting in his barrack 
 
TARAS BULBA • 91 
 
 'or a good while already, as though he knew noth- 
 ing about what was going on. 
 
 " What is it, noble sirs ? ^ What is your will ? " 
 he inquired. 
 
 " Come, you are elected Koshevoi.'* 
 
 "Have mercy, noble sirs I" said KIrdyaga. 
 *' How am I worthy of such an honour? Why 
 should I be made Koshevoi? I haven't sufficient 
 sense to discharge such a duty. Could no better 
 man be found in all the Army? '* 
 
 " Come along, as you're bid I '* shouted the 
 Zaporozhtzi. Two of them seized him by the 
 arms; and, although he planted his feet firmly, 
 they finally dragged him to the square, accom- 
 panied by shouts, thrusts from the rear with fists, 
 kicks and exhortations. — " Don't hold back, you 
 son of the Devil! Accept the honour, you dog, 
 when 'tis given to you!'* In this manner was 
 KIrdyaga conducted into the ring of kazaks. 
 
 " Well, noble sirs," yelled those who had 
 brought him, " are you agreed that this kazak 
 shall be your Koshevoi? " 
 
 " All agreed ! " shouted the throng, and the 
 whole plain reverberated for a long time after- 
 ward with that shout. 
 
 ^ The Polish " Panove," the word employed here and else- 
 where, is the form of address for men of noble birth, " Pan " 
 (or Mr.) being the singular form. I. F. H. 
 
92 TARAS BULBA 
 
 One of the chiefs took the mace and handed it 
 to the newly-elected Koshevoi. Kirdyaga, in 
 accordance with custom, immediately refused it.' 
 The chief offered it a second time; Kirdyaga again 
 declined it, and then, at the third offer, accepted 
 it. A shout of approbation rang through the 
 crowd, and again the whole plain resounded afar 
 with the shout of the kazaks. Then there stepped 
 forth from among the people, the four oldest of 
 all, white moustached kazaks with white scalp- 
 locks (there were no very old men in the Syech, for 
 none of the Zaporozhtzi ever died a natural 
 death), and taking each a handful of earth, which 
 recent rains had converted into mud, they laid it on 
 his head. The wet earth trickled down from his 
 head, ran on his moustache and cheeks, and 
 smeared his whole face with mud. But Kirdyaga 
 stood motionless in his place, and thanked the 
 kazaks for the honour they had shown him. 
 
 Thus ended the noisy election, as to which one 
 cannot say whether it was as pleasing to the others 
 as it was to Bulba : by means of it he had taken his 
 revenge on the former Koshevoi. Moreover, 
 Kirdyaga was an old comrade of his, and had 
 been on expeditions with him by land and sea, 
 sharing the toils and hardships of war. The 
 crowd immediately dispersed to celebrate the elec- 
 tion, and such revelry ensued as Ostap and 
 
TARAS BULBA 93 
 
 Andril had not yet beheld. The dram-shops were 
 attacked: mead, corn-brandy and beer were seized 
 quite simply, without payment; the owners were 
 glad enough to escape with whole skins themselves. 
 The whole night passed amid shouts, and songs 
 which celebrated war-like feats — and the rising 
 moon gazed long at troops of musicians marching 
 about the streets with banduras, round balalaikas^ 
 and the church choir, who were kept to sing in 
 church and to glorify the deeds of the Zaporozhtzi. 
 At last drunkenness and fatigue began to over- 
 power their strong heads, and here and there a 
 kazak could be seen to fall upon the earth, and, 
 comrade embracing comrade in fraternal fashion, 
 maudlin and even weeping, both rolled upon the 
 earth together. Here a whole group tumbled 
 down in a heap ; there a man chose the most com- 
 fortable position, and stretched straight out on a 
 log of wood. This last, who was stronger, was 
 still giving utterance to incoherent speeches; at last 
 even he yielded to the power of intoxication, flung 
 himself down — and all in the Syech slept. 
 
 ^The ordinary balalaika is triangular. I. F. H. 
 
CHAPTER FOUR 
 
BUT on the following day, Taras Bulba had 
 a conference with the new Koshevoi as to 
 the best way of inciting the kazaks to some 
 enterprise. The Koshevoi was a «vily and saga- 
 cious kazak, knew the Zaporozhtzi through and 
 through, and said, at first: "Oaths cannot be 
 violated; it's downright impossible." But, after 
 a pause, he added: " No matter, it can be man- 
 aged. We won't violate them, but let's devise 
 something. Let the men assemble, not at my 
 summons, but simply of their own accord. You 
 know how to contrive it; and I'll hasten to the 
 square instantly, with the chiefs, as though we 
 knew nothing about it." 
 
 Not an hour had elapsed after their conversa- 
 tion when the kettle-drums thundered. Instantly 
 the drunken and foolish kazaks made their appear- 
 ance. A million kazak caps poured into the 
 square. A murmur arose, "Why? What? 
 Why was the assembly beaten?" No one 
 answered. At last, in one quarter and another, it 
 began to be rumoured about, " Behold, the kazak 
 
 97 
 
98 TARAS BULBA 
 
 strength is being vainly wasted: there is no war! 
 Behold, our leaders have become altogether fat 
 and sleepy; their eyes swim in fat! Yes, plainly, 
 there is no justice in the world!" The other 
 kazaks first listened, and then began to say to 
 themselves, '' Ah, that's the truth; there's no 
 justice in the world! " Their leaders seemed sur- 
 prised at these utterances. At last the Koshevoi 
 stepped forward: *' Permit me, noble kazaks, to 
 address you." 
 
 "Speak out!" 
 
 " Touching the matter in question, noble sirs, 
 probably no one knows better than yourselves, that 
 many Zaporozhtzi have run In debt to the Jews In 
 the dram-shops, and to that sort of folks, so that 
 now not even a devil would give them credit. 
 Again, touching the matter In question, there are 
 many young fellows who have no Idea of what war 
 is like, although, as you are aware, noble sirs, with- 
 out war a young man cannot exist. How make a 
 Zaporozhetz out of him If he has never slain a 
 Mussulman? " 
 
 " He speaks well," said Bulba to himself. 
 
 ** Think not, however, noble sirs, that I speak 
 thus with a view of disturbing the peace: God 
 forbid! I merely mention the fact. Moreover, 
 the church we have for our God Is too disgraceful 
 for words: just consider for how many years the 
 
TARAS BULBA 99 
 
 Syech has existed, by the mercy of God, but to this 
 day it not only doesn't look like a church outside, 
 but even the holy pictures have no adornments; 
 no one has so much as thought of making them a 
 garment : ^ they have received only that which some 
 other kazaks have bequeathed them in their wills; 
 and moreover those gifts have been meagre, be- 
 cause those men had drunk up nearly all they had 
 during their lifetime. I'm making you this 
 speech, therefore, not with the object of stirring 
 you up to a war with the Mussulmans: we have 
 promised the Sultan peace, and it would be a great 
 sin in us, for we swore It according to our law." 
 
 "What's he mixing things up like that for?" 
 said Bulba to himself. 
 
 " So you see, noble sirs, that war cannot be 
 begun; knightly honour does not permit it. But 
 according to my poor opinion, this is what I think: 
 let's send out a few young men in boats; let them 
 ravage the coasts of Anatolia a bit. What say 
 you, noble sirs? " 
 
 " Lead on, take us all! " shouted the crowd on 
 all sides. " We're ready to lay down our heads 
 for our Faith." 
 
 1 The golden or silver decoration, applied to the painted holy 
 pictures, in the form of a garment which leaves the face, hands 
 and feet of the Saint visible. It is a great favor — as well as 
 a sign of zeal — to be permitted to furnish such decoration for 
 the Holy Ikona. I. F. H. 
 
loo TARAS BULBA 
 
 The Koshevoi was alarmed. He did not wish, 
 by any manner of means, to stir up all Zaporozhe; 
 a breach of the peace appeared to him improper on 
 the present occasion. " Permit me, noble sirs, to 
 address you further." 
 
 " Enough I " yelled the kazaks. " You can say 
 nothing better." 
 
 " If so it must be, then so be It. I am the slave 
 of your will. Everybody knows, and the Scrip- 
 tures also tell us, that the voice of the people Is the 
 voice of God. It is Impossible to devise anything 
 better than the whole nation has devised. But 
 here's the difficulty: you know, noble sirs, that the 
 Sultan will not permit the diversion which delights 
 our young men to go unpunished. And we ought 
 to be well prepared at such a time, and our forces 
 ought to be fresh, and then we need fear no one. 
 But during their absence the Tatars may make an 
 attack; those Turkish dogs don't show themselves, 
 and they daren't come while the master Is at home, 
 but they snap at his heels from behind, and bite 
 painfully, to boot. And, if It comes to that, to 
 speak the truth, we have not boats enough on 
 hand, nor powder ready In sufficient quantity, for 
 all to go. But I am glad and ready. If you llkerj 
 I am the slave of your will." 
 
 The wily Ataman stopped speaking. The 
 
TARAS BULB/^ Toi 
 
 various groups began to discuss the matter, and the 
 atamans of the different barracks to take counsel 
 together: fortunately, few of these were drunk, 
 so they decided to heed the counsels of reason. 
 
 A number of men set out at once for the op- 
 posite shore of the Dnyeper, to the treasury of the 
 Army, where, In an Inaccessible hiding-place, under 
 water and among the reeds, lay concealed the 
 army-chest, and a part of the arms captured from 
 the enemy. Others hastened to Inspect the boats, 
 and prepare them for service. In a twinkling the 
 whole shore was thronged with men. Carpenters 
 appeared, axes In hand. Old, weatherbeaten, 
 broad-shouldered, strong-legged Zaporozhtzl, 
 with black or silvered moustaches, rolled up their 
 trousers, stood knee-deep In the water, and 
 dragged the boats from the shore with stout ropes; 
 others brought thither seasoned lumber, ready for 
 Immediate use, and timber of all sorts. Here the 
 boats were freshly planked, turned bottom up- 
 wards, calked and tarred; there other skiffs were 
 bound together, side by side. In kazak fashion, 
 with long strands of reeds, that the swell of the 
 waves on the sea might not sink them. Further 
 on, all along the shores, they built fires, and heated 
 tar in copper kettles, to coat the boats. The old 
 and experienced Instructed the young. The blows 
 
102 TARAS BULBA 
 
 and shouts of the workers rose over all the coun- 
 tryside; the bank, alive with men, shook and 
 swayed about. 
 
 About this time a large ferry-boat began to 
 approach the shore. The mass of men standing 
 in it began to wave their arms from a long distance 
 away. They were kazaks in torn, ragged svitkas. 
 Their disordered garments (many had nothing but 
 their shirt and a short pipe in their mouth) showed 
 that they had escaped from some disaster, or had 
 caroused to such an extent that they had drunk up 
 all they had had on their bodies. A very <^hort, 
 broad-shouldered kazak of about fifty stepped out 
 from their midst, and stood in front. He shouted 
 and waved his hand more vigorously than any 
 of the others; but his words could not be heard 
 for the shouts and hammering of the workmen. 
 
 "Whence come you?" asked the Koshevoi, 
 when the boat had touched shore. All the work- 
 ers paused In their labours, and, with axes and 
 chisels uplifted, looked on expectantly. 
 
 " From a misfortune ! '* shouted the kazak. 
 
 "From what?" 
 
 " Permit me, noble Zaporozhtzl, to address 
 you." 
 
 "Speak!" 
 
 " Or would you prefer to assemble the Coun- 
 cil?" 
 
 J 
 
TARAS BULBA 103 
 
 " Speak, we are all here." 
 
 The men all pressed together in a close mass. 
 
 *' And have you heard nothing of what has been 
 going on in the Hetman's dominions? " 
 
 "What is it?" inquired one of the barrack 
 atamans. 
 
 "Eh! What? Evidently, a Tatar has plas- 
 tered up your ears, that you might hear nothing." 
 
 " Tell us: what is going on there? " 
 
 " That is going on the like of which no man 
 born or christened ever yet has seen." 
 
 ".T<^11 us what it is, you son of a dog," shouted 
 one of the crowd, apparently losing patience. 
 
 " Things have come to such a pass that our holy 
 churches are no longer ours." 
 
 " How not ours? " 
 
 " They are leased to the Jews now. If the Jew 
 is not first paid, there can be no service." 
 
 " What nonsense is this you're telling us? " 
 
 " And if the thrice-accursed dog of a Jew does 
 not make a sign with his unclean hand over the 
 holy paskha,^ it cannot be blessed." 
 
 " He lies, brother nobles ! It cannot be that an 
 unclean Jew puts his mark upon the holy paskha." 
 
 " Listen ! I have not yet told all. Roman 
 Catholic priests are driving about all over the 
 Ukraina, in carts. The harm lies not in the carts, 
 
 ^ The special Easter dish, made chiefly of curds. I. F. H. 
 
104 TARAS BULBA 
 
 but that not horses but Orthodox ^ Christians are 
 harnessed to them. Listen ! Even that Is not all. 
 They say that the Jewesses are making themselves 
 petticoats out of our priests' vestments. Such are 
 the deeds that are taking place In the Ukralna, 
 noble sirs! And you sit here revelling in Zapo- 
 rozhe; and, evidently, a Tatar has so scared you 
 that you have no eyes, no ears, no anything, and 
 you hear nothing that Is going on In the world." 
 
 " Stop, stop ! " broke In the Koshevoi, who, up 
 to that moment had stood with his eyes fixed upon 
 the earth like all Zaporozhtzl who, on important 
 occasions never yielded to their first impulse but 
 kept silence, and meanvv^hlle collected privately all 
 the menacing power of their Indignation. " Stop ! 
 I, also, have a word to say. What have you been 
 doing the while ? When the Devil was thus maul- 
 ing your priest, — what were you doing your- 
 selves? Had you no swords? How did you 
 come to permit such lawlessness? " 
 
 *' Eh! How did we come to permit such law- 
 lessness? You ought to have tried to stop it, 
 when there were fifty thousand of the Lyakhs ^ 
 alone; yet, and 'tis a shame not to be concealed, 
 
 1 The " Orthodox," or " Orthodox Christians," signifies mem- 
 bers of the Greco-Russian, or Eastern Catholic, Church. I. F. H. 
 
 2 Lyak is an abbreviated form of Polyakh, Pole. I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 105 
 
 that there were also dogs among our men who 
 have already accepted their Faith." 
 
 " But your Hetman and your colonels, — what 
 did they do?" 
 
 " God preserve any one from such deeds as our 
 colonels performed! " 
 
 "How so?" 
 
 " This way : Our Hetman, roasted in a brazen 
 ox, now lies in Warsaw; and the heads and hands 
 of our colonels are being carried round to all the 
 Fairs, as a spectacle for the people. That's what 
 our colonels did." 
 
 The whole throng became violently agitated. 
 At first silence reigned all along the shore, like that 
 which precedes a fierce tempest; and then, sud- 
 denly, voices were raised, and all the shore broke 
 Into utterance : 
 
 " What ! Jews hold the Christian churches on 
 lease! Roman-Catholic priests have harnessed 
 and beaten Orthodox Christians! What! Such 
 torture has been permitted on Russian soil by 
 accursed unbelievers! And they have done such 
 things to the colonels and the Hetman? Nay, this 
 shall not be. It shall not be ! " Words of this sort 
 flew from all quarters. The Zaporozhtzi were In 
 an uproar, and felt their power. This was not the 
 excitement of a giddy-headed folk. All who were 
 
io6 TARAS BULBA 
 
 thus agitated were strong, firm characters, which 
 were not easily heated, but once rendered red-hot 
 preserved the inward heat long and obstinately. 
 " Hang all Jews ! '' rang through the crowd. 
 " They shall not make petticoats for their Jewesses 
 from priests' vestments! They shall not place 
 their tokens on the holy paskha ! Drown them 
 all, the heathens, in the Dnyeper ! " These words, 
 uttered by some one in the throng, flashed like 
 lightning through all minds, and the crowd flung 
 themselves upon the suburb with the intention of 
 cutting the throats of all the Jews. 
 
 The poor sons of Israel, losing all presence of 
 mind, and not being courageous, in any case, hid 
 themselves in empty brandy-casks, in ovens, and 
 even crawled under the skirts of their Jewesses; 
 but the kazaks routed them out, wherever they 
 were. 
 
 "Most illustrious lords!" shrieked one Jew, 
 tall and thin as a stick, thrusting his sorry visage, 
 distorted with terror, from among a group of his 
 comrades, " most illustrious lords ! suffer us to say 
 a word, only one word. We will reveal to you 
 what you never yet have heard, a thing more im- 
 portant than I can say, — very important ! " 
 
 ** Well, say It ! " said Bulba, who always liked 
 to hear what an accused man had to say. 
 
 *' Illustrious lords! " exclaimed the Jew, "such 
 
TARAS BULBA 107 
 
 I lords never were seen before, never, by God! 
 * Such good, kind, brave men there never were in 
 the world before I " His voice died away, quiver- 
 ing with terror. ** How was it possible that we 
 should think any evil of the Zaporozhtzi? Those 
 men are not of us at all, those who take leases in 
 the Ukraina. God is my witness — they are not 
 of us! They are not Jews at all. The Devil 
 only knows what they are ; they are only fit to spit 
 upon, and cast aside. Behold, they will tell you 
 the same thing! Is it not true, Shloma? or you, 
 Shmul?" 
 
 "By God, it is true!" replied Shloma and 
 Shmul, from among the crowd, both pale as clay 
 under their ragged caps. 
 
 " We never yet," pursued the long Jew, " have 
 had any secret intercourse with your enemies, and 
 with Roman Catholics we will have nothing to do; 
 may they dream of the Devil ! We are like blood 
 brothers to the Zaporozhtzi. . . ." 
 
 " What I Do you mean to say that the Zaporo- 
 zhtzi are brothers to you ! " exclaimed one among 
 the throng. " Don't wait; accursed Jews! Into 
 the Dnyeper with them, noble sirs! Drown all 
 unbelievers! " 
 
 These words served as the signal. They seized 
 the Jews by the arms, and began to hurl them into 
 the waves. Piteous cries resounded on all sides; 
 
to8 TARAS BULBA 
 
 but the grim Zaporozhtzi only laughed, when they 
 saw the Jewish legs, encased in shoes and stock- 
 ings flourishing in the air. The poor orator who 
 had called down destruction on himself, wriggled 
 out of his kaftan, by which they had seized him, 
 and in his scant, parti-coloured under-waistcoat, 
 clasped Bulba's legs and begged, in a piteous voice : 
 " Great lord ! most gracious sir! I used to know 
 your brother, the late Dorosha. He was a war- 
 rior who was an ornament to knighthood. I gave 
 him eight hundred sequins when he was forced to 
 ransom himself from the Turks.'' 
 
 *' You knew my brother? " asked Taras 
 
 " God is my witness that I did. He was a mag- 
 nificent nobleman." 
 
 " And what is your name ? " 
 
 " Yankel." 
 
 *' Good," said Taras; and then, after reflecting, 
 he turned to the kazaks and spoke as follows: 
 ** There will always be plenty of time to hang the 
 Jew, if it proves necessary; but give him to me for 
 to-day." 
 
 So saying, Taras led him to his wagon, beside 
 which stood his kazaks. *' Now, crawl under the 
 cart; lie there, and don't move. — And as for you, 
 my good men, don't you surrender the Jew." 
 
 Thereupon he returned to the square, for the 
 whole crowd had, long before, collected there. 
 
TARAS BULBA 109 
 
 All had, at once, abandoned the shore and the 
 preparation of the boats; for a land-journey now 
 lay before them, not a sea-voyage, and they needed 
 horses and carts, not ships and kazak gulls. Now 
 all, both young and old, wanted to go on the ex- 
 pedition; and It was decided, with the advice of 
 the chiefs, the atamans of the barracks, the Koshe- 
 vol, and the will of the whole Zaporozhlan army, 
 to march straight to Poland, to avenge all the 
 injury and disgrace to the Faith and to kazak 
 renown, to seize booty from the cities, to start con- 
 flagrations in the villages and crops, and to spread 
 their fame far abroad over the steppe. All Im- 
 mediately girded and armed themselves. The 
 Koshevoi grew two feet — and more — taller. 
 He was no longer the timid executor of the friv- 
 olous wishes of a free people; he was the un- 
 trammelled master, he was a despot who under- 
 stood only how to command. All the headstrong 
 and uproarious knights stood in orderly ranks, 
 with respectfully bowed heads, not venturing to 
 lift their eyes when the Koshevoi issued his orders; 
 he gave them quietly, without shouting, without 
 haste, but with pauses, like an old man deeply 
 learned in kazak affairs, and putting into execu- 
 tion, not for the first time, a wisely-matured enter- 
 prise. 
 
 " Examine yourselves, — inspect yourselves 
 
no TARAS BULB A 
 
 thoroughly, all of you," he said, " put your teams 
 and your tar-boxes in order, test your weapons. 
 Take not many garments with you : a shirt and a 
 couple of pairs of trousers to each kazak, and a 
 pot of dried oatmeal and ground millet apiece, — 
 let no one take any more ! There will be plenty of 
 provisions, all that's needed, in the wagons. Let 
 every kazak have two horses. And two hundred 
 yoke of oxen must be taken, for we shall require 
 them at the fords and marshy places. Maintain 
 order, noble sirs, above all things. I know that 
 there are some among you who, as soon as God 
 sends greed, will immediately tear up nankin and 
 rich velvets to make themselves foot-wrappers. 
 Leave off such devilish habits; spurn every petti- 
 coat, and take only weapons, if you happen to 
 come across good ones, and ducats or silver, noble 
 sirs, for they are subject to capture, and useful in 
 any case. And I'll tell you this beforehand, noble 
 sirs: if any one gets drunk on this expedition, he 
 will receive short shrift: I'll order him to be 
 chained by the neck like a dog, to a transport, no 
 matter who he may be, even were he the most 
 heroic kazak in the whole army; he shall be shot 
 on the spot hke a dog, and flung out to be torn by 
 the birds of prey, without burial, for a drunkard 
 on the march deserves not Christian burial. 
 Young men, obey the old men in all things! If a 
 
TARAS BULB A in 
 
 ball grazes you, or a sword cuts your head or any 
 other part, pay no heed to such trifles. Mix a 
 charge of powder in a cup of brandy, quaff heart- 
 ily of it, and all will pass off — you will not even 
 have any fever; and if the wound is not too large, 
 put simple earth on it, mixing it first with spittle in 
 your palm, and it will dry up the wound. And 
 now, to work, to work, my lads; get into action, 
 but without over-haste." 
 
 So spoke the Koshevoi; and no sooner had he 
 finished his speech than all the kazaks instantly set 
 to work. All the Syech sobered up, and there was 
 not a single drunken man to be found, any more 
 than if there never had been such a thing among 
 the kazaks. Some kazaks repaired the fellies of 
 the wheels, others shifted the axles of the carts; 
 some carried sacks of provisions to the transport 
 wagons, while other wagons they loaded with 
 arms; others, still, drove up the horses and oxen. 
 On all sides resounded the trampling of horses' 
 hoofs, test-shots from the guns, the clang of 
 swords, the lowing of oxen, the screech of turning 
 wagons, talking, shrill cries, and urging on of 
 cattle ; — and soon the kazak camp stretched far 
 over the plain. And he who might have under- 
 taken to run from its head to its tail would have 
 had a long course. In the tiny wooden church the 
 priest held a special service of prayer, and 
 
112 TARAS BULB A 
 
 sprinkled every one with holy water; all kissed the 
 cross. When the horde started and moved out of 
 the Syech all the Zaporozhtzi turned their heads 
 for a last look : " Farewell, our mother ! " they 
 said, almost in one breath. ** May God preserve 
 thee from all misfortune ! '* 
 
 As he, passed through the suburb, Taras Bulba 
 saw that his Jew, Yankel, had already erected a 
 sort of stall with an awning, and was selling flints, 
 screw-drivers, powder, and all sorts of military 
 stores needed on the road, even rolls and loaves of 
 bread. " What devils those Jews are ! " said 
 Taras to himself; and riding up to him, he said: 
 " Fool, why are you sitting here ? do you want to 
 be shot like a sparrow? " 
 
 Yankel, in reply, came as near to him as possible, 
 and making signs with both hands, as though de- 
 sirous of imparting some secret, said: " Let the 
 noble lord but keep silence, and say nothing to any 
 one. Among the kazak wagons is a cart of mine; 
 I am carrying all sorts of needful stores for the 
 kazaks, and on the journey I will furnish every 
 sort of provision at a lower price than any Jew 
 ever sold before. 'TIs so, God is my witness — • 
 God Is my witness, 'tis so ! " 
 
 Taras Bulba shrugged his shoulders in amaze- 
 ment at the Jewish nature, and rode on to the 
 horde. 
 
CHAPTER FIVE 
 
\ 
 
ALL Southwest Poland speedily became a 
 prey to fear. Everywhere the rumour 
 flew: "The Zaporozhtzi! The Zapo- 
 rozhtzi have appeared ! " All who could flee, 
 did so. All rose up and scattered, after the man- 
 ner of that lawless, reckless age, when men built 
 neither fortresses nor castles, but each erected his 
 temporary dwelling of straw at haphazard. 
 Each man thought : " 'Tis useless to waste money 
 and labour on a cottage; 'twill be swept away, in 
 any case, In a Tatar raid." Every one took 
 fright; one exchanged his plough and oxen for a 
 horse and gun; another hid, driving off his cattle, 
 and carrying away all he could. Occasionally, on 
 the road, some were encountered who greeted their 
 visitors with arms in hand; but more numerous 
 were those who fled before their arrival. Every 
 one knew that it was difficult to deal with the wild 
 and warlike horde known by the name of the 
 Zaporozhlan army, which, beneath Its reckless and 
 disorderly exterior, concealed an organisation well 
 calculated for times of battle. The horsemen 
 
 "5 
 
ii6 TARAS BULBA 
 
 rode on without overburdening or heating their 
 horses; the foot-soldiers marched soberly behind 
 the wagons; and the whole camp moved only by 
 night, resting during the day, and selecting for this 
 purpose the wilderness, uninhabited places, and 
 the forests, of which there was then an abundance. 
 Spies and scouts were sent ahead to ferret out the 
 where, the what, and the how. And often they 
 made their appearance suddenly In the places 
 where they were least expected — and then every 
 one bade farewell to life ; the villages were burned; 
 the horses and cattle which were not driven off 
 behind the army, were killed on the spot. They 
 seemed to be revelling, rather than carrying out a 
 raid. Our hair would rise on end nowadays, at 
 the horrible exhibitions of savagery of that fierce, 
 half-civilised age, which the Zaporozhtzl every- 
 where displayed. Children slain, women's breasts 
 cut off, the skin flayed from the feet up to the 
 knees of victims who were then set at liberty : In a 
 word, the kazaks paid old debts In coin of full 
 weight. The Prelate of one monastery, on hear- 
 ing of their approach, despatched two monks to 
 say that they were not behaving as they should; 
 that an agreement existed between the Zaporo- 
 zhtzl and the Government; that they were break- 
 ing faith with the King, and all International right. 
 " Tell your Bishop, from me and from all the 
 
TARAS BULB A 117 
 
 'aporozhtzl/' said the Koshevol, '' that he has 
 nothing to fear; the kazaks, so far, are only light- 
 ing and smoking their pipes." And the mag- 
 nificent abbey was soon wrapped In the devouring 
 flames, and Its colossal Gothic windows gazed 
 grimly through the waves of fire as they parted. 
 Fleeing throngs of monks, women and Jews sud- 
 denly flooded those towns where there was any 
 hope in the garrison and the town-defences. The 
 belated succour, despatched from time to time by 
 the Government, consisting of a few small regi- 
 ments, either could not find them, or, seized with 
 fright, turned tall at the very first encounter, and 
 fled on their swift horses. So It came to pass that 
 many of the royal commanders, who had con- 
 quered in former battles, resolved to unite their 
 forces, and present a front to the Zaporozhtzi 
 
 And here, more than all, did our young kazaks, 
 who avoided robbery, cupidity and a weak enemy, 
 and were burning with the desire to distinguish 
 themselves in the presence of the chiefs, endeavour 
 to measure themselves in single combat with a 
 warlike and boastful Lyakh, prancing on his 
 spirited horse, with the sleeves of his jacket thrown 
 back and streaming in the wind. This science was 
 inspiriting; they had already won for themselves 
 many horse-trappings, valuable swords, and guns. 
 In a single month, the newly-fledged birds had 
 
ii8 TARAS BULB A 
 
 attained their full growth, were completely trans- 
 formed, and had become men; their features, in 
 which, hitherto a trace of youthful softness had 
 been discernible, had now grown grim. And it 
 was pleasant to old Taras, to see both his sons 
 among the leaders. It seemed as though Ostap 
 were designed by nature for the pursuit of war and 
 the difficult art of conducting military operations. 
 Never once losing his head, or becoming con- 
 fused under any circumstances, with a cool 
 audacity which was almost supernatural in a youth 
 of two and twenty, he could, in an instant, gauge 
 the danger, and grasp the whole scope of the mat- 
 ter, could instantly devise a means of escaping it, 
 but of escaping it only that he might the more 
 surely conquer it. His movements now began to 
 be distinguished by the assurance which springs 
 from experience, and in them could be detected the 
 temperament of the future great leader. His per- 
 son exhaled strength, and his knightly qualities had 
 already assumed the broad power of the lion. 
 *^ Oh, what a fine colonel that fellow will make one 
 of these days! " said old Taras. " By God, he'll 
 make a magnificent colonel, far surpassing even his 
 father!" 
 
