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THE WANDERING JEW - VOLUME 8

EUGENE SUE

PART THIRD.--THE REDEMPTION.

I. The Wandering Jew's Chastisement
II. The Descendants of the Wandering Jew
III. The Attack
IV. The Wolves and the Devourers
V. The Return
VI. The Go-Between
VII. Another Secret
VIII. The Confession
IX. Love
X. The Execution
XI. The Champs-Elysees
XII. Behind the Scenes
XIII. Up with the Curtain
XIV. Death

PART THIRD.--THE REDEMPTION.

CHAPTER I.

'Tis night--the moon is brightly shining the brilliant stars are
sparkling in a sky of melancholy calmness the shrill whistlings of a
northerly wind--cold bleak and evil-bearing--are increasing: winding
about and bursting into violent blasts with their harsh and hissing
gusts they are sweeping the heights of Montmartre. A man is standing on
the very summit of the hill; his lengthened shadow thrown out by the
moon's pale beams darkens the rocky ground in the distance. The
traveller is surveying the huge city lying at his feet--the City of
Paris--from whose profundities are cast up its towers cupolas domes
and steeples in the bluish moisture of the horizon; while from the very
centre of this sea of stones is rising a luminous vapor reddening the
starry azure of the sky above. It is the distant light of a myriad lamps
which at night the season for pleasure is illuminating the noisy
capital.

"No!" said the traveller "it will not be. The Lord surely will not
suffer it. Twice is quite enough. Five centuries ago the avenging hand
of the Almighty drove me hither from the depths of Asia. A solitary
wanderer I left in my track more mourning despair disaster and death
than the innumerable armies of a hundred devastating conquerors could
have produced. I then entered this city and it was decimated. Two
centuries ago that inexorable hand which led me through the world again
conducted me here; and on that occasion as on the previous one that
scourge which at intervals the Almighty binds to my footsteps ravaged
this city attacking first my brethren already wearied by wretchedness
and toil. My brethren! through me--the laborer of Jerusalem cursed by
the Lord who in my person cursed the race of laborers--a race always
suffering always disinherited always slaves who like me go on on
on without rest or intermission without recompense or hope; until at
length women men children and old men die under their iron yoke of
self-murder that others in their turn then take up borne from age to
age on their willing but aching shoulders. And here again for the third
time in the course of five centuries I have arrived at the summit of
one of the hills which overlooks the city; and perhaps I bring again with
me terror desolation and death. And this unhappy city intoxicated in
a whirl of joys and nocturnal revelries knows nothing about it--oh! it
knows not that I am at its very gate. But no! no! my presence will not
be a source of fresh calamity to it. The Lord in His unsearchable
wisdom has brought me hither across France making me avoid on my route
all but the humblest villages so that no increase of the funeral knell
has marked my journey. And then moreover the spectre has left me--
that spectre livid and green with its deep bloodshot eyes. When I
touched the soil of France its moist and icy hand abandoned mine--it
disappeared. And yet I feel the atmosphere of death surrounding me
still. There is no cessation; the biting gusts of this sinister wind
which envelop me in their breath seem by their envenomed breath to
propagate the scourge. Doubtless the anger of the Lord is appeased.
Maybe my presence here is meant only as a threat intending to bring
those to their senses whom it ought to intimidate. It must be so; for
were it otherwise it would on the contrary strike a loud-sounding blow
of greater terror casting at once dread and death into the very heart of
the country into the bosom of this immense city. Oh no! no! the Lord
will have mercy; He will not condemn me to this new affliction. Alas! in
this city my brethren are more numerous and more wretched than in any
other. And must I bring death to them? No! the Lord will have mercy;
for alas! the seven descendants of my sister are at last all united in
this city. And must I bring death to them? Death! instead of that
immediate assistance they stand so much in need of? For that woman who
like myself wanders from one end of the world into the other has gone
now on her everlasting journey after having confounded their enemies'
plots. In vain did she foretell that great evils still threatened those
who are akin to me through my sister's blood. The unseen hand by which I
am led drives that woman away from me even as though it were a
whirlwind that swept her on. In vain she entreated and implored at the
moment she was leaving those who are so dear to me.--At least 0 Lord
permit me to stay until I shall have finished my task! Onward! A few
days for mercy's sake only a few days! Onward! I leave these whom I
am protecting on the very brink of an abyss! Onward! Onward!! And the
wandering star is launched afresh on its perpetual course. But her voice
traversed through space calling me to the assistance of my own! When
her voice reached me I felt that the offspring of my sister were still
exposed to fearful dangers: those dangers are still increasing. Oh say
say Lord! shall the descendants of my sister escape those woes which for
so many centuries have oppressed my race? Wilt Thou pardon me in them?
Wilt Thou punish me in them? Oh! lead them that they may obey the last
wishes of their ancestor. Guide them that they may join their
charitable hearts their powerful strength their best wisdom and their
immense wealth and work together for the future happiness of mankind
thereby perhaps enabled to ransom me from my eternal penalties. Let
those divine words of the Son of Man "Love ye one another!" be their
only aim; and by the assistance of their all-powerful words let them
contend against and vanquish those false priests who have trampled on the
...

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