University of Virginia Library

14. CHAPTER FOURTEENTH.
THE MANUSCRIPR OF BROTHER ANSELM.

II. THE LEGEND OF THE TENTH CENTURY.

A captive, rising from the straw which littered the floor of his cell, in
scribed on the dingy wall, these figures—

3651.

Through the only window of the cell—narrow and high, it opened to
the east, permitting a glimpse of earth and sky to be seen—came the soft
warmth of a declining summer day. That mild glow disclosed the bare
walls, the high arch, the miserable straw, which littered one corner of the
cell. It was in truth a desolate place, and the ray of sunlight only made
it seem more black and gloomy.

As the Captive rose, it might be seen that his form resembled a skeleton,
endued by a supernatural hand with something like life, and clad in coarse
attire, with thin flakes of gray hair falling about his bony forehead and
hollow cheeks. He walked very slowly along the floor, lifting his large
eyes—which all the while seemed like lighted coals placed in the orbits
of a skull—toward the light, and bared his fleshless arm.

Then, with a sharpened nail, he pierced a shrunken vein, and with his
blood, traced on the wall of the cell the figures—3651.—

But first, he effaced from the wall certain figures inscribed in dim red
characters—3650.—

And while, with the point of the rusted nail, moistened by his blood,
he performed this singular work, like a man influenced by a solemn vow,
the sunlight shone as if in mockery upon his skeleton form, and played
right cheerily with his bony forehead, and large brilliant eyes.

The Captive stood with folded arms, surveying in silence the figures
he had written with his blood. It was as though some harrowing memory
was associated with those red characters, for not for a single moment did
his gaze wander, or the expression of his features change.

The light began to fade, and the shadows, which had assumed various
fantastic forms, gathered in one vague mass around the solitary captive.

There came suddenly through the thick walls a low, deep sound, which
awoke the imprisoned wretch from his reverie. Now it seemed like distant
music, now like a chorus of dying groans, now like the accumulated
whispers of an affrighted, panic-stricken crowd. It was only the organ of
a chapel, thundering its deep tones through the arches, as the evening
hour brought on the darkness.

Not far from the Captive's cell, that Chapel disclosed its Image of the
Virgin to the last kiss of day; indeed, the Chapel and the cell were combined
in the same edifice, a Monastery, whose dark spires and turrets rose
against the fresh verdure of a beautiful valley.

The Captive heard the sound of the organ, mingled with the chaunting
of the evening hymn, and bent his head lower upon his breast, raising his
eyes all the while from beneath his compressed brows, to gaze upon the
red figures—3651.

In the Chapel of the Monastery, that organ spoke out with a deep voice
of music and religion, and the vesper hymn pealing from the lip of Monk
and Nun, awoke in every heart a living hope of immortal joy.

But, to the Captive shut out from all the world, withered by hopeless
imprisonment—blood, and heart, and brain stricken with the palsy of
despair—that evening mass, echoing through the thick walls, had a singular
message.

It did not say to his leaden ear—“Look up, child of God, the sun is
setting over hill and valley, but there is Hope for you in the night, and
glory in the cloud!”

To him it spoke with a far different voice. As he bent his head, and
by the fading light beheld the mysterious figures traced in his blood,
growing dim and dimmer every moment, the solemn Mass, chaunted by
Monk and Nun, deepened by the thunder-tone of the organ, uttered a sad
message:—It said—

“You were young. Your step was firm. Your eye bright. Your heart
full of life; and your brain as wide and free in its thought as the blue sky
of heaven. Now you are old, miserably old; you tremble on the floor of
your cell, an unburied corse. Once a father blessed you as you crossed
the cottage threshold—once a Mother pressed her hands upon your head,

and blessed you, as the Hope which God had given to her old age. Once
a girl, beautiful even in her homely peasant garb, placed her hand in
yours, and promised to be your wife. Now look from yonder window,
and behold the blackened walls of your ruined home. Look beyond those
walls, and see the graves of the old man, your father, and the peasant
woman, your mother. Your betrothed? Seek for her in the living grave
—in the tomb, like unto that which encoffins yourself—in the Convent
cell, a pale, withered form, shrouded in the white robe of a nun!”

This was the message of the vesper hymn to the soul of the solitary
Captive. For ten years it had spoken to him in this cell, every day its
message pealing sadder, darker, and more like the accents of hopeless
despair.

To me, the image of that solitary Captive, shut out from the world, in
the Tenth Century, coffined while living in this hopeless imprisonment
of a Bohemian Monastery, his death-lighted eyes fixed upon the figures,
traced on the damp wall with his blood, presents an image of superhuman
despair.

He could see the blasted roof-tree of his home from the window, behold
the sunset smiling upon the graves of his peasant people—he felt that his
betrothed peasant wife, transformed into a nun—`a living corse,' as the
old books have it—was near him, only separated by a solitary wall. And
yet he did not gaze from the window, nor listen for the voice of his
peasant wife. Roused from his straw, by the impulse of a stern and sullen
duty, he had inscribed those mysterious figures on the wall, and stood
gazing upon them with his large sad eyes.

The Crime of this wretch? Wherefore swept away from humanity and
its hopes, into the life-in-death of this cell? Wherefore trace with his
blood upon the wall, the figures 3651, after first erasing 3650.

We dare not give his crime—have not the language to penetrate the
mystery of those crimson numerals.

Night deepened over the scene, and by the starlight his figure was dimly
revealed, still standing with his face to the wall, as though through the
darkness he sought to read the inexplicable inscription.

There was a sound of jarring bolts—the tread of footsteps in the passage
—and the door of the cell, rolling on its hinges, gave passage to a flood of
joyous light. Still the captive did not turn; the warm light, streaming
over his shoulders, revealed the inscription, and for the first time, in a low
voice, he spoke—

“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one,” he said, and was silent.

And all the while, a brave company of monks clad in satin and velvet,
warriors glittering in steel and gold, came thronging through the doorway
of the cell, their fine attire flashing and glancing in the strong radiance.

And the gay band—for even the monks, with faces round and oily,
seemed joyous in the plenteousness of flesh and soft apparel—two figures

were prominent. One was a Monk, the Abbot of the Monastery; the
other a Knight, the Lord of the broad lands, extending from the domains
of the Monastery, to far-distant forests.

There was no care upon the Abbot's face. Corpulent and complacent,
he seemed defended from all thought by his soft, silken gown; and on his
rotund form, he bore a shining cross of gold, hanging to his apoplectic neck
by a golden chain. Above the vivid redness of his cheeks, above his
small eyes, almost hidden in laughing wrinkles, some scattered white hairs
gleamed, like scanty snow-flakes trembling on the verge of a red-hot furnace.
He was a corpulent man and a righteous withal—ah! had you but
seen his complacent smile ripple upward over his unctuous cheeks!

As he beheld the captive, a look of compassion seemed struggling into
life from the fulness of his face.

The Warrior by his side. A gaunt form, cased in armor of steel, with
a gold drop sparkling here and there, and a huge sword—it was two-handed
—hanging from his left shoulder to his feet. A bunch of white plumes
waved over his steel helmet, and beneath its raised vizor appeared his face.
The features coarse and bold, the eyebrows thick and gray, the eyes fierce
and penetrating, the wide mouth and large jaw full of the Iron Will of an
Iron Soul.

Even his face gleamed with something like pity as his sharp eyes rested
upon the solitary captive, who, with his back turned toward the brilliant
company, gazed steadily upon the wall.

As for the Monks and the Soldiers, who, treading at the heels of the
Abbot and the Lord, came thronging over the threshold,—the torches
smoking and flaring over their heads—they watched the faces of their
masters for a moment, and then took courage to gather something like pity
into their eyes.

The Abbot spoke. It would have done you good to hear him. So soft,
so bland his tone, gliding from his lips smooth as olive oil over a burnished
platter.

“Wretch!” he said.

It was kindly meant, no doubt, but the captive did not answer. It may
be that he did not hear the soft word. For ten years no human being had
spoken to him one word of kindness, and it was plainly to be seen, that his
ears were sealed to any thing like the sound of a human voice.

The Lord in the terrible armor, with the potent sword hanging at his
shoulder, now essayed his power. He was eloquent—

“Heretic!” he said, and laid his hand, gloved in steel, upon the living
skeleton.

The miserable criminal turned slowly, and looked with his large eyes
at the face of the stern Knight and the rotund Abbot.

“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one—” this was all the captive

said, and his sunken cheeks were flushed by the torch-light, his eyes,
unnaturally bright at all times, were touched with a mocking glare.

“Michael—” the Abbot placed a hand glittering with rings upon the
criminal's tattered garment—“Do you repent of your hideous crime? Do
you renounce the power of Lucifer?”

