The traveller is pale as the great figure on the cross.  On his broad forehead a black line extends from one temple to the other.  It is the cobbler of Jerusalem.  The poor artisan, who hardened by misery, injustice and oppression, without pity for the suffering of the Divine Being who bore the cross, repulsed him from his dwelling, and bade him:  “Go on!  Go on!  Go on!” And, from that day, the avenging Deity has in his turn said to the artisan of Jerusalem:  “Go on!  Go on!  Go on!”

And he has gone on, without end or rest.  Nor did the divine vengeance stop there.  From time to time death has followed the steps of the wanderer, and innumerable graves have been even as mile-stones on his fatal path.  And if ever he found periods of repose in the midst of his infinite grief, it was when the hand of the Lord led him into deep solitudes, like that where he now dragged his steps along.  In passing over that dreary plain, or climbing to that rude Calvary, he at least heard no more the funeral knell, which always, always sounded behind him in every inhabited region.

All day long, even at this hour, plunged in the black abyss of his thoughts, following the fatal track—­going whither he was guided by the invisible hand, with head bowed on his breast, and eyes fixed upon the ground, the wanderer had passed over the plain, and ascended the mountain, without once looking at the sky—­without even perceiving the Calvary—­without seeing the image upon the cross.  He thought of the last descendants of his race.  He felt, by the sinking of his heart, that great perils continued to threaten him.  And in the bitterness of a despair, wild and deep as the ocean, the cobbler of Jerusalem seated himself at the foot of the cross.  At this moment a farewell ray of the setting sun, piercing the dark mass of clouds, threw a refection upon the Calvary, vivid as a conflagration’s glare.  The Jew rested his forehead upon his hand.  His long hair, shaken by the evening breeze, fell over his pale face—­when sweeping it back from his brow, he started with surprise—­he, who had long ceased to wonder at anything.  With eager glance he contemplated the long lock of hair that he held between his fingers.  That hair, until now black as night, had become gray.  He also, like unto Herodias, was growing older.

His progress towards old age, stopped for eighteen hundred years, had resumed its course.  Like the Wandering Jewess, he might henceforth hope for the rest of the grave.  Throwing himself on his knees, he stretched his hands towards heaven, to ask for the explanation of the mystery which filled him with hope.  Then, for the first time, his eyes rested on the Crucified One, looking down upon the Calvary, even as the Wandering Jewess had fixed her gaze on the granite eyelids of the Blessed Martyr.

The Saviour, his head bowed under the weight of his crown of thorns, seemed from the cross to view with pity, and pardon the artisan, who for so many centuries had felt his curse—­and who, kneeling, with his body thrown backward in an attitude of fear and supplication, now lifted towards the crucifix his imploring hands.