mine are the punishment of my sins—yonder in that grave sleeps the witness of my words and of my evil deeds—I suffer more! And I but now entreated Thy Father about some fire that he would send it as he sent it upon Gomorrah, and he heard me not—what is there still left for me to suffer!”
After these words, pronounced with immeasurable anguish, a silence fell on everything in the cemetery as though it would accentuate Loyka’s bitterness—the white iron figure of the Christus clanged upon the cross from time to time—perhaps it did not wish without reserve to adapt itself to this train of thoughts. On this Vena said “If you would have allowed yourself, pantata, to be nailed to a cross like the Lord Christ, look you there, you never need have been banished from your home, and for my part I believe that Joseph would have helped you up if you had requested him.”
Loyka having bewailed and lamented his fate, now felt relieved, at least those thick clouds broke and dispersed in which till now his thoughts had been enveloped. But it was only for a moment. And in that moment he sank down the cross, embraced the foot of it, and perhaps he wept. But this did not last long. He looked up to the heavens, ran his eyes through the myriad stars, and seeing the moon in the full splendour of its rays, suddenly laughed aloud, laughed without words, and so continued to laugh.
X