The prisoner, folding his big hands over his sackcloth, looked vacantly
in the face of the Abbot. It was a pitiful contrast. That dumb Image of
Famine, with idiocy glaring from the large eyeballs, and this rotund embodiment
of corpulence, glowing all over with complacency and holiness.
Here a skeleton covered with sackcloth—There an Ideal of Flesh, enshrined
in satin, with such a gay golden cross, moving to the slow pulsations
of a little heart. Indeed, it was a miserable contrast.

“I will try him, reverend Father—” said the Knight, glancing grimly
over his servitors, all clad in armor, terrible with club of iron and sword
of steel—“Michael, would you like a little sunlight, a little free air? Dost
hear me? Would you like to feel your foot upon the mountain sod, and
draw a good long breath of freedom, ere you die?”

Something like intelligence began to beam in the big eyes of the wretched
man.

“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one,” he said in a shrill voice,
slightly raising his joined hands.

We are afraid that this contrast is not one whit less pitiful than the
first. Here a living skeleton, slightly lifting his bony hands, while something
like reason begins to beam in the dumb anguish of his face—there a
splendid warrior, glowing in golden helmet and snowy plumes, terrible
with steel armor and two-handed sword.

“Noble Lord, let me speak to him—” and the good Abbot, wearing on
his breast a golden Cross, which was supposed to remind him of the Wooden
Cross on which a long-suffering Being died some hundred years ago, spoke
blandly to the Idiot—

“Mary!” he said.

At once the dawning intelligence brightened into day. The Idiot's
vacant eye burned with sudden fire. There came slowly over his death's-head
face a glow, that lighted up the sunken features, and made him look
like a living man.

“Mary!” he echoed, and then relapsing into his vacant mood again,
murmured with a sad smile—“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one.”

It was remarkable; he ever laid a peculiar emphasis on the word, one.

“Wretch! There is no hope!” the Abbot benevolently said, and turned
away.

The Monks, as though answering to some solemn litany, chorused—

“Wretch! There is no hope!”

But the grim Knight, whose features bore the stern impress of fifty

years of blood, looked in the Idiot's face with a glance that seemed something
like compassion.

“I will rouse him—” he roughly said, and then laying a hand upon the
arm of the captive, began in his abrupt, impetuous way—“Michael, I say,
Michael, dost thou remember me, my boy?”

The Idiot's face was vacant.

“Thou wert once a page in the hall of my castle, Michael. A braver
youth I never saw. Light in step, courtly in speech, thine eye bright and
thy form like a vigorous sapling. Dost remember the old castle, Michael?
Thou wert a peasant lad, the son of a serf, and yet my father took thee to
be his page. Took thee, when but a baby on thy peasant mother's knee.
And dressed thee in soft apparel, and taught thee knightly duty—God's
blood—” the knight swore a knightly oath—“Canst thou not call it to
mind?”

Still the big eyes of the Idiot glared vacantly upon him. No touch of
humanity there! A skeleton with fire-coals shining from the orbits of his
eyes—nothing but a skeleton, clad in sackcloth and placed on his feet by
supernatural power.

“Idiot! He cannot remember—no more sense than a rotten piece
of wood!”

Here the soldiers, true to their duty, repeated their lord's ejaculation,
looking into his stern face all the while.

“I will touch him gently—” whispered the excellent Abbot, advancing
from the throng—“Dost thon remember me? Thou wert wont to come
oftentime, from the Castle to the Monastery, dressed like a gay page,
Michael—many and many a time. And an aged Brother of our order
taught thee to read, to write, Michael, and permitted thee to read the books
of our library, my good child—”

His good child! So withered in his sackcloth, with the gray hairs
hanging over his skull-like face—a very strange kind of child, I trow.

“Dost thou remember me, Michael?”

But the Idiot's eyes were vacant still.

“And then, Michael, in thy journeys from the Castle to the Monastery,”
resumed the Abbot—“and from the Monastery to the Castle back again,
thou didst chance upon a peasant girl, wondrous fair, and pleasant to look
upon. Thou didst exchange vows of love with her, with Mary, Michael
—with Mary, I say—Mary—”

How the sudden reason looked out again from the Idiot's great glittering
eyeballs!

“Mary!” he echoed—“Mary!” and he raised his bony hand to his
forehead, and seemed wrapt in thought. He removed it in a moment; his
face was pitiful and vacant again; slowly down his hollow cheek rolled a
single tear.

