My voice took a little rest. The stranger had covered his face with his hands. Things stayed like that for a long time. Then the stranger, in a voice that I had long since recognized, said,

“And why did you tell me this story?”

“Who else would have understood me? You come to me without rank, without office, without honors and distinctions, almost without a name. It was dark when you came in, but all the same I detected a resemblance in your features.”

The stranger looked up at me questioningly.

“Yes,” I replied to his silent look, “I often think, maybe God’s hand is again off on its mission.”

The children ended up hearing this story, and evidently it was told to them in such a way that they could understand it. For they are very fond of this story.

Why the Dear Lord Wants There to Be Poor People

The foregoing story had circulated so widely that our worthy schoolteacher was walking around the streets with a hurt look on his face. I find this quite understandable. It is bad for a teacher when the children suddenly know something he has not told them. The teacher has to be the only hole in the plank through which you can see into the orchard. If there are other holes there, the children crowd around a new one every day and soon get tired of the view altogether. I would not have used this comparison here, since perhaps not every teacher would go along with being a hole; but the teacher I am talking about, who is my neighbor, heard the comparison from me first and deemed it a highly accurate one. And in case somebody else has another view on this, for me my neighbor’s authority is definitive.

He stood before me, toying constantly with his spectacles, and said, “I don’t know who told the children this story, but in any case, it is not right to fill their imaginations with these unusual kinds of notions and get them all excited. We’re dealing here with a kind of fairy tale—”

“By chance I happened to hear it,” I interrupted him.

“So,” said the teacher, who found this not at all improbable, “what do you think about it?” I hesitated, and he continued quickly, “To begin with, I find it improper to make free and unauthorized use of religious, especially biblical, material. All those things are, in any case, described in the catechism in such a way that they couldn’t be better expressed.” I wanted to say something but remembered just in time that the teacher had said “to begin with,” which, according to grammar and for the sake of the health of the sentence, would have to be followed by a “then” and maybe even by an “and finally” before I could permit myself to interject anything. And indeed, that is what happened. Since our worthy schoolteacher also passed along this sentence, whose flawless construction would not fail to charm any connoisseur, to other people as well, and since they are no more likely to forget it than I am, I shall record here what came, just like the finale of an overture, after those lovely preparatory words “and finally”: