The first to visit, aid and counsel the stricken community was Rabbi Jeiteles, whose unselfish devotion to duty led him from house to house, administering simple remedies to the suffering, closing the eyes of the dead and consoling the grieving survivors. He knew no fear, no hesitation. To his wife's anxious words of warning he had but one reply, "We are all in God's hands."
Earnestly he went about his work, conscious of his danger, yet putting all thought of self aside until he, too, fell a victim to the dread destroyer.
One day, while performing the last sad rites over a dead child, he was stricken, and before he could be removed to his home he had breathed his last.
Great was the grief in the Jewish community in Kief. From one end of the quarter to the other the inhabitants mourned for thirty days, bewailing the death of their beloved Rabbi, as though each household had lost a revered parent.
The plague continued its ravages, and the people in their wild terror resorted to the bal-shem for amulets and talismans. On every door could be read the inscription, "Not at home." But the cholera would not be put off by so flimsy a device and entered unbidden. Even the death of a grave-digger did not stay the dread disease, although it had been prophesied that such an event would end the trouble. The cabalistic books were ransacked for charms and mystic signs with which to resist the power of the conqueror, but all in vain.
One morning Itzig ran as fast as his shuffling legs would bear him, up the dirty lane that led to his abode, and fell rather than walked into the low door that led into his hut. His wife was engaged in washing a baby—the seventh—and Beile, an ill-favored, sallow-complexioned girl, sat at the window sewing.
"Jentele," cried Itzig, sinking into a chair, "God has been good to us!"
"Have you just found that out?" asked his wife, petulantly. "What is the matter? Have you come into a fortune?"
"Beile, leave the room," said Itzig.
"Why, father?"