The grim Lord bade the soldier by his side to turn his torch away, for
said he, with a lordly curse—“The light hurts mine eyes!”

But the corpulent Abbot, determined to restore the wretch to something
like reason, went on in his pleasant voice—

“But then, Michael, loved as thou wert by all within Castle and
Monastery, pledged in vows of betrothal to this peasant maid, thou didst
at once dash thy best hopes into dust, by a hideous crime. Thou didst
—blessed saints be merciful to me, for I can scarce gather strength to speak
it!—violate all laws, human and divine, and crimson thy soul with the
guilt of unpardonable sin. 'Tis ten years since we endeavored to preserve
thy soul from utter ruin, by a little needful and blessed severity. We
separated thee and thy peasant bride. We consigned thee to the silence
and seclusion of this cell; first foreing upon thee the solemn vow of our
order. And as thy father and mother, Michael, participated in thy guilt,
we made a blessed example from their ashes—”

“I remember the day when they were burned—” suggested the Knight.

“Mary, my page—” he looked into Michael's vacant face—“was
forced to take the veil in the convent after—”

He paused suddenly. At the word “after” the Idiot's eyes again flashed
with a sudden consciousness; his lips moved. His long knotted fingers
were clenched with a violent gesture.

“After?” What did it mean, that word which died half-uttered on the
tongue of the noble Lord? Perchance some allusion to an illustrious
custom of the ancient days, which gave to the Lord of broad lands unlimited
control over the life and person of any serj who might chance to be
born upon those lands.

“Thou didst, Michael, commit the unpardonable crime,” the good
Abbot continued, crossing his hands upon his robust body—“Dost thou
repent of it, now?”

The Idiot's eyes were blank as white parchment.

“Didst not, Michael,—I speak, my good child, for the good of thy soul
—go into the hot fields, where the serfs were at their toil, and tell them,
that the good God would one day give to them—the hewers and the diggers—the
land on which they spent their sweat and blood? Didst thou
not dare to take the Bible from our Monastery, and tell the serfs such
damnable falsehood as this, and also assert, that it was written on the
holy page?”

The Monks groaned in horror—the soldiers joined in chorus.

“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one,” murmured the Idiot.

“Didst thou not stand by the wayside, and tell the gaping serfs, that
the Church was a Lie, built up in stone and plaster; and the Castle a
Blasphemy, cemented in blood; and that both Church and Castle stood
upon foundations of human skulls? That Monk and Lord were combined
in an unholy league, whose motto was evermore,—`Shame to the

Carpenter's Son, and death to his brothers and sisters, the Poor.'—It
makes my blood run cold to speak it!”

“Thou didst call the Lord Jesus a Carpenter's Son—” cried the awe-stricken
Knight. “Thou didst. With my own ears I heard thee!”

In answer to these terrible accusations, the Idiot-captive said never an
intelligent word; only unclosing his shrivelled lips to murmur, “Three
thousand six hundred and fifty-one!”

“And then, Michael—poor boy—grown bold in crime, as the serfs followed
thee in crowds to the mountain side, and listened to thy ravings all
day long, thou didst even spread the Bible before their unlearned eyes, and
utter a heresy too damnable for repetition. Yet I will repeat it, in order
to impress upon thy soul the full enormity of thy crime. `The day comes,'
thus thou didst speak—`when there shall be nor Priest, nor Lord, nor
Castle, nor Church. Then shall the earth become a garden, and all men
be brothers, in the name of the Lord Jesus, the Messiah of the Poor.”'

The Monks and the soldiers started back with one impulse of horror,
leaving the corpulent Abbot in his satin, and the Knight in his armor, alone
with the blasphemous wretch.

“But I came upon thy serfs and thee, with my good riders—” the
Knight said, benevolently. “It was at night, and ye were standing on the
mountain side. We came upon your band of Rebels and Heretics, with
club and sword. Only one was spared.—Michael, thou wert the only one
out of some fourscore. We spared thee—”

“In mercy!” smiled the Abbot, smoothing the creases in his robe with
his fat hands—“In compassion.”

The Idiot-Captive raised his arm, withered as a branch of dead pine, and
marked with innumerable minute scars.

“Three thousand six hundred and fifty-one,” he muttered, turning his
large eyes from face to face.

