e ribald Turk was even now gloating
over the screams of the wretched self-deluded man. Oh, fool that she
had been to drive him to the stake and the fiery scourge. If divine,
then to turn Turk were part of the plan of Salvation; if human, he
would at least be spared an agonized death. The bloody visions of her
childhood came back to her, fire coursed in her fevered veins. She
snatched up a mantilla and threw it over her shoulders, then dashed
from the chamber. Her houri-like beauty in that palace of hidden
moon-faces, her breathless explanation that the Sultan had summoned
her to join her husband, carried her past breathless guards, through
door after door, past the black eunuchs of the seraglio and the white
eunuchs of the royal apartment, till through the interstices of purple
hangings she had a far-off glimpse of the despot in his great imperial
turban, sitting on his high, narrow throne, his officers around him. A
page stopped her rudely. Faintness overcame her.

"Mehmed Effendi," called the page.

Dizzy, her tongue scarcely under control, she tried to proffer to the
tall door-keeper who parted the hangings her request for admission.
But he held out his arms to catch her swaying form, and then, as in
some monstrous dream, something familiar seemed to her to waft from
the figure, despite the white turban and the green mantle, and the
next instant, as with the pain of a stab, she recognized Sabbatai.

"What masquerade is this?" her white lips whispered in indignant
revulsion as she struggled from his hold.

"My lord, the Sultan, hath made me his door-keeper--_Capigi Bashi
Otorak_," he replied deprecatingly. "He is merciful and forgiving. May
Allah exalt his dominion. The salary is large; he is a generous
paymaster. I testify that there is no God but God. I testify that
Mohammed is God's prophet." He caught the swooning Melisselda in his
arms and covered her face with kisses.

XXV

News travelled slowly in those days. A week later, while Agi Mehmed
Effendi and his wife Fauma Kadin (born Sarah and still called
Melisselda by her adoring husband, the Sultan's door-keeper) were
receiving instruction in the Moslem religion from the exultant Mufti
Vanni, a great Synod of Jews, swept to Amsterdam by the mighty wave
of faith and joy, Rabbis and scholars and presidents of colleges, were
drawing up a letter of homage to the Messiah. And while the Grand
Seignior was meditating the annihilation of all the Jews of the
Otto