When daybreak came fully over the roofs of the city, it found him senseless, sightless, dying in a garret: the only freedom that he had reached was the delirious liberty of the brain, which, in its madness, casts aside all bonds of time and place and memory and reason.
All the day she watched beside him there, amidst the brazen clangor of the bells and scream of the rough winds above the roofs.
In the gloom of the place, the burning color of the great canvas of Jerusalem glowed in its wondrous pomp and power against all the gray, cold poverty of the wretched place. And the wanton laughed with her lover on the housetop; and the thief clutched the rolling gold; and the children lapped the purple stream of the wasted wine; and the throngs flocked after the thief, whom they had elected for their god; and ever and again a stray, flickering ray of light flashed from the gloom of the desolate chamber, and struck upon it till it glowed like flame;—this mighty parable, whereby the choice of the people was symbolized for all time; the choice eternal, which never changes, but forever turns from all diviner life to grovel in the dust before the Beast.
The magnificence of thought, the glory of imagination, the radiance of color which the canvas held, served only to make more naked, more barren, more hideous the absolute desolation which reigned around. Not one grace, not one charm, not one consolation, had been left to the life of the man who had sacrificed all things to the inexorable tyranny of his genius. Destitution, in its ghastliest and most bitter meaning, was alone his recompense and portion. Save a few of the tools and pigments of his art, and a little opium in a broken glass, there was nothing there to stand between him and utter famine.
When her eyes had first dwelt upon him lying senseless under the gaze of the gods, he had not been more absolutely destitute than he was now. The hard sharp outlines of his fleshless limbs, the sunken temples, the hollow cheeks, the heavy respiration which spoke each breath a pang,—all these told their story with an eloquence more cruel than lies in any words.
He had dared to scourge the world without gold in his hand wherewith to bribe it to bear his stripes; and the world had been stronger than he, and had taken its vengeance, and had cast him here powerless.
All the day through she watched beside him—watched the dull mute suffering of stupor, which was only broken by fierce unconscious words muttered in the unknown tongue of his birth-country. She could give him no aid, no food, no succor; she was the slave of the poorest of the poor; she had not upon her even so much as a copper piece to buy a crust of bread, a stoup of wine, a little cluster of autumn fruit to cool her burning lips. She had nothing,—she, who in the world of men had dared to be strong, and to shut her lips, and to keep her hands clean, and her feet straight; she, whose soul had been closed against the Red Mouse.
If she had gone down among the dancing throngs, and rioted with them, and feasted with them, and lived vilely, they would have hung her breast with gems, and paved her path with gold. That she knew; and she could have saved him.
Where she kneeled beside his bed she drew his hands against her heart,—timidly, lest consciousness should come to him and he should curse her and drive her thence—and laid her lips on them, and bathed them in the scorching dew of her hot tears, and prayed him to pardon her if it had been weakness in her,—if it had been feebleness and self-pity thus to shrink from any abasement, any vileness, any martyrdom, if such could have done him service.
She did not know; she felt astray and blind and full of guilt. It might be—so she thought—that it was thus the gods had tested her; thus they had bade her suffer shame to give him glory; thus they had tried her strength,—and found her wanting.