CHAP. VIII.
Why then unbidden gush'd the tear?
.............
Then would cold shudderings seize his brain,
As gasping he labour'd for breath;
The strange gaze of his meteor eye,
Which, frenzied, and rolling dreadfully,
Glar'd with hideous gleam,
Would chill like the spectre gaze of Death,
As, conjur'd by feverish dream.
He seems o'er the sick man's couch to stand,
And shakes the fell lance in his skeleton hand.
Wandering Jew.[1]
Yes;—they fled from Genoa; they had eluded pursuit and justice, but could not escape the torments of an outraged and avenging conscience, which, with stings the most acute, pursued them whithersoever they might go. Fortune even seemed to favour them; for fortune will, sometimes, in this world, appear to side with the wicked. Wolfstein had received notice, that an uncle, possessed of immense wealth, had died in Bohemia, and bequeathed to him the whole of his estate. Thither then, with Megalena, went Wolfstein. Their journey produced no
- ↑ For an account of The Wandering Jew, see my edition of Shelley's Poetical Works, vol. iv, pp. 317, 318.
