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Presently the ladybird raised her upper wings as though she were preparing for flight; whereupon Nilushka sought with a finger to detain her, and, in so doing, let fall the leaf, and enabled the insect to detach itself and fly away at a low level.
"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."
Many are the sins of earth come of the fact that the seeming is mistaken for the actual, and that men keep pressing forward when they ought to be waiting, to be proving themselves." Hence Vologonov, like the rest, bestowed much attention upon Nilushka, and frequently held conversations with him.
What "the other one" meant I could never divine. Nor could Antipa. Once, drawing the idiot to him, he said: "Why do you always say 'What about the other one'?" Troubled and nervous, Nilushka merely muttered some unintelligible reply as his fingers turned and turned about the circular object which he was holding. "Nothing," at length he replied. "Nothing of what? "Nothing here."
"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."
Then timidly he glanced at the blue shadow of the ravine, and extended to me his leaf, over the veins of which there was crawling a ladybird. "A bukan," he observed. "It is so. And whither are you going to take it?" "We shall all of us die. I was going to take and bury it." "But it is alive; and one does not bury things before they are dead." Nilushka closed and opened his eyes once or twice.
Yes, that golden birthmark so like a bee I can see to this day! Two weeks later, on a Sunday at mid-day, Nilushka passed into the other world. That day, after returning home from late Mass, and handing to his mother a couple of wafers which had been given him as a mark of charity, the lad said: "Mother, please lay out my bed on the chest, for I think that I am going to lie down for the last time."
And, thoughtfully contracting the bushy eyebrows which looked as though they had been taken from the face of another man, Vologonov thrust his hands up his sleeves, and stood eyeing Nilushka shrewdly with his intangible gaze.
Near the threshold Nilushka was lying on a narrow chest against the wall. The folds of a dark-red pillow of fustian under the head set off to perfection the pale blue tint of his round, innocent face under its corona of golden curls; and though the eyes were closed, and the lips pressed tightly together, he still seemed to be smiling in his old quiet, but joyous, way.
At the same time, whereas, on previous occasions, Nilushka had never gone to sleep without first of all singing to himself his little song, and then chanting the eternal, universal "Lord, have mercy upon us!" he, on this occasion, merely folded his hands upon his breast, closed his eyes, and relapsed into slumber.
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