"Oh, Lord God! have mercy on my sins!" he groaned, seized with sudden horror at the thought that he must depart without the last sacraments and with a curse on his lips. He felt that death had laid its icy hand on his heart; it was too late, his lips tried to stammer some words, but his jaws were clenched in a convulsion. Thus he gave up his cold and stubborn spirit, without consolation, without atonement, hoping for no mercy, for he had shown none; yet he had been true to himself and the Church, true even unto death.
But Donatus, crushed and banned, knelt by the corpse and prayed for mercy on the hapless erring soul. Would God hearken still to the prayer of the accursed? Could it reach the Throne of God? He bowed his forehead to the dust, and gave the cold stones a farewell kiss. Then he rose, and made his way back to the door where the boy was to wait.
"Boy, where are you?" he called out. No answer, the boy was gone. He had heard Correntian's curse, and had fled; the blind man was abandoned wholly.
Where should he go? The Church had disowned him, the earth cast him out. "Lord, hast Thou not a drop of mercy left for me out of Thine inexhaustible fount of grace? Did I not obey Thy will in so far as I understood it? I gave the light of my eyes to escape love; the staff that was the prop of my darkened life I broke and cast from me, and all my sacrifices have turned to curses and my obedience to fatal ends. I may well say with Job, 'My face is foul with weeping, and on my eyelids is the shadow of death. Not for any injustice in mine hands, also my prayer is pure.' Oh, Lord my God! if Thou didst see me in the hour when I drove away the girl, that pure and faithful child, Thou must know whether I then did not expiate my sins, and deserve Thy mercy or not. Yea, I will flee from all the ties of life, I will die alone like the chamois that hides itself in the glacier when its end is nigh; I will efface the trace of my steps on earth that fatality may no longer pursue me. Oh, God, my God! will the measure of my sorrows never be full?"
So he stood, his arms uplifted, a dumb image of suffering--like a tree stricken by a storm.
A few stars peeped out from time to time between the driving clouds; the abyss lay in slumberous silence at his feet, and the night-breeze snatched pitilessly at the ragged garments that scarcely sufficed to cover him. The empty windows of the ruined stronghold of faith stared at him like hollow eye-sockets, in dumb reproach. No cry from Heaven above or the earth beneath responded to his lament, no pitying hand clasped his to lead him to his last bourne; he sank down on a stone, and hid his head in his hands. "O! God, my God, why hast Thou forsaken me?"
CHAPTER VIII.
High, high up where no blade of corn can grow, in the glacier desert of the Ortler chain, the solitary penitent lived on the extremest verge where it was possible for flesh and blood to live and breathe--fulfilling literally Correntian's curse. Below lay the unfathomable depth of the valley of Trafoy between its deeply cleft walls, like an open grave. The glacier torrents roared down through fissures and crevices, feeding the three Holy Wells in the gorge below; the rock crumbled away beneath the volume of the mighty waters, and wide floods devastated the land.
A strange herd-boy had led him up whom he had met with that night at Marienberg, and who had taken pity on him for God's sake. It was a difficult task to guide the blind man up to these heights, but guardian spirits were with him and upheld him, or he would have slipped from the boy's weak hand a hundred times and down the steep and slippery path.
It is only from those who love life that God requires it; the wretch to whom death would be release may not die!