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There were people, smoke coming from cottage chimneys, goose-girls with their spotless and absurdly peaceful geese, once a group of peasants young men and barefooted girls sitting on the grass resting from their work in the fields. As the train passed one of the boys flung his arm round the neck of the tanned young nymph beside him, and over they rolled, fighting like good-natured puppies.
In his workroom were piled, under a thick layer of dust or with faces turned to the wall, the canvases of his student years, when, as the fashion of the day was, he limned scenes of gallantry, depicting with a sleek, timorous brush emptied quivers and birds put to flight, risky pastimes and reveries of bliss, high-kilted goose-girls and shepherdesses with rose-wreathed bosoms.
The proverbs of the country-side, the wisdom of tavern-wit, the shrewdness and fantasy of old wives tales, the sly earthly humors of farmers and vine-tenders and goat-herds and goose-girls these are things out of which he distils his vision, his oracles, his courage.
But for his sturdy common sense and the disquieting spectacle of the transformations already effected in the men about them by these modern Circes, he would not have escaped uncontaminated. But he had no mind to swell the herd of these lovely goose-girls. The danger would have been greater for him if there had not been so many of them angling for him.
"Strange?" echoed Herr Goldberg, becoming furious at having the interest in himself thus diverted. "Since when did goose-girls and barmaids become on intimate terms with her serene highness?" Gretchen pressed the vintner's arm to hold him in his chair. "Does not your socialism teach that we are all equal?" The vintner thumped with his stein in approval, and others imitated him.
It was noticeable, that, for the most part, the children of the rich, who had always had everything they desired, would choose the parts of goose-girls and peasants and such like; and the poor children jumped eagerly at the chance of being princesses or fairies for a few hours in their miserable lives.
Yes, sir, it's lovely work on the hills behind a palace with all the knights ridin' by an' sayin', 'Fair maid, did'st see a boar pass by this way? You don't have to be afraid you'd never have to see one. In all the books the goose-girls didn't never see no boars, and the knights gave 'em a piece of gold an' smiled on 'em, and the sunshine shined on 'em, an' they had a lovely time."
In the very corner itself, his back to the vintner's, and nothing but the wall to look at, was the old man in tatters and patches, the mountaineer who possessed a Swiss watch and gave golden coins to goose-girls. He was busily engaged in gnawing the leg of a chicken. Between times he sipped his beer, listening. Carmichael had forgotten some papers that day.
It was noticeable that, for the most part, the children of the rich, who had always had everything they desired, would choose the parts of goose-girls and peasants and such like; and the poor children jumped eagerly at the chance of being princesses or fairies for a few hours in their miserable lives.
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