And so we came at last to another wonder, of deep and abiding
interest—the veritable house where the unhappy wretch once lived who has
been celebrated in song and story for more than eighteen hundred years
as the Wandering Jew. On the memorable day of the Crucifixion he stood
in this old doorway with his arms akimbo, looking out upon the
struggling mob that was approaching, and when the weary Saviour would
have sat down and rested him a moment, pushed him rudely away and said,
“Move on!” The Lord said, “Move on, thou, likewise,” and the command has
never been revoked from that day to this. All men know now that the
miscreant upon whose head that just curse fell has roamed up and down
the wide world, for ages and ages, seeking rest and never finding
it—courting death but always in vain—longing to stop, in city, in
wilderness, in desert solitudes, yet hearing always that relentless
warning to march—march on! They say—do these hoary traditions—that when
Titus sacked Jerusalem and slaughtered eleven hundred thousand Jews in
her streets and byways, the Wandering Jew was seen always in the
thickest of the fight, and that when battle-axes gleamed in the air, he
bowed his head beneath them; when swords flashed their deadly
lightnings, he sprang in their way; he bared his breast to whizzing
javelins, to hissing arrows, to any and to every weapon that promised
death and forgetfulness, and rest. But it was useless—he walked forth
out of the carnage without a wound. And it is said that five hundred
years afterwards he followed Mahomet when he carried destruction to the
cities of Arabia, and then turned against him, hoping in this way to win
the death of a traitor. His calculations were wrong again. No quarter
was given to any living creature but one, and that was the only one of
all the host that did not want it. He sought death five hundred years
later, in the wars of the Crusades, and offered himself to famine and
pestilence at Ascalon. He escaped again—he could not die. These repeated
annoyances could have at last but one effect—they shook his confidence.
Since then the Wandering Jew has carried on a kind of desultory toying
with the most promising of the aids and implements of destruction, but
with small hope, as a general thing. He has speculated some in cholera
and railroads and has taken almost a lively interest in infernal
machines and patent medicines. He is old, now, and grave, as becomes an
age like his; he indulges in no light amusements save that he goes
sometimes to executions, and is fond of funerals.