Yössil heard no more; his limbs gave way and his whole body was seized with trembling; he just dragged himself to a bench and sat there like one turned to stone, with great, staring eyes. 6 THE END The happy assembly did not notice it. After Minchah and Maariv (some few only after a page of Gemoreh, or a chapter of Mishnayes), they went away and left Yössil alone as usual. Even the householder in whose house Yössil should have eaten that day's meals never thought of going up to him and asking why he had not been to breakfast, and why he was not coming back with him to supper; he just hurried home along with the rest, to tell his wife and children the good news, that Savitzki had gone, that they were rid of _that_ treasure. It was not till the next day that Yössil was missed; then they said, bother would _not_ have taken him, and the beadle lighted the stove himself. The oven smoked and Yössil was talked about the whole day; he was the only one who could manage the stove. They began to wonder if he had gone to Palestine, or else to Argentina? It was true, he had nothing with which to pay his travelling expenses, but then he could always resort to begging. It was only on the sixth day, when the town was looking for the arrival of an inspector of licenses, that the first shop-keeper who climbed up into the loft to hide a piece of imported velvet found Yössil hanging and already stark. XI BONTZYE SHWEIG[48] Down here, in _this_ world, Bontzye Shweig's death made no impression at all. Ask anyone you like who Bontzye was, _how_ he lived, and what he died of; whether of heart failure, or whether his strength gave out, or whether his back broke under a heavy load, and they won't know. Perhaps, after all, he died of hunger. If a tram-car horse had fallen dead, there would have been more excitement. It would have been mentioned in the papers, and hundreds of people would have crowded round to look at the dead animal--even the spot where the accident took place. But the tramway horse would receive less attention if there were as many horses as men--a thousand million. Bontzye lived quietly and died quietly. He passed through _our_ world like a shadow. No wine was drunk at Bontzye's circumcision, no healths were proposed, and he made no beautiful speech when he was confirmed. He lived like a little dun-colored grain of sand on the sea-shore, among millions of his kind; and when the wind lifted him and blew him over to the other side of the sea, nobody noticed it. When he was alive, the mud in the street preserved no impression of his feet; after his death, the wind overturned the little board on his grave. The grave-digger's wife found it a long way off from the spot, and boiled a potful of potatoes over it. Three days after that, the grave-digger had forgotten where he had laid him.