“Listen to me, my friend,” said Mathéus, drying his eyes. “The more I think of it, the more convinced I am that it could not be otherwise. A nameless prophet was sent to Beth-el, on condition that he neither drank nor ate; but having unfortunately eaten a piece of bread, he was devoured by a lion, and his bones were found between this lion and an ass that had been given to him. Jonah was swallowed by a fish. It is true, he only remained three days in the fish’s stomach; but it is very disagreeable to be kept for seventy-two hours in such a constrained position. Habakkuk was transported by his hair through the air to Babylon. Imagine, Coucou Peter, how much he must have suffered by being suspended by his hair during such a journey. Ezekiel was stoned. It is not exactly known whether Jeremiah was stoned or sawed in two; but Isaiah was certainly sawed in two. Amos was——”
“Maître Frantz,” cried Coucou Peter, abruptly, “if you think to give me courage by telling me such stories as these, you are very much mistaken. I won’t conceal from you that, sooner than be cut in two, I’d rather go back to my fiddle, and play tunes on it all the rest of my life.”
“Come, come—do not be afraid. In these days prophets are no longer so ill-treated; on the contrary, handsome pensions are given to them—so long as they maintain at least the existence of a soul.”
“And we, who maintain thousands of souls, deserve pensions a thousand times bigger!” cried the gay fiddler.
Conversing in this manner, the illustrious philosopher and his disciple tranquilly went their way along the valleys of the Zorn. Mathéus, who loved nothing so well as the interior of the woods, forgot the ingratitude of the human species; the scarce perceptible sound of an insect nibbling the bark of an old tree, the flight of a bird through the rustling foliage, the vague murmur of a stream in the ravine, the whirl of the gnats dancing above the still pools—these thousand details of solitude ceaselessly furnished new texts for his anthropo-zoological meditations.
Coucou Peter whistled to amuse himself, and from time to time paid his respects to his flask of kirschwasser. Bruno often went into the Zorn up to the saddle-girths; at those times Maître Frantz and his disciple clung to one another, raising their legs well out of the way of the water, which they watched running below them with tumultuous gurglings.
The heat, however, became overpowering; not a breath of air penetrated the woods. Coucou Peter, having dismounted, felt the perspiration streaming down his back; Mathéus, who had not closed an eye all night, yawned from time to time, murmuring, “Great—Great Demiourgos!” without exactly knowing what further he wished to say.
In this way they reached a gorge where the torrent spread over a pebbly bed. Hardly had Bruno reached the edge of the water, before the confounded beast stretched out his neck to drink, and Maître Frantz, not expecting this movement, was nearly shot over his head. Coucou Peter quickly seized him by the tails of his coat; and then the rogue gave vent to such a formidable roar of laughter that all the neighbouring echoes rang with it.
“Coucou Peter! Coucou Peter!” cried the scandalised Doctor; “are you not ashamed to laugh when I am in danger of being drowned? Is this, then, your affection for me?”