And, when evening comes and Mother sits down at the piano and sings the song which Father loves above all other songs, it appears that the words were written by one Jew and the melody composed by another.
My little boy is hot and red when he falls to sleep that night. He turns restlessly in bed and talks in his sleep.
"He is a little feverish," says his mother.
And I bend down and kiss his forehead and answer, calmly:
"That is not surprising. Today I have vaccinated him against the meanest of all mean and vulgar diseases."
XV
We are staying in the country, a long way out, where the real country is.
Cows and horses, pigs and sheep, a beautiful dog and hens and ducks form our circle of acquaintances. In addition to these, there are of course the two-legged beings who own and look after the four-legged ones and who, in my little boy's eyes, belong to quite the same kind.
The great sea lies at the foot of the slope. Ships float in the distance and have nothing to say to us. The sun burns us and bronzes us. We eat like thrashers, sleep like guinea-pigs and wake like larks. The only real sorrow that we have suffered is that we were not allowed to have our breeches made with a flap at the side, like the old wood-cutter's.
Presently, it happens that, for better or worse, we get neighbours.