“What means he by those idle words, which he repeats so often?” and
the good Abbot turned his round face toward his dear children, the Monks.

A Monk with thin sharp features gave answer—

“It has been my office to bring bread and water to him,” he said, pointing
to the captive Blasphemer—“And I have noticed every day a different
number writ on the wall, in blood-red letters. Yesterday, 'twas—I marked
it well,—three, six, five and a nought. To-day, 'tis three, six, five
and one. 'Tis writ with a sharp nail, and a little blood from his arm.”

“Strange! passing strange—” ejaculated the good Abbot—“What can
the Idiot mean!”

“Days!” exclaimed the captive, in a shrill tone, whose maniac boldness
startled every spectator. “Days!”

And with his long bony fingers he pointed to the blood-red figures on
the dingy wall.

At once a light dawned on the Abbot's soul.

“Holy Apostles! The heretic means to say that he has been imprisoned
just three thousand six hundred and fifty-one days. Malignant even in
his madness! He has written it upon the wall, with his blood—”

Extending his hand, the reverend Abbot pointed to the wall, while his
round visage, glowing with a godly fervor, was turned toward the stern
countenance of the Land-Lord by his side.

There was a pause of breathless stillness.

“To write the number of days with his blood!” gasped the Abbot.

It seemed a thoroughly blasphemous thing, in the eyes of the reverend
man.

“But we must not forget our purpose,” suggested the Knight—“I have
the gold, and it may as well be turned to account for the good of my soul.”

“'Tis a holy impulse my son, which guides thy actions. In a battle
with a Lord whose estate is next thine own, thou didst sack his castle,
put his people to the sword, and take his daughter for thy leman. Thou
wouldst make friends with Heaven and St. Peter, by giving unto our
Monastery a goodly store of gold. Is it thus, brave Knight?”

“Even so. I would have the gold transformed into an Image of the
Blessed Saviour, which shall stand above the Chapel-Altar, as a token of
my pious thought—”

“And as Michael here was somewhat cunning in the arts of painting
and sculpture,—that is, before we imprisoned him—it was thy purpose to
offer him life and freedom, on condition that he moulded an Image of the
Lord from your gold?”

“It was,” said the Knight—“But there is no hope. His mind is utterly
gone. See! How he clutches at the light!”

Indeed the appearance of the wretch was very pitiful. Fixing his great
eyes upon the light, he seemed to behold phantoms, invisible to all other
eyes, for his extended hands clutched nervously at the vacant air.

“Michael,” said the Abbot—“Let me clasp thy hand. Turn thine eyes
upon me. Thou mayst be free. Thou shalt behold thy Mary once
more—”

The great eyes, glassy with a vacant stare, shone with soul.

“Mary!” and the miserable man clasped the fat hand of the Abbot, and
looked with intelligent earnestness into his face.

Again the Abbot uttered his words of mercy—

“Free, I say! Thou shalt be led forth into the open air and the warm
sunshine. Thou shalt behold thy plighted wife—Dost hear me, Michael?
Dost repent of thy heresy?”

“Heresy!” echoed the captive, in a mild tone—“I had a wild dream,
but it is over now. Do with me what you will, only let me feel my foot
upon the mountain side, and inhale one long breath of air—free air, and I
will come to my cell again, and die. I promise this, good sirs,—I swear
it—I—”

He knelt at their feet, joining his knotted fingers, as he rolled his eyes
from face to face.

“He consents,” said the Abbot, with a smile—“He will mould for us
the Golden Image of the Redeemer!”

Far through the blackness of night glared a vague mass of flame, now
looking like a luminous cloud, now like an immense ball of fire. It shone
half-way up the mountain side, and was regarded by the serfs of the Bohemian
valley with great wonder and awe. Even those who were in the
secret, and knew the cause of this light, could not see the glaring through
the darkness without a sensation akin to fear.

It was nothing more than the light of a furnace shining from the mouth
of a cavern.

Before that cavern, on the rocky ground, men-at-arms, cased in iron,
strode to and fro, and within its walls, the captive Michael toiled steadily
at his task. They had built him a furance, supplied him with wax, with
clay, with lead, with heaps of gold, and given him the aid of sinewy arms,
so that he might mould, even from the intense flame, a glittering Image of
the Redeemer.

