Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/216

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 customs. They abhor their own language. They care not to speak their real thoughts with their own countrymen. They sell their fellow-countrymen 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! 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! Not one of them! 'Tis not a fitting thing for their mouse-like natures!" Thus spoke the Atamán; and after he had finished his speech, he still con-