During the evening, a number of Bensef's intimate friends visited the house and were told Mendel's history. The news of his arrival soon spread through the community, awakening everywhere the liveliest sympathy. Many parents had been bereft of their children in the self-same way and still mourned the absence of their first-born, whom the cruel decree of Nicholas had condemned to the rigors of some military outpost. Mendel became the hero of Kief, while he lay tossing in bed, a prey to high fever.
In spite of the care that was lavished upon him, he steadily grew worse. Fear, hunger, exposure and self-reproach had been too much for his youthful frame. For several days Miriam administered her humble house-remedies, but they were powerless to relieve his sufferings. The hot tea which he was made to drink, only served to augment the fever.
On the fifth day, Mendel was decidedly in a dangerous condition. He was delirious. The doctors in the Jewish community were consulted, but were powerless to effect a cure. Bensef and his wife were in despair.
"What shall we do?" said Miriam, sadly. "We cannot let the boy die."
"Die?" cried Hirsch, becoming pale at the thought. "Oh, God, do not take the boy! He has wound himself about my heart. Oh, God, let him live!"
"Come, husband, praying is of little avail," answered his practical wife; "we must have a feldsher" (doctor).
"A feldsher in the Jewish community? Why, Miriam, are you out of your mind? Have you forgotten how, when Rabbi Jeiteles was lying at the point of death, no amount of persuasion could induce a doctor to come into the quarter. 'Let the Jews die,' they answered to our entreaties; 'there will still be too many of them!'"
Miriam sighed. She remembered it well.
"What persuasion would not do, money may accomplish," she said, after a pause. "Hirsch, that boy must not die. He must live to be a credit to us and a comfort to our old age. You have money—what gentile ever resisted it?"
"I will do what I can," said the man, gloomily. "But even though I could bring one to the house, what good can he do. It is merely an experiment with the best of them. They will take our money, make a few magical incantations, prescribe a useless drug, and leave their patient to the mercy of Fate."