And when it was seen at length that nothing availed to disturb Israel's
material welfare, the three base usurers laid their heads together yet
again, that they might prey upon his superstitious fears, and they
said, "He is our enemy, but he is a Jew: let the woman who is named
the prophetess put her curse upon him." Then she who was so called, one
Rebecca Bensabbot, deaf as a stone, weak in her intellect, seventy years
of age, and living fifty years on the poor-box which Reuben Maliki kept,
crossed Israel in the streets, and cursed him as a son of Beelzebub
predicting that, even as he had made the walls of the Kasbah to echo
with the groans of God's elect, so should his own spirit be broken
within them and his forehead humbled to the earth. He stood while he
heard her out, and his strong lip trembled at he words; but he only
smiled coldly, and passed on in silence.

"The clouds are not hurt," he thought, "by the bark of dogs."

Thus did his brethren of Judah revile him, and thus did they torture
him; yet there was one among them who did neither. This was the daughter
of their Grand Rabbi, David ben Ohana. Her name was Ruth. She was young,
and God had given her grace and she was beautiful, and many young
Jewish men, of Tetuan had vied with each other in vain for he favour. Of
Israel's duty she knew little, save what report had said of it, that
it was evil; and of the act which had made him an outcast among his
own people, and an Ishmael among the sons of Ishmael she could form
no judgment. But what a woman's eyes might see in him, without help of
other knowledge, that she saw.

She had marked him in the synagogue, that his face was noble and his
manners gracious; that he was young, but only as one who had been