"I wish to tell you, gentlemen, what our comradeship is. You have heard from your fathers and grandfathers how highly esteemed our country has been, how it caused itself to be honoured by the Greeks, how the city of the Caesars[38] paid ducats to it, how rich its towns were, how beautiful its churches, what men were its sovereigns--sovereigns of Russian pedigree, its own bosom sovereigns, and no Popish heretics. All this have the misbelievers destroyed; everything have they laid waste. We remained orphans, and our country like ourselves has been bereft too, like a widow after the loss of a mighty husband! This was the time, comrades, when we held out our hands to one another to be brothers! This is the foundation of our brotherhood! No ties are more holy than those of comradeship. The father loves his child, the mother loves her child, the child loves its father and mother; but this is no wonder. The brute loves its cub, too! but man alone can make to himself relations by the relationship of the heart, without that of blood! There have been comrades in other countries, but such comrades as are in our Russian country, such, I say, have never existed elsewhere. More than one of you have been dragged away into foreign countries; there, too, you have seen men! They also are God's creatures; with them also did you speak as with your own countrymen; but when you had to tell them what you felt in the inmost recesses of your hearts, then you saw the difference! Clever men are they, but not like our countrymen! men, also, but not like us! No, brothers, to love as a Russian heart loves--not to love with your mind, or anything else, but to love with all that God has given us, with all your being, with all, all," said Tarass; and he waved his arm, and shook his gray head, and jerked his mustachios, and then went on: "To love in such a manner, nobody but Russians can love. I know that baseness has found its way into our country; many think only about having heaps of corn and hay, herds of horses, and of preserving untouched in their cellars their sealed casks of mead; many ape the devil knows what customs of misbelievers, and are ashamed of their native speech, they avoid meeting their countrymen, they sell them, as one sells brutes in the market. Higher than any brotherhood do they value the favour of a foreign king, no, not merely of a king, but even the base favour of a Polish magnate, who tramples on their faces with his yellow boots. But yet the basest of them, be he base as man can be, be he all besmeared with dirt and flattery, even he, brothers, has some grain of Russian feeling in his breast; he will wake up at some time, and the poor fellow will wring his hands, he will tear his hair and curse his base life, and be ready by torments of every description to redeem it. Let every one of them know what comradeship means in our Russian country. If it has come to that point, that we must die, well then, let us die as none of them may ever die!