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.
He had never known his mother, and therefore had wandered about with his father from babyhood.
Kohol was moved to pity, householders bought up all the books in order to bury the father, which they did almost for nothing, and even gave him a nice grave.
The orphan was taken into the Talmud Torah and told to sleep in the house-of-study; he ate "days,"[41] as he was still doing when my story begins.
In half a year's time he went through measles in the house-of-study, and then small-pox, and got a face as pitted as a grater.
The next year brought a new misfortune. In the house-of-study was an old split stove, of which Yössil was the official heater. This oven was a useless old thing and gave out no heat. By day things were bearable; at night the stove went down to freezing-point. Yössil's rags, given him by the householders on some holiday, were hardly enough to clothe him, never sufficient for extra covering at night.
One day Yössil thought the matter over, and stole the key of the wood store-room. He commenced to steal wood, and every day he heated the stove more, and sat by the fire and warmed himself. At last, as people said, God punished him for his theft: the stove suddenly burst, and a piece flew out and broke his foot. The town Röfeh cured it, but it remained shorter than the other, and Yössil limped from that day forward.