‘I came to wish you a good journey,’ Potugin brought out at last.
‘And how did you know I was going to-day?’ asked Litvinov.
Potugin looked on the floor around him.... ‘I became aware of it ... as you see. Our last conversation took in the end such a strange turn.... I did not want to part from you without expressing my sincere good feeling for you.’
‘You have good feeling for me now ... when I am going away?’
Potugin looked mournfully at Litvinov. ‘Ah, Grigory Mihalitch, Grigory Mihalitch,’ he began with a short sigh, ‘it’s no time for that with us now, no time for delicacy or fencing. You don’t, so far as I have been able to perceive, take much interest in our national literature, and so, perhaps, you have no clear conception of Vaska Buslaev?’
‘Of whom?’
‘Of Vaska Buslaev, the hero of Novgorod ... in Kirsch-Danilov’s collection.’
‘What Buslaev?’ said Litvinov, somewhat puzzled by the unexpected turn of the conversation. ‘I don’t know.’
‘Well, never mind. I only wanted to draw your attention to something. Vaska Buslaev, after he had taken away his Novgorodians on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, and there, to their horror, bathed all naked in the holy river Jordan, for he believed not “in omen nor in dream, nor in the flight of birds,” this logical Vaska Buslaev climbed up Mount Tabor, and on the top of this mountain there lies a great stone, over which men of every kind have tried in vain to jump.... Vaska too ventured to try his luck. And he chanced upon a dead head, a human skull in his road; he kicked it away with his foot. So the skull said to him; “Why do you kick me? I knew how to live, and I know how to roll in the dust—and it will be the same with you.” And in fact, Vaska jumps over the stone, and he did quite clear it, but he caught his heel and broke his skull. And in this place, I must by the way observe that it wouldn’t be amiss for our friends, the Slavophils, who are so fond of kicking dead heads and decaying nationalities underfoot to ponder over that legend.’
‘But what does all that mean?’ Litvinov interposed impatiently at last. ‘Excuse me, it’s time for me....’