faning the festal day?"

The crowd battered in the doors, they tore up the stones of the street
and darted inside.

The floor was strewn with worshippers, rocking to and fro.

The venerable Aaron de la Papa, shorn of his ancient Rabbinical
prestige, but still a commanding figure, rose from the floor, his
white shroud falling weirdly about him, his face deadly pale from the
long fast.

"Halt!" he cried. "How dare you profane the House of God?"

"Blasphemers!" retorted Silvera. "Ye who pray for what God in His
infinite mercy has granted, do ye mock and deride Him?"

But Solomon Algazi, a hoary-headed zealot, cried out, "My fathers have
fasted before me, and shall I not fast?"

For answer a great stone hurtled through the air, just grazing his
head.

"Give over!" shouted Elias Zevi, one of Sabbatai's brothers. "Be done
with sadness, or thou shalt be stoned to death. Hath not the Lord
ended our long persecution, our weary martyrdom? Cease thy prayer, or
thy blood be on thine own head." Algazi and De la Papa were driven
from the city; the _Kofrim_, as the heretics were dubbed, were
obnoxious to excommunication. The thunder of the believers silenced
the still small voice of doubt.

And from the Jewries of the world, from Morocco to Sardinia, from
London to Lithuania, from the Brazils to the Indies, one great cry in
one tongue rose up:--"_Leshanah Haba Berushalayim--Leshanah Haba Beni
Chorin._ Next year in Jerusalem--next year, sons of freedom!"

XVIII

It was the eve of 1666. In a few days the first sun of the great year
would rise upon the world. The Jews were winding up their affairs,
Israel was strung to fever pitch. The course of the exchanges,
advices, markets, all was ignored, and letters recounting miracles
replaced commercial correspondence.

Elijah the Prophet, in his ancient mantle, had been seen everywhere
simultaneously, drinking the wine-cups left out for him, and sometimes
filling them with oil. He was seen at Smyrna on the wall of a festal
chamber, and welcomed with compliments, orations, and thanksgivings.
At Constantinople a Jew met him in the street, and was reproached for
neglecting to wear the fringed garment and for shaving. At once
fringed garments were reintroduced throughout the Empire, and heads,
though always shaven after the manner of Turks and the East, now
became overgrown incommodiously with hair--even the _Piyos_, or
earlock, hung again down the side of the face, and its absenc