CHAPTER XVI.

SOME days passed by. It appeared to men as if the vault
of heaven had suddenly dropped on the Commonwealth.
Joltiya Vodi; Korsun; the destruction of the armies of the
crown, ever victorious hitherto in struggles with the Cos-
sacks; the capture of the hetmans; the awful conflagration
in the whole Ukraine; slaughters, murders, unheard of
since the beginning of the world, -- all these came so sud-
denly that men almost refused to believe that so many
misfortunes could come upon one land at a time. Many,
in fact, did not believe it; some became helpless from
terror, some lost their senses, some prophesied the coming
of antichrist and the approach of the day of judgment.
All social ties were severed; all intercourse between people
and families was interrupted. Every authority ceased; dis-
tinction of persons vanished. Hell had freed from its
chains all crimes, and let them out on the world to revel;
therefore murder, pillage, perfidy, brutality, violence, rob-
bery, frenzy, took the place of labor, uprightness, and con-
science. It seemed as though henceforth people would live
not through good, but through evil; that the hearts and
intentions of men had become inverted, and that they held
as sacred that which hitherto had been infamous, and that
as infamous which hitherto had been sacred. The sun
shone no longer upon the earth, for it was hidden by the
smoke of conflagrations; in the night, instead of stars and
moon, shone the light of fires. Towns, villages, churches,
palaces, forests, went up in flames. People ceased to con-
verse; they only groaned or howled like dogs. Life lost
its value. Thousands perished without an echo, without
remembrance. And from out all these calamities, deaths,
groans, smoke, and burnings, there rose only one man.
Every moment loftier and higher, every moment more
terribly gigantic, he wellnigh obscured the light of day,
and cast his shadow from sea to sea. That man was
Bogdan Hmelnitski.

A hundred and twenty thousand men, armed and drunk
with victory, stood ready at his nod. The mob had risen on
all sides; the Cossacks of the towns joined him in every