The audience did not take long to reflect, they agreed to the Rav's proposal, collected a few rubles (for who would not give their last farthing for such an important object?), and on Sunday morning early they hired him a peasant's cart and horse--and the Rav drove away to Wilna. The Rav passed the drive marshalling his arguments, settling on what he should say, and how he should explain himself, and he was delighted to see how, the more deeply he pondered his plan, the more he thought it out, the more efficient and appropriate it appeared, and the clearer he saw what happiness it would bestow on men all the world over. The small cart arrived at Wilna. "Whither are we to drive?" asked the peasant. "Whither? To a Jew," answered the Rav. "For where is the Jew who will not give me a night's lodging?" "And I, with my cart and horse?" The Rav sat perplexed, but a Jew passing by heard the conversation, and explained to him that Wilna is not Pumpian, and that they would have to drive to a post-house, or an inn. "Be it so!" said the Rav, and the Jew gave him the address of a place to which they should drive. Wilna! It is certainly not the same thing as Pumpian. Now, for the first time in his life, the Rav saw whole streets of tall houses, of two and three stories, all as it were under one roof, and how fine they are, thought he, with their decorated exteriors! "Oi, there live the unfortunate people!" said Reb Nochumtzi to himself. "I never saw anything like them before! How can they bear such a misfortune? I shall come to them as an angel of deliverance!" He had made up his mind to go to the principal Jewish citizen in Wilna, only he must be a good scholar, so as to understand what Reb Nochumtzi had to say to him. They advised him to go to the president of the Congregation. Every street along which he passed astonished him separately, the houses, the pavements, the droshkis and carriages, and especially the people, so beautifully got up with gold watch-chains and rings--he was quite bewildered, so that he was afraid he might lose his senses, and forget all his arguments and his reasonings. At last he arrived at the president's house. "He lives on the first floor." Another surprise! Reb Nochumtzi was unused to stairs. There was no storied house in all Pumpian! But when you must, you must! One way and another he managed to arrive at the first-floor landing, where he opened the door, and said, all in one breath: "I am the Pumpian Rav, and have something to say to the president." The president, a handsome old man, very busy just then with some merchants who had come on business, stood up, greeted him politely, and opening the door of the reception-room said to him: "Please, Rabbi, come in here and wait a little. I shall soon have finished, and then I will come to you here."