"Farewell! May you be as happy, my noble friend, as you deserve, and leave to me my poverty and my wealth. You see that the phantom has become reality--the ideal is attained.
"Your old friend
"Magdalena Freyer."
When the duke received this letter his valet saw him, for the first time in his life, weep bitterly.
[CONCLUSION.]
FROM ILLUSION TO TRUTH.
For ten years God granted the loving wife her husband's life, it seemed as if he had entirely recovered. At last the day came when He required it again. For the third time the community offered Freyer the part of the Christus. He was still a handsome man, and spite of his forty-eight years, as slender as a youth, while his spiritual expression, chaste and lofty--rendered him more than ever an ideal representative of Christ God bestowed upon him the full cup of the perfection of his destiny, and it was completed as he had longed. Not on a sick-bed succumbing to lingering disease--but high on the cross, as victor over pain and death. God had granted him the grace of at last completing the task--he had held out this time until the final performance--then, when they took him down from the cross for the last time under the falling leaves, amid the first snow of the late autumn--he did not wake again. On the cross the noble heart had ceased to beat, he had entered into the peace of Him Whom he personated--passed from illusion to truth--from the copy to the prototype.
Never did mortal die a happier death, never did a more beautiful smile of contentment rest upon the face of a corpse.
"It is finished! You have done in your way what your model did in His, you have sealed the sacred lesson of love by your death, my husband!" said the pallid woman who pressed the last kiss upon his lips.
The semblance had become reality, and Mary Magdalene was weeping beside her Redeemer's corpse.