“Let not that distress you, my dear friend,” replied the illustrious philosopher; “we shall always find room enough before us. If we have not hitherto been successful, it is because we require a vaster theatre! You must observe that Providence has conducted us, in some measure against our inclinations, towards the larger towns; let us go to Saverne!”
“To Saverne!—mind what you are about! Saverne’s a town full of lawyers and gendarmes!”
The good apostle said that because he had left his wife at Saverne, to say nothing of numerous debts to the brewers and publicans in general throughout the town; but the illustrious Doctor listened to none of these objections.
“Gendarmes are made for thieves,” he said, “and not for philosophers; let us go forward, Coucou Peter, let us go forward; every moment of our existence belongs to human kind.”
They passed down the silent street of Tieffenbach; most of the inhabitants were away at the fair of Haslach, and the small houses with their closed doors, their little gardens surrounded with disjointed palings, and their solitary moss-grown wells, had a melancholy look, very different from holiday gaiety and animation.
Coucou Peter appeared thoughtful.
“Tell me, Maître Frantz,” he said, “can rabbis marry?”
“Undoubtedly, my friend; it is a duty even, imposed on them by Moses, for the propagation of the species.”
“Yes; but the Chief Rabbi of the Peregrination of Souls?”
“Why not? Marriage is in the order of nature; I see nothing objectionable in it.”