The Turkish Messiah

________________________________________________
_ SCROLL THE FIRST

I

In the year of the world five thousand four hundred and eight, sixteen hundred and forty-eight years after the coming of Christ, and in the twenty-third year of his own life on earth, Sabbatai Zevi, men said, declared himself at Smyrna to his disciples--the long-expected Messiah of the Jews. They were gathered together in the winter midnight, a little group of turbaned, long-robed figures, the keen stars innumerable overhead, the sea stretching sombrely at their feet, and the swarming Oriental city, a black mystery of roofs, minarets, and cypresses, dominated by the Acropolis, asleep on the slopes of its snow-clad hill.

Anxiously they had awaited their Prophet's emergence from his penitential lustration in the icy harbor, and as he now stood before them in naked majesty, the water dripping from his black beard and hair, a perfect manly figure, scarred only by self-inflicted scourgings, awe and wonder held them breathless with expectation. Inhaling that strange fragrance of divinity that breathed from his body, and penetrated by the kingliness of his mien, the passionate yet spiritual beauty of his dark, dreamy face, they awaited the great declaration. Some common instinct told them that he would speak to-night, he, the master of mystic silences.

The _Zohar_--that inspired book of occult wisdom--had long since foretold this year as the first of the epoch of regeneration, and ever since the shrill ram's horn had heralded its birth, the souls of Sabbatai Zevi's disciples had been tense for the great moment. Surely it was to announce himself at last that he had summoned them, blessed partakers in the greatest moment of human and divine history.

What would he say?

Austere, silent, hedged by an inviolable sanctity, he stood long motionless, realizing, his followers felt, the Cabalistic teaching as to the Messiah, incarnating the Godhead through the primal Adam, pure, sinless, at one with himself and elemental Nature. At last he raised his luminous eyes heavenwards, and said in clear, calm tones one word--

YAHWEH!

He had uttered the dread, forbidden Name of God. For an instant the turbaned figures stood rigid with awe, their blood cold with an ineffable terror, then as they became conscious again of the stars glittering on, the sea plashing unruffled, the earth still solid under their feet, a great hoarse shout of holy joy flew up to the shining stars. "_Messhiach! Messhiach!_ The Messiah!"

The Kingdom was come.

The Messianic Era had begun.

II

How long, O Lord, how long?

That desolate cry of the centuries would be heard no more.

While Israel was dispersed and the world full of sin, the higher and lower worlds had been parted, and the four letters of God's name had been dissevered, not to be pronounced in unison. For God Himself had been made imperfect by the impeding of His moral purpose.

But the Messiah had pronounced the Tetragrammaton, and God and the Creation were One again. O mystic transport! O ecstatic reunion! The joyous shouts died into a more beatific silence.

From some near mosque there broke upon the midnight air the solemn voice of the _mueddin_ chanting the _adan_--

"God is most great. I testify that there is no God but God. I testify that Mohammed is God's Prophet."

Sabbatai shivered. Was it the cold air or some indefinable foreboding?

III

It was the day of Messianic dreams. In the century that was over, strange figures had appeared of prophets and martyrs and Hebrew visionaries. From obscurity and the far East came David Reubeni, journeying to Italy by way of Nubia to obtain firearms to rid Palestine of the Moslem--a dark-faced dwarf, made a skeleton by fasts, riding on his white horse up to the Vatican to demand an interview, and graciously received by Pope Clement. In Portugal--where David Reubeni, heralded by a silken standard worked with the Ten Commandments, had been received by the King with an answering pageantry of banners and processions--a Marrano maiden had visions of Moses and the angels, undertook to lead her suffering kinsfolk to the Holy Land, and was burnt by the Inquisition. Diogo Pires--handsome and brilliant and young, and a Christian by birth--returned to the faith of his fathers, and, under the name of Solomon Molcho, passed his brief life in quest of prophetic ecstasies and the pangs of martyrdom. He sought to convert the Pope to Judaism, and predicting a great flood at Rome, which came to pass, with destructive earthquakes at Lisbon, was honored by the Vatican, only to meet a joyful death at Mantua, where, by order of the Emperor, he was thrown upon the blazing funeral pyre. And in these restless and terrible times for the Jews, inward dreams mingled with these outward portents. The _Zohar_--the Book of Illumination, composed in the thirteenth century--printed now for the first time, shed its dazzling rays further and further over every Ghetto.

The secrets reserved for the days of the Messiah had been revealed in it: Elijah, all the celestial conclave, angels, spirits, higher souls, and the Ten Spiritual Substances had united to inspire its composers, teach them the bi-sexual nature of the World-Principle, and discover to them the true significance of the _Torah_ (Law), hitherto hidden in the points and strokes of the Pentateuch, in its vowels and accents, and even in the potential transmutations of the letters of its words. Lurya, the great German Egyptian Cabalist, with Vital, the Italian alchemist, sojourned to the grave of Simon bar Yochai, its fabled author. Lurya himself, who preferred the silence and loneliness of the Nile country to the noise of the Talmud-School, who dressed in white on Sabbath, and wore a fourfold garment to signify the four letters of the Ineffable Name, and who by permutating these, could draw down spirits from Heaven, passed as the Messiah of the Race of Joseph, precursor of the true Messiah of the Race of David. The times were ripe. "The kingdom of heaven is at hand," cried the Cabalists with one voice. The Jews had suffered so much and so long. Decimated for not dying of the Black Death, pillaged and murdered by the Crusaders, hounded remorselessly from Spain and Portugal, roasted by thousands at the _autos-da-fe_ of the Inquisition, everywhere branded and degraded, what wonder if they felt that their cup was full, that redemption was at hand, that the Lord would save Israel and set His people in triumph over the heathen! "I believe with a perfect faith that the Messiah will come, and though His coming be delayed, nevertheless will I daily expect Him."

So ran their daily creed.

In Turkey what time the Jews bore themselves proudly, rivalling the Venetians in the shipping trade, and the Grand Viziers in the beauty of their houses, gardens, and kiosks; when Joseph was Duke of Naxos, and Solomon Ashkenazi Envoy Extraordinary to Venice; when Tiberias was turned into a new Jerusalem and planted with mulberry-trees; when prosperous physicians wrote elegant Latin verses; in those days the hope of the Messiah was faint and dim. But it flamed up fiercely enough when their strength and prestige died down with that of the Empire, and the harem and the Janissaries divided power with the Praetorians of the Spahis, and the Jews were the first objects of oppression ready to the hand of the unloosed pashas, and the black turban marked them off from the Moslem. It was a Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire who wrote the religious code of "The Ordered Table" to unify Israel and hasten the coming of the Messiah, and his dicta were accepted far and wide.

And not only did Israel dream of the near Messiah, the rumor of Him was abroad among the nations. Men looked again to the mysterious Orient, the cradle of the Divine. In the far isle of England sober Puritans were awaiting the Millennium and the Fifth Monarchy of the Apocalypse--the four "beasts" of the Babylonian, Persian, Greek, and Roman monarchies having already passed away--and when Manasseh ben Israel of Amsterdam petitioned Cromwell to readmit the Jews, his plea was that thereby they might be dispersed through all nations, and the Biblical prophecies as to the eve of the Messianic age be thus fulfilled. Verily, the times were ripe for the birth of a Messiah.

IV

He had been strange and solitary from childhood, this saintly son of the Smyrniote commission agent. He had no playmates, none of the habits of the child. He would wander about the city's steep bustling alleys that seemed hewn in a great rock, or through the long, wooden-roofed bazaars, seeming to heed the fantastically colored spectacle as little as the garbage under foot, or the trains of gigantic camels, at the sound of whose approaching bells he would mechanically flatten himself against the wall. And yet he must have been seeing, for if he chanced upon anything that suffered--a child, a lean dog, a cripple, a leper--his eyes filled with tears. At times he would stand on the brink of the green gulf and gaze seawards long and yearningly, and sometimes he would lie for hours upon the sudden plain that stretched lonely behind the dense port.

In the little congested school-room where hundreds of children clamored Hebrew at once he was equally alone; and when, a brilliant youth, he headed the lecture-class of the illustrious Talmudist, Joseph Eskapha, his mental attitude preserved the same aloofness. Quicker than his fellows he grasped the casuistical hair-splittings in which the Rabbis too often indulged, but his contempt was as quick as his comprehension. A note of revolt pierced early through his class-room replies, and very soon he threw over these barren subtleties to sink himself--at a tenderer age than tradition knew of--in the spiritual mysticisms, the poetic fervors, and the self-martyrdoms of the Cabalistic literature. The transmigrations of souls, mystic marriages, the summoning of spirits, the creation of the world by means of attributes, or how the Godhead had concentrated itself within itself in order to unfold the finite Many from the infinite One; such were the favorite studies of the brooding youth of fifteen.

"Learning shall be my life," he said to his father.

"Thy life! But what shall be thy livelihood?" replied Mordecai Zevi. "Thy elder brothers are both at work."

"So much more need that one of thy family should consecrate himself to God, to call down a blessing on the work of the others."

Mordecai Zevi shook his head. In his olden days, in the Morea, he had known the bitterness of poverty. But he was beginning to prosper now, like so many of his kinsmen, since Sultan Ibrahim had waged war against the Venetians, and, by imperilling the trade of the Levant, had driven the Dutch and English merchants to transfer their ledgers from Constantinople to Smyrna. The English house of which Mordecai had obtained the agency was waxing rich, and he in its wake, and so he could afford to have a scholar-son. He made no farther demur, and even allowed his house to become the seat of learning in which Sabbatai and nine chosen companions studied the Zohar and the Cabalah from dawn to darkness. Often they would desert the divan for the wooden garden-balcony overlooking the oranges and the prune-trees. And the richer Mordecai grew, the greater grew his veneration for his son, to whose merits, and not to his own diligence and honesty, he ascribed his good fortune.

"If the sins of the fathers are visited on the children," he was wont to say, "then surely the good deeds of the children are repaid to the fathers." His marked reverence for his wonderful son spread outwards, and Sabbatai became the object of a wistful worship, of a wild surmise.

Something of that wild surmise seemed to the father to flash into his son's own eyes one day when, returned from a great journey to his English principals, Mordecai Zevi spoke of the Fifth Monarchy men who foretold the coming of the Messiah and the Restoration of the Jews in the year 1666.

"Father!" said the boy. "Will not the Messiah be born on the ninth of Ab?"

"Of a surety," replied Mordecai, with beating heart. "He will be born on the fatal date of the destruction of both our Temples, in token of consolation, as it is written; 'and I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first.'"

The boy relapsed into his wonted silence. But one thought possessed father and son. Sabbatai had been born on the ninth of Ab--on the great Black Fast.

The wonder grew when the boy was divorced from his wife--the beautiful Channah. Obediently marrying--after the custom of the day--the maiden provided by his father, the young ascetic passionately denied himself to the passion ripened precociously by the Eastern sun, and the marvelling _Beth-Din_ (House of Judgment) released the virgin from her nominal husband. Prayer and self-mortification were the pleasures of his youth. The enchanting Jewesses of Smyrna, picturesque in baggy trousers and open-necked vests, had no seduction for him, though no muslin veil hid their piquant countenances as with the Turkish women, though no prescription silenced their sweet voices in the psalmody of the table, as among the sin-fearing congregations of the West. In vain the maidens stuck roses under their ear or wore honeysuckle in their hair to denote their willingness to be led under the canopy. But Mordecai, anxious that he should fulfil the law, according to which to be celibate is to live in sin, found him a second mate, even more beautiful; but the youth remained silently callous, and was soon restored afresh to his solitary state.

"Now shall the _Torah_ (Law) be my only bride," he said.

Blind to the beauty of womanhood, the young, handsome, and now rich Sabbatai, went his lonely, parsimonious way, and a wondering band followed him, scarcely disturbing his loneliness by their reverential companionship. When he entered the sea, morning and night, summer and winter, all stood far off; by day he would pray at the fountain which the Christians called _Sancta Veneranda_, near to the cemetery of the Jews, and he would stretch himself at night across the graves of the righteous in a silent agony of appeal, while the jackals barked in the lonely darkness and the wind soughed in the mountain gorges.

But at times he would speak to his followers of the Divine mysteries and of the rigorous asceticism by which alone these were to be reached and men to be regenerated and the Kingdom to be won; and sometimes he would sing to them Spanish songs in his sweet, troubling voice--strange Cabalistic verses, composed by himself or Lurya, and set to sad, haunting melodies yearning with mystic passion. And in these songs the womanhood he had rejected came back in amorous strains that recalled the Song of Songs, which is Solomon's, and seemed to his disciples to veil as deep an allegory:--

"There the Emperor's daughter
Lay agleam in the water,
Melisselda.
And its breast to her breast
Lay in tremulous rest,
Melisselda.
From her bath she arose
Pure and white as the snows,
Melisselda.
Coral only at lips
And at sweet finger-tips,
Melisselda.
In the pride of her race
As a sword shone her face,
Melisselda.
And her lips were steel bows,
But her mouth was a rose,
Melisselda."

