“Thank God, who has let us live so long, Baes Joos! We yet remain from the good old time. Don’t you know me again? No! The audacious lad that so often crept through your hedge, and stole your apples before they were ripe?”
“Six-and-ninety years,” muttered the old man, without moving.
“Very likely, but tell me, Baes Joos, is the wainwright’s Rosa living yet?”
“Six-and-ninety years!” repeated the old man with a hollow voice.
The hostess came with the ale, and said—“He is blind and deaf, sir, don’t give yourself the trouble to talk with him; he cannot understand you.”
“Blind and deaf,” exclaimed the stranger, disconcerted. “What irrepairable devastations time commits in the space of thirty years! I walk here in the midst of the ruins of a whole race of men.”
“You were asking after the wainwright’s Rosa?” continued the hostess; “our wainwright has four daughters, but amongst them is no Rosa. The eldest is called Lisbeth, and is married to the footman; the second is named Goude, and makes caps; the third is Nell; and the youngest, Anna: the poor thing is short-sighted.”
“I am not speaking of these people,” exclaimed the stranger, with impatience; “I mean the family of Kobe Meulinck.”
“Ah, they are all dead long ago, dear sir!” was the hostess’s reply.
Deeply agitated, the traveler paid for his ale, and left the public-house with a feverish impetuosity. Out of doors he pressed his hand upon his eyes, and exclaimed in despair:—“God! even she! my poor Rosa—dead! Always, always the inevitable word—dead! dead! Then shall no one on earth recognize me! Not one kind eye shall greet me!”