correct one. But perhaps I had better instruct the lad
myself."

"Certainly that would be the better plan."

So from that time onwards Vologonov fell to stopping Nilushka in the
street, and repeating to him something or another in his kindly
fashion. Once he even took him by the hand, and, leading him to his
room, and giving him something to cat, said persuasively:

"Say this after me. 'Do not hasten, Oh ye people.' Try if you can say
that."

"'A lantern,'" began Nilushka civilly.

"'A lantern?' Yes. Well, go on, and say, 'I am a lantern unto thee--"

"I want to sing, it."

"There is no need for that, though presently you shall sing it. For the
moment your task is to learn the correct speaking of things. So say
after me--"

"O Lo-ord, have mercy!" came in a quiet, thoughtful chant from the
idiot. Whereafter he added in the coaxing tone of a child:

"We shall all of us have to die."

"Yes, but come, come!" expostulated Vologonov. "What are you blurting
out NOW? That much I know without your telling me--always have I known,
little friend, that each of us is hastening towards his death. Yet your
want of understanding exceeds what should be."

"Dogs run-"

"Dogs? Now, enough, little fellow."

"Dogs run like chickens. They run here, in the ravine," continued
Nilushka in the murmuring accents of a child of three.

"Nevertheless," mused Vologonov, "even that seeming nothing of his may
mean something. Yes, there may lie in it a great deal. Now, say:
'Perdition will arise before him who shall hasten.'"

"No, I want to SING something."

With a splutter Vologonov said:

"Truly you are a difficult subject to deal with!"

And with that he fell to pacing the floor with long, thoughtful strides
as the idiot's voice cried in quavering accents:

"O Lo-ord, have me-ercy upon us!"

* * * * *

Thus the winsome Nilushka proved indispensable to the foul, mean,
unhealthy life of the suburb. Of that life he coloured and rounded off
the senselessness, the ugliness, the superfluity. He resembled an
apple hanging forgotten on a gnarled old worm-eaten tree, whence all
the fruit and the leaves have fallen until only the branches wave in
the autumn wind. Rather, he resembled a sole-surviving picture in the
pages of a ragged, soiled old book which has neither a beginning nor an
ending, and therefore can no longer be read, is no longer worth the
reading, since now its pages contain nothing intell