And in the eyes of the tranced listeners were tears of worship for Melisselda as for the Messiah's mystic Bride.

V

And while the silent Sabbatai said no word of Messiah or mission, no word save the one word on the seashore, his disciples, first secret, then bold, spread throughout Smyrna the news of the Messiah's advent.

They were not all young, these first followers of Sabbatai. No one proclaimed him more ardently than the grave, elderly man of science, Moses Pinhero. But the sceptics far outnumbered the believers. Sabbatai was scouted as a madman. The Jewry was torn by dissensions and disturbances. But Sabbatai took no part in them. He had no communion with the bulk of his brethren, save in religious ceremonies, and for these he would go to the poorest houses in the most noisome courts. It was in a house of one room, the raised part of which, covered with a strip of carpet, made the bed-and living-room, and the unraised part the kitchen, that his next manifestation of occult power was made. The ceremony was the circumcision of the first-born son, but as the _Mohel_ (surgeon) was about to operate he asked him to stay his hand awhile. Half an hour passed.

"Why are we waiting?" the guests ventured to ask of him at last.

"Elijah the Prophet has not yet taken his seat," he said.

Presently he made a sign that the proceedings might be resumed. They stared in reverential awe at the untenanted chair, where only the inspired vision of Sabbatai could perceive the celestial form of the ancient Prophet.

But the ancient Talmudical college frowned upon the new Prophet, particularly when his disciples bruited abroad his declaration on the sea-shore. He was cited before the _Chachamim_ (Rabbis).

"Thou didst dare pronounce the ineffable Name" cried Joseph Eskapha, his old Master. "What! Shall thy unconsecrated lips pollute the sacred letters that even in the time of Israel's glory only the High Priest might breathe in the Holy of Holies on the Day of Atonement!"

"'Tis a divine mystery known to me alone," said Sabbatai.

But the Rabbis shook their heads and laid the ban upon him and his disciples. A strange radiance came in Sabbatai's face. He betook himself to the fountain and prayed.

"I thank Thee, O my Father," he said, "inasmuch as Thou hast revealed myself to myself. Now I know that my own penances have not been in vain."

But the excommunication of the Sabbatians did not quiet the commotion in the Jewish quarter of Smyrna, fed by Millennial dreams from the West. In England, indeed, a sect of Old Testament Christians had arisen, working for the adoption of the Mosaic Code as the law of the State.

From land to land of Christendom, on the feverish lips of eager believers, passed the rumor of the imminence of the Messiah of the Jews. According to some he would appear before the Grand Seignior in June, 1666, take from him his crown by force of music only, and lead him in chains like a captive. Then for nine months he would disappear, the Jews meanwhile enduring martyrdom, but he would return, mounted on a Celestial Lion, with his bridle made of seven-headed serpents, leading back the lost ten tribes from beyond the river Sambatyon, and he should be acknowledged for Solomon, King of the Universe, and the Holy Temple should descend from Heaven already built, that the Jews might offer sacrifice therein for ever. But these hopes found no lodgment in the breasts of the Jewish governors of the Smyrniote quarter, where hard-headed Sephardim were busy in toil and traffic, working with their hands, or shipping freights of figs or valonea; as for the _Schnorrers_, the beggars who lived by other people's wits, they were even more hard-headed than the workers. Hence constant excitements and wordy wars, till at last the authorities banished the already outlawed Sabbatai from Smyrna. When he heard the decree he said, "Is Israel not in exile?" He took farewell of his brothers and of his father, now grown decrepit in his body and full of the gout and other infirmities.

"Thou hast brought me wealth," said old Mordecai, sobbing; "but now I had rather lose my wealth than thee. Lo, I am on the brink of the grave, and my saintly son will not close mine eyes, nor know when to say _Kaddish_ (mourning prayer) over my departed soul."

"Nay, weep not, my father," said Sabbatai. "The souls depart--but they will return."

VI

He wandered through the Orient, everywhere gaining followers, everywhere discredited. Constantinople saw him, and Athens, Thessalonica and Cairo.

For the Jew alone travel was easy in those days. The scatterings of his race were everywhere. The bond of blood secured welcome: Hebrew provided a common tongue. The scholar-guest, in especial, was hailed in flowery Hebrew as a crown sent to decorate the head of his host. Sumptuously entertained, he was laden with gifts on his departure, the caravan he was to join found for him, the cost defrayed, and even his ransom, should he unhappily be taken captive by robbers.

At the Ottoman capital the exile had a mingled reception. In the great Jewish quarter of Haskeui, with its swarming population of small traders, he found many adherents and many adversaries. Constantinople was a nest of free-lances and adventurers. Abraham Yachiny, the illustrious preacher, an early believer, was inspired to have a tomb opened in the ancient "house of life." He asked the sceptical Rabbis to dig up the earth. They found it exceedingly hard to the spade, but, persevering, presently came upon an earthen pot and therein a parchment which ran thus: "I, Abraham, was shut up for forty years in a cave. I wondered that the time of miracles did not arrive. Then a voice replied to me: 'A son shall be born in the year of the world 5386 and be called Sabbatai. He shall quell the great dragon; he is the true Messiah, and shall wage war without weapons.'"

Verily without weapons did Sabbatai wage war, almost without words. Not even the ancient Parchment convinced the scoffers, but Sabbatai took note of it as little as they. To none did he proclaim himself. His tall, majestic figure, with its sweeping black beard, was discerned in the dusk, passionately pleading at the graves of the pious. He was seen at dawn standing motionless upon his bulging wooden balcony that gave upon the Golden Horn. When he was not fasting, none but the plainest food passed his lips. He flagellated himself daily. Little children took to him, and he showered sweetmeats upon them and winning smiles of love. When he walked the refuse-laden, deep-rutted streets, slow and brooding, jostled by porters, asses, dervishes, sheiks, scribes, fruit-pedlars, shrouded females, and beggars, something more than the sombreness of his robes marked him out from the medley of rainbow-colored pedestrians. Turkish beauties peered through their yashmaks, cross-legged craftsmen smoking their narghiles raised their heads as he passed through the arched aisles of the Great Bazaar. Once he wandered into the slave-market, where fair Circassians and Georgians were being stripped to furnish the Kiosks of the Bosphorus, and he grew hot-eyed for the corrupt chaos of life in the capital, with its gorgeous pachas and loathly cripples, its countless mosques and brothels, its cruel cadis and foolish dancing dervishes. And when an angry Mussulman, belaboring his ass, called it "Jew!" his heart burnt with righteous anger. Verily, only Israel had chosen Righteousness--one little nation, the remnant that would save the world, and bring about the Kingdom of God. But alas! Israel herself was yet full of sin, hard and unbelieving.

"Woe! woe!" he cried aloud to his brethren as he entered the Jewish quarter. "Your sins shall be visited upon you. For know that when God created the world, it was not from necessity but from pure love, and to be recognized by men as their Creator and Master. But ye return Him not love for love. Woe! woe! There shall come a fire upon Constantinople and a great burning upon your habitations and substance."

Then his breast swelled with sobs; in a strange ecstasy his spirit seemed to soar from his body, and hover lovingly over all the motley multitude. All that night his followers heard him praying aloud with passionate tears, and singing the Psalms of David in his sweet melancholy voice as he strode irregularly up and down the room.

VII

At Constantinople a messenger brought him a letter of homage from Damascus from his foremost disciple, Nathan of Gaza.

Nathan was a youthful enthusiast, son of a Jerusalem begging-agent, and newly married to the beautiful, but one-eyed daughter of a rich Portuguese, who had migrated from Damascus to Gaza. Opulent and zealous, he devoted himself henceforth to preaching the Messiah, living and dying his apostle and prophet--no other in short than the Elijah who was to be the Messiah's harbinger. Nor did he fail to work miracles in proof of his mission. Merely on reading a man's name, he would recount his life, defaults and sins, and impose just correction and penance. Evil-doers shunned his eye. More readily than on Sabbatai men believed on him, inasmuch as he claimed but the second place, and an impostor, said they, would have claimed the first. Couched in the tropes and metaphors of Rabbinical Hebrew, Nathan's letter ran thus:--

"22ND CHESVAN OF THIS YEAR.

"To the King, our King, Lord of our Lords, who gathers the Dispersed of Israel, who redeems our Captivity, the Man elevated to the Height of all sublimity, the Messiah of the God of Jacob, the true Messiah, the Celestial Lion, Sabbatai Zevi, whose honor be exalted and his dominion raised in a short time, and for ever, Amen. After having kissed thy hands and swept the dust from thy feet, as my duty is to the King of Kings, whose Majesty be exalted and His Empire enlarged. These are to make known to the Supreme Excellency of that Place, which is adorned with the beauty of thy Sanctity, that the Word of the King and of His Law hath enlightened our Faces; that day hath been a solemn day unto Israel and a day of light unto our Rulers, for immediately we applied ourselves to perform thy Commands as our duty is. And though we have heard of many strange things, yet we are courageous, and our heart is as the heart of a Lion; nor ought we to inquire or reason of thy doings; for thy works are marvellous and past finding out. And we are confirmed in our Fidelity without all exception, resigning up our very souls for the Holiness of thy Name. And now we are come as far as Damascus, intending shortly to proceed in our journey to Scanderone, according as thou hast commanded us: that so we may ascend and see the face of God in light, as the light of the face of the King of life. And we, servants of thy servants, shall cleanse the dust from thy feet, beseeching the majesty of thine excellency and glory to vouchsafe from thy habitation to have a care of us, and help us with the Force of thy Right Hand of Strength, and shorten our way which is before us. And we have our eyes towards Jah, Jah, who will make haste to help us and to save us, that the Children of Iniquity shall not hurt us; and towards whom our hearts pant and are consumed within us: who shall give us Talons of Iron to be worthy to stand under the shadow of thine ass. These are the words of thy Servant of Servants, who prostrates himself to be trod on by the soles of thy feet.--NATHAN BENJAMIN."

VIII

But it was at Thessalonica--now known as Salonica--that Sabbatai gained the greatest following. For Thessalonica was the chief stronghold of the Cabalah; and though the triangular battlemented town, sloping down the mountain to the gulf, was in the hands of the Turks, who had built four fortresses and set up twelve little cannons against the Corsairs, yet Jews were largely in the ascendant, and their thirty synagogues dominated the mosques of their masters and the churches of the Greeks, even as the crowns they received for supplying the cloths of the Janissaries far exceeded their annual tribute. Castilians, Portuguese, Italians, they were further recruited by an influx of students from all parts of the Empire, for here were two great colleges teaching more than ten thousand scholars. In this atmosphere of pious warmth Sabbatai found consolation for the apathy of Constantinople. Not only men were of his devotees now, but women, and maidens, in all their Eastern fervor, raising their face-veils and putting off their shrouding _izars_ as they sat at his feet. Virgins, untaught to love or to dissemble, lifted adoring eyes. But Sabbatai's vision was still inwards and heavenwards; and one day he made a great feast, and invited all his friends to his wedding in the chief synagogue. They came with dancing and music and lighted torches, but racked by curiosity, full of guesses as to the bride. Through the close lattice-work of the ladies' balcony peered a thousand eager eyes. When the moment came, Sabbatai, in festal garments, took his stand under the canopy. But no visible bride stood beside him. Moses Pinhero reverently drew a Scroll of the Law from the ark, vested in purple and gold broideries, and hung with golden chains and a breastplate and bells that made sweet music, and he bore it beneath the canopy, and Sabbatai, placing a golden ring on a silver peak of the Scroll, said solemnly:

"I betroth thee unto me according to the Law of Moses and Israel."

A buzz of astonishment swelled through the synagogue, blent with heavier murmurs of protest from shocked pietists. But the more poetic Cabalists understood. They explained that it was the union of the Torah, the Daughter of Heaven, with the Messiah, the Son of Heaven, who was never to mate with a mortal.

But a _Chacham_ (Rabbi), unappeased, raised a loud plaint of blasphemy.

"Nay, the blasphemy is thine," replied the Bridegroom of the law quietly. "Say not your prophets that the Truth should be the spouse of those who love the Truth?"

But the orthodox faction prevailed, and he was driven from the city.

He went to the Morea, to his father's relatives; he wandered to and fro, and the years slipped by. Worn by fasts and penances, living in inward dreams of righteousness and regeneration, he grew towards middle age, and always on his sweet scholarly face an air of patient waiting through the slow years. And his train of disciples grew and changed; some died, some wearied of the long expectation. But Samuel Primo, of Jerusalem, became his devoted secretary, and Abraham Rubio was also ever at his side, a droll, impudent beggar, professing unlimited faith in the Messiah, and feasting with unbounded appetite on the good things sent by the worshippers, and put aside by the persistent ascetic.

"Tis fortunate I shall be with thee when thou carvest the Leviathan," he said once. "Else would the heathen princesses who shall wait upon us come in for thy pickings."

