Meanwhile the horses had stopped, and
let us know that a high and steep hill was ahead of us, and that it
was our turn to trudge through the mud. We had to submit to the
will of the animals, and we dismounted.
III
After tramping a while alongside the coach, the old man lit his
pipe, emitted a cloud of smoke, and continued:--
I do not know what happened then. I cannot tell who caught me, nor
the place I was taken to. I must have been in a trance all the
while.
When I awoke, I found myself surrounded by a flock of sheep, in a
meadow near the woods. Near me was my brother Solomon; but I hardly
recognized him. He wore peasant clothes: a linen shirt turned out
over linen breeches and gathered in by a broad belt. I was eyeing
my brother, and he was eyeing me, both of us equally bewildered, for
I was disguised like himself.
A little boy, a real peasant boy, was standing near us. He smiled
at us in a good-natured, hospitable way. It was the chore-boy of
the Jewish quarter. On the Sabbaths of the winter months he kept up
the fires in the Jewish houses; that is why he could jabber a few
words of Yiddish.
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