IX
Joseph puzzles me. His ways are really mysterious, and I do not know what goes on in this silent and furious soul. But surely something extraordinary. His look sometimes is difficult to endure,—so difficult that mine avoids its intimidating fixity. He has a slow ard gliding gait, that frightens me. One would say that he was dragging a ball riveted to his ankle, or, rather, the recollection of a ball. Is this a relic of a prison or of a convent? Both, perhaps. His back, too, frightens me, and also his large, powerful neck, tanned by the sun till it looks like old leather, and stiffened with sinews that stretch and strain like ropes. I have noticed on the back of his neck a collection of hard muscles that stand out in an exaggerated fashion, like those of wolves and wild beasts which have to carry heavy prey in their jaws.
Apart from his anti-Semitic craze, which indicates in Joseph a great violence and a thirst for blood, he is rather reserved concerning all matters. It is even impossible to know what he thinks. He has none of the swagger, and none of the professional humility, by which true domestics are to be recognized. Never a word of complaint, never the slightest disparagement of his masters. He
