The Treasure Chest by Johann Hebel

Author:Johann Hebel [Hebel, Johann]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9780141960531
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2009-12-06T18:30:00+00:00

A Profitable Game of Riddles

Eleven people were on a boat going down the Rhine from Basel, and a Jew who was making for Chalampé was allowed to travel with them and sit in a corner so long as he behaved himself and tipped the boatman eighteen kreuzers. The Jew’s purse jingled right enough when he shook it, but it contained only one twelve-kreuzer piece; its companion was a brass button. Nevertheless he accepted the offer gratefully. For he thought, ‘There’ll be something to be made underway, many have got rich on the Rhine before now.’

To begin with, on leaving the Tankard Inn, they chattered and joked a great deal, and the Jew, who didn’t take off his cloth pack but kept it firmly on his shoulder, sat there in his corner and had to put up with a great deal: it’s a wrong sometimes done to his kind. But when they were well past Öhningen and Cobbler’s Island, past Märkt and the cliff at Istein and St Vitus’s Chapel, one by one they all fell quiet and yawned and gazed down the length of the Rhine, until one of them broke the silence. ‘You, Moses,’ he said, ‘Don’t you know some way of whiling away our time? Your forefathers must have thought up all sorts of things in the wilderness.’

‘Now,’ thought the Jew, ‘here’s a chance to feather my nest,’ and he suggested they take turns to ask riddles, and he would join in if they would allow him. All those who couldn’t solve a riddle were to give the one who set it a twelve-kreuzer piece, a good answer would earn the same sum. The whole company was happy with that, and hoping they would be amused by the Jew’s stupidity, or his clever idea, they each asked merrily whatever came into his head. The first, for example, asked: ‘How many soft-boiled eggs could the giant Goliath eat on an empty stomach?’ They all said no one could possibly guess that and paid out twelve kreuzers each. But the Jew said, ‘Just one, for when you’ve eaten one egg your stomach is no longer empty!’ He had won the twelve kreuzers.

The next one thought, ‘You wait, Jew, I’ll test you on the New Testament, that way I won’t lose my twelve kreuzers!’ ‘Why did the apostle Paul write the Second Epistle to the Corinthians?’ The Jew said, ‘He can’t have been with them, if he had he could have spoken to them.’ That was another twelve kreuzers.

When the third man saw that the Jew was well versed in the Bible he started on a different tack: ‘Who draws out his work as long as he can but still finishes it on time?’ The Jew said, ‘The ropemaker who is good at his job.’

The fourth one asked: ‘Who gets paid for pulling wool over people’s eyes?’ The Jew said, ‘A wigmaker.’

Meanwhile they were approaching a village and one of them said, ‘That’s Bamlach.’ Then the fifth asked: ‘In which month do the people of Bamlach eat least?’ The Jew said, ‘In February, it has only twenty-eight days.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.