Our rabbi knew very well that whichever party he declared to be right, the Chassidîm on the _other_ side would be at him forthwith, and he wormed himself out of the difficulty like the learned Jew that he was. _He_ couldn't decide--it was a question of the impulse to do harm--_bê-mê_. There was no decision possible--the case must be laid before the Rebbes.[67] Noah naturally preferred the Belzer Rebbe, Yeruchem had no choice, and to Belz they went. Yeruchem, before he left, made his brother-in-law his representative, and trusted him with a few rubles which he had borrowed (people lent them out of pity). But it all turned out badly. The brother-in-law spent the money on himself, or (as he averred) lost it--Malkah fell ill of worry. Yeruchem, it is true, gained his fire-wall with "costs," before the Rebbe, but he and Noah were both caught on the frontier,[68] and brought home with the _étape_.[69] When Yeruchem arrived, Malkah was dead, and the little house pulled down. THE MASKIL And don't imagine Tishewitz to be the world's end. It has a Maskil, too, and a real Maskil, one of the old style, of middle age, uneducated and unread, without books, without even a newspaper, in a word a mere pretense at a Maskil. He lets his beard grow. To be a Maskil in Tishewitz it is enough only to trim it, but they say "he attends to his hair during the ten Days of Penitence!" He is not dressed German fashion, and no more is the Feldscher, also a Jew in a long coat and ear-locks. Our Maskil stops at blacking his boots and wearing a black ribbon round his neck. He has only sorry remnants of ear-locks, but he wears a peaked cap. People simply say: "Yeshurun waxed fat and kicked." He does well, runs a thriving trade, has, altogether, three children--what more can he want? Being free of all care, he becomes a Maskil. On the strength of what he is a Maskil, it is hard to tell--enough that people should consider him one! The whole place knows it, and he confesses to it himself. He is chiefly celebrated for his "Wörtlech," is prepared to criticise anything in heaven or on earth. As I heard later, the Maskil took me for another Maskil, and was sure that I should lodge with him, or, at any rate, that he would be my first entry. "For work of that kind," he said to the others, "you want people with brains. What do you suppose he could do with the like of _you_?" And as the mountain did not go to Mohammed, because he had never heard of him, Mohammed went to the mountain. He found me in the house of a widow. He came in with the question of the wicked child in the Haggadah: "What business is this of yours?" "_Mòi Pànyiye!_[70] what are you doing here?" "How here?" I ask. "Very likely you think I come from under the stove? That because a person lives in Tishewitz, he isn't civilized, and doesn't know what is doing in the world? You remember: 'I have sojourned with Laban?'[71] I do live here, but when there's a rat about, I soon smell him."