Nello rose to his feet and stretched his arms to them: the tears of a passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face.
"I have seen them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"
His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so long—light, clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the throne of Heaven.
Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great darkness covered the face of Christ.
The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog.
"We shall see His face—there," he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think; He will have mercy."
On the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp found them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozen into stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas morning broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying thus on the stones together. Above, the veils were drawn back from the great visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the thorn-crowned head of the God.
As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man, who wept as women weep.
"I was cruel to the lad," he muttered, "and now I would have made amends—yea, to the half of my substance—and he should have been to me as a son."
There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit.