Of the ladies little was known; but it came to be generally affirmed, on what, if sifted, perhaps amounted to insufficient evidence, that each wife was more marvellously handsome than her predecessor. And then, for a while, these lingering distorted sounds from the outside world had died out in the sordid stillness of their lives, to rise again suddenly, after long interval, in startling echoes. The wildest of rumours was all at once in the air, heralding this much-married, banished disputant of the synagogue, this turbulent, troublesome Sabbathai, as Messiah of the Jews. What he had done, what he would do, what he could do, was repeated from mouth to mouth with an ever-growing exactness of exaggeration which modern methods of transmitting news could hardly surpass. One soberly circumstantial tale was of a ship cruising off the north coast of Scotland (of all places in the world!), with sail and cordage of purest silk, her ensign the Twelve Tribes, and her crew, consistently enough, speaking Hebrew. A larger and certainly more geographically minded contingent of converts was said to be marching across the deserts of Arabia to proclaim the millennium. This host was identified as the lost Ten Tribes, and Sabbathai, mounted on a celestial lion with a bridle of serpents, was, or was shortly to be--for the reports were sometimes a little conflicting--at the head of this imposing multitude, and about to inaugurate a new and glorious Temple, which, all ready built and beautified, would straightway descend from heaven, and in which the services were likely to become popular, since all fasts were forthwith to be changed into festivals. The rumours, it must be confessed, were all of a terribly materialistic sort, and one wonders somewhat sadly over Sabbathai’s proclamation, questioning if the promise of ‘dominion over the nations,’ or the permission ‘to do every day what is usual for you to do only on new moons,’ roused most of the long-repressed human nature in those weary pariahs, the ‘nation of the Jews,’ to whom it was roundly addressed. All the cities of Turkey, an old chronicler tells us, ‘were full of expectation.’ Business in many places was altogether suspended. The belief in a reign of miracle was extended to daily needs, and trust in such needs being somehow supplied was esteemed as an essential test of general faith in the new order of things. So none laboured, but all prayed, and purified themselves, and performed strange penances. The rich people grew profuse and penitent, and poverty, always honourable among Jews, came in those strange days to be fashionable.