And in the course of years the news of her and of her prophecy
travelled to Sabbataï Zevi, and found him at Cairo the morning after
he had spoken to the Sphinx in the great silences. And to him under
the blue Egyptian sky came an answering throb of romance. The
womanhood that had not moved him in the flesh thrilled him, vaguely
imaged from afar, mystically, spiritually.
"Let her be sent for," he said, and his disciples noted an unwonted
restlessness in the weary weeks while his ambassadors were away.
"Dost think she will come?" he said once to Abraham Rubio.
"What woman would not come to thee?" replied the beggar. "What dainty
is not offered thee? I trow natheless that thou wilt refuse, and that
I shall come in for thy leavings."
Sabbataï smiled faintly.
"What have I to do with women?" he murmured. "But I would fain know
what hath been prophetically revealed to her!"
One afternoon his ambassadors returned, and announced that they had
brought her. She was resting after the journey, and would visit him on
the morrow. He appointed their meeting in the Palace of the
Saraph-Bashi. Then, unable to rest, he mounted the hill of the citadel
and saw an auspicious golden glow over the mosques and houses of
Cairo, illumining even the desert and the Pyramids. He stood watching
the sun sink lower and lower, till suddenly it went out like a snuffed
candle.