"In those days of the Kingdom there shall be no more need for abnegation," said Sabbatai. "As it is written, 'And thy fast-days shall become feast-days.'"

"Nay, then, thy feast-days shall become my fast-days," retorted Rubio.

Sabbatai smiled. The beggar was the only man who could make him smile. But he smiled--a grim, bitter smile--when he heard that the great fire he had predicted had devastated Constantinople, and wrought fierce mischief in the Jewish quarter.

"The fire will purify their hearts," he said.

IX

Nathan the Prophet did not fail to enlarge upon the miraculous prediction of his Master, and through all the lands of the Exile a tremor ran.

It reached that hospitable table in Cairo where each noon half a hundred learned Cabalists dined at the palace of the Saraph-Bashi, the Jewish Master of the Mint, himself given to penances and visions, and swathed in sackcloth below the purple robes with which he drove abroad in his chariot of state.

"He who is sent thee," wrote Nathan to Raphael Joseph Chelebi, this pious and open-handed Prince in Israel, "is the first man in the world--I may say no more. Honor him, then, and thou shalt have thy reward in his lifetime, wherein thou wilt witness miracles beyond belief. Whatever thou shouldst see, be not astonied. It is a divine mystery. When the time shall come I will give up all to serve him. Would it were granted me to follow him now!"

Chelebi was prepared to follow Sabbatai forthwith; he went to meet Sabbatai's vessel, and escorted him to his palace with great honor. But Sabbatai would not lodge therein.

"The time is not yet," he said, and sought shelter with a humble vendor of holy books, whose stall stood among the money-changers' booths, that led to the chief synagogue, and his followers distributed themselves among the quaint high houses of the Jewry, and walked prophetic in its winding alleys, amid the fantastic chaos of buyers and sellers and donkeys, under the radiant blue strip of Egyptian sky. Only at mid-day did they repair to the table of the Saraph-Bashi.

"Hadst any perils at sea?" asked the host on the first day. "Men say the Barbary Corsairs are astir again."

Sabbatai remained silent, but Samuel Primo, his secretary, took up the reply.

"Perils!" quoth he. "My Master will not speak of them, but the Captain will tell thee a tale. We never thought to pass Rhodes!"

"Ay," chimed in Abraham Rubio, "we were pursued all night by two pirates, one on either side of us like beggars."

"And the Captain," said Isaac Silvera, "despairing of escape, planned to take to the boats with his crew, leaving the passengers to their fate."

"But he did not?" quoth a breathless Cabalist.

"Alas, no," said Abraham Rubio, with a comical grimace. "Would he had done so! For then we should have owned a goodly vessel, and the Master would have saved us all the same."

"But righteousness must needs be rewarded," protested Samuel Primo. "And inasmuch as the Captain wished to save the Master in the boats--"

"The Master was reading," put in Solomon Lagnado. "The Captain cries out, 'The Corsairs are upon us!' 'Where?' says the Master. 'There!' says the Captain. The Master stretches out his hands, one towards each vessel, and raises his eyes to heaven, and in a moment the ships tack and sail away on the high sea."

Sabbatai sat eating his meagre meal in silence.

But when the rumor of his miracle spread, the sick and the crippled hastened to him, and, protesting he could do naught, he laid his hands on them, and many declared themselves healed. Also he touched the lids of the sore-eyed and they said his fingers were as ointment. But Sabbatai said nothing, made no pretensions, walking ever the path of piety with meek and humble tread. Howbeit he could not linger in Egypt. The Millennial Year was drawing nigh--the mystic 1666.

Sabbatai Zevi girded up his loins, and, regardless of the rumors of Arab robbers, nay, wearing his phylacteries on his forehead as though to mark himself out as a Jew, and therefore rich, joined a caravan for Jerusalem, by way of Damascus.

X

O the ecstasy with which he prostrated himself to kiss for the first time the soil of the sacred city! Tears rolled from his eyes, half of rapture, half of passionate sorrow for the lost glories of Zion, given over to the Moslem, its gates guarded by Turkish sentries, and even the beauty of his first view of it--domes, towers, and bastions bathed in morning sunlight--fading away in the squalor of its steep alleys.

Nathan the Prophet had apprised the Jews of the coming of their King, and the believers welcomed him with every mark of homage, even substituting Sabbatai Zevi for Sultan Mehemet in the Sabbath prayer for the Sovereign, and at the Wailing Place the despairing sobs of the Sons of the Law were tempered by a great hope.

Poor, squeezed to famishing point by the Turkish officials, deprived of their wonted subsidies from the pious Jews of Poland, who were decimated by Cossack massacres, they had had their long expectation of the Messiah intensified by the report which Baruch Gad had brought back to them from Persia--how the Sons of Moses, living beyond the river Sambatyon (that ceased to run on the Sabbath), were but awaiting, amid daily miracles, the word of the Messiah to march back to Jerusalem. The lost Ten Tribes would reassemble: at the blast of the celestial horn the dispersed of Israel would be gathered together from the four corners of the Earth. But Sabbatai deprecated the homage; of Redemption he spake no word.

And verily his coming seemed to bode destruction rather than salvation. For a greedy Pacha, getting wind of the disloyalty of the synagogue to the Sultan, made it a pretext for an impossible fine.

The wretched community was dashed back to despair. Already reduced to starvation, whence were they to raise this mighty sum? But, recovering, all hearts turned at once to the strange sorrowful figure that went humbly to and fro among them.

"Money?" said he. "Whence should I take so much money?"

"But thou art Messiah?"

"I Messiah?" He looked at them wistfully.

"Forgive us--we know the hour of thy revelation hath not yet struck. But wilt thou not save us by thy human might?"

"How so?"

"Go for us, we pray thee, on a mission to the friendly Saraph-Bashi of Cairo. His wealth alone can ransom us."

"All that man can do I will do," said Sabbatai.

"May thy strength increase!" came the grateful ejaculation, and white-bearded sages stooped to kiss the hem of his garment.

So Sabbatai journeyed back to Cairo by caravan through the desert, preceded, men said, by a pillar of fire, and accompanied when he travelled at night by myriads of armed men that disappeared in the morning, and wheresoever he passed all the Jewish inhabitants flocked to gaze upon him. In Hebron they kept watch all night around his house.

From his casement Sabbatai looked up at the silent stars and down at the swaying sea of faces.

"What if the miracle be not wrought!" he murmured. "If Chelebi refuses to sacrifice so much of his substance! But they believe on me. It must be that Jerusalem will be saved, and that I am the Messiah indeed."

At Cairo the pious Master of the Mint received him with ecstasy, and granted his request ere he had made an end of speaking.

That night Sabbatai wandered away from all his followers, beyond the moonlit Nile, towards the Great Pyramid, on, on, unto the white desert, his eyes seeing only inward visions.

"Yea, I am Messiah," he cried at length to the vast night, "I am G--!"

The sudden shelving of the sand made him stumble, and in that instant he became aware of the Sphinx towering over him, its great granite Face solemn in the moonlight. His voice died away in an awed whisper. Long, long he gazed into the great stone eyes.

"Speak!" he whispered. "Thou, _Abou-el-Hol_, Father of Terror, thou who broodedst over the silences ere Moses ben Amram led my people from this land of bondage, shall I not lead them from their dispersal to their ancient unity in the day when God shall be One, and His Name One?"

The Sphinx was silent. The white sea of sand stretched away endlessly with noiseless billows. The Pyramids threw funereal shadows over the arid waste.

"Yea," he cried, passionately. "My Father hath not deceived me. Through me, through me flow the streams of grace to recreate and rekindle. Hath He not revealed it to me, even ere this day of Salvation for Jerusalem, by the date of my birth, by the ancient parchment, by the homage of Nathan, by the faith of my brethren and the rumor of the nations, by my sufferings, by my self-appointed martyrdoms, by my long, weary years of forced wanderings to and fro upon the earth, by my loneliness--ah, God--my loneliness!"

The Sphinx brooded solemnly under the brooding stars. Sabbatai's voice was as the wail of a wind.

"Yea, I will save Israel, I will save the world. Through my holiness the world shall be a Temple. Sin and evil and pain shall pass. Peace shall sit under her fig-tree, and swords shall be turned into pruning-hooks, and gladness and brotherhood shall run through all the earth, even as my Father declared unto Israel by the mouth of his prophet Hosea. Yea, I, even I, will allure her and bring her into the desert, and speak comfortably unto her. And I will give her vineyards from thence, and the Valley of Achor for a door of hope; and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth and as in the days when she came up out of the land of Egypt. And I will say to them which were not my people, 'Thou art my people'; and they shall say, 'Thou art my God.'"

The Sphinx was silent. And in that silence there was the voice of dead generations that had bustled and dreamed and passed away, countless as the grains of desert sand.

Sabbatai ceased and surveyed the Face in answering silence, his own face growing as inscrutable.

"We are strong and lonely--thou and I," he whispered at last. But the Sphinx was silent.

(_Here endeth the First Scroll._)

SCROLL THE SECOND

XI

In a little Polish town, early one summer morning, two Jewish women, passing by the cemetery, saw a spirit fluttering whitely among the tombs.

They shrieked, whereupon the figure turned, revealing a beautiful girl in her night-dress, her face, albeit distraught, touched unmistakably with the hues of life.

"Ah, ye be daughters of Israel!" cried the strange apparition. "Help me! I have escaped from the nunnery."

"Who art thou?" said they, moving towards her.

"The Messiah's Bride!" And her face shone. They stood rooted to the soil. A fresh thrill of the supernatural ran through them.

"Nay, come hither," she cried. "See." And she showed them nail-marks on her naked flesh. "Last night my father's ghostly hands dragged me from the convent."

At this the women would have run away, but each encouraged the other.

"Poor creature! She is mad," they signed and whispered to each other. Then they threw a mantle over her.

"Ye will hide me, will ye not?" she said, pleadingly, and her wild sweetness melted their hearts.

They soothed her and led her homewards by unfrequented byways.

"Where are thy friends, thy parents?"

"Dead, scattered--what know I? O those days of blood!" She shuddered violently. "Baptism or death! But they were strong. I see a Cossack dragging my mother along with a thong round her neck. 'Here's a red ribbon for you, dear,' he cries with laughter; they betrayed us to the Cossacks, those Greek Christians within our gates--the Zaporogians dressed themselves like Poles--we open the gates--the gutters run blood--oh, the agonies of the tortured!--oh! father!"

They hushed her cries. Too well they remembered those terrible days of the Chmielnicki massacres, when all the highways of Europe were thronged with haggard Polish Jews, flying from the vengeance of the Cossack chieftain with his troops of Haidamaks, and a quarter of a million of Jewish corpses on the battle-fields of Poland were the blunt Cossack's reply to the casuistical cunning engendered by the Talmud.

"They hated my father," the strange beautiful creature told them, when she was calmer. "He was the lessee of the Polish imposts; and in order that he might collect the fines on Cossack births and marriages, he kept the keys of the Greek church, and the Pope had to apply to him, ere he could celebrate weddings or baptisms--they offered to baptize him free of tax, but he held firm to his faith; they impaled him on a stake and lashed him--oh, my God! And the good sisters found me weeping, a little girl, and they took me to the convent and were kind to me, and spoke to me of Christ. But I would not believe, no, I could not believe. The psalms and lessons of the synagogue came back to my lips; in visions of the night I saw my father, blood-stained, but haloed with light.

"'Be faithful,' he would say, 'be faithful to Judaism. A great destiny awaits thee. For lo! our long persecution draws to an end, the days of the Messiah are at hand, and thou shalt be the Messiah's bride,' And the glory of a great hope came into my life, and I longed to escape from my prison into the sunlit world. I, the bride of the cloister!" she cried, and revolt flung roses into her white face. "Nay, the bride of the Messiah am I, who shall restore joy to the earth, who shall wipe the tears from off all faces. Last night my father came to me again, and said, 'Be faithful to Judaism.' Then I replied, 'If thou wert of a truth my father, thou wouldst cease thy exhortations, thou wouldst know I would rather die than renounce my faith, thou wouldst rescue me from these hated walls, and give me unto my Bridegroom.' Thereupon he said, 'Stretch out thine hand,' and I stretched out my hand, and I felt an invisible hand clasp it, and when I awoke I found myself by his grave-side, where ye came upon me. Oh, take me to the Woman's Bath forthwith, I pray ye, that I may wash off the years of pollution."

They took her to the Woman's Bath, admiring her marvellous beauty.

"Where is the Messiah?" she asked.

"He is not come yet," they made answer, for the rising up of Sabbatai was as yet known to but a few disciples.

"Then I will go find Him," she answered.

She wandered to Amsterdam--the capital of Jewry--and thence to Frankfort-on-the-Main, and thence, southwards, in vain search to Livorne.

And there in the glory of the Italian sunshine, her ardent, unbalanced nature, starved in the chilly convent, yielded to passion, for there were many to love her. But to none would she give herself in marriage. "I am the Messiah's destined bride," she said, and her wild eyes had always an air of waiting.

