He wandered through the Orient, everywhere gaining followers,
everywhere discredited. Constantinople saw him, and Athens,
Thessalonica and Cairo.
For the Jew alone travel was easy in those days. The scatterings of
his race were everywhere. The bond of blood secured welcome: Hebrew
provided a common tongue. The scholar-guest, in especial, was hailed
in flowery Hebrew as a crown sent to decorate the head of his host.
Sumptuously entertained, he was laden with gifts on his departure, the
caravan he was to join found for him, the cost defrayed, and even his
ransom, should he unhappily be taken captive by robbers.
At the Ottoman capital the exile had a mingled reception. In the great
Jewish quarter of Haskeui, with its swarming population of small
traders, he found many adherents and many adversaries. Constantinople
was a nest of free-lances and adventurers. Abraham Yachiny, the
illustrious preacher, an early believer, was inspired to have a tomb
opened in the ancient "house of life." He asked the sceptical Rabbis
to dig up the earth. They found it exceedingly hard to the spade, but,
persevering, presently came upon an earthen pot and therein a
parchment which ran thus: "I, Abraham, was shut up for forty years in
a cave. I wondered that the time of miracles did not arrive. Then a
voice replied to me: 'A son shall be born in the year of the world
5386 and be called Sabbataï. He shall quell the great dragon; he is
the true Messiah, and shall wage war without weapons.'"
Verily without weapons did Sabbataï wage war, almost without words.
Not even the ancient Parchment convinced the scoffers, but Sabbataï
took note of it as little as they. To none did he proclaim himself.
His tall, majestic figure, with its sweeping black beard, was
discerned in the dusk, passionately pleading at the graves of the
pious. He was seen at dawn standing motionless upon his bulging wooden
balcony that gave upon the Golden Horn. When he was not fasting, none
but the plainest food passed his lips. He flagellated himself daily.
Little children took to him, and he showered sweetmeats upon them and
winning smiles of love. When he walked the refuse-laden, deep-rutted
streets, slow and brooding, jostled by porters, asses, dervishes,
sheiks, scribes, fruit-pedlars, shrouded females, and beggars,
something more than the sombreness of his robes marked him out from
the medley of rainbow-colored pedestrians. Turkish beauties peered
through their yashmaks, cross-legged craftsmen smoking their narghiles
raised their heads as he passed through the arched aisles of the Great
Bazaar. Once he wandered into the slave-market, where fair Circassians
and Georgians were being stripped to furnish the Kiosks of the
Bosphorus, and he grew hot-eyed for the corrupt chaos of life in the
capital, with its gorgeous pachas and loathly cripples, its countless
mosques and brothels, its cruel cadis and foolish dancing dervishes.
And when an angry Mussulman, belaboring his ass, called it "Jew!" his
heart burnt with righteous anger. Verily, only Israel had chosen
Righteousness--one little nation, the remnant that would save the
world, and bring about the Kingdom of God. But alas! Israel herself
was yet full of sin, hard and unbelieving.
"Woe! woe!" he cried aloud to his brethren as he entered the Jewish
quarter. "Your sins shall be visited upon you. For know that when God
created the world, it was not from necessity but from pure love, and
to be recognized by men as their Creator and Master. But ye return Him
not love for love. Woe! woe! There shall come a fire upon
Constantinople and a great burning upon your habitations and
substance."
Then his breast swelled with sobs; in a strange ecstasy his spirit
seemed to soar from his body, and hover lovingly over all the motley
multitude. All that night his followers heard him praying aloud with
passionate tears, and singing the Psalms of David in his sweet
melancholy voice as he strode irregularly up and down the room.