"Now that you are crying," exclaimed Samuel, thoroughly angry, "you are not only hard-headed, but also silly, simply silly! 'Long of hair but short of sense.' To cry and cry, and not know wherefore!" With this Samuel turned towards us, and began to plead his case.
"Have you ever seen such a cry-baby? Five times in her life she filled the world with a hue and cry, when she bore me a child, and every time it was but an empty bubble: five girls she brought me! Then, beginning with the sixth birth, she was fortunate enough to get boys, the real thing. Three sons she gave me as my old age was approaching. And now, when she ought to thank Heaven for having been found worthy of raising a soldier for the army, she cries! Think of it—your son enters the army a free man; but I, in my time,—well, well, I was taken by force when a mere youngster!"
Here the old man settled his account with the bottle, and took leave of his crying wife and his good neighbors, and in the company of his son mounted the coach waiting outside, ready to go to H., the capital of the district, where the recruits had to report.
By special good fortune I was going to H. by the same coach, and so I came to hear the story of old Samuel's life from the beginning till that day.
It was the rainy season; the roads were muddy, and the horses moved with difficulty. The driver made frequent stops, and whenever the road showed the slightest inclination to go uphill he would intimate that it might be well for us to dismount and walk beside the coach a little.
The cold drizzle penetrated to our very skin and made our flesh creep. The warmth we had brought with us from the house was evaporating, and with it went the merry humor of the old man. He began to contemplate his son, who sat opposite to him, looking him over up and down.
The wise "lord and master," who had tried to instruct his wife at home and celebrate the fact of her having reared a soldier for the army, he failed himself to stand the trial: he began to feel the pangs of longing and lonesomeness. The imminent parting with his son, to take place on the morrow, seemed to depress him greatly.
Bent and silent he sat, and one could see that he was lost in a maze of thoughts and emotions, which came crowding in upon him in spite of himself.
I took a seat opposite to him, so that I might enter into a conversation with him.
"Do you remember all that happened to you in those days?" I asked by way of starting the conversation.