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Moni The Goat-Boy
by
He started home at evening as silent as he had come in the morning. When he found Paula standing near the Bath House, and she sprang quickly across to the goat-shed and asked sympathetically: “Moni, what is the matter? Why don’t you sing any more?” he turned shyly away and said:
“I can’t,” and as quickly as possible made off with his goats.
Paula said to her aunt above: “If I only knew what was the matter with the goat-boy! He is quite changed. You wouldn’t know him. If he would only sing again!”
“It must be the frightful rain which has silenced the boy so!” remarked the aunt.
“Everything all comes together; let us go home, Aunt,” begged Paula, “there is no more pleasure here. First I lost my beautiful cross, and it can’t be found; then comes this endless rain, and now we can’t ever hear the merry goat-boy any more. Let us go away!”
“The cure must be finished, or it will do no good,” explained the aunt.
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 Fraulein 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.