The Wandering Jew — Complete
hear my prayer? The spectre! O! do I behold the spectre? Yes, there it
is; its cadaverous countenance is agitated by convulsive throes, its red
eyes are rolling in their orbits. Begone! begone! Oh! its hand--its icy
hand has seized on mine! Mercy, Lord, have mercy! 'Onward!' Oh, Lord!
this scourge, this terrible avenging scourge! Must I, then, again carry
it into this city, must my poor wretched brethren be the first to fall
under it--though already so miserable? Mercy, mercy! 'Onward!' And the
descendants of my sister--oh, pray, have mercy, mercy! 'Onward!' O Lord,
have pity on me! I can no longer keep my footing on the ground, the
spectre is dragging me over the brow of the hill; my course is as rapid
as the death-bearing wind that whistles in my track; I already approach
the walls of the city. Oh, mercy, Lord, mercy on the descendants of my
sister--spare them! do not compel me to be their executioner, and let
them triumph over their enemies. Onward, onward! The ground is fleeing
from under me; I am already at the city gate; oh, yet, Lord, yet there
is time; oh, have mercy on this slumbering city, that it may not even
now awaken with the lamentations of terror, of despair and death! O
Lord, I touch the threshold of the gate; verily Thou willest it so
then. 'Tis done--Paris! the scourge is in thy bosom! oh, cursed, cursed
evermore am I. Onward! on! on!"(34)
(34) In 1346, the celebrated Black Death ravaged the earth, presenting
the same symptoms as the cholera, and the same inexplicable phenomena as
to its progress and the results in its route. In 1660 a similar epidemic
decimated the world. It is well known that when the cholera first broke
out in Paris, it had taken a wide and unaccountable leap; and, also
memorable, a north-east wind prevailed during its utmost fierceness.
CHAPTER II. THE DESCENDANTS OF THE WANDERING JEW.
That lonely wayfarer whom we have heard so plaintively urging to be
relieved of his gigantic burden of misery, spoke of "his sister's
descendants" being of all ranks, from the working man to the king's son.
They were seven in number, who had, in the year 1832, been led to Paris,
directly or indirectly, by a bronze medal which distinguished them from
others, bearing these words:-VICTIM of L. C. D. J. Pray for me!
-----PARIS, February the 13th, 1682.
IN PARIS, Rue St. Francois, No. 3, In a century and a half you will be.
February the 13th, 1832.
-----PRAY FOR ME!
The son of the King of Mundi had lost his father and his domains in
India by the irresistible march of the English, and was but in title
Prince Djalma. Spite of attempts to make his departure from the East
delayed until after the period when he could have obeyed his
medal's command, he had reached France by the second month of 1832.
Nevertheless, the results of shipwreck had detained him from Paris till
after that date. A second possessor of this token had remained unaware
of its existence, only discovered by accident. But an enemy who sought
to thwart the union of these seven members, had shut her up in a
mad-house, from which she was released only after that day. Not alone
was she in imprisonment. An old Bonapartist, General Simon, Marshal of
France, and Duke de Ligny, had left a wife in Russian exile, while he
(unable to follow Napoleon to St. Helena) continued to fight the English
in India by means of Prince Djalma's Sepoys, whom he drilled. On the
latter's defeat, he had meant to accompany his young friend to Europe,
induced the more by finding that the latter's mother, a Frenchwoman, had
left him such another bronze medal as he knew his wife to have had.
Unhappily, his wife had perished in Siberia, without his knowing it, any
more than he did, that she had left twin daughters, Rose and Blanche.
Fortunately for them, one who had served their father in the Grenadiers
of the Guard. Francis Baudoin, nicknamed Dagobert, undertook to fulfil
the dying mother's wishes, inspired by the medal. Saving a check at
Leipsic, where one Morok the lion-tamer's panther had escaped from its
cage and killed Dagobert's horse, and a subsequent imprisonment (which
the Wandering Jew's succoring hand had terminated) the soldier and his
orphan charges had reached Paris in safety and in time. But there, a
renewal of the foe's attempt had gained its end. By skillful devices,
Dagobert and his son Agricola were drawn out of the way while Rose and
Blanche Simon were decoyed into a nunnery, under the eyes of Dagobert's
wife. But she had been bound against interfering by the influence of the
Jesuit confessional. The fourth was M. Hardy, a manufacturer, and the
fifth, Jacques Rennepont, a drunken scamp of a workman, who were more
easily fended off, the latter in a sponging house, the former by
a friend's lure. Adrienne de Cardoville, daughter of the Count of
Rennepont, who had also been Duke of Cardoville, was the lady who had
been unwarrantably placed in the lunatic asylum. The fifth, unaware
of the medal, was Gabriel, a youth, who had been brought up, though
a foundling, in Dagobert's family, as a brother to Agricola. He had
entered holy orders, and more, was a Jesuit, in name though not in
heart. Unlike the others, his return from abroad had been smoothed. He
had signed away all his future prospects, for the benefit of the order
of Loyola, and, moreover, executed a more complete deed of transfer on
the day, the 13th of February, 1832, when he, alone of the heirs, stood
in the room of the house, No. 3, Rue St. Francois, claiming what was a
vast surprise for the Jesuits, who, a hundred and fifty years
before, had discovered that Count Marius de Rennepont had secreted a
considerable amount of his wealth, all of which had been confiscated to
them, in those painful days of dragoonings, and the revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. They had bargained for some thirty or forty millions of
francs to be theirs, by educating Gabriel into resigning his inheritance
to them, but it was two hundred and twelve millions which the Jesuit
representatives (Father d'Aigrigny and his secretary, Rodin) were amazed
to hear their nursling placed in possession of. They had the treasure
in their hands, in fact, when a woman of strangely sad beauty had
mysteriously entered the room where the will had been read, and laid
a paper before the notary. It was a codicil, duly drawn up and signed,
deferring the carrying out of the testament until the first day of June
the same year. The Jesuits fled from the house, in rage and intense
disappointment. Father d'Aigrigny was so stupor-stricken at the defeat,
that he bade his secretary at once write off to Rome that the Rennepont
inheritance had escaped them, and hopes to seize it again were utterly
at an end. Upon this, Rodin had revolted, and shown that he had
authority to command where he had, so far, most humbly obeyed. Many such
spies hang about their superior's heels, with full powers to become the
governor in turn, at a moment's notice. Thenceforward, he, Rodin, had
taken the business into his own hands. He had let Rose and Blanche Simon
out of the convent into their father's arms. He had gone in person to
release Adrienne de Cardoville from the asylum. More, having led her to
sigh for Prince Djalma, he prompted the latter to burn for her.
