He went off with great alacrity, evidently glad that he had fared no worse.” GENDARMES. The gendarmes or rural policemen were the second bane of village life; but while the Schnorrer was looked on with charitable eye, for these latter gentry no one had a good word. They were detested, thoroughly and intensely. As a rule they well deserved the detestation in which they were held, for they were pompous, insufferable individuals, egregiously proud and conceited because of the little authority they possessed, and over-eager to display their power; in a word, petty tyrants of the worst kind. They were equally hated by Jew and Gentile, and were not popular even with the judges and magistrates, who were often liberal-minded gentlemen, and who knew well the tyrannical disposition of their rustic retainers. The multiplicity of laws and regulations in the German statute book, particularly those referring to trade and commerce, gave the gendarmes the much-desired opportunity for the display of their power; and as the Jews were the chief element engaged in commercial pursuits, they were also the chief victims of these rustic arbiters of weal and woe. To defeat or discomfit a gendarme was a highly meritorious deed, and all the community rejoiced in concert when one of these potentates had been made the victim of some particularly ingenious trick. An incident which had happened some time previous to my arrival in Nordheim, and which all the community were highly enjoying at the time of my arrival, will illustrate this disposition. There lived in Nordheim a poor, half-witted Jew named Meyer, an unfortunate fellow without relatives or home or means of subsistence, who depended for his support on the charitable gifts of the kind-hearted villagers. Despite his mental infirmity, Meyer possessed, as is not seldom the case with the weak-minded, quite a stock of humor; and as he was always cheerful and pleasant, and was continually doing odd and amusing things, “Shoteh Meyerle,” or “Little Meyer the fool,” as he was called, enjoyed considerable popularity. Everybody, rich and poor, high and low, Jew and Gentile, knew him well. Everybody had a friendly greeting for him when met on the road; nobody, not even the most unruly boys, would harm him in any way or permit him to be harmed by others. He had free access to every house, and enjoyed altogether liberties and privileges not possessed by any other member of the community. One day it chanced that Shoteh Meyerle determined, in accordance with his wont, to visit the adjoining village of Willmars to obtain some gifts. The day was hot, the road was long and dusty, and Meyer soon felt that rest and recuperation would be agreeable. These could not be had on the dusty road, and he, therefore, stepped aside into a field where there was a fine tree, in whose cool shade he sat him down and reposed. This act, it is true, was illegal, for the agrarian regulations of the Bavarian state strictly