 Andrii surrendered himself wholly to the en- 
 chanting music of bullets and swords. He knew 
 pot what It was to consider or to calculate, or to 
 
TARAS BULBA 119 
 
 measure in advance his own strength and the 
 enemy's. He found in battle a mad delight and 
 Intoxication; he perceived something festal In the 
 moments when a man's brain burns, when every- 
 thing waves and flutters before his eyes, heads fly 
 off, horses fall to the earth with a sound of thun- 
 der, while he rides on like a drunken man, amid 
 the whistling of bullets and the flashing of swords, 
 dealing blows to all, and heeding not those dealt 
 to him. More than once the father marvelled, 
 also, at Andrii, when he beheld him, Incited only 
 by a passionate impulse, hurl himself at something 
 which a sensible man in cold blood would never 
 have attempted, and, by the sheer force of his mad 
 onslaught accomplish such wonders as could not 
 but amaze men old in battle. Old Taras admired, 
 and said: " And he, too, will be a good warrior 
 (if the enemy does not capture him). He's not 
 Ostap, but he's a fine, a grand warrior, neverthe- 
 less." 
 
 The army decided to march straight to the city 
 of Dubno, where, so rumour asserted, there were 
 many treasures and wealthy inhabitants. The 
 journey was accomplished in a day and a half, and 
 the Zaporozhtzl made their appearance before the 
 city. The Inhabitants resolved to defend them- 
 selves to the utmost extent of their power, to the 
 last extremity, and preferred to die in their 
 
I20 TARAS BULB A 
 
 squares and streets, before their own thresholds, 
 rather than admit the enemy to their houses. A 
 high earthen rampart surrounded the city; in 
 places where the rampart was somewhat lower 
 there rose up a stone wall, or a house, or even an 
 oaken stockade, which served as a battery. The 
 garrison was strong, and felt the importance of 
 their business. The Zaporozhtzi attacked the 
 rampart fiercely, but were met by a shower of 
 grapeshot. The citizens and residents of the 
 town evidently did not wish to remain idle, either, 
 and stood In groups upon the rampart; In their 
 eyes could be read desperate resistance. The 
 women, also, were determined to take part, and 
 rained down upon the heads of the Zaporozhtzi 
 stones, casks, pots, and, finally, boiling water and 
 sacks of sand, which blinded them. The Zapo- 
 rozhtzi were not fond of dealing with fortified 
 places: sieges were not In their line. The 
 Koshevol ordered a retreat, and said: *' 'TIs use- 
 less, brother nobles ; we will retire : but may I be a 
 heathen Tatar and not a Christian, if we don't 
 clean them out of that town I Let them all perish 
 of hunger, the dogs I " The army retreated. In- 
 vested the town on all sides, and, for lack of some- 
 thing to do, busied themselves with devastating the 
 surrounding country, burning the neighbouring vil- 
 lages, the ricks of unthreshed grain, and turning 
 
TARAS BULBA 121 
 
 their droves of horses loose in the fields as yet un- 
 touched by the reaping-hook, where, as though 
 intentionally prepared for them, waved the plump 
 ears, the fruit of an unusual harvest, liberally re- 
 warding all tillers of the soil that season. 
 
 With horror, the inhabitants, looking on from 
 the city, beheld their means of subsistence de- 
 stroyed. And, meanwhile, the Zaporozhtzi, hav- 
 ing formed a double cordon of their wagons 
 around the city, disposed themselves as in the 
 Syech in their barracks, smoked their pipes, bar- 
 tered their booty for weapons, played at leap-frog, 
 at odd-and-even, and gazed at the city with deadly 
 cold-bloodedness. At night they lighted their 
 camp-fires : the cooks boiled the porridge for each 
 kuren in huge copper kettles; an unsleeping senti- 
 nel stood all night long beside the blazing fires. 
 But the Zaporozhtzi soon began to tire of inactiv- 
 ity and prolonged sobriety, unaccompanied by any 
 fighting. The Koshevoi even ordered the allow- 
 ance of liquor to be doubled, which was sometimes 
 done in the army when difficult enterprises or op- 
 erations were under way. The young men in gen- 
 eral, and Taras Bulba's sons in particular, did not 
 like this life. Andrii was visibly bored. ** You 
 silly head!" said Taras to him: " Be patient, 
 kazak, you will be Ataman some day. And he is 
 not a good warrior who loses his spirit In an Im- 
 
122 TARAS BULB A 
 
 portant affair; but he is good who does not weary 
 even of inaction, who endures everything, and, no 
 matter what you do to him, turns it to account." 
 But hot youth cannot agree with age : the two have 
 different natures, and they look at the same thing 
 with different eyes. 
 
 But, in the meantime, Taras's regiment, led by 
 Tovkach, arrived; with him were, also, two 
 Yesauls, the Scribe, and other regimental offi- 
 cers: the kazaks numbered over four thousand 
 In all. There were among them many volunteers, 
 who had risen of their own free will, without any 
 summons, as soon as they heard what the matter 
 was. The Yesauls brought to Taras's sons the 
 blessing of their aged mother, and to each a holy 
 Image of cypress-wood, from the Mezhlgorsk 
 monastery In Kiev. The two brothers hung the 
 holy ikoni round their necks, and involuntarily 
 grew pensive, as they recalled their old mother. 
 What did this blessing prophesy, what did it say to 
 them? Was It a blessing for their victory over 
 the enemy, and then a joyful return to their home 
 with booty and glory, to be everlastingly com- 
 memorated In the songs of the bandura-players, or 
 was It . . . ? 
 
 But the future Is not to be known, and stands 
 before- a man like autumnal fogs rising from the 
 swamps: birds fly to and fro In it, with flapping 
 
TARAS BULB A 123 
 
 wings, never recognising one another, the dove not 
 seeing the vulture, nor the vulture the dove, and 
 no one knows how near he may be flying to his 
 destruction. 
 
 Ostap had, long before, attended to his duties, 
 and gone to the barrack. Andrii, without know- 
 ing why, felt a sort of oppression in his heart. 
 The kazaks had finished their evening meal; the 
 evening had fully quieted down, the wonderful 
 July night ruled the air: but he did not go to the 
 barracks, he did not lie down to sleep, and invol- 
 untarily he surveyed the whole scene before him. 
 In the sky, with a thin, sharp gleam, twinkled in- 
 numerable stars. The plain was covered, far and 
 wide, by wagons scattered over Its expanse, their 
 •swinging tar-buckets smeared with tar, loaded with 
 every description of goods and provisions cap- 
 tured from the foe. By the side of the carts, 
 under the carts, and far beyond the carts, Zapo- 
 rozhtzi were everywhere visible, stretched out 
 upon the grass, — all asleep in picturesque atti- 
 tudes: one had thrust a sack under his head, 
 another his cap, still another was simply making 
 use of his comrade's side. Swords, guns, arque- 
 buses, short-stemmed pipes with copper mount- 
 ings, iron awls, and a flint and steel were Insep- 
 arable from every kazak. The heavy oxen, with 
 legs doubled under them, lay In huge, whitish 
 
124 TARAS BULB A 
 
 masses, and at a distance looked like grey stones 
 scattered on the slopes of the plain. On all sides 
 the heavy snores of sleeping warriors had already 
 begun to rise from the grass, and were answered 
 from the plain by the ringing neighs of their 
 steeds, chafing at their hobbled feet. Meanwhile, 
 a certain grim magnificence was mingled with the 
 beauty of the July night. It was the distant glare 
 of conflagrations from the country round about. 
 In one place the flames spread tranquilly and 
 grandly over the sky; In another, having encoun- 
 tered something else on fire, they suddenly burst 
 into a whirlwind, and flew, hissing, upwards, to the 
 very stars, and torn fragments faded away in the 
 most distant quarter of the heavens. There a 
 black monastery like a grim Carthusian monk 
 stood threatening, and displaying Its dark magnifi- 
 cence at every flash; yonder burned the monastery 
 garden. It seemed as though the trees could be 
 heard hissing, as they wrapped themselves in 
 smoke ; and when the fire leaped aside. It suddenly 
 lighted up with a phosphorescent lilac-rose-hued 
 gleam the ripe plums, or turned the yellowing 
 pears here and there to ruddy gold; and there, 
 among them all, on the wall of a building or 
 against the trunk of a tree, a black blot, hung the 
 body of a poor Jew or monk who had perished in 
 the flames with the building. Far away, high 
 
TARAS BULB A 125 
 
 above the conflagration, hovered birds, which 
 looked like a cluster of tiny black crosses upon a 
 fiery background. The town, thus laid bare, 
 seemed asleep ; its spires and roofs, and the stock- 
 ade and walls flashed quietly in the glare of the 
 distant conflagrations. Andrii made the rounds 
 of the kazak ranks. The fires beside which the 
 sentinels sat were on the point of dying out; and 
 even the sentinels were asleep, having devoured 
 oatmeal and dumplings with genuine kazak appe- 
 tites. He was amazed at such carelessness, and 
 said to himself: " 'Tis well that there is no 
 strong enemy near at hand, and no one to fear." 
 At last he went to one of the transport-wagons, 
 climbed into It, and lay down upon his back, thrust- 
 ing his clasped hands under his head; but 
 he could not sleep, and gazed long at the sky. It 
 was all open before him; the air was pure and 
 transparent; the dense mass of stars which consti- 
 tutes the Milky Way, and traverses the sky in a 
 belt, was flooded with light. From time to time 
 Andrii forgot himself, to a degree, and a light mist 
 of dreaming seemed to veil the heavens from him 
 for a moment; and then it cleared away, and they 
 became visible again. 
 
 During one of these intervals it seemed to him 
 that some strange human figure was flitting before 
 him. Thinking It was merely a dream-apparition 
 
126 TARAS BULBA 
 
 which would immediately fade away, he opened his 
 eyes fully and beheld a withered, emaciated face 
 bending over him, and gazing straight into his 
 eyes. The long, coal-black hair fell, uncoiffed, 
 dishevelled, from beneath a dark veil which was 
 thrown over the head; and the strange glitter of 
 the eyes and the death-like brown tone of the face, 
 which threw the sharply-cut features into relief, 
 inclined him to beheve that it was an apparition. 
 His hand Involuntarily grasped his arquebuse, and 
 he exclaimed almost convulsively: ** Who are 
 you? If you are an evil spirit, begone from my 
 sight! If you are a living being, you have chosen 
 an unseemly time for your jest; I will kill you with 
 a single shot! " 
 
 In answer to this, the apparition laid its finger 
 upon its lips, and seemed to entreat silence. He 
 dropped his hand, and began to scrutinise it more 
 attentively. He recognised it as a woman from 
 the long hair, the brown neck, the half-concealed 
 bosom. But she was not a native of those re- 
 gions; her whole face was swarthy, wasted by dis- 
 ease ; her broad cheek-bones stood out prominently 
 above her hollow cheeks ; her narrow eyes rose up- 
 wards in an arch. The more he gazed at her 
 features, the more he discerned in them that which 
 was familiar. At last, unable to restrain himself 
 longer, he said: "[Tell me, who are you? It 
 
TARAS BULB A 127 
 
 seems to me that I know you, or have seen you 
 somewhere." 
 
 " Two years ago, in Kiev." 
 
 " Two years ago, in Kiev ! " repeated Andrii, 
 endeavouring to collect in his mind all that still lin- 
 gered In his memory of his former student life. 
 He looked intently at her once more, and suddenly 
 exclaimed, at the top of his voice: *' You are the 
 Tatar! the servant of the young noblewoman, the 
 Voevod's daughter! " 
 
 "S-sh!" cried the Tatar, clasping her hands 
 with a gesture of supplication, trembling all over, 
 and turning her head round in order to see whether 
 any one had been waked up by Andrii's loud ex- 
 clamation. 
 
 *' Tell me, tell me, why are you here?" said 
 Andrii, almost panting. In a whisper, Interrupted 
 every moment by inward emotion. " Where is 
 the young lady? is she alive? " 
 
 " She is now In the city." 
 
 " In the city! " he exclaimed, again almost in a 
 shriek, and felt that all the blood suddenly flew 
 to his heart. '* Why is she In the city? " 
 
 *' Because the old nobleman himself is in the 
 city: he has been Voevod of Dubno for the last 
 year and a half." 
 
 "Is she married? How strange you look! 
 Tell me about her! " 
 
128 TARAS BULBA 
 
 " She has had nothing to eat for two days/' 
 "What!'^ 
 
 *' Not one of the inhabitants has had a morsel 
 of bread for a long while past; all have been eat- 
 ing earth only." 
 
 Andrii was astonished. 
 
 ** The young lady saw you from the city ram- 
 parts, among the Zaporozhtzl. She said to me, 
 * Go, say to the knight: If he remembers me, let 
 him come to me ; and do not forget to make him 
 give you a bit of bread for my aged mother, for I 
 do not wish to see my mother die before my very 
 eyes.' Better that I should die first, and she after- 
 wards! Beseech him: clasp his knees, his feet: 
 he, also, has an aged mother; let him give you 
 bread for her sake.' " 
 
 Many feelings awoke and flamed up In the 
 young kazak's breast. 
 
 " But how came you hither? By what road did 
 you arrive ? " 
 
 " By an underground passage." 
 " Is there an underground passage ? " 
 "Yes." ' i 
 
 "Where?'* ' 
 
 "You will not betray it, knight?" 
 " I swear by the holy Cross that I will not." 
 " You must descend into the gully, and cross the 
 water-course yonder, among the reeds." 
 
TARAS BULB A 129 
 
 " And It leads into the city? '* 
 
 " Straight into the town monastery." 
 
 " Let us go, let us go, at once! " 
 
 " A bit of bread, in the name of Christ and of 
 His holy Mother!" 
 
 " Good, so be it. Stand here beside the wagon 
 — or, better still, lie down in it; no one will see 
 you, all are asleep. I will return Immediately." 
 
 And he set off for the transports, which con- 
 tained the provisions belonging to their barrack. 
 His heart beat violently. All the past, all that 
 had been extinguished by the kazak bivouacs, by 
 the stern battle of life, flamed up at once to the sur- 
 face, and, in its turn, drowned the present. 
 Again, as from the dark depths of the sea, the 
 proud woman rose up before him: again in his 
 memory shone forth her beautiful arms, her eyes, 
 her laughing mouth, her thick, dark chestnut hair, 
 falling in curls upon her shoulders, the elastic, 
 well-knit members of her maiden figure. No, 
 they had not been extinguished In his breast; they 
 had not vanished: they had simply withdrawn to 
 one side. In order, for a time, to make way for 
 other strong emotions; but often, very often, the 
 young kazak's deep slumbers had been troubled by 
 them, and often, waking, he had lain sleepless on 
 his bed, without being able to explain the cause. 
 
 He walked on ; but his heart beat more violently 
 
I30 TARAS BULBA 
 
 still at the mere thought of seeing her again, and 
 his young knees shook. When he reached the 
 transport, he had utterly forgotten the reason for 
 his coming; he raised his hand to his brow, and 
 rubbed it long, trying to recollect what he meant to 
 do. At last he trembled, and was filled with terror : 
 the thought suddenly occurred to him that she was 
 dying of hunger. He flung himself upon the wagon 
 and seized several large loaves of black bread; 
 but then he thought: "Is not this food, which 
 is suited to a robust and easily-satisfied Zaporo- 
 zhetz, too coarse and unfit for her delicate 
 frame?'* Then he remembered that the Kosh- 
 evoi, on the previous evening, had reproved the 
 cooks for having cooked up all the buckwheat flour 
 into porridge at once, when there was plenty for 
 at least three times. In the full assurance that he 
 would find plenty of porridge in the kettles, he drew 
 out his father's travelling kettle, and went with it 
 to the cook of their barrack, who was sleeping 
 alongside two huge kettles, holding about ten 
 bucketfuls apiece, under which the ashes still 
 glowed. Glancing into them, he was amazed to 
 find both empty. Supernatural powers must have 
 been required to eat it all, the more so as their 
 barrack numbered fewer men than the others. 
 He looked into the kettles of the other kurens, — 
 nothing anywhere. Involuntarily there recurred 
 
TARAS BULBA 131 
 
 to his mind, *' The Zaporozhtzi are like children: 
 if there is little they eat it, if there Is much they 
 leave nothing." What was he to do? Still, 
 somewhere In the wagon belonging to his father's 
 regiment there was, he thought, a sack of white 
 bread, which they had found when they pillaged 
 the bakery of a monastery. He went straight to 
 his father's load, but it was not there. Ostap had 
 taken it and put it under his head; and there he 
 lay, stretched out on the ground, snoring so that 
 the whole plain reverberated. Andrii seized the 
 sack abruptly with one hand, and gave It a jerk, 
 so that Ostap's head fell on the ground, and the 
 latter sprang up, half awake, and sitting there, 
 with closed eyes, shouted at the top of his lungs: 
 *' Stop him ! Stop the damned Lyakh ! Catch 
 the horse I "— '^ Silence ! I'll kill you ! " shouted 
 Andril, In terror, brandishing the sack over him. 
 But Ostap did not continue his speech, quieted 
 down, and emitted such a snore that the grass on 
 which he lay undulated with his breath. 
 
 Andrii glanced timidly about him on all sides, to 
 see If Ostap's dream-ravings had waked any of the 
 kazaks. Only one scalp-locked head rose up in 
 the adjoining barrack, glanced about, then 
 dropped back on the ground. After waiting a 
 couple of minutes, he set out with his burden. 
 The Tatar woman still lay there, scarcely breath- 
 
132 TARAS BULBA 
 
 ing. " Rise, let us go ! Fear not, all are sleep- 
 ing. Can you take one of these loaves if I cannot 
 carry all? " So saying, he flung the sacks on his 
 back, pulled out another sack of millet as he passed 
 a wagon, took in his hands the loaves he had 
 wanted to give the Tatar woman to carry and, 
 bending somewhat under his load, went boldly 
 through the ranks of slumbering Zaporozhtzi. 
 
 " Andrii," said old Bulba as he passed. His 
 heart died within him. He halted, all of a 
 tremble, and said softly: *' What is it?" 
 
 " There's a woman with you ! When I get up 
 ril give you a sound thrashing! Women will 
 lead you to no good." So saying, he leaned his 
 head upon his hand, and gazed intently at the 
 muffled form of the Tatar. 
 
 Andrii stood there more dead than alive, not 
 daring to look his father in the face. And when 
 he did raise his eyes and glance at him, old Bulba 
 was fast asleep, with his head resting in the palm 
 of his hand. 
 
 He made the sign of the cross on his breast. 
 Fear fled from his heart even more rapidly than it 
 had attacked it. When he turned to look at the 
 Tatar woman, she stood before him like a dark, 
 granite statue, all muffled in her veil; and the glow 
 of the crimson glare in the distance lighted up only 
 her eyes, dull as the eyes of a corpse. He plucked 
 
TARAS BULBA 133 
 
 her by the sleeve, and both went on together, 
 glancing Incessantly behind them; and, at last, they 
 descended the slope Into a small ravine, almost a 
 hole, at the bottom of which a stream flowed 
 lazily, overgrown with sedge, and strewn with 
 mossy hummocks. Descending Into this ravine 
 they were completely concealed from view of all 
 the plain occupied by the Zaporozhlan camp. At 
 least, Andril, as he glanced back, saw that the 
 abrupt declivity rose behind him like a steep wall, 
 taller than a man's stature. On its crest waved a 
 few stalks of steppe-grass; and above them, in the 
 sky, hung the moon, like a reaping-hook of pure, 
 ruddy gold, set a-slant. The breeze, blowing off 
 the steppe, warned them that the dawn was not far 
 off. But nowhere was the distant crow of a cock 
 audible. There had been not a single cock for a 
 long time past, either In the city or in the devas- 
 tated neighbourhood. They crossed the stream on 
 a narrow plank, beyond which rose the opposite 
 bank, that appeared higher than the one behind 
 them, and formed a complete precipice. It 
 seemed as though this were a strong and solid 
 point of the citadel ; at all events, the earthen ram- 
 part was lower there, and no garrison appeared 
 behind It. But further on rose the thick mon- 
 astery wall. The precipitous bank was all over- 
 grown with steppe-grass, and In the narrow ravine 
 
134 TARAS BULBA 
 
 between it and the stream grew tall reeds, almost 
 to the height of a man. At the summit of the 
 ravine were visible the remains of a wattled fence, 
 revealing that a garden had once existed there; In 
 front of it, the broad leaves of the burdock, from 
 among which rose pig-weed and blackthorn, and 
 sunflowers, rearing their heads high above all the 
 rest. Here the Tatar flung off her high-heeled 
 slippers, and went bare-foot, gathering up her 
 gown carefully, for the spot was marshy, and 
 soaked with water. Forcing their way through 
 the reeds, they halted before a pile of faggots and 
 brushwood. Pushing aside the brushwood, they 
 found a sort of earthen arch — an opening not 
 much larger than the mouth of an oven. The 
 Tatar woman bent her head, and went first. 
 Andril followed, bending as low as he could. In 
 order to pass with his sacks ; and both soon found 
 themselves In total darkness. 
 
/' 
 
 CHAPTER SIX 
 
VI 
 
 ANDRII could hardly move In the dark and 
 narrow earthen corridor, as he followed 
 the Tatar, dragging after him his sacks of 
 bread. '* It will soon be light," said his guide: 
 "we are nearing the spot where I placed a candle." 
 And, in fact, the dark earthen walls began to 
 be gradually illuminated. They reached a little 
 widening where, apparently, there had once been a 
 chapel; at least, a small table was set against the 
 wall, like an altar-table, and above it was visible 
 the faded, almost entirely obliterated picture of a 
 Catholic Madonna. A small silver lamp hanging 
 before it barely illuminated it. The Tatar 
 stooped, and picked up from the earth a brass 
 candlestick with a tall, slender foot, and snuffers, 
 pin, and extinguisher hanging from it on chains, 
 which she had left there. She lighted It at the 
 silver lamp. The light grew stronger, and as 
 they went on, now illumined by it, and again en- 
 veloped in pitchy shadow, they suggested a picture 
 by Gerard Douw. 
 
 The knight's handsome, rosy countenance, over- 
 137 
 
138 TARAS BULBA 
 
 flowing with health and youth, presented a strong 
 contrast to the pale, emaciated face of his com- 
 panion. The passage grew a little more roomy, 
 so that Andrii was able to straighten himself up. 
 He gazed with curiosity at the earthen walls. 
 Here, as in the catacombs at Kiev, were visible 
 niches in the walls; and here and there stood 
 coffins. In some places they came across human 
 bones which had become softened with the damp- 
 ness, and were crumbling into dust. It was evi- 
 dent that here, also, pious people had taken 
 refuge from the storms, sorrows and seductions 
 of the world. It was extremely damp in some 
 places ; under their feet it was all water at times. 
 Andrii was forced to halt frequently, in order to 
 allow his companion to rest, for her fatigue con- 
 stantly increased. The small piece of bread she 
 had swallowed only caused a pain in her stomach, 
 which had grown unused to food; and she often 
 stood motionless for several minutes at a time in 
 one spot. 
 
 At last a small iron door appeared before them. 
 ** Now, glory be to God, we have arrived! " said 
 the Tatar in a faint voice, and tried to raise her 
 hand to knock; but she had not the strength. 
 Andrii knocked loudly at the door in her stead. 
 The echo which followed showed that there was a 
 large space beyond the door. Then the echo 
 
TARAS BULBA 139 
 
 changed, as though encountering lofty arches. In 
 a couple of minutes a rattling of keys became 
 audible, and some one could be heard, apparently 
 descending a staircase. At last the door opened: 
 a monk, standing on a narrow staircase, with the 
 key and a candle In his hands, admitted them. 
 Andril Involuntarily stopped short at the sight of 
 a Catholic monk, — one of those who had aroused 
 such hatred and disdain among the kazaks, who 
 had treated them even more ruthlessly than they 
 had treated the Jews. 
 
 The monk, on his side, started back at the sight 
 of a Zaporozhian kazak; but an Inaudible word 
 uttered by the Tatar reassured him. He lighted 
 them, locked the door behind them, and led them 
 up the stairs; and they found themselves beneath 
 the dark and lofty arches of the monastery church. 
 Before one of the altars, adorned with tall candle- 
 sticks and candles, knelt a priest absorbed In silent 
 prayer. Near him, on each side, knelt two young 
 choristers In lilac cassocks, with white lace sur- 
 plices, and censers In their hands. He was pray- 
 ing that heaven would send down miraculous In- 
 tervention, that the city might be saved; that their 
 drooping spirits might be strengthened; that 
 patience might be given them; that the tempter, 
 whispering complaint and weak-spirited grief over 
 earthly misfortunes, might be banished. A few 
 
I40 TARAS BULBA 
 
 women, resembling shadows, knelt supporting 
 themselves against the backs of the chairs and dark 
 wooden benches in front of them, and drooping 
 their exhausted heads upon them. A few men 
 knelt sadly, leaning against the pillars which sup- 
 ported the side arches. The stained-glass win- 
 dow above the altar glowed with the rosy light of 
 dawn; and from it, on the floor, fell circles of 
 azure, yellow and other colours, suddenly illumin- 
 ating the dim church. The entire altar, even to its 
 furthest recesses, suddenly shone forth in a radiant 
 halo; the smoke of the censers hung like an 
 illuminated, rainbow-hued cloud in the air. 
 Andrii gazed from his dark corner, not without 
 surprise, at the wonders wrought by the light. At 
 that moment the magnificent swell of the organ 
 suddenly filled the whole church; it grew deeper 
 and deeper, increased in volume, passed into heavy 
 bursts of thunder; and then, all at once, turning 
 into heavenly music, its singing tones floated high 
 among the arches, suggesting the voices of young 
 maidens, and again descended into a deep roar 
 and thunder, and then ceased. And the thunder- 
 ous pulsations echoed long and tremulously among 
 the arches; and Andrii, with mouth agape, was 
 amazed by the wondrous music. 
 
