"All that man can do I will do," said Sabbataï.
"May thy strength increase!" came the grateful ejaculation, and white-bearded sages stooped to kiss the hem of his garment.
So Sabbataï journeyed back to Cairo by caravan through the desert, preceded, men said, by a pillar of fire, and accompanied when he travelled at night by myriads of armed men that disappeared in the morning, and wheresoever he passed all the Jewish inhabitants flocked to gaze upon him. In Hebron they kept watch all night around his house.
From his casement Sabbataï looked up at the silent stars and down at the swaying sea of faces.
"What if the miracle be not wrought!" he murmured. "If Chelebi refuses to sacrifice so much of his substance! But they believe on me. It must be that Jerusalem will be saved, and that I am the Messiah indeed."
At Cairo the pious Master of the Mint received him with ecstasy, and granted his request ere he had made an end of speaking.
That night Sabbataï wandered away from all his followers, beyond the moonlit Nile, towards the Great Pyramid, on, on, unto the white desert, his eyes seeing only inward visions.
"Yea, I am Messiah," he cried at length to the vast night, "I am G—!"
The sudden shelving of the sand made him stumble, and in that instant he became aware of the Sphinx towering over him, its great granite Face solemn in the moonlight. His voice died away in an awed whisper. Long, long he gazed into the great stone eyes.
"Speak!" he whispered. "Thou, Abou-el-Hol, Father of Terror, thou who broodedst over the silences ere Moses ben Amram led my people from this land of bondage, shall I not lead them from their dispersal to their ancient unity in the day when God shall be One, and His Name One?"