The Prince Bishop Evrard stood gazing at his marvellous Cathedral; and
as he let his eyes wander in delight over the three deep sculptured
portals and the double gallery above them, and the great rose window,
and the ringers' gallery, and so up to the massive western towers, he
felt as though his heart were clapping hands for joy within him. And
he thought to himself, "Surely in all the world God has no more
beautiful house than this which I have built with such long labour and
at so princely an outlay of my treasure." And thus the Prince Bishop
fell into the sin of vainglory, and, though he was a holy man, he did
not perceive that he had fallen, so filled with gladness was he at the
sight of his completed work.
[Illustration: "_Surely in all the world God has no more beautiful
house than this_"]
In the double gallery of the west front there were many great statues
with crowns and sceptres, but a niche over the central portal was
empty, and this the Prince Bishop intended to fill with a statue of
himself. It was to be a very small simple statue, as became one who
prized lowliness of heart, but as he looked up at the vacant place it
gave him pleasure to think that hundreds of years after he was dead
people would pause before his effigy and praise him and his work. And
this, too, was vainglory.
As the Prince Bishop lay asleep that night a mighty six-winged Angel
stood beside him and bade him rise. "Come," he said, "and I will show
thee some of those who have worked with thee in building the great
church, and whose service in God's eyes has been more worthy than
thine." And the Angel led him past the Cathedral and down the steep
street of the ancient city, and though it was midday, the people going
to and fro did not seem to see them. Beyond the gates they followed
the shelving road till they came to green level fields, and there in
the middle of the road, between grassy banks covered white with cherry
blossom, two great white oxen, yoked to a huge block of stone, stood
resting before they began the toilsome ascent.
"Look!" said the Angel; and the Prince Bishop saw a little blue-winged
bird which perched on the stout yoke beam fastened to the horns of the
oxen, and sang such a heavenly song of rest and contentment that the
big shaggy creatures ceased to blow stormily through their nostrils,
and drew long tranquil breaths instead.
"Look again!" said the Angel. And from a hut of wattles and clay a
little peasant girl came with a bundle of hay in her arms, and gave
first one of the oxen and then the other a wisp. Then she stroked
their black muzzles, and laid her rosy face against their white cheeks.
Then the Prince Bishop saw the rude teamster rise from his rest on the
bank and cry to his cattle, and the oxen strained against the beam and
the thick ropes tightened, and the huge block of stone was once more
set in motion.
And when the Prince Bishop saw that it was these fellow-workers whose
service was more worthy in God's eyes than his own, he was abashed and
sorrowful for his sin, and the tears of his own weeping awoke him. So
he sent for the master of the sculptors and bade him fill the little
niche over the middle portal, not with his own effigy but with an image
of the child; and he bade him make two colossal figures of the white
oxen; and to the great wonderment of the people these were set up high
in the tower so that men could see them against the blue sky. "And as
for me," he said, "let my body be buried, with my face downward,
outside the great church, in front of the middle entrance, that men may
trample on my vainglory and that I may serve them as a stepping-stone
to the house of God; and the little child shall look on me when I lie
in the dust."
Now the little girl in the niche was carved with wisps of hay in her
hands, but the child who had fed the oxen knew nothing of this, and as
she grew up she forgot her childish service, so that when she had grown
to womanhood and chanced to see this statue over the portal she did not
know it was her own self in stone. But what she had done was not
forgotten in heaven.
And as for the oxen, one of them looked east and one looked west across
the wide fruitful country about the foot of the hill-city. And one
caught the first grey gleam, and the first rosy flush, and the first
golden splendour of the sunrise; and the other was lit with the colour
of the sunset long after the lowlands had faded away in the blue mist
of the twilight. Weary men and worn women looking up at them felt that
a gladness and a glory and a deep peace had fallen on the life of toil.
And then, when people began to understand, they said it was well that
these mighty labourers, who had helped to build the house, should still
find a place of service and honour in the house; and they remembered
that the Master of the house had once been a Babe warmed in a manger by
the breath of kine. And at the thought of this men grew more pitiful
to their cattle, and to the beasts in servitude, and to all dumb
animals. And that was one good fruit which sprang from the Prince
Bishop's repentance.
Now over the colossal stone oxen hung the bells of the Cathedral. On
Christmas Eve the ringers, according to the old custom, ascended to
their gallery to ring in the birth of the Babe Divine. At the moment
of midnight the master ringer gave the word, and the great bells began
to swing in joyful sequence. Down below in the crowded church lay the
image of the new-born Child on the cold straw, and at His haloed head
stood the images of the ox and the ass. Far out across the snow-roofed
city, far away over the white glistening country rang the glad music of
the tower. People who went to their doors to listen cried in
astonishment: "Hark! what strange music is that? It sounds as if the
lowing of cattle were mingled with the chimes of the bells." In truth
it was so. And in every byre the oxen and the kine answered the
strange sweet cadences with their lowing, and the great stone oxen
lowed back to their kin of the meadow through the deep notes of the
joy-peal.
In the fulness of time the Prince Bishop Evrard died and was buried as
he had willed, with his face humbly turned to the earth; and to this
day the weather-wasted figure of the little girl looks down on him from
her niche, and the slab over his grave serves as a stepping-stone to
pious feet.