Yet there were persons who would go so far as to crack rude jests at his expense. For instance, as he would be skipping along, with his childish voice raised in his little ditty, some idler or another would shout from a window, or through the cranny of a fence:
"Hi, Nilushka! Fire! Fire!"
Whereupon the angel-faced imbecile would sink to earth as though his legs had been cut away at the knee from under him, and he would huddle, frantically clutching his golden head in his permanently soiled hands, and exposing his youthful form to the dust, under the nearest house or fence.
Only then would the person who had given him the fright repent, and say with a laugh:
"God in heaven, what a stupid lad this is!"
And, should that person have been asked why he had thus terrified the boy, he would probably have replied:
"Because it is such sport to do so. As a lad who cannot feel things as other human beings do, he inclines folk to make fun of him."
As for the omniscient Antipa Vologonov, the following was his frequent comment on Nilushka:
"Christ also had to walk in terror. Christ also was persecuted. Why so? Because ever He endured in rectitude and strength. Men need to learn what is real and what is unreal. 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.