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Updated: June 21, 2025
"It is the sign," he murmured, "the sign that Melisselda hath truly led me to the Kingdom of Joy." But in the morning he awoke still troubled. The meaning of the sign seemed less clear than in the silence of the night; the figure of the new Prophet loomed ominous.
And over these vast romping crowds, drunk with faith, Melisselda queened it with her voluptuous smiles and the joyous abandon of her dancing, and men and women, boys and girls, embraced and kissed in hysterical frenzy. The yoke of the Law was over, the ancient chastity forgotten.
Melisselda had been dosing in an inner chamber after the fatigue of the journey, but the concluding thunders of the duologue had aroused her, and she heard the physician's farewell words. She now parted the hangings and looked through at Sabbataï, her loveliness half-framed, half-hidden by the tapestry. Her face was wreathed in a heavenly smile. "Sabbataï!" she breathed.
Nobler, perhaps, to die, and live as an heroic memory but then to leave Melisselda! To leave her warm breast and the sunlight and the green earth, and all that beauty of the world and of human life to which his eyes had only been unsealed after a lifetime of self-torturing blindness? "O God! O God!" he cried, "wherefore hast Thou mocked and abandoned me?"
And Melisselda inaugurated the reign of joy. Her advent brought many followers to Sabbataï. Thousands fell under the spell of her beauty, her queenly carriage, gracious yet gay. A new spirit of romance was born in ritual-ridden Israel. Men looked upon their wives distastefully, and the wives caught something of her fire and bearing and learnt the movement of abandon and the glance of passion.
'In that day will I make the governors of Judah like an hearth of fire among the wood, and like a torch of fire in a sheaf." His eyes grew humid as he looked up at her. "Yea, Melisselda, thou hast been true and of good courage. And now, when I am alone, when the shouts of the faithful have died away, when the King of the World lies here alone in darkness and ashes, thou hast faith still?"
Coral only at lips And at sweet finger-tips, Melisselda. In the pride of her race As a sword shone her face, Melisselda. And her lips were steel bows, But her mouth was a rose, Melisselda." And in the eyes of the tranced listeners were tears of worship for Melisselda as for the Messiah's mystic Bride.
Three months of princely wealth and homage for Sabbataï had passed. In response to the joyous inspiration of Melisselda, he had abandoned all his ascetic habits, and lived the life of a king, ruling a world never again to be darkened with sin and misery.
Was not our Maimonides he at whose tomb we worship in Tiberias himself once a Mussulman? Did he not say that if it be to save our lives naught is forbidden?" He moved to take her in his arms, but this time it was she that drew back. Her eyes flashed. "Nay, as a man, I love thee not. Thou art divine or naught; God or Impostor!" "Melisselda!" She ignored his stricken cry.
To-morrow thou shalt assert the God." He threw himself back on the divan and sighed wearily. "Leave me, Melisselda. Go to thy rest; to-night I must keep vigil alone. Perchance it is my last night on earth." Her countenance lit up. "Yea, to-morrow comes the Kingdom of Heaven." And smiling ineffable trust, she stooped down and lightly kissed his hair, then glided from the room.
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