Taras Bulba, and Other Tales. Николай Гоголь

the kerchief from her face, and remaining motionless.

      “Why are you so sad? Tell me, why are you so sad?”

      She cast away the handkerchief, pushed aside the long hair which fell over her eyes, and poured out her heart in sad speech, in a quiet voice, like the breeze which, rising on a beautiful evening, blows through the thick growth of reeds beside the stream. They rustle, murmur, and give forth delicately mournful sounds, and the traveller, pausing in inexplicable sadness, hears them, and heeds not the fading light, nor the gay songs of the peasants which float in the air as they return from their labours in meadow and stubble-field, nor the distant rumble of the passing waggon.

      “Am not I worthy of eternal pity? Is not the mother that bore me unhappy? Is it not a bitter lot which has befallen me? Art not thou a cruel executioner, fate? Thou has brought all to my feet—the highest nobles in the land, the richest gentlemen, counts, foreign barons, all the flower of our knighthood. All loved me, and any one of them would have counted my love the greatest boon. I had but to beckon, and the best of them, the handsomest, the first in beauty and birth would have become my husband. And to none of them didst thou incline my heart, O bitter fate; but thou didst turn it against the noblest heroes of our land, and towards a stranger, towards our enemy. O most holy mother of God! for what sin dost thou so pitilessly, mercilessly, persecute me? In abundance and superfluity of luxury my days were passed, the richest dishes and the sweetest wine were my food. And to what end was it all? What was it all for? In order that I might at last die a death more cruel than that of the meanest beggar in the kingdom? And it was not enough that I should be condemned to so horrible a fate; not enough that before my own end I should behold my father and mother perish in intolerable torment, when I would have willingly given my own life twenty times over to save them; all this was not enough, but before my own death I must hear words of love such as I had never before dreamed of. It was necessary that he should break my heart with his words; that my bitter lot should be rendered still more bitter; that my young life should be made yet more sad; that my death should seem even more terrible; and that, dying, I should reproach thee still more, O cruel fate! and thee—forgive my sin—O holy mother of God!”

      1

      Everyman’s Library, No. 726.

      2

      The Cossack country beyond (za) the falls (porozhe) of the Dnieper.

      3

      The village or, rather, permanent camp of the Zaporozhian Cossacks.

      4

      Cossack villages. In the Setch, a large wooden barrack.

      5

      Sometimes written Zaporovian.

      6

      Enormous wooden sheds, each inhabited by a troop or kuren.

      7

      That is of the Greek Church. The Poles were Catholics.

      8

      Lyakhs, an opprobrious name for the Poles.

      9

      The Cossack waggons have their axles smeared with tar instead of grease.