He let not M. Hardy escape. A friend whom the latter treated as a
brother, had been shown up to him as a mere spy of the Jesuits; the
woman whom he adored, a wedded woman, alas! who had loved him in spite
of her vows, had been betrayed. Her mother had compelled her to hide her
shame in America, and, as she had often said--"Much as you are endeared
to me, I cannot waver between you and my mother!" so she had obeyed,
without one farewell word to him. Confess, Rodin was a more dextrous
man than his late master! In the pages that ensue farther proofs of his
superiority in baseness and satanic heartlessness will not be wanting.
CHAPTER III. THE ATTACK.
On M. Hardy's learning from the confidential go-between of the lovers,
that his mistress had been taken away by her mother, he turned from
Rodin and dashed away in a post carriage. At the same moment, as loud
as the rattle of the wheels, there arose the shouts of a band of workmen
and rioters, hired by the Jesuit's emissaries, coming to attack Hardy's
operatives. An old grudge long existing between them and a rival
manufacturer's--Baron Tripeaud--laborers, fanned the flames. When M.
Hardy had left the factory, Rodin, who was not prepared for this
sudden departure, returned slowly to his hackney-coach; but he stopped
suddenly, and started with pleasure and surprise, when he saw, at some
distance, Marshall Simon and his father advancing towards one of the
wings of the Common Dwelling-house; for an accidental circumstance had
so far delayed the interview of the father and son.
"Very well!" said Rodin. "Better and better! Now, only let my man have
found out and persuaded little Rose-Pompon!"
And Rodin hastened towards his hackney-coach. At this moment, the wind,
which continued to rise, brought to the ear of the Jesuit the war song
of the approaching Wolves.
The workman was in the garden. The marshal said to him, in a voice of
such deep emotion that the old man started; "Father, I am very unhappy."
A painful expression, until then concealed, suddenly darkened the
countenance of the marshal.
"You unhappy?" cried father Simon, anxiously, as he pressed nearer to
the marshal.
"For some days, my daughters have appeared constrained in manner, and
lost in thought. During the first moments of our re-union, they were
mad with joy and happiness. Suddenly, all has changed; they are becoming
more and more sad. Yesterday, I detected tears in their eyes; then
deeply moved, I clasped them in my arms, and implored them to tell me
the cause of their sorrow. Without answering, they threw themselves on
my neck, and covered my face with their tears."
"It is strange. To what do you attribute this alteration?"
"Sometimes, I think I have not sufficiently concealed from them the
grief occasioned me by the loss of their mother, and they are
perhaps miserable that they do not suffice for my happiness. And yet
(inexplicable as it is) they seem not only to understand, but to share
my sorrow. Yesterday, Blanche said to me: 'How much happier still should
we be, if our mother were with us!--'"
"Sharing your sorrow, they cannot reproach you with it. There must be
some other cause for their grief."
"Yes," said the marshal, looking fixedly at his father; "yes--but to
penetrate this secret--it would be necessary not to leave them."
"What do you mean?"
"First learn, father, what are the duties which would keep me here; then
you shall know those which may take me away from you, from my daughters,
and from my other child."
"What other child?"
"The son of my old friend, the Indian Prince."
"Djalma? Is there anything the matter with him?"
"Father, he frightens me. I told you, father, of his mad and unhappy
passion for Mdlle. de Cardoville."
"Does that frighten you, my son?" said the old man, looking at the
marshal with surprise. "Djalma is only eighteen, and, at that age, one
love drives away another."
"You have no idea of the ravages which the passion has already made in
the ardent, indomitable boy; sometimes, fits of savage ferocity follow
the most painful dejection. Yesterday, I came suddenly upon him; his
eyes were bloodshot, his features contracted with rage; yielding to an
impulse of mad furry, he was piercing with his poinard a cushion of red
cloth, whilst he exclaimed, panting for breath, 'Ha blood!--I will have
blood!' 'Unhappy boy!' I said to him, 'what means this insane passion?'
'I'm killing the man!' replied he, in a hollow and savage voice: it is
thus he designates his supposed rival."