From the time that the Jewish nation had begun to reflect upon its destiny with a kind of despair, the imagination of the people had reverted with much complacency to the ancient prophets. Now, of all the personages of the past, the remembrance of whom came like the dreams of a troubled night to awaken and agitate the people, the greatest was Elias. This giant of the prophets, in his rough solitude of Carmel, sharing the life of savage beasts, dwelling in the hollows of the rocks, whence he came like a thunderbolt, to make and unmake kings, had become, by successive transformations, a sort of superhuman being, sometimes visible, sometimes invisible, and as one who had not tasted death. It was generally believed that Elias would return and restore Israel.[1] The austere life which he had led, the terrible remembrances he had left behind him--the impression of which is still powerful in the East[2]--the sombre image which, even in our own time, causes trembling and death--all this mythology, full of vengeance and terror, vividly struck the mind of the people, and stamped as with a birth-mark all the creations of the popular mind. Whoever aspired to act powerfully upon the people, must imitate Elias; and, as solitary life had been the essential characteristic of this prophet, they were accustomed to conceive "the man of God" as a hermit. They imagined that all the holy personages had had their days of penitence, of solitude, and of austerity.[3] The retreat to the desert thus became the condition and the prelude of high destinies. [Footnote 1: Malachi iv. 5, 6; (iii. 23, 24, according to the Vulg.); _Ecclesiasticus_ xlviii. 10; Matt. xvi. 14, xvii. 10, and following; Mark vi. 15, viii. 28, ix. 10, and following; Luke ix. 8, 19; John i. 21, 25.] [Footnote 2: The ferocious Abdallah, pacha of St. Jean d'Acre, nearly died from fright at seeing him in a dream, standing erect on his mountain. In the pictures of the Christian churches, he is surrounded with decapitated heads. The Mussulmans dread him.] [Footnote 3: _Isaiah_ ii. 9-11.]