Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/257

Rh Yankel turned to him, and said that everything would be done; that his Ostap was in the city jail, and that, although it would be difficult to persuade the jailer, yet he hoped to arrange a meeting.

Bulba entered the room with the three Jews.

The Jews again began to talk among themselves, in their incomprehensible language. Taras took a good look at each of them. Something seemed to have affected him deeply; on his rough and stolid countenance a consuming flame of hope flashed up, of hope such as sometimes visits a man in the lowest depths of despair; his aged heart began to beat violently, as though he were a youth.

"Hearken, Jews!" said he, and there was a ring of triumph in his words. "You can do anything in the world, even to extracting things from the bottom of the sea; and it has long since passed into a proverb that a Jew will steal from himself, if he takes a fancy to steal. Set my Ostap at liberty! Give him a chance to escape from their diabolical hands. I have promised this man five thousand ducats,—I add another five thousand; all that I have in the way of precious cups, buried gold, my houses, all, even to my last garment, I will sell; and I will enter into a contract with you for my whole life, to share with you, half and half, all the booty I may win in war."