"As you will. You know she can always earn her bread and water at the cap-making. But you are your own master. When you are rid of this sickness—which will be soon—you shall go and seek her out and bring her to abide with you." The words rang sardonically through the chamber.
"How good you are!" Moshé murmured, as he sank back relieved.
The hunchback leaned over the bed till his gigantic brow almost touched the sick man's, till his wonderful eyes lay almost on his. "And yet you will not let me hasten on your recovery in the way I proposed to you."
"No, no," Moshé said, trembling all over. "What matters if I lie here a week more or less?"
"Lie here!" hissed his friend. "In a week you will lie rotting."
A wild cry broke from the blood-bespattered lips! "I am not dying! I am not dying! You said just now I should be better soon."
"So you will; so you will. But only if we have money. Our last farthing, our last means of raising a farthing, is gone. Without proper food, without a spark of fire, how can you hold out a week in this bitter weather? No, unless you would pass from the light and the gladness of life to the gloom and the shadow of the tomb, you must be instantly baptized."
"Shmad myself! Never!" said the sick man, the very word conjuring up an intolerable loathing, deeper than reason; and then another violent fit of coughing shook him.
"See how this freezing atmosphere tells on you. You must take Christian gold, I tell you. Thus only shall I be able to get you fire—to get you fire," repeated the hunchback with horrible emphasis. "You call yourself a disbeliever. If so, what matters? Why should you die for a miserable prejudice? But you are no true infidel. So long as you shrink from professing any religion under the sun, you still possess a religion. Your unfaith is but foam-drift on the deep sea of faith; but lip-babble while your heart is still infected with superstition. Come, bid me fetch the priest with his crucifix and holy water. Let us fool him to the top of his bent. Rouse yourself; be a man and live."
"No, no, brother! I will be a man and die."