|
THE WANDERING JEW - VOLUME 11
THE WANDERING JEW - VOLUME 11 EUGENE SUE BOOK XI.
L. The Ruins of the Abbey of St. John the Baptist
LI. The Calvary
LII. The Council
LIII. Happiness
LIV. Duty
LV. The Improvised Hospital
LVI. Hydrophobia
LVII. The Guardian Angel
LVIII. Ruin
LIX. Memories
LX. The Ordeal
LXI. Ambition
LXII. To a Socius a Socius and a Half
LXIII. Faringhea's Affection
LXIV. An Evening at St. Colombe's
LXV. The Nuptial Bed
LXVI. A Duel to the Death
LXVII. A Message
LXVIII. The First of June
EPILOGUE.
I. Four Years After
II. The Redemption
CHAPTER L.
THE RUINS OF THE ABBEY OF ST. JOHN THE BAPTIST.
The sun is fast sinking. In the depths of an immense piny wood in the
midst of profound solitude rise the ruins of an abbey once sacred to
St. John the Baptist. Ivy moss and creeping plants almost entirely
conceal the stones now black with age. Some broken arches some walls
pierced with ovals still remain standing visible on the dark background
of the thick wood. Looking down upon this mass of ruins from a broken
pedestal half-covered with ivy a mutilated but colossal statue of
stone still keeps its place. This statue is strange and awful. It
represents a headless human figure. Clad in the antique toga it holds
in its hand a dish and on that dish is a head. This head is its own. It
is the statue of St. John the Baptist and Martyr put to death by wish of
Herodias.
The silence around is solemn. From time to time however is heard the
dull rustling of the enormous branches of the pine-trees shaken by the
wind. Copper-colored clouds reddened by the setting sun pass slowly
over the forest and are reflected in the current of a brook which
deriving its source from a neighboring mass of rocks flows through the
ruins. The water flows the clouds pass on the ancient trees tremble
the breeze murmurs.
Suddenly through the shadow thrown by the overhanging wood which
stretches far into endless depths a human form appears. It is a woman.
She advances slowly towards the ruins. She has reached them. She treads
the once sacred ground. This woman is pale her look sad her long robe
floats on the wind her feet covered with dust. She walks with
difficulty and pain. A block of stone is placed near the stream almost
at the foot of the statue of John the Baptist. Upon this stone she sinks
breathless and exhausted worn out with fatigue. And yet for many days
many years many centuries she has walked on unwearied.
For the first time she feels an unconquerable sense of lassitude. For
the first time her feet begin to fail her. For the first time she who
traversed with firm and equal footsteps the moving lava of torrid
deserts while whole caravans were buried in drifts of fiery sand--who
passed with steady and disdainful tread over the eternal snows of
Arctic regions over icy solitudes in which no other human being could
live--who had been spared by the devouring flames of conflagrations and
by the impetuous waters of torrents--she in brief who for centuries had
had nothing in common with humanity--for the first time suffers mortal
pain.
Her feet bleed her limbs ache with fatigue she is devoured by burning
thirst. She feels these infirmities yet scarcely dares to believe them
real. Her joy would be too immense! But now her throat becomes dry
contracted all on fire. She sees the stream and throws herself on her
knees to quench her thirst in that crystal current transparent as a
mirror. What happens then? Hardly have her fevered lips touched the
fresh pure water than still kneeling supported on her hands she
suddenly ceases to drink and gazes eagerly on the limpid stream.
Forgetting the thirst which devours her she utters a loud cry--a cry of
deep earnest religious joy like a note of praise and infinite
gratitude to heaven. In that deep mirror she perceives that she has
grown older.
In a few days a few hours a few minutes perhaps in a single second
she has attained the maturity of age. She who for more than eighteen
centuries has been as a woman of twenty carrying through successive
generations the load of her imperishable youth--she has grown old and
may perhaps at length hope to die. Every minute of her life may now
bring her nearer to the last home! Transported by that ineffable hope
she rises and lifts her eyes to heaven clasping her hands in an
attitude of fervent prayer. Then her eyes rest on the tall statue of
stone representing St. John. The head which the martyr carries in his
hand seems from beneath its half-closed granite eyelid to cast upon
the Wandering Jewess a glance of commiseration and pity. And it was she
Herodias who in the cruel intoxication of a pagan festival demanded the
murder of the saint! And it is at the foot of the martyr's image that
for the first time the immortality which weighed on her for so many
centuries seems likely to find a term!
"Oh impenetrable mystery! oh divine hope!" she cries. "The wrath of
heaven is at length appeased. The hand of the Lord brings me to the feet
of the blessed martyr and I begin once more to feel myself a human
creature. And yet it was to avenge his death that the same heaven
condemned me to eternal wanderings!
"Oh Lord! grant that I may not be the only one forgiven. May he--the
artisan who like me daughter of a king wanders on for centuries--
...
|