 At that moment he felt some one pluck the skirt 
 of his kaftan. " 'Tis time to be going," said the 
 
TARAS BULBA 141] 
 
 Tatar. They traversed the church unpercelved 
 and emerged upon the square in front. The quad- 
 rangular square was entirely deserted; in the 
 middle of it stood wooden pillars, showing that 
 only a week before, perhaps, a provision market 
 had existed there. The streets, which were then 
 unpaved, were simply a mass of dried mud. The 
 square was surrounded by a row of small, one- 
 storied houses of stone or mud, on whose walls 
 were visible wooden stakes and posts to their full 
 height, obliquely crossed by carved wooden beams, 
 as was the manner of building in those days, exam- 
 ples of which style of construction are still to be 
 seen in some parts of Lithuania and Poland. 
 They were covered with enormously high roofs, 
 with a multitude of dormer-windows and ventilat- 
 ing orifices. On one side, quite close to the 
 church, and taller than the others, rose a building 
 entirely detached from the rest; probably the 
 Town Hall or some government office. It was two 
 stories high, and above it. In two arches, was built 
 a belvedere, where stood a watchman; a huge 
 clock-face was inserted In the roof. 
 
 The square seemed dead, but Andrii thought he 
 heard a feeble groan. Glancing about him, he 
 perceived, on the further side, a group of two or 
 three men lying almost motionless on the ground. 
 He fastened his eyes more Intently upon them, to 
 
142 TARAS BULBA 
 
 see whether they were asleep or dead; and, at 
 the same moment, he stumbled over something 
 which lay at his feet. It was the dead body of a 
 woman, evidently a Jewess. She appeared to have 
 been young, though this was not discernible in her 
 distorted and emaciated features. Upon her 
 head was a red silk kerchief; two rows of pearls, 
 or pearl beads adorned the ear-pieces of her head- 
 dress; from beneath it two or three long curls in 
 curl-papers hung down upon her withered neck, 
 with Its tightly-drawn sinews. Beside her lay a 
 baby, clutching convulsively at her withered 
 breast, and squeezing it with Its fingers in involun- 
 tary wrath, at finding no milk there. He neither 
 wept nor screamed, and only the gentle rise and 
 fall of his body would lead one to think that he was 
 not dead, or at least on the point of breathing his 
 last. 
 
 They turned into a street, and were suddenly 
 stopped by a madman who, catching sight of An- 
 dril's precious burden, sprang upon him like a 
 tiger, and clutched him, yelling, *' Bread! " But 
 his strength was not equal to his madness. Andrii 
 repulsed him : he fell to the ground. Moved with 
 pity, Andrii tossed him a loaf, upon which he 
 flung himself like a mad dog, gnawing and biting 
 It; and immediately, there in the street, he expired 
 
TARAS BULBA 143 
 
 In horrible convulsions, from long disuse of eating. 
 The terrible victims of hunger startled them at 
 almost every step. Many, apparently unable to 
 endure their torments In their own houses, seemed 
 to have run Into the streets to see whether some 
 nourishing power might, possibly, descend from 
 the air. At the gate of one house sat an old 
 woman, and It was Impossible to say whether she 
 was asleep, dead, or only unconscious; at all 
 events, she no longer saw or heard anything, and 
 sat motionless In one spot, her head drooping on 
 her breast. From the roof of another house hung 
 a strained and withered body In a rope noose. 
 The poor fellow had not been able to endure the 
 tortures of hunger to the end, and had preferred 
 to hasten his death by voluntary suicide. At the 
 sight of such terrible proofs of famine, Andril 
 could not refrain from asking the Tatar, " Have 
 they really been unable to find anything with which 
 to sustain life? If a man Is driven to extremities, 
 then there is no help for It; he must nourish him- 
 self on that which he has hitherto despised; he 
 may sustain himself with creatures which are for- 
 bidden by the law. Anything may be eaten under 
 such circumstances." 
 
 *' They have eaten everything," said the Tatar, 
 — " all the animals. Not a horse or a dog, nor 
 
144 TARAS BULBA 
 
 even a mouse, can be found In the whole city. 
 We never had any store of provisions in the town: 
 they were all brought in from the villages." 
 
 *' But how can you, while dying such a fearful 
 death, still dream of defending the city? " 
 
 *' Possibly the Voevod might have surrendered; 
 but yesterday the Colonel in Buzhana sent a hawk 
 into the city with a note, saying that it was not to 
 be given up : that he was coming to its rescue with 
 his regiment, and was only waiting for another 
 colonel, that they might march together. And 
 now they are expected at any moment. — But we 
 have reached the house." 
 
 Andrii had already seen, from afar, the house 
 which was unlike the others, and had been built, 
 apparently, by an Italian architect: It was con- 
 structed of thin red bricks, and had two stories. 
 The windows of the lower story were sheltered 
 under lofty projecting granite cornices; the upper 
 story consisted entirely of small arches, which 
 formed a gallery; between them, gratings with 
 coats-of-arms could be seen : on the corners of the 
 houses were more coats-of-arms. The broad ex- 
 ternal staircase, of tinted bricks, abutted on the 
 square. At the foot of the staircase sat sentries, 
 one on each side, who with one hand held the hal- 
 berd standing beside him In a picturesque and sym- 
 metrical manner, and with the other supported 
 
TARAS BULBA !i45 
 
 IS drooping head, and in this attitude more 
 resembled statues than living beings. They were 
 neither asleep nor dozing, but seemed perfectly 
 insensible to everything; they even paid no atten- 
 tion when any one ascended the stairs. At the 
 head of the stairs they found a richly-dressed war- 
 rior, clad in armour from head to foot, holding a 
 prayer-book in his hand. He was turning his dim 
 eyes upon them when the Tatar spoke a word to 
 him, and he dropped them again upon the open 
 pages of his book. They entered the first cham- 
 ber, rather a large one, serving as a reception- 
 room, or simply as an ante-room ; it was completely 
 filled with soldiers, servants, huntsmen, cup-bear- 
 ers, and other servitors indispensable to the main- 
 tenance of a Polish magnate's state, all seated 
 along the walls, in various attitudes. The reek 
 of extinguished candles was perceptible; two, in 
 huge candlesticks, nearly as tall as a man, which 
 stood in the middle of the room, were still burning, 
 although morning had long since peeped through 
 the wide, grated window. Andrii was about to 
 proceed straight to a large oaken door, adorned 
 with a coat-of-arms and a profusion of carved 
 ornaments; but the Tatar pulled his sleeve, and 
 pointed to a small door in the side wall. Through 
 this they entered a corridor, and then a room, 
 which he began to examine attentively. The light 
 
146 TARAS BULBA 
 
 which sifted through a crack in the shutters fell 
 upon some objects, — a crimson curtain, a gilded 
 cornice, a painting on the wall. The Tatar mo- 
 tioned to Andrii to wait here, and opened the door 
 into another room, from which gleamed the light 
 of a fire. Through the open door he beheld, 
 rapidly flitting past, a tall female figure, with a 
 splendid braid of hair falling over her uplifted 
 arm. The Tatar returned and bade him enter. 
 
 He was never able to remember how he entered, 
 and how the door was shut behind him. Two 
 candles burned in the room, and a shrine-lamp 
 glowed before a holy picture: beneath it stood a 
 small but lofty table, with steps to kneel upon dur- 
 ing prayer, after the Roman Catholic fashion. 
 He turned in the other direction, and perceived a 
 woman, who seemed to have congealed and turned 
 to stone in the midst of some rapid movement. 
 It seemed as though her whole form had been 
 trying to spring towards him, and had suddenly 
 paused. And, amazed, he stood in like manner 
 before her. Not thus had he pictured to himself 
 that he would see her: this was not the person 
 whom he had formerly known ; nothing about her 
 resembled that person: but she was twice as beau- 
 tiful, twice as wonderful now as she had formerly 
 been. Then there had been something unfinished, 
 incomplete about her : now it was a production to 
 
TARAS BULBA 147 
 
 which the artist had given the finishing stroke of 
 his brush. That other one had been a charming, 
 giddy girl: this was a beauty, a woman in the full 
 development of her charms. Complete feeling, 
 not scraps and hints of feeling, but all feeling, was 
 expressed in her eyes as she raised them. The 
 tears were not yet dry in them, and framed them 
 in a shining dew, which pierced the very soul. 
 Her bosom, neck and arms were moulded in pro- 
 portions which indicated fully developed loveli- 
 ness. Her hair which, in former days, had waved 
 in airy ringlets about her face, had become a 
 heavy, luxuriant mass, part of which was fastened 
 up, while part in long, slender, beautifully curling 
 locks spread over her breast. It seemed as 
 though her every feature were changed. In vain 
 did he seek to discover in them a single one of 
 those which were engraved on his memory, — 
 there was not one. Even her extreme pallor did 
 not lessen her wonderful beauty : on the contrary, 
 it seemed to impart to it an Irresistibly conquering 
 charm. And Andrii felt in all his soul a reverent 
 timidity, and stood motionless before her. She, 
 too, seemed surprised at the appearance of the 
 kazak, as he stood before her in all his beauty, 
 and the might of his young manhood, and In the 
 very immovability of his limbs personified the ut- 
 most freedom of movement. His eyes beamed 
 
148 TARAS BU-LBA 
 
 with clear decision; his velvet brows bent in a bold 
 arch; his sunburnt cheeks glowed with all the 
 ardour of virginal fire; and his youthful black 
 moustache shone like silk. 
 
 " No, I have no power to thank you, magnani- 
 mous knight,*' she said, her silvery voice all in a 
 tremble. " God alone can reward you, not I, a 
 weak woman.'* She dropped her eyes; her lids 
 fell over them in beautiful, snowy crescents, 
 guarded by lashes long as arrows; all her won- 
 drous face bowed forward, and a delicate flush 
 overspread It from below. Andril knew not what 
 reply to make to this; he wanted to express every- 
 thing; he had it in his soul to express it with all the 
 ardour he felt, and could not. He felt that some- 
 thing was obstructing his mouth, and words were 
 deprived of sound; he felt that it was not for him, 
 reared in the seminary, and in a warlike, nomadic 
 life, to reply fitly to such language, and was wroth 
 at his kazak nature. 
 
 At that moment the Tatar entered the room. 
 She had cut the bread which the knight had 
 brought in slices, and now brought it on a golden 
 plate, and placed It before her young mistress. 
 The beauty glanced at her, at the bread, at her 
 again, then turned her eyes on Andril; and there 
 was a great deal In those eyes. That gentle 
 glance, expressive of her weakness and her in- 
 
TARAS BULBA 149 
 
 ability to give utterance to the feelings which over- 
 powered her, was far more comprehensible to 
 Andrii than any words. His soul suddenly grew 
 light: all within him seemed to have been released. 
 The emotions of his soul, which, up to that mo- 
 ment, some one seemed to have been restraining 
 with a heavy curb, now felt themselves set free, at 
 liberty, and eager to pour themselves out In a re- 
 sistless torrent of words. Suddenly the beauty 
 turned to the Tatar, and inquired anxiously: 
 
 " But my mother? You took her some? '' 
 
 " She Is asleep." 
 
 "And my father?" 
 
 " I carried him some, also : he said that he would 
 come and thank the knight In person." 
 
 She took the bread, and raised It to her mouth. 
 With inexpressible delight Andril watched her 
 break It with her shining fingers ; and, all at once, 
 he recalled the man, mad with hunger, who had ex- 
 pired before his very eyes, on swallowing a morsel 
 of bread. He turned pale and, seizing her hand, 
 cried: "Enough! Eat no more! you have not 
 eaten for so long that bread will be poison to you 
 now." And she Immediately dropped her hand; 
 she laid the bread on the plate, and gazed Into his 
 eyes like a submissive child. And If any words 
 could express — but neither chisel, nor brush, nor 
 all-powerful speech is capable of expressing what 
 
I50 TARAS BULB A 
 
 Is sometimes to be seen In the glances of maidens, 
 nor the tender feeling which takes possession of 
 him who sees such maiden glances. 
 
 " Tzarltza ! " exclaimed Andril, filled, heart 
 and soul, with emotion, and with overflowing feel- 
 ings of every sort, *' what do you need? what do 
 you wish? Command me! Impose on me the 
 most Impossible task In all the world: I 
 will fly to perform It, even though I perish. 
 I will perish, I will I And I swear by the holy 
 Cross, that death for your sake is so sweet — 
 but no. It Is Impossible to say how sweet It is! 
 I have three farms; half my father's drove of 
 horses is mine; all that my mother brought 
 my father in dowry, and still conceals even 
 from him, — all this Is mine ! Not one of the 
 kazaks now possesses such weapons as I do : for 
 the hilt of my sword alone they would give their 
 best drove of horses and three thousand sheep. 
 And all this will I renounce, discard, throw aside, 
 — I will burn It, drown It if you will but say the 
 word, or even move your delicate black brows! 
 But I know that I am probably talking wide of 
 the mark; that all this Is not fitting here; that it Is 
 not for me, who have passed my life In the sem- 
 inary and In Zaporozhe, to speak as they are wont 
 who speak among Kings, Princes and all the rest of 
 the noble knights. I perceive that you are a dif- 
 
TARAS BULB A 151 
 
 ferent sort of God's creature from the rest of us, 
 and far above all other nobles' wives and their 
 maiden daughters." 
 
 With glowing amazement did the maiden listen, 
 all ear, losing no single word, to this frank, sin- 
 cere language, in which, as in a mirror, the strong, 
 young spirit was reflected; and each simple word 
 of this speech, uttered in a voice which winged its 
 way straight to the depths of the heart, was clothed 
 with power. And she bent forward her beautiful 
 face, pushed back her troublesome hair, opened 
 her mouth, and gazed long, with parted lips. 
 Then she tried to say something, but suddenly 
 paused, remembering that the knight came in a 
 different class, that his father, brethren, country 
 stood behind him as grim avengers; that the 
 Zaporozhtzl who were besieging the city were ter- 
 rible men, and a cruel death awaited all who were 
 in the place. . . . And her eyes suddenly filled 
 with tears. She caught up a handkerchief em- 
 broidered in silks, and threw It over her face, and 
 In a moment it was all wet; she sat long with her 
 beautiful head thrown back, her snowy teeth set 
 on her lovely under-lip, as though she had suddenly 
 felt the sting of a poisonous serpent, and without 
 removing the handkerchief from her face, lest he 
 should see her broken with grief. 
 
 *' Speak one word to me ! " entreated Andrii, 
 
152 TARAS BULB A 
 
 taking her satin hand. A sparkling fire coursed 
 through his veins at the touch, and he pressed the 
 hand which lay apathetically in his own. 
 
 But she maintained silence, never taking the 
 kerchief from her face, and remained motionless. 
 
 " Why are you so sad? Tell me, why are you 
 so sad?" 
 
 She cast aside the handkerchief, pushed back her 
 long hair which fell over her eyes, and poured out 
 her heart in mournful speech, in a quiet voice like 
 the breeze which, arising on a beautiful evening, 
 suddenly blows through a dense growth of reeds 
 beside the stream; they rustle, murmur, and sud- 
 denly begin to emit delicately-sad sounds, and the 
 wayfarer, pausing, in inexplicable melancholy, 
 catches them and heeds neither the fading light 
 nor the gay songs of the people which float past as 
 they stray homeward from their labours in 
 meadow and stubble-field, nor the distant rumble 
 of a passing cart. 
 
 " Am not I worthy of eternal pity? Is not the 
 mother who brought me into the world unhappy? 
 Is it not a bitter fate which has fallen to my share ? 
 Art not thou a cruel executioner, my grim Fate? 
 Thou hast brought all to my feet, — the highest 
 nobles in the land, the wealthiest gentlemen, 
 Counts and foreign Barons, and all the flower of 
 our knighthood. All these were free to love me. 
 
TARAS BULBA 153 
 
 and any one of them would have accounted my 
 love a great blessing. I had but to wave my hand, 
 and the best of them, the handsomest, the very first 
 in beauty and birth, would have become my hus- 
 band. And to none of them didst thou incline my 
 heart, O my bitter Fate ! thou didst turn my heart 
 against the noblest heroes of our land, and towards 
 a stranger, towards our enemy? Why, O most 
 holy Mother of God I for what sins dost thou so 
 pitilessly, so mercilessly persecute me? In abund- 
 ance and superfluity of luxury my days have been 
 passed; the richest dishes, the sweetest wines have 
 been my food. And to what end was it all? 
 What was it all for? In order that I might, at 
 the last, die a cruel death, such as is not the lot of 
 even the meanest beggar In the kingdom? And 
 was It not enough that I was condemned to so 
 horrible a fate; not enough that, before my own 
 end I should behold my father and mother perish 
 in intolerable torment, when I would willingly have 
 given my own life twenty times over to save them? 
 All this was not enough: before my own death I 
 must see and hear words and love such as I had 
 never known before. It needs must be that he 
 should break my heart in pieces with his utter- 
 ances; that my bitter lot should be rendered still 
 more bitter; that my young life should be made yet 
 more sad! that my death should seem even more 
 
154 TARAS BULBA 
 
 terrible; and that, dying, I should reproach thee 
 still more, O cruel Fate ! and thee — forgive my 
 sin — O holy Mother of God ! " 
 
 And when she ceased in despair, a feeling of 
 hopelessness was expressed in her face; every 
 feature spoke of gnawing sorrow; and all, from 
 the sadly bowed brow and downcast eyes, to the 
 tears trickling down and drying on her softly- 
 flushed cheeks, seemed to say : " There is no hap- 
 piness in this face." 
 
 " Such a thing was never heard of since the 
 world began. It cannot be, It shall not be ! " said 
 Andrii, " that the best and most beautiful of 
 women should suffer so bitter a fate, when she was 
 born that all the best there is in the world should 
 bow before her as before a Saint. No, you shall 
 not die I I swear it by my birth, and by all I hold 
 dear In the world, you shall not die. But If it must 
 indeed be so; If nothing, neither strength, nor 
 prayer, nor heroism will avail to avert that cruel 
 fate, — then we will die together, and I will die 
 first. I will die before you, at your beauteous 
 knees, and even in death they shall not part us." 
 
 " Deceive not yourself and me, knight," she 
 said, gently shaking her beautiful head; " I know, 
 and to my great sorrow I know only too well, that 
 it is impossible for you to love me. I know what 
 your duty is, and what your Faith. Your father, 
 
TARAS BULB A 155 
 
 your comrades, your fatherland call you, — and we 
 are your enemies." 
 
 '* And what are my father, my comrades, my 
 fatherland to me? " said Andril, shaking his head 
 with a quick movement, and straightening up his 
 young figure like a poplar beside the river. " Be 
 that as it may, I have no one, no one, no one ! " 
 he repeated with the same voice and movement 
 of the hand wherewith the buoyant, irrepressible 
 kazak expresses his determination to do some un- 
 heard-of deed, impossible to any other man. 
 '' Who has said that my fatherland is the Ukraina ? 
 Who gave it to me for my country? Our father- 
 land is the one our spirit longs for, the one which 
 is dearest of all to it. My country is — you! 
 That is my fatherland, and that land I bear in my 
 heart. I shall bear it there all my life long, and 
 I will see whether any of the kazaks can tear it 
 thence. And I will renounce everything, barter 
 everything, I will lose myself for that country I " 
 
 Petrified for an Instant, she gazed into his eyes 
 like a beautiful statue, and suddenly burst out sob- 
 bing; and with that wonderful feminine Impetuos- 
 ity, of which only grand-souled, uncalculating 
 women, created for fine Impulses are capable, she 
 threw herself upon his neck, encircling It with her 
 wondrous, snowy arms, and fell to weeping. At 
 that moment Indistinct shouts rang out In the 
 
156 TARAS BULB A 
 
 streets, accompanied by the sound of trumpets and 
 kettle-drums; but he heard them not. He was 
 conscious of nothing save the lovely mouth which 
 was bathing him in its warm, sweet breath, of the 
 tears streaming down his face, and her long un- 
 bound, perfumed hair which veiled him completely 
 In its dark, shining silk. 
 
 At that moment the Tatar ran in with a cry of 
 joy. *' Saved, saved! " she cried, beside herself. 
 " Our troops have arrived in the city. They have 
 brought corn, millet, flour and Zaporozhtzi in 
 chains." But neither of them heard that our 
 troops had arrived in the city, nor what they had 
 brought with them, nor how they had bound the 
 Zaporozhtzi. Filled with feehngs untasted else- 
 where on earth, Andrii kissed the sweet mouth 
 which pressed his cheek, and the sweet mouth did 
 not remain unresponsive. In this union of kisses 
 they experienced that which it is given to a man to 
 feel but once in his lifetime. 
 
 And the kazak was lost I He was lost to 
 Kazak chivalry. Never again will he behold 
 Zaporozhe, nor his father^s house, nor the church 
 of God. The Ukraina will never more behold 
 the bravest of her sons, who have undertaken to 
 defend her. Old Taras will tear a grey tuft 
 from his scalp-lock, and curse the day and the hour 
 in which such a son wa$ born to dishonour him, 
 
CHAPTER SEVEN 
 
VII 
 
 NOISE and movement were rife in the 
 camp of the Zaporozhtzi. At first no 
 one could explain the true reason why 
 the army had managed to enter the city. After- 
 wards It appeared that the Pereyaslavsky barrack, 
 encamped before the side gate of the city, had been 
 dead drunk; so it was no wonder that half of the 
 men had been killed, and the other half bound 
 before they knew what it was all about. While 
 the neighbouring kurens, aroused by the uproar, 
 were grasping their weapons, the army had already 
 passed through the gate, and the rear ranks fired 
 upon the sleepy and only half-sober Zaporozhtzi, 
 who were pressing in disorder upon them. 
 
 The Koshevoi ordered all to be assembled; and 
 when all were standing in a ring, and had removed 
 their caps and become quiet, he said: " Just see, 
 brother nobles, what happened last night! See 
 what drunkenness has led to I See what an Insult 
 the enemy has put upon us! Evidently, It is so 
 arranged with us, that if one kindly doubles your 
 allowance, then you are ready to get drunk, and the 
 
 159 
 
i6o TARAS BULBA 
 
 enemies of Christ can not only take your very 
 trousers off you, but can even sneeze in your faces 
 without your hearing them I " 
 
 The kazaks all stood with drooping heads, 
 knowing well that they were guilty: only one, 
 Kukubenko, the ataman of the Nezamalsky kuren, 
 answered back. "Stop, father!" said he; "al- 
 though it's not lawful to make such a retort when 
 the Koshevol speaks. In the presence of the whole 
 army, yet It Is necessary to say that that wasn't the 
 way of it. You have not been quite just in your 
 reprimand. The kazaks would have been guilty 
 and deserving of death, had they got drunk on the 
 march, during war, or heavy, toilsome labour; 
 but we have been camped down here unoccupied, 
 loitering In vain before the city. It was not a 
 Fast, or any other time of Christian abstinence: 
 how can a man do otherwise than get drunk in idle- 
 ness? There's no sin in that. But we'd better 
 show them what it is to attack innocent people. 
 They first beat us well, and now we'll give them 
 such a beating that they won't carry five of them 
 home again." 
 
 The speech of the barrack ataman pleased the 
 kazaks. They raised their utterly despondent 
 heads upright, and many nodded approvingly, mut- 
 tering: "Kukubenko has spoken well!" And 
 Taras Bulba, who stood not far from the Koshe- 
 
 I 
 
TARAS BULBA i6i 
 
 vol, said : " How now, Koshevoi ? Kukubenko 
 has spoken truth. iWhat have you to say to 
 that?" 
 
 " What have I to say? 'I say, Blessed Be the 
 father who begat such a son! It requires not 
 much wisdom to utter words of reproof; but much 
 wisdom is needed to say such words as, without 
 cursing a man's misfortune, encourage him, restore 
 to him his spirit, put spurs to the horse of his 
 soul, refreshed by watering. I meant myself to 
 speak words of comfort to you, but Kukubenko 
 has forestalled me." 
 
 *' The Koshevoi also has spoken well ! " rang 
 through the ranks of the Zaporozhtzi. " His 
 words are good," repeated others. And even the 
 grey-heads who stood there like dark-blue doves, 
 nodded their heads, and twitching their grey 
 moustaches, said softly: "That word was well 
 spoken ! " 
 
 " Listen now, noble sirs," continued the Koshe- 
 voi. " To take a city, scale it, undermine it as 
 the foreign engineers do. Is the sort of shamming 
 we'll leave to the enemy: that's not proper nor an 
 affair for a kazak. But, judging from appear- 
 ances, the enemy entered the city without many 
 provisions; they hadn't many carts with them. 
 The people in the city are hungry : they will eat up 
 everything In a trice; and the horses will do the 
 
i62 TARAS BULBA 
 
 same with the hay. ... I don't know whether 
 one of their Saints will toss them down anything 
 from heaven with hay-forks: God alone knows 
 that: but their Catholic priests are clever at 
 empty words. By one means or another they will 
 leave the city. Divide yourselves, therefore, Into 
 three forces, and take up your posts before the 
 three gates; five kurens before the principal gate, 
 and three kurens before each of the others. Let 
 the Dyadnlvsky and Korsunsky barracks go into 
 ambush! Colonel Taras and his regiment, into 
 ambush! the Tytarevsky and the Tunnoshevsky 
 kurens, as reserves on the right side of the trans- 
 ports, the Shcherbenovsky and the upper Stebllklv- 
 sky on the left! And select from the ranks the 
 young men of most quarrelsome tongue to gall the 
 foe ! All Lyakhs are an empty-headed lot, and 
 can't endure abuse, and perhaps this very day they 
 will Issue forth from the gates. Let each ataman 
 inspect his kuren: if any are not of full strength, 
 recruit them from the remnants of the Peryaslav- 
 sky kuren. Inspect them all afresh ! Give a loaf 
 and a beaker to each kazak, to sober him. But, 
 surely, every one must be satiated after last night; 
 for all stuffed themselves so that, truth to tell, I'm 
 only surprised that no one burst during the night. 
 And here is one further command: If any Jew 
 rum-seller sells a kazak so much as a single jug of 
 
TARAS BULBA 163 
 
 his vile brandy, I'll nail a plg^s ear to his very fore- 
 head, the dog, and I'll hang him up by the feet I 
 To work, my men, to work! " 
 
 Thus did the Koshevoi issue his orders; and all 
 did him reverence, bowing low, even to his girdle, 
 and without putting on their caps, they set out for 
 their transports and camps; and only after they 
 had gone a considerable distance did they don 
 their caps. All began to equip themselves; they 
 tested their swords and cutlasses, poured powder 
 from the sacks into their powder-flasks, rolled out 
 and arranged the wagons, and picked out their 
 horses. 
 
 On his way to his regiment Taras wondered, 
 and could not explain to himself, what had become 
 of Andrii; had he been captured and bound while 
 asleep, with the others? But no, Andrii was not 
 the man to go alive into captivity. And he was 
 not to be seen among the slaughtered kazaks. 
 Taras pondered deeply, and went past his regiment 
 without being aware that some one had long been 
 calling him by name. 
 
 " Who wants me? " he said, coming to himself 
 at last. Before him stood the Jew Yankel. 
 
 *' Sir Colonel, Sir Colonel! " said the Jew in a 
 hurried, broken voice, as though desirous of re- 
 vealing something not utterly useless. " I've been 
 in the city, Sir Colonel! " 
 
i64 TARAS BULBA 
 
 Taras looked at the Jew, and wondered how he 
 had already succeeded In entering the city. — 
 " What enemy took you there? " 
 
 " I'll tell you at once," said Yankel. " As soon 
 as I heard the uproar at daybreak, and the kazaks 
 began to fire, I seized my kaftan, and without stop- 
 ping to put it on, ran at the top of my speed, 
 thrusting my arms In on the way, because I wanted 
 to know, as soon as possible, the cause of the noise, 
 and why the kazaks were firing at dawn. I took 
 and ran to the very gate of the city, at the moment 
 when the last of the troops were passing through. 
 I look — and at the head of the file Is Cornet 
 Galyandovlch. He is a man well known to me: 
 he has owed me a hundred ducats for more than 
 two years past. I ran after him, as though to 
 claim the debt of him, and so entered the city with 
 them.'' 
 
 " So you entered the city, and wanted him to 
 settle the debt I " said Taras ; " and he didn't order 
 you to be hung on the spot, like a dog? " 
 
 *' God is my witness that he did want to hang 
 me," replied the Jew: "his servants had already 
 seized me, and thrown a rope about my neck. But 
 I besought the nobleman, and said that I would 
 wait for my money as long as he liked, and prom- 
 ised to send him more if only he would help me to 
 collect my debts from the other knights ; for I will 
 
TARAS BULBA 165 
 
 tell your nobility, that the Cornet has not a ducat 
 in his pocket, although he has farms and proper- 
 ties and four castles, and steppe-land that extends 
 clear to Shklov; but he has not a groschen, any 
 more than a kazak. And now, if the Breslau 
 Jews had not fitted him out, he wouldn't have been 
 able to go to the war. That was the reason he 
 didn't go to the Diet." 
 
 "What did you do in the city? Did you see 
 any of our people? " 
 
 "Certainly, many of our people are there: 
 Itzok, Rakhum, Samuel, Khaivalkh, Yevrei the 
 revenue-farmer . . ." 
 
 " May they perish, the dogs I " shouted the en- 
 raged Taras. " Why do you name over your 
 Jew tribe to me? I'm asking you about our 
 Zaporozhtzi." 
 
 "I saw none of our Zaporozhtzi: I saw only 
 Pan 1 Andrii." 
 
 " You saw Andrii I " shouted Bulba. " What's 
 he doing there? Where did you see him? In a 
 dungeon? in a pit? dishonoured? bound? " 
 
 " Who would dare to bind Pan Andrii? Now 
 he's so grand a knight, by God ... I hardly 
 recognised him. Gold on his shoulder-straps, 
 gold on his belt, gold everywhere, always gold: 
 
 '^Pan is the Polish word used when speaking of men of 
 gentle or noble birth, I. F. H, 
 
i66 TARAS BULBA 
 
 as when the sun shines In spring, and every bird 
 begins to chirp, and sing In the orchards, so Is he 
 shining all over with gold. And his horse, which 
 the Voevod himself gave him, Is the very 
 best: the horse alone Is worth two hundred 
 ducats." 
 
 Bulba was petrified. *' Why has he put on 
 strange garments? " 
 
 " He has put them on because they are finer. 
 And he rides about, and the others ride about, and 
 he teaches them, and they teach him; like the very 
 richest sort of a Polish panj' 
 
 " Who has forced him to this? " 
 
 ** I shouldn't say that he had been forced. 
 Doesn't the noble lord know that he went over to 
 them of his own free will? " 
 
 "Who went over?" 
 
 " Why, Pan Andril." 
 
 "Went where?" 
 
 "Went over to their side: he's entirely theirs, 
 now." 
 
 " You He, you hog's ear! " 
 
 " How is It possible that I should He? Am I a 
 fool that I should lie? Would I He at the risk of 
 my head ? Don't I know that Jews are hung like 
 dogs If they He to noble lords? " 
 
 " Then this means that, in your opinion, he has 
 betrayed his fatherland and his Faith? " 
 
TARAS BULB A 167 
 
 " I don't say that he has betrayed anything: I 
 merely said that he had gone over to them." 
 
 '' You He, you devil of a Jew ! Such a deed was 
 never known in a Christian land. You're getting 
 things mixed up, you dog! " 
 
 " May grass grow upon the threshold of my 
 house if I am mixing things ! May every one spit 
 upon the grave of my father, my mother, my 
 father's father-in-law, and my mother's father, if 
 I am mixing things! If the noble lord wishes, I 
 can even tell him why he went over to them." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 ** The Voevod has a beautiful daughter. Holy 
 God ! what a beauty I " Here the Jew tried his 
 best to depict beauty in his own person, throwing 
 out his hands, screwing up his eyes, and twisting 
 his mouth to one side, as though testing something 
 by tasting it. 
 
 "Well, what of that?" 
 
 " He did it, went over to them, for her sake. 
 When a man's in love, then he's just like a boot- 
 sole, which, if you soak it, you can bend in any 
 direction, and it will yield." 
 
 Bulba pondered deeply. He remembered that 
 the power of weak woman is great — that she had 
 ruined many a strong man, that this was the weak 
 point in Andrii's nature — and he stood long in 
 one place, as though rooted to the spot. 
 
i68 TARAS BULBA 
 
 ** Listen, noble lord, and I will tell the noble lord 
 all," said the Jew. " As soon as I heard the up- 
 roar, and saw them going through the city gate, 
 I caught up a string of pearls, in case of any 
 emergency. For there are beauties and noble- 
 women there ; ^ and if there are beauties and noble- 
 women,' I said to myself, * they will buy pearls, 
 even if they have nothing to eat.' And, as soon 
 as ever the Cornet's servants set me at liberty, I 
 hastened to the Voevod's palace to sell my pearls. 
 I asked all manner of questions of the Tatar serv- 
 ing-woman: the wedding is to take place as soon 
 as they have driven off the Zaporozhtzl. Pan 
 Andril has promised to drive off the Zaporozhtzl." 
 
 " And you didn't slay him on the spot, you 
 devil's brat? " shouted Bulba. 
 
 " Why should I kill him ? He went over of his 
 own free will. What's his crime? He liked it 
 better there, so he went there." 
 
 *' And you saw him face to face? " 
 
 *' Face to face, as God is my witness! Such a 
 magnificent warrior! more splendid than all the 
 rest. God grant him health, he knew me at once; 
 and when I approached him he said immedi- 
 ately . . ." 
 
 *^ What did he say?" 
 
 " He said — First he beckoned me with his 
 finger, and then he said, * Yankel ! ' and I, ' Pan 
 
TARAS BULBA 169 
 
 Andrii I * said I. ' Yankel, tell my father, tell my 
 brother, tell all the kazaks, all the Zaporozhtzl, 
 everybody, that my father Is no longer my father, 
 nor my brother my brother, nor my comrades my 
 comrades; and that I mean to fight them all, 
 all!''* 
 
 "You lie, you devil of a Judas!" shouted 
 Taras, beside himself with rage. " You lie, dog! 
 I'll kill you, Satan! Get away from here ! if not, 
 death awaits you ! " So saying, Taras unsheathed 
 his sword. 
 
 The frightened Jew set off instantly, at the full 
 speed of his shrunken legs. He ran for a long 
 time without looking back, through the Kazak 
 camp, and then far out on the deserted plain, al- 
 though Taras did not pursue him at all, reasoning 
 that it was foolish to vent his rage on the first per- 
 son who came to hand. Then he recollected that 
 he had seen Andrii on the night before, traversing 
 the camp with some woman ; and he bowed his grey 
 head. And still he would not believe that so dis- 
 graceful a thing could have happened, and that his 
 own son had sold his Faith and his soul. 
 
 Finally, he led his regiment into ambush, and 
 hid himself, with it behind a forest — the only one 
 which had not been burned by the kazaks. But 
 the Zaporozhtzi, foot and horse, set out for the 
 three gates by three different roads; one after 
 
I70 TARAS BULBA 
 
 another the kurens turned out: the Umansky, 
 Popovichevsky, Konevsky, Steblikovsky, Nezamai- 
 kovsky, Gurgaziy, Tytarevsky, Tymoshevsky. 
 The Perevaslavsky alone was wanting. Its 
 kazaks had smoked and drunk it to its fate. One 
 awoke to find himself bound in the enemy's hands; 
 another never woke at all, but went in his slumber 
 into the damp earth; and the Ataman Khlib, him- 
 self, minus his trousers and outward adornments, 
 found himself in the camp of the Lyakhs. 
 
 The uproar among the kazaks was heard in the 
 city. Every one hastened to the ramparts, and a 
 lively spectacle was presented to the kazaks. 
 Polish warriors, each handsomer than the other, 
 stood on the wall. Their bronze helmets shone 
 like the sun, and were adorned with feathers white 
 as swans. Others wore light caps, pink or blue, 
 with crowns which drooped over one ear; kaftans 
 with the sleeves thrown back, either embroidered 
 with gold or simply garnished with cords. Their 
 swords and guns were richly chased, and the noble 
 lords had paid huge prices for them; they had, 
 also, many equipments of every sort. In front 
 stood the heavy Budzhakovsky Colonel, haughtily, 
 in his red cap ornamented with gold. The 
 Colonel was taller and stouter than all the rest, and 
 his rich and voluminous kaftan was a tight fit. 
 On the other hand, almost by the side of the gate, 
 
TARAS BULBA 171' 
 
 stood another Colonel, a small, drled-up man ; but 
 his little, piercing eyes gleamed sharply from under 
 his thick and shaggily overgrown brows, and he 
 turned quickly on all sides, gesticulating energeti- 
 cally with his thin, withered hand, and distributing 
 his commands. It was evident that, in spite of 
 his tiny body, he understood the art of war 
 thoroughly. Not far from him stood a very tall 
 Cornet, with thick moustaches, and he did not seem 
 to lack colour in his face: the noble lord was fond 
 of strong mead and hearty revelry. And behind 
 these were visible many noblemen of all degrees, 
 who had equipped themselves, some with their 
 own ducats, some at the expense of the royal treas- 
 ury, some with money from the Jews, by pawning 
 everything they had in their ancestral castles. 
 Many, also, were the senatorial parasites, whom 
 the Senators took with them to dinners, to make a 
 fine show, and who stole silver cups from the table 
 and the sideboard, and, after the day's show was 
 over, mounted some gentleman's coach-box and 
 drove his horses. There were many of all sorts 
 there. In some cases they had not enough money 
 to pay for a drink, yet they were all fitted out for 
 war. 
 
 The kazak ranks stood quietly in front of the 
 walls. There was no gold about any of them, 
 except here and there, perhaps, a glint of it on the 
 
172 TARAS BULBA 
 
 hilt of a sword or the mount of a gun. The 
 kazaks were not addicted to decking themselves 
 out gaily for battle : their chain-armour and their 
 doublets were plain, and their black, red-crowned 
 caps glowed darkly afar. 
 
 Two kazaks rode out from the ranks of the 
 Zaporozhtzl. One was quite young, the other 
 was older; both were fierce In words, and not bad 
 specimens of kazaks In action — Okhrim Nash, 
 and Myklta Golokopytenko. Behind them rode 
 Demid Popovlch, a stalwart kazak, who had been 
 hanging about the Syech for a long time, who had 
 been present at the siege of Adrlanople, and under- 
 gone a great deal In the course of his existence. 
 He had been burned In the conflagration, and had 
 run away to the Syech, with tarred and blackened 
 head and singed moustaches. But Popovlch had 
 become stout, had grown long locks of hair behind 
 his ears, had raised moustaches black as pitch, and 
 was a gallant fellow when it came to biting 
 speeches, was Popovlch. 
 
 " Aha, red kaftans on all the army — • but what 
 rd like to know Is, whether the strength of the 
 troops matches them ! '' 
 
 " I'll give it to you I '* shouted the fat Colonel 
 from above. ** Fll bind you all I Surrender your 
 guns and horses, slaves! Have you seen how I 
 
TARAS BULBA 173 
 
 bound your men? — Bring out the Zaporozhtzi on 
 the ramparts for them to see ! '' 
 
 And the Zaporozhtzi were led out, pinioned with 
 ropes. 
 
 At their head stood the ataman of the barrack, 
 KhHb, without his trousers and outward adorn- 
 ments, exactly as they had captured him in his 
 drunken sleep. And the ataman bowed his head 
 earthward In shame before the kazaks, at his 
 nakedness, and at having been taken prisoner like 
 a dog while asleep. His powerful head had 
 turned grey over night. 
 
 *' Grieve not, Khlib ! we'll rescue you 1 " shouted 
 the kazaks from below. 
 
 ** Grieve not, dear friend ! '* shouted Ataman 
 Borodaty. " It's not your fault that they caught 
 you naked: that's a misfortune which may happen 
 to any man. But It's a disgrace to them that they 
 have exposed you to dishonour, and not covered 
 your nakedness decently." 
 
 " You seem to be a brave army when you catch 
 people asleep," remarked Golokopytenko, glanc- 
 ing at the ramparts. 
 
 " Walt, we'll clip your top-knots for you ! " 
 
 " I'd like to see them clip our scalp-locks I " 
 said Popovich, prancing about before them on his 
 horse; then, glancing at his comrades, he said: 
 
174 TARAS BULB A 
 
 "Well, perhaps the Lyakhs speak the truth: if 
 that fat-bellied fellow yonder leads them, they'll 
 all find a good shelter behind him." 
 
 " Why do you think they'll find a good 
 shelter?" asked the kazaks, aware that Popovich 
 was preparing to launch some cutting remark. 
 
 " Because the whole army can hide behind him; 
 and two devils couldn't help you to reach anybody 
 with your spear from behind that belly of his ! " 
 
 All the kazaks burst out laughing, and many of 
 them shook their heads, saying: "What a fel- 
 low that Popovich Is, If any one wants to turn a 
 phrase ! — Only, now " — But the Kazaks did not 
 explain what they meant by that now. 
 
 " Fall back, fall back quickly from the wall ! " 
 shouted the Koshevoi; for It appeared that the 
 Lyakhs could not endure these biting words, and 
 the Colonel waved his hand. 
 
 The kazaks had barely retreated from the wall 
 when grape-shot rained down. 
 
 On the ramparts all was excitement, and the 
 grey-haired Voevod himself made his appearance 
 on horseback. The gates swung open, and the 
 army sallied forth. In front came the mounted 
 hussars. Behind them, the men In armour, then 
 all those with brazen helmets; after them rode 
 singly the highest nobility, each man dressed as 
 pleased him best. The haughty nobles would not 
 
TARAS BULBA 175 
 
 mingle with the others In the ranks, and those who 
 had no commands rode alone with their retinues. 
 After these came more companies, and after these 
 still, emerged the Cornet, then more files of men, 
 and then the fat Colonel; and quite in the rear of 
 the whole army came, last of all, the little Colonel. 
 " Stop them ! Keep them from drawing up, from 
 forming in line ! " shouted the Koshevoi : *' Let 
 all the kurens attack them at once ! Abandon the 
 other gates ! Tytarevsky kuren, fall on one flank I 
 Dyadkovsky kuren, fall on the other! Attack 
 them in the rear, Kukubenko and Palivoda! 
 Stop them, stop them ! Separate them ! " And the 
 kazaks attacked on all sides, killing the Lyakhs, 
 throwing them Into confusion, and being thrown 
 into confusion themselves. They did not even 
 give them time to fire : It came to swords and 
 spears at once. All merged together In a heap, 
 and each man had an opportunity to distinguish 
 himself. 
 
 Demid Popovlch ran three common soldiers 
 through, and knocked two of the highest nobles 
 from their horses, saying: ''Here are good 
 horses! I have long wanted to get hold of just 
 such horses ! " And he drove the horses far 
 afield, shouting to the kazaks who were standing 
 about to catch them. Then he flung himself again 
 into the mass, fell again upon the fallen nobles^ 
 
176 TARAS BULBA 
 
 killed one, and flung his lasso round the neck of the 
 other, tied him to his saddle, and dragged him all 
 over the plain, after having taken from him his 
 sword with a rich hilt, and removed from his girdle 
 a whole coin-bag of ducats. 
 
 Kobita, a good kazak, and still very young, en- 
 gaged one of the bravest men in the Polish army 
 in single combat, and they fought long together. 
 They had come to fisticuffs, and the kazak had 
 nearly conquered his foe, and, throwing him down, 
 stabbed him in the breast with his sharp Turkish 
 knife. But he did not guard himself properly: 
 at that moment a hot bullet struck him on the 
 temple. The man who struck him down was the 
 most distinguished of the nobles, the handsomest 
 knight of an ancient and princely race. Like a 
 stately column he bestrode his light bay steed. 
 And many deeds of daring did this boyar perform : 
 he clove two kazaks in twain; Feodor Korzh, the 
 brave kazak, he overthrew together with his horse; 
 then he shot the horse and picked the kazak off 
 the animal with his spear; many heads and hands 
 did he hew off; and he slew kazak Kobita, sending 
 a bullet through his temple. 
 
 " There's the man I'd like to measure forces 
 with I " shouted Kukubenko, the ataman of the 
 Nezamaikovsky kuren. Spurring on his horse, he 
 flew straight at his back, and shouted loudly, so 
 
TARAS BULBA I177 
 
 that all who stood near shuddered at that un- 
 earthly yell. The Lyakh tried to turn his horse 
 quickly, and face him, but the horse did not obey: 
 frightened by the terrible cry, it sprang aside, and 
 the Lyakh received Kukubenko's fire. The hot 
 ball struck him in the shoulder-blade, and he rolled 
 from his horse. 
 
 But even then the Lyakh did not surrender: he 
 still strove to deal his enemy a blow, but his hand 
 grew weak and fell with his sword. Then Kuku- 
 benko, taking his heavy sword in both hands, thrust 
 it into his mouth, already grown pallid. The 
 sword, breaking out two teeth, cut the tongue in 
 twain, pierced the windpipe, and penetrated deep 
 into the ground; and so he pinned him there for- 
 ever to the damp earth. His noble blood, scarlet 
 as viburnum berries beside the river, welled up in 
 a fountain, and stained his yellow, gold-embroid- 
 ered kaftan. But Kukubenko had already left 
 him, and was forcing his way, with his Nezamal- 
 kovsky kuren, towards another group. 
 
 " Eh, he didn't appropriate those splendid ac- 
 coutrements I " said Borodaty, ataman of the 
 Umansky kuren, leaving his men and going to the 
 place where lay the nobleman slain by Kukubenko. 
 " Fve killed seven nobles with my own hand, but 
 such accoutrements I have never beheld on any 
 one." And, tempted by greed, Borodaty bent 
 
178 TARAS BULBA 
 
 down to remove the rich armour, and forthwith 
 pulled out the knight's Turkish knife, set with 
 precious stones, loosed from his belt the purse of 
 ducats, and from his breast a wallet with fine linen, 
 silver and a maiden's curl, carefully cherished as a 
 souvenir. But Borodaty did not hear the red- 
 nosed Cornet rushing upon him from the rear; he 
 had already once hurled him from the saddle, and 
 bestowed on him a fine gash by way of remem- 
 brance. He flourished his arm with all his might, 
 and brought his sword down on the bended neck. 
 Greed led to no good: the strong head rolled off, 
 and the body fell headless, sprinkling the earth far 
 and wide. The grim kazak soul soared heaven- 
 ward, grimacing, indignant, amazed at having so 
 suddenly quitted so stalwart a body. Before the 
 Cornet managed to seize the ataman's head by its 
 scalp-lock and fasten It to his saddle, a savage 
 avenger arrived. 
 
 As a vulture hovering In the sky, beating great 
 circles with its mighty wings, suddenly remains 
 poised in air, in one spot, and thence darts down 
 like an arrow upon the shrieking cock quail beside 
 the road; just so did Taras's son Ostap fly sud- 
 denly upon the kazak, and fling a rope about his 
 neck with one cast. The Cornet's red face grew a 
 still deeper crimson when the cruel noose pressed 
 his throat, and he tried to seize his pistol; but his 
 
TARAS BULBA 179 
 
 convulsively contracted hand could not direct the 
 shot, and the bullet flew wild across the plain. 
 Ostap immediately unfastened a silken cord which 
 the Cornet carried at his saddle-bow to bind prison- 
 ers, and with his own cord bound him hand and 
 foot, attached the cord to his saddle, and dragged 
 him across the plain, calling all the kazaks of the 
 Umansky kuren to come and render the last honour 
 to their ataman. 
 
 When the Umantzy heard that the ataman of 
 their kuren, Borodaty, was no longer among the 
 living, they deserted the field of battle, and rushed 
 to recover his body; and they consulted Immedi- 
 ately as to whom they should elect to be their 
 leader. At last they said : *' But why discuss the 
 matter? It is impossible to appoint a better 
 leader than Bulbars Ostap : he's younger than any 
 of us, it's true; but his judgment is that of an old 
 man." 
 
 Ostap, doffing his cap, thanked all his kazaks 
 for the honour, and did not decline, either on the 
 score of his youth, or of his youthful judgment, 
 knowing well that wartime Is not a fitting season 
 to waste oneself on such things; but he instantly 
 led them straight at the throng and proceeded to 
 show them all that not In vain had they elected him 
 ataman. The Lyakhs realised that the engagement 
 was growing too hot for them, and retreated across 
 
i8o TARAS BULBA 
 
 the plain, with the intention of re-forming at its 
 other extremity. But the little Colonel signalled 
 to four fresh companies close to the gate, and they 
 rained down grape-shot on the kazak throng; but 
 very few men were hit: their shot took effect on 
 the kazak oxen, who were gazing wildly at the 
 battle. The frightened oxen bellowed, turned on 
 the camps, smashed the wagons, and trampled 
 many persons under foot. But Taras, emerging 
 from ambush at the moment, with his troops, 
 rushed forward with a yell to Intercept them. He 
 headed off the entire infuriated herd which, 
 startled by his yell, swooped down upon the Po- 
 lish regiments, overthrew the cavalry, and crushed 
 and dispersed them all. 
 
 " O, thank you, oxen ! " cried the Zaporozhtzi : 
 " you served us on the march, and now you have 
 served us In war." And they attacked the foe 
 with renewed vigour. They slew many of the 
 enemy. Many distinguished themselves, — Mete- 
 litza, Shilo, both of the Pisarenkos, Vovtuzenko, 
 and not a few others. The Lyakhs perceived that 
 matters were going ill, flung away their banners, 
 and shouted for the city gates to be opened. 
 Creaking, the Iron-bound gates opened and re- 
 ceived the weary and dust-covered riders, flocking 
 In like sheep Into the fold. Many of the Zapo- 
 rozhtzi started to pursue them ; but Ostap stopped 
 
TARAS BULBA i8i 
 
 his Umantzl, saying, " Keep off ! keep further 
 away from the wall, brother nobles I 'Tis not well 
 to approach them too closely." And he spoke 
 truly; for from the ramparts there began to rain 
 and pour down everything which came to hand, 
 and a great many were struck. At that moment, 
 the Koshevoi rode up, and praised Ostap, saying, 
 " He's a new ataman, but he's leading the army 
 like an old one." Old Bulba glanced round to 
 see who the new ataman might be, and beheld 
 Ostap sitting on his horse at the head of the 
 Umantzl, his cap cocked on one ear, and the ata- 
 man's staff in his hand. 
 
 " Who ever saw the like ! " he exclaimed, as he 
 gazed at him; and the old man rejoiced, and began 
 to thank all the Umantzl for the honour they had 
 conferred on his son. 
 
 The kazaks retired again, and were preparing 
 to go into camp; but the Lyakhs showed them- 
 selves again on the city ramparts with tattered 
 mantles. There was clotted blood on many rich 
 kaftans, and the beautiful bronze helmets were 
 covered with dust. 
 
 " Have you bound us ? " shouted the Zaporozh- 
 tzi to them from below. 
 
 "I'll give it to you!" shouted back the fat 
 Colonel from above, shaking a rope at them; and 
 the weary, dust-covered warriors ceased not to 
 
1 82 TARAS BULB A 
 
 threaten, while the most exasperating on both 
 sides exchanged fierce remarks. 
 
 At last all dispersed. One, weary with battle, 
 stretched himself out to rest; another sprinkled his 
 wounds with earth, and tore up for bandages ker- 
 chiefs and rich garments captured from the enemy. 
 Others, who were less exhausted, began to sort 
 over the corpses, and to render them the last 
 honours. They dug graves with their swords and 
 spears, brought earth in their caps and the skirts 
 of their garments, laid the kazaks' bodies out 
 decently, and buried them in fresh earth, in order 
 that the ravens and the eagles might not claw out 
 their eyes. But binding the corpses of the Lyakhs 
 by tens, as they came to hand, to the tails of wild 
 horses, they let these loose on the plain, pursued 
 them, and lashed them for a long time on their 
 flanks. The infuriated horses flew over furrow 
 and hillock, through gullies and streams, and 
 thrashed the bodies of the Poles, all covered with 
 blood and dust, against the earth. 
 
 Then all the kurens sat down in circles in the 
 evening, and talked long of their deeds, and of the 
 feats which had fallen to the share of each, for 
 eternal repetition by newcomers and by posterity. 
 It was long before they lay down to sleep; and 
 longer still before old Taras, meditating what it 
 might signify that Andrii was not among the 
 
TARAS BULB A 183 
 
 enemy's warriors, lay down. Had Judas been 
 ashamed to come forth against his countrymen? or 
 had the Jew deceived him, and had he simply been 
 made a captive against his will? But then he 
 recollected that Andril's heart was boundlessly 
 susceptible to feminine speeches: he felt ashamed, 
 and swore a mighty oath in spirit against the fair 
 Pole who had bewitched his son. And he would 
 have put his oath into execution. He would not 
 have so much as glanced at her beauty, he would 
 have pulled her forth by her thick and splendid 
 hair; he would have dragged her after him all over 
 the plain, among all the kazaks. Her splendid 
 shoulders and bosom, white as fresh-fallen snow 
 upon the mountain-tops, would have been bat- 
 tered against the earth, and all covered with blood 
 and dust. He would have dispersed her sumptu- 
 ous, lovely body, in fragments. But Taras did 
 not know what God was preparing for man on the 
 morrow, and began to forget himself with drowsi- 
 ness, and finally fell asleep. But the kazaks still 
 went on talking among themselves; and the sober 
 sentinel stood all night long beside the fire, never 
 closing his eyes, and looking intently on all sides. 
 
CHAPTER EIGHT 
 
VIII 
 
 THE sun had not scaled half the height of 
 heaven when all the kazaks assembled In 
 a group. News had arrived from the 
 Syech that the Tatars, during the kazaks' absence, 
 had plundered It thoroughly, had dug up the treas- 
 ures which the kazaks kept burled In the ground, 
 had killed or carried away Into captivity all who 
 remained, and had straightway set out, with all the 
 flocks and droves of horses they had collected, for 
 Perekop. 
 
 One kazak only, Maksim Golodukha, had torn 
 himself out of the Tatars' hands on the road, had 
 stabbed the MIrza, had unbound his bag of 
 sequins, and on a Tatar horse. In Tatar garments, 
 had fled before his pursuers for two nights and a 
 day and a half, ridden his horse to death, changed 
 to another, killed that one also, and arrived at the 
 Zaporozhlan camp upon a third, having learned 
 on the way that the Zaporozhtzi were before 
 Dubno. He only succeeded In informing them 
 that this misfortune had happened, but how It had 
 happened, — whether the Zaporozhtzi who had re- 
 mained behind had been carousing in kazak 
 
 187 
 
i88 TARAS BULBA 
 
 fashion, and had been carried drunk into captivity, 
 and how the Tatars had learned in what spot the 
 treasures of the Army were buried, — he said noth- 
 ing. The kazak was extremely tired; he was all 
 swollen, and his face was burned and scorched by 
 the wind; he fell down at once, and a deep sleep 
 overpowered him. 
 
