“I beseech you, kind sir,” said he, in a cracked, melancholy tone, “have pity on the most unfortunate man in the world. For Heaven’s sake, answer me a single question! Is this the town of Boston?” “You have recognized him now,” said the virtuoso. “It is Peter Rugg, the missing man. I chanced to meet him the other day still in search of Boston, and conducted him hither; and, as he could not succeed in finding his friends, I have taken him into my service as doorkeeper. He is somewhat too apt to ramble, but otherwise a man of trust and integrity.” “And might I venture to ask,” continued I, “to whom am I indebted for this afternoon’s gratification?” The virtuoso, before replying, laid his hand upon an antique dart, or javelin, the rusty steel head of winch seemed to have been blunted, as if it had encountered the resistance of a tempered shield, or breastplate. “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 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.”