THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 525 



the season were exchanged, and the charitable donations were 

 placed in a bag, which was emptied into a sleigh that followed 

 the serenaders. In begging for the poor, request was always made 

 for a chine of pork with the tail attached, called Vechignee, or la 

 chigne. In high good humor, heralded by barking dogs and 

 shouting children, the whole party started for the next house. 



Tradition constitutes the archives of a people, the treasures of 

 their faiths and beliefs, the landmarks of their past history. The 

 people's superstitions are, in truth, the people's poetry crude, 

 grotesque, but surely most pathetic efforts to find shape and sub- 

 stance for images cast by their own innate emotions, fears, and 

 aspirations. These blind searchings after truths that lie beyond 

 the confines of the senses, and outside the domain of logic, possess 

 a deep significance from a human as well as from a literary point 

 of view. These strivings are themselves phenomena to be taken 

 into accoun't before we can solve the problem of life. 



THE WANDERING JEW AT THE SALPETRIERE. 



BY M. HENRI COUP1N. 



is always something of truth in even the most con- 

 fused legends. Such is the case, for example, with the wide- 

 spread legend of the Wandering Jew, which seems at first sight 

 to have been wholly invented, but which can in reality be ex- 

 plained by examples originating in neuropathy. A very curious 

 essay on this subject has been recently published by Dr. Henry 

 Meige, from which we cite a few of the facts. 



The beginning of the story of the eternal traveler Cartophilus, 

 Ahasuerus (Fig. 1), or Isaac Laquedem according to the country 

 in which it is told is familiar. By the account of Matthew Paris, 

 Cartophilus was the bearer of Pontius Pilate's pretorium. When 

 Jesus Christ was passing through the gate, he struck him with 

 his hand, and said : " Go on, Jesus, go faster ; what are you stop- 

 ping for ? " Jesus, turning to him, replied, " I am going, but you 

 shall tarry till I come again, and shall be always wandering." Ac- 

 cording to another version, Ahasuerus is a large man, with flow- 

 ing hair, a Jew in nationality, a shoemaker by trade, " who was 

 present at the death of Jesus Christ, and has continued in life 

 ever since." Historians agree, whichever version is taken, in 

 representing the Wandering Jew as marching hither and thither, 

 visiting cities hastily, appearing now in Hamburg, now in Mos- 

 cow, now in Paris, etc., but always with the same aspect. . Paint- 

 ers are no less agreed in representing the portraits after a single 

 model ; whether executed at Bautzen or at Epinal, in 1600 (Fig. 2) 



