"What a waste of good rags!" said the Schnorrer.
"What a waste of good muscle!" retorted Maimon; for the beggar was a strapping fellow in rude health. "If I had your shoulders I should hold my head higher on them."
The Schnorrer shrugged them. "Only fools work. What has work brought you? Rags. You begin with work and end with rags. I begin with rags and end with meals."
"But have you no self-respect?" cried Maimon, in amaze. "No morality? No religion?"
"I have as much religion as any Schnorrer on the road," replied the beggar, bridling up. "I keep my Sabbath."
"Yes, indeed," said Maimon, smiling, "our sages say, Rather keep thy Sabbath as a week-day than beg; you say, Rather keep thy week-day as a Sabbath than be dependent on thyself." To himself he thought, "That is very witty: I must remember to tell Lapidoth that." And he called for another glass of whisky.
"Yes; but many of our sages, meseems, are dependent on their womankind. I have dispensed with woman; must I therefore dispense with support likewise?"
Maimon was amused and shocked in one. He set down his whisky, unsipped. "But he who dispenses with woman lives in sin. It is the duty of man to beget posterity, to found a home; for what is civilization but home, and what is home but religion?" The wanderer's tones were earnest; he forgot his own sins of omission in the lucidity with which his intellect saw the right thing.
"Ah, you are one of the canting ones," said the Schnorrer. "It strikes me you and I could do something better together than quarrel. What say you to a partnership?"
"In begging?"