XII

And in the course of years the news of her and of her prophecy travelled to Sabbatai Zevi, and found him at Cairo the morning after he had spoken to the Sphinx in the great silences. And to him under the blue Egyptian sky came an answering throb of romance. The womanhood that had not moved him in the flesh thrilled him, vaguely imaged from afar, mystically, spiritually.

"Let her be sent for," he said, and his disciples noted an unwonted restlessness in the weary weeks while his ambassadors were away.

"Dost think she will come?" he said once to Abraham Rubio.

"What woman would not come to thee?" replied the beggar. "What dainty is not offered thee? I trow natheless that thou wilt refuse, and that I shall come in for thy leavings."

Sabbatai smiled faintly.

"What have I to do with women?" he murmured. "But I would fain know what hath been prophetically revealed to her!"

One afternoon his ambassadors returned, and announced that they had brought her. She was resting after the journey, and would visit him on the morrow. He appointed their meeting in the Palace of the Saraph-Bashi. Then, unable to rest, he mounted the hill of the citadel and saw an auspicious golden glow over the mosques and houses of Cairo, illumining even the desert and the Pyramids. He stood watching the sun sink lower and lower, till suddenly it went out like a snuffed candle.

XIII

On the morrow he left his mean brick dwelling in the Jewry, and received her alone in a marble-paved chamber in the Palace, the walls adorned with carvings of flowers and birds, minutely worked, the ceiling with arabesques formed of thin strips of painted wood, the air cooled by a fantastic fountain playing into a pool lined with black and white marbles and red tiling. Lattice-work windows gave on the central courtyard, and were supplemented by decorative windows of stained glass, wrought into capricious patterns.

"Peace, O Messiah!" Her smile was dazzling, and there was more of gaiety than of reverence in her voice. Her white teeth flashed 'twixt laughing lips. Sabbatai's heart was beating furiously at the sight of the lady of his dreams. She was clad in shimmering white Italian silk, which, draped tightly about her bosom, showed her as some gleaming statue. Bracelets glittered on her white wrists, gems of fire sparkled among her long, white fingers, a network of pearls was all her head-dress. Her eyes had strange depths of passion, perfumes breathed from her skin, lustreless like dead ivory. Not thus came the maidens of Israel to wedlock, demure, spotless, spiritless, with shorn hair, priestesses of the ritual of the home.

"Peace, O Melisselda," he replied involuntarily.

"Nay, wherefore Melisselda?" she cried, ascending to the _leewan_ on which he stood.

"And wherefore Messiah?" he answered.

"I have seen thee in visions--'tis the face, the figure, the prophetic beauty--But wherefore Melisselda?"

He laughed into her eyes and hummed softly:--

"'From her bath she arose,
Pure and white as the snows,

Melisselda.'"

"Ay, that did I, when I washed off the convent. But my name is Sarah."

"Nay, not Sarah, but Sarai--my Princess!" His voice was hoarse and faltering. This strange new sense of romance that, like a callow-bird, had been stirring in his breast ever since he had heard of her quest of him, spread its wings and soared heavenwards. She had been impure--but her impurity swathed her in mystic seductiveness. The world's law bound her no more than him--she was free and elemental, a spirit to match his own; purified perpetually by its own white fire. She came nearer, and her eyes wrapped him in flame.

"My Prince!" she cried.

He drew backward towards the divan. "Nay, but I must know no woman."

"None but thy true mate," she answered. "Thou hast kept thyself pure for me even as I have kept myself passionate for thee. Come, thou shalt make me pure, and I will make thee passionate."

He looked at her wistfully. The cool plash of the fountain was pleasant in the silence.

"I make thee pure!" he breathed.

"Ay," and she repeated softly:--

"'Pure and white as the snows,
Melisselda.'"

"Melisselda!" he whispered.

"Messiah!" she cried, with heaving bosom. "Come, I will teach thee the joy of life. Together we will rule the world. What! when thou hast redeemed the world, shall it not rejoice, shall not the morning stars sing together? My King, my Sabbatai."

Her figure was a queen's, her eyes were stars, her lips a woman's.

"Kiss me!" they pleaded. "Thy long martyrdom is over. Now begins _my_ mission--to bring thee joy. So hath it been revealed to me."

"Hath it been indeed revealed to thee?" he demanded hoarsely.

"Yea, again and again, in dreams of the night. The bride of the Messiah--so runs my destiny. Embrace thy bride."

His eyes kindled to hers. He seemed in a circle of dazzling white flame that exalted and not destroyed.

"Then I am Messiah, indeed," he thought, glowing, and, stooping, he knew for the first time the touch of a woman's lips.

XIV

The Master of the Mint was overjoyed to celebrate the Messiah's marriage under his own gilded roof. To the few who shook their heads at the bride's past, Sabbatai made answer that the prophecies must be fulfilled, and that he; too, had had visions in which he was commanded, like the prophet Hosea, to marry an unchaste wife. And his disciples saw that it was a great mystery, symbolizing what the Lord had spoken through the mouth of Jeremiah: "Again I will build thee and thou shalt be built, O virgin of Israel: thou shalt again be adorned with thy tabrets and shall go forth in the dances of them that make merry." So the festivities set in, and the Palace was filled with laughter and dancing and merrymaking.

And Melisselda inaugurated the reign of joy. Her advent brought many followers to Sabbatai. Thousands fell under the spell of her beauty, her queenly carriage, gracious yet gay. A new spirit of romance was born in ritual-ridden Israel. Men looked upon their wives distastefully, and the wives caught something of her fire and bearing and learnt the movement of abandon and the glance of passion. And so, with a great following, enriched by the beauty of Melisselda and the gold of the Master of the Mint, Sabbatai returned to redeem Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was intoxicated with joy: the prophecies of Elijah the Tishbite, known on earth as Nathan of Gaza, were borne on wings of air to the four corners of the world.

"To the Remnant of the Israelites," he wrote, "Peace without end. Behold I go to meet the face of our Lord, whose majesty be exalted, for he is the Sovereign of the King of Kings, whose empire be enlarged. And now I come to make known unto you that though ye have heard strange things of our Lord, yet let not your hearts faint or fear, but rather fortify yourselves in your Faith because all his actions are miraculous and secret, which human understanding cannot comprehend, and who can penetrate into the depth of them? In a brief time all things shall be manifested to you clearly in their purity, and ye shall know and consider and be instructed by the Inventor himself. Blessed is he who can expect and arrive to the Salvation of the true Messiah, who will speedily publish his Authority and Empire over us now and for ever.

"NATHAN."

In the Holy City the aged Rabbis of the Sacred Colleges alone betrayed misgivings, fearing that the fine would be annually renewed, and even the wealth of Chelebi exhausted. Elsewhere, the Jewries were divided into factions, that fought each other with texts, and set the Word against the Word. This verse clearly proved the Messiah had come, and that verse that the signs were not yet fulfilled; and had not Solomon, the wise king, said that the fool gave belief at once to all indifferently, while the wise man weighed and considered before believing? Fiercely waged the battle of texts, and a comet appeared on behalf of the believers. Demoniacles saw Sabbatai Zevi in heaven with three crowns, one for Messiah, one for King, and one for Conqueror of the Peoples. But the Jerusalem Rabbis remaining sceptical, Nathan proclaimed in an ecstasy that she was no longer the sacred city, the primacy had passed to Gaza. But Sabbatai was fain to show himself at Smyrna, his native city, and hither he marched, preceded by apostles who kindled the communities he was to pass through. Raphael, another Greek beggar, rhapsodized interminably, and Bloch, a Cabalist from Germany, a meek, simple soul, had frenzies of fiery inspiration. Samuel Primo, the untiring secretary, scattered ceaseless letters and mysterious manifestoes. But to none did Sabbatai himself claim to be the Messiah--he commanded men not to speak of it till the hour should come. Yet was his progress one long triumphal procession. At Aleppo the Jews hastened to meet him with songs and dances; "the gates of joy are opened," they wrote to Constantinople. At Smyrna itself the exile was received with delirium, with cries of "_Messhiach!_ Messiah!" which he would not acknowledge, but to which Melisselda responded with seductive smiles. His aged father fell upon his neck.

"The souls depart," said Sabbatai, kissing him. "But they return."

He was brought before the Cadi, who demanded a miracle.

"Thou askest a miracle?" said Sabbatai scornfully. "Wouldst see a pillar of fire?"

The Sabbatians who thronged the audience chamber uttered a cry and covered their faces with their hands.

"Yea, we see, we see," they shouted; the word was passed to the dense crowd surging without, and it swayed madly. Husbands ran home to tell their wives and children, and when Sabbatai left the presence chamber he was greeted with delirious acclamations.

And while Smyrna was thus seething, and its Jews were preparing themselves by purification and prayer for the great day, a courier, dark as a Moor with the sunburn of unresting travel, arrived in the town with a letter from the Holy City. It was long before he could obtain audience with Sabbatai, who, with his inmost disciples, was celebrating a final fast, and meantime the populace was in a ferment of curiosity, the messenger recounting how he had tramped for weeks and weeks through the terrible heat to see the face of the Messiah and kiss his feet and deliver the letter from the holy men of Jerusalem, who were too poor to pay for his speedier journeying. But when at last Sabbatai read the letter, his face lit up, though he gave no sign of the contents. His disciples pressed for its publication, and, after much excitement, Sabbatai consented that it should be read from the _Al Memor_ of the synagogue. When they learned that it bore the homage of repentant Jerusalem, their joy was tumultuous to the point of tears. Sabbatai threw twenty silver crowns on a salver for the messenger, and invited others to do the same, so that the happy envoy could scarce stagger away with his reward.

Nevertheless Sabbatai still delayed to declare himself.

But at last the long silence drew to an end. The great year of 1666 was nigh, before many moons the New Year of the Christians would dawn. Under the direction of Melisselda men were making sleeved robes of white satin for the Messiah. And one day, thus arrayed in gleaming white, at the head of a great procession walking two by two, Sabbatai Zevi marched to the House of God.

XV

In the gloom of the great synagogue, while the worshippers swayed ghostly, and the ram's horn sounded shrill and jubilant, Sabbatai, standing before the Ark, where the Scrolls of the Law stood solemn, proclaimed himself, amid a tense awe as of heavens opening in ineffable vistas, the Righteous Redeemer, the Anointed of Israel.

A frenzied shout of joy, broken by sobs, answered him from the vast assembly.

"Long live our King! Our Messiah!" Many fell prostrate on the ground, their faces to the floor, kissing it, weeping, screaming, shouting in ecstatic thankfulness; others rocked to and fro, blinded by their tears, hoarse with exultation.

"_Messhiach! Messhiach!_"

"The Kingdom has come!"

"Blessed be the Messiah!"

In the women's gallery there were shrieks and moans: some swooned, others fell a-prophesying, contorting themselves spasmodically, uttering wild exclamations; the spirit seized upon little children, and they waved their arms and shouted frantically.

"_Messhiach! Messhiach!_"

The long exile of Israel was over--the bitter centuries of the badge and the byword, slaughter and spoliation; no longer, O God! to cringe in false humility, the scoff of the street-boy, the mockery of mankind, penned in Ghettos, branded with the wheel or the cap--but restored to divine favor as every Prophet had predicted, and uplifted to the sovereignty of the peoples.

"_Messhiach! Messhiach!_"

They poured into the narrow streets, laughing, chattering, leaping, dancing, weeping hysterically, begging for forgiveness of their iniquities. They fell at Sabbatai feet, women spread rich carpets for him to tread (though he humbly skirted them), and decked their windows and balconies with costly hangings and cushions. Some, conscious of sin that might shut them out from the Kingdom, made for the harbor and plunged into the icy waters; some dug themselves graves in the damp soil and buried themselves up to their necks till they were numb and fainting; others dropped melted wax upon their naked bodies. But the most common way of mortification was to prick their backs and sides with thorns and then give themselves thirty-nine lashes. Many fasted for days upon days and kept Cabalistic watches by night, intoning _Tikkunim_ (prayers).

