The Justice said: "I think that Varus had to try with all his might to reach the Rhine, and that he could have done only by gaining the open country. The battle is said to have lasted three days, and in that length of time you can march a good distance. Hence I am rather of the opinion that the attack in the mountains which surround our plain did not take place very far from here."
"Wrong, wrong, Justice!" cried the Collector. "Here below everything was occupied and blocked up by the Cherusci, Catti, and Sigambri. No the battle was much farther south, near the region of the Ruhr, not far from Arnsberg. Varus had to push his way through the mountains, he had no egress anywhere, and his mind was bent on reaching the middle Rhine, whither the road leads diagonally across Sauerland. That is what I have always thought, and now I have discovered the most unmistakable evidence of it. Close by the Ruhr I found the bronze and bought the three idols, and a man from the village told me that hardly an hour's walk from there was a place in the woods among the mountains where an enormous quantity of bones were piled up in the sand and gravel. Ha! I exclaimed, the day is beginning to break. I went out there with a few peasants, had them excavate a little, and, behold! we came across bones to my heart's content. So that is the place where Germanicus had the remnants of the Roman legions buried six years after the battle of Teutoburg Wood, when he directed his last expeditions against Hermann. And I have therefore discovered the right battlefield."
"Bones do not ordinarily preserve themselves for a thousand years and more," said the Justice, shaking his head doubtfully.
"They have become petrified among the minerals there," said the collector angrily. "I'll have to put an evidence of my theory in your hand—here is one I have brought with me." He drew forth a large bone from his shirt and held it before his opponent's eyes. "Now, what do you call that?" he asked triumphantly.
The peasants stared at the bone in amazement. The Justice, after he had examined it, replied: "A cow's bone, Mr. Schmitz! You discovered a carrion-pit, not the battlefield of Teutoburg."
The Collector indignantly put the discredited antiquity back into its place and uttered a few violent imprecations, to which the old peasant knew the most effective way to reply. It seemed as if a quarrel might ensue between the two men, but as a matter of fact the appearances were of no significance. For it was a common thing for them, whenever they got together, to disagree about this and similar matters. But in spite of these controversies they always remained good friends. The Collector, who, in order to follow up his hobbies, even begrudged himself bread, was in the habit all the year round of feeding himself for weeks at a time out of the full meat-pots of the Oberhof, and in return for it he helped along his host's business by doing all kinds of writing for him. For the Collector had formerly been, by profession, a sworn and matriculated Imperial Notary.
Finally, after a great deal of fruitless argument on both sides, the Justice said: "I won't wrangle with you over the battlefield, although I still persist in my belief that Hermann defeated Varus somewhere around this neighborhood. As a matter of fact it doesn't make any particular difference to me where it happened—the question is one for the scholars. For if the other Roman general, six years afterwards, as you have often told me, marched into this region with another army, then the whole battle had but little significance."
"You don't know anything about it!" exclaimed the Collector. "The present existence and position of Germany rests entirely upon the battle won by Hermann. If it had not been for Hermann 'the liberator,' you would not be occupying these extensive premises now, marked off by your hedges and stakes. But you people simply live along from one day to the next, and have no use for history and antiquity."
"Oho, Mr. Schmitz, you do me great injustice there," replied the old peasant proudly. "God knows what pleasure it gives me to sit down of a winter evening and read the chronicles and histories, and you yourself know that I treat the sword of Carolus Magnus (the old man pronounced the second syllable long), which has now for a thousand years and more been in the possession of the Oberhof, as I do the apple of my eye, and consequently—"
"The sword of Charles the Great!" exclaimed the Collector scornfully.
"Friend, is it impossible to get these notions out of your head?
Listen—"