tly losing patience.

"Things have come to such a pass that our holy churches are no longer
ours."

"How not ours?"

"They are pledged to the Jews. If the Jew is not first paid, there can
be no mass."

"What are you saying?"

"And if the dog of a Jew does not make a sign with his unclean hand over
the holy Easter-bread, it cannot be consecrated."

"He lies, brother gentles. It cannot be that an unclean Jew puts his
mark upon the holy Easter-bread."

"Listen! I have not yet told all. Catholic priests are going about all
over the Ukraine in carts. The harm lies not in the carts, but in the
fact that not horses, but orthodox Christians (1), are harnessed to
them. Listen! I have not yet told all. They say that the Jewesses are
making themselves petticoats out of our popes' vestments. Such are the
deeds that are taking place in the Ukraine, gentles! And you sit here
revelling in Zaporozhe; and evidently the Tatars have so scared you that
you have no eyes, no ears, no anything, and know nothing that is going
on in the world."

(1) That is of the Greek Church. The Poles were Catholics.

"Stop, stop!" broke in the Koschevoi, who up to that moment had stood
with his eyes fixed upon the earth like all Zaporozhtzi, who, on
important occasions, never yielded to their first impulse, but kept
silence, and meanwhile concentrated inwardly all the power of their
indignation. "Stop! I also have a word to say. But what were you
about? When your father the devil was raging thus, what were you doing
yourselves? Had you no swords? How came you to permit such lawlessness?"

"Eh! how did we come to permit such lawlessness? You would have tried
when there were fifty thousand of the Lyakhs (2) alone; yes, and it is
a shame not to be concealed, when there are also dogs among us who have
already accepted their faith."

(2) Lyakhs, an opprobrious name for the Poles.

"But your hetman and your leaders, what have they done?"

"God preserve any one from such deeds as our leaders performed!"

"How so?"

"Our hetman, roasted in a brazen ox, now lies in Warsaw; and the
heads and hands of our leaders are being carried to all the fairs as a
spectacle for the people. That is what our leaders did."

The whole throng became wildly excited. At first silence reigned all
along the shore, like that which precedes a tempest; and then suddenly
voices were raised and all the shore spoke:--

"What! The Jews hold the Christian churches in pledg