With tears streaming down my blackened face and the acolyte’s garments half torn from my body, I tried to find my way out of the lower hall, the other two kings having basely deserted me—when a woman’s hand reached out to me in the dark. A very gentle touch it was, and it drew me into a warm and beautiful room. Then I saw that the woman was the Pany’s sister, an “old maid” known all through the town for her piety and good works. She washed my face with warm water, and arranged my dress so that I would be better shielded from the cold; she filled my pockets with nuts and such sweets as she knew I could eat, and as she led me out, she kissed my forehead and said: “Our Lord was a little Jewish boy, just like you.” Then she kissed my lips and said, “In His name.”
I ran home through the increasing cold as fast as my feet could carry me, into my room and to bed, but spent a restless night. I dreamed of the Pany’s son and of his sister, feeling kicks and kisses alternately. Then I travelled, far and farther, following the star, looking for the crib and the Child, but never finding them.
That Christmas morning I shall never forget. The maid found my bed full of vermin which had crawled out of the boys’ sheepskin coats, and the towels and toilet articles were a mass of stove-polish. It was a day of intensest suffering under punishment of various kinds, yet through it all I felt the kisses of the Pany’s sister on my forehead and on my lips.
I was neither a Wise Man nor a king, yet I was wiser than I had been and I was as proud as a king, for I had not knelt at the Pany’s command and I had whipped his son.
VI
ABRAHAM LINCOLN IN HUNGARY
TEN o’clock in the morning was the one tense hour of the day, for the omnibus was due to arrive and, with it, everything which connected our town with the outside world. Although most of the villagers expected neither letters nor friends, every one who had even a moment of leisure stepped to his front door when the omnibus came, and tried to catch a glimpse of the sleepy passengers who had spent a torturing night in the sombre, springless vehicle. In front of the Black Eagle Inn, congregated town loafers, children and the aged, who alone had leisure to watch the passengers alight.
This was an exciting procedure, for the omnibus was high, and its one window served also as exit, so that the passengers’ feet protruded through the small opening first, the bodies being drawn carefully after. It was a mirth-provoking performance, and as laughter was an indulgence not often experienced in our sober environment, all who could afford the leisure and the laughter awaited the daily diversion at the Black Eagle Inn.
On a certain Sabbath morning I had absented myself from the synagogue. It was a June day of rare beauty with a warm, wooing, gentle wind, calling the boy in me back to the creek, the willow-trees, the goslings and the Gentile boys and girls. While nature with its willows and its goslings had no objection to my “cutting” the synagogue service, its Gentile and ungenteel children objected seriously, and I was driven back to the dusty street, with its cobblestone pavement. There was nothing to do except go to the synagogue or join the crowd of loafers around the Black Eagle Inn, and I chose the latter, although at great peril; for to be caught loafing on the Sabbath, during the hours of morning service, was sure to bring dire consequences. The clatter of hoofs and rattle of wheels were already heard, proceeding from a cloud of dust which came nearer and nearer as the omnibus swayed into sight. Its emaciated, weary horses responded to the whip of the driver as they made one last, brave effort at a gallop; then stopped at their accustomed place, steaming from heat and too weary even to whisk the gathering flies from their backs.
“How many passengers have you?” some one called to the driver.
“Three-quarters of a man,” he replied, laughing coarsely.