A Story of Nuremberg [pp. 523-536]

S28 A STORY OF NUREMBERc. [Jan.,
loving gifts of devout generations; St. Sebald's, with its carved
portal, its stained windows, its treasures of bronze, and, above all,
the shrine where Peter Visoher and his sons labored for thirteen
years. Gabriel loved St. Sebald's dearly, but closer still to his
heart was the majestic church of St. Lorenz, where, in sharp
relief against the dull red pillars, rose that dream in stone, the
Sacrament House of Adam Krafft, its slender, fretted spire
springing to the very roof, clasped in the embrace of the curling
vine tendrils carved around it.
Here the boy would linger for hours, never weary of studying every detail of this faultless shrine, wherein reposed no saint
or martyr, but the immortal Lord of hosts. With envious eyes
he gazed upon the kneeling figures of Adam Krafft and his two
fellow-laborers, who, carved in stone, now supported the treasure
tI~eir hands had wrought. Surely this was the crowning summit
of human ambition-to live thus for ever in the house of God,
and before the eyes of men, a part of the very work which had
ennobled the artist's life. Ah! if he, the despised humpback,
could but descend to posterity immortalized by the labor of his
l~ands. What to the dreaming lad was the picture of Adam
Krafft dying in a hospital, poor, unfriended, and alone, in the
midst of a city his genius had enriched? What was it to him
that Nuremberg, which now heaped honors on the dead, had
denied bread to the living? Such bitter truths come not to the
young. They are the heritage of age, and Gabriel was but a
boy, with all a boy's fond hopes and aspirations. Often as he
studied the graceful beauty of the Sacrament House, where, cut
in the pure white stone, he saw the Last Supper and Christ blessing little children, he wondered whether among those Jewish
boys and girls was one who, deformed and repulsive to the
eye, yet felt the Saviour's loving touch and was comforted.
A few more years rolled by, and each succeeding spring saw
Kala taller and prettier, and Gabriel working harder still at his
laborious art. Not so engrossed, however, but that he knew that
Kala was fair, and that when her soft fingers touched his a swift
and sudden fire leaped through his heart. Kala's beauty lurked
in his dreams by night and in his long, solitary days of toil, and
became the motive power of all his best endeavors. If he should
gain wealth it would be but to lay it at her feet. If he, the
desolate waif, should win fame and distinction, it would be but to
gild her name with his. Surely these things must be some recompense in a woman's eyes for a pale face and a stunted form;
and (~abriel, lost in foolish dreams, worked on.