"Donnerkeil! Ui jeh, ch, ch, ch. Eh! Say, up there, you ought to go about your business instead of making life miserable for poor happy devils whose fate sends them abroad on such nights... Eh! mothers, are you no longer under the domination of Solomon? ...Ohey! Ohey! Tseilom Kop! Meicabl! Farwaschen Ponim! Beheime! You want to prevent me from drinking the excellent Moselle wines with the students of Borussia who are only too happy to toast with me because of my science and my inimitable lyricism, not to mention all my talents for sorcery and prophecy.
"Accursed spirits! know ye that I might have drunk also Rhine wines, not to mention the wines of France. Nor should I have neglected to polish off some champagne in your honor, my old friends!... At midnight, the hour when the Christkindchen is made, I should have rolled under the table and have slept at least during the brawling... But you unchain the winds, you make an infernal uproar during this saintly night which should have been peaceful... as to being calm, you seem to be twisting his pigtail up there, sweet ladies... To amuse Solomon, no doubt... Lilith! Naama! Aguereth! Mahala! Ah! Solomon, for thy pleasure they are going to kill all the poets on this earth.
"Ah Solomon! Solomon! jovial king whose entertainers are the four nocturnal spectres moving from the Orient to the North, thou desirest my death, for I am also a poet like all the Jewish prophets and a prophet like all the poets.
"Farewell drunkenness for tonight... Old Rhine, I must turn my back to thee. I am going back to prepare me for death and dictate my last and most lyrical prophecies..."
A horrible crash, like a stroke of thunder, burst just then. The old prophet pressed his lips together, lowering his head and looking down; then he bent down and held his ear quite close to the ground. When he straightened up he murmured:
"The earth herself can no longer suffer the unbearable contact with poets."
Then he took his way across the streets of Buel, turning his back on the Rhine. When the rabbi had traversed the railroad track he found himself before a crossing and as he hesitated not knowing which to take, he lifted his head again by chance. He saw before him a young man with a valise coming from Bonn; the old rabbi did not recognize the person and cried to him:
"Are you mad to go out in such weather, sir?"
"I am hurrying to rejoin someone whom I have lost and whose track I am following," replied the stranger.
"What is your profession," cried the Jew.