The Hakim Bashi, the Sultan's physician, who as a Jew-Turk himself,
was thought to be the fittest to approach Sabbataï, laid the decision
of the Grand Seignior before him on the evening of his arrival at
Adrianople. The released prisoner was lodged with mocking splendor in
a commodious apartment in the palace, overlooking the river, and lay
upon a luxurious divan, puffing at a chibouque with pretended calm.
"What reverences is it customary to make to the Grand Seignior?" he
asked, with affected nonchalance, when the first salutations with the
physician had been exchanged. "I would not be wanting in the forms
when I appear before his exalted majesty."
"An end to the farce, Sabbataï Zevi!" said the Hakim Bashi, sternly.
"The Sultan demands of thee not posturings, but a miracle."
"Have not miracles enough been witnessed?" asked Sabbataï, in a low
tone.
"Too many," returned the ex-Jew drily. "Yet if thou wouldst save thy
life there needs another."
"What miracle?"
"That thou turn Turk!" And a faint smile played about the physician's
lips.
There was a long silence. Sabbataï's own lips twitched, but not with
humor. The regal radiance of Abydos had died out of his face, but its
sadness was rather of misery than the fine melancholy of yore.
"And if I refuse this miracle?"
"Thou must give us a substitute. The Mufti Vanni suggests that thou be
stript naked and set as a mark for the archers; if thy flesh and skin
are proof like armor, we shall recognize thee as the Messiah indeed,
and the person designed by Allah for the dominions and greatnesses to
which thou dost pretend."
"And if I refuse this miracle, too?"
"Then the stake waits at the gate of the seraglio to compel thee,"
thundered the Hakim Bashi; "thou shalt die with tortures. The mercy of
decapitation shall be denied thee, for thou knowest well Mohammedans
will not pollute their swords with the blood of a Jew. Be advised by
me, Sabbataï," he continued, lowering his tone. "Become one of us.
After all, the Moslem are but the posterity of Hagar. Mohammed is but
the successor of Moses. We recognize the One God who rules the heavens
and the earth, we eat not swine-flesh. Thou canst Messiah it in a
white turban as well as in a black," he ended jocosely.
Sabbataï winced. "Renegade!" he muttered.
"Ay, and an excellent exchange," quoth the physician. "The Sultan is a
generous paymaster, may his shadow never grow less. He giveth thee
till the morn to decide--Turk or martyr? With burning torches attached
to thy limbs thou art to be whipped through the streets with fiery
scourges in the sight of the people--such is the Sultan's decree. He
is a generous paymaster. After all, what need we pretend--between
ourselves, two Jews, eh?" And he winked drolly. "The sun greets
Mohammed every morn, say these Turks. Let to-morrow's greet another
Mohammedan."
Sabbataï sprang up with an access of majesty.
"Dog of an unbeliever! Get thee gone!"
"Till to-morrow! The Sultan will give thee audience to-morrow," said
the Hakim Bashi imperturbably, and, making a mock respectful
salutation, he withdrew from the apartment.
Melisselda had been dosing in an inner chamber after the fatigue of
the journey, but the concluding thunders of the duologue had aroused
her, and she heard the physician's farewell words. She now parted the
hangings and looked through at Sabbataï, her loveliness half-framed,
half-hidden by the tapestry. Her face was wreathed in a heavenly
smile.
"Sabbataï!" she breathed.
He turned a frowning gaze upon her. "Thou art merry!" he said
bitterly.
"Is not the hour come?" she cried joyously.
"Yea, the hour is come," he murmured.
"The hour of thy final trial and triumph! The longed-for hour of thy
appearance before the Sultan, when thou wilt take the crown from his
head and place it on--"
Instead of completing the sentence, she ran to take his head to her
bosom. But he repulsed her embracing arms. She drew back in
consternation. It was the first time she had known him rough, not only
with her, but with any creature.
"Leave me! Leave me!" he cried huskily.
"Nay, thou needest me." And her forgiving arms spread towards him in
fresh tenderness.
He looked at her without moving to meet them.
"Ay, I need thee," he said pathetically. "Therefore," and his voice
rose firm again, "leave me to myself."
"Thou hast become a stranger," she said tremulously. "I do not
understand thee."
"Would thou hadst ever been a stranger, that I had never understood
thee."
"Sabbataï, thou ravest."
"I have come to my senses. O my God! my God!" and he fell a-weeping on
the divan.
Melisselda's alarm grew greater.
"Rouse thyself, they will hear thee."
"Let them hear. God hears me not."
"Hears thee not? Thou art He!"
"I God!" He laughed bitterly. "Thou believest that! Thou who knowest
me man!"
"I know thee all divine. I have worshipped thee in joy. Art thou not
Messiah?"
"Messiah! Who cannot save myself!"
"Who can hurt thee? Who hath ever hurt thee from thy youth up? The
Angels watch over thy footsteps. Is not thy life one long miracle?"
He shook his head hopelessly. "All this year I have waited the
miracle--all those weary months in the dungeon of Constantinople, in
the Castle of Abydos--but what sure voice hath spoken? To-morrow I
shall be disembowelled, lashed with fiery scourges--who knows what
these dogs may do?"
"Hush! hush!"
"Ah, thou fearest for me!" he cried, in perverse triumph. "Thou
knowest I am but mortal man!"
The roses of her beautiful cheek had faded, but she spoke,
unflinching.
"Nay, I believe on thee still. I followed thee to thy prison,
unwitting it would turn into a palace. I follow thee to thy torture
to-morrow, trusting it will be the crowning miracle and the fiery
scourges will turn into angels' feathers. It is the word of Zechariah
fulfilled. 'In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an
hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf.'"
