passionate ecstasy glistened on the paleness of his face. "I have seen
them at last!" he cried aloud. "O God, it is enough!"
His limbs failed under him, and he sank upon his knees, still gazing
upward at the majesty that he adored. For a few brief moments the light
illumined the divine visions that had been denied to him so long--light
clear and sweet and strong as though it streamed from the throne of
Heaven. Then suddenly it passed away: once more a great darkness covered
the face of Christ.
The arms of the boy drew close again the body of the dog. "We shall see
His face--_there,_" he murmured; "and He will not part us, I think." On
the morrow, by the chancel of the cathedral, the people of Antwerp found
them both. They were both dead: the cold of the night had frozen into
stillness alike the young life and the old. When the Christmas morning
broke and the priests came to the temple, they saw them lying thus on
the stones together. Above the veils were drawn back from the great
visions of Rubens, and the fresh rays of the sunrise touched the
thorn-crowned head of the Christ.
As the day grew on there came an old, hard-featured man who wept as
women weep. "I was cruel to the lad," he muttered, "and now I would have
made amends--yea, to the half of my substance--and he should have been
to me as a son."
There came also, as the day grew apace, a painter who had fame in the
world, and who was liberal of hand and of spirit. "I seek one who should
have had the prize yesterday had worth won," he said to the people--"a
boy of rare promise and genius. An old wood-cutter on a fallen tree at
eventide--that was all his theme. But there was greatness for the future
in it. I would fain find him, and take him with me and teach him Art."
And a little child with curling fair hair, sobbing bitterly as she clung
to her father's arm, cried aloud, "Oh, Nello, come! We have all ready
for thee. The Christ-child's hands are full of gifts, and the old piper
will play for us; and the mother says thou shalt stay by the hearth and
burn nuts with us all the Noël week long--yes, even to the Feast of the
Kings! And Patrasche will be so happy! Oh, Nello, wake and come!"
But the young pale face, turned upward to the light of the great Rubens
with a smile upon its mouth, answered them all, "It is too late."
For the sweet, sonorous bells went ringing through the frost, and the
sunlight shone upon the plains of snow, and the populace trooped gay and
glad through the streets, but Nello and Patrasche no more asked charity
at their hands. All they needed now Antwerp gave unbidden.
Death had been more pitiful to them than longer life would have been. It
had taken the one in the loyalty of love, and the other in the innocence
of faith, from a world which for love has no recompense and for faith no
fulfilment.
All their lives they had been together, and in their deaths they were
not divided: for when they were found the arms of the boy were folded
too closely around the dog to be severed without violence, and the
people of their little village, contrite and ashamed, implored a special
grace for them, and, making them one grave, laid them to rest there side
by side--forever!
End of Project Gutenberg's A Dog of Flanders, by Louisa de la Ramê, AKA Óuida