And when, after seven days, the clouds passed away and the dwellers in Triton's city came forth, they shrank back from one another with horror and loathing. Ulcers and scabs disfigured every face. Noses and lips had vanished; the hair of the damsels had fallen out; their bodies had grown crooked. God had obliterated His own image in those whose creation He had repented of. And the sky above their heads had lost its bright blueness, and henceforth remained dull and livid, and men could gaze without winking into the pale disc of the midday sun, and count the spots thereon.
Yet even all this was not enough.
People had no longer any reason to find fault with their neighbours. As they were all equally hideous, it became a point of honour to deny the fact, so scorn grew all the more outrageous, and defiance all the more determined.
The domestic animals no longer recognized their masters. The tame beasts with their mates escaped from the city, and fled with anxious, plaintive cries to the mountains. The dogs and the little yellow birds forsook the city in swarms, and fled to the mountains, where they agreed among themselves never to utter another sound. The dogs will bark no more, the yellow birds will sing no more, lest their loathsome owners discover where they are. In their stead ravens and wolves came into the city. There these natural scavengers held a great council, at which they partitioned among themselves the inheritance of man.
Bar Noemi raised his avenging hand for the eighth time, and cried with a deeply sorrowful voice—
"Let there be death."
And he came, that cruel angel, that terrible angel, Malach Hamovez, with his two-edged sword of flame, the slayer of hosts, before whom nothing in the height or in the depth can remain hidden, and began his awful work of desolation.
The small and the insignificant perished first.
In one day, every little worm and beetle vanished from off the face of the earth, just as if autumn had come and taken them away.
On the second day the serpents and other reptiles came forth from their holes to breathe their last in the plague-stricken sunshine. They lay in thousands at the gates of the city.