tos,
Jewries, and Mellahs. The more part received the divine message in
uproarious jubilation. The Messiah was come, indeed! Those terrible
twenty-four hours of absolute fasting and passionate prayer--henceforward
to be hours of feasting and merriment! O just and joyous edict! The
Jewish Kingdom was on the eve of restoration--how then longer bewail
its decay!

But the staunchest pietists were staggered, and these the most fervent
of the followers of Sabbatai. What! The penances and prayers of
sixteen hundred years to be swept away! The Yoke of the Torah to be
abolished! Surely true religion rather demanded fresh burdens. What
could more fitly mark the Redemption of the World than new and more
exacting laws, if, indeed, such remained to be invented? True, God
himself was now incarnate on earth--of that they had no doubt. But how
could He wish to do away with the laws deduced from the Holy Book and
accumulated by the zealous labors of so many generations of faithful
Rabbis; how could He set aside the venerated prescriptions of the
_Shulchan Aruch_ of the pious Benjamin Caro (his memory for a
blessing), and all that network of ceremonial and custom for the
zealous maintenance of which their ancestors had so often laid down
their lives? How could He so blaspheme?

And so--in blind passion, unreasoning, obstinate--they clung to their
threatened institutions; in every Jewry they formed little parties for
the defence of Judaism.

What they had prayed for so passionately for centuries had come to
pass. The hopes that they had caught from the _Zohar_, that they had
nourished and repeated day and night, the promise that sorrow should
be changed into joy and the Law become null and void--here was the
fulfilment. The Messiah was actually incarnate--the Kingdom of the
Jews was at hand. But in their hearts was a vague fear of the dazzling
present, and a blind clinging to the unhappy past.

In the Jewry of Smyrna the Messiah walked on the afternoon of the
abolished fast, and a vast concourse seethed around him, dancing and
singing, with flute and timbrel, harp and drum. Melisselda's voice led
the psalm of praise. Suddenly a whisper ran through the mob that there
were unbelievers in the city, that some were actually fasting and
praying in the synagogue. And at once there was a wild rush. They
found the doors shut, but the voice of wailing was heard from inside.

"Beat in the doors!" cried Isaac Silvera. "What do they within,
pro