[Taras Bulba and Other Tales by Nikolai Vasilievich Gogol]@TWC D-Link book
Taras Bulba and Other Tales

CHAPTER IV
12/21

All who were thus agitated were strong, firm characters, not easily aroused, but, once aroused, preserving their inward heat long and obstinately.

"Hang all the Jews!" rang through the crowd.

"They shall not make petticoats for their Jewesses out of popes' vestments! They shall not place their signs upon the holy wafers! Drown all the heathens in the Dnieper!" 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 in any case courageous, hid themselves in empty brandy-casks, in ovens, and even crawled under the skirts of their Jewesses; but the Cossacks found them wherever they were.
"Gracious nobles!" shrieked one Jew, tall and thin as a stick, thrusting his sorry visage, distorted with terror, from among a group of his comrades, "gracious nobles! suffer us to say a word, only one word.

We will reveal to you what you never yet have heard, a thing more important than I can say--very important!" "Well, say it," said Bulba, who always liked to hear what an accused man had to say.
"Gracious nobles," exclaimed the Jew, "such nobles were never seen, by heavens, never! Such good, kind, and brave men there never were in the world before!" His voice died away and quivered with fear.

"How was it possible that we should think any evil of the Zaporozhtzi?
Those men are not of us at all, those who have taken pledges in the Ukraine.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books