Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/269

Rh dreadful to his face, so that you can't bear to look at it, and no one will give him a hundred ducats. O, my God! Merciful God!"

But this failure made a much more profound impression upon Bulba, which was expressed by a devouring flame in his eyes.

"Come along!" he said suddenly, as though shaking himself; "Let's go to the square. I want to see how they will torture him."

"O, noble sir, why go? That won't do any good now."

"Come along!" said Bulba obstinately; and, sighing, the Jew followed him as a nurse follows a child.

The square on which the execution was to take place was not difficult to find: people were thronging thither from all directions. In that savage age, an execution constituted one of the most interesting of spectacles, not only for the populace, but also for the higher classes. A multitude of the most pious old women, a throng of young girls and women of the most cowardly sort, who would dream the whole night afterwards of bloody corpses, and who shrieked as loudly in their sleep as a drunken hussar, missed no opportunity, nevertheless, to gratify their curiosity. "Ah, what torture!" many of them would exclaim hysterically, covering their eyes, and turning away; but they