Other expedients for enlarging his revenue Ben Aboo had suggested, but
Israel had steadfastly resisted all of them. Sometimes the Governor
had pretended that he had received an order from the Sultan to impose a
gross and wicked tax, but Israel's answer had been the same. "There is
no evil in the world but injustice," he had said. "Do justice, and you
do all that God can ask or man expect."

For such opposition to the will of the Basha any other person would have
been cast into a damp dungeon at night, and chained in the hot sun by
day. Israel was still necessary. So Ben Aboo merely longed for the dawn
of that day whereon he should need him no more.

But since the disaster which had befallen Israel's house everything
had undergone a change. It was now Israel himself who suggested dubious
means of revenue. There was no device of a crafty brain for turning
the very air itself into money--ransoms, promissory notes, and false
judgments--but Israel thought of it. Thus he persuaded the Governor to
send his small currency to the Jewish shops to be changed into silver
dollars at the rate of nine ducats to the dollar, when a dollar was
worth ten in currency. And after certain of the shopkeepers, having
changed fifty thousand dollars at that rate, fled to the Sultan to
complain, Israel advised that their debtors should be called together,
their debts purchased, and bonds drawn up and certified for ten times
the amounts of them. Thus a few were banished from their homes in fear
of imprisonment, many were sorely harassed, and some were entirely
ruined.

It was a strange spectacle. He whom the rabble gibed at in the public
streets held the fate of every man of them in his hand. Their dogs and