CHAPTER XV.

THE CONSTANT WANDERER.

It is night. The moon shines and the stars glimmer in the midst of a
serene but cheerless sky; the sharp whistlings of the north wind, that
fatal, dry, and icy breeze, ever and anon burst forth in violent gusts.
With its harsh and cutting breath, it sweeps Montmartre's Heights. On the
highest point of the hills, a man is standing. His long shadow is cast
upon the stony, moon-lit ground. He gazes on the immense city, which lies
outspread beneath his feet. PARIS--with the dark outline of its towers,
cupolas, domes, and steeples, standing out from the limpid blue of the
horizon, while from the midst of the ocean of masonry, rises a luminous
vapor, that reddens the starry azure of the sky. It is the distant
reflection of the thousand fires, which at night, the hour of pleasures,
light up so joyously the noisy capital.

"No," said the wayfarer; "it is not to be. The Lord will not exact it. Is
not twice enough?

"Five centuries ago, the avenging hand of the Almighty drove me hither
from the uttermost confines of Asia. A solitary traveller, I had left
behind me more grief, despair, disaster, and death, than the innumerable
armies of a hundred devastating conquerors. I entered this town, and it
too was decimated.

"Again, two centuries ago, the inexorable hand, which leads me through
the world, brought me once more hither; and then, as the time before, the