"Ay, truly."
"Didst say to him that I prayed his presence, or, at least, that he should explain himself? That I was in deepest sorrow, and Mina sick unto death?"
"Yea, truly, my master."
"And what response made he?"
"That he, too, was grieved; but that his word was pledged, and that until his marriage he might not leave the castle of the countess. The soft remembrances of youth, he added, mar not, among wise men, the projects of a riper age."
"'Tis well, Johann, and I thank thee," replied the sculptor. "I now know what I wished to know, and resolution is taken."
Then he rose from his arm-chair threw a gloomy glance around the wall of the studio.
"I return hither no more," murmured. "Here have I toiled thirty years with upright heart and pure hands. Nothing that I have here completed has been sullied or profaned. I feared and served God; I honored and I loved man. I then had a right to give purity to my virgins, the light of faith to my martyrs, the halo of love to my cherubims. But now all is lost—faith, renown, and child. Holy images! I cannot touch ye with bruised heart and violent hands; hating and cursing men, I may not mould the august form of the God of love. Therefore, no more will I appear in this retreat; its windows shall remain darkened, its door closed. I will carry with me only my grief, my memories, and this," he cried, seizing a sculptor's chisel with a short, polished, and keen blade, upon which he gazed with his strange look, as he gripped it with feverish strength in his hand.
"Speak not so. O my master! clasp not that steel so tightly," cried Johann. "That will bring thee little of consolation or hope. Look for solace for thy sorrows to this," he said, holding an ivory crucifix before his master's eyes. "It was pressed to Mina's dying lips; she hath bequeathed it to us. Recallest thou not, my master, her smile as she gazed upon it? 'Twas because beneath the shadow of the cross even death seems sweet. There is the only refuge, and there will I find shelter. The world hath had but little of joy for me, and I but little of love for the world. The prior of the Augustines hath promised me a cell, and I will be happy, there to pass my life, praying or working beneath the poor robe of a monk, and preserving the memory and crucifix of Mina."