"Yes; but many of our sages, meseems, are dependent on their womankind. I have dispensed with woman; must I therefore dispense with support likewise?" Maimon was amused and shocked in one. He set down his whisky, unsipped. "But he who dispenses with woman lives in sin. It is the duty of man to beget posterity, to found a home; for what is civilization but home, and what is home but religion?" The wanderer's tones were earnest; he forgot his own sins of omission in the lucidity with which his intellect saw the right thing. "Ah, you are one of the canting ones," said the _Schnorrer_. "It strikes me you and I could do something better together than quarrel. What say you to a partnership?" "In begging?" "What else have I to offer? You are new to the country--you don't know the roads--you haven't got any money." "Pardon me! I have a thaler left." "No, you haven't--you pay that to me for the partnership." The metaphysical Maimon was tickled. "But what do I gain for my thaler?" "My experience." "But if so, you gain nothing from _my_ partnership." "A thaler to begin with. Then, you see, your learning and morality will draw when I am at a loss for quotations. In small villages we go together and produce an impression of widespread misery: we speak of the destruction of our town by fire, of persecution, what you will. One beggar might be a liar: two together are martyrs." "Then you beg only in villages?" "Oh no. But in towns we divide. You do one half, I do another. Then we exchange halves, armed with the knowledge of who are the beneficent in either half. It is less fatiguing." "Then the beneficent have to give twice over." "They have double merit. Charity breeds charity." "This is a rare fellow," thought Maimon. "How Lapidoth would delight in him! And he speaks truth. I know nothing of the country. If I travel a little with him I may learn much. And he, too, may learn from me. He has a good headpiece, and I may be able to instil into him more seemly notions of duty and virtue. Besides, what else can I do?" So, spinning his thaler in air, "Done!" he cried. The beggar caught it neatly. "Herr Landlord," said he, "another glass of your excellent whisky!" And, raising it to his lips when it came, "Brother, here's to our partnership." "What, none for me?" cried Maimon, crestfallen. "Not till you had begged for it," chuckled the _Schnorrer_. "You have had your first lesson. Herr Landlord, yet another glass of your excellent whisky!" And so the philosopher, whose brain was always twisting and turning the universe and taking it to pieces, started wandering about Germany with the beggar whose thoughts were bounded by his paunch. They exploited but a small area, and with smaller success than either had anticipated. Though now and then they were flush, there was never a regular meal; and too often they had to make shift with mouldly bread and water, and to lie on stale straw, and even on the bare earth.