Love, feeling, everything that is tender and passionate in a woman, was converted in her into maternal love.

She hovered around her children with anxiety, passion, tears, like the gull of the steppes.

They were taking her sons, her darling sons, from her--taking them from her, so that she should never see them again! Who knew?
Perhaps a Tatar would cut off their heads in the very first skirmish, and she would never know where their deserted bodies might lie, torn by birds of prey; and yet for each single drop of their blood she would have given all hers.

Sobbing, she gazed into their eyes, and thought, "Perhaps Bulba, when he wakes, will put off their departure for a day or two; perhaps it occurred to him to go so soon because he had been drinking." The moon from the summit of the heavens had long since lit up the whole courtyard filled with sleepers, the thick clump of willows, and the tall steppe-grass, which hid the palisade surrounding the court.

She still sat at her sons' pillow, never removing her eyes from them for a moment, nor thinking of sleep.