Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/189

Rh 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 Andríi'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 kazáks. Her splendid shoulders and bosom, white as fresh-fallen snow upon the mountain-tops, would have been battered against the earth, and all covered with blood and dust. He would have dispersed her sumptuous, lovely body, in fragments. But Taras did not know what God was preparing for man on the morrow, and began to forget himself with drowsiness, and finally fell asleep. But the kazáks 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.