et 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 s