"Good, good!" said he, "you may go home; take care of your cold!"
I had taken four steps toward the door, when Frichard, the secretary of
the mayoralty, called out:
"It is Moses! The Jew Moses, colonel, who has sent his two boys off to
America! The oldest should be in the service."
This wretch of a Frichard had a grudge against me, because we had the
same business of selling old clothes under the market, and the country
people almost always preferred buying of me; he had a mortal grudge
against me, and that is why he began to inform against me.
The governor exclaimed at once: "Stop a minute! Ah ha, old fox! You
send your boys to America to escape conscription! Very well! Give him
his musket, cartridge-box, and sabre."
Indignation against Frichard choked me. I would have spoken, but the
wretch laughed and kept on writing at the desk; so I followed the
gendarme Werner to a side room, which was filled with muskets, sabres,
and cartridge-boxes.
Werner himself hung a cartridge-box crosswise on my back, and gave me a
musket, saying:
"Go, Moses, and try always to answer to the call."
I went down through the crowd so indignant that I heard no longer the
shouts of laughter from the rabble.
On reaching home I told Sorle what had happened. She was very pale as
she listened. After a moment, she said: "This Frichard is the enemy of
our race; he is an enemy of Israel. I know it; he detests us! But
just now, Moses, do not say a word; do not let him see that you are
angry; it would please him too much. By and by you can have your
revenge! You will have a chance. And if not yourself, your children,
your grandchildren; they shall all know what this wretch has done to
their grandfather--they shall know it!"
She clinched her hand, and little Safel listened.
This was all the comfort she could give me. I thought as she did, but
I was so angry that I would have given half my fortune to ruin the
wretch. All that day, and in the night, too, I exclaimed more than
twenty times:
"Ah, the scoundrel!--I was going--they had said to me, 'You may
go!'--He is the cause of all my misery!"
You cannot imagine, Fritz, how I have always hated that man. Never
have my wife and I forgotten the harm he did us--never shall my
children forget it.
V