"I don't see why you should be so lazy, turning night into day. Tramp on, and sleep off your drunkenness somewhere else! I want no miracles--and no Wiesherrle in my house."
"I'll pay for everything," said Freyer humbly, almost beseechingly, holding out his little stock of ready money, for he was overpowered with hunger and thirst.
"What do I care for your pennies!" growled the tavern keeper angrily, closing the door.
There stood the hapless man, in whom the girl's soul had recognized with awe the martyred Christ, but whom the rude peasant turned from his door as a vagrant--hungry and thirsty, worn almost unto death, and with a walk of five hours before him. He took his hat and his staff, hung his dry coat over his shoulder, and left the barn.
As he went out he heard the last notes of the vesper-bell, and felt a yearning to go to Him for whom he had been mistaken, it seemed as if He were calling in the echoing bells: "Come to me, I have comfort for you." He struck into the forest path that led to the Wiesherrle. The white walls of the church soon appeared and he stepped within, where the showy, antiquated style of the last century mingled with the crude notions of the mountaineers for and by whom it was built.
Skulls, skeletons of saints, chubby-cheeked cupids, cruel martyrdoms, and Arcadian shepherdesses, nude penitents and fiends dragging them down into the depths, lambs of heaven and dogs of hell were all in motley confusion! Above the chaotic medley arched on fantastic columns the huge dome with a gate of heaven painted in perspective, which, according to the beholder's standpoint rose or sank, was foreshortened or the opposite.
A wreath of lucernes beautifully ornamented, through which the blue sky peeped and swallows building their nests flew in and out, formed as it were the jewel in the architecture of the cornice. Even the eye of God was not lacking, a tarnished bit of mirror inserted above the pulpit in the centre of golden rays, and intended to flash when the sun shone on it.
And there in a glass shrine directly beneath all the tinsel rubbish, on the gilded carving of the high altar, the poor, plain little Wiesherrle hung in chains. The two, the wooden image of God, and the one of flesh and blood, confronted each other--the Christ of the Ammergau Play greeted the Christ of the Wies. It is true, they did resemble each other, like suffering and pain. Freyer knelt long before the Wiesherrle and what they confided to each other was heard only by the God in whose service and by whose power they wrought miracles--each in his own way.
"You are happy," said the Wiesherrle. "Happier than I! Human hands created and faith animated me; where that is lacking, I am a mere dead wooden puppet, only fit to be flung into the fire. But you were created by God, you live and breathe, can move and act--and highest of all--suffer like Him whom we represent. I envy you!"
"Yes!" cried Freyer; "You are right; to suffer like Christ is highest of all! My God, I thank Thee that I suffer."