e no more need for
abnegation," said Sabbatai. "As it is written, 'And thy fast-days
shall become feast-days.'"

"Nay, then, thy feast-days shall become my fast-days," retorted Rubio.

Sabbatai smiled. The beggar was the only man who could make him smile.
But he smiled--a grim, bitter smile--when he heard that the great fire
he had predicted had devastated Constantinople, and wrought fierce
mischief in the Jewish quarter.

"The fire will purify their hearts," he said.

IX

Nathan the Prophet did not fail to enlarge upon the miraculous
prediction of his Master, and through all the lands of the Exile a
tremor ran.

It reached that hospitable table in Cairo where each noon half a
hundred learned Cabalists dined at the palace of the Saraph-Bashi, the
Jewish Master of the Mint, himself given to penances and visions, and
swathed in sackcloth below the purple robes with which he drove abroad
in his chariot of state.

"He who is sent thee," wrote Nathan to Raphael Joseph Chelebi, this
pious and open-handed Prince in Israel, "is the first man in the
world--I may say no more. Honor him, then, and thou shalt have thy
reward in his lifetime, wherein thou wilt witness miracles beyond
belief. Whatever thou shouldst see, be not astonied. It is a divine
mystery. When the time shall come I will give up all to serve him.
Would it were granted me to follow him now!"

Chelebi was prepared to follow Sabbatai forthwith; he went to meet
Sabbatai's vessel, and escorted him to his palace with great honor.
But Sabbatai would not lodge therein.

"The time is not yet," he said, and sought shelter with a humble
vendor of holy books, whose stall stood among the money-changers'
booths, that led to the chief synagogue, and his followers distributed
themselves among the quaint high houses of the Jewry, and walked
prophetic in its winding alleys, amid the fantastic chaos of buyers
and sellers and donkeys, under the radiant blue strip of Egyptian sky.
Only at mid-day did they repair to the table of the Saraph-Bashi.

"Hadst any perils at sea?" asked the host on the first day. "Men say
the Barbary Corsairs are astir again."

Sabbatai remained silent, but Samuel Primo, his secretary, took up the
reply.

"Perils!" quoth he. "My Master will not speak of them, but the Captain
will tell thee a tale. We never thought to pass Rhodes!"

"Ay," chimed in Abraham Rubio, "we were pursued all night by two
pirates, one on either side of us like begg