A mysterious taint was on the ancient house, that Nemesis for past grandeur that Thackeray has drawn for us in the picture of the Marquis of Steyne in Vanity Fair.
The young and lovely lady had been seized with a mysterious and incurable disease of the mind. She had disappeared from society. It was said that her condition was terrible; that at times even the doctors and nurses who watched over her impenetrable seclusion shrunk back from her in fear.
It was as though she was possessed of an evil spirit—so the tale had long been whispered.
And now it was abroad and upon the lips of every one that the poor living body inhabited by some evil thing had been brought to the Teacher, and that all was once more well with the maid—the soul returned, health and simplicity her portion once more.
These things had made a most lasting and powerful impression upon the public mind. Who Joseph was, what were the reality and extent of his powers, what was to be the outcome of his mission: these were the questions of the day, and all the world was asking them.
The non-religious world sneered. The majority in "Christian" England was also divided in unequal portions. Most people said that Joseph was a marvellous trickster and cheat—a cheat and impostor such as England had probably never seen before, but still a rogue of rogues.
But among the last and poorest sections of the London community a very different opinion obtained.
They didn't know anything about religious matters, they cared still less. "God" was a word which gave point and freedom to an oath. The churches were places in which one was adjured to give up even the miserable pleasures which made life possible to be endured. The Bible was the little black Book you kissed in the police courts.
But Joseph was a friend.
Great things were going to happen in the congested districts of the lost. A material Saviour seemed to have risen up. A man who rebuked the rich and powerful, who poured words of fire upon the tyrant and the oppressor, had come to London. There was help then! A light was to dawn in the sky, there was a little patch of hope in the sombre environment of lost and degraded lives.