The result of all this was that Savitzki went about like a wicked man in the other world, and at the end of two years and a half he saw he would not be able to hold on there; that his "inexpressibles" were getting too big for him, that he was growing daily thinner, and might fall into a decline; he was preparing to run away and leave his debts behind, and now--_it_ was near. No, this is not the time to leave a town of the kind; there are golden days coming. They have already sent an order to build a "barrack" for cholera patients and to set apart a house for their families; and although the heads of the community have forked out and bribed the town-justice and the inspectors, to set down the "expenditures" for the barrack as though it had been built, and not alarm the town, everyone felt it was on the move, that it was coming; that it meant peril of death to everyone and good luck to Savitzki. He will get three to four rubles a day from the government, the sick will pay him extra, and those who are well will pay not to be put down as sick. All the Jews will pay, for disinfection and no-disinfection, isolation and non-isolation, for being let in and let out, for speaking and for being silent, and above all, "burial money"--not to be made the subject of a post-mortem and be buried in pitch. Savitzki revived. His heart grew light within him. He paced the streets whistling a merry air; he looked cheerily into everyone's face, peeped in at all the doors and windows. Jews like to hide themselves, ah! but he will not allow it. They shall pay him for the past years--he will come into his own. Then he will leave the dead-alive place and marry. Whom should he find here? The apothecary's daughter--that ugly thing? 3 THE SECOND WHO IS NOT AFRAID Yössil, the beggar-student, would also like to marry, and has equally put his hope in the pestilence; he is the one orphan lad in the town. The householders could get no other if they wished. They will _have_ to marry him off. And he wishes it very much, which is no wonder--it is in the family. His father and his grandfather at his age had already buried children, and he is eighteen years old. He is "a scorn and a derision." They call him "bachelor" and "old maid," he has no peace at the academy all day. The allusions made at his expense prick him like pins. At night, it's worse. He lies all alone in the house-of-study on the hard bench, and does not sleep whole nights--the bad dreams will not let him; he is ready to crawl up the wall. He begs and implores the neighbors to marry him. He asks mercy, and the answer is always the same: "Unless it be the Queen of Sheba, who will look at you, scab?" That, as it happened, was something Yössil had not; but he had other attractions. He had come to the place fourteen years before, with his father, a book-peddler who fell ill on his way through and who--not of you be it said!--died there.