“Do you think the Curé of Haffert could be mixed up in this?”
Once more the brewer shrugged his shoulders.
“All that I know,” said he, “is that Stammering Joob and Crippled Manes have ordered sixty casks of beer of me.”
Mathis ordered only twenty casks for the present, and returned home with a long face.
Two days before St Rochus, three great Prussian freight-waggons, laden with planks and battens and canvas, passed through Haffert, and stopped at the Schei, right opposite the “Sun” inn. A moment after, Crippled Manes was seen hobbling up from another direction, with an old police-cap on his head, and followed by a number of schoolboys and loafers from the town, where the rumour of the arrival of the “foreign dancing-tent” had already spread. A large number of hands went to work at once; timbers were unloaded, posts set up, canvas spread out; and in the middle of all the bustle the lame recruiting-sergeant moved about with his bottle of Hollands, encouraging the workmen, and sometimes garnishing the offered glass with some such facetious remark as, “To the health of M. le Curé of Haffert;” or, “To the health of Mathis Knoups, our neighbour!”
However, Mathis Knoups, who, with compressed lips, stood on the watch behind the door of his workshop, could not hear what he said.
But all this was nothing to the commotion which was caused on the following day—the Eve of St Rochus—in Haffert and on the Schei, by the arrival of twelve Prussian musicians, in faded light-green coats, sky-blue caps, and all sorts of brass instruments,—one or two of them of such a size that they curled all round the blower like serpents. They marched through Haffert playing all the way, drew up in a line before the dancing-tent, which was decked with flags and pennons, and then entered the town, accompanied by Crippled Manes, who now, armed with a big stick, marched in front, and acted the part of drum-major.
All through the night Mathis could still hear the shrill sound of the clarionet and the booming of the great bass instruments.
No need to ask whether Haffert kermis was crowded! Everybody went to dance in the Prussian tent. The brewer had to go over twice a day with fresh supplies; and when Knoups came to complain to him, on the third day, that he had only tapped eight casks, it was resolved to cart eight casks away from the “Sun” to the tent over the way.
“Of course,” laughed Manes, “neighbours ought to help each other!”