His eyes grew humid as he looked up at her. "Yea, Melisselda, thou
hast been true and of good courage. And now, when I am alone, when the
shouts of the faithful have died away, when the King of the World lies
here alone in darkness and ashes, thou hast faith still?"
"Ay, I believe--'tis but a trial, the final trial of my faith."
She smiled at him confidently; hope quickened within him. "If this
were but a trial, the final trial of _my_ faith!" he murmured. "But
no--ere that white strip of moon rises again in the heavens I shall be
a mangled corpse, the feast of wolves, unless--I have prayed for a
sign--oh, how I have prayed, and now--ah, see! A star is falling. O my
God, that this should be the end of my long martyrdom! But the
punishment of my arrogance is greater than I can bear. God, God, why
didst Thou send me those divine-seeming whispers, those long, long
thoughts that thrilled my soul? Why didst Thou show me the sin of
Israel and his suffering, the sorrow and evil of the world, inspiring
me to redeem and regenerate?" His breast swelled with hysteric sobs.
"My Sabbataï!" Melisselda's warm arms were round him. He threw her off
with violence. "Back, back!" he cried. "I understand the sign; I
understand at last. 'Tis through thee that I have forfeited the divine
grace."
"Through me?" she faltered.
"Yea; thy lips have wooed mine away from prayer, thine arms have drawn
me down from the steeps of righteousness. Thou hast made me unfaithful
to my bride, the Law. For nigh forty years I lived hard and lonely,
steeped my body in ice and snow, lashed myself--ay, lashed myself, I
who now fear the lash--till the blood ran from a dozen wounds, and
now, O God! O God! Woman, thou hast polluted me! I have lost the
divine spirit. It hath gone out from me; it will incarnate itself in
another, in a nobler. Once I was Messiah, now I am man."
"I?--I took from thee the divine spirit!"
She looked at him in all the flush of her beauty, grown insolent
again.
He sprang up, he fell upon her breast, he kissed her lips madly.
"Nay, nay, thou hast shown it me! Love! Love! 'tis Love that breathes
through all things, that lifts the burden of life. But for thee I
should have passed away, unknowing the glory of manhood. I am a man--a
man rejoicing in his strength! O my starved youth! why did I not
behold thee earlier?" Tears of self-pity rolled down his ashen cheek.
"O my love! my love! my lost youth! Give me back my youth, O God! Who
am I, to save? A man; yea, a man, glorying in manhood. Ah! happy are
they who lead the common fate of men, happy in love, in home, in
children; woe for those who would climb, who would torture and deny
themselves, who would save humanity? From what? If they have Love,
have they not all? It is God, it is the Kingdom. It is the Kingdom.
Come, let us live--I a man, thou a woman!"
"But a Mussulman!"
"What imports? God is everywhere. Was not our Maimonides--he at whose
tomb we worship in Tiberias--himself once a Mussulman? Did he not say
that if it be to save our lives naught is forbidden?"
He moved to take her in his arms, but this time it was she that drew
back. Her eyes flashed.
"Nay, as a man, I love thee not. Thou art divine or naught; God or
Impostor!"
"Melisselda!" She ignored his stricken cry.
"Nay, this ordeal hath endured long enough," she replied sternly.
"Confess, I have been proof."
"I am neither God nor Impostor," he said brokenly. "Ah! say not that
thou canst not love me as a man. When thou didst first come to bless
my life I had not yet declared myself Messiah."
"Who knows what I thought then? A wild girl, crazed by the convent,
by the blood shed before my childish eyes, I came to thee full of
lawless passions and fantastic dreams. But as I lived with thee, as I
saw the beauty of thy thought, thy large compassion, the purity of thy
life amid temptations that made me jealous as a woman of Damascus,
then I knew thee a God indeed."
"Nay, when I knew thee I knew myself man. But as our followers grew,
as faith and fortune trod in my footsteps, my blasphemous dream
revived; I believed in thy vision of the Kingdom. When I divided the
world I thought myself Messiah indeed. But as I sat on my throne at
Abydos, with worshippers from the world's end kissing my feet, a
hollow doubt came over me, a sense of dream, and hollow voices echoed
ever in my ear, asking, 'Art thou Messiah? Art thou Messiah? Art thou
Messiah?' I strove to drown them in the festive song; but in the
stillness of the night, when thou wast sleeping at my side, the voices
came back, and they cried mockingly, 'Man! Man! Man!' And when
Nehemiah came--"
"Man!" interrupted Melisselda impatiently. "Cease to cozen me. Have I
not known men? Ay, who more? Their weaknesses, their vanities, their
lewdnesses--enough! To-morrow thou shalt assert the God."
He threw himself back on the divan and sighed wearily. "Leave me,
Melisselda. Go to thy rest; to-night I must keep vigil alone.
Perchance it is my last night on earth."
Her countenance lit up. "Yea, to-morrow comes the Kingdom of Heaven."
And smiling ineffable trust, she stooped down and lightly kissed his
hair, then glided from the room.
And in his sleepless brain and racked soul went on, through that
unending night, the terrible tragedy of doubt, tempered by spells of
spasmodic prayer. A God, or a Man? A Messiah undergoing his Father's
last temptation; or a martyr on the eve of horrible death? And if the
victim of a monstrous self-delusion, what mattered whether one lived
out one's years of shame as Jew or Mussulman? Nobler, perhaps, to die,
and live as an heroic memory--but then to leave Melisselda! To leave
her warm breast and the sunlight and the green earth, and all that
beauty of the world and of human life to which his eyes had only been
unsealed after a lifetime of self-torturing blindness?
"O God! O God!" he cried, "wherefore hast Thou mocked and abandoned
me?"