It was also dark and gray on the following day, and the rain poured down
without ceasing. Moni spent the day exactly like the one before. He sat
under the rock and his thoughts went restlessly round in a circle, for
when he decided: "Now, I will go and confess the wrong, so that I shall
dare to look up to the dear Lord again," then he saw the little kid
under the knife before him and it all began over again in his mind from
the beginning; so that with thinking and brooding, and the weight he
carried, he was very tired by night, and crept home in the streaming
rain as if he didn't notice it at all.
By the Bath House below the landlord was standing in the back doorway
and called to Moni: "Come in with them. They are wet enough! Why, you
are crawling down the mountain like a snail! I wonder what is the matter
with you!"
The landlord had never been so unfriendly before. On the contrary he
had always made the most friendly remarks to the merry goat-boy. But
Moni's changed appearance did not please him, and besides he was in a
worse humor than usual because Fraeulein Paula had just complained to him
about her loss and assured him that the valuable cross could only have
been lost in the house or directly in front of the house-door. She had
only stepped out on that day towards evening, to hear the goat-boy sing
on his way home. To have it said that it was possible for such a costly
thing to be lost in his house, beyond recovery, made him very cross. The
day before he had called together the whole staff of servants, examined
and threatened them, and finally offered a reward to the finder. The
whole house was in an uproar over the lost ornament.
When Moni with his goats passed by the front of the house, Paula was
standing there. She had been waiting for him, for she wondered very
much whether he would ever sing any more or be merry. As he now crept
by, she called:
"Moni! Moni! Are you really the same goat-boy who used to sing from
morning till night:
"'And so blue is the sky there
My joy can't be told'?"
Moni heard the words very well; he gave no answer, but they made a great
impression on him. Oh, how different it really was from the time when
he could sing all day long and he felt exactly as he sang. Oh, if it
could only be like that again!
Again Moni climbed up the mountain, silent and sad and without singing.
The rain had now ceased, but thick fog hung around on the mountains,
and the sky was still full of dark clouds. Moni again sat under the
rock and battled with his thoughts. About noon the sky began to clear;
it grew brighter and brighter. Moni came out of his cave and looked
around. The goats once more sprang gayly here and there, and the little
kid was quite frolicsome from delight at the returning sun and made the
merriest leaps.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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