him if Abraham had really had anything to do with the building
of the Islam temple, but had been checked by the thought of the utter
absurdity of supposing that this man sitting in front of me could possibly
know anything about it. But now I spoke. I did not want him to suppose
that I believed anything he said, nor did I really intend to humor him in
his insane retrospections; but what he had said suggested to me the very
apropos remark that one might suppose he had been giving a new version of
the story of the Wandering Jew.

At this he sat up very straight, on the extreme edge of his chair; his
eyes sparkled.

"You must excuse me," he said, "but for twenty seconds I am going to be
angry. I can't help it. It isn't your fault, but that remark always
enrages me. I expect it, of course, but it makes my blood boil, all the
same."

"Then you have told your story before?" I said.

"Yes," he answered. "I have told it to certain persons to whom I thought
it should be known. Some of these have believed it, some have not; but,
believers or disbelievers, all have died and disappeared. Their opinions
are nothing to me. You are now the only living being who knows my story."

I was going to ask a question here, but he did not give me a chance.
He was very much moved.

"I hate that Wandering Jew," said he, "or, I should say, I despise the
thin film of a tradition from which he was constructed. There never was
a Wandering Jew. There could not have been; it is impossible to conceive
of a human being sent forth to wander in wretchedness forever. Moreover,
suppose there had been such a man, what a poor, modern creature he would
be compared with me! Even now he would be less than two thousand years
old. You must excuse my perturbation, but I am sure that during the whole
of the Christian era I have never told my story to any one who did not, in
some way or other, make an absurd or irritating reference to the Wandering
Jew. I have often thought, and I have no doubt I am right, that the
ancient story of my adventures as Kroudhr, the Vizier of the Two-horned
Alexander, combined with what I have related, in one century or another,
of my subsequent experiences, has given rise to the tradition of that
very unpleasant Jew of whom Eug