"If you can smell a rat, and know all that is going on, why do you want to ask questions?" The beadle pricked up his ears, and so did the half-dozen loungers who had followed me step by step. There was a fierce delight in their faces, and on their foreheads was written the verse: "Let the young men arise"--let us see two Maskilîm having it out between them! "What is the good of all this joking?" said the Maskil, irritated. "My tongue is not a shoe-sole! And for whose benefit am I to speak? That of the Tishewitz donkeys? Look at the miserable creatures!" I feel a certain embarrassment. I cannot well take up the defense of Tishewitz, because the Tishewitz worthies in the window and the door-way are smiling quite pleasantly. "Come, tell me, what does it all mean, taking notes?" "Statistics!" "_Statistic-shmistik!_ We've heard that before. What's the use of it?" I explained--not exactly to _him_, but to the community, so that they should all have an idea of what statistics meant. "Ha-ha-ha!" laughs the Maskil loudly and thickly, "you can get the Tishewitz donkeys to believe that, but you won't get me! Why do you want to put down how a person lives, with a floor, without a floor! What does it matter to you if a person lives in a room without a floor? _Ha?_" It matters, I tell him, because people want to show how poor the Jews are; they think-- "They think nothing of the kind," he interrupted, "but let that pass! Why should they want to know exactly how many boys and how many girls a man has? and what their ages are, and all the rest of the bother?" "They suspect us of shirking military duty. The books, as of course you know, are not correct, and we want to prove--" "Well, that may be so, for one thing--I'll allow that--but--about licenses! Why do you note down who has them--and what they are worth?" "In order to prove that the Jews--" But the Maskil does not allow me to finish my sentence. "A likely story! Meantime, people will know that this one and the other pays less than he ought to for his license, and he'll never hear the last of it." Scarcely had he said so, when the heads in the window disappeared; the beadle in the door-way took himself off, and the Maskil, who had really meant well all along, stood like one turned to stone. The population had taken fright, and in another hour or two the town was full of me. I was suspected of being commissioned by the excise. And why not, indeed? The excise knew very well that a Jew would have less difficulty in getting behind other people's secrets. I was left to pace the market-square alone. The town held aloof. It is true that the Maskil dogged my footsteps, but he had become antipathetic to me, and I couldn't look at him. The faces in the Gass became graver and darker, and I began to think of escaping. There are too many side-glances to please me--there is too much whispering.