ces 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 w