So the Minster grew—grew as human works do grow, by patient mechanical toil of brain and hand elaborating the original inspiration, by accurate measurement, by rigid faithfulness to law, by lowly learning from God's work, by patient study of man's needs. Curve by curve, line by line, stone on stone, till the vision of the poet's heart grew into a vision of beauty for the refreshment of the hearts of all men.
But the Architect did not live, on earth, to see his thought grow into sight.
On a pallet, in a cell of the monastery, he lay, smitten with fever.
And while the thought of his brain was growing into solid stone on the sunny earth outside his cell, the solid earth itself was passing away, like a dream, from him.
It was Easter Eve. In the deepest dusk before the dawn, in the silence of his cell, a stirring and shadowing of something unholy seemed to darken and disturb the air.
Unloving voices answered each other in hoarse whispers, like a hot, dry wind through the crisp and shrivelled sedges of a dried-up watercourse.
"Ha!" laughed the voices; "he thinks he has been working for immortality. But we know better. A century hence, not a creature will remember his name, any more than they remember or care who planted the first tree in the forests around the city.
"He dreams of the gratitude of men; and centuries after he has mouldered into dust, the generations of the dust-born will be gazing up with stupid wonder at the thing he built, and pouring out their prayers and praises to the stone roof which rises above his dust and theirs, fancying their words pierce through, instead of falling back like the echoes. But we know better.
"Among all the names glorified there, no mention will be made of his. He fancies his name is written in stone, and in men's hearts. It is written in dust, and in men's breath. 'Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher, all is Vanity.'"