For ten years God granted the loving wife her husband's life, it seemed as if he had entirely recovered. At last the day came when He required it again. For the third time the community offered Freyer the part of the Christus. He was still a handsome man, and spite of his forty-eight years, as slender as a youth, while his spiritual expression, chaste and lofty--rendered him more than ever an ideal representative of Christ God bestowed upon him the full cup of the perfection of his destiny, and it was completed as he had longed. Not on a sick-bed succumbing to lingering disease--but high on the cross, as victor over pain and death. God had granted him the grace of at last completing the task--he had held out this time until the final performance--then, when they took him down from the cross for the last time under the falling leaves, amid the first snow of the late autumn--he did not wake again. On the cross the noble heart had ceased to beat, he had entered into the peace of Him Whom he personated--passed from illusion to truth--from the copy to the prototype.
Never did mortal die a happier death, never did a more beautiful smile of contentment rest upon the face of a corpse.
"It is finished! You have done in your way what your model did in His, you have sealed the sacred lesson of love by your death, my husband!" said the pallid woman who pressed the last kiss upon his lips.
The semblance had become reality, and Mary Magdalene was weeping beside her Redeemer's corpse.
On the third day after the crucifixion, when the true Christ had risen, Freyer was borne to his grave.
But, like the ph[oe]nix from its ashes, on that day the real Christ rose from the humble sepulchre for the penitent.
"When wilt thou appear to me in the spring garden, Redeeming Love?" she had once asked. Now she was--in the autumn garden--beside the grave of all happiness.
When the coffin had been lowered and the pall-bearers approached the worn, drooping widow, the burgomaster asked: "Where do you intend to live now, Madame?"
"Where, except in Ammergau, here--where his foot has marked for me the path to God? Oh, my Gethsemane!"
"But," said the pastor, "will you exile yourself forever in this quiet village? Do you not wish to return to your own circle and the world of culture? You have surely atoned sufficiently."
"Atoned? No, your Reverence, not atoned, for the highest happiness is no atonement--expiation is beginning now." She turned toward the Christ which hung on the wall of the church, not far from the grave, and extending her arms toward it murmured: "Now I have nothing save Thee! Thou hast conquered--idea of Christianity, thy power is eternal!"----
The cloud of tears hung heavily over Ammergau, falling from time to time in damp showers.
Evening had closed in. Through the lighted windows of the ground floor of a little house, surrounded by rustling pines, two women were visible, Mary and Magdalena. The latter was kneeling before the "Mother" whose clasped hands were laid upon her head in comfort and benediction.
The lamps in the low-roofed houses of the village were gradually lighted. The peasants again sat in their ragged blouses on the carvers' benches, toiling, sacrificing, and bearing their lot of poverty and humility, proud in the consciousness that every ten years there will be a return of the moment which strips off the yoke and lays the purple on their shoulders, the moment when in their midst the miracle is again performed which spreads victoriously throughout a penitent world--the moment which brings to weary, despairing humanity peace and atonement--on the cross.
