Indignation against Frichard choked me. I would have spoken, but the wretch laughed and kept on writing at the desk; so I followed the gendarme Werner to a side room, which was filled with muskets, sabres, and cartridge-boxes.
Werner himself hung a cartridge-box crosswise on my back, and gave me a musket, saying:
"Go, Moses, and try always to answer to the call."
I went down through the crowd so indignant that I heard no longer the shouts of laughter from the rabble.
On reaching home I told Sorlé what had happened. She was very pale as she listened. After a moment, she said: "This Frichard is the enemy of our race; he is an enemy of Israel. I know it; he detests us! But just now, Moses, do not say a word; do not let him see that you are angry; it would please him too much. By and by you can have your revenge! You will have a chance. And if not yourself, your children, your grandchildren; they shall all know what this wretch has done to their grandfather—they shall know it!"
She clinched her hand, and little Sâfel listened.
This was all the comfort she could give me. I thought as she did, but I was so angry that I would have given half my fortune to ruin the wretch. All that day, and in the night, too, I exclaimed more than twenty times:
"Ah, the scoundrel!—I was going—they had said to me, 'You may go!'—He is the cause of all my misery!"
You cannot imagine, Fritz, how I have always hated that man. Never have my wife and I forgotten the harm he did us—never shall my children forget it.