II
All three horsemen rode on in silence. Old Taras was thinking of the distant past; before him passed his youth, his years—his vanished years, over which the kazák always weeps, wishing that his life might be all youth. He wondered whom of his former comrades he should meet in the Syech. He reckoned up how many were already dead, how many were still alive. Tears formed slowly in his eyes, and his grey head drooped dejectedly.
His sons were occupied with other thoughts. But we must speak more at length of his sons. They had been sent at the age of twelve years to the academy at Kiev, because all honourable officials of that epoch considered it indispensable to give their children an education, even if it were utterly forgotten afterwards. Like all who entered the free academy, they were then wild, having been reared in unrestricted freedom; and there, for the first time, they were generally smoothed down a bit, and acquired a certain something common to them all, which caused them
57
