illed my breast, and
a resistless terror possessed me. So was I accursed forevermore. A
voice kept saying always to me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on forever!'
From home, from kin, from country, from all I knew and loved I fled;
nowhere could I tarry,--the nameless horror burned in my bosom, and I
heard continually a voice crying unto me: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
forever!' So, with the years, the centuries, the ages, I have fled
before that cry and in that nameless horror; empires have risen and
crumbled, races have been born and are extinct, mountains have been
cast up and time hath levelled them,--still I do live and still I
wander hither and thither upon the face of the earth, and am an
accursed thing. The gift of tongues is mine,--all men I know, yet
mankind knows me not. Death meets me face to face, and passes me by;
the sea devours all other prey, but will not hide me in its depths;
wild beasts flee from me, and pestilences turn their consuming breaths
elsewhere. On and on and on I go,--not to a home, nor to my people,
nor to my grave, but evermore into the tortures of an eternity of
sorrow. And evermore I feel the nameless horror burn within, whilst
evermore I see the pleading eyes of him that bore the cross, and
evermore I hear his voice crying: 'Move on, O Jew! move on
forevermore!'"

"Thou art the Wandering Jew!" cried the Father Miguel.

"I am he," saith the aged man. "I marvel not that thou dost revolt
against me, for thou standest in the shadow of that same cross which I
have spurned, and thou art illumined with the love of him that went his
way to Calvary. But I beseech thee bear with me until I have told thee
all,--then drive me hence if thou art so minded."

"Speak on," quoth the Father Miguel.

Then said the Jew: "How came I here I scarcely know; the seasons are
one to me, and one day but as another; for the span of my life, O
priestly man! is eternity. This much know you: from a far country I
embarked upon a ship,--I knew not whence 't was bound, nor cared I. I
obeyed the voice that bade me go. Anon a mighty tempest fell upon the
ship and overwhelmed it. The cruel sea brought peace to all but me; a
many days it tossed and buffeted me, then with a cry of exultation cast
me at last upon a shore I had not seen before, a coast far, far
westward whereon abides no human thing. But in that solitude still
heard I from within the awful mandate that sent me journeying onward,
'Move on, O Jew! move