"And after that?"
"Nothing; the corpses had come to life and the living began to die out, for want of room, for want of air—but specially of hunger—"
"Was there a famine?"
"No more than anywhere else! But there was one for all that. The corpses took their place at the prayer-meetings and at the table at home as well. People didn't know why, but there were suddenly not enough spoons. All ate out of one dish, and there were not enough spoons. Every house-mistress knows that she has as many spoons as there are people in the house, so she thinks there has been a robbery! The pious say: Witchcraft! But as they came to see the spoons were missing everywhere, and there was not food to go round, then they said: A famine! and they hungered, and they are hungering still."
———
"And in a short time the corpses outnumbered the living; now they are the community and the leaders of the community! They do not beget children and increase naturally—not that, but when anyone dies, they steal him away off his bed, out of the grave—and there is a fresh corpse going about the town.
"And what is lacking to them? They have no cares, no fear of death—they eat for the purpose of saying grace—they don't want the food, they have no craving for it—let alone drink and lodging; a hundred corpses can sleep in one room—they don't require air!
"And they have no worries, because whence do worries spring? From knowing! 'The more knowledge, the more sorrow, but the dead man does not trouble.' It's not his affair! He doesn't wish to know and he needn't know—he wanders in a world of illusion.
"He keeps away from living concerns; he has no questions, no anxieties, no heart-ache, no one is conscious of his liver!
"Who do you think is our rabbi? Once it was a live man and a man of action; now he, too, is a corpse; he wanders in a world of illusion, and goes on giving decisions by rote as in a dream.