Page:Leskov - The Sentry and other Stories.djvu/242

 226 Well, I thought, we could wait to talk about this, and said to him:

"Let us learn the heathen tongue, brother, and not the language of Jerusalem; begin to teach me, and be not angry if I am slow of comprehension."

"I am not angry, Vladyko," he answered—and in truth he was a wonderfully good-natured and open-hearted old man, and taught me admirably. He disclosed to me with quickness and intelligence all the secrets of acquiring this speech, which is so poor and possesses so few words that it can scarcely be called a language. It is certainly nothing more than the language of the animal life, and not of the intellectual life; nevertheless, it is difficult to master; the phraseology is laconic, and it has no periods; from this arises the difficulty of all attempts at translation into this speech of any text expressed according to the rules of a developed language, possessing complicated periods and subjunctive propositions, while poetical and figurative expressions are impossible to render; besides the meaning they convey would be quite unintelligible to this poor people. How could you explain to them the meaning of the following words: "Be as crafty as the serpent and as gentle as the dove," when they have never seen a serpent or a dove, and are even unable to form an idea of them.