he 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 voi