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“Remove the canvas from the figure,” said the Cure sternly. Stubbornness and resentment filled Francois’s breast. He did not stir.

“Do you oppose the command of the Church?” said the Cure, still more severely. “Remove the canvas.”

“It is my work–my own: my idea, my stone, and the labour of my hands,” said Francois doggedly.

The Cure turned to Lajeunesse and made a motion towards the statue. Lajeunesse, with a burning righteous joy, snatched off the canvas. There was one instant of confusion in the faces of all-of absolute silence.

Then the crowd gasped. The Cure’s hat came off, and every other hat followed. The Cure made the sign of the cross upon his breast and forehead, and every other man, woman, and child present did the same. Then all knelt, save Francois and the Cure himself.

What they saw was a statue of Christ, a beautiful benign figure; barefooted, with a girdle about his waist: the very truth and semblance of a man. The type was strong and yet delicate; vigorous and yet refined; crude and yet noble; a leader of men–the God-man, not the man-God.

After a moment’s silence the Cure spoke. “Francois, my son,” said he, “we have erred. ‘All we like sheep have gone astray; we have followed each after his own way, but God hath laid on Him’–he looked towards the statue–‘the iniquity of us all.'”

Francois stood still a moment gazing at the Cure, doggedly, bitterly; then he turned and looked scornfully at the crowd, now risen to their feet again. Among them was a girl crying as if her heart would break. It was Jeanne Marchand. He regarded her coldly.

“You were so ready to suspect,” he said.

Then he turned once more to the Cure. “I meant it as my gift to the Church, monsieur le Cure–to Pontiac, where I was born again. I waked up here to what I might do in sculpture, and you–you all were so ready to suspect! Take it, it is my last gift.”

He went to the statue, touched the hands of it lovingly, and stooped and kissed the feet. Then, without more words, he turned and left the shed and the house.

Pouring out into the street the people watched him cross the bridge that led into another parish–and into another world: for from that hour Francois Lagarre was never seen in Pontiac.

The statue that he made stands upon a little hill above the valley where the beaters of flax come in the autumn, through which the woodsmen pass in winter and in spring. But Francois Lagarre, under another name, works in another land.

While the Cure lived he heard of him and of his fame now and then, and to the day of his death he always prayed for him. He was wont to say to the little Avocat whenever Francois’s name was mentioned:

“The spirit of a man will support him, but a wounded spirit who can bear?”