And, blent with these penances, festival after festival, riotous, delirious, whenever Sabbatai Zevi, with his vast train of followers, and waving a fan, showed himself in the street on his way to a ceremony or to give Cabalistic interpretations of Scripture in the synagogue. The shop-keepers of the Jewish bazaar closed their doors, and followed in the frenzied procession, singing "The right hand of the Lord is exalted, the right hand bringeth victory," jostling, fighting, in their anxiety to be touched with the fan and inherit the Kingdom of Heaven. And over these vast romping crowds, drunk with faith, Melisselda queened it with her voluptuous smiles and the joyous abandon of her dancing, and men and women, boys and girls, embraced and kissed in hysterical frenzy. The yoke of the Law was over, the ancient chastity forgotten. In the Cabalistic communities of Thessalonica, where the pious began at once to do penance, some dying of a seven-days' fast, and others from rolling themselves naked in the snow, parents hastened to marry young children so that all the unborn souls which through the constant re-incarnations, necessary to enable the old sinful souls to work out their Perfection, had not yet been able to find bodies, might enter the world, and so complete the scheme of creation. Seven hundred children were thus joined in wedlock. Business, work was suspended; the wheel of the cloth-workers ceased; the camels no longer knelt in the Jewish quarter of Smyrna, the Bridge of Caravans ceased to vibrate with their passing, the shops remained open only so long as was necessary to clear off the merchandise at any price; whoso of private persons had any superfluity of household stuff sold it off similarly, but yet not to Jews, for these were interdicted from traffic, business being the mark of the unbeliever, and punishable by excommunication, pecuniary mulcts, or corporeal chastisements. Everybody prepared for the imminent return to Palestine, when the heathen should wait at the table of the Saints and the great Leviathan deck the Messianic board. In the interim the poor were supported by the rich. In Thessalonica alone four thousand persons lived on gifts; truly Messianic times for the Abraham Rubios. In Smyrna the authority of the Cadi was ignored or silenced by purses; when the Turks complained, the Seraglio swallowed gold on both sides. The _Chacham_ Aaron de la Papa, being an unbeliever and one of those who had originally driven him from his birthplace, was removed by Sabbatai, and Chayim Benvenisti appointed _Chacham_ instead. The noble Chayim Penya, the one sceptic of importance left in Smyrna, was wellnigh torn to pieces in the synagogue by the angry multitude, but when his own daughters went into prophetic trances and saw the glory of the Kingdom he went over to Sabbatai's side, and reports flew everywhere that the Messiah's enemies were struck with frenzies and madness, till, restored by him to their former temper and wits, they became his friends, worshippers, and disciples. Four hundred other men and women fell into strange ecstasies, foamed at the mouth, and recounted their visions of the Lion of Judah, while infants, who could scarcely stammer out a syllable plainly, repeated the name of Sabbatai, the Messiah; being possessed, and voices sounding from their stomachs and entrails. Such reports, bruited through the world by the foreign ambassadors at Smyrna, the clerks of the English and Dutch houses, the resident foreigners, and the Christian ministers, excited a prodigious sensation, thrilling civilized mankind. On the Exchanges of Europe men took the odds for and against a Jewish kingdom.

Upon the Jews of the world the news that the Messiah had passed from a far-off aspiration into a reality fell like a thunderbolt; they were dazed with joy; then they began to prepare for the great journey. Everywhere self-flagellation, almsgiving, prophetic ecstasies and trances, the scholars and the mob at one in joyous belief. And everywhere also profligacy, adultery, incest, through the spread of a mystical doctrine that the sinfulness of the world could only be overcome by the superabundance of sin.

XVI

Amsterdam and Hamburg--the two wealthiest communities--receiving constant prophetic messages from Nathan of Gaza, became eager participators in the coming Kingdom. In the Dutch capital, the houses of prayer grew riotous with music and dancing, the dwelling-houses gloomy with penitential rigors. The streets were full of men and women prophesying spasmodically, the printing presses panted, turning out new prayer-books with penances and formulae for the faithful. And in these _Tikkunim_, starred with mystic emblems of the Messiah's dominance, the portrait of Sabbatai appeared side by side with that of King David. At Hamburg the Jews were borne heavenwards on a wave of exultation; they snapped their fingers at the Christian tormentor, refused any longer to come to the compulsory Christian services. Their own services became pious orgies. Stately Spanish Jews, grave blue-blooded Portuguese, hitherto smacking of the Castilian hidalgo, noble seigniors like Manuel Texeira, the friend of a Queen of Sweden, erudite physicians like Bendito de Castro, president of the congregation, shed their occidental veneer and might have been seen in the synagogue skipping like harts upon the mountains, dancing wild dances with the Holy Scroll clasped to their bosoms.

"_Hi diddi hulda hi ti ti!_" they carolled in merry meaninglessness.

"Nay, but this is second childhood," quoth the venerable Jacob Sasportas, chief Rabbi of the English Jews, as he sat in the presidential pew, an honored visitor at Hamburg. "Surely thy flock is demented."

De Castro's brow grew black.

"Have a care, or my sheep may turn dog. An they overhear thee, it were safer for thee even to go back to thy London."

Sasportas shook his head with a humorous twinkle.

"Yea, if Sabbatai will accompany me. An he be Messiah let him face the Plague, let him come and prophesy in London and outdo Solomon Eagle; let him heal the sick and disburden the death-carts."

"He should but lay his hands on the sick and they were cured!" retorted De Castro. "But his mission is not in the isles of the West; he establisheth the throne in Zion."

"Well for thee not in Hamburg, else would thy revenues dwindle, O wise physician. But the Plague is wellnigh spent now; if he come now he may take the credit of the cure."

"Rabbi as thou art, thou art an Epicurean; thou sittest in the seat of the scorner."

"'Twas thou didst invite me thereto," murmured Sasportas, smiling.

"The Plague is but a sign of the Messianic times, and the Fire that hath burnt thy dwelling-place is but the castigation for thine incredulity."

"Yea, there be those who think our royal Charles the Messiah, and petition him to declare himself," said Sasportas, with his genial twinkle. "Hath he not also his Melisseldas?"

"Hush, thou blasphemer!" cried De Castro, looking anxiously at the howling multitude. "But thou wilt live to eat thy words."

"Be it so," said Sasportas, with a shrug of resignation. "I eat nothing unclean."

But it was vain for the Rabbi of the little western isle to contend by quip or reason against the popular frenzy. England, indeed, was a hotbed of Christian enthusiasts awaiting the Jewish Millennium, the downfall of the Pope and Anti-Christ, and Jews and Christians caught mutual fire.

From the far North of Scotland came a wonderful report of a ship with silken sails and ropes, worked by sailors who spoke with one another in the solemn syllables of the sacred tongue, and flying a flag with the inscription, "The Twelve Tribes of Israel!" And a strange rumor told of the march of multitudes from unknown parts into the remote deserts of Arabia. Fronted with sceptics, believers offered wagers at ten to one that within two years Sabbatai would be anointed King of Jerusalem; bills of exchange were drawn in Threadneedle Street upon the issue.

And, indeed, Sabbatai was already King of the Jews. From all the lands of the Exile crowds of the devout came to do him homage and tender allegiance--Turkish Jews with red fez or saffron-yellow turban; Jerusalem Jews in striped cotton gowns and soft felt hats; Polish Jews with foxskin caps and long caftans; sallow German Jews, gigantic Russian Jews, high-bred Spanish Jews; and with them often their wives and daughters--Jerusalem Jewesses with blue shirts and head-veils, Egyptian Jewesses with sweeping robes and black head-shawls, Jewesses from Ashdod and Gaza, with white visors fringed with gold coins, Polish Jewesses with glossy wigs, Syrian Jewesses with eyelashes black as though lined with kohl, fat Jewesses from Tunis, with clinging breeches interwoven with gold and silver.

Daily he held his court, receiving deputations, advices, messengers. Young men and maidens offered him their lives to do with as he would; the rich laid their fortunes at his feet, and fought for the honor of belonging to his body-guard. That abstract deity of the Old Testament--awful in His love and His hate, without form, without humanity--had been replaced by a Man, visible, tangible, lovable; and all the yearning of their souls, all that suppressed longing for a visual object of worship which had found vent and satisfaction in the worship of the Bible or the Talmud in its every letter and syllable, now went out towards their bodily Redeemer. From the Ancient of Days a new divine being had been given off--the Holy King, the Messiah, the Primal Man, Androgynous, Perfect, who would harmonize the jarring chords, restore the spiritual unity of the Universe. Before the love in his eyes sin and sorrow would vanish as evil vapors; the frozen streams of grace would flow again.

"I, the Lord your God, Sabbatai Zevi!"

Thus did Secretary Samuel Primo sign the Messianic decrees and ordinances.

XVII

The month of Ab approached--the Messiah's birthday, the day of the Black Fast, commemorating the fall of the Temples. But Melisselda protested against its celebration by gloom and penance, and the word went out to all the hosts of captivity--

"The only and just-begotten Son of God, Sabbatai Zevi, Messiah and Redeemer of the people of Israel, to all the sons of Israel, Peace! Since ye have been worthy to behold the great day, and the fulfilment of God's word to the prophets, let your lament and sorrow be changed into joy, and your fasts into festivals; for ye shall weep no more. Rejoice with drums, organs, and music, making of every day a New Moon, and change the day which was formerly dedicated to sadness and sorrow into a day of jubilee, because I have appeared; and fear ye naught, for ye shall have dominion not only over the nations, but over the creatures also in the depths of the sea."

Thereat arose a new and stranger commotion throughout all the Ghettos, Jewries, and Mellahs. The more part received the divine message in uproarious jubilation. The Messiah was come, indeed! Those terrible twenty-four hours of absolute fasting and passionate prayer--henceforward to be hours of feasting and merriment! O just and joyous edict! The Jewish Kingdom was on the eve of restoration--how then longer bewail its decay!

But the staunchest pietists were staggered, and these the most fervent of the followers of Sabbatai. What! The penances and prayers of sixteen hundred years to be swept away! The Yoke of the Torah to be abolished! Surely true religion rather demanded fresh burdens. What could more fitly mark the Redemption of the World than new and more exacting laws, if, indeed, such remained to be invented? True, God himself was now incarnate on earth--of that they had no doubt. But how could He wish to do away with the laws deduced from the Holy Book and accumulated by the zealous labors of so many generations of faithful Rabbis; how could He set aside the venerated prescriptions of the _Shulchan Aruch_ of the pious Benjamin Caro (his memory for a blessing), and all that network of ceremonial and custom for the zealous maintenance of which their ancestors had so often laid down their lives? How could He so blaspheme?

And so--in blind passion, unreasoning, obstinate--they clung to their threatened institutions; in every Jewry they formed little parties for the defence of Judaism.

What they had prayed for so passionately for centuries had come to pass. The hopes that they had caught from the _Zohar_, that they had nourished and repeated day and night, the promise that sorrow should be changed into joy and the Law become null and void--here was the fulfilment. The Messiah was actually incarnate--the Kingdom of the Jews was at hand. But in their hearts was a vague fear of the dazzling present, and a blind clinging to the unhappy past.

In the Jewry of Smyrna the Messiah walked on the afternoon of the abolished fast, and a vast concourse seethed around him, dancing and singing, with flute and timbrel, harp and drum. Melisselda's voice led the psalm of praise. Suddenly a whisper ran through the mob that there were unbelievers in the city, that some were actually fasting and praying in the synagogue. And at once there was a wild rush. They found the doors shut, but the voice of wailing was heard from inside.

"Beat in the doors!" cried Isaac Silvera. "What do they within, profaning the festal day?"

The crowd battered in the doors, they tore up the stones of the street and darted inside.

The floor was strewn with worshippers, rocking to and fro.

The venerable Aaron de la Papa, shorn of his ancient Rabbinical prestige, but still a commanding figure, rose from the floor, his white shroud falling weirdly about him, his face deadly pale from the long fast.

"Halt!" he cried. "How dare you profane the House of God?"

"Blasphemers!" retorted Silvera. "Ye who pray for what God in His infinite mercy has granted, do ye mock and deride Him?"

But Solomon Algazi, a hoary-headed zealot, cried out, "My fathers have fasted before me, and shall I not fast?"

For answer a great stone hurtled through the air, just grazing his head.

"Give over!" shouted Elias Zevi, one of Sabbatai's brothers. "Be done with sadness, or thou shalt be stoned to death. Hath not the Lord ended our long persecution, our weary martyrdom? Cease thy prayer, or thy blood be on thine own head." Algazi and De la Papa were driven from the city; the _Kofrim_, as the heretics were dubbed, were obnoxious to excommunication. The thunder of the believers silenced the still small voice of doubt.

And from the Jewries of the world, from Morocco to Sardinia, from London to Lithuania, from the Brazils to the Indies, one great cry in one tongue rose up:--"_Leshanah Haba Berushalayim--Leshanah Haba Beni Chorin._ Next year in Jerusalem--next year, sons of freedom!"

XVIII

It was the eve of 1666. In a few days the first sun of the great year would rise upon the world. The Jews were winding up their affairs, Israel was strung to fever pitch. The course of the exchanges, advices, markets, all was ignored, and letters recounting miracles replaced commercial correspondence.

Elijah the Prophet, in his ancient mantle, had been seen everywhere simultaneously, drinking the wine-cups left out for him, and sometimes filling them with oil. He was seen at Smyrna on the wall of a festal chamber, and welcomed with compliments, orations, and thanksgivings. At Constantinople a Jew met him in the street, and was reproached for neglecting to wear the fringed garment and for shaving. At once fringed garments were reintroduced throughout the Empire, and heads, though always shaven after the manner of Turks and the East, now became overgrown incommodiously with hair--even the _Piyos_, or earlock, hung again down the side of the face, and its absence served to mark off the _Kofrim_.

