Page:Taras Bulba. A Tale of the Cossacks. 1916.djvu/87

Rh under the pointer and threadbare doctrines of a teacher, they made a raid on five thousand horses; in place of the field where scholars played ball, they had the boundless, untrammelled border-marches; and at sight of them the Tatar showed his alert head, and the Turk, in his green turban, gazed phlegmatically, grimly. The difference was, that in place of the forced freedom which had united them at school, of their own free-will they had deserted their fathers and mothers and fled from their parental homes; that here were those about whose necks a rope was already dangling, and who, instead of pale death, had seen life, and life in all its intensity; that here were those who, from patrician habit, could never keep a kopék in their pockets; that here were those who had hitherto regarded a ducat as wealth, whose pockets, thanks to the Jew revenue-farmers, could have been turned wrong-side out without any danger of anything falling from them. Here all were students who could not endure the academic rod, and had not carried away a single letter from the school; but with them, also, were some who knew about Horace, and Cicero, and the Roman Republic. Many of them were officers who afterwards distinguished themselves in the King's armies; and there were numerous educated and experienced partisans, who cherished