"For a long time the people carried various men on their shoulders. Without question they gave them of their labor and their freedom, placed them above themselves and waited humbly for them to see from their height the paths of righteousness on earth. But these chosen ones of the people, when they reached the height, became drunk and degraded by their power and remained above, forgetting who placed them there, and became a heavy burden on the earth instead of a joy. When the people saw that the children who were fed by their blood were their enemies, they lost their faith in them and abandoned these powerful ones, who had to fall and the power and the strength of their government decayed. The people understood that the law was not that one from a family should be raised and after having fed him on their liberty that they should live by his mind, but that the true law was that all should be raised to one height and that each one should look upon the paths of life with his own eyes; and the day when the consciousness of the inevitable equality of man arose in the people, that day was the birth of Christ.
"Many people have tried to realize their dreams of justice by creating one live being, a common lord over all, and more than once various people, urged on by this common thought, have tried to bind it with strong words that it might live forever. And when all these thoughts were mustered in one, a living God arose for them, the beloved child of the people, Jesus Christ."
That which he said about Christ, the Son of God, was near to me; but about the people giving birth to Christ I could not understand. I told him that, and he answered:
"If you wish to know, you will understand. If you wish to believe, you will know."
We tramped together for three days, going slowly; he, teaching me all the time and explaining the past to me. He recited the whole history of the people from the beginning up to the present day; he told me of the troubled times when the churches persecuted the jesters and of the merry men who awakened the people's memory with their jokes and sowed truth by them.
"Do you understand," he asked me, "who this Savelko of yours was?"
"Yes, I understand."
"Remember that small things come from large and that the large is made up from small pieces."
We came to Stephan Verkhatour. The old man said to me:
"We must part here. My road lies with you no longer."