 In such cases it was customary for the Koshevoi 
 to pursue the brigands on the instant, endeavour- 
 ing to overtake them on the road ; for, the prison- 
 ers might find themselves promptly in the bazaars 
 of Asia Minor, in Smyrna, or the Island of Crete, 
 and God knows in what places the scalp-locked 
 heads of Zaporozhtzi might not be seen. This 
 was the reason of the kazaks assembling. They 
 all stood, to a man, with their caps on; for they 
 were not come together at the word of command of 
 their ruling ataman, but to take counsel together 
 as equals with equals. " Let the old men first 
 advise ! " rose a shout from the crowd. " Let the 
 Koshevoi give his opinion I " said others. 
 
 And the Koshevoi, doffing his cap, not as com- 
 mander, but as a comrade among comrades, 
 thanked all the kazaks for the honour, and said: 
 " There are among us many old men, and those 
 who are wiser in counsel; but since you have 
 deemed me worthy, this is my advice : not to lose 
 any time, comrades, but to pursue the Tatars, for 
 
TARAS BULB A 189 
 
 you know, yourselves, what sort of a man the Tatar 
 is. He will not pause with his stolen booty to 
 await our coming, but will vanish in a twinkling, 
 so that you can find no trace of him. Therefore, 
 this is my counsel: Go. We have already 
 diverted ourselves sufficiently here. The Lyakhs 
 know what the kazaks are like. We have avenged 
 our Faith to the extent of our powers ; there's not 
 much to satisfy greed in this famished city. And 
 so my advice is : Go." 
 
 " Go I " rang heavily through the Zaporozhian 
 kurens. But such words did not suit Taras Bulbars 
 mood at all; and he brought his frowning, Iron- 
 grey brows still lower down over his eyes, like 
 bushes growing on a dark, lofty mountain, whose 
 crests are suddenly covered with prickly northern 
 frost. 
 
 " No, Koshevoi, your counsel Is not good," said 
 he. " You have not spoken aright. Evidently, 
 you have forgotten that our men captured by the 
 Lyakhs will remain prisoners? Evidently you 
 wish that we should not respect the first holy law 
 of comradeship ; that we should leave our brethren 
 to be flayed alive, or to be carried about through 
 the towns and villages after their kazak bodies 
 have been quartered, as was done with the Het- 
 man, and the bravest warriors In the Ukralna. 
 Have not they already blasphemed sufficiently 
 
190 TARAS BULBA 
 
 against the holy things without that? What are 
 we ? I ask you all, what sort of a kazak would he 
 be who should desert his comrade in misfortune, 
 and let him perish like a dog In a foreign land? 
 If it has come to such a pass that no one has any 
 confidence In kazak honour, permitting himself to 
 spit upon his grey moustache, and upbraid him 
 with offensive words, then no one will blame me. 
 I will remain here alone." 
 
 All the Zaporozhtzl then who stood there 
 wavered. 
 
 ** And have you forgotten, brave colonel," saic 
 the Koshevol, ** that the Tatars also have our coi 
 rades in their hands ; that if we do not rescue thei 
 now, they will be sold Into everlasting captlvll 
 among the infidels, which is worse than the mosj 
 cruel death? Have you forgotten that they no^ 
 hold all our treasure, won by Christian blood? 
 
 All the kazaks pondered, and knew not what t< 
 say. None of them wished to merit disgracefi 
 renown. Then there stepped out in front of thei 
 the oldest in years of all the Zaporozhian army,] 
 Kasyan Bovdyug. He was respected by all the 
 kazaks. Twice had he been elected Koshevol, and 
 he had also been a very brave kazak in the wars : 
 but he had long been old, and had been upon no 
 expeditions, neither did the old man like to give 
 advice to any one ; but he loved to lie constantly on 
 
m 
 
 TARAS BULBA 191 
 
 his side in the circle of kazaks, listening to the tale 
 of every occurrence on the kazak marches. He 
 never joined in the conversation, but merely 
 listened, and with his finger pressed the ashes down 
 In the short pipe which never left his mouth; and 
 then he would sit long, with his eyes half open, and 
 the kazaks never knew whether he were asleep or 
 still listening. He always stayed at home during 
 their expeditions, but on this occasion, the whim to 
 take part had seized upon the old man. He waved 
 his hand, in kazak fashion, and said, "So be it! 
 I'm going also; perhaps I may be of some service 
 to the kazak nation." All the kazaks fell silent 
 when he now stepped forward before the assembly, 
 for it was long since any speech from him had been 
 heard. Each man wanted to know what Bovdyug 
 had to say. 
 
 " It's my turn to speak a word, brother nobles," 
 e began: " listen, my lads, to an old man. The 
 Koshevoi spoke wisely, and as the head of the 
 Kazak army, and bound to protect It; and regret- 
 ting the treasures of the army, he could have said 
 nothing wiser. That's a fact! That's my first 
 speech. And now barken to my second — and 
 this is my second speech : Colonel Taras has spoken 
 even more truly, God grant him many years, and 
 that such colonels as he may be plentiful in the 
 Ukraina ! The first duty and the first honour of 
 
192 TARAS BULBA 
 
 a kazak is to uphold comradeship. Never in all 
 my life, brother nobles, have I heard of any kazak 
 deserting or selling any of his comrades. The 
 men there and the men here are equally our com- 
 rades, whether they be few or many, and all are 
 dear to us. So this is my speech: Let those to 
 whom the prisoners captured by the Tatars are 
 dear, set out after the Tatars; and let those to 
 whom the captives of the Poles are dear, and who 
 do not wish to desert a righteous cause, stay be- 
 hind. The Koshevoi, in accordance with his duty, 
 will accompany one half in pursuit of the Tatars, 
 and the other half may choose a temporary ata- 
 man to lead them. But if you will heed the words 
 of an old man, there is no one more fit to act as 
 temporary ataman than Taras Bulba. Not one 
 of us is his equal in valour." 
 
 Thus spoke Bovdyug, and paused; and all the 
 kazaks rejoiced that the old man had, in this man- 
 ner, set them to rights. All tossed up their caps, 
 and shouted : " Thanks, batko ! ^ He has been 
 
 "^Batko is the Little Russian form of battushka, and means 
 " father " in the same way that the old English gaffer, derived 
 from grandfather, was used as a term of respect. All priests 
 are addressed as "batiushka," and a priest's wife is addressed 
 and alluded to as the corresponding, "matushka"; and the 
 two words are (as Count L. N. Tolstoy once said to me) "the 
 only genuine Russian * titles.' " Nevertheless, if one were to 
 translate the two words as "father" and "mother," Russians 
 
TARAS BULBA 193 
 
 silent, — silent for a long time, but he has spoken 
 at last. Not in vain did he say, when we were 
 preparing for this expedition, that he might be use- 
 ful to the kazak nation: even so has it come to 
 pass! " 
 
 " Well, are you agreed upon anything? " asked 
 the Koshevol. 
 
 " We are ! " shouted the kazaks. 
 
 " Then the Council is at an end? '' 
 
 " It is! " shouted the kazaks. 
 
 " Then listen to the military command, my 
 lads," said the Koshevol, stepping forward, and 
 putting on his cap; and all the kazaks took off their 
 caps, and stood with heads uncovered and eyes 
 fixed upon the earth, as was always the custom 
 among the kazaks when the leader prepared to 
 speak. *' Now divide yourselves, brother nobles ! 
 Let those who wish to go take their stand on the 
 right, and those who wish to stay on the left. 
 
 'here the majority of a kuren goes, there the rest 
 
 •e to go; if a minority of a kuren goes over, it 
 bust be added to another kuren." 
 
 And they began to take up their positions, some 
 ^n the right, some on the left. Whither the ma- 
 
 mld wax hilarious; and as we do not use "gaflPer" in 
 lerica, and have no corresponding term of affectionate re- 
 ject, readers must accept "batko" and this explanation. 
 
 F. n. 
 
194 TARAS BULBA 
 
 jority of a kuren went, there the ataman went also; 
 and where there was a minority, the kuren attached 
 itself to another kuren ; and it came out pretty even 
 on both sides. Those who wished to remain were 
 nearly the whole of the Nezamalkovsky kuren, the 
 larger half of the Popovichevsky kuren, the entire 
 Umansky kuren, the entire Kanevsky kuren, and 
 the larger half of the Stebllkivsky and Timoshev- 
 sky kurens. All the rest offered to go In pursuit 
 of the Tatars. On both sides were many stalwart 
 and valorous kazaks. Among those who decided 
 to pursue the Tatars were Cherevaty, and the good 
 old kazaks, Pokotypole, Lemish, and Khoma Prok- 
 opovlch. Demid Popovich also went in that party, 
 because he was a kazak of a very restless disposi- 
 tion, and he could not stay still long in one place : 
 he had tried his hand on the Lyakhs, and now 
 wanted to try it on the Tatars also. The atamans 
 of kurens were Nostyugan, Pokryshka, Nevynsky, 
 any many other brave and renowned kazaks who 
 wished to put their swords and their brawny shoul- 
 ders to the test In an encounter with the Tatars. 
 There were, likewise, very brave kazaks not a 
 few among those who elected to remain: the 
 kuren atamans Demytrovich, Kukubenko, Verty- 
 khvlst, Balan, and Bulbars Ostap. Besides these 
 there were many valiant and distinguished kazaks: 
 Yovtuzenko, Cherevychenko, Stepan Guska, Okh- 
 
TARAS BULBA 195 
 
 Tim Guska, Mykola Gustyl, Zodorozhnli, Mete- 
 litza, Ivan Zakrutyguba, Mosii Shilo, Degtyar- 
 enko, Sydorenko, Pisarenko, a second PIsarenko, 
 and still another Pisarenko, and many other good 
 kazaks. All of them had had great experience and 
 had travelled far and wide ; they had been on the 
 shores of Anatolia, on the salt marshes and the 
 steppes of the Crimea, on all the rivers, great and 
 small which empty into the Dnyeper, and on all the 
 fords and Islands of the Dnyeper : they had been in 
 Moldavia, Valakhia, and the Turkish land; they 
 had sailed all over the Black Sea in their double- 
 ruddered kazak boats; they had attacked with fifty 
 skiffs in line the tallest and richest ships; they had 
 sunk many a Turkish galley, and had burned much, 
 very much powder in their day ; more than once had 
 they torn up velvets and rich stuffs of cotton and 
 silk for foot-wrappers; many a time had they 
 beaten out buckles for the straps which confined 
 their full trousers, from the sequins of pure gold. 
 And every one of them had drunk up and revelled 
 away as much as would have sufficed any other man 
 for a whole lifetime, and there was nothing to show 
 for it. They had squandered it all, like kazaks, 
 in treating all the world, and in hiring music so 
 that every one might be merry. Even now rare 
 was the man among them who had not some 
 property: tankards, silver porringers, bracelets, 
 
196 TARAS BULBA 
 
 buried under the reeds on the islands of the 
 Dnyeper In order that the Tatars might not find 
 them If, In case of disaster, they should succeed In 
 making a sudden attack on the Syech; but It would 
 have been difficult for a Tatar to find them, for the 
 owner himself was already beginning to forget 
 where he had burled them. Such were the kazaks 
 who wished to remain and take vengeance on the 
 Lyakhs for their trusty comrades and the Faith of 
 Christ I The aged kazak Bovdyug also wished to 
 remain with them, saying: "My years do not 
 permit me to pursue the Tatars, but this Is the 
 place where I may lie down In a good kazak death. 
 Long have I prayed to God that when my life was 
 to end, I might end It In a war for a holy and 
 Christian cause. And so It has come to pass. 
 There can be no more glorious end In any other 
 place for the old kazak." 
 
 When they had all separated, and had ranged 
 themselves In two lines on opposite sides, the 
 Koshevol passed through the ranks, and said: 
 *' Well, brother nobles, are the two parties satisfied 
 with each other?'* 
 
 *' Yes, all satisfied, batko I " replied the kazaks. 
 
 " Then kiss one another, and say good-bye ; for 
 God knows whether you will ever see each other 
 again In this life. Obey your Ataman, and do 
 
TARAS BULBA 197 
 
 what your duty bids you. You yourselves know 
 what kazak honour commands." 
 
 And all the kazaks began to exchange kisses. 
 The atamans were the first to begin : stroking down 
 their grey moustaches, they kissed each other in 
 cross-form, then grasping each other's hands, and 
 squeezing them firmly, each wanted to say to the 
 other : " Well, Sir brother, shall we meet again 
 or not ? '* But they did not ask the question : they 
 kept silent, and both greyheads speculated on the 
 future. Then the kazaks took leave of one an- 
 other, to the last man, knowing well that both 
 parties had a great deal of work before them. 
 But they were not obliged to part at once,-^ they 
 had to wait until dark night, in order that the 
 enemy might not notice the diminution in the 
 kazak army. Then they all went off, by kurens, 
 to dine. 
 
 After dinner, all who had the journey before 
 them lay down to rest, and fell into a deep and long 
 sleep, as though foreseeing that it was, perhaps, 
 the last sleep they would taste In such freedom. 
 They slept even until sunset; and when the sun 
 had gone down, and twilight had descended to a 
 certain degree, they began to grease their carts. 
 When everything was in readiness, they sent the 
 wagons on ahead, and having doffed their caps 
 
198 TARAS BULBA 
 
 once more to their comrades, they quickly followed 
 the transports. The cavalry, with dignity, with- 
 out shouts or whistling at the horses, tramped 
 lightly after the foot-soldiers; and all speedily 
 vanished In the darkness. The only sound was the 
 dull thud of horses' hoofs, or the creaking of some 
 wheel which had not got into working order, or 
 had not been properly greased, because of the 
 darkness of the night. 
 
 Their comrades stood for a long time waving 
 their hands to them from afar, though nothing 
 could be seen. But when they returned to their 
 places, when they perceived, by the light of the 
 brightly gleaming stars, that half the carts were 
 gone, and many, many of their comrades, then 
 every man's heart grew sad; and all Involuntarily 
 became pensive, and their pleasure-loving heads 
 drooped towards the earth. 
 
 Taras saw how troubled the kazaks had become, 
 and that sadness, unfitting for brave men, had 
 begun quietly to overmaster their heads; but he 
 remained silent. He wished to give them all time 
 to become accustomed to the melancholy caused 
 by their parting from their comrades; but mean- 
 time, he was quietly preparing to arouse them sud- 
 denly, and all at once, by a loud war-whoop, in 
 kazak fashion, in order that there might return 
 
TARAS BULBA 199 
 
 atresh, and with greater strength than before, to 
 the soul of each, that valour of which only the 
 Slav race — a broad and powerful race, — which 
 is to others what the sea Is to shallow rivers, — Is 
 capable. In stormy times it turns all to roaring 
 and thunder, raging and raising such waves as 
 weak rivers cannot throw up ; but when It Is wind- 
 less and quiet, clearer than any river It spreads 
 Its boundless, glassy surface, a constant delight to 
 the eye. 
 
 And Taras ordered his servitors to unload one 
 of the wagons which stood apart from the rest. 
 It was larger and stronger than any other In the 
 kazak camp ; stout, double tires encircled Its huge 
 wheels. It was heavily laden, covered with horse- 
 cloths and strong wolf-skins, and firmly bound with 
 tightly-drawn, tarred ropes. In the wagon were 
 flasks and casks of good, old wine, which had lain 
 long In Taras's cellars. He had brought it along 
 as a reserve, to celebrate some occasion, in case a 
 grand moment should arrive, when there awaited 
 them some deed worthy of being handed down to 
 posterity, so that each kazak, to the very last man, 
 might quaff the forbidden liquor and be inspired 
 with a grand sentiment befitting the grand mo- 
 ment. On receiving their ColonePs command the 
 servants hastened to the wagon, hewed the stout 
 
200 TARAS BULBA 
 
 ropes with their swords, removed the thick wolf- 
 skins and horse-cloths, and drew forth the flasks 
 and casks. 
 
 " Take it, all of you," said Bulba, " all of you, 
 no matter how many there are, take it in whatever 
 you have, a ladle or a bucket for watering the 
 horses; or your sleeve, or your cap; but if you 
 have nothing else, then simply hold your two fists 
 under." 
 
 And all the kazaks seized something: one took a 
 ladle, another a horse-bucket, another a sleeve, an- 
 other a cap, and still another held out both his 
 hands. Taras's servants, making their way 
 among the ranks, poured out for all, from the 
 casks and flasks. But Taras ordered them not to 
 drink until he should give the signal for all to drink 
 together. It was evident that he wished to say 
 something. Taras knew that, no matter how 
 strong in itself the good old wine might be, and 
 however fitted to strengthen the spirit of man, yet 
 if a suitable speech were linked with it, then the 
 strength of the wine and of the spirit would be 
 doubly great. 
 
 " I treat you, sir brothers ! " thus spoke Bulba, 
 " not in honour of your having made me your 
 ataman, great as that honour is, nor to celebrate 
 our parting from our comrades. No ; both these 
 would be fitting at a different time, but not such is 
 
TARAS BULBA 201; 
 
 the present moment. The work before us Is great 
 in labour, and in glory for the kazaks ! Let us, 
 therefore, comrades, drink all together, — let us 
 drink, before all else, to the Holy Orthodox Faith, 
 that the day may come, at last, when it may be 
 spread over all the world, and that everywhere 
 there may be but one Faith, and that all Mussul- 
 mans may become Christians ! And let us drink 
 also, all together, to the Syech, that it may stand 
 long for the destruction of the Mussulmans, that 
 each year there may issue forth from it young men, 
 each better, each handsomer, than the other. And 
 let us also drink, all together, to our own glory, 
 that our grandsons and the sons of those grand- 
 sons may say that there once were men who were 
 not ashamed of comradeship, and who never be- 
 trayed one another. Now — to the Faith, sir 
 brothers, to the Faith! " 
 
 "To the Faith!" shouted, with thick voices, 
 those who were standing In the near-by ranks. 
 " To the Faith ! " those more distant took up the 
 cry, — and all, both young and old, drank to the 
 Faith. 
 
 " To the Syech ! " said Taras, raising his hand 
 high above his head. 
 
 " To the Syech I " echoed the foremost ranks. 
 ** To the Syech! " said the old men softly, twitch- 
 ing their grey moustaches; and eagerly as young 
 
202 TARAS BULBA 
 
 hawks the youths repeated: "To the Syech!'* 
 And the distant plain heard how the kazaks com- 
 memorated their Syech. 
 
 *' Now, a last draught, comrades, to the glory 
 of all Christians now living In the world I " 
 
 And every kazak drank a last draught to the 
 glory of all Christians in the world. And among 
 the ranks, In all the kurens, they long repeated: 
 " For all the Christians In the world! " 
 
 The ladles ^ were empty, but the kazaks still 
 stood with their hands uplifted. Although the 
 eyes of all gleamed cheerily with the liquor, all 
 were thinking deeply. Not of greed or of the 
 spoils of war were they thinking now, nor of which 
 of them would be lucky enough to acquire ducats, 
 fine weapons, embroidered kaftans and Cherkessian 
 horses; but they were meditating like eagles 
 perched upon the rocky crests of lofty, precipitous 
 mountains, from which, far away, the boundless 
 sea Is visible, dotted, as with tiny birds, with gal- 
 leys, ships, and every sort of vessel, confined at the 
 sides by scarcely visible, thin lines of shore with 
 their sea-coast cities like gnats, and their bending 
 forests like short grass. Like eagles they gazed 
 about them over all the plain, and at their Fate 
 
 ^The kovsh, a vessel for drinking or for ladling liquids, 
 resembles in form, somewhat, the old-fashioned porringer. 
 I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 203 
 
 :ling in the distance. It will come, all the 
 plain, with Its waste lands and Its road-tracks will 
 be covered with their white, protruding bones, 
 lavishly washed with their kazak blood, and 
 strewn with shattered wagons and splintered 
 swords and spears: far afield will be strewn the 
 scalp-locked heads, with downward-drooping mous- 
 taches; the eagles will swoop down, and tear out 
 their kazak eyes. But there Is great good In this 
 so widely and boldly broadcast bivouac of death I 
 Not a single magnanimous deed will perish, and 
 the kazak glory will not be lost, like a tiny grain 
 of powder from a gun-barrel. He will come, the 
 bandura-player with grey beard falling upon his 
 breast will come, and perhaps the old man still 
 full of ripe, manly strength, though his head is 
 white with years, eloquent by the spirit, will utter 
 ringing, mighty words of them. And their glory 
 shall resound through all the world, and all who 
 shall be born thereafter shall speak of them; for 
 the word of power Is borne afar, reverberating 
 like a booming, brazen bell. In which the maker 
 has mingled much pure silver, that Its beautiful 
 sound may be wafted far and wide through cities, 
 huts, palaces and villages, summoning all men, 
 without exception, to hold orisons. 
 
CHAPTER NINE 
 
IX 
 
 No one In the city knew that one-half of the 
 kazaks had gone in pursuit of the Tatars. 
 From the tower of the Magistracy all 
 the sentinels observed was, that a part of the 
 wagons had been dragged Into the forest : but they 
 thought the kazaks were preparing an ambush; 
 so, also, thought the French engineer. Mean- 
 while, the Koshevoi's words proved to be not de- 
 void of foundation, and a scarcity of provisions 
 arose In the city. 
 
 In accordance with the custom of past centuries, 
 the troops did not separate as much as was neces- 
 sary. They tried to make a sortie; but half the 
 venturesome men were Instantly slain by the 
 kazaks, and the other half driven into the city with 
 no result. But the Jews availed themselves of the 
 opportunity to find out everything: whither and 
 why the Zaporozhtzl had departed, and with what 
 leaders, and which particular kurens, and their 
 number, and how many had remained on the spot, 
 and what they Intended to do: In short, within a 
 few minutes, everything was known In the city. 
 The colonels took courage and prepared to offer 
 207 
 
2o8 TARAS BULBA 
 
 battle. Taras had already divined it by the noise 
 and movement in the city, and toiled energetically, 
 making his arrangements, forming his men Into 
 columns, issuing orders and instructions. He 
 ranged the kurens in three camps, surrounding 
 them with the wagons, in the guise of bulwarks, — 
 a form of battle in which the Zaporozhtzi were in-| 
 vincible. He ordered two kurens into ambush] 
 he drove sharp stakes, broken guns, fragments oi 
 spears, into a part of the plain, with a view toj 
 forcing the enemy's cavalry upon It, should an o] 
 portunity present itself. And when all was don^ 
 that was needed, he made a speech to the kazaks 
 not for the purpose of encouraging and fresheninj 
 up their spirits, — he knew that they were stronj 
 of soul without that, — but simply because h( 
 wished to tell them all he had in his heart. 
 
 " I want to tell you, sir brothers, what ourj 
 brotherhood Is. You have heard from youi 
 fathers and grandfathers In what honour our lam 
 has always been held by all men. We have made^ 
 ourselves known to the Greeks, and we capturef 
 gold from Tzargrad,^ and our cities were luxuri- 
 ous, and so were the temples and the Princes, — -[ 
 the Princes of the Russian people, our own 
 Princes, not Catholic unbelievers. But the Mus- 
 
 iTzargrad, i.e., Imperial City; the only Russian name for 
 Constantinople. I. F. H. 
 

 TARAS BULBA 209 
 
 sulmans took all, all vanished, and only we orphans 
 remained, yea, like unto a widow after the death of 
 a powerful husband: orphaned was our land, as 
 well as ourselves ! Such was the time, comrades, 
 when we joined hands in a brotherhood: that is 
 what our fellowship consists of! There is no 
 bond more sacred than brotherhood. A father 
 loves his children, a mother loves her children, the 
 children love their father and their mother; but 
 this is not like that, brethren ! the wild beasts also 
 love their young I But only men can enter into 
 a relationship which is of the spirit and not of 
 blood. There have been comrades in other lands, 
 but never any such brotherhoods as on our Rus- 
 sian soil. It has happened to many of you to be 
 lost for awhile in foreign lands. You look : there 
 are people there, also! They, also, are God's 
 creatures ; and you talk with them as with the men 
 of your own country. But when it comes to say- 
 ing a heartfelt word — you see the difference. 
 No! they're sensible folks, but not the right sort; 
 the same kind of people, and yet not the same! 
 No, brothers, to love as the Russian soul loves, is 
 to love not with the mind or anything else, but 
 with all that God has given you, all that is within 
 you. — Ah ! " said Taras, and waved his hand, 
 shook his grey head, twitched his moustache, and 
 then went on : ** No, no one can love in that way ! 
 
210 TARAS BULBA 
 
 I know that baseness has now made its way into 
 our land. Men care only to possess ricks of grain 
 and hay, and their droves of horses, and that their 
 sealed mead may be untouched in their cellars ; they 
 adopt the Devil only knows what Mussulman cus- 
 toms. They abhor their own language. They 
 care not to speak their real thoughts with their 
 own countrymen. They sell their fellow-country- 
 men as they sell soulless creatures on the market- 
 place. The favour of a foreign king — and not 
 even of a king, but the grudging favour of a 
 Polish magnate, who beats them on the mouth 
 with his yellow shoe, is dearer to them than all 
 brotherhood. But the very meanest scoundrel, 
 whoever he may be, given over though he be 
 to vileness and servility, even he, brothers, has at 
 least a Russian feeling; and it will assert itself 
 some day. And then the wretched man will beat 
 the floor with his hands; and he will grasp his 
 head in despair, loudly cursing his vile life, and 
 ready to expiate his disgraceful deeds with torture. 
 For they know, all of them, what brotherhood 
 means on Russian soil I And if it has come to the 
 point when such a man must die, not one of them 
 will have the chance to die in the right way. No I 
 Not one of them ! 'Tis not a fitting thing for their 
 mouse-like natures!" Thus spoke the Ataman; 
 and after he had finished his speech, he still con- 
 
TARAS BULB A 211 
 
 tlnued to shake his head, which had grown silver in 
 kazak affairs. All who stood there were deeply 
 affected by this speech, which went to their very 
 hearts. The oldest In the ranks stood motionless, 
 their grey heads drooping earthward : a tear gath- 
 ered quietly in their aged eyes; they slowly wiped 
 it away with their sleeve, and then all, as with one 
 consent, waved their hands in the air at the same 
 moment, and shook their experienced heads. For 
 it was evident that Taras had reminded them of 
 many of the best-known and finest points of the 
 heart in a man who has become wise through suf- 
 fering, toil, daring, and every earthly misfortune, 
 or, though unknown to them, of many things felt 
 by young, pearly spirits, to the eternal joy of the 
 parents who bore them. 
 
 But the enemy's troops were already marching 
 out of the city, to the thunder of kettledrums and 
 trumpets; and the noble lords, with arms akimbo, 
 rode forth surrounded by innumerable retinues. 
 The fat Colonel was giving orders. And they 
 began to advance briskly on the kazak camps, 
 threateningly aiming their arquebuses, with eyes 
 flashing and brazen armour glittering. As soon 
 as the kazaks perceived that they had arrived 
 within gunshot, they let fly all together with their 
 seven-palm arquebuses, and continued to fire with- 
 out cessation. 
 
