Then Freyer, conquering his agitation, raised his head. "What more beautiful fate could be mine, Countess, than to die on the cross, like my redeemer? It is all that I desire."
"All?" she repeated, and a keen emotion of jealousy assailed her, jealousy of the cross, to which he would fain devote his life! She met his dark eyes with a look, a sweet, yearning--fatal look--a poisoned arrow whose effect she well knew. She grudged him to the cross, the dead, wooden instrument of martyrdom, which did not feel, did not love, did not long for him as she did! And the true Christ? Ah, He was too noble to demand such a sacrifice--besides. He would receive too souls for one, for surely, in His image, she loved Him. He had sent her the hand marked with blood stains to show her the path to Him--He could not desire to withdraw it, ere the road was traversed.
"You are a martyr in the true sense of the word," she said. Her eyes seemed to ask whether the shaft had struck. But Freyer had lowered his lids and sat gazing at the floor.
"Oh, Countess," he said evasively, "to have one's limbs wrenched for half an hour does not make a martyr. That suffering brings honor and the consciousness of serving others. Many, like my friend Ludwig, and other natives of Ammergau, offer to our cause secret sacrifices of happiness which no audience beholds and applauds, and which win no renown save in their own eyes and God's. They are martyrs, Countess!--I am merely a vain, spoiled, sinful man, who has enough to do to keep himself from being dazzled by the applause of the world and to become worthy of his task."
"To become!" the countess repeated. "I think whoever speaks in that way, is worthy already."
Freyer raised his eyes with a look which seemed to Madeleine von Wildenau to lift her into a higher realm. "Who would venture to say that he was worthy of this task? It requires a saint. All I can hope for is that God will use the imperfect tool to work His miracles, and that He will accept my will for the deed,--otherwise I should be forced to give up the part this very day."
The countess was deeply moved.
"Oh, Freyer, wonderful, divinely gifted nature! To us you are the Redeemer, and yet you are so severe to yourself."
"Do not talk so, Countess! I must not listen! I will not add to all my sins that of robbing my Master, in His garb, of what belongs to Him alone. You cannot suspect how it troubles me when people show me this reverence; I always long to cry out, 'Do not confound me with Him--I am nothing more than the wood--or the marble from which an image of the Christ is carved, and withal bad wood, marble which is not free from stains.' And when they will not believe it, and continue to transfer to me the love which they ought to have for Christ--I feel that I am robbing my Master, and no one knows how I suffer." He started up. "That is why I mingle so little with others--and if I ever break this rule I repent it, for my peace of mind is destroyed."
He took his hat. His whole nature seemed changed--this was the chaste severity with which he had driven the money changers from the temple, and Madeleine turned pale--chilled to the inmost heart by his inflexible bearing.