"Ah—the corpses!"
———
He rests for a moment and then goes on:
"Hardly had night fallen, when the corpses came back into the town; each one went to his home, stole in at the door, the window, or down the chimney—went hastily to the wardrobe, took out some clothes, dressed himself, yawned, and lay down somewhere to sleep.
"Next morning there was a whole townfull of corpses."
"And the living said nothing?"
"They never remarked; they were taken up with the dispute; their heads were full of it, they were all at sixes and sevens! And really, when you come to think of it, how much difference is there between a dead-alive person and a walking corpse in winding-sheets? When a son saw his father, he spat out three times, indignant with himself: 'To think of the dream I had—I dreamt I said Kaddish for my father and inherited him! May such dreams plague my enemies.'
"A widow saw her husband, and gave him a hearty slap. He had deceived her, the wretch! made game of her! and she, foolish woman that she was, had made him new winding-sheets!"
"And supposing she had married again?"
"How should she have? In the course of the dispute some one set fire to the Shool and to the house-of-study and to the wedding canopy; everything, you may say, was burnt. They accused pretty well everybody in turn—"