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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
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