souls. This gave rise to that wild gaiety which could not have sprung
from any other source. The tales and talk current among the assembled
crowd, reposing lazily on the ground, were often so droll, and
breathed such power of vivid narration, that it required all the
nonchalance of a Zaporozhetz to retain his immovable expression,
without even a twitch of the moustache--a feature which to this day
distinguishes the Southern Russian from his northern brethren. It was
drunken, noisy mirth; but there was no dark ale-house where a man
drowns thought in stupefying intoxication: it was a dense throng of
schoolboys.

The only difference as regarded the students was that, instead of
sitting under the pointer and listening to the worn-out doctrines of a
teacher, they practised racing with five thousand horses; instead of
the field where they had played ball, they had the boundless
borderlands, where at the sight of them the Tatar showed his keen face
and the Turk frowned grimly from under his green turban. The
difference was that, instead of being forced to the companionship of
school, they themselves had deserted their fathers and mothers and
fled from their homes; that here were those about whose neck a rope
had already been wound, and who, instead of pale death, had seen life,
and life in all its intensity; those who, from generous habits, could
never keep a coin in their pockets; those who had thitherto regarded a
ducat as wealth, and whose pockets, thanks to the Jew revenue-farmers,
could have been turned wrong side out without any danger of anything
falling from them. Here were students who could not endure the
academic rod, and had not carried away a single letter from the
schools; but with them were also some who knew about Horace, Cicero,
and the Roman Republic. There were many leaders who afterwards
distinguished themselves in the king's armies; and there were numerous