He pushed my hair back from my forehead, and placing his hand on my head in blessing, added:
"Good-by, my child! good-by! and ... may you be happier than your teacher!"
The last words were said so low that I could scarcely hear them.
One beautiful bright spring morning his attendant found him dead, with a smile upon his lips.
Gräfin Jadwiga is still alive, and is still a beautiful woman. Who can tell whether she is happy, or whether, at the bottom of her heart, there is not a sad remembrance of the man whom she had really loved after her own fashion?
She painted the picture of Christ—that strange product of religious enthusiasm and human love—in Switzerland during the summer that succeeded David Blum's death. The art she had once followed as an amusement now, perhaps, brought her comfort; and the picture also showed that she had understood the nobility and greatness of the self-sacrifice made by the Jew for her sake and his own.
This is the story of the picture of Christ at Barnow. It is strange and sad, as I said before; but do not blame me for that, for my heart bleeds when I remember this over-true tale, which must be regarded as one of the dark riddles of life, and as the doing of that eternal, inscrutable Power that deals out darkness or light, happiness or misery, to the weak human heart....