At a barred opening we saw a figure appear in a long fur cap and adorned with a dirty beard. Recognising Picart, he said to him in German: 'Ah, my dear Salomon, it is you. I will open the door.'
We entered a very warm room, stinking and disgusting. As soon as we were seated on a bench around the stove, we saw three other Jews, who, Jacob said, constituted his family.
Picart, who knew how to go to work with his pretended co-religionists, began by opening his knapsack and drawing out, to begin with, a pair of epaulettes—not a Colonel's, but a Field-Marshal's—and a parcel of lace stripes, the whole of it new, picked up on the Wilna mountain out of the deserted waggons.
There were also some silver covers that had come from Moscow. The Jews opened their eyes wide. Picart now asked for wine and bread. Some excellent Rhine wine was brought. The bread was not exactly of the same quality, but just then it was better than one could have hoped for.
While we were drinking, the Jews were inspecting the articles spread out upon the bench. Jacob asked Picart how much he wanted for all that.
'Name it yourself,' answered Picart.
The Jew mentioned a price very far from what Picart wanted.
He said: 'No.'
Jacob went a little higher.
This time Picart, on whom the wine was beginning to take effect, looked at the Jew sneeringly, and answered him by laying a finger on the side of his nose, and humming the Rabbi's chant in the synagogue on the Sabbath.