The Maskil soon recovered himself.
"Well," he said, "blessed be the righteous Judge! Where are the riches?"
The narrator wiped his eyes with his sleeve, gave a sad smile and continued:
"Yes, I only wanted to show you what one means when one says, it was not to be. There came trouble after trouble—my wife died—the stall went to the bad because it was kept by a man—I was left alone with the children, and there wasn't a crust—I married again—I took an elderly woman on purpose, because I thought she would do for the stall, but I was taken in. There was a baby a year. Meanwhile our fairs fell off, and for a whole twelvemonth the stall wasn't worth a pinch of powder.
"I determined to make an end of it—to give up the match-making, grow rich, and sit and study. Aï—how does one grow rich? I wrote to the brother-in-law of my first wife, to the treasurer, and asked him for God's sake to tell me when next there was a circumcision.
"I got a message before the month was out, and hastened to Vorke. I stop nowhere, but go straight to the Rebbe."
"And—a larger manure heap?" laughs the Maskil. The narrator gives him a vicious look.
"The Vorke Tsaddik," he said, "went in for ritual cleanliness, his whole religion was ritual cleanliness."
"Only see," remarked the Maskil, "how he looks at me! Rascal! When you came here first, who helped you? A Vorke Chossid? or perhaps your cousin the Tsaddik? or was it I? ha! You would have died of hunger long ago if it hadn't been for me!"
And he turns to me: