The naive literary construction of the plot was of no consequence to the reader who tasted a novel for the first time in his life.

The _naivete_ of the plot was in keeping with the naive, artificially reproduced language of the prophet Isaiah and the biblical annals, which intensified the illusion of antiquity.
[Footnote 1: See on this expression above, p.

148 et seq.] Several years after the publication of his "Love of Zion," when social currents had begun to stir Russian Jewry, Mapu began his five volume novel of contemporary life, under the title _'Ayit Tzabua'_, "The Speckled Bird," or "The Hypocrite" (1857-1869).

In his naive diction, which is curiously out of harmony with the complex plot in sensational French style, the author pictures the life of an obscure Lithuanian townlet: the Kahal bosses who hide their misdeeds beneath the cloak of piety; the fanatical rabbis, the Tartuffes of the Pale of Settlement, who persecute the champions of enlightenment.

As an offset against these shadows of the past, Mapu lovingly paints the barely visible shoots of the new life, the _Maskil_, who strives to reconcile religion and science, the misty figure of the Jewish youth who goes to the Russian school in the hope of serving his people, the profiles of the Russian Jewish intellectuals, and the captains of industry from among the rising Jewish plutocracy.
Toward the end of his life Mapu returned to the historical novel, and in the "Transgression of Samaria" (_Ashmat Shomron_, 1865) he attempted to draw a picture of ancient Hebrew life during the declining years of the Northern Kingdom.