"My name has not been without its distinction in the world for a
longer period than that of any other man alive," answered he. "Yet
many doubt of my existence; perhaps you will do so to-morrow. This
dart which I hold in my hand was once grim Death's own weapon. It
served him well for the space of four thousand years; but it fell
blunted, as you see, when he directed it against my breast."

These words were spoken with the calm and cold courtesy of manner
that had characterized this singular personage throughout our
interview. I fancied, it is true, that there was a bitterness
indefinably mingled with his tone, as of one cut off from natural
sympathies and blasted with a doom that had been inflicted on no
other human being, and by the results of which he had 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 under all this
corrupted or frozen mass of earthly life. Perhaps the immortal