But the third time Joseph came alone. Gabriel's heart gave a great leap of exultation. He turned, took careful aim, and fired. The shot rang through the startled neighborhood, but Joseph fled in panic, uninjured, shouting. Uriel dropped his pistol, half in surprise at his failure, half in despairing resignation. "There is no justice," he murmured. How gray the sky was! What a cold, bleak world! He went to the door and bolted it. Then he took up the second pistol. Irrelevantly he noted the "G." graven on it. Gabriel! Gabriel! What memories his old name brought back! There were tears in his eyes. Why had he changed to Uriel? Gabriel! Gabriel! Was that his mother's voice calling him, as she had called him in sunny Portugal, amid the vines and the olive-trees? Worn out, world-weary, aged far beyond his years, beaten in the long fight, despairing of justice on earth and hopeless of any heaven, Uriel Acosta leaned droopingly against his beloved desk, put the pistol's cold muzzle to his forehead, pressed the trigger, and fell dead across the open pages of his _Exemplar Humanae Vitae_, the thin, curling smoke lingering a little ere it dissipated, like the futile spirit of a passing creature--"a wind that passeth away and cometh not again." THE TURKISH MESSIAH SCROLL THE FIRST I In the year of the world five thousand four hundred and eight, sixteen hundred and forty-eight years after the coming of Christ, and in the twenty-third year of his own life on earth, Sabbataï Zevi, men said, declared himself at Smyrna to his disciples--the long-expected Messiah of the Jews. They were gathered together in the winter midnight, a little group of turbaned, long-robed figures, the keen stars innumerable overhead, the sea stretching sombrely at their feet, and the swarming Oriental city, a black mystery of roofs, minarets, and cypresses, dominated by the Acropolis, asleep on the slopes of its snow-clad hill. Anxiously they had awaited their Prophet's emergence from his penitential lustration in the icy harbor, and as he now stood before them in naked majesty, the water dripping from his black beard and hair, a perfect manly figure, scarred only by self-inflicted scourgings, awe and wonder held them breathless with expectation. Inhaling that strange fragrance of divinity that breathed from his body, and penetrated by the kingliness of his mien, the passionate yet spiritual beauty of his dark, dreamy face, they awaited the great declaration. Some common instinct told them that he would speak to-night, he, the master of mystic silences. The _Zohar_--that inspired book of occult wisdom--had long since foretold this year as the first of the epoch of regeneration, and ever since the shrill ram's horn had heralded its birth, the souls of Sabbataï Zevi's disciples had been tense for the great moment. Surely it was to announce himself at last that he had summoned them, blessed partakers in the greatest moment of human and divine history. What would he say?