"Woe! woe!" he cried aloud to his brethren as he entered the Jewish quarter. "Your sins shall be visited upon you. For know that when God created the world, it was not from necessity but from pure love, and to be recognized by men as their Creator and Master. But ye return Him not love for love. Woe! woe! There shall come a fire upon Constantinople and a great burning upon your habitations and substance." Then his breast swelled with sobs; in a strange ecstasy his spirit seemed to soar from his body, and hover lovingly over all the motley multitude. All that night his followers heard him praying aloud with passionate tears, and singing the Psalms of David in his sweet melancholy voice as he strode irregularly up and down the room. VII At Constantinople a messenger brought him a letter of homage from Damascus from his foremost disciple, Nathan of Gaza. Nathan was a youthful enthusiast, son of a Jerusalem begging-agent, and newly married to the beautiful, but one-eyed daughter of a rich Portuguese, who had migrated from Damascus to Gaza. Opulent and zealous, he devoted himself henceforth to preaching the Messiah, living and dying his apostle and prophet--no other in short than the Elijah who was to be the Messiah's harbinger. Nor did he fail to work miracles in proof of his mission. Merely on reading a man's name, he would recount his life, defaults and sins, and impose just correction and penance. Evil-doers shunned his eye. More readily than on Sabbataï men believed on him, inasmuch as he claimed but the second place, and an impostor, said they, would have claimed the first. Couched in the tropes and metaphors of Rabbinical Hebrew, Nathan's letter ran thus:-- "22ND CHESVAN OF THIS YEAR.