But it's more than strange to me, because it is linked with my
past life. Still, I won't tell it from my point of view. I'll begin with
the Prefet's version.
The "Wandering Jew" really _is_ a Jew, of the best and most intellectual
type. His name is Paul Herter. His father was a man of Metz, who had
brought to German Lorraine a wife from Luneville. Paul is thirty-five
now, so you see he wasn't born when the Metz part of Lorraine became
German. His parents--French at heart--taught him secretly to love
France, and hate German domination. As he grew up, Paul's ambition was
to be a great surgeon. He wished to study, not in Germany, but in Paris
and London. These hopes, however, were of the "stuff that dreams are
made of," for when the father died, the boy had to work at anything he
could get for a bare livelihood. It wasn't till he was over twenty-five
that he'd scraped together money for the first step toward his career.
He went to Paris: studied and starved; then to London. It was there I
met him, but that bit of the story fits in later. He was thought well
of at "Bart's," and everybody who knew him was surprised when suddenly
he married one of the younger nurses, an English girl, and vanished with
her from London. Presently the pair appeared in Metz, at the mother's
house. Herter seemed sad and discouraged, uncertain of his future, and
just at this time, through German Lorraine ran rumours of war "to begin
when the harvests should be over.
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