"Year after year your memory shall grow as a legend of the beautiful."
These words now became the inspiration of his masterpiece. Day and night it took shape in the rolling chaos of his sorrow. What sculptor in the world ever espoused the execution of a work that lured more irresistibly from their hiding-places the shy and tender ministers of his genius? What one ever explored with greater boldness the utmost limits of artistic expression, or wrought in sterner defiance of the laws of our common forgetfulness?
III.
One afternoon, when people thronged the great cemetery of the city, a strolling group were held fascinated by the unique loveliness of a newly erected monument.
"Never," they exclaimed, "have we seen so exquisite a masterpiece. In whose honor is it erected?"
But when they drew nearer, they found carved on it simply a woman's name.
"Who was she?" they asked, puzzled and disappointed. "Is there no epitaph?"
"Aye," spoke up a young man lying on the grass and eagerly watching the spectators. "Aye, a very fitting epitaph."
"Where is it?"
"Carved on the heart of the monument!" he cried, in a tone of triumph.