Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/262

256 should disguise himself as a foreign count, just arrived from Germany, for which purpose the prudent Jew had already provided a costume. It was already night. The master of the house, the above-mentioned red-haired Jew with freckles, drew forth a thin mattress covered with some sort of rug, and spread it on the bench for Bulba. Yankel lay down upon the floor, on a similar mattress. The red-haired Jew drank a small cup of liquor infusion, threw off his half-kaftan, and betook himself,—looking, in his shoes and stockings, a good deal like a chicken,—with his Jewess, to something resembling a cupboard. Two other Jews lay down on the floor beside the cupboard, like a couple of family dogs. But Taras did not sleep: he sat motionless, drumming lightly on the table with his fingers. He kept his pipe in his mouth, and puffed out smoke which made the Jew sneeze, in a state of semi-waking, and wrap up his nose in his coverlet. Scarcely was the sky tinged with the first faint gleams of dawn, when he pushed Yankel with his foot: "Rise, Jew, and give me your Count's dress!"

In a moment he had dressed himself; he blackened his moustache and eyebrows, put on his head a small, dark cap, and not even the kazáks who knew him best would have recognised him. To all appearance, he was not more than five and