the happy of this world have
said to the toiling people what I said to the imploring and suffering
Saviour: 'Go on! go on!' And the people, sinking with fatigue, bearing
their heavy cross, have answered in the bitterness of their grief: 'Oh,
for pity's sake! a few moments of repose; we are worn out with toil.'--Go
on!'--'And if we perish in our pain, what will become of our little
children and our aged mothers?'--'Go on! go on!' And, for eighteen
centuries, they and I have continued to struggle forward and to suffer,
and no charitable voice has yet pronounced the word 'Enough!'

"Alas! such is my punishment. It is immense, it is two-fold. I suffer in
the name of humanity, when I see these wretched multitudes consigned
without respite to profitless and oppressive toil. I suffer in the name
of my family, when, poor and wandering, I am unable to bring aid to the
descendants of my dear sister. But, when the sorrow is above my strength,
when I foresee some danger from which I cannot preserve my own, then my
thoughts, travelling over the world, go in search of that woman like me
accursed, that daughter of a queen, who, like me, the son of a laborer,
wanders, and will wander on, till the day of her redemption.[3]

"Once in a century, as two planets draw nigh to each other in their
revolutions, I am permitted to meet this woman during the dread week of
the Passion. And after this interview, filled with terrible remembrances
and boundless griefs, wandering stars of eternity, we pursue our infinite
course.

"And this woman, the only one upon earth who, like me, sees the end of
every century, and exclaims: 'What another?' this woman responds to my
thought, from the furthest extremity of the world. She, who alone shares
my terrible destiny, has chosen to share also the only interest that has
consoled me for so many ages. Those descendants of my dear sister, she
too loves, she too protects them. For them she journeys likewise from
East to West and from North to South.

"But alas! the invisible hand impels her, the whirlwind carries her away,
and the voice speaks in her ear: 'Go on!'--'Oh that I might finish my
sentence!' repeats she also,--'Go on!'--'A single hour--only a single hour
of repose!'--Go on!'--'I leave those I love on the brink of the
abyss.'--'Go on! Go on!--'"

Whilst this man thus went over the hill absorbed in his thoughts, the
light evening breeze increased almost to a gale, a vivid flash streamed
across the s