Sabbatai Zevi, happy in the love of Melisselda, rapt in heavenly joy, now confidently expecting the miracle that would crown the miracle of his career, prepared to set out for Constantinople to take the Crown from the Sultan's head to the sound of music. He held a last solemn levee at Smyrna, and there, surrounded by his faithful followers, with Melisselda radiantly enthroned at his side, he proceeded to parcel out the world among his twenty-six lieutenants.

Of these all he made kings and princes. His brothers came first. Elias Zevi he named King of Kings, and Joseph Zevi King of the Kings of Judah.

"Into thee, O Isaac Silvera," said he, "has the soul of David, King of Israel, migrated. Therefore shalt thou be called King David and shalt have dominion over Persia. Thou, O Chayim Inegna, art Jeroboam, and shalt rule over Araby. Thou, O Daniel Pinto, art Hilkiah, and thy kingdom shall be Italia. To thee, O Matassia Aschenesi, who reincarnatest Asa, shall be given Barbary, and thou, Mokiah Gaspar, in whom lives the soul of Zedekiah, shalt reign over England." And so the partition went on, Elias Azar being appointed Vice-King or Vizier of Elias Zevi, and Joseph Inernuch Vizier of Joseph Zevi.

"And for me?" eagerly interrupted Abraham Rubio, the beggar from the Morea.

"I had not forgotten thee," answered Sabbatai. "Art thou not Josiah?"

"True--I had forgotten," murmured the beggar.

"To thee I give Turkey, and the seat of thine empire shall be Smyrna."

"May thy Majesty be exalted for ever and ever," replied King Josiah fervently. "Verily shall I sit under my own fig-tree."

Portugal fell to a Marrano physician who had escaped from the Inquisition. Even Sabbatai's old enemy, Chayim Penya, was magnanimously presented with a kingdom.

"To thee, my well-beloved Raphael Joseph Chelebi of Cairo," wound up Sabbatai, "in whose palace Melisselda became my Queen, to thee, under the style of King Joash, I give the realm of Egypt."

The Emperor of the World rose, and his Kings prostrated themselves at his feet.

"Prepare yourselves," said he. "On the morning of the New Year we set out."

When he had left the chamber a great hubbub broke out. Wealthy men who had been disappointed of kingdoms essayed to purchase them from their new monarchs. The bidding for the Ottoman Empire was particularly high.

"Away! Flaunt not your money-bags!" cried Abraham Rubio, flown with new-born majesty. "Know ye not that this Smyrna is our capital city, and we could confiscate your gold to our royal exchequer? Josiah is King here." And he took his seat upon the throne vacated by Sabbatai. "Get ye gone, or the bastinado and the bowstring shall be your portion."

XIX

Punctually with the dawn of the Millennial Year the Turkish Messiah, with his Queen and his train of Kings, took ship for Constantinople to dethrone the Grand Turk, the Lord of Palestine. He voyaged in a two-masted Levantine Saic, the bulk of his followers travelling overland. Though his object had been diplomatically unpublished, pompous messages from Samuel Primo had heralded his advent. The day of his arrival was fixed. Constantinople was in a ferment. The Grand Vizier gave secret orders for his arrest as a rebel; a band of Chiauses was sent to meet the Saic in the harbor. But the day came and went and no Messiah. Instead, thunders and lightnings and rain and gales and news of wrecks. The wind was northerly, as commonly in the Hellespont and Propontis, and it seemed as if the Saic must have been blown out of her course.

The Jews of Constantinople asked news of every vessel. The captain of a ketch from the Isles of Marmora told them that a chember had cast anchor in the isles, and a tall man, clothed in white, who bestrode the deck, being apprised that the islanders were Christians, had raised his finger, whereupon the church burnt down. When at last the Jews heard of the safety of Sabbatai's weather--beaten vessel, which had made for a point on the coast of the Dardanelles, they told how their Master had ruled the waves and the winds by the mere reading of the hundred and sixteenth Psalm. But the news of his safety was speedily followed by the news of his captivity; the Vizier's officers were bringing him to Constantinople.

It was true; yet his Mussulman captors were not without a sense of the majesty of their prisoner, for they stopped their journey at Cheknese Kutschuk, near the capital, so that he might rest for the Sabbath, and hither, apprised in advance by messenger, the Sabbatians of Constantinople hastened with food and money. They still expected to see their Sovereign arrive with pomp and pageantry, but he came up miserably on a sorry horse, chains clanking dismally at his feet. Yet was he in no wise dismayed. "I am like a woman in labor," he said to his body-guard of Kings, "the redoubling of whose anguish marks the near deliverance. Ye should laugh merrily, like the Rabbi in the Talmud when he saw the jackal running about the ruined walls of the Temple; for till the prophecies are utterly fulfilled the glory cannot return." And his face shone with conscious deity.

He was placed in a khan with a strong guard. But his worshippers bought off his chains, and even made for him a kind of throne. On the Sunday his captors brought him, and him alone, to Constantinople. A vast gathering of Jews and Turks--a motley-colored medley--awaited him on the quay; mounted police rode about to keep a path for the disembarking officers and to prevent a riot. At length, amid clamor and tumult, Sabbatai set fettered foot on shore.

His sad, noble air, the beauty of his countenance, his invincible silence, set a circle of mystery around him. Even the Turks had a moment of awe. A man-god, surely!

The Pacha had sent his subordinate with a guard to transfer him to the Seraglio. By them he was first hastily conducted into the custom-house, the guard riding among and dispersing the crowd.

Sabbatai sat upon a chest as majestically as though it were the throne of Solomon.

But the Sub-Pacha shook off the oppressive emotion with which the sight of Sabbatai inspired him.

"Rise, traitor," said he, "it is time that thou shouldst receive the reward of thy treasons and gather the fruit of thy follies." And therewith he dealt Sabbatai a sounding box of the ear.

His myrmidons, relieved from the tension, exploded in a malicious guffaw.

Sabbatai looked at the brutal dignitary with sad, steady gaze, then silently turned the other cheek.

The Sub-Pacha recoiled with an uncanny feeling of the supernatural; the mockery of the bystanders was hushed.

Sabbatai was conducted by side ways, to avoid the mob, to the Palace of the Kaimacon, the Deputy-Vizier.

"Art thou the man," cried the Kaimacon, "whom the Jews aver to have wrought miracles at Smyrna? Now is thy time to work one, for lo! thy treason shall cost thee dear."

"Miracles!" replied Sabbatai meekly. "I--what am I but a poor Jew, come to collect alms for my poor brethren in Jerusalem? The Jews of this great city persuade themselves that my blessing will bring them God's grace; they flock to welcome me. Can I stay them?"

"Thou art a seditious knave."

"An arrant impostor," put in the Sub-Pacha, "with the airs of a god. I thought to risk losing my arm when I cuffed him on the ear, but lo! 'tis stronger than ever." And he felt his muscle complacently.

"To gaol with the rogue!" cried the Kaimacon.

Sabbatai, his face and mien full of celestial conviction, was placed in the loathsome dungeon which served as a prison for Jewish debtors.

XX

For a day or so the Moslems made merry over the disconcerted Jews and their Messiah. The street-boys ran after the Sabbatians, shouting, "_Gheldi mi? Gheldi mi?_" (Is he coming? Is he coming?); the very bark of the street-dogs sounded sardonic. But soon the tide turned. Sabbatai's prophetic retinue testified unshaken to their Master--Messiah because Sufferer. Women and children were rapt in mystic visions, and miracles took place in the highways. Moses Suriel, who in fun had feigned to call up spirits, suddenly hearing strange singing and playing, fell into a foaming fury, and hollow prophecies issued from him, sublimely eloquent and inordinately rapid, so that on his recovery he went about crying, "Repent! Repent! I was a mocker and a sinner. Repent! Repent!" The Moslems themselves began to waver. A Turkish Dervish, clad in white flowing robes, with a stick in his hand, preached in the street corners to his countrymen, proclaiming the Jewish Messiah. "Think ye," he cried, "that to wash your hands stained with the blood of the poor and full of booty, or to bathe your feet which have walked in the way of unrighteousness, suffices to render you clean? Vain imagination! God has heard the prayers of the poor whom ye despise! He will raise the humble and abash the proud." Bastinadoed in vain several times, he was at last brought before the Cadi, who sent him to the _Timar-Hane_, the mad-house. But the doctors testified that he was sound, and he was again haled before the Cadi, who threatened him with death if he did not desist. "Kill me," said the Dervish pleadingly, "and ye will deliver me from the spirits which possess me and drive me to prophesy." Impressed, the Cadi dismissed him, and would have laden him with silver, but the Dervish refused and went his rhapsodical way. And in the heavens a comet flamed.

Soon Sabbatai had a large Turkish following. The Jews already in the debtors' dungeon hastened to give him the best place, and made a rude throne for him. He became King of the Prison. Thousands surged round the gates daily to get a glimpse of him. The keeper of the prison did not fail to make his profit of their veneration, and instead of the five _aspres_ which friends of prisoners had to pay for the privilege of a visit, he charged a crown, and grew rapidly rich. Some of the most esteemed Jews attended a whole day before Sabbatai in the Oriental postures of civility and service--eyes cast down, bodies bending forward, and hands crossed on their breasts. Before these visitors, who came laden with gifts, Sabbatai maintained an equally sublime silence; sometimes he would point to the chapter of Genesis recounting how Joseph issued from his dungeon to become ruler of Egypt.

"How fares thy miserable prisoner?" casually inquired the Kaimacon of his Sub-Pacha one day.

"Miserable prisoner, Sire!" ejaculated the Sub-Pacha. "Nay, happy and glorious Monarch! The prison is become a palace. Where formerly reigned perpetual darkness, incessant wax tapers burn; in what was a sewer of filth and dung, one breathes now only amber, musk, aloe-wood, otto of roses, and every perfume; where men perished of hunger now obtains every luxury; the crumbs of Sabbatai's table suffice for all his fellow-prisoners."

The Deputy-Vizier was troubled, and cast about for what to do.

Meantime the fame of Sabbatai grew. It was said that every night a light appeared over his head, sometimes in stars, sometimes as an olive bough. Some English merchants in Galata visited him to complain of their Jewish debtors at Constantinople, who had ceased to traffic and would not discharge their liabilities. Sabbatai took up his quill and wrote:

"To you the Nation of Jews who expect the appearance of the Messiah and the Salvation of Israel, Peace without end. Whereas we are informed that ye are indebted to several of the English nation: It seemeth right unto us to order you to make satisfaction to these your just debts: which if you refuse to do, and not obey us herein, know ye that then ye are not to enter with us into our Joys and Dominions."

The debts were instantly paid, and the glory of the occupant of the debtors' prison waxed greater still. The story of his incarceration and of the homage paid him, even by Mussulmans, spread through the world. What! The Porte--so prompt to slay, the maxim of whose polity was to have the Prince served by men he could raise without envy and destroy without danger--the Turk, ever ready with the cord and the sack, the sword and the bastinado, dared not put to death a rebel, the vaunted dethroner of the Sultan. A miracle and a Messiah indeed!

XXI

But the Kaimacon was embarking for the war with Crete; in his absence he feared to leave Sabbatai in the capital. The prisoner was therefore transferred to the abode of State prisoners, the Castle of the Dardanelles at Abydos, with orders that he was to be closely confined, and never to go outside the gates. But, under the spell of some strange respect, or in the desire to have a hold upon them, too, the Kaimacon allowed his retinue of Kings to accompany him, likewise his amanuensis, Samuel Primo, and his consort, Melisselda.

The news of his removal to better quarters did not fail to confirm the faith of the Sabbatians. It was reported, moreover, that the Janissaries sent to take him fell dead at a word from his mouth, and being desired to revive them he consented, except in the case of some who, he said, were not true Turks. Then he went of his own accord to the Castle, but the shackles they laid on his feet fell from him, converted into gold with which he gratified his true and faithful believers, and, spite of steel bars and iron locks, he was seen to walk through the streets with a numerous attendance. Nor did the Sabbatians fail to find mystic significance in the fact that their Messiah arrived at his new prison on the Eve of Passover--of the anniversary of Freedom.

Sabbatai at once proceeded to kill the Paschal lamb for himself and his followers, and eating thereof with the fat, in defiance of Talmudic Law, he exclaimed:--"Blessed be God who hath restored that which was forbidden."

