formulae he had learnt from the _Schnorrer_
dried up on his tongue. But his silence pleaded more pitifully than
his speech. For he was barefooted and almost naked. Yet amid all these
untoward conditions his mind kept up its interminable twisting and
turning of the universe; that acute analysis for which centuries of
over-subtlety had prepared the Polish Jew's brain, and which was now
for the first time applied scientifically to the actual world instead
of fantastically to the Bible. And it was perhaps when he was lying on
the bare earth that the riddle of existence--twinkling so defiantly in
the stars--tortured him most keenly.

Thus passed half a year. Maimon had not learnt to beg, nor had the
beggar acquired the rudiments of morality. How often the philosopher
longed for his old friend Lapidoth--the grave-digger's son-in-law--to
talk things over with, instead of this carnal vagabond. They had been
poverty-stricken enough, those two, but oh! how differently they had
taken the position. He remembered how merrily Lapidoth had pinned his
dropped-off sleeve to the back of his coat, crying, "Don't I look like
a _Schlachziz_ (nobleman)?" and how he in return had vaunted the
superiority of his gaping shoes: "They don't squeeze at the toes." How
they had played the cynic, he and the grave-digger's son-in-law,
turning up with remorseless spade the hollow bones of human virtue! As
convincedly as synagogue-elders sought during fatal epidemics for the
secret sins of the congregation, so had they two striven to uncover
the secret sinfulness of self-deceived righteousness.

"Bad self-analysis is the foundation of contentment," Lapidoth had
summed it up one day, as they lounged on the town-wall.

To which Maimon: "Then, friend, why are we so content to censure
others? Let us be fair and pass judgment on ourselves. But the
contemplative life we lead is merely the result of indolence, which we
gloss over by reflections on the vanity of all things. We are content
with our rags. Why? Because we are too lazy to earn better. We
reproach the unscholarly as futile people addicted to the pleasures of
sense. Why? Because, not being constituted like you and me, they live
differently. Where is our superiority, when we merely follow our
inclination as they follow theirs? Only in the fact that we confess
this truth to ourselves, while they profess to act, not to satisfy
their particular desires, but for the general utility."

"Friend," Lapidot