comely young Jewish butcher
in his blood-stained rags to the toothless old Jewish banker with gold
braid on his new kaftan.

They were gathered together to consider the posture of affairs in regard
to the plague of locusts. Hence the Moorish officials had suffered them
to remain outside the walls of their Mellah after sunset. Some of the
Moors themselves stood aside and watched, but at a distance, leaving a
vacant space to denote the distinction between them. The scribes sat in
their open booths, pretending to read their Koran or to write with their
reed pens; the gunsmiths stood at their shop-doors; and the country
Berbers, crowded out of their usual camping ground on the Sok, squatted
on the vacant spots adjacent. All looked on eagerly, but apparently
impassively, at the vast company of Jews.

And so great was the concourse of these people, and so wild their
commotion, that they were like nothing else but a sea-broken by
tempestuous winds. The market-place rang as a vault with the sounds of
their voices, their harsh cries, their protests, their pleadings, their
entreaties, and all the fury of their brazen throats. And out of their
loud uproar one name above all other names rose in the air on every
side. It was the name of Israel ben Oliel. Against him they were
breathing out threats, foretelling imminent dangers from the hand of
man, and predicting fresh judgments from God. There was no evil which
had befallen him early or late but they were remembering it, and
reckoning it up and rejoicing in it. And there was no evil which had
befallen themselves but they were laying it to his charge.

Yesterday, when they passed through the town in their procession of
penance, following their Grand Rabbi as he walked abreast of the Imam,
that they might call on God to destroy the eggs of the locust, they had
expected the heavens to open over their heads, and to feel the rain
fall instantly. The heavens had not opened, the rain had not fallen, the
thick hot cake as of baked air had continued to hang and to palpitate in
the sky, and the fierce sun had beaten down as before on the parched
and scorching earth. Seeing this, as their petitions ended, while
the Muslims went back to their houses, disappointed but resigned, and
muttering to themselves, "It is written," they had returned to their
synagogues, convinced that the plague was a judgment, and resolved, like
the sailors of the ship going down to Tarshish, to cast lots and to kno