A STORY OF THE PAST, THE PRESENT, AND THE FUTURE. BY THE REV. GEORGE CROLY, AUTHOR OF "LIFE AND TIMES OF GEORGE IV.," "APOCALYPSE OF ST. JOHN," ETC. COMPLETE IN ONE VOLUME. NEW YORK: WILLIAM H. COLYER, No. 5 HAGUE-STREET. THERE has appeared from time to time in Europe, during the last thousand years, a mysterious individual, a sojourner in all lands, yet a citizen of none; professing the profoundest, secrets of opulence, yet generally living in a state of poverty; astonishing every one by the vigour of his recollections, and the evidence of his close and living intercourse with the eminent characters and events of every age, yet connected with none-without lineage, or possession, or pursuit on earth-a wanderer, and unhappy. A number of histories have been invented for him; some purely fictitious, others founded on ill-understood records. Germany, the land of mysticism, where men labour to think all facts imaginary, and turn all imaginations into facts, has toiled most in this idle perversion of truth. Yet those narratives have been in general but a few pages, feebly founded on the single, fatal sentence of his punishment for an indignity offered to the Great Author of the Christian faith. That exile lives; that most afflicted of the people of affliction yet walks this earth; bearing the sorrows of eighteen centuries on his brow-withering in soul with remorse for the guilt of an hour of madness. He has long borne the scoff in silence; he has heard his princely rank degraded to that of a menial, and heard without a murmur; he has heard his unhappy offence charged to deliberate malice and cruelty, when it was but the misfortune of a zeal blinded and inflamed by the prejudices of his nation; and he has bowed to the calumny as a portion of his punishment. But the time of this forbearance is no more. He feels himself at last wearing away; and feels, with a sensation like that of returning to the common fates of mankind, a desire to stand clear with his fellow-men. In their presence he will never move again. To their justice or their mercy he will never again appeal. The wound of his soul rests, never again to be disclosed; until that day when all things shall be summoned and be known. In his final retreat he has collected these memorials. He has concealed nothing, he has dissembled nothing; the picture of his hopes and fears, his weakness and his sorrows, is stamped here with sacred sincerity. Other narratives may be more specious or eloquent; but this narrative has the supreme merit of truth; it is the most true-it is the only true. SALATHIEL. CHAPTER I. "TARRY THOU TILL I COME." The words shot through me-I felt them like an arrow in my heart-my brain whirled-my eyes grew dim. The troops, the priests, the populace, the world passed away from before my senses like phantoms. But my mind had a horrible clearness. As if the veil that separates the visible and invisible worlds had been rent in sunder, I saw shapes and signs for which mortal language has no name. The whole expanse of the future spread under my mental gaze in dreadful vision. A preternatural light, a new power of mind seemed to have been poured into my being. I saw at once the full guilt of my crime-the fierce folly-the mad ingratitude-the desperate profanation. I lived over again, in frightful distinctness, every act and instant of the night of my unspeakable sacrilege. I saw, as if written with a sunbeam, the countless injuries that in the rage of bigotry I had accumulated upon the victim; the bitter mockeries that I had devised; the cruel tauntings that my lips had taught the rabble; the pitiless malignity that had forbidden them to discover a trace of virtue where all virtue was. The blows of the scourge still sounded in my ears. Every drop of the innocent blood rose up in judgment before me. Accursed be the night in which I fell before the tempter! Blotted out from time and eternity be' the hour in which I took part with the torturers! Every fibre of my frame quivers, every drop of my blood curdles as I still hear the echo of the anathema that on the night of wo sprang first from my furious lips, the self-pronounced ruin, the words of desolation, "HIS BLOOD BE UPON US AND UPON OUR CHILDREN!" I had headed the multitude: where others shrank, I urged; where others pitied, I reviled and inflamed; I scoffed at the feeble malice of the priesthood; I scoffed at the tardy cruelty of the Roman; I swept away by menace and by scorn the human reluctance of the few who dreaded to dip their hands in blood. Thinking to do God service, and substituting my passions for my God, I threw firebrands on the hearts of a rash, jealous, and bigoted people. I triumphed ! In a deed which ought to have covered earth with lamentation, which was to make angels weep, which might have shaken the universe into dust, I triumphed! The decree was passed: but my phrensy was not so to be satiated. I loathed the light while the victim lived. Under the penalty of treason to Cæsar, I demanded instant execution of the sentence. "Not a day of life must be given," I exclaimed; “not an hour: death on the instant; death!" My clamour was echoed by the roar of millions. But in the moment of my exultation I was stricken. In the acclamation of the multitude came forth the command. He who had refused an hour of life to the victim was in terrible retribution condemned to know the misery of life interminable. I heard through all the voices of JerusalemI should have heard through all the thunders of heaven the calm, low voice, 'Tarry thou till I come!" "I felt my fate at once. I sprang away through the shouting hosts, as if the avenging angel waved his sword above my head. Wild songs, furious execrations, the rude uproar of myriads stirred to the heights of popular passion, filled the air; still, through all I heard the pursuing sentence, Tarry thou till I come," and felt it to be the sentence of incurable agony. I was never to know the shelter of the grave. |