212 TARAS BULBA 
 
 The heavy detonations resounded through the 
 distant fields and meadows, merging into one con- 
 tinuous roar. The whole plain was shrouded In 
 smoke, but the Zaporozhtzi went on firing without 
 stopping to draw breath : the rear ranks did noth- 
 ing but load and hand to those in front, creating 
 amazement among the enemy who could not un- 
 derstand how the kazaks fired without loading 
 their guns. Amid the dense smoke which en- 
 veloped both armies, It could no longer be seen 
 how one and another dropped out of the ranks :| 
 but the Lyakhs felt that the bullets were flying 
 thickly, and that the engagement was growing hot : 
 and when they retreated to escape from the smoke 
 and to take an observation, many were missing 
 from the ranks, but only two or three out of a com- 
 pany had been killed on the kazak side. And still 
 the kazaks went on firing their arquebuses without 
 a moment's intermission. Even the foreign en- 
 gineer was amazed at tactics heretofore unknown 
 to him, and said, then and there, in the presence of 
 all, " Those Zaporozhtzi are brave lads. That's 
 the way men in other lands ought to fight." And 
 he advised that the cannon should immediately be 
 trained on the camps. Heavily roared the iron 
 cannon, with their wide throats ; the earth hummed 
 and trembled far and wide, and the smoke lay 
 twice as heavy over the plain. The reek of the 
 
TARAS BULBA 213 
 
 lowder could be smelled among tHe squares and 
 streets in the most distant as well as the nearest 
 quarters of the city. But those who aimed the 
 cannon pointed them too high; the hot shot 
 described too large a curve; screaming horribly 
 they flew over the heads of the whole camp, and 
 buried themselves deep in the earth at a distance, 
 tearing up the ground and throwing the black dirt 
 high in the air. At the sight of such lack of skill, 
 the French engineer tore his hair, and undertook 
 to point the cannon himself, heeding not the kazak 
 bullets which burned and showered around him. 
 Taras saw from afar that the whole Nezamai- 
 kovsky and Steblikivsky kurens were threatened 
 with destruction, and uttered a ringing shout: 
 " Get away instantly from behind the wagons, and 
 mount your horses! '* But the kazaks would not 
 have succeeded in effecting these two movements 
 had not Ostap dashed into the midst of the enemy, 
 and wrenched the lunts from six cannoneers. But 
 he was unable to wrench them from the remaining 
 four: the Lyakhs drove him back. Meanwhile 
 the foreign Captain had taken a lunt in his own 
 hand, to fire off the largest of the cannon — such 
 a cannon as none of the kazaks had ever beheld 
 before. It looked horrible, with its wide mouth, 
 and a thousand deaths peered forth from it. And 
 as it thundered, the three others followed, shak- 
 
214 TARAS BULBA 
 
 ing in fourfold earthquake the dully responsive 
 earth, — and much woe did they cause. For more 
 than one kazak wails an aged mother, beating with 
 bony hands her feeble breast; more than one widow 
 will be left in Glukhov, Nemlrov, Chernigov, and 
 other towns. Every day will the loving woman 
 hasten forth to the bazaar, catching at all pass- 
 ers-by, scanning the face of each to see if there 
 be not among them one dearer than all; but many 
 troops of all sorts will pass through the town, yet 
 never among them will appear the single one who 
 is dearest of all to her. 
 
 And half the Nezamaikovsky kuren was as 
 though it had never been I As hail suddenly beats 
 down a field where every ear of grain shines like a 
 ducat of full weight, so were they beaten down. 
 
 How hastened the kazaks thither ! how they all 
 started up ! How raged the ataman of the kuren, 
 Kukubenko, when he saw that the best half of his 
 kuren was no more ! He fought his way, with his 
 remaining Nezamalkovtzi, to the very heart of the 
 fray, hewed down, in his wrath, like a cabbage, the 
 first man he encountered, hurled many a rider from 
 his horse, impaling both horse and rider with his 
 spear; made his way to the gunners and captured 
 a cannon; but there he beheld the ataman of the 
 Umansky kuren and Stepan Guska hard at work, 
 having already seized the chief cannon. He left 
 
^ARAS BULBA 215 
 
 [those kazaks there, and returned with his own to 
 another group of the foe: and where the Neza- 
 maikovtzi went there was a street! where they 
 wheeled about there was a lane ! And the ranks 
 were visibly thinning, and the Lyakhs were falling 
 in sheaves! And right beside the wagons was 
 Vovtuzenko, and In front Cherevlchenko, and by 
 the more distant one Degtyarenko; and behind 
 them was the ataman of the kuren, Vertykvlst. 
 Degtyarenko already had raised two Lyakhs upon 
 his spear, and was now attacking the third, a stub- 
 born fellow. Agile and strong was the Lyakh, 
 with gorgeous accoutrements, and he was accom- 
 panied by fifty servitors. He fell fiercely upon 
 Degtyarenko, beat him to the ground and, flourish- 
 ing his sword above him, cried, " There's not one 
 of you kazak dogs who would dare to oppose me ! " 
 " Here's one ! " said Mosii Shilo, stepping for- 
 ward. He was a muscular kazak, who had often 
 served as ataman on the sea, and had undergone 
 many vicissitudes. The Turks had captured him 
 and his men at Treblzond, and thrown them all, 
 captives, Into the galleys; they bound them hand 
 and foot with iron chains, gave them no millet for 
 a week at a time, and made them drink the repul- 
 sive sea water. The poor prisoners bore and suf- 
 fered all things, if only they might not be forced to 
 renounce their Orthodox Faith. Ataman Mosii 
 
2i6 TARAS BULBA 
 
 Shilo could not endure it: he trampled under foot 
 the Holy Scriptures, wound a vile turban about his 
 sinful head, won the confidence of a Pasha, be- 
 came steward on a ship, and ruler over all the 
 slaves. The poor prisoners sorrowed greatly 
 thereat, for they knew that if he had betrayed his 
 Faith he would become a tyrant, and his hand 
 would be the more severe and heavy on them; and 
 so it turned out. Mosli ShIlo had them all put in 
 new chains, three in a row, and twisted the cruel 
 cords until they cut clean to the bone ; and he beat 
 them upon the back of the neck, regaling them 
 with cuffs for their napes. And when the Turks 
 rejoiced at having obtained such a servant, and be- 
 gan to carouse, and, forgetful of their law, all got 
 drunk, he distributed all the sixty-four keys among 
 the prisoners, in order that they might free them- 
 selves, fling their chains and manacles into the sea, 
 and, seizing their swords, in their turn slay the 
 Turks. Then did the kazaks collect great booty, 
 and return with glory to their country; and the 
 bandura-players glorified Mosli Shilo for a very 
 long time. The men would have elected him 
 Koshevoi, but he was a very peculiar kazak. At 
 one time he would perform some feat which the 
 most sagacious never would have dreamed of; and 
 at another, folly simply took possession of him. 
 He drank away and squandered away everything, 
 
m 
 
 TARAS BULBA 217 
 
 was in debt to every one in the Syech, and stole like 
 a common street thief, to boot. He carried off a 
 complete kazak equipment from another kuren, by 
 night, and pawned it to a dram-shop keeper. For 
 this dishonourable act they bound him to a post In 
 the bazaar, and laid a club by his side, so that 
 every one, according to the measure of his 
 strength, might deal him a blow. But there was 
 not one Zaporozhetz out of them all to be found 
 who would raise the club against him, remember- 
 ing his former services. Such was the kazak, 
 Mosii Shilo. 
 
 " Here are some who will kill you, you dog! " 
 he said, springing upon him. And how they 
 hacked away! their shoulder-plates and breast- 
 plates bent beneath the blows. The hostile Lyakh 
 cut through his shirt of mail, reaching the body 
 itself with his sharp blade; the kazak's shirt was 
 dyed crimson; but Shilo heeded it not, flourished 
 is muscular hand (heavy was that mighty fist), 
 nd brought it down unexpectedly on his head. 
 The brazen helmet flew off, the Lyakh reeled and 
 ell; but Shilo went on hacking and making 
 crosses on the stunned man. Kill not utterly thine 
 enemy, kazak! turn back rather! The kazak 
 turned not, and one of the dead man's servitors 
 plunged a knife into his neck. Shilo turned, and 
 almost succeeded In seizing the daring man, but he 
 
2i8 TARAS BULBA 
 
 disappeared amid the smoke of the powder. On 
 all sides rose the clash of arquebuses. Shilo 
 reeled, and knew that his wound was mortal. He 
 fell, with his hand upon his wound, and said, turn- 
 ing to his comrades : " Farewell, sir brothers, my 
 comrades I May the holy Russian land stand for- 
 ever, and may It have eternal honour I " Then he 
 closed his failing eyes, and the kazak soul took 
 flight from the grim body. And then Zadorozhny 
 came forward with his men, Vertykhvist broke 
 the ranks, and Balaban stepped forward. 
 
 " What now, noble sirs? '* said Taras, calling to 
 the atamans by name : " Is there yet powder In the 
 powder-flasks ? The kazak force Is not weakened, 
 is It ? The kazaks do not yield ? " 
 
 " There Is yet powder In the flasks, hatko; the 
 kazak force is not yet weakened; the kazaks do not 
 yield!" 
 
 And the kazaks pressed vigorously on : the ranks 
 were all In confusion. The little colonel had the 
 assembly beaten, and ordered eight painted stand- 
 ards to be flung out, to collect his men, who 
 were scattered far over all the plain. All the 
 Lyakhs hastened to the standards. But they 
 had not yet succeeded In ranging themselves In 
 order, when Ataman Kukubenko attacked again 
 with his Nezamalkovtzi, In their centre, and fell 
 
 I 
 
TARAS BULB A 219 
 
 Straight upon the big-bellied colonel. The colonel 
 could not withstand the attack and, wheeling his 
 horse about, set out at a gallop; but Kukubenko 
 pursued him for a long distance, all over the plain, 
 and prevented him from joining his regiment. 
 
 Perceiving this from the kuren on the flank, 
 Stepan Guska set out after him, lasso in hand, 
 bending his head to his horse's neck, and taking ad- 
 vantage of an opportunity, with one cast he landed 
 the lasso about his neck: the colonel turned purple 
 in the face, grasped the cord with both hands, and 
 tried to break it; but a powerful blow drove a lance 
 through his body. And there he remained, pinned 
 to the earth. But things turned out badly for 
 Guska I Before the kazaks had time to look about 
 them, they beheld Stepan Guska elevated on four 
 spears. All the poor fellow succeeded in saying 
 was, " May all our enemies perish, and may the 
 Russian land rejoice forever I " and then he yielded 
 up his spirit. 
 
 The kazaks glanced around, and there was 
 kazak Meteltzya on one side, entertaining the 
 Lyakhs, dealing blows on the head to one and an- 
 other; and on the other side. Ataman Nevylychky 
 was attacking with his men; and Zakrutybuga was 
 turning and slaying the foe near the transports; 
 and the third Pisarenko had repulsed a whole 
 
220 TARAS BULBA 
 
 squadron from the more distant wagons ; and they 
 were still fighting and killing round the other wag- 
 ons, and even upon them. 
 
 " How now, noble sirs ! " cried Ataman Taras, 
 stepping forward before them all: *' is there still 
 powder in your flasks? Is the kazak force still 
 strong? do not the kazaks yield? " 
 
 " There is still powder in our flasks, batko; the 
 kazak force is still strong; the kazaks do not 
 yield!" 
 
 But Bovdyug had already toppled off one of the 
 wagons ; a bullet had struck him straight under the 
 heart. The old man collected all his strength, and 
 said: *' I sorrow not at parting with this world! 
 God grant to every man such an end ! May the 
 Russian land be forever glorious! " and Bovdyug's 
 spirit soared on high, to tell the old men who had 
 gone on long before that men still knew how to 
 fight on Russian soil, and, better still, that they 
 knew how to die for it and for the holy Faith. 
 
 Balaban, ataman of a kuren, soon after fell to 
 the ground, also from a wagon. Three mortal 
 wounds had he received, from a spear, a bullet, 
 and a sword. He had been one of the most 
 valorous of the kazaks, and had accomplished a 
 great deal during his atamanship, in expeditions on 
 the sea; but more glorious than all the rest was 
 his expedition to the shores of Anatolia. There 
 
I 
 
 TARAS BULB A 221 
 
 they had collected many sequins, much valuable 
 Turkish property, kaftans and adornments of 
 every description. But misfortune awaited them 
 on their way back: the gallant fellows fell under 
 the fire of the Turks. How they caught It from 
 the ship ! Half the boats were crushed, and over- 
 turned, drowning many a one ; but the reeds bound 
 to the sides saved the boats from sinking. Bala- 
 ban rowed off at full speed, and stood straight In 
 the face of the sun, thus rendering himself Invisible 
 to the Turkish ship. All the following night they 
 spent In balling out the water with scoops and their 
 caps, and In repairing the damaged places. They 
 cut sails from their full kazak trousers and, sailing 
 off, escaped from the very swift Turkish vessel. 
 And not only did they arrive unharmed in the 
 Syech, but they brought a gold-embroidered vest- 
 ment to the Archimandrite ^ of the Mezhlgorsky 
 Monastery In Kiev; and for the church in honour 
 of the Intercession of the Holy Virgin, which is in 
 Zaporozhe, an ikona-frame of pure silver. And 
 for a very long time afterwards did the bandura- 
 players celebrate the daring of the kazaks. Now 
 he bowed his head, feeling the pains which precede 
 death, and said quietly: ''It seems to me, sir 
 brothers, that I am dying a fine death. Seven have 
 I hewn in pieces, nine have I transfixed with my 
 
 1 Abbot. I. F. H. 
 
^22 TARAS BULBA 
 
 spear, and many have I trampled under my horse's 
 hoofs; and I no longer remember how many my 
 bullets have slain. May our Russian land flourish 
 forever! " and his spirit fled. 
 
 Kazaks, kazaks ! surrender not the flower of 
 your army. Already was Kukubenko sur- 
 rounded, and seven men only remained out of all 
 the Nezamaikovsky kuren, and these had already 
 defended themselves beyond their strength; their 
 garments were already stained with blood. Taras 
 himself, perceiving his straits, hastened to his 
 rescue; but the kazaks arrived too late. Before 
 the enemies who surrounded him could be driven 
 off, a spear was buried just below his heart. 
 Quietly he sank Into the arms of the kazaks who 
 grasped him, and his young blood flowed In a 
 stream, like precious wine brought from the cellar 
 in a glass vessel by careless servants who, stumbling 
 at the entrance, break the rich flask : the wine pours 
 over the ground, and the master, hastening up, 
 tears his hair, having reserved It for the best occa- 
 sion of his life, in order that. If God should grant 
 him, in his old age, to meet again the comrade of 
 his youth, they might recall together days gone by, 
 when men revelled otherwise and better than now. 
 Kukubenko turned his eyes about, and said, " I 
 thank God that it has been my lot to die before 
 your eyes, comrades. May those who come after 
 
I 
 
 TARAS BULBA 223 
 
 US live better than we have lived; and may our 
 Russian land, beloved of Christ, flourish for- 
 ever! " and his young spirit fled. Angels took it, 
 and, supporting it by the arms,^ bore it to heaven: 
 there it will be well with him. ^' Sit down at my 
 right hand, Kukubenko," Christ will say to him: 
 " you never betrayed your comrades, you never 
 committed a dishonourable act, you never sold a 
 man into misery, you preserved and defended My 
 Church!" 
 
 The death of Kukubenko saddened them all. 
 The kazak ranks were already terribly thinned; 
 many brave men were missing, but the kazaks still 
 held their ground. 
 
 " How now, sir brothers! " cried Taras to the 
 remaining kurens : " is there still powder in your 
 flasks? Your swords ai*e not yet dulled? Are 
 the kazak forces weary? Have the kazaks given 
 way?^' 
 
 " There Is still plenty of powder, hatko; our 
 swords are still fit; the kazak forces are not weary, 
 and the kazaks have not yielded." 
 
 And again the kazaks strained every nerve, as 
 though they had suffered no losses whatsoever. 
 Only three kuren atamans still remained alive. 
 
 ^ Archbishops and Bishops are ceremonially supported by a 
 priest or an acolyte on each side, who hold them by the elbow 
 when ascending steps during a service. I. F. H. 
 
224 TARAS BULBA 
 
 Their red blood flowed everywhere in crimson 
 streams; kazak corpses, and those of the enemy, 
 were piled high in layers. Taras looked up to the 
 sky, and there, already, was outstretched a long 
 file of vultures. Well, there will be booty for some 
 one. And yonder they were raising Meteltzya on 
 their spears and the head of the second Pisa- 
 renko, as it went spinning round, opened and shut 
 its eyes; and the mangled body of Okhrim Guska 
 broke apart, and fell upon the ground in four 
 pieces. "Now! '* said Taras, and waved a ker- 
 chief. Ostap understood the signal, and dashing 
 quickly from his ambush, attacked sharply. The 
 Lyakhs could not withstand this violent onslaught; 
 and he drove them back, chasing them straight to 
 the spot where the stakes and fragments of spears 
 were embedded in the earth. The horses began 
 to stumble and fall, and the Lyakhs to fly over 
 their heads. At that moment, the Korsuntzy, 
 who had remained until the last behind the trans- 
 port-wagons, perceived that they still had some bul- 
 lets left, and suddenly fired off their arquebuses. 
 The Lyakhs all fell into confusion, and lost their 
 presence of mind; and the kazaks took courage. 
 " Here's our victory I " rang out kazak voices on 
 all sides; the trumpets began to blare, and the 
 standard of victory was unfurled. The defeated 
 Lyakhs dispersed in all directions, and hid them- 
 
TARAS BULBA 225 
 
 selves. " No, the victory is not yet complete ! " 
 said Taras, glancing at the city gate ; and he was 
 right. 
 
 The gate opened, and out dashed a hussar regi- 
 ment, the pride of all the cavalry troops. Every 
 rider was mounted on a matched bay race-horse 
 from Kabarda ; in front of the rest rode the hand- 
 somest, the most heroic warrior of them all; his 
 black locks streamed from beneath his brazen 
 helmet; a rich scarf, embroidered by the hands of 
 a peerless beauty, was bound about his arm. 
 Taras sprang back in horror when he saw that it 
 was Andrii. And he, meanwhile, enveloped in 
 the dust and heat of battle, anxious to deserve the 
 scarf which had been bound, as a gift, on his arm, 
 flew on like a young greyhound; the handsomest, 
 swiftest and youngest of all the troop. The ex- 
 perienced huntsman halloos on the greyhound, 
 which leaps forward, its legs cutting a straight line 
 in the air, its body slanted all on one side, tossing 
 up the snow, and a score of times outrunning the 
 hare in the ardour of the course. And Andrii was 
 precisely like this. Old Taras paused and ob- 
 served how he cleared a path before him, dispers- 
 ing, hewing and distributing blows to right and 
 left. Taras could not restrain himself from 
 shouting, " What? Your own comrades? Your 
 own comrades! You deviFs brat, do you slay 
 
226 TARAS BULBA 
 
 your own comrades?'* But Andrii did not dij 
 tinguish who stood before him, his comrades oi 
 strangers : he saw nothing. Curls, long, long curl 
 were what he saw; and a bosom like that of a river 
 swan, and a snowy neck and shoulders, and all that 
 is created for wild kisses. 
 
 " Hey there, my lads ! just lure him to the 
 forest! Entice him to the forest for me!" 
 shouted Taras. And Instantly thirty of the 
 smartest kazaks volunteered to entice him thither, 
 and settling their tall caps firmly, they spurred 
 their horses straight at a gap in the hussars. 
 They attacked the front ranks from the flank, beat 
 them down, separated them from the rear ranks, 
 distributing a gift to one and another; but Golo- 
 kopytenko struck Andrii on the back with his 
 sword, and then immediately rode away from the 
 hussars at the top of his speed. How furiously 
 Andrii raged ! How his young blood rebelled in 
 his veins ! Driving his sharp spurs into his horse's 
 flanks, he flew at top speed after the kazak, never 
 glancing back and not perceiving that only twenty 
 men, at most, were following him; but the kazaks 
 fled at full gallop, and directed their course 
 straight for the forest. Andrii overtook them and 
 was on the point of catching Golokopytenko, when 
 a powerful hand grasped his horse's bridle. 
 Andrii looked : before him stood Taras ! He be- 
 
f 
 
 TARAS BULBA 227 
 
 gan to tremble all over, and suddenly turned pale, 
 like a student who has Incautiously teased his com- 
 rade to excess, and receiving. In consequence, a 
 blow on the forehead with a ruler, flushes up like 
 fire, springs up in wrath from the bench, to chase 
 his frightened comrade, prepared to tear him in 
 pieces, and suddenly encounters his teacher enter- 
 ing the class-room: in an Instant his wrathful im- 
 pulse calms down, and his futile anger vanishes. 
 In such wise, in one instant, Andrii's wrath was as 
 though it had never existed. And he beheld noth- 
 ing save only his terrible father, standing before 
 him. 
 
 "Well, what are we going to do now? " said 
 Taras, looking him straight in the eye. But An- 
 drii could make no reply to this, and sat there with 
 his eyes rivetted on the ground. 
 
 " Well, little son ! Did your Lyakhs help 
 you?" 
 
 Andrii did not answer. 
 
 " You'll be such a traitor, will you? You'll be- 
 tray your Faith in this fashion? betray your com- 
 rades? Hold on, there, dismount from your 
 horse!" 
 
 Obedient as a child, he dismounted, and stood 
 before Taras more dead than alive. " Stand still, 
 don't move ! I gave you life, I will also kill you ! " 
 said Taras, and, retreating a pace, he brought his 
 
 r 
 
228 TARAS BULBA 
 
 gun up to his shoulder. Andrii was white as 
 linen : his lips could be seen to move softly, and he 
 uttered a name; but it was not the name of his 
 native land, or of his mother, or of his brethren; 
 it was the name of the beautiful Pole. Taras 
 fired. 
 
 Like an ear of corn cut down by the reaping- 
 hook, like a young limb when it feels the deadly 
 steel in its heart, he hung his head and rolled upon 
 the grass without uttering a word. 
 
 The murderer of his son stood and gazed long 
 upon the lifeless body. Even in death he was very 
 handsome: his manly face, so short a time ago 
 filled with power, and irresistible charm for every 
 woman, still breathed forth marvellous beauty; his 
 black brows, like sombre velvet, set off his pale 
 features. 
 
 " In what way wasn't he a genuine kazak? " 
 said Taras: "he's tall of stature, and black- 
 browed, and his face is that of a nobleman, and 
 his hand was strong in battle! He has fallen, 
 fallen ingloriously, like a vile dog ! " 
 
 "Father, what have you done? Was it you 
 who killed him?" said Ostap, riding up at this 
 moment. 
 
 Taras nodded. 
 
 Ostap gazed intently at the dead man. He felt 
 sorry for his brother, and said, at once: " Let's 
 
I^Po 
 
 TARAS BULBA 229 
 
 s: 
 
 t 
 
 give him an honourable burial, Father, that the foe 
 may not dishonour his body, nor the birds of prey 
 rend It." 
 
 *' They'll bury him without any help from us! " 
 said Taras: " there'll be plenty of mourners and 
 comforters for him ! " 
 
 And he reflected for a couple of minutes : should 
 e fling him to the fierce wolves for their prey, or 
 respect in him the knightly valour which every 
 brave man is bound to honour in another, no mat- 
 ter who the man may be? Then he espied Golo- 
 kopytenko galloping towards them : *' Disaster, 
 ataman ! the Lyakhs have been reinforced, a fresh 
 force has come to their rescue ! " Golokopytenko 
 had not finished speaking when Vovtuzenko dashed 
 up : " Disaster, ataman ! a fresh force is bearing 
 down upon us! " 
 
 Vovtuzenko had not finished speaking when 
 Pisarenko rushed up without his horse : *' Where 
 are you, hatko? The kazaks are looking for you. 
 Ataman Nevylychky is killed, Zadorozhny is 
 killed, and so is Cherevlchenko : but the kazaks are 
 still standing their ground; they do not wish to die 
 without having seen you; they want you to gaze 
 upon them once more before the hour of death 
 arrives ! " 
 
 ** To horse, Ostap I " said Taras, and hastened 
 in search of his kazaks, to look once more upon 
 
230 TARAS BULBA 
 
 them, and let them once more behold their ataman 
 before the hour of death. But before they could 
 emerge from the forest, the enemy's forces had 
 already surrounded it on all sides, and horsemen 
 armed with swords and spears appeared every- 
 where among the trees. " Ostap, Ostap ! don't 
 surrender!" shouted Taras, and grasping his 
 naked sword, he began to cut down all he encoun- 
 tered on every side. But six had already sprung 
 upon Ostap. ('Twas an unpropitious hour for 
 them! the head of one flew off, another toppled 
 over, a spear pierced the ribs of a third; a fourth, 
 more bold, bent his head to escape from a bullet, 
 and the hot bullet struck his horse in the breast ; — 
 the maddened animal reared, fell back upon the 
 earth, and crushed his rider under him.) " Well 
 done, son! Well done, Ostap! " shouted Taras: 
 *' I'm following you ! " And he beat off all who 
 attacked him. Taras hewed and fought, dealing 
 blows upon the head of one after another, still 
 keeping his eye upon Ostap ahead of him; and he 
 saw that eight more were falling upon Ostap. 
 *' Ostap, Ostap ! don't surrender ! " But already 
 they had overpowered Ostap; one had flung his 
 lasso around his neck, and they had bound him, 
 and were carrying him away. " Hey, Ostap, 
 Ostap ! " shouted Taras, forcing his way to him, 
 and cutting down men, as though they had been 
 
I 
 
 TARAS BULB A 231 
 
 cabbages, to right and left. " Hey, Ostap, 
 Ostap ! " But at that moment something struck 
 him like a heavy stone : everything grew dim and 
 confused before his eyes. For a moment there 
 flashed before him confusedly heads, spears, 
 smoke, flashes of fire, tree-stumps with their leaves. 
 And he sank heavily to the earth, like a felled oak. 
 And darkness covered his eyes. 
 
CHAPTER TEN 
 
X 
 
 '"^ "V TELL, IVe had a long sleep!" said 
 %/%/ Taras, coming to his senses as if after 
 ' ^ a heavy, drunken slumber, and trying 
 fo distinguish the objects about him. A terrible 
 weakness overpowered his limbs. The walls and 
 :orners of a strange room appeared dimly to his 
 ^ision. At last he perceived Tovkach seated be- 
 Fore him, apparently listening to his every breath. 
 ' Yes," thought Tovkach, " you might have 
 slept forever." But he said nothing, shook his 
 finger and motioned Taras to keep quiet. 
 
 " But tell me, where am I now? " asked Taras, 
 straining his mind, and endeavouring to recollect 
 what had happened. 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! " cried his companion 
 roughly. "Why should you want to know? 
 Don't you see that youVe all hacked to pieces? 
 Here I've been galloping with you for two weeks, 
 without stopping to take breath; and all the while 
 you've been burning up with fever, and jabbering 
 nonsense. This is the first time you've slept 
 quietly. Be silent, if you don't wish to do your- 
 self an injury! " 
 
 23$ 
 
236 TARAS BULBA 
 
 But Taras still strove to collect his thoughts, 
 and to recall what had taken place. " Well, but 
 the Lyakhs must have surrounded me completely, 
 and captured me ? I hadn't a chance to fight my- 
 self free from the mob? " 
 
 " Hold your tongue ! I tell you, you devil's 
 brat!" shouted Tovkach angrily, as a nurse, 
 driven beyond her patience, cries out at her 
 naughty, fractious young charge. " What good 
 will it do you to know how you got away? It's 
 enough that you did get away. Some people were 
 found who didn't betray you. That's enough for 
 you to know! You and I must still gallop on 
 together for many a night! Think you that you 
 are accounted a common kazak? No, they have 
 offered a reward of two thousand ducats for your 
 head." 
 
 " And Ostap ! " cried Taras suddenly, making a 
 tremendous effort to rise ; and then, all at once, he 
 recollected that Ostap had been seized and bound 
 before his very eyes, and that he was now in the 
 hands of the Lyakhs. And grief overpowered 
 his aged head. He tugged at his bandages, and 
 tore them all from his wounds ; he threw them far 
 from him ; he tried to say something aloud — and 
 uttered something incoherent. Fever and de- 
 lirium took possession of him afresh, and he chat- 
 tered foolish speeches, devoid of rhyme ox reason, 
 
TARAS BULBA 237 
 
 Meanwhile his faithful comrade stood before 
 him cursing and showering harsh, reproachful 
 words upon him, without stint. Finally he seized 
 him by the arms and legs, swaddled him like a 
 baby, replaced all his bandages, rolled him up in 
 an ox-hide, bound him with linden-bast, and fasten- 
 mg him with ropes to his saddle, dashed off with 
 him again, at full speed, along the road. 
 
 " I'll get you there, even if not ahve ! I'll not 
 abandon you for the Lyakhs to make mock at your 
 kazak race, and rend your body in twain, and fling 
 it Into the water. Let the eagles claw your eyes 
 from your brow, if so it must be ; but let it be our 
 own eagle of the steppe, and not a Polish eagle, 
 not one which has flown hither from Polish soil. 
 I'll bring you, though it be a corpse, to the 
 UkralnaP' 
 
 Thus spoke his faithful comrade. He galloped 
 on, without drawing breath, day and night, and 
 brought him, insensible, into the Zaporozhlan 
 Syech Itself. There he undertook to heal him, 
 with unwearied care, with herbs and liniments. 
 He sought out a skilful Jewess: she made Taras 
 drink various potions for a whole month, and at 
 last he began to improve. Whether It was owing 
 to the medicine, or to his Iron constitution gaining 
 the upper hand, at any rate, in six weeks he was on 
 his feet again; his wounds had closed, and only the 
 
238 TARAS BULBA 
 
 scars of the sabre-cuts showed how seriously In- 
 jured the old kazak had been. But he had be- 
 come markedly sad and morose. Three deep 
 wrinkles had engraved themselves upon his brow, 
 and never more departed thence. Then he looked 
 about him: all was new in the Syech; all his old 
 comrades were dead. Not one was left of those 
 who had defended the right, the Faith, and 
 brotherhood. And as for those who had fared 
 forth with the Koshevoi in pursuit of the Tatars, 
 they, also, had died long since: all had laid down 
 their heads : all had perished. One had lost his 
 honourable head In battle, another had died for 
 lack of bread and water, amid the salt marshes of 
 the Crimea; another had disappeared in captivity, 
 unable to endure the disgrace, and even their for- 
 mer Koshevoi was long since dead, and so were all 
 old comrades, and the seething kazak power was 
 overgrown with grass. He heard only that there 
 had been a feast, a noisy, strenuous feast. All the 
 dishes had been smashed to bits: not a drop of 
 liquor was left anywhere; the guests and servants 
 had stolen all the valuable cups and platters, — 
 and the master of the house stood sadly thinking 
 that It would have been better had there been no 
 feast. In vain did they try to cheer Taras, and to 
 divert his mind; in vain did the long-bearded, grey- 
 haired bandura-players, passing by in twos and 
 
TARAS BULBA 239 
 
 threes, glorify his kazak deeds. He gazed grimly 
 and Indifferently at everything, and on his stolid 
 face sorrow unquenchable stood forth ; and he said 
 softly, " My son, my Ostap ! " 
 
 The Zaporozhtzi assembled for an expedition 
 by sea. Two hundred boats were launched on the 
 Dnyeper, and Asia Minor saw the kazaks, with 
 their shaven heads and long scalp-locks, devote her 
 thriving shores to fire and sword; she saw the tur- 
 bans of her Mahometan inhabitants strewn, like 
 her innumerable flowers, over the blood-be- 
 sprinkled fields, and floating along her banks. 
 She beheld many tarry Zaporozhian trousers, and 
 muscular hands with black hunting-whips. The 
 Zaporozhtzi ate up and laid waste all their vine- 
 yard. In her mosques they left heaps of dung. 
 They used rich Persian shawls for trouser-belts, 
 and girded their dirty doublets with them. For a 
 long time afterwards short Zaporozhian pipes 
 were found in those regions. Then they sailed 
 merrily homeward again. A ten-gun Turkish ves- 
 sel pursued them and scattered their fragile skiffs 
 like birds, with a volley from its guns. A third 
 part of them sank In the depths of the sea ; but the 
 rest assembled again, and gained the mouth of the 
 Dnyeper with twelve kegs full of sequins. But all 
 this had no interest for Taras. He went off upon 
 the fields and the steppe as though to hunt ; but the 
 
240 TARAS BULBA 
 
 charge remained unfired, in his gun, and, laying 
 down the weapon, he sat sadly on the seashore. 
 He sat there long, with drooping head, repeating 
 continually, ''My Ostap, my Ostap!" Before 
 him spread the gleaming Black Sea; In the distant 
 reeds the sea-gulls screamed. His grey moustache 
 turned to silver, and the tears chased one another 
 down his cheeks. 
 
 At last Taras could endure It no longer. 
 " Whatever happens, I must go and find out what 
 he Is doing. Is he alive, or in the grave ? or Is he 
 not yet In the grave? Know I will, cost what It 
 may! " And within a week he was In the town of 
 Uman, mounted, fully armed with spear, sword, a 
 flat travelling-cask at his saddle-bow, his pot of 
 oatmeal, his cartridges, cord to hobble his horse, 
 and other accoutrements. He rode straight to a 
 dirty, bedaubed little house, whose tiny windows 
 were almost Invisible, blackened as they were with 
 some unknown dirt; the chimney was plugged with 
 a rag; and the roof, which was full of holes, was 
 covered with sparrows; a heap of all sorts of 
 refuse lay before the very door. From the win- 
 dow peered the head of a Jewess, in a headdress 
 with discoloured pearls. 
 
 " Is your husband at home ? " asked Bulba, dis- 
 mounting, and fastening his horse's bridle to an 
 iron hook beside the door. 
 
TARAS BULBA 241 
 
 " Yes," said the Jewess, and hastened out im- 
 mediately with a little trough of wheat for the 
 horse, and a stoup of beer for the rider, 
 
 "Where's your Jew?" 
 
 " In the other room, at prayer," replied the 
 Jewess, bowing and wishing Bulba good health, 
 as he raised the drinking-cup to his lips. 
 
 *' Remain here and feed and water my horse, 
 and I'll go and speak with him alone. I have busi- 
 ness with him." 
 
 This Jew was that Yankel, already known to 
 us. He was there as a revenue-farmer and dram- 
 shop keeper. He had gradually got all the neigh- 
 bouring noblemen and gentry into his clutches, had 
 slowly sucked away most of their money, had made 
 his presence severely felt in that region. For a 
 distance of three miles In every direction not a 
 single cottage remained in a proper condition. 
 All were falling in ruins; all had been drunk away, 
 and rags and poverty alone remained; the whole 
 neighbourhood was devastated as if after a fire or 
 an epidemic. And if Yankel had lived there ten 
 years, he would, probably, have depopulated the 
 Voevod's entire domain. 
 
 Taras entered the room. The Jew was praying, 
 wrapped In his dirty scarf, and was turning to spit 
 for the last time. In accordance with the forms of 
 his creed, when his eye suddenly alighted upon 
 
242 TARAS BULBA 
 
 Taras standing behind him. And the very firsi 
 thing of all, which struck the Jew full in the facej' 
 was the recollection of the two thousand ducats 
 offered for his head; but he was ashamed of his 
 avarice, and tried to stifle w ithin him the eterna l 
 thought of gold ^ which twines like _a_WQrm about 
 the soul of a Jew. 
 
 ^^Tiearken to me, Yankel! " said Taras to the 
 Jew, who began to bow low before him, and he 
 shut the door so that they might not be seen. " I 
 saved your life: the Zaporozhtzi were ready to 
 tear you in pieces, like a dog. Now it's your turn 
 to do me a service." 
 
 The Jew's face contracted a bit. 
 
 " What service? If it's a service I can render, 
 why not render it? " 
 
 " Don't give me any talk! Take me to War- 
 saw." 
 
 "To Warsaw? Why to Warsaw?" said the 
 Jew, and his brows and shoulders rose in amaze- 
 ment. 
 
 " Don't answer back. Take me to Warsaw. I 
 must see him once more, at any cost, and say at 
 least one word to him." 
 
 *' Say a word to whom? " 
 
 " To him — to Ostap — to my son." 
 
 ** Has not the noble lord heard that already — " 
 
TARAS BULBA 243 
 
 " I know, I know all: they offer two thousand 
 ducats for my head. They know its value, the 
 fools ! I'll give you five thousand. Here are two 
 thousand on the spot" (Bulba poured out two 
 thousand ducats from a leather bag), ** and the 
 rest you shall have when I return." 
 
 The Jew instantly seized a towel and concealed 
 the ducats under it. " Ai', glorious money ! AT, 
 good money! " he said, twirling one of the gold 
 pieces in his hand, and testing it with his teeth. 
 *' I don't believe the man from whom the noble 
 lord stole these fine gold pieces remained in the 
 world an hour longer; he went straight to the river 
 and drowned himself after the loss of such mag- 
 nificent pieces. 
 
 ** I wouldn't have asked you ; I might, possibly, 
 have found my own way to Warsaw, but some one 
 might recognise me, and then the cursed Lyakhs 
 would capture me, for I'm not clever at making 
 up plausible stories; but that's just what you Jews 
 are created for. You'd deceive the very Devil: 
 you know all the tricks ; that's why I have come to 
 you ! And, besides, I couldn't accomplish any- 
 thing in Warsaw by myself. Harness up your 
 cart instantly, and drive me to Warsaw." 
 
 " And does the noble lord think that I can take 
 the mare so, out of hand, and harness her, and — 
 
244 TARAS BULBA 
 
 * Get up, Dapple ' ? Does the noble lord think 
 that I can take the noble lord just as he Is, without ; 
 hiding him? '* 
 
 " Well, hide me, then, hide me any way you like : 
 how would a powder-cask answer? '* 
 
 " Ai, ai ! and the noble lord thinks, perhaps, that 
 he can be concealed In a powder-cask? Doesn't 
 the noble lord know that every man thinks every 
 cask contains corn-brandy? " 
 
 " Well, let 'em think it's brandy! " 
 
 "What! Let them think It's brandy?" said 
 the Jew, grasping his earlocks with both hands, 
 then throwing up his arms. 
 
 *' Well, and why are you so frightened? " 
 
 " And doesn't the noble lord know that God has 
 made brandy expressly for every one to taste? 
 They're all gluttons and fond of dainties there : a 
 Polish noble will run five versts after a cask; he'll 
 bore a hole, and as soon as he sees that nothing 
 runs out, he'll say, * The Jew Isn't carrying a 
 powder-cask; there's certainly something wrong 
 here ! Seize the Jew, bind the Jew, take away all 
 the Jew's money ; put the Jew in prison ! ' Because 
 everything that Is evil is blamed on the Jew, and 
 every one takes a Jew for a dog; and they think 
 he's not a man, because he's a Jew." 
 
 " Then lay me In the wagon with a load of fish." 
 
 " It can't be done, noble sir, it can't be done : all 
 
TARAS BULBA 245 
 
 over Poland the people are as hungry as dogs now. 
 They'll steal the fish, and feel the noble lord." 
 
 " Then take me In any devirs way you like, only 
 take me/* 
 
 *' Listen, listen, noble sir! " said the Jew, strip- 
 ping up the cuffs of his sleeves, and approaching 
 him with arms outstretched. " This Is what we'll 
 do. — ^ They're building fortresses and castles 
 everywhere : French engineers have come from 
 Germany, and so a great deal of brick and stone is 
 being carted over the highways. Let the noble 
 lord lie down in the bottom of the wagon, and over 
 him I will pile bricks. The noble lord is strong 
 and well, apparently, so he will not mind if it is a 
 little heavy; and I will make a hole in the bottom 
 of the wagon, so that I can feed the noble lord." 
 
 " Do what you will, only take me ! " 
 
 And in an hour, a wagon-load of bricks left 
 Uman, drawn by two sorry nags. On one of them 
 sat tall Yankel; and his long, curling earlocks 
 fluttered from beneath his Jewish cap of felt, as, 
 long as a verst-post planted by the roadside, he 
 bounced about on the horse. 
 
CHAPTER ELEVEN 
 
XI 
 
 AT the time when the above-described inci- 
 dents took place, there were, as yet, in the 
 frontier settlements, no custom-house 
 officials and guards, — those terrible menaces to 
 enterprising people, — therefore, any one could 
 bring across anything he liked. If any one made 
 any search or inspection, he did It chiefly for his 
 own pleasure, especially if there happened to be In 
 the wagon objects attractive to the eye, and if his 
 own hand possessed a certain weight and power. 
 But the bricks found no admirers, and they entered 
 the principal gate of the city unmolested. Bulba, 
 in his narrow cage, could only hear the noise, the 
 shouts of the drivers, and nothing more. Yankel, 
 bouncing away on his short, dust-covered trotter, 
 turned, after taking several circuitous bends, into a 
 dark, narrow street bearing the name of " The 
 Muddy " and also of " the Jews' Street," because, 
 as a matter of fact, Jews from nearly every quarter 
 of Warsaw were to be found there. This street 
 greatly resembled a back-yard turned wrongside 
 out. The sun, apparently, never shone in there. 
 The totally black wooden houses, with Innumerable 
 
 249 
 
250 TARAS BULBA 
 
 poles projecting from the windows, still further 
 increased the gloom. Rarely did the brick wall 
 gleam red among them ; for it also, in many places, 
 had turned quite black. Here and there, high up, 
 a bit of stuccoed wall lighted by the sun, shone 
 with a whiteness intolerable to the eye. Every- 
 thing there was extremely harsh ; pipes, rags, shells, 
 broken and discarded tubs. Every one flung into 
 the street whatever was useless to him, thus afford- 
 ing the passer-by an opportunity to regale all his 
 senses with the rubbish. A man on horseback 
 could almost touch with his hand the poles thrown 
 across the street from one house to another, upon 
 which hung Jewish stockings, short trousers, and 
 smoked geese. Sometimes the rather pretty face 
 of a Jewess, adorned with blackened pearls, 
 peeped out of an ancient window. A mob of Jew 
 urchins, with torn and dirty garments and curly 
 hair, screamed and rolled about in the mud. A 
 red-haired Jew, with freckles all over his face, 
 which made him look like a sparrow's egg, was 
 gazing out of a window; he instantly accosted 
 Yankel in his unintelligible jargon, and Yankel im- 
 mediately drove into the court-yard. Another 
 Jew, who was coming along the street, halted and 
 entered into conversation, and when Bulba, at last, 
 emerged from beneath the bricks, he beheld these 
 three Jews talking with great heat. 
 
TARAS BULBA 251 
 
 Yankel turned to him, and said that everything 
 would be done; that his Ostap was In the city jail, 
 and that, although It would be difficult to persuade 
 the jailer, yet he hoped to arrange a meeting. 
 
 Bulba entered the room with the three Jews. 
 
 The Jews again began to talk among them- 
 selves, in their incomprehensible language. 
 Taras took a good look at each of them. Some- 
 thing seemed to have affected him deeply; on his 
 rough and stolid countenance a consuming flame of 
 hope flashed up, of hope such as sometimes visits a 
 man in the lowest depths of despair; his aged 
 heart began to beat violently, as though he were 
 a youth. 
 
 "Hearken, Jews I" said he, and there was a 
 ring of triumph in his words. " You can do any- 
 thing In the world, even to extracting things from 
 the bottom of the sea ; and it has long since passed 
 into a proverb that a Jew will steal from himself, 
 if he takes a fancy to steal. Set my Ostap at lib- 
 erty! Give him a chance to escape from their 
 diabolical hands. I have promised this man hve 
 thousand ducats, — I add another five thousand; 
 all that I have in the way of precious cups, burled 
 gold, my houses, all, even to my last garment, I 
 will sell; and I will enter Into a contract with you 
 for my whole life, to share with you, half and half, 
 all the booty I may win in war." 
 
252 TARAS BULBA 
 
 " O, It can't be done, dear noble lord, it's Impos- 
 sible!" "No, it can't be done I" chimed in 
 another Jew. 
 
 The three Jews exchanged glances. 
 
 " We might try," said the third, with a timid 
 glance at the other two. *' Perhaps God will fa- 
 vour us." 
 
 All three Jews began to talk in German. Strain 
 his ears as he might, Bulba could make nothing of 
 It: he only caught the word " Mardokhal " often 
 repeated, nothing more. 
 
 " Listen, noble lord," said Yankel. " We must 
 consult with a man such as there never was before 
 in all the world ... I as wise as Solomon he Is; 
 and If he will do nothing, then no one in the world 
 can do anything. Sit here : this Is the key ; admit 
 no one I " Thereupon the Jews went out Into the 
 street. 
 
 Taras locked the door, and gazed from the tiny 
 window upon the dirty Jewish prospect. The 
 three Jews halted In the middle of the street, and 
 began to talk with a good deal of warmth : a fourth 
 soon joined them, and, finally, a fifth. Again he 
 heard repeated, " Mardokhal, Mardokhal I " 
 The Jews kept glancing Incessantly towards one 
 side of the street; at last, at the end of It, from be- 
 hind a dirty house, there emerged a foot in a Jew- 
 ish shoe, and there was a brief glimpse of the flut- 
 
TARAS BULBA 253 
 
 tering skirts of a half-kaftan. — " Ah ! Mardokhal, 
 Mardokhai ! " exclaimed the Jews with one voice. 
 A gaunt Jew, somewhat shorter than Yankel, but 
 even more wrinkled, and with a huge upper lip, 
 approached the impatient group ; and all the Jews 
 made haste, even interrupting one another, to talk 
 to him. During the recital, Mardokhal cast sev- 
 eral glances towards the little window, and Taras 
 divined that the conversation concerned him. 
 
 Mardokhai waved his hands, listened, inter- 
 rupted, spat frequently to one side, and, pulling 
 up the skirts of his half-kaftan, thrust his hand into 
 his pocket and drew out some jingling object, 
 showing his very dirty trousers in the operation. 
 Finally, all the Jews set up such a shout, that the 
 Jew who was standing on guard was forced to 
 make a signal for silence, and Taras began to 
 fear for his own safety; but when he remembered 
 that Jews cannot consult anywhere except in the 
 street, and that the demon himself cannot under- 
 stand their language, he regained his composure. 
 
 Two minutes later the Jews all entered the room 
 together. Mardokhai approached Taras, tapped 
 him on the shoulder, and said: " When we wish 
 to act, then things will be as they should." Taras 
 looked at this Solomon such as the world had never 
 known, and conceived some hope : in fact, his face 
 might well inspire some confidence: his upper lip 
 
254 TARAS BULBA 
 
 was simply an object of horror; Its thickness had 
 doubtless been increased by adventitious circum- 
 stances. The beard of this Solomon consisted of 
 only about fifteen hairs, and they were all on the 
 left side. Solomon's face bore so many scars of 
 battle, received for his audacity, that he had, no 
 doubt, lost count of them long before, and grown 
 accustomed to regarding them as birthmarks. 
 
 Mardokhai departed, accompanied by his com- 
 rades, who were filled with admiration for his wis- 
 dom. Bulba was left alone. He was in a 
 strange, unaccustomed situation; for the first time 
 In his life, he felt uneasy. His soul was In a state 
 of fever. He was no longer the man he had been, 
 unbending, Immovable, strong as an oak; he was 
 faint-hearted now; now he was weak. He 
 trembled at every sound, at every new Jewish 
 figure which showed Itself at the end of the street. 
 In this condition he spent the whole day; he neither 
 ate nor drank, and his eye never, for a single mo- 
 ment, quitted the tiny window which looked out on 
 the street. Finally, late at night, Mardokhai and 
 Yankel made their appearance. Taras's heart 
 died within him. 
 
 *' What news? Are you successful? " he asked, 
 with the restiveness of a wild horse. 
 
 But before the Jews had recovered breath to 
 answer, Taras perceived that Mardokhai no 
 
TARAS BULBA 255 
 
 longer had his last lock, which, although very 
 greasy, had fallen In rings from beneath his felt 
 cap. It was evident that he wished to say some- 
 thing, but he began by uttering such nonsense that 
 Taras understood nothing of it. And Yankel 
 himself put his hand very often to his mouth, as 
 though suffering from a cold. 
 
 '' O, dear noble sir! " said Yankel, " It'is utterly 
 impossible now ! God is my witness, it is impos- 
 sible ! Such vile people, that one can only spit on 
 their heads in disgust! And Mardokhai here will 
 tell you the same. Mardokhai has done what no 
 man in the world ever did, but it was not God's will 
 that it should be so. Three thousand of the 
 troops are stationed here, and to-morrow all the 
 men are to be executed." 
 
 Taras looked the Jew straight in the eye, but 
 no longer with impatience or anger. 
 
 '' But If the noble lord wishes to see him, then 
 it must be very early in the morning, before sun- 
 rise. The sentinels have agreed, and one jailer 
 has promised. But may they have no happiness in 
 the world, woe is me! What greedy people! 
 Even among us there are none such: I had to 
 give fifty ducats to each one, and to the jailer. . . ." 
 
 *' Good. Take me to him ! " exclaimed Taras 
 with decision, and all the firmness returned to his 
 spirit. He agreed to Yankel's proposal that he 
 
256 TARAS BULBA 
 
 should disguise himself as a foreign count, just ar- 
 rived from Germany, for which purpose the pru- 
 dent Jew had already provided a costume. It was 
 already night. The master of the house, the 
 above-mentioned red-haired Jew with freckles, 
 drew forth a thin mattress covered with some sort 
 of rug, and spread it on the bench for Bulba. 
 Yankel lay down upon the floor, on a similar mat- 
 tress. The red-haired Jew drank a small cup of 
 liquor infusion, threw off his half-kaftan, and be- 
 took himself, — looking, in his shoes and stockings, 
 a good deal like a chicken, — with his Jewess, to 
 something resembling a cupboard. Two other 
 Jews lay down on the floor beside the cupboard, 
 like a couple of family dogs. But Taras did not 
 sleep : he sat motionless, drumming lightly on the 
 table with his fingers. He kept his pipe in his 
 mouth, and puffed out smoke which made the Jew 
 sneeze, in a state of semi-waking, and wrap up his 
 nose in his coverlet. Scarcely was the sky tinged 
 with the first faint gleams of dawn, when he 
 pushed Yankel with his foot : " Rise, Jew, and 
 give me your Count^s dress ! " 
 
 In a moment he had dressed himself; he black- 
 ened his moustache and eyebrows, put on his head 
 a small, dark cap, and not even the kazaks who 
 knew him best would have recognised him. To 
 all appearance, he was not more than five and 
 
TARAS BULBA 257 
 
 thirty. A healthy colour played In his cheeks, and 
 even his scars Imparted to him an air of authority. 
 The gold-embroidered costume was extremely well 
 suited to him. 
 
 The streets were still asleep. Not a single mer- 
 cantile person had yet shown himself In the city, 
 basket on arm. Yankel and Bulba went to a build- 
 ing which had the appearance of a crouching stork. 
 It was low, wide, huge and black; and on one side 
 a tall, slender tower projected, like a stork's neck, 
 above which stuck out a bit of roof. This build- 
 ing served for a variety of purposes : It was a bar- 
 rack, a jail, and even the criminal court. Our 
 travellers entered the gate, and found themselves 
 In a vast room, or covered courtyard. About a 
 thousand men were sleeping there. Straight be- 
 fore them was a small door In front of which sat 
 two sentries playing at some game which consisted 
 in one striking the palm of the other's hand with 
 two fingers. They paid scant heed to the new- 
 comers, and merely turned their heads when 
 Yankel said, " 'TIs we, noble sirs; do you hear? 
 TIswe. . . y 
 
 " Go in! " said one of them, opening the door 
 with one hand, and holding out the other to his 
 comrade, to receive his blows. 
 
 They entered a low, dark corridor, which led 
 them to a room of the same description, with 
 
258 TARAS BULBA 
 
 small windows overhead. "Who goes there? '* 
 shouted several voices, and Taras beheld a number 
 of warriors In full armour. *' We have been or- 
 dered to admit no one.'* 
 
 " *TIs we!" cried Yankel; ** we, by heaven, 
 most illustrious sirs ! '* But no one would listen to 
 them. Fortunately, at that moment a fat man 
 came along, who, from all the signs, appeared to 
 be the commanding officer, for he cursed more 
 loudly than all the rest. 
 
 " Noble sir, 'tis we ! You know us, and the 
 sir Count will thank you." 
 
 " Admit them, a hundred devils and the devil's 
 mother! And admit no one else. And no one 
 is to take off his sword, and no one is to quarrel 
 on the floor, like dogs. . . ." 
 
 The conclusion of the eloquent order our trav- 
 ellers did not hear. " 'Tis we, 'tis I, 'tis your 
 friends! " Yankel said to every one they met. 
 
 '* Well, can we enter now? " he Inquired of one 
 of the guards, when, at last, they reached the end 
 of the corridor. 
 
 " Yes, but I don't know whether you are to be 
 admitted to the prison itself. Yan is not here 
 now: another man is standing guard In his place," 
 replied the sentinel. " Ai, a'l!" cried the Jew 
 softly: " this is bad, my dear sir! " 
 
TARAS BULBA 259 
 
 "Lead on!" said Taras firmly. The Jew 
 obeyed. 
 
 At the door of the underground cells, which ran 
 to a peak at the top, stood a heyduke,^ with a three- 
 storied moustache. The upper story ran back, 
 the second straight forward, and the third down- 
 ward, which made him greatly resemble a cat. 
 
 The Jew shrank into nothing, and sidled up to 
 him almost sideways: "Your High Excellency! 
 High and Illustrious lord! " 
 
 " Are you speaking to me, Jew? " 
 
 " To you, illustrious lord." 
 
 " Hm, — but I'm merely a heyduke," said the 
 merry-eyed man with the three-storied moustache. 
 
 " And I thought it was the Voevod himself, 
 God is my witness, I did! Ai, ai, ai! " There- 
 upon the Jew wagged his head and spread out his 
 fingers. " AT, what an imposing aspect ! A 
 colonel, as God is my witness, a regular colonel ! 
 Another finger's breadth and he'd be a colonel. 
 The noble lord ought to mount a stallion, one as 
 fleet as a fly, and drill the regiments ! " 
 
 The heyduke arranged the lower story of his 
 moustache, and his eyes grew very merry. 
 
 1 A heyduke is the lackey of a grandee, selected for his 
 height and massive build, and dressed as a Hungarian, a 
 Hussar or a Kazak. I. F. H. 
 
26o TARAS BULBA 
 
 " What a warlike people ! " went on the Jew. 
 ** Ah, woe IS me, what a fine race ! All cords and 
 metal disks . . . they shine like the sun; and the 
 pretty girls, whenever they behold warriors — AT, 
 ail " Again the Jew wagged his head. 
 
 The heyduke twirled his upper moustache, and 
 uttered a sound which somewhat resembled the 
 neigh of a horse. 
 