For many weary days, for countless long and dreary nights, the men-at-arms
kept watch in front of the cavern, while the Heretic toiled within.
They could see him hurrying to and fro, in the glare of the intolerable
flame; his skeleton form and haggard face, touched by the intense light,
making him resemble the Demon of some monkish Legend. And the
stern soldiers, accustomed to battle, and familiar with blood, trembled at
the sight of this miserable wretch, who toiled near the furnace in the
mountain cavern.

Sometimes, at dead of night, while his work was in progress, he would
come to the mouth of the cavern, and standing thus, between the mountain
and the light, gaze silently on the slumbering valley. No one spoke to
him. Even the serfs, who aided him in the mere physical portion of his
task, shrank from his touch. They beheld him hover round the flame,
they saw him shape his model of wax and encase it in a rough coffin of
clay, and at his command, piled the fire-wood all about it, until the heat
blasted their eyesight. But no one dared to speak to him—He was accursed;
he had made a compact with the Fiend—“Heretic!” they whispered,
pointing with a stealthy gesture at the skeleton figure near the flame.

At last the statue was done. Word was sent to the Castle and Monastery
that the Image of Jesus, moulded of bright and beautiful gold, lay on
the cavern floor, amid the embers of the dead fire, enshrined in its shell
of baked clay.

It was a morning in the fall of the year, when the serfs and men-at-arms,
thronging over the rocks in front of the cavern, saw a gorgeous
cavalcade wind slowly up the mountain side. Around extended the woods,

touched by autumn; in the blue dome of heaven, a single mountain peak
arose; from afar, on the bank of a winding river, gleamed the turrets of
the Monastery, while the gloomy wall of the Castle rose in the east, over
the tops of the brown forest trees.

And the cavalcade of Monks and Soldiers wound slowly up the mountain
side, with the peal of trumpet alternating with the chaunted hymn,
and the glittering steel armor contrasting with the flowing robes of priestly
grandeur.

Conspicuous among the band, two forms were seen—the grave Knight
and the jocund Abbot. The white plumes of the Lord fluttered over his
golden helmet, and the glittering cross which the Abbot wore on his breast,
shone from the distance like a star.

And the music came merrily up the mountain side.

Now winding around a cliff, now lost in shadow, the cavalcade drew
near and nearer. At last they reached the mouth of the cavern, the Monks
in their white robes extending to the right, and the warriors in their burnished
armor spreading to the left.

In the centre of this brilliant crescent, stood the Abbot and the Lord,
the dark mouth of the cavern yawning before them. They awaited the
coming of Michael the Heretic. The fire was extinguished; all was dark
within. All was silent as the moment of his approach drew near. Not
an eye in all that throng but longed to look upon that beautiful statue.
Every heart beat quicker as the echo of footsteps ascended from the cavern.

On the threshold, just where the warm sunlight encountered the midnight
of the cavern, appeared a skeleton figure and a wan and withered
face. It was Michael, clad in his humble garb, and holding in his knotted
fingers a lighted pine-knot. The expression of his face, so hollow in the
cheeks, and skull-like in the brow, was mild and subdued; with his eyes
cast sadly to the sunlight, he stood on the threshold of the eavern, folding
one hand upon his shrunken chest.

“It is done?” exclaimed the Abbot. “You shall be free—you shall
behold your plighted wife—”

Michael the Heretic serf did not speak, but bowed his head in mute
assent. It was evident that the miserable man was scarce able to maintain
his feet. Ten years of imprisonment has withered him from strong and beautiful
youth into hopeless and premature old age; the thought and toil of
his cavern task, has almost extinguished the last spark of his wretched life.

“Come!” he said to the Abbot and the Lord, and turning his face from
the light, went slowly into the cavern, torch in hand.

With hasty steps the corpulent Abbot followed the ray of his torch:
the Knight, lean and muscular, advanced with measured strides.

“It will be a beautiful image, no doubt—” chattered the Abbot, as he
picked his way among the loose stones; “for the fellow, though a serf,
has some wit—and it will be a mass of gold, solid, heavy, shiny gold,—

'twill be an honor to our Chapel, and fourscore masses shall be said, Sir
Knight, when thou art dead—for the repose of thy soul—”

“Rather let them be said without delay, before I die, that I may live a
few years more—” growled the pious Lord.

“Behold the Image!” A hollow voice resounded through the cavern,
and the Heretic Michael stood motionless, holding the torch above his
head. That light, while it left the cavern wrapt in dismal gloom, shone
vividly over the features of the Heretic, and revealed the Image of the
Redeemer.

