"What did we know of the world?
"The world belonged to the officials outside, to the soldiers. They were, in our eyes, beings moving in a fabulous realm, into which we could never enter.
"My brother, who was a handsome man—he resembled Herr Dournay—formed a friendship with a young drummer named Grassler, who was billetted in our house. We were all made perfectly happy by the reverence which this youth showed towards my father, whom he regarded as a saint, and by his gentleness and timidity when in his presence. I yet remember, as though it were but yesterday, how I stood on the steps, turning round and round with my hand one of the knobs of the balustrade, when the drummer said to me:—
"'Yes, Rosalie, when you are grown up, and I have become an officer, I will come back and take you away with me.'
"He went away drumming; but I kept hearing those strange words in the sound of the drum, and still stood on the steps, twirling the knob, while the whole world seemed to whirl with me. But I beg pardon, I am growing too prolix."
"No, go into details as much as you like."
"But I cannot," replied Fräulein Milch. "Well, then, they went to the war. My brother fell. Conrad came back. He had become an ensign, and he brought back to my father my brother's little prayer-book, its cover and leaves pierced by a ball. My father and my mother and I sat on the ground, mourning for seven days. Conrad came and sat with us: he honored our foreign observances.
"Father seated himself again among his sacred books; but, whereas he used formerly to read with a low, humming sound, he now spoke the words aloud and with violence. He seemed obliged to put a constraint upon his thoughts, which would go out after his son.
"Time gradually healed our wounds. My brother had long been at rest in his grave,—who can say where? Conrad had returned to his home. I was seventeen. It was on Easter eve; we had solemnized the Passover, and my father discoursed much on the liberation from servitude, in commemoration of which we keep Easter, and lamented the oppression beneath which we were sighing still. He loved Jesus heartily and warmly, and only bewailed unceasingly the misuse of his name as an authority for the misery into which we, members of his race, were plunged. That night I heard him say that our great and wise Rabbi, Moses ben Maimon, had taught that Jesus had overthrown heathen idolatry; that he was not Messias, but his fore-runner!
"It was late at night ere we went to rest. I slept in a room adjoining that of my parents. Thus I heard my father say to my mother:—