B. was a teacher who went on crutches. The boy went a couple of steps outside the ring, which opened to give him space; then he came back on the improvised stage and executed as he did so the movements of a man walking on crutches. He did his part very well; the illusion was complete, and the onlookers applauded, but the little actor stood there with a serious expression. He had a pallid little face and black clothes; perhaps he had just lost his father or mother.
“Laugh!” ordered the other with a light flick of the whip which he had in his hand.
The boy tried to obey, but it did not come easily. The laugh sounded forced at the start, but it was not long before he succeeded in laughing himself into a genuine, quite natural guffaw, and with that he turned toward his “master,” as if it was at him that he laughed. But the latter already desired to have his slave show off new accomplishments.
“Say: ‘My farsher is a damned scoundrel!’”
The boy looked around the circle with a helpless glance. When he saw that no one gave a semblance of wanting to help him, and that, on the contrary, all stood in eager expectation of something really amusing, he said as low as he dared:
“My farsher is a damned scoundrel.”
That drew unbounded applause.
“Laugh—Cry!”
The child began to simulate weeping, but with that he now came into the mood he was ordered to imagine. The weeping stuck in his throat, and he shed actual tears.
“Let him be!” said an older boy in the circle, “he’s crying in earnest.”