To the Tower of Strength, as the Sabbatians called the castle at Abydos, wherein the Messiah held his Court, streamed treasure-laden pilgrims from Poland, Germany, Italy, Vienna, Amsterdam, Cairo, Morocco, thinking by the pious journey to become worthy of seeing his face; and Sabbatai gave them his benediction, and promised them increase of their stores and enlargement of their possessions in the Holy Land. The ships were overburdened with passengers; freights rose. The natives grew rich by accommodating the pilgrims, the castellan (interpreting liberally the Kaimacon's instructions to mean that though the prisoner might not go out visitors might come in) by charging them fifteen to thirty marks for admission to the royal precincts. A shower of gold poured into Abydos. Jew, Moslem, Christian--the whole world wondered, and half of it believed. The beauty and gaiety of Melisselda witched the stubbornest sceptics. Men's thoughts turned to "The Tower of Strength," from the far ends of the world. Never before in human history had the news of a Messiah travelled so widely in his own lifetime. To console those who could not make the pilgrimage to him or to Jerusalem, Sabbatai promised equal indulgence and privilege to all who should pray at the tombs of their mothers. His initials, S.Z., were ornamentally inscribed in letters of gold over almost every synagogue, with a crown on the wall, in the circle of which was the ninety-first Psalm, and a prayer for him was inserted in the liturgy: "Bless our Lord and King, the holy and righteous Sabbatai Zevi, the Messiah of the God of Jacob."

The Ghettos began to break up. Work and business dwindled in the most sceptical. In Hungary the Jews commenced to demolish their houses. The great commercial centres, which owed their vitality to the Jews, were paralyzed. The very Protestants wavered in their Christianity. Amsterdam, under the infection of Jewish enthusiasm, effervesced with joy. At Hamburg, despite the epistolary ironies of Jacob Sasportas, the rare _Kofrim_, or Anti-Sabbatians, were forced, by order of Bendito de Castro, to say Amen to the Messianic prayer. At Livorne commerce dried up. At Venice there were riots, and the _Kofrim_ were threatened with death. In Moravia the Governor had to interfere to calm the tumult. At Salee, in Algeria, the Jews so openly displayed their conviction of their coming dominance that the Emir decreed a persecution of them. At Smyrna, on the other hand, a _Chacham_ who protested to the Cadi against the vagaries of his brethren, was, by the power of their longer purse, shaved of his beard and condemned to the galleys.

Three months of princely wealth and homage for Sabbatai had passed. In response to the joyous inspiration of Melisselda, he had abandoned all his ascetic habits, and lived the life of a king, ruling a world never again to be darkened with sin and misery. The wine sparkled and flowed, the choicest dishes adorned the banqueting-table, flowers and delicate odors made grateful the air, and the beautiful maidens of Israel danced voluptuously before him, shooting out passionate glances from under their long eyelashes. The fast of the seventeenth of Tammuz came round. Sabbatai abolished it, proclaiming that on that day the conviction that he was the Messiah had been borne in upon him. The ninth of Ab--the day of his Nativity--was again turned from a fast to a festival, the royal edict, promulgated throughout the world, quoting the exhortation of Zephaniah: "Sing and rejoice, O daughter of Zion; for lo I come, and I will dwell in the midst of thee, saith the Lord." Detailed prescriptions as to the order of the services and the psalmody accompanied the edict.

And in this supreme day of jubilation and merrymaking, of majesty and splendor, crowned with the homage and benison of his race, deputations of which came from all climes and soils to do honor to his nativity, the glory of Sabbatai culminated.

(_Here endeth the Second Scroll._)

 

SCROLL THE THIRD

XXII

In the hour of his triumph, two Poles, who had made the pious pilgrimage, told him of a new Prophet who had appeared in far-off Lemberg, one Nehemiah Cohen, who announced the advent of the Kingdom, but not through Sabbatai Zevi.

That night, when his queen and his courtiers were sleeping, Sabbatai wrestled sore with himself in his lonely audience-chamber. The spectre of self-doubt--long laid to rest by music and pageantry--was raised afresh by this new and unexpected development. It was a rude reminder that this pompous and voluptuous existence was, after all, premature, that the Kingdom had yet to be won.

"O my Father in Heaven!" he prayed, falling upon his face. "Thou hast not deceived me. Tell me that this Prophet is false, I beseech Thee, that it is through me that Thy Kingdom is to be established on earth. I await the miracle. The days of the great year are nigh gone, and lo! I languish here in mock majesty. A sign! A sign!"

"Sabbatai!" A ravishing voice called his name. He looked up. Melisselda stood in the doorway, come from her chamber as lightly clad as on that far-off morning in the cemetery.

There was a strange rapt expression in her face, and, looking closer, he saw that her laughing eyes were veiled in sleep.

"It is the sign," he muttered in awe.

He sprang to his feet and took her white hand, that burnt his own, and she led him back to her chamber, walking unerringly.

"It is the sign," he murmured, "the sign that Melisselda hath truly led me to the Kingdom of Joy."

But in the morning he awoke still troubled. The meaning of the sign seemed less clear than in the silence of the night; the figure of the new Prophet loomed ominous.

When the Poles went back they bore a royal letter, promising the Polish Jews vengeance on the Cossacks, and commanding Nehemiah to come to the Messiah with all speed.

The way was long, but by the beginning of September Nehemiah arrived in Abydos. He was immediately received in private audience. He bore himself independently.

"Peace to thee, Sabbatai."

"Peace to thee, Nehemiah. I desired to have speech with thee; men say thou deniest me."

"That do I. How should Messiah--Messiah of the House of David, appear and not his forerunner, Messiah of the House of Ephraim, as our holy books foretell?" Sabbatai answered that the Ben Ephraim had already appeared, but he could not convince Nehemiah, who proved highly learned in the Hebrew, the Syriac, and the Chaldean, and argued point by point and text by text. The first Messiah was to be a preacher of the Law, poor, despised, a servant of the second. Where was he to be found?

Three days they argued, but Nehemiah still went about repeating his rival prophecies. The more zealous of the Sabbatians, angry at the pertinacious and pugnacious casuist, would have done him a mischief, but the Prophet of Lemberg thought it prudent to escape to Adrianople. Here in revenge he sought audience with the Kaimacon.

"Treason, O Mustapha, treason!" he announced. He betrayed the fantastic designs upon the Sultan's crown, still cherished by Sabbatai and known to all but the Divan; the Castellan of Abydos, for the sake of his pocket, having made no report of the extraordinary doings at the Castle.

Nehemiah denounced Sabbatai as a lewd person, who endeavored to debauch the minds of the Jews and divert them from their honest course of livelihood and obedience to the Grand Seignior. And, having thus avenged himself, the Prophet of Lemberg became a Mohammedan.

A Chiaus was at once dispatched to the Sultan, and there was held a Council. The problem was grave. To execute Sabbatai--beloved as he was by Jew and Turk alike--would be but to perpetuate the new sect. The Mufti Vanni--a priestly enthusiast--proposed that they should induce him to follow in the footsteps of Nehemiah, and come over to Islam. The suggestion seemed not only shrewd, but tending to the greater glory of Mohammed, the one true Prophet. An aga set out forthwith for Abydos. And so one fine day when the Castle of the Dardanelles was besieged by worshippers, when the Tower of Strength was gay with brightly clad kings, and filled with pleasant plants and odors and the blended melodies of instruments and voices, a body of moustachioed Janissaries flashed upon the scene, dispersing the crowd with their long wands; they seized the Messiah and his queen, and brought them to Adrianople.

XXIII

The Hakim Bashi, the Sultan's physician, who as a Jew-Turk himself, was thought to be the fittest to approach Sabbatai, laid the decision of the Grand Seignior before him on the evening of his arrival at Adrianople. The released prisoner was lodged with mocking splendor in a commodious apartment in the palace, overlooking the river, and lay upon a luxurious divan, puffing at a chibouque with pretended calm.

"What reverences is it customary to make to the Grand Seignior?" he asked, with affected nonchalance, when the first salutations with the physician had been exchanged. "I would not be wanting in the forms when I appear before his exalted majesty."

"An end to the farce, Sabbatai Zevi!" said the Hakim Bashi, sternly. "The Sultan demands of thee not posturings, but a miracle."

"Have not miracles enough been witnessed?" asked Sabbatai, in a low tone.

"Too many," returned the ex-Jew drily. "Yet if thou wouldst save thy life there needs another."

"What miracle?"

"That thou turn Turk!" And a faint smile played about the physician's lips.

There was a long silence. Sabbatai's own lips twitched, but not with humor. The regal radiance of Abydos had died out of his face, but its sadness was rather of misery than the fine melancholy of yore.

"And if I refuse this miracle?"

"Thou must give us a substitute. The Mufti Vanni suggests that thou be stript naked and set as a mark for the archers; if thy flesh and skin are proof like armor, we shall recognize thee as the Messiah indeed, and the person designed by Allah for the dominions and greatnesses to which thou dost pretend."

"And if I refuse this miracle, too?"

"Then the stake waits at the gate of the seraglio to compel thee," thundered the Hakim Bashi; "thou shalt die with tortures. The mercy of decapitation shall be denied thee, for thou knowest well Mohammedans will not pollute their swords with the blood of a Jew. Be advised by me, Sabbatai," he continued, lowering his tone. "Become one of us. After all, the Moslem are but the posterity of Hagar. Mohammed is but the successor of Moses. We recognize the One God who rules the heavens and the earth, we eat not swine-flesh. Thou canst Messiah it in a white turban as well as in a black," he ended jocosely.

Sabbatai winced. "Renegade!" he muttered.

"Ay, and an excellent exchange," quoth the physician. "The Sultan is a generous paymaster, may his shadow never grow less. He giveth thee till the morn to decide--Turk or martyr? With burning torches attached to thy limbs thou art to be whipped through the streets with fiery scourges in the sight of the people--such is the Sultan's decree. He is a generous paymaster. After all, what need we pretend--between ourselves, two Jews, eh?" And he winked drolly. "The sun greets Mohammed every morn, say these Turks. Let to-morrow's greet another Mohammedan."

Sabbatai sprang up with an access of majesty.

"Dog of an unbeliever! Get thee gone!"

"Till to-morrow! The Sultan will give thee audience to-morrow," said the Hakim Bashi imperturbably, and, making a mock respectful salutation, he withdrew from the apartment.

Melisselda had been dosing in an inner chamber after the fatigue of the journey, but the concluding thunders of the duologue had aroused her, and she heard the physician's farewell words. She now parted the hangings and looked through at Sabbatai, her loveliness half-framed, half-hidden by the tapestry. Her face was wreathed in a heavenly smile.

"Sabbatai!" she breathed.

He turned a frowning gaze upon her. "Thou art merry!" he said bitterly.

"Is not the hour come?" she cried joyously.

"Yea, the hour is come," he murmured.

"The hour of thy final trial and triumph! The longed-for hour of thy appearance before the Sultan, when thou wilt take the crown from his head and place it on--"

Instead of completing the sentence, she ran to take his head to her bosom. But he repulsed her embracing arms. She drew back in consternation. It was the first time she had known him rough, not only with her, but with any creature.

"Leave me! Leave me!" he cried huskily.

"Nay, thou needest me." And her forgiving arms spread towards him in fresh tenderness.

He looked at her without moving to meet them.

"Ay, I need thee," he said pathetically. "Therefore," and his voice rose firm again, "leave me to myself."

"Thou hast become a stranger," she said tremulously. "I do not understand thee."

"Would thou hadst ever been a stranger, that I had never understood thee."

"Sabbatai, thou ravest."

"I have come to my senses. O my God! my God!" and he fell a-weeping on the divan.

Melisselda's alarm grew greater.

"Rouse thyself, they will hear thee."

"Let them hear. God hears me not."

"Hears thee not? Thou art He!"

"I God!" He laughed bitterly. "Thou believest that! Thou who knowest me man!"

"I know thee all divine. I have worshipped thee in joy. Art thou not Messiah?"

"Messiah! Who cannot save myself!"

"Who can hurt thee? Who hath ever hurt thee from thy youth up? The Angels watch over thy footsteps. Is not thy life one long miracle?"

He shook his head hopelessly. "All this year I have waited the miracle--all those weary months in the dungeon of Constantinople, in the Castle of Abydos--but what sure voice hath spoken? To-morrow I shall be disembowelled, lashed with fiery scourges--who knows what these dogs may do?"

"Hush! hush!"

"Ah, thou fearest for me!" he cried, in perverse triumph. "Thou knowest I am but mortal man!"

The roses of her beautiful cheek had faded, but she spoke, unflinching.

"Nay, I believe on thee still. I followed thee to thy prison, unwitting it would turn into a palace. I follow thee to thy torture to-morrow, trusting it will be the crowning miracle and the fiery scourges will turn into angels' feathers. It is the word of Zechariah fulfilled. 'In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf.'"

His eyes grew humid as he looked up at her. "Yea, Melisselda, thou hast been true and of good courage. And now, when I am alone, when the shouts of the faithful have died away, when the King of the World lies here alone in darkness and ashes, thou hast faith still?"

"Ay, I believe--'tis but a trial, the final trial of my faith."

