“What does he want to do? What is he going about the world for? If he has got a house of his own and lands, and all that he needs, why doesn’t he stop at home?—or, if he’s fond of travelling, why doesn’t he sell one of his fields to pay his travelling expenses?”
These worthy people could not in the least understand what it was to be a prophet; they laughed at Coucou Peter’s explanations, and as the illustrious Doctor did not stir from where he was sitting, and could not hear them, Coucou Peter finished by laughing at them himself.
“Ha! ha! ha! you rascal, Pfifer-Karl!” he cried, slapping the trombone on the shoulder, “you are no fool—it isn’t you who would go about working for future generations! Ha! ha! ha!—it’s a funny idea all the same!”
The gipsies strongly pressed him to take up his fiddle again and go with them to the fair; for they had made more than one round with him in Alsace, and knew that he was everywhere well received. But he would not abandon the doctrine.
“No,” he said, “I am a prophet, and I shall remain a prophet; it is a long time since I played any music. Besides, if I were to find out later that anybody else had taken my place of Grand Rabbi, I should tear my hair in despair. No, no—I want to get myself talked about; I want the name of Coucou Peter to be like that of Pythagoras.”
“When there’s a fool anywhere about he is always more talked of than all the sensible people in the country,” said Pfifer-Karl.
“Yes,” replied Coucou Peter, laughing; “but fools of a new kind are rare. They are like six-legged sheep. They are well fed, and shown for money, while the others are led shorn. I wish I had a leg in the middle of my back—my fortune would be made; people would come from the ends of the earth to see me.”
Meanwhile the cauldron went on steaming and began to give out a most agreeable odour. They gathered round the fire, and the Nightingale, having washed her porringer at a neighbouring spring, offered it to Coucou Peter. He refused it, saying that he had dined too well to drink carrot-soup. Mathéus withdrew from the circle and said he was sleepy; stale crusts of bread floating in clear water did not tempt his appetite.
The night was dark. Coucou Peter lit his pipe and watched the gipsies eating their portions, the porringer passing from hand to hand, each drinking out of it in his turn.
Maître Frantz had seated himself on the heather. For some time the good man’s looks were turned to the dark valley; he listened to the roar of a distant waterfall, which sometimes seemed to pause, and then slowly to increase again, like the noise of a storm. The entire valley responded to that solemn voice; the leaves sighed, the birds chirped, the trees waved their black tops.