There, leaning on their swords, the three gazed down on him,
armored, armed, majestic, serious, guarding the empty grave, which
to the child, who knew nothing of its history, seemed a bier; and
at the feet of Theodoric, who alone of them all looked young and
merciful, poor little desperate Findelkind fell with a piteous
sob, and cried: "I am not mad! Indeed, indeed, I am not mad!"
He did not know that these grand figures were but statues of
bronze. He was quite sure they were the dead, arisen, and meeting
there, around that tomb on which the solitary kneeling knight
watched and prayed, encircled, as by a wall of steel, by these his
comrades. He was not frightened, he was rather comforted and
stilled, as with a sudden sense of some deep calm and certain
help.
Findelkind, without knowing that he was like so many dissatisfied
poets and artists much bigger than himself, dimly felt in his
little tired mind how beautiful and how gorgeous and how grand the
world must have been when heroes and knights like these had gone
by in its daily sunshine and its twilight storms. No wonder
Findelkind of Arlberg had found his pilgrimage so fair, when if he
had needed any help he had only had to kneel and clasp these firm,
mailed limbs, these strong cross-hiked swords, in the name of
Christ and of the poor.
Theodoric seemed to look down on him with benignant eyes from
under the raised visor; and our poor Findelkind, weeping, threw
his small arms closer and closer round the bronze knees of the
heroic figure, and sobbed aloud, "Help me, help me! Oh, turn the
hearts of the people to me, and help me to do good!"
But Theodoric answered nothing.
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