. Getzel was convulsed with laughter.

"What are you laughing at, you Goyetzel you?" he asked himself. And he
answered himself in a different voice:

"I am laughing at you, good-for-nothing. Isn't it enough that you lost
all my nuts on me? Why did you want to go and lose my money as well?
Such a lot of money. You fool of fools! Oh, I can't get over it. Ha! ha!
ha!"

"You yourself brought me to it. You wicked one of wicked ones! You
scamp! You rascal!"

"Fool of the night! If I were to tell you to cut off your nose, must you
do it? You idiot! You animal with the horse's face, you! Ha! ha! ha!"

"Be quiet, at any rate, you Goyetzel, you. And let me not see your
forbidding countenance."

And he turned away from himself, sat sulky for a few minutes, scraping
the earth with his fingers. He covered the hole he had made, as he sang
a little song under his breath.

"Do you know what I will tell you, Getzel?" he said to himself a few
minutes later. "Let us forgive one another. Let us be friends. The Lord
helped me. It was my luck to win so many nuts--may no evil eye harm
them! Why should we not enjoy ourselves? Let's crack a few nuts. I
should think they are not bad! Well, what do you say, Getzel?"

"Yes, I also think they ought not to be bad," he answered himself. He
thrust a nut into his mouth, a second, a third. Each time, he banged his
teeth with his fists. The nut was cracked. He took out a fat kernel,
cleaned it round, threw it back in his mouth, and chewed it pleasurably
with his strong white teeth. He crunched them as a horse crunches oats.
He said to himself:

"Would you also like the kernel of a nut, Getzel? Speak out. Do not be
ashamed."

"Why not?"

That was how he answered himself. He stretched out his left hand, but
only smacked it with his right.

"Will you have a plague?"

"Let it be a plague."

"Then have two."

And he did not cease from cracking the nuts, and crunching them like a
horse. It was not enough that he sat eating and gave none to the other,
but he said to him:

"Listen, Getzel, to what I will ask you. How, for example, do you feel
while I am eating and you are only looking on?"

"How do I feel? May you have such a year!"

"Ah, I see you've got a temper. Here is a kernel for you."

And Getzel's right hand gave the left a kernel. The right turned upside
down. The left hand smacked the right. The left hand smacked the right
cheek. Then the right hand smacked the left cheek twic