The Wandering Jew.
First Part.--The Transgression.
Prologue.
The Land's End of Two Worlds.
The Arctic Ocean encircles with a belt of eternal ice the desert confinesof Siberia and North America--the uttermost limits of the Old and Newworlds, separated by the narrow, channel, known as Behring's Straits.
The last days of September have arrived.
The equinox has brought with it darkness and Northern storms, and nightwill quickly close the short and dismal polar day. The sky of a dull andleaden blue is faintly lighted by a sun without warmth, whose white disk,scarcely seen above the horizon, pales before the dazzling, brilliancy ofthe snow that covers, as far as the eyes can reach, the boundlesssteppes.
To the North, this desert is bounded by a ragged coast, bristling withhuge black rocks.
At the base of this Titanic mass lied enchained the petrified ocean,whose spell-bound waves appear fired as vast ranges of ice mountains,their blue peaks fading away in the far-off frost smoke, or snow vapor.
Between the twin-peaks of Cape East, the termination of Siberia, thesullen sea is seen to drive tall icebergs across a streak of dead green.There lies Behring's Straits.
Opposite, and towering over the channel, rise the granite masses of CapePrince of Wales, the headland of North America.
These lonely latitudes do not belong to the habitable world; for thepiercing cold shivers the stones, splits the trees, and causes the earthto burst asunder, which, throwing forth showers of icy spangles seemscapable of enduring this solitude of frost and tempest, of famine anddeath.
And yet, strange to say, footprints may be traced on the snow, coveringthese headlands on either side of Behring's Straits.
On the American shore, the footprints are small and light, thus betrayingthe passage of a woman.
She has been hastening up the rocky peak, whence the drifts of Siberiaare visible.
On the latter ground, footprints larger and deeper betoken the passing ofa man. He also was on his way to the Straits.
It would seem that this man and woman had arrived here from oppositedirections, in hope of catching a glimpse of one another, across the armof the sea dividing the two worlds--the Old and the New.
More strange still! the man and the woman have crossed the solitudesduring a terrific storm! Black pines, the growth of centuries, pointingtheir bent heads in different parts of the solitude like crosses in achurchyard, have been uprooted, rent, and hurled aside by the blasts!
Yet the two travellers face this furious tempest, which has plucked uptrees, and pounded the frozen masses into splinters, with the roar ofthunder.
They face it, without for one single instant deviating from the straightline hitherto followed by them.
Who then are these two beings who advance thus calmly amidst the stormsand convulsions of nature?
Is it by chance, or design, or destiny, that the seven nails in the soleof the man's shoe form a cross--thus:
* * * * * * *
Everywhere he leaves this impress behind him.
On the smooth and polished snow, these footmarks seem imprinted by a footof brass on a marble floor.
Night without twilight has soon succeeded day--a night of forebodinggloom.
The brilliant reflection of the snow renders the white steppes stillvisible beneath the azure darkness of the sky; and the pale stars glimmeron the obscure and frozen dome.
Solemn silence reigns.
But, towards the Straits, a faint light appears.
At first, a gentle, bluish light, such as precedes moonrise; it increasesin brightness, and assumes a ruddy hue.
Darkness thickens in every other direction; the white wilds of the desertare now scarcely visible under the black vault of the firmament.
Strange and confused noises are heard amidst this obscurity.
They sound like the flight of large night--birds--now flappingnow-heavily skimming over the steppes-now descending.
But no cry is heard.
This silent terror heralds the approach of one of those imposingphenomena that awe alike the most ferocious and the most harmless, ofanimated beings. An Aurora Borealis (magnificent sight!) common in thepolar regions, suddenly beams forth.
A half circle of dazzling whiteness becomes visible in the horizon.Immense columns of light stream forth from this dazzling centre, risingto a great height, illuminating earth, sea, and sky. Then a brilliantreflection, like the blaze of a conflagration, steals over the snow ofthe desert, purples the summits of the mountains of ice, and imparts adark red hue to the black rocks of both continents.
After attaining this magnificent brilliancy, the Northern Lights fadeaway gradually, and their vivid glow is lost in a luminous fog.
Just then, by a wondrous mirage an effect very common in high latitudes,the American Coast, though separated from Siberia by a broad arm of thesea, loomed so close that a bridge might seemingly be thrown from oneworld to other.
Then human forms appeared in the transparent azure haze overspreadingboth forelands.
On the Siberian Cape, a man on his knees, stretched his arms towardsAmerica, with an expression of inconceivable despair.
On the American promontory, a young and handsome woman replied to theman's despairing gesture by pointing to heaven.
For some seconds, these two tall figures stood out, pale and shadowy, inthe farewell gleams of the Aurora.
But the fog thickens, and all is lost in the darkness.
Whence came the two beings, who met thus amidst polar glaciers, at theextremities of the Old and New worlds?
Who were the two creatures, brought near for a moment by a deceitfulmirage, but who seemed eternally separated?