Short Fiction Selma Lagerlöf (best book club books of all time .txt) 📖

Old Faustina had returned to Capri and had sought out the Emperor. She told him her story, and while she spoke she hardly dared look at him. During her absence the illness had made frightful ravages, and she thought to herself: “If there had been any pity among the Celestials, they would have let me die before being forced to tell this poor, tortured man that all hope is gone.”

To her astonishment, Tiberius listened to her with the utmost indifference. When she related how the great miracle performer had been crucified the same day that she had arrived in Jerusalem, and how near she had been to saving him, she began to weep under the weight of her failure. But Tiberius only remarked: “You actually grieve over this? Ah, Faustina! A whole lifetime in Rome has not weaned you then of faith in sorcerers and miracle workers, which you imbibed during your childhood in the Sabine mountains!”

Then the old woman perceived that Tiberius had never expected any help from the Prophet of Nazareth.

“Why did you let me make the journey to that distant land, if you believed all the while that it was useless?”

“You are the only friend I have,” said the Emperor. “Why should I deny your prayer, so long as I still have the power to grant it.”

But the old woman did not like it that the Emperor had taken her for a fool.

“Ah! this is your usual cunning,” she burst out. “This is just what I can tolerate least in you.”

“You should not have come back to me,” said Tiberius. “You should have remained in the mountains.”

It looked for a moment as if these two, who had clashed so often, would again fall into a war of words, but the old woman’s anger subsided immediately. The times were past when she could quarrel in earnest with the Emperor. She lowered her voice again; but she could not altogether relinquish every effort to obtain justice.

“But this man was really a prophet,” she said. “I have seen him. When his eyes met mine, I thought he was a god. I was mad to allow him to go to his death.”

“I am glad you let him die,” said Tiberius. “He was a traitor and a dangerous agitator.”

Faustina was about to burst into another passion⁠—then checked herself.

“I have spoken with many of his friends in Jerusalem about him,” said she. “He had not committed the crimes for which he was arraigned.”

“Even if he had not committed just these crimes, he was surely no better than anyone else,” said the Emperor wearily. “Where will you find the person who during his lifetime has not a thousand times deserved death?”

But these remarks of the Emperor decided Faustina to undertake something which she had until now hesitated about. “I will show you a proof of his power,” said she. “I said to you just now that I laid my kerchief over his face. It is the same kerchief which I hold in my hand. Will you look at it a moment?”

She spread the kerchief out before the Emperor, and he saw delineated thereon the shadowy likeness of a human face.

The old woman’s voice shook with emotion as she continued: “This man saw that I loved him. I know not by what power he was enabled to leave me his portrait. But mine eyes fill up with tears when I see it.”

The Emperor leaned forward and regarded the picture, which appeared to be made up of blood and tears and the dark shadows of grief. Gradually the whole face stood out before him, exactly as it had been imprinted upon the kerchief. He saw the blood-drops on the forehead, the piercing thorn-crown, the hair, which was matted with blood, and the mouth whose lips seemed to quiver with agony.

He bent down closer and closer to the picture. The face stood out clearer and clearer. From out the shadow-like outlines, all at once, he saw the eyes sparkle as with hidden life. And while they spoke to him of the most terrible suffering, they also revealed a purity and sublimity which he had never seen before.

He lay upon his couch and drank in the picture with his eyes. “Is this a mortal?” he said softly and slowly. “Is this a mortal?”

Again he lay still and regarded the picture. The tears began to stream down his cheeks. “I mourn over thy death, thou Unknown!” he whispered.

“Faustina!” he cried out at last. “Why did you let this man die? He would have healed me.”

And again he was lost in the picture.

“O Man!” he said, after a moment, “if I can not gain my health from thee, I can still avenge thy murder. My hand shall rest heavily upon those who have robbed me of thee!”

Again he lay still a long time; then he let himself glide down to the floor⁠—and he knelt before the picture:

“Thou art Man!” said he. “Thou art that which I never dreamed I should see.” And he pointed to his disfigured face and destroyed hands. “I and all others are wild beasts and monsters, but thou art Man.”

He bowed his head so low before the picture that it touched the floor. “Have pity on me, thou Unknown!” he sobbed, and his tears watered the stones.

“If thou hadst lived, thy glance alone would have healed me,” he said.

The poor old woman was terror-stricken over what she had done. It would have been wiser not to show the Emperor the picture, thought she. From the start she had been afraid that if he should see it his grief would be too overwhelming.

And in her despair over the Emperor’s grief, she snatched the picture away, as if to remove it from his sight.

Then the Emperor looked up. And, lo! his features were transformed, and he was as he had been before the illness. It was as if the illness had had its root and sustenance in the contempt and hatred of mankind which had lived