"O God!" sighed the little man, and tears fell from his eyes, "Thou help'st our enemies."
"Don't talk so much," said Van Moeulen again. "And thou, Schnabelewopski," he whispered to me, "excuse me if I bore thee; the little man would have it that I should read to him the history of his namesake Samson. We are at the fourteenth chapter—listen!
"'Samson went down to Timnath, and saw a woman in Timnath of the daughters of the Philistines.'"
"No," said the patient with closed eyes, "we are at the sixteenth chapter. It is to me as if I were living in all that which you read me, as if I heard the sheep bleating as they feed by Jordan, as if I myself had set fire to the tails of the foxes and chased them through the fields of the Philistines, and as if I had slain a thousand Philistines with the jawbone of an ass. Oh the Philistines![1] they enslaved and mocked us, and made us pay toll like swine, and slung me out of doors from the ball-room on the Horse, and kicked me at Bockenheim—kicked me out of doors from the Horse!—oh, by God, that was not fair."
"He is feverish, and has wild fancies," softly said Van Moeulen, and began the sixteenth chapter.
- ↑ Samson here confuses the Philistines of old with the modern article. All townspeople are called Philistines by the students.
