After some minutes Harmantier arrived with his woollen jacket and his bunch of keys.
The lieutenant said to him, "Lock up this man!"
"Come, get up and walk!" he said to the deserter, who rose and followed Harmantier, while everybody crowded round.
The jailer opened the two massive doors of the prison; the prisoner entered without resistance, and then the large locks and bolts fastened him in.
"Every man return to his post!" said the lieutenant to us. And we went up the steps of the mayoralty.
All this had so upset me that I had not thought of my wife and children. But when once above, in the large warm room, full of smoke, with all that set who were laughing and boasting at having taken a poor, unresisting deserter, the thought that I was the cause of this misery filled my soul with anguish; I stretched myself on the camp-bed, and thought of all the trouble that is in the world, of Zeffen, of Sâfel, of my children, who might, perhaps, some day be arrested for not liking war. And the words of the Lord came to my mind, which He spake to Samuel, when the people desired a king:
"Hearken unto the voice of the people in all that they say unto thee; for they have not rejected thee, but they have rejected me, that I should not reign over them. Howbeit yet protest solemnly unto them, and show them the manner of the king that shall reign over them. He will take your sons and appoint them for himself; and some shall run before his chariots. He will set them to make his instruments of war. And he will take your daughters to be cooks and bakers. And he will take your fields and your vineyards, and your olive-yards, even the best of them, and give them to his servants. He will take your men-servants, and your maid-servants, and your goodliest young men. He will take the tenth of your sheep; and ye shall be his servants. And ye shall cry out in that day, and the Lord will not hear you."
These thoughts made me very wretched; my only consolation was in knowing that my sons Frômel and Itzig were in America. I resolved to send Sâfel, David, and Esdras there also, when the time should come.
These reveries lasted till daylight. I heard no longer the shouts of laughter or the jokes of the ragamuffins. Now and then they would come and shake me, and say, "Go, Moses, and fill your brandy jug! The sergeant gives you leave."
But I did not wish to hear them.