Amidst heaps of dry chips a carpenter had lit a pipe. The builder was just then inspecting the yard. He perceived the bluish little cloud of smoke in the air at once. The blood rushed to his head. He threatened the man with his fists. The carpenter, awestruck, knocked his pipe out and stamped on the burning tobacco. Next to him, a journeyman began to split a fine big oak beam; in his fright, he deviated from the right angle.
Old Ulwing’s face became dark red with anger. He pushed the man aside and snatched the axe out of his hand.
“Look here!” he shouted in a voice that made all the men surrounding him stop work. Then, like a captive bird of steel, with a swing the axe rose in his grip. The chips flew. The oak recognised its master and split at his powerful will.
Christopher Ulwing forgot everything. His chest panted and inhaled the savour of the oak. The inherited ancestral instincts and movements revived; though displaced for a long time by strenuous intellectual work and rendered superfluous by long prosperity, the gigantic strength of his youth awoke again. There was nothing in the whole world but the timber of the oak and himself. For a moment the men got a glimpse of the great carpenter whose former strength was the subject of endless and ever increasing tales, told by the old masters of the craft to the younger generation.
They saw him for one moment, then something happened. The raised axe fell out of his powerful hand and dropped helplessly through the air. It fell to the ground. The builder grasped his forehead as if it had been struck by the axe and he began to sway slowly, terribly, like an old tower whose foundation gives way. Nobody dared touch him. Meanwhile the workmen stared in amazement.
Füger was the first to regain his presence of mind. He tendered his shoulder to his chief.
John Hubert ran as pale as death across the yard.
Supported by two powerful journeymen carpenters the master builder staggered along. His bent arms were round the men’s necks. His elbows were higher than his shoulders. The face of the old man looked sallow and masklike between the youthful faces of the men, crimson with their effort.
“Not there,” he said scarcely audibly when they tried to drag him to his bed in his room. He pointed with his chin to the window. They pushed an armchair in front of it.
Soon the shrivelled face of Gárdos, the proto-medicus, appeared in the door. When he left the room, he made the gesture of respectful submission which is only known to priests and physicians. Priests make it at the altar, in the presence of God, physicians when they face death.