Volume 5 — Chapter X.

Solitude was the cradle of creation; solitude is the never-ceasing fountain wherein exhausted souls are refreshed. Not without an object did the prophets begin their mission in the desert. Who would leave after him an immortal name must retire from the haunts of men, and in solitude examine his soul ere he speaks to mankind from the rostrum, or with the pen, the chisel, or the pencil. When the busy hum of the world has faded away into silence, when he hears no voice but that of his heart within, and nature without, and God above, he will then feel the flame which brings immortality. The voice he hears will be that of truth; the hand which stretches toward him that of justice; and all the strength of the one and the charms of the other will glow in his work.

Master Sebald's dungeon was the most real, the most complete of solitudes. Thick walls of gray granite, upon which shone green and slimy traces of the dampness that filled the air, formed a circle around him without an angle, a recess, an irregularity on which the weary eye might rest. A plank and a truss of straw were his bed; a block of stone was his only seat; there was no door, for such was old Sebald's wish. Light alone—sweet light—was not denied the captive, but flowed abundant and golden through a large opening in the vaulted roof. But by day only was the boon granted, and then it bore with it no sight of that world where men dwelt, no view of the sunlit waters, the green fields, or the feathered children of the air. Nothing of these could he enjoy; nothing but that flood of day flowing from the open heaven upon the criminal's brow, like the gaze of Eternal Love, ever open to hearts that yearn for it; and nevertheless, when Master Sebald thus found himself immured in a living tomb, when nothing of earth remained to him save stone walls, his modelling clay, and his chisel, then inspiration of a greater power than it had ever before felt filled his soul, and in that inspiration and in his work he would have found joyful companions; he would have been happy, were it not that two dark and vengeful guests found lodgment in his breast, sorrow and remorse.

His remorse was for his crime, his sorrow for his child. They wore deeper the furrows in his brow; they made his hair whiter, his step more feeble and uncertain; they sunk his eyes deeper in their sockets. They tortured him in his weary watchings; they gave form to his dreams and broke and almost banished slumber; they stood before him when he worked or prayed—his former hate and his former love; his victim and his child. The golden hair of his Mina glittered in wild waves before his eyes; he saw the manly face of Otho pale and contracted with agony, while the gushing blood poured from his wound; he closed his eyes, but still their forms stood before him, both beckoning to the threshold of that world where eternity begins.

The old master commenced his work, ever surrounded by these sad companions. Ever hearing the last murmurs of Otho, the last sighs of Mina, he carved the holy cross and the summit of Calvary; then the shameful scroll; then the sacred form. Ever haunted by his visions of the dead, he knew better to give to the divine Crucified the writhing of living agony joined to the beginning rigidity of death; he remembered the last quivering of human strength and the mysterious folds of the winding-sheet. It was only when he came to carve the face of Christ that imagination and memory ceased to furnish him a model. Mina's passionate grief and pious resignation; the mingled humiliation, repentance, grief, and rage of the murdered Otho could give naught to be reproduced in the countenance of a God. He must seek his model elsewhere; and Master Sebald had not asked for his mirror in vain.

Standing erect before his work, he began to chisel the face of Christ; and for the first time since his prison walls closed upon him he gazed upon his own reflection. The long gaze upon his white head and his grief-worn features satisfied him.

His own face was a book, a book of sorrows speaking most eloquently, wherein all bitterness, all failings, all regrets, and all terrors, the dreams of the artist, the humiliation of the master, the friend betrayed, the sufferings, of the father, the anguish of the condemned, had inscribed their memories and left their foot-prints. The agony of Master Sebald was already long, and had been cruel and stormy. Ah! the remembrances of Otho's treachery were as the wounds in the hands and feet; the brand of dishonor upon his brow was as the crown of thorns; and the last wound, the stab of the lance, was the loss of Mina. So, that after long contemplating his own features, the old sculptor knelt humbly before the work he had begun.

"Pardon, O Christ!" he said, "if I, a weak mortal, an unworthy and sinful man, dare, in carving thy sacred lineaments, trace mine. But I design not, O Lord! to show thee happy and full of peace, or radiant and glorious. I promised to present thee suffering, suffering even the death of the cross; I suffer that of the gibbet. A friend betrayed thee; a friend betrayed me. Thou wast loaded with insult and ignominy; I too had good cause to blush before my judges. Thou weepest over the sins of men, thy children; I over my child's grave. And as, O Lord! thou wert man as well as God, I may not offend thee in copying the anguish, the griefs, the sufferings that have left their print upon my brow. All these thou knowest, O Lord! but remorse thou couldst not know. That will I keep to myself, and in its stead I will place radiance, hope, and splendor of divinity. Ay, hope! for even on the cross didst thou hope and call upon thy Father!"

