Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/285

Rh the heads of many among his principal officers.

And what of Taras? Taras roamed all over Poland with his regiment, burned eighteen towns, and nearly forty churches, and reached Krakov. He slew many nobles of all degrees, and plundered the richest and finest castles. The kazáks opened and poured out on the ground the century-old mead and wine, carefully hoarded up in the noblemen's cellars; they cut and burned rich cloths, garments, and utensils, which they found in the storerooms. "Spare nothing," Taras kept repeating—only that. The kazáks spared not the black-browed gentlewoman, the brilliant, white-bosomed maidens: they could not save themselves, not even at the altar itself; Taras burned them together with the altar. Many were the snowy hands upraised to heaven from amid the fiery flames, accompanied by piteous shrieks, which would have moved the damp earth itself to pity, and caused the steppe-grass to bend low with compassion at their fate. But the ruthless kazáks paid no heed, and picking up the children in the streets upon their lances, they cast them, also, into the flames.

"This is in commemoration of Ostap, you devilish Lyakhs!" was all that Taras said. And such commemorations for Ostap he arranged in every village, until the Polish Government