Mother, dearest mother, I know you are my truest friend. Believe me, even now, though I have shaken off something of the dread, even now, at the bare recollection of it, an indescribable agony comes over my soul. It is only to you that I speak of it. You know that I was in my boyhood endowed with a courage beyond my years. Who, then, could have expected I should prove so weak? But I saw her--no, I cannot name her--she is too majestic, too awful for any mortal, not merely for me, to name. That face, whose brilliant glory in one moment burns into the heart; those eyes that quickly pierce the inner soul; that consuming, all-penetrating gaze: these are the traits of none that is born of woman. Oh, if you only had seen me in that moment! True, I could hide myself from all, but how hide myself from myself? The pains of hell, with every possible torture, filled my breast. Oh, what a cruel condition! I think, whatever the hell prepared for sinners may be, its tortures cannot equal mine. No, that was not love. At least, I never heard of love like that.... And then, my heart softened; I recognized the inscrutable finger of Providence that ever watches over us, and I blessed Him, who thus marvellously had pointed out the path wherein I should walk. No; this being whom He sent to rob me of quiet, and to topple down my frail plans, was no woman.... But I pray you, do not ask me who she is. She is too majestic, too awful, to be named. A later series of short-stories and sketches appeared from 1831 to 1833 under the title of “Mirgorod.” The first part of this collection constitutes one of the great romances of history--“Taras Bulba.” It is long enough to be a short novel, and, indeed, it is a novel in plot. Briefly, it tells the story of a mighty Cossack colonel, whose name gives the work its title. The romance opens with his two sons, Ostap and Andríi, coming home from school and meeting their Homeric old father and gentle, homely, and adoring mother. The father cannot be convinced that his boys have not been injured by their course at school until he engages in violent fisticuffs with Ostap. Almost immediately, to the heart-breaking of the old lady, who plays a small part in the whole scheme of her husband’s life, Taras Bulba personally takes his boys away to the great Cossack camp, where these corsairs of the steppes are gathered waiting for some chance of foray, or a war that may promise them spoils. The revelling scenes of the camp are pictured with tremendous verve, and the doughty, fear-despising, Jew-abusing Cossack is pictured to the life.