Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/256

250 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. Everything there was extremely harsh; pipes, rags, shells, broken and discarded tubs. Every one flung into the street whatever was useless to him, thus affording 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 immediately 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.