"Because I breathed? Ah, the breath of the deity can swell more than a human breast, sister, and you will hear it! Collect your thoughts--and pray!"
His whisper grew fainter, the silence about her more solemn. "I cannot pray; I never have prayed," she lamented, "and surely not to lifeless wood."
"Only try--for my sake," he urged gently, as if addressing a restless child, which ought to go to sleep and will not.
"Yes; but stay with me," she pleaded like a child, clinging to his arm.
"I will stay," he said, kneeling by her side.
"Teach me to pray as you do," she entreated, raising her delicate hands to him. He clasped them in his, and she felt as if the world could do her no further harm, that her soul, her life, lay in his firm hands.
The warmth emanating from him became in her a devout fervor. The pulses of ardent piety throbbing in his finger-tips seemed to communicate a wave-like motion to the surrounding air, which imparted to everything which hitherto had been dead and rigid, an undulating movement that lent it a faint, vibrating life.
Something stirred, breathed, murmured before and above her. There was a rustling among the withered leaves of the garlands at the foot of the Pieta, invisible feet glided through the church and ascended the steps of the high altar; high up the vaulted dome rose a murmur which wandered to the folds of the funeral banner, hanging above, passing from pillar to pillar, from arch to arch, in ghostly echoes which the listening ear heard with secret terror, the language of the silence. And the burning eyes beheld the motionless forms begin to stir. The contours of the figures slowly changed in the uncertain, flickering light, the shadows glided and swung to and fro. The Saviour's lips opened, then slowly closed, the kneeling woman touched the rigid limbs and laid her fevered fingers on the wounded breast. The other hand rested in Freyer's. A chain was thus formed between the three, which thrilled and warmed the wood with the circulating stream of the hot blood. It was no longer a foreign substance--it was the heart, the poor pierced heart of their beloved, divine friend. It throbbed, suffered, bled. More and more distinctly the chest rose and fell with the regular breathing. It was the creative breath of the deity, which works in the conscious and unconscious object, animating even soulless matter. The arm supported by Mary Magdalene swayed to and fro, the fingers of the hand moved gently. The poor pierced hand--it seemed as if it were trying to move toward the countess, as if it were pleading, "Cool my pain."
Urged by an inexplicable impulse, the countess warmed the stiff, slender fingers in her own. She fancied that it was giving relief. Higher and higher swelled the tide of feeling in her heart until it overflowed--and--she knew not how, she had risen and pressed a kiss upon the wounds in the poor little hand, a kiss of the sweetest, most sacred piety. She felt as if she were standing by a beloved corpse whose mute lips we seek, though they no longer feel.
She could not help it, and bending down again the rosy lips of the young widow rested on the pale half-parted ones of the statue. But the lips breathed, a cool, pure breath issued from them, and the rigid form grew more pliant beneath the sorrowful caress, as though it felt the reconciling pain of the penitent human soul. But the divine fire which was to purify this soul, blazed far beyond its boundaries in this first ardor. Overpowered by a wild fervor, she flung herself on her knees and adjured the God whose breath she had drunk in that kiss, to hear her. The friend praying at her side was forgotten, the world had vanished, every law of reason was annihilated, all knowledge was out of her mind--every hard-won conquest of human empiricism was effaced. From the heights and from the depths it came with rustling pinions, bearing the soul away on the flood-tide of mercy. The miracle was approaching--in unimagined majesty.