“My Azya,” said Pan Bogush, after a while, “I do not deny that they may be in love with your blood and the glory of Tugai Bey, though they are our Tartars, and Tugai Bey was our enemy. I understand such things, for even with us there are nobles who say with a certain pride that Hmelnitski was a noble, and descended, not from the Cossacks, but from our people—from the Mazovians. Well, though such a rascal that in hell a worse is not to be found, they are glad to recognize him, because he was a renowned warrior. Such is the nature of man! But that your blood of Tugai Bey should give you the right to command all Tartars, for this I see no sufficient reason.”
Azya was silent for a time; then he rested his palms on his thighs, and said, “Then I will tell you; Krychinski and other Tartars obey me. For besides this, that they are simple Tartars and I a prince, there are resources and power in me. But neither you know them, nor does the hetman himself know them.”
“What resources, what power?”
“I do not know how to tell you,” answered Azya, in Russian. “But why am I ready to do things that another would not dare? Why have I thought of that of which another would not have thought?”
“What do you say? Of what have you thought?”
“I have thought of this—that if the hetman would give me the will and the right, I would bring back, not merely the captains, but would put half the horde in the service of the hetman. Is there little vacant land in the Ukraine and the Wilderness? Let the hetman only announce that if a Tartar comes to the Commonwealth he will be a noble, will not be oppressed in his faith, and will serve in a squadron of his own people, that all will have their own hetman, as the Cossacks have, and my head for it, the whole Ukraine will be swarming soon. The Lithuanian Tartars will come; they will come from the South; they will come from Dobrudja and Belgrod; they will come from the Crimea; they will drive their flocks, and bring their wives and children in wagons. Do not shake your head, your grace; they will come!—as those came long ago who served the Commonwealth faithfully for generations. In the Crimea and everywhere the Khan and the murzas oppress the people; but in the Ukraine they will have their sabres, and take the field under their own hetman. I swear to you that they will come, for they suffer from hunger there from time to time. Now, if it is announced among the villages that I, by the authority of the hetman, call them—that Tugai Bey’s son calls—thousands will come here.”
Pan Bogush seized his own head: “By the wounds of God, Azya, whence did such thoughts come to you? What would there be?”
“There would be in the Ukraine a Tartar nation, as there is a Cossack. You have granted privileges to the Cossacks, and a hetman. Why should you not grant them to us? You ask what there would be. There would not be what there is now—a second Hmelnitski—for we should have put foot at once on the throat of the Cossack; there would not be an uprising of peasants, slaughter and ruin; there would be no Doroshenko, for let him but rise, and I should be the first to bring him on a halter to the feet of the hetman. And should the Turkish power think to move against us, we would beat the Sultan; were the Khan to threaten raids, we would beat the Khan. Is it so long since the Lithuanian Tartars, and those of Podolia, did the like, though remaining in the Mohammedan faith? Why should we do otherwise? We are of the Commonwealth, we are noble. Now, calculate. The Ukraine in peace, the Cossacks in check, protection against Turkey, a number of tens of thousands of additional troops—this is what I have been thinking; this is what came to my head; this is why Krychinski, Adurovich, Moravski, Tarasovski, obey me; this is why one half the Crimea will roll to those steppes when I raise the call.”
Pan Bogush was as much astonished and weighed down by the words of Azya as if the walls of that room in which they were sitting had opened on a sudden, and new, unknown regions had appeared to his eyes. For a long time he could not utter a word, and merely gazed on the young Tartar; but Azya began to walk with great strides up and down in the room. At last he said—
“Without me this cannot be done, for I am the son of Tugai Bey; and from the Dnieper to the Danube there is no greater name among the Tartars.” After a while he added: “What are Krychinski, Tarasovski, and others to me? It is not a question of them alone, or of some thousands of Lithuanian or Podolian Tartars, but of the whole Commonwealth. They say that in spring a great war will rise with the power of the Sultan; but only give me permission, and I will cause such a seething among the Tartars that the Sultan himself will scald his hands.”
“In God’s name, who are you, Azya?” cried Pan Bogush.
The young man raised his head: “The coming hetman of the Tartars!”
A gleam of the fire fell at that moment on Azya, lighting his face, which was at once cruel and beautiful. And it seemed to Pan Bogush that some new man was standing before him, such was the greatness and pride beating from the person of the young Tartar. Pan Bogush felt also that Azya was speaking the truth. If such a proclamation of the hetman were published, all the Lithuanian and Podolian Tartars would return without fail, and very many of the wild Tartars would follow them. The old noble
