A buzz of astonishment swelled through the synagogue, blent with heavier murmurs of protest from shocked pietists. But the more poetic Cabalists understood. They explained that it was the union of the Torah, the Daughter of Heaven, with the Messiah, the Son of Heaven, who was never to mate with a mortal.
But a Chacham (Rabbi), unappeased, raised a loud plaint of blasphemy.
"Nay, the blasphemy is thine," replied the Bridegroom of the law quietly. "Say not your prophets that the Truth should be the spouse of those who love the Truth?"
But the orthodox faction prevailed, and he was driven from the city.
He went to the Morea, to his father's relatives; he wandered to and fro, and the years slipped by. Worn by fasts and penances, living in inward dreams of righteousness and regeneration, he grew towards middle age, and always on his sweet scholarly face an air of patient waiting through the slow years. And his train of disciples grew and changed; some died, some wearied of the long expectation. But Samuel Primo, of Jerusalem, became his devoted secretary, and Abraham Rubio was also ever at his side, a droll, impudent beggar, professing unlimited faith in the Messiah, and feasting with unbounded appetite on the good things sent by the worshippers, and put aside by the persistent ascetic.
"Tis fortunate I shall be with thee when thou carvest the Leviathan," he said once. "Else would the heathen princesses who shall wait upon us come in for thy pickings."
"In those days of the Kingdom there shall be no more need for abnegation," said Sabbataï. "As it is written, 'And thy fast-days shall become feast-days.'"
"Nay, then, thy feast-days shall become my fast-days," retorted Rubio.
Sabbataï smiled. The beggar was the only man who could make him smile. But he smiled—a grim, bitter smile—when he heard that the great fire he had predicted had devastated Constantinople, and wrought fierce mischief in the Jewish quarter.
"The fire will purify their hearts," he said.