Mordecai Zevi shook his head. In his olden days, in the Morea, he had known the bitterness of poverty. But he was beginning to prosper now, like so many of his kinsmen, since Sultan Ibrahim had waged war against the Venetians, and, by imperilling the trade of the Levant, had driven the Dutch and English merchants to transfer their ledgers from Constantinople to Smyrna. The English house of which Mordecai had obtained the agency was waxing rich, and he in its wake, and so he could afford to have a scholar-son. He made no farther demur, and even allowed his house to become the seat of learning in which Sabbataï and nine chosen companions studied the Zohar and the Cabalah from dawn to darkness. Often they would desert the divan for the wooden garden-balcony overlooking the oranges and the prune-trees. And the richer Mordecai grew, the greater grew his veneration for his son, to whose merits, and not to his own diligence and honesty, he ascribed his good fortune. "If the sins of the fathers are visited on the children," he was wont to say, "then surely the good deeds of the children are repaid to the fathers." His marked reverence for his wonderful son spread outwards, and Sabbataï became the object of a wistful worship, of a wild surmise. Something of that wild surmise seemed to the father to flash into his son's own eyes one day when, returned from a great journey to his English principals, Mordecai Zevi spoke of the Fifth Monarchy men who foretold the coming of the Messiah and the Restoration of the Jews in the year 1666. "Father!" said the boy. "Will not the Messiah be born on the ninth of Ab?" "Of a surety," replied Mordecai, with beating heart. "He will be born on the fatal date of the destruction of both our Temples, in token of consolation, as it is written; 'and I will cause the captivity of Judah and the captivity of Israel to return, and will build them, as at the first.'" The boy relapsed into his wonted silence. But one thought possessed father and son. Sabbataï had been born on the ninth of Ab--on the great Black Fast.