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What the deuce do we live for? just tell me that. You are a sensible man, you were not chosen as Koschevoi without reason: so just tell me what we live for?" The Koschevoi made no reply to this question. He was an obstinate Cossack. He was silent for a while, and then said, "Anyway, there will not be war." "There will not be war?" Taras asked again. "No." "Then it is no use thinking about it?"
The beaten Lyakhs ran in all directions and hid themselves. "No, the victory is not yet complete," said Taras, glancing at the city gate; and he was right. The gates opened, and out dashed a hussar band, the flower of all the cavalry. Every rider was mounted on a matched brown horse from the Kabardei; and in front rode the handsomest, the most heroic of them all.
Why should I know that it is possible to live otherwise, so as I cannot live? And it may be that were it not for the books my life would be easier, simpler. How painful all this is! What a wretched, unfortunate being I am! Alone. If Taras at least were here." At the recollection of her brother she felt still more grieved, still more sorry for herself.
The Koschevoi, in accordance with his duty, will accompany one half in pursuit of the Tatars, and the other half can choose a hetman to lead them. But if you will heed the words of an old man, there is no man fitter to be the commanding hetman than Taras Bulba. Not one of us is his equal in heroism."
The throng increased; more folk joined the dancer: and it was impossible to observe without emotion how all yielded to the impulse of the dance, the freest, the wildest, the world has ever seen, still called from its mighty originators, the Kosachka. "Oh, if I had no horse to hold," exclaimed Taras, "I would join the dance myself."
But one shouted more loudly than all the rest, and flew after the others in the dance. His scalp-lock streamed in the wind, his muscular chest was bare, his warm, winter fur jacket was hanging by the sleeves, and the perspiration poured from him as from a pig. "Take off your jacket!" said Taras at length: "see how he steams!" "I can't," shouted the Cossack. "Why?"
It beats the good, and suffers not the bad to go unpunished, and no one understands life's justice." The girl began to feel painfully sorry for the old man; she was seized with an intense yearning to help him; she longed to be of use to him. Following him with burning eyes, she suddenly said in a low voice: "Papa, dear! do not grieve. Taras is still alive. Perhaps he "
And the Cossacks would have cut their way through, and their swift steeds might again have served them faithfully, had not Taras halted suddenly in the very midst of their flight, and shouted, "Halt! my pipe has dropped with its tobacco: I won't let those heathen Lyakhs have my pipe!"
"This is my companion," said Nekhludoff to his sister, pointing to Taras, whose story he had told her before. "Surely not third class?" said Nathalie, when Nekhludoff stopped in front of a third-class carriage, and Taras and the porter with the things went in. "Yes; it is more convenient for me to be with Taras," he said.
Taras sat, looking very happy, opposite the door, keeping a place for Nekhludoff, and carrying on an animated conversation with a man in a cloth coat who sat opposite to him, and who was, as Nekhludoff afterwards found out, a gardener going to a new situation.
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