“The wandering Jew:  Redemption.”

THE WANDERING JEW

By Eugene Sue

BOOK VIII.

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.

THE WANDERING JEW’S CHASTISEMENT.

’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