It was placed erect upon a rock. The form clad in the garments of a
Bohemian Peasant, the hand extended, the brow stamped with a peculiar
expression—all shone vividly in the light.

The Abbot and the Knight could not stir; the Image held them motionless,
with a sensation of involuntary awe. They did not utter a word, but
gazed upon it with fixed eyeballs.

They beheld, not a figure of bright and glittering gold, but an Image of
the Saviour moulded in lead, the form grimly arrayed in the costume of
serfdom, and the face stamped with a look of unutterable sadness. The
large motionless eyeballs, the lips moving in a smile that had more of
sorrow than joy for its meaning, the great forehead impressed with a sublime
despair—all moulded, not of bright and beautiful gold, but of dull,
sullen lead, thrilled the spectators with sensations such as they had never
felt before.

It may have been that the sad hue of the lead deepened the impression
which the Image produced, but as Michael held his torch near and nearer
to it, the thought rushed upon the spectators that they did not merely
behold a form of lifeless metal.

“I cannot banish the thought—” gasped the Abbot, as his rubicund
cheek assumed the color of a shroud—“No! No! There is a soul imprisoned
in that leaden mass! A Soul that watches me now—hears me
as I speak, and reads my soul with those fixed eyeballs—ah! Heretic!
What have you done? By what infernal sorcery have you imprisoned a
living Soul in that Image of lead?”

The Heretic sank on his knees, and a smile broke over his livid face.
But as he sank he raised the torch on high, and by the varying light,
his face seemed to smile, to frown, to sneer by turns.

The Knight uttered a fierce oath.

“I am afraid!” he cried, leaning upon the hilt of his two-handed sword
—“There is a Soul there,—thou'rt right, Sir Abbot—a Soul imprisoned
in those fixed eyeballs—”

“What hast done with our gold?” cried the Abbot, turning fiercely upon
the kneeling wretch—“Where—” The words died on his chilled lips.
For the eyes of the Leaden Image were upon him; they seemed to pierce
his heart; the sublime despair of that forehead congealed his blood.

Kneeling on the cavern floor, every nerve trembling with the last throb
of life, the Heretic lifted his face toward the light, and his voice was heard,
clear and distinct, through the silence of the cavern—

“You asked of me an `Image of the Saviour triumphant over Death
and Evil, as he appears in your Church.' I could not mould a Lie into
Gold, for I felt that my hour was near. So I moulded HIM of Lead, and
moulded HIM—not as he appears in the Bible, the friend of the oppressed,
the Redeemer of the Poor—but as He is in your Church, a Sullen Spectre,
scowling upon the agony and anguish of mankind. Behold him, not pure
and beautiful as he shines from the Bible, but as he is—imprisoned in the
hollow forms, the blasphemous ritual—of your Church—”

The voice of the dying wretch became faint and fainter; the hand which
grasped the torch, quivered over his distorted face—quivered for a moment,
ere it fell motionless in death.

“Behold him, not as he walked the sands of Palestine, a free, beautiful
Spirit, full of Godlike love for Man, but as he is, chained by the satanic
body of your Church—Behold—the Imprisoned Jesus!”

The Abbot and the Lord started back, awed and terror-stricken, from the
dying blasphemer.

“And yet the day comes—” he staggered to his feet again, and held the
light near the sad, sullen face of the Image,—“And yet the day comes, O
Lord, when thy Spirit, no longer imprisoned by creeds, shall walk freely
once more into the homes and hearts of Men. Then shall the Lead
become Gold, and the Sneer be changed into a Smile!”

As he uttered these incomprehensible words, the torch fell from his
stiffening fingers, and darkness possessed the cavern, gathering in its folds
that sullen Image, which seemed to bear within its leaden bosom a
Living Soul.

What had he done with the Gold? Neither the Abbot nor the Lord
could ever give answer to this question; for, stricken with terror, they
commanded that the cavern's mouth should be choked with a wall of impenetrable
stone, leaving the dead body of the Heretic alone with the
blasphemous Image. Here, shrouded by darkness, alone in night, they
remained for ages, until the day of Huss, when this cavern became the
temple of four thousand worshippers. But a wild tradition hinted, in obscure
terms, that within the leaden Image was concealed a bright and
beautiful statue of Gold. Was it ever discovered? Did the leaden shell
ever fall aside, revealing the face of the Loving Spirit.