 " I pray the noble lord to do us a service ! '* ex- 
 claimed the Jew : *' Here's a prince who has come 
 hither from a foreign land to get a look at the 
 kazaks. He has never, in all his life, seen what 
 sort of men the kazaks are." 
 
 The appearance of foreign counts and barons 
 was sufficiently common in Poland : they were often 
 drawn by curiosity to view this half-Asiatic corner 
 of Europe. They regarded Moscow and the 
 Ukraina as situated in Asia. So the heyduke 
 bowed low, and thought fit to put in a few words 
 of his own. 
 
 " I do not know, Your Excellency," said he, 
 " why you should desire to see them. They are 
 dogs, not men; and their Faith is such as no one 
 respects." 
 
 " You lie, you son of the Devil! " said Bulba. 
 "You're a dog, yourself I How dare you say 
 that our Faith is not respected? It's your hereti- 
 cal faith which is not respected." 
 
TARAS BULBA 261 
 
 " OHo, ho ! " said the heyduke. '' Well, I know 
 who you are, my friend; you're one of those who 
 are under my charge. So wait, I'll summon our 
 men." 
 
 Taras perceived his indiscretion; but vexation 
 and obstinacy prevented his devising a means of 
 remedying it. Fortunately, Yankel managed to 
 Interpose at this moment: — ** Most Illustrious sir, 
 how IS It possible that the Count should be a 
 kazak? And if he were a kazak, where could he 
 have obtained such a dress, and such a count-like 
 mien? " 
 
 " O, go talk to yourself! '* And the heyduke 
 had already opened his wide mouth to shout. 
 
 " Your Royal Highness, silence I Silence, for 
 God's sake ! " cried Yankel. " Silence ! We will 
 pay you for it In a way you have never dreamed of: 
 we will give you two golden ducats." 
 
 *' Oho ! two ducats I I can't do anything with 
 two ducats. I give my barber two ducats for 
 shaving only the half of my beard. Give a hun- 
 dred ducats, Jew." Here the heyduke twirled his 
 upper moustache. " And If you don't give a hun- 
 dred ducats, I'll give the alarm on the spot." 
 
 " And why so much? " said the Jew sadly, turn- 
 ing pale, and undoing his leather purse; but It was 
 lucky that he had no more in his purse, and that 
 the heyduke could not count above one hundred. 
 
262 TARAS BULBA 
 
 "Noble sir, noble sir, let us depart quickly 1 
 See the evil people yonder I " said Yankel, noticing 
 that the heyduke was turning the money over in 
 his hand, as though regretting that he had not de- 
 manded more. 
 
 *' What do you mean, you devil of a heyduke? '' 
 said Bulba. " YouVe taken our money, and don't 
 mean to show us the men? Yes, you must let us 
 see them. Since youVe taken the money, you have 
 no right to refuse." 
 
 " Get out I Go to the devil ! And if you don't, 
 I'll give the alarm this very minute, and you'll — 
 Take yourselves off, and be quick about it. 
 That's all I have to say." 
 
 " Sir, noble sir, let us go ! In God's name, let us 
 go ! Curse him ! May he dream of such hor- 
 rible things that he will have to spit in disgust I " 
 cried poor Yankel. 
 
 Bulba turned slowly, with drooping head, and 
 went back, followed by the reproaches of Yankel, 
 who was devoured with grief at the thought of the 
 wasted ducats. 
 
 " And why must you needs stir him up? Why 
 didn't you let the dog go on cursing? That race 
 can't help cursing. O, woe is me, what luck God 
 does send to some folks I A hundred ducats 
 merely for driving us off I And our brother — 
 they'll tear off his earlocks, and they'll do some- 
 
TARAS BULBA 263 
 
 thing dreadful to his face, so that you can't bear to 
 look at it, and no one will give him a hundred 
 ducats. O, my God! Merciful God! " 
 
 But this failure made a much more profound 
 impression upon Bulba, which was expressed by a 
 devouring flame in his eyes. 
 
 " Come along! " he said suddenly, as though 
 shaking himself; ** Let's go to the square. I want 
 to see how they will torture him." 
 
 " O, noble sir, why go? That won't do any 
 good now." 
 
 "Come along!" said Bulba obstinately; and, 
 sighing, the Jew followed him as a nurse follows 
 a child. 
 
 The square on which the execution was to take 
 place was not difficult to find : people were throng- 
 ing thither from all directions. In that savage 
 age, an execution constituted one of the most inter- 
 esting of spectacles, not only for the populace, but 
 also for the higher classes. A multitude of the 
 most pious old women, a throng of young girls and 
 women of the most cowardly sort, who would 
 dream the whole night afterwards of bloody 
 corpses, and who shrieked as loudly in their sleep 
 as a drunken hussar, missed no opportunity, never- 
 theless, to gratify their curiosity. " Ah, what tor- 
 ture! " many of them would exclaim hysterically, 
 covering their eyes, and turning away; but they 
 
264 TARAS BULBA 
 
 would stand their ground for quite a while, never- 
 theless. Many a one, with gaping mouth and out- 
 stretched arms, would have liked to jump upon the 
 heads of the populace to get a better view. 
 Above the mass of small, narrow, commonplace 
 heads, towered the large head of a butcher, ad- 
 miring the whole process with the air of a con- 
 noisseur, and exchanging monosyllabic words with 
 a gunsmith whom he called " Gossip " because he 
 had once got drunk in the same dram-shop with 
 him on a holiday. Some entered into warm dis- 
 cussions, others even laid wagers. But the major- 
 ity were of the sort who, all the world over, look 
 on at the world and at everything that goes on in 
 it, and merely pick at their noses. 
 
 In the foreground, close to the bearded city 
 guards, stood a young noble, or one who appeared 
 to be such, in warlike garb, who had donned liter- 
 ally everything he owned, so that nothing but a 
 ragged shirt and his old shoes were left in his quar- 
 ters. Two chains, one on top of the other, hung 
 around his neck, with some ducats or other de- 
 pending from them. He stood with his mistress 
 Yusysya, and kept glancing round incessantly, to 
 make sure that no one soiled her silken gown. 
 He explained everything to her so perfectly that 
 no one could have added a single word. — " All 
 these people, my dear Yusysya," he said, " whom 
 
TARAS BULBA 265 
 
 you behold, have come hither to see the criminals 
 executed; and that man yonder, my love, who 
 holds an axe and other instruments In his hands, Is 
 the executioner, and he will despatch them. And 
 when he begins to break them on the wheel, and to 
 torture them in other ways, the criminal will still 
 be alive ; but when he cuts off his head, then, my 
 love, he will die at once. Before that he will cry 
 out and move about, but just as soon as his head 
 is cut off It will be Impossible for him to cry out, 
 or to eat or drink, because, my dear, he will no 
 longer have any head.^' And Yusysya listened to 
 it all with terror and curiosity. 
 
 The roofs of the houses were dotted with peo- 
 ple. From the dormer windows peered very 
 strange faces with beards and something resem- 
 bling caps. Upon the balconies, beneath awnings, 
 sat the aristocracy. The lovely little hands of 
 a smiling young lady, gleaming like white sugar, 
 clasped the railing. Illustrious nobles, all de- 
 cidedly stout of figure, looked on with an air of 
 Importance. A servitor In brilliant garb, with 
 backward-flowing sleeves, carried round divers 
 beverages and viands. Sometimes a black-eyed 
 rogue would take her cakes or fruit, and fling 
 them among the crowd with her own noble little 
 hand. The throng of hungry knights held up their 
 caps to catch it; and some tall noble, In faded scar- 
 
266 TARAS BULBA 
 
 let jacket and discoloured braid, thrusting his head 
 above the throng, was the first to grasp it with the 
 aid of his long arms, and kissed his booty, pressed 
 it to his heart, and finally put it in his mouth. A 
 hawk, suspended beneath the balcony in a gilded 
 cage, was also a spectator; with beak inclined to 
 one side, and one foot raised, he, also, watched 
 the people attentively. — But suddenly a murmur 
 ran through the crowd, and a rumour spread: 
 " They're coming I they're coming ! The ka- 
 zaks!" 
 
 The kazaks walked with uncovered heads, and 
 their long scalp-locks ^ floating. Their beards 
 had grown. They walked neither timidly nor 
 surlily, but with a certain haughtiness. Their 
 garments of handsome cloth were threadbare and 
 hung about them in tatters. They neither looked 
 at nor saluted the populace. At the head of all 
 walked Ostap. 
 
 What were old Taras's feelings when he be- 
 held his Ostap! What was in his heart then! 
 He gazed at him from among the crowd, and 
 lost not a single one of his movements. The men 
 had already approached the place of execution. 
 
 1 These long tufts of hair on the crown of a shaven head 
 were a fashion borrowed by the Zaporozhtzi from the Poles. 
 I. F. H. 
 
TARAS BULBA 267 
 
 Ostap halted. He was to be the first to quaff 
 the bitter cup. He glanced at his comrades, raised 
 his hand, and said in a loud voice : '' God grant 
 that none of the heretics who stand here may 
 hear, impious wretches, how Christians suffer! 
 Let none of us utter a single word! '* Then he 
 walked up to the scaffold. 
 
 " Well done, son ! well done ! " said Bulba 
 softly, and bowed his grey head. 
 
 The executioner tore off Ostap's old rags; they 
 fastened his arms and legs in stocks expressly pre- 
 pared, and — we will not harrow the reader with 
 a picture of the hellish tortures, which would make 
 his hair rise upright on his head. They were the 
 offspring of that coarse, wild age, when men still 
 led the bloody life of warlike expeditions only, 
 and hardened their souls within them, until no 
 sense of humanity remained. In vain did some — 
 a few who were exceptions in that age — oppose 
 such terrible measures. In vain did the King and 
 many knights, enlightened In mind and soul, 
 demonstrate that such severity of punishment could 
 only fan the flame of vengeance in the kazak na- 
 tion. But the power of the King and the opinion 
 of the wise were as nothing in comparison with 
 the savage will of the magnates of the kingdom 
 who, by their thoughtlessness and incomprehensible 
 
268 TARAS BULBA 
 
 lack of all far-sighted policy, their childish self- 
 love and petty pride, converted the Diet into a 
 satire on government. 
 
 Ostap endured the tortures and torments like 
 a giant. Not a cry, not a groan was audible; 
 even when they began to break the bones in his 
 arms and legs, when the horrible cracking could be 
 heard by the most remote spectators amid the 
 deathlike stillness of the throng, when even the 
 young ladies turned aside their eyes, nothing even 
 resembling a groan escaped his lips, nor did his 
 face quiver. Taras stood in the crowd with 
 bowed head; but at the same time, rasing his eyes 
 proudly, he said with approbation : " Well done, 
 son ! Well done I '' But when they took him to 
 the last deadly tortures, it seemed as though his 
 strength were on the point of failing. And he 
 turned his eyes about him on all sides. 
 
 O God! All strangers, all unknown faces! 
 If only some one of his near relatives were but 
 present at his death! He would not have wished 
 to hear the sobs and anguish of his feeble mother, 
 or the unreasoning shrieks of a wife, tearing 
 her hair and beating her white breast: he would 
 have liked to see a strong man who could refresh 
 him with a wise word, and cheer him at the end. 
 And his strength failed him, and he cried aloud, 
 
TARAS BULBA 269 
 
 in the weakness of his soul : " Father ! Where 
 are you? Do you hear it all? " 
 
 " I hear! " rang through the universal silence, 
 and all that million of people shuddered in concert. 
 A detachment of mounted soldiers hastened anx- 
 iously to scan the throng of people. Yankel 
 turned pale as death, and when the horsemen ar- 
 rived within a short distance of him he turned 
 round in terror to look at Taras : but Taras was 
 no longer beside him ; every trace of him was lost. 
 
CHAPTER TWELVE 
 
 I 
 
XII 
 
 TRACES of Taras made themselves ap- 
 parent. A hundred and twenty thousand 
 kazaks descended upon the border- 
 marches of the Ukralna. This was not a small di- 
 vision or detachment which had sallied forth for 
 plunder, or in pursuit of the Tatars. No: the 
 whole nation had risen, for the measure of the 
 people's patience was full to overflowing; they 
 had risen to avenge the mockery of their rights, 
 the dishonourable humiliation of their characters, 
 the insults to the Faith of their ancestors and 
 their sacred customs, the dishonouring of their 
 Church, the dissolute excesses of the foreign 
 nobles, the Union, the disgraceful domination of 
 Jewdom on Christian soil, and all that had ex- 
 cited and doubled the stern hatred, which the 
 kazaks had cherished for ages. Hetman Ostra- 
 nitza, young but strong in spirit, led the entire 
 innumerable kazak forces. By his side could be 
 seen his very aged and experienced friend and 
 counsellor, Gunya. Eight colonels led regiments 
 of twelve thousand each. Two Yesauls-general 
 
 273 
 
274 TARAS BULBA 
 
 and a Chief Bearer of the Hetman's mace of office, 
 rode behind the Hetman. A Cornet-general car- 
 ried the principal standard; many other standards 
 and banners floated afar; the assistants of the Het- 
 man*s mace-bearer bore the Hetman's st^ff. 
 There were also many other officials of the regi- 
 ment, of the transport-wagons, and of the general 
 army, and regimental scribes, and with them de- 
 tachments of foot-soldiers and of cavalry. There 
 were almost as many free kazaks and volunteers 
 as there were registered kazaks. The kazaks had 
 risen up everywhere, in Chigirin, from Pereyaslav, 
 from Baturin, from Glukhov, from the regions of 
 the lower Dnyeper, from the whole of its upper 
 course and from the islands. Innumerable horses, 
 and countless camps of carts stretched across the 
 plain. And among all these kazaks, among all 
 those eight regiments, one regiment was the flower 
 of them all, and it was led by Taras Bulba. Ev- 
 erything contributed to give him weight over the 
 nfJTPrsj his n^y^nceA years,_hjs experience and skill 
 in directi ng h is troops, and his haTred^f the foe, 
 whicfTsurpassed that of alTtHe rest. His grey 
 head dreamed of nothing but fire and the halter, 
 and his utterances In the councils of war breathed 
 nothing short of annihilation. 
 
 It is not worth while to describe all the battles 
 in which the kazaks distinguished themselves, or 
 
TARAS BULBA 275 
 
 the gradual course of the campaign. All that is 
 set down in the Chronicles of old. Every one 
 knows what an army raised on Russian soil for the 
 Faith is like. There is no power stronger than 
 faith. It is menacing and invincible as a rock not 
 made by human hands, amid the stormy, ever- 
 changing sea. From the very heart of the depths 
 of the sea it lifts its impregnable walls to heaven, 
 all built of a single, compact stone. It is visible 
 from every side, and looks the waves straight in 
 the eye as they roll past. And woe to the vessel 
 which is dashed against it ! The rigging flies into 
 splinters, everything in it sinks and is crushed, into 
 dust, and the startled air reverberates with the 
 cries of the drowning. 
 
 The pages of the Chronicles contain a minute 
 description of how the Polish garrisons fled from 
 the liberated towns; how the unscrupulous Jewish 
 revenue-farmers were hung; how weak was the 
 royal Hetman, Nikolai Pototzk^, with his numer- 
 ous army againstTKis invincible force ; how, broken, 
 pursued, he drowned the best part of his army in a 
 small stream; how the fierce kazak regiments be- 
 sieged him in the small town of Polon; and, how, 
 driven to extremities, the Polish Hetmar? promised, 
 under oath, full satisfaction for'everything, in the 
 name of his King and the government oflicials, 
 ^nd the restitution of all their former rights and 
 
276 TARAS BULBA 
 
 privileges. But the kazaks were not the men to 
 be tricked by all that: they already knew full well 
 the value of a Polish oath. And Pototzky would 
 never more have pranced on his six-thousand ducat 
 race-horse of the Kabarda, attracting the glances 
 of distinguished ladies, and the envy of the nobil- 
 ity; he would never more have cut a figure in the 
 Diet, giving luxurious feasts to Senators, — if the 
 Russian priests who were In the little town had 
 not saved him. When all the clergy in their bril- 
 liant gold vestments, with the Bishop himself, cross 
 In hand and episcopal mitre on head, went out 
 to meet the kazaks, bearing the holy pictures and 
 the cross, all the kazaks bowed their heads, and 
 doffed their caps. No one lower than the King 
 himself would they have respected at such an hour; 
 but their boldness subsided before the Church of 
 Christ, and they paid respect to their priesthood. 
 The Hetman and the Colonels agreed to release 
 Pototzky, after having exacted from him a solemn 
 oath to leave all the Christian churches at liberty, 
 to lay aside the ancient enmity, and to do no Injury 
 to the kazak army. Qne colonel alone woul d not 
 agre e to suc ha pe ace. That one w^^ -Ta4*a:^r-~~-He 
 tore a handful ofTiair from his headr-afl^i-erled : 
 
 *^ lih, hetman and LoloneTs! Commit no such 
 womanish deed! Trust not the Lyakhs! The 
 dogs will betray you ! " 
 
TARAS BULBA 277 
 
 When the regimental scribe presented the agree- 
 ment, and the Hetman set his powerful hand to It, 
 Taras drew out his genuine Damascus blade, a rich 
 Turkish sabre of the finest steel, broke It in twain 
 like a reed, and flung the two fragments far away 
 from him on either side, saying: "Farewell! 
 As the two pieces of this sword will never re- 
 unite and form one sword again, so, we, comrades, 
 shall never more behold one another in this world. 
 Remember my parting words." (Here his voice 
 rose higher and acquired a hitherto unknown 
 power — and his prophetic utterances troubled 
 them all.) "Before your death-hour you will re- 
 member me! Do you think that you have pur- 
 chased peace and quiet? Do you think you are 
 going to reign like Polish lords? You will reign 
 like Polish lords, but after quite another fashion. 
 They will flay the skin from your head, Hetman, 
 they will stuff It with bran, and long will it be ex- 
 hibited at all the fairs. And neither will you 
 retain your heads, noble sirs ! You will perish In 
 damp dungeons, walled about with stone. If they 
 do not boil you alive In kettles, as they boil 
 sheep ! 
 
 " And you, my men," he went on, turning to his 
 followers, " which of you wants to die a proper 
 death? not through sorrows and womanish long- 
 ing, nor drunk under a hedge alongside of the 
 
278 TARAS BULBA 
 
 dramshop; but an honourable kazak death, all in 
 one bed, like bride and groom? Or, perhaps, you 
 would like to go back home and turn infidels, and 
 carry Polish Catholic priests on your backs? " 
 
 " We'll follow you, sir Colonel, we'll follow 
 you ! " shouted his whole regiment, and many 
 others joined them. 
 
 " If you mean to follow me, then come on! " 
 said Taras, pulling his cap further down on his 
 brows; and throwing a menacing glance at the 
 others, he walked to his horse, and shouted to his 
 men : " Let no one reproach us with any insulting 
 speeches ! Now, hey there, my lads ! we'll go and 
 pay a visit to the Catholics I " Thereupon he 
 lashed his horse, and there followed him a camp 
 of a hundred carts, and with them many cavalry 
 and foot-soldiers; and, turning, he threatened with 
 his glance all who remained behind — and wrath 
 was in his eye. The regiment marched off in full 
 view of the whole army, and Taras continued long 
 to turn and glower. 
 
 The Hetman and the colonels were disquieted; 
 all grew thoughtful and remained long silent, as 
 though oppressed by some heavy foreboding. 
 Not in vain did Taras prophesy : all came to pass 
 as he had foretold. A little while afterwards, 
 after the treacherous attack at Kanev, the Het- 
 man's head was mounted on a stake, together with 
 
TARAS BULBA 279 
 
 the heads of many among his principal offi- 
 cers. 
 
 And what of Taras? Taras roamed all over 
 Poland with his regiment^b urned eighte en towns, 
 and nearly forty chiircEes, and reached Krakov. 
 He slew many nobles of all degrees, and plundered 
 the richest and finest castles. The kazaks opened 
 and poured out on the ground the century-old 
 mead and wine, carefully hoarded up in the noble- 
 men's cellars ; they cut and burned rich cloths, gar- 
 ments, and utensils, which they found in the store- 
 rooms. '* Spare nothing," Taras kept repeating 
 — only that. The kazaks spared not the black- 
 browed gentlewoman, the brilliant, white-bosomed 
 maidens : they could not save themselves, not even 
 at the altar itself; Taras burned them together 
 with the altar. Many were the snowy hands up- 
 raised to heaven from amid the fiery flames, ac- 
 companied by piteous shrieks, which would have 
 moved the damp earth itself to pity, and caused 
 the steppe-grass to bend low with compassion at 
 their fate. But the ruthless kazaks paid no heed, 
 and picking up the children in the streets upon 
 their lances, they cast them, also, into the flames. 
 
 *' This is in commemoration of Ostap, you dev- 
 ilish Lyakhs ! " was all that Taras said. And 
 such commemorations for Ostap he arranged in 
 every village, until the Polish Government per- 
 
28o TARAS BULBA 
 
 /ceived that Taras's raids were more than ordinary 
 expeditions for pkinder; and that same Pototzky 
 was given five regiments, and ordered to capture 
 Taras, without fail. 
 
 Six days did the kazaks retreat along the coun- 
 try lanes, before the pursuit; their horses barely 
 endured this excessive flight, but they saved the 
 kazaks. But this time Pototzky was equal to the 
 task intrusted to him ; unwearily he followed them, 
 and reached the bank of the Dnyeper, where Taras 
 had taken possession of a ruined and abandoned 
 castle, for the purpose of resting. 
 
 On the very brink of the Dnyeper, it could be 
 seen, with its shattered ramparts and the ruined 
 remains of its walls. The summit of the cliff was 
 strewn with rubbish and broken bricks, ready at 
 any moment to detach themselves and fly to the 
 bottom. The Royal Hetman, Pototzky, sur- 
 rounded it on the two sides which faced the plain. 
 Four days did the kazaks fight and struggle, de- 
 fending thea ^selves w ith bricks and ston es. But 
 their provisions and their grrength IJecame ex- 
 hausted, and Taras resolved to cut his way through 
 the ranks. And the kazaks would have cut their 
 way out, and their swift steeds might again have 
 served them faithfully, had not Taras halted sud- 
 denly In the very midst of their flight, and shouted ; 
 **Halt! nay-^ip#4u^ dropped with Its tobac;co: I 
 
TARAS BULBA 281 
 
 won't let those devilish Lyakhs have my pipe ! " 
 And the old ataman bent down, and searched in 
 the grass for his pipe full of tobacco, his insep- 
 arable companion on all his expeditions on sea and 
 land and at home. 
 
 But, In the meantime, a band of Lyakhs sud- 
 denly dashed up and seized him by his mighty 
 shoulders. He tried to struggle with all his 
 limbs; but he failed to scatter the heydukes over 
 the ground as he had been wont to do. " O, old 
 age, old age ! " he said : and the stalwart old kazak 
 wept. But it was not his age that was to blame : 
 nearly thirty men were hanging on his arms and 
 legs. 
 
 '' The raven Is caught I " shouted the Lyakhs. 
 ** Now It is only necessary to think how we can 
 best show him honour, the dog! " and they de- 
 cided, with the permission of the Hetman, to burn 
 him alive In the sight of every one. Near by 
 stood a naked tree, whose crest had been blasted 
 by lightning. They bound him with iron chains 
 to the trunk of the tree, driving nails through his 
 hands, and raising him as high as possible, that the 
 old kazak might be everywhere visible; and they 
 immediately began to build a pyre of faggots at 
 the foot of the tree. But Taras did not look at 
 the pyre, nor did he think of the fire with which 
 they were preparing to burn him: he gazecj 
 
282 TARAS BULBA 
 
 anxiously, the great-hearted man, In the direction 
 whence the kazaks were firing. From his lofty 
 post of observation he could see everything, as in 
 the palm of his hand. 
 
 " Take possession, my lads, take possession 
 quickly," he shouted, " of the hillock behind the 
 forest: they can't approach It!'' But the wind 
 did not carry his words to them. " They'll per- 
 ish, perish for nothing! " he said, in despair, and 
 glanced down to where the Dnyeper gleamed. Joy 
 shone In his eyes. He descried the sterns of four 
 boats peeping out from behind the bushes; and he 
 gathered together all the strength of his voice, and 
 shouted In a ringing tone : " To the shore, to the 
 shore, my lads ! descend the path on the left, under 
 the cliff. There are boats on the strand; seize 
 them all, that the foe may not catch you ! " 
 
 This time the breeze blew from the other quar- 
 ter, and all his words were audible to the kazaks. 
 But for this counsel he received a blow on the head 
 with the butt-end of an axe, which made everything 
 dance before his eyes. 
 
 The kazaks rode down the cliff path at full 
 speed; but the pursuers were at their heels. They 
 looked: the path wound and twisted and made 
 many curves aside. ** Ah, comrades, luck's 
 against us ! " said they all, then halted for an in- 
 stant, raised their whips — and their Tatar horses 
 
TAKAS BULBA 283 
 
 rose from the ground, clove air like serpents, flew 
 over the precipice, and plunged straight into the 
 Dnyeper. Two only failed to land in the river, 
 and thundered from the height upon the stones, 
 and perished there with their steeds, before they 
 could even utter a cry. But the rest of the kazaks 
 were already swimming with their horses and un- 
 fastening the boats. The Lyakhs halted on the 
 brink of the precipice, astounded at this wonderful 
 feat of the kazaks, and thinking : " Shall we leap 
 down to them, or not? " 
 
 One young colonel, a lively, hot-blooded fellow, 
 own brother to the beautiful Pole who had seduced 
 poor Andril, did not reflect long, but hurled himself 
 ^nd his horse after the kazaks, with all his might. 
 He turned three somersaults In the air with his 
 steed, and landed heavily on the jagged cliffs. 
 The sharp stones tore him In pieces as he fell Into 
 the abyss ; and his brains, mingled with blood, be- 
 spattered the shrubs which grew on the uneven 
 walls of the precipice. 
 
 When Taras Bulba recovered from the blow, 
 and glanced at the Dnyeper, the kazaks were al- 
 ready In the skiffs, and were rowing away. Bul- 
 lets showered upon them from above, but did not 
 reach them. And the old Ataman's eyes sparkled 
 with joy. 
 
 " Farewell, comrades 1 " he shouted to them 
 
284 TARAS BULBA 
 
 from above ; " remember me, and come hither 
 again next spring to make merry ! — What if ye 
 have captured me, ye devilish Lyakhs ? Think ye 
 that there is anything in the world which the kazak 
 fears? Wait; the time will come when ye shall 
 learn what the Orthodox Russian Faith is like! 
 Already the peoples, far and near, are beginning to 
 understand it. A Tzar shall arise from the Rus- 
 sian soil, and there shall not be a Power in the 
 world which shall not submit Itself to him ! " But 
 the fire had already risen above the faggots ; it was 
 lapping his feet, and the flames spread to the tree. 
 . . . But can any fire, flames or power be found on 
 earth capable of overpowering Russian strength? 
 Not small Is the river Dnyeper, and in it are 
 many deep pools, dense reed-beds, shallows and 
 little bays; its watery mirror gleams brightly, re- 
 sounding with the ringing plaint of the swan, and 
 the proud wild goose glides swiftly over it; and 
 many are the woodcocks, tawny-throated grouse, 
 and various other sorts of birds to be found among 
 the reeds and along its shores. The kazaks 
 floated swiftly on In the narrow, double-ruddered 
 boats, — rowed stoutly, carefully shunning the 
 reefs, cleaving the ranks of the birds, which rose 
 on the wing — and talked of their Ataman. 
 
 THE END 
 
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