A Virtuosos Collection | Page 9

other human being, and by the
results of which he bad ceased to be human. Yet, withal, it seemed one
of the most terrible consequences of that doom that the victim no
longer regarded it as a calamity, but had finally accepted it as the
greatest good that could have befallen him.
"You are the Wandering Jew!" exclaimed I.
The virtuoso bowed without emotion of any kind; for, by centuries of
custom, he had almost lost the sense of strangeness in his fate, and was
but imperfectly conscious of the astonishment and awe with which it
affected such as are capable of death.
"Your doom is indeed a fearful one!" said I, with irrepressible feeling
and a frankness that afterwards startled me; "yet perhaps the ethereal
spirit is not entirely extinct tinder all this corrupted or frozen mass of
earthly life. Perhaps the immortal spark may yet be rekindled by a
breath of heaven. Perhaps you may yet be permitted to die before it is
too late to live eternally. You have my prayers for such a
consummation. Farewell."
"Your prayers will be in vain," replied he, with a smile of cold triumph.
"My destiny is linked with the realities of earth. You are welcome to
your visions and shadows of a future state; but give me what I can see,
and touch, and understand, and I ask no more."
"It is indeed too late," thought I. "The soul is dead within him."
Struggling between pity and horror, I extended my hand, to which the
virtuoso gave his own, still with the habitual courtesy of a man of the
world, but without a single heart-throb of human brotherhood. The
touch seemed like ice, yet I know not whether morally or physically.
As I departed, he bade me observe that the inner door of the hall was
constructed with the ivory leaves of the gateway through which Aeneas
and the Sibyl had been dismissed from Hades.

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