A policeman made his way through the group, and looked inquiringly from Braun to the watchman. Without uttering a word Braun held out the painting, and at the sight of it the watchman uttered a cry of amazement and delight.
“It’s the stolen Corot!” he exclaimed. Then turning to Braun, “Where did you get it? Who had it? Do you claim the reward?”
Braun’s lips moved, but no sound came from them, and he turned on his heel and began to walk off, when the policeman laid a hand on his shoulder.
“Not so fast, young man. You’ll have to give some kind of an account of how you got this,” he said.
Braun looked at him stupidly, and the policeman became suspicious. “I guess you’d better come to the station-house,” he said, and without more ado walked off with his prisoner. Braun made no resistance, felt no surprise, offered no explanation. At the station-house they asked him many questions, but Braun only looked vacantly at the questioner, and had nothing to say. They locked him in a cell over night, a gloomy cell that opened on a dimly lighted corridor, and there Braun sat until the day dawned, never moving, never speaking. Once, during the night, the watchman on duty in this corridor thought he heard a voice whispering “Lizschen! Lizschen!” but it must have been the rain that now was pouring in torrents.
V
“There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest.
“There the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor.
“The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master.”
It is written in Israel that the rabbi must give his services at the death-bed of even the lowliest. The coffin rested on two stools in the same room in which she died; beside it stood the rabbi, clad in sombre garments, reading in a listless, mechanical fashion from the Hebrew text of the Book of Job, interpolating here and there some time-worn, commonplace phrase of praise, of exhortation, of consolation. He had not known her; this was merely part of his daily work.