The spacious residence of Ioiada, son of the high priest Eliashib, was ordinarily a rendezvous for the aristocratic circles of Jerusalem. The fashion of the city seized the occasion of the home-bringing of his daughter-in-law, the bride of Manasseh, and the feastings that celebrated it, to throng his court and chambers with such gayety as had not been seen since the return from the land of the Captivity. The repute of Nicaso's beauty, the romance of such an alliance between a priestly house of the Jews and the family of Sanballat, their ancient enemy, set the tongues of all classes going. The multitude hailed the event. They were wearied with the exclusiveness they had been forced to maintain as respected their intercourse with neighboring people. Shopkeepers were delighted, for, in the train of Sanballat's daughter, came men and women from all surrounding tribes, and Jerusalem seemed about to become again an emporium of trade, as in the days before the Exile. Marduk was solicited to open a bazaar in the chief street of the city with the assurance of doing a thriving business in foreign stuffs, for which the good people of Jerusalem had taken a sudden and violent fancy. But for reasons best known to himself, the Phoenician merchant chose to pitch his tents without the walls. Yet here he apparently did a lively trade; for scarcely a day passed that did not bring a camel or two down from the north, or a horseman up from Joppa on the coast. Marduk himself seemed to catch the spirit of enterprise, and attended in person to the details of business, which he had formerly left entirely to Eliezar. Many of the traders, especially those who came from Phoenicia, and who were presumably the agents of his business, he took to his own private tent, or walked with them apart. It was rumored that he was about to open new trade routes with Egypt and the East, which would centre in Jerusalem. That Manasseh was so frequently with him gave plausibility to the report that a great mercantile combination had been agreed upon in which much Jewish wealth should be represented by the house of Ioiada, the treasury of Sanballat by his son-in-law, Manasseh, and the heaviest merchants of Tyre by Marduk, whose exhaustless genius and money-bags were the inspiration of the enterprise. But far different movements were beneath the surface of things. The religious sentiment of Jerusalem had been shocked by the alliance of the priestly house with that of the hated Samaritan. By many Nicaso was called Jezebel, and Manasseh denounced as a traitor who aimed at playing the part of a second Ahab. The venerable scribe, Ezra, seemed broken-hearted over the defection of his favorite pupil. His lectures upon the law became lamentations.