Here the old sculptor ceased, and bent before his work, while the shadows of despair darkened his brow. Then he cast a troubled look upon the statue, a look in which anguish mingled with prayer, confidence with terror.

"And can I hope?" he murmured. "Mina is in heaven. Shall I again see her?"

But no voice replied, and, sighing, he stood again erect. Then after a few moments of silent meditation he seized his chisel, and, making the sign of the cross, recommenced his work, and the stone seemed to breathe, to quiver, to palpitate as, one by one, the suffering lines came forth. Truly in Master Sebald's mirror were grief and unpitying and unending pain.

And he worked in spite of the gnawings of hunger, the want of sleep, the cold of the winter. He had ever within him strength and fire—the strength of expiation, the fire of penitence. But as he worked, his form became more stooped, and his eye less sure; his blood flowed feebler through his veins, and his breath grew more quick and gasping. But he needed but mind and hand, and his mind was clear, and his hand carved bravely still. And what cared he for the failing of an exhausted body? If, day by day, his face grew thinner, his eyes cavernous, his lips tighter, was not his model for all that the more real? Was it not a dying Christ he was carving?

At last his work was done. When the last blow of the chisel had been given, when the stone had received the final touch, when Christ hung there wounded, quivering, breathing, sublime, Master Sebald knelt before his work and bowed his forehead to the earth. The sculptor demanded his pay; the criminal his pardon. He prayed fervently and long; and when he rose, he knew that his child called, and that the hour of his deliverance was nigh, and, walking to the narrow opening which formed his only means of communication with men, he called aloud to his jailer:

"My Christ is finished! My task is done! Unseal the door and lead me to the executioner."

But it was not the executioner that came, but the judge; and he, the first to enter the dungeon, when he lifted his eyes, fell upon his knees with clasped hands; for what he saw seemed no image of stone, but a living Christ, suffering and dying before him. Struck with astonishment and admiration, he called his colleagues and sent for monseigneur the bishop, and his highness the margrave, that all might see the Christ of the condemned. The dungeon of Master Sebald was too narrow for the multitude of visitors who crowded before the holy image; they talked of carrying it to one of the courts of the city, or to the Grand Place, that all the faithful might mourn and be edified by so sacred a spectacle. But Master Sebald opposed this project and asked a further boon:

"Ah!" cried he, "if you think this work of my hands merits aught but favor, consecrate it to a holy remembrance; place it in the cemetery where my daughter reposes. Christ should be upon her tomb, to speak to her of hope, and on the tomb of him—of—him too, to speak to him of forgiveness."

We may add that the sculptor's request was quickly granted, for in those happy days there were sheriffs who believed, and judges of tender hearts. They were very backward, and very far behind our enlightened age in those days, although gunpowder had just been invented. Besides, the councillors of the margrave held sacred things in respect, and did not regard cemeteries as mere charnel-houses.

They carried, then, with great pomp, Master Sebald's statue to the cemetery; and, for the first time since his imprisonment began, the old man saw the crowd of men, the green leaves, the tomb of his daughter, and the white clouds of heaven.

He saw the blessing of the cross; he saw Mina's tomb consecrated; and then, taking his chisel, he graved upon the pedestal, as a last farewell, the inscription which, as we have seen, yet remains, and asked the time appointed for his execution. But murmurs arose in the crowd which soon swelled to violent clamors. Could so repentant a man, so old and true an artist, be given over to the gibbet! The people surrounded the magistrates; the magistrates turned to the councillors; the councillors turned to the margrave; and after a short deliberation the president of the tribunal declared to Master Koerner that, in consideration of his genius, of his piety, and of his repentance, he should still live; pardon was granted him.

"Is life a boon?" murmured the old artist, sadly bowing his head. "But I await the mercy of God. He is more generous than man."

He had not long to wait, for two days after, in the gray, early morning, they found him cold and dead upon his daughter's grave, his head resting upon the base of the crucifix. His hopes were realized; God opened his prison-doors.

......

Such is the legend of the sculptor and his work—a legend which offers a simple and characteristic picture of the ages of confiding faith, when the Christian placed his hopes, the injured his vengeance, the criminal his repentance, and the artist his genius, at the foot of the cross.