She smiled at him confidently; hope quickened within him. "If this were but a trial, the final trial of _my_ faith!" he murmured. "But no--ere that white strip of moon rises again in the heavens I shall be a mangled corpse, the feast of wolves, unless--I have prayed for a sign--oh, how I have prayed, and now--ah, see! A star is falling. O my God, that this should be the end of my long martyrdom! But the punishment of my arrogance is greater than I can bear. God, God, why didst Thou send me those divine-seeming whispers, those long, long thoughts that thrilled my soul? Why didst Thou show me the sin of Israel and his suffering, the sorrow and evil of the world, inspiring me to redeem and regenerate?" His breast swelled with hysteric sobs.

"My Sabbatai!" Melisselda's warm arms were round him. He threw her off with violence. "Back, back!" he cried. "I understand the sign; I understand at last. 'Tis through thee that I have forfeited the divine grace."

"Through me?" she faltered.

"Yea; thy lips have wooed mine away from prayer, thine arms have drawn me down from the steeps of righteousness. Thou hast made me unfaithful to my bride, the Law. For nigh forty years I lived hard and lonely, steeped my body in ice and snow, lashed myself--ay, lashed myself, I who now fear the lash--till the blood ran from a dozen wounds, and now, O God! O God! Woman, thou hast polluted me! I have lost the divine spirit. It hath gone out from me; it will incarnate itself in another, in a nobler. Once I was Messiah, now I am man."

"I?--I took from thee the divine spirit!"

She looked at him in all the flush of her beauty, grown insolent again.

He sprang up, he fell upon her breast, he kissed her lips madly.

"Nay, nay, thou hast shown it me! Love! Love! 'tis Love that breathes through all things, that lifts the burden of life. But for thee I should have passed away, unknowing the glory of manhood. I am a man--a man rejoicing in his strength! O my starved youth! why did I not behold thee earlier?" Tears of self-pity rolled down his ashen cheek. "O my love! my love! my lost youth! Give me back my youth, O God! Who am I, to save? A man; yea, a man, glorying in manhood. Ah! happy are they who lead the common fate of men, happy in love, in home, in children; woe for those who would climb, who would torture and deny themselves, who would save humanity? From what? If they have Love, have they not all? It is God, it is the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom. Come, let us live--I a man, thou a woman!"

"But a Mussulman!"

"What imports? God is everywhere. Was not our Maimonides--he at whose tomb we worship in Tiberias--himself once a Mussulman? Did he not say that if it be to save our lives naught is forbidden?"

He moved to take her in his arms, but this time it was she that drew back. Her eyes flashed.

"Nay, as a man, I love thee not. Thou art divine or naught; God or Impostor!"

"Melisselda!" She ignored his stricken cry.

"Nay, this ordeal hath endured long enough," she replied sternly. "Confess, I have been proof."

"I am neither God nor Impostor," he said brokenly. "Ah! say not that thou canst not love me as a man. When thou didst first come to bless my life I had not yet declared myself Messiah."

"Who knows what I thought then? A wild girl, crazed by the convent, by the blood shed before my childish eyes, I came to thee full of lawless passions and fantastic dreams. But as I lived with thee, as I saw the beauty of thy thought, thy large compassion, the purity of thy life amid temptations that made me jealous as a woman of Damascus, then I knew thee a God indeed."

"Nay, when I knew thee I knew myself man. But as our followers grew, as faith and fortune trod in my footsteps, my blasphemous dream revived; I believed in thy vision of the Kingdom. When I divided the world I thought myself Messiah indeed. But as I sat on my throne at Abydos, with worshippers from the world's end kissing my feet, a hollow doubt came over me, a sense of dream, and hollow voices echoed ever in my ear, asking, 'Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah?' I strove to drown them in the festive song; but in the stillness of the night, when thou wast sleeping at my side, the voices came back, and they cried mockingly, 'Man! Man! Man!' And when Nehemiah came--"

"Man!" interrupted Melisselda impatiently. "Cease to cozen me. Have I not known men? Ay, who more? Their weaknesses, their vanities, their lewdnesses--enough! To-morrow thou shalt assert the God."

He threw himself back on the divan and sighed wearily. "Leave me, Melisselda. Go to thy rest; to-night I must keep vigil alone. Perchance it is my last night on earth."

Her countenance lit up. "Yea, to-morrow comes the Kingdom of Heaven." And smiling ineffable trust, she stooped down and lightly kissed his hair, then glided from the room.

And in his sleepless brain and racked soul went on, through that unending night, the terrible tragedy of doubt, tempered by spells of spasmodic prayer. A God, or a Man? A Messiah undergoing his Father's last temptation; or a martyr on the eve of horrible death? And if the victim of a monstrous self-delusion, what mattered whether one lived out one's years of shame as Jew or Mussulman? Nobler, perhaps, to die, and live as an heroic memory--but then to leave Melisselda! To leave her warm breast and the sunlight and the green earth, and all that beauty of the world and of human life to which his eyes had only been unsealed after a lifetime of self-torturing blindness?

"O God! O God!" he cried, "wherefore hast Thou mocked and abandoned me?"

XXIV

Early in the forenoon the light touch of a loved hand upon his shoulder roused him from deeps of reverie.

He uplifted a white, haggard face. Melisselda stood before him in all her dazzling freshness, like a radiant spirit come to chase the demons of the night. The ancient Spanish song came into his mind, and the sweet, sad melody vibrated in his soul.

From her bath she arose,
Pure and white as the snows,
Melisselda.
Coral only at lips
And at sweet finger-tips,
Melisselda.

His eyes filled with tears--the divine dreams of youth stirred faintly within him.

"Is it Peace with thee?" she asked.

His head drooped again on his breast.

"From the casement I saw the sun rise over the Maritza," he said, "kindling the sullen waters, but my faith is still gray and dead. Nay, rather there came into my mind the sublime poem of Moses Ibn Ezra of Granada: 'Thy days are delusive dreams and thy life as yon cloud of morning: whilst it tarries over thy tabernacle thou may'st remain therein, but at its ascent thou art dissolved and removed unto a place unknown to thee,' This is the end, Melisselda, the end of my great delusion. What am I but a man, with a man's pains and errors and self-deceptions, a man's life that blooms but once as a rose and fades while the thorn endures?" The ineffable melancholy of his accents subdued her to silence: for the moment the music of his voice, his sad brooding eyes, the infinite despair of his attitude swayed her to a mood akin to his own. "Verily it was for me," he went on, "that the Sephardic poet sang--

"'Reflect on the labor thou didst undergo under the sun, night and day, without intermission; labor which thou knowest well to be without profit; for, verily in these many years thou hast walked after vanity and become vain. Thou wast a keeper of vineyards, but thine own vineyard thou hast not kept; whilst the Eyes of the Eternal run to and fro to see if the vine hath flourished, whether the tender grapes appear, and, lo! all was grown over with thorns; nettles had covered the face thereof. Thou hast grown old and gray, thou hast strayed but not returned.' Yea, I have strayed, but is the gate closed for return? To be a man--only a man--how great that is!" His voice died away, and with it the sweet, soothing spell. Fire glowed in Melisselda's breast, heaving her bosom, shooting sparks from her eyes.

"Nay, if thou art only a man, thou art not even a man. My love is dead."

As he shrank beneath her contempt, another stanza of his ancient song sang itself involuntarily in his brain. Never had he seen her thus.

In the pride of her race,
As a sword shone her face,
Melisselda.
And her lids were steel bows,
But her mouth was a rose,
Melisselda.

_But her mouth was a rose._ Ah, God, the pity of it, to leave the rose for the crown of thorns!

"Melisselda!" he cried, with a sob. "Have pity on me."

The door opened; two of the Imperial Guards appeared.

"Thou slayest me," he said in Hebrew.

"I worship thee," she answered him, in the same sacred tongue. Her face took on its old confident smile.

"But I am a man."

Once again her lids were steel bows.

"Then die like a man! Thinkst thou I would share thy humiliation? If I am to be a Moslem's bride, let me be the Sultan's. If I am not to share the Messiah's throne, let me share an Emperor's. Thy Spanish song made me an Emperor's daughter--I will be an Emperor's consort."

And she laughed wantonly.

The guards advanced timidly with visible awe. Melisselda's swiftly flashing face changed suddenly. She drew him to her breast.

"My King!" she murmured. "'Twas cruel to tempt my faith thus." Then releasing him, she cried, "Go to thy Kingdom."

He drew himself up; the fire in her eyes flashed into his own.

"The Sultan summons thee," said one of the guards reverently.

"I am ready," he said, calmly adjusting the folds of his black mantle.

Melisselda was left alone. The slow moments wore on, tense and terrible. Little by little the radiant faith died out of her face. Half an hour went by, and cold serpents of doubt began to coil about her own heart.

What if Sabbatai were only a man after all? With frenzied rapidity she reviewed the past; now she glowed with effulgent assurances of his divinity, the homage of his people, the awe of Turk and Christian, Rabbis and sages at his feet, the rich and the great struggling to kiss his fan, the treasures poured into his unwilling palms; now she shivered with hideous suggestions and remembrances of frailty and mortal ineptitude. And as her faith faltered, as the exaltation, with which she had inspired him, ebbed away, alarm for his safety began to creep into her soul, till at last it was as a flood sweeping her in his traces. And the more her fears swelled the more she realized how much she had grown to love him, with his sad, dark, smooth-skinned beauty, the soft, almost magnetic touch of his hand. Messiah or man, she loved him: he was right. What if she had sent him to his death! A cold, sick horror crept about her limbs. Perhaps he had dared to put his divinity to the test, and the ribald Turk was even now gloating over the screams of the wretched self-deluded man. Oh, fool that she had been to drive him to the stake and the fiery scourge. If divine, then to turn Turk were part of the plan of Salvation; if human, he would at least be spared an agonized death. The bloody visions of her childhood came back to her, fire coursed in her fevered veins. She snatched up a mantilla and threw it over her shoulders, then dashed from the chamber. Her houri-like beauty in that palace of hidden moon-faces, her breathless explanation that the Sultan had summoned her to join her husband, carried her past breathless guards, through door after door, past the black eunuchs of the seraglio and the white eunuchs of the royal apartment, till through the interstices of purple hangings she had a far-off glimpse of the despot in his great imperial turban, sitting on his high, narrow throne, his officers around him. A page stopped her rudely. Faintness overcame her.

"Mehmed Effendi," called the page.

Dizzy, her tongue scarcely under control, she tried to proffer to the tall door-keeper who parted the hangings her request for admission. But he held out his arms to catch her swaying form, and then, as in some monstrous dream, something familiar seemed to her to waft from the figure, despite the white turban and the green mantle, and the next instant, as with the pain of a stab, she recognized Sabbatai.

"What masquerade is this?" her white lips whispered in indignant revulsion as she struggled from his hold.

"My lord, the Sultan, hath made me his door-keeper--_Capigi Bashi Otorak_," he replied deprecatingly. "He is merciful and forgiving. May Allah exalt his dominion. The salary is large; he is a generous paymaster. I testify that there is no God but God. I testify that Mohammed is God's prophet." He caught the swooning Melisselda in his arms and covered her face with kisses.

XXV

News travelled slowly in those days. A week later, while Agi Mehmed Effendi and his wife Fauma Kadin (born Sarah and still called Melisselda by her adoring husband, the Sultan's door-keeper) were receiving instruction in the Moslem religion from the exultant Mufti Vanni, a great Synod of Jews, swept to Amsterdam by the mighty wave of faith and joy, Rabbis and scholars and presidents of colleges, were drawing up a letter of homage to the Messiah. And while the Grand Seignior was meditating the annihilation of all the Jews of the Ottoman Empire for their rebellious projects, with the forced conversion of the orphaned children to Islam, the Jews of the world were celebrating--for what they thought the last time--the Day of Atonement, and five times during that long fast-day did the weeping worshippers, rocking to and fro in their grave-clothes, passionately pronounce the blessing over Sabbatai Zevi, the Messiah of Israel.

Nor did the fame and memory of him perish for generations; nor the dreamers of the Jewry cease to cherish the faith in him, many following him in adopting the white turban of Islam.

But by what ingenious cabalistic sophistries, by what yearning fantasies--fit to make the angels weep--his unhappy followers, obstinate not to lose the great white hope that had come to illumine the gloom of the Jewries, explained away his defection; what sects and counter-sects his appostasy gave birth to, and what new prophets arose--a guitar-playing gallant of Madrid, a tobacco dealer of Pignerol, a blue-blooded Christian millionaire of Copenhagen--to nourish that great pathetic hope (which still lives on) long after Sabbatai himself, after who knows what new spasms of self-mystification and hypocrisy, what renewed aspirations after his old greatness and his early righteousness, what fresh torment of soul and body, died on the Day of Atonement, a lonely white-haired exile in a little Albanian town, where no brother Jew dwelt to close his eyelids or breathe undying homage into his dying ears--is it not written in the chronicles of the Ghetto?

(_Here endeth the Third and Last Scroll._) _

Read next: The Maker Of Lenses

Read previous: Uriel Acosta

Table of content of Dreamers of the Ghetto


GO TO TOP OF SCREEN

Post your review
Your review will be placed after the table of content of this book