Barbary, and wheresoever men are broken they go to him, and wheresoever
women are fallen and wrecked they seek the mercy and the shelter of his
face. He is poor, and has nothing to give them save one thing only, but
that is the best thing of all--it is hope. Not hope in life, but hope
in death, the sublime hope whose radiance is always around him. Man that
veils his face before the mysteries of the hereafter, and science that
reckons the laws of nature and ignores the power of God, have no place
with the Mahdi. The unseen is his certainty; the miracle is all in all
to him; he throngs the air with marvels; God speaks to him in dreams
when he sleeps, and warns and directs him by signs when he is awake._

_With this man, so singular a mixture of the haughty chief and the joyous
child, there is another, a woman, his wife. She is beautiful with a
beauty rarely seen in other women, and her senses are subtle beyond the
wonders of enchantment. Together these two, with their ragged fellowship
of the poor behind them, having no homes and no possessions, pass
from place to place, unharmed and unhindered, through that land of
intolerance and iniquity, being protected and reverenced by virtue of
the superstition which accepts them for Saints. Who are they? What have
they been?_



CHAPTER I

ISRAEL BEN OLIEL


Israel was the son of a Jewish banker at Tangier. His mother was
the daughter of a banker in London. The father's name was Oliel; the