So spoke the village folk, shaking their heads as they left the inn where the young Jewess and her children were tearing their clothes and beating their foreheads on the floor. And at the same time each man thought to himself:
“Well, anyhow, the bond I gave him has gone to the devil!”
To tell you the truth, there were very few in the village whose consciences whispered to them:
“It wouldn’t be a bad idea to return the principal to the Jews, even if we kept the interest.”
And the fact is no one gave up so much as one crooked penny.
The miller did not pay anything either, but then he thought he was different.
The widow Yankel begged and implored the townsfolk to help her, and even made her children throw themselves at their feet, beseeching them to let her have fifty, or even twenty, copecks on every rouble so that she shouldn’t starve, and might somehow manage to take her little orphans to the city. And more than one kind-hearted man was so moved that the tears trickled down his whiskers, and more than one nudged his neighbour and said:
“Haven’t you any fear of God in you, neighbour? Didn’t you owe the Jew money? Why don’t you pay her? Upon my word, you ought to, even if it’s only a little.”
But the neighbour would only scratch his top-knot under his hat and answer:
“Why should I pay him, when with my own hands I took him every penny I owed him the day he went to the city? Would you have me to pay twice? Now with you, neighbour, it’s different!”