fresh, pure water, than, still kneeling, supported on her hands, she
suddenly ceases to drink, and gazes eagerly on the limpid stream.
Forgetting the thirst which devours her, she utters a loud cry--a cry of
deep, earnest, religious joy, like a note of praise and infinite
gratitude to heaven. In that deep mirror, she perceives that she has
grown older.

In a few days, a few hours, a few minutes, perhaps in a single second,
she has attained the maturity of age. She, who for more than eighteen
centuries has been as a woman of twenty, carrying through successive
generations the load of her imperishable youth--she has grown old, and
may, perhaps, at length, hope to die. Every minute of her life may now
bring her nearer to the last home! Transported by that ineffable hope,
she rises, and lifts her eyes to heaven, clasping her hands in an
attitude of fervent prayer. Then her eyes rest on the tall statue of
stone, representing St. John. The head, which the martyr carries in his
hand, seems, from beneath its half-closed granite eyelid, to cast upon
the Wandering Jewess a glance of commiseration and pity. And it was she,
Herodias who, in the cruel intoxication of a pagan festival, demanded the
murder of the saint! And it is at the foot of the martyr's image, that,
for the first time, the immortality, which weighed on her for so many
centuries, seems likely to find a term!

"Oh, impenetrable mystery! oh, divine hope!" she cries. "The wrath of
heaven is at length appeased. The hand of the Lord brings me to the feet
of the blessed martyr, and I begin once more to feel myself a human
creature. And yet it was to avenge his death, that the same heaven
condemned me to eternal wanderings!

"Oh, Lord! grant that I may not be the only one forgiven. May he--the