Then he became thoughtful and said:
"Matvei, you should drop your wandering. It is too late, or perhaps too early for you. You have to learn. It is time for you to learn."
"Is it not too late?"
"Look at me," he answered. "I am fifty-three years old, and up to this day I learn from some little children."
"Whose children?" I asked.
"They are some children I know. You should live with them a year or two. You ought to go to the factory. It is not very far from here, about a hundred versts, where I have good friends."
"First tell me what you wanted to say, and then I shall think where I am to go."
We walked together on the path alongside the road and again I heard his clear voice and his strange words.
"Christ was the first true people's God, born from the soul of the people like the phoenix from the flames."
He trembled all over and waved his hands before his face as if he wanted to catch new words from the air, and continued shouting: