“Does he love you?”
“Yes,” he answered much more decidedly this time. “He is always doing things for me, and sometimes, you know, he kisses me and cries.”
“He loves me and cries too!” Marusia chimed in, with a look of childish pride.
“My father doesn’t love me,” I said sadly. “He never kisses me. He is a horrid man.”
“No, no,” Valek objected. “You don’t understand. Tiburtsi says he isn’t. He says the Judge is the best man in the town, and that the town would have been ruined long ago if it had not been for your father and the Priest who has just gone into a monastery, and the Jewish Rabbi. Those three—”
“What have those three done?”
“The town hasn’t been ruined because they were there, so Tiburtsi says, because they look after the poor people. Your father, you know, once sentenced a count to punishment.”
“Yes, that’s so. The count was very angry.”
“There, you see! It’s no joke to sentence a count.”
“Why?”