"May you know trouble as little as I know that! Folk say a devil. The Röfeh says, a stone fell into my head, and the soul, or, as he calls it, the life, into my belly. I don't remember the stone, but I have a bruise on my head."
He takes off his hat and cap together, bends his head, and shows me a bare bump in the hair.
"It may have been from a stone, but I am mad—that's certain."
"What is your eccentricity?"
"Two or three times a day I have my soul in my belly, and then I speak out of my belly, and crow like a cock. I can't stop myself, I really can't!"
"What were you before the misfortune?"
"I hadn't got to be anything. It happened to me early in the Köst.[103] That is why I have only one child, health and strength to it!"
"Have you any money?"
"I had a few gulden dowry. A lot of it went in remedies—on 'good Jews' ... the rest I gave her."
"What do you live on?"