And so it was. The "noble-minded benefactor" was Baron Sigismund Ronnicki, who had literally picked the "vagabond" out of the streets of Barnow, where he was wandering houseless and forlorn, and had taken him home to his castle at Z——. Wladislaus was given everything he wanted except—schnapps. And why was this, and this alone, denied him? "When he drinks schnapps," said Schmule, "he forgets everything that has happened. And I intend that he should remember. I will have my right."
But the "drunkard" was not to be long a source of satisfaction to the new lord of the castle. At midsummer, in the year following, a great feast was given by Schmule, in honor of his daughter's marriage to a Magyar noble. During the evening Wodnicki succeeded in getting some schnapps. He drank freely, and then staggered out of doors, and down the drive in which he had met the Jewish boy fifty years before.
He never returned to the castle.
Next morning he was found lying dead under the steep wall of rock that bounded one side of the drive. Whether he had fallen over the precipice in his drunken blindness, or had thrown himself over, no one ever knew.
This is one of the many strange stories that take place on this earth of ours.
THE PICTURE OF CHRIST.
(1868.)
... How distinctly I can see the little town even now, with its narrow, tortuous, and gloomy streets, its ruined castle on the top of the hill, and its stately monastery near the river! It is to this last that I wish to draw the reader's attention. The Dominican monastery is a huge pile of buildings surrounded by a wall in which one can still see the traces of the old Tartar attacks of long ago. Within the wall is a confused mass of chapels and dwelling-houses, separated from each other by damp, moss-grown courtyards, or by sparsely covered grass-plots. I often went there in my boyhood, and used to like playing among the graves in the little churchyard. I also delighted in listening to the echo of my footsteps in the great empty refectory; but I liked best of all to go to the "Abbot's Chapel," a small Byzantine building which was known by that name, and look up at a picture that had been hung there a short time before. It had been painted by the proud and beautiful Gräfin Jadwiga Bortynska, lady of the manor of Barnow. It was a wonderful picture—breathing love and peace. Christ was represented standing on vaporous clouds, His hands stretched out in blessing over the earth. The pale face, which was, as it were, framed in black curls, had an expression of divine love and sublime goodness—perfect man and perfect God.
But I did not think of that when I first saw the picture, for I was then only a thoughtless boy of twelve years old. It was on a bright, warm autumn day that I saw it first. An hour after it was hung up in its place, little Wladik, the sexton's son, showed it to me. The sunshine was falling full upon it at the time, and I almost started as I saw the life-like figure in its dark frame.