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And the young men said, “We are not used to building.”

“Nor am I,” said the King; “but let us build, and build as best we can, and give to God the best we have and the best we know.”

So they dug the deep trenches for the foundations, and they sent north and south, and east and west for the wisest builders who loved the Lord Christ; and the builders came, and the carvers came, and the young men learned to use the chisel and the hammer; and the great Cathedral grew year by year, as a pine-tree in the forest grows above the birches and the yew-trees on the ground.

And once King Bela came to visit his kinsman, and they rode out to see the builders. And King Ladislaus dismounted from his horse, and asked Bela to dismount, and gave to him a chisel and a hammer.

“No,” said the King Bela, “it will hurt my hands. In my land we have workmen whom we pay to do these things. But I like to see you work.”

So he sat upon his horse till dinner-time, and he went home.

And year by year the Cathedral grew. And a thousand pinnacles were built upon the towers and on the roof and along the walls; and on each pinnacle there fluttered a golden sky-lark. And on the altar in the Cathedral was a scroll of crimson, and on the crimson scroll were letters of gold, and the letters were in the Latin language, and said “Propior Deo,” and on a blue scroll underneath, in the language of the people they were translated, and it said, “Nearer to Thee.”

IV.

And another Hermit came, and he told the King that the Black Death was ravaging the cities of the East; that half the people of Constantinople were dead; that the great fair at Adrianople was closed; that the ships on the Black Sea had no sailors; and that there would be no food for the people on the lower river.

And the King said, “Is the Duke dead, whom we saw at Bucharest; is the Emperor dead, who met me at Constantinople?”

“No, your Grace,” said the Hermit, “it pleases the Lord that in the Black Death only those die who live in hovels and in towns. The Lord has spared those who live in castles and in palaces.”

“Then,” said King Ladislaus, “I will live as my people live, and I will die as my people die. The Lord Jesus had no pillow for his head, and no house for his lodging; and as the least of his brethren fares so will I fare, and as I fare so shall they.”

So the King and the hundred braves pitched their tents on the high land above the old town, around the new Cathedral, and the Queen and the ladies of the court went with them. And day by day the King and the Queen and the hundred braves and their hundred ladies went up and down the filthy wynds and courts of the city, and they said to the poor people there, “Come, live as we live, and die as we die.”

And the people left the holes of pestilence and came and lived in the open air of God.

And when the people saw that the King fared as they fared, the people said, “We also will seek God as the King seeks Him, and will serve Him as he serves Him.”

And day by day they found others who had no homes fit for Christian men, and brought them upon the high land and built all together their tents and booths and tabernacles, open to the sun and light, and to the smile and kiss and blessing of the fresh air of God. And there grew a new and beautiful city there.

And so it was, that when the Black Death passed from the East to the West, the Angel of Death left the city of Buda on one side, and the people never saw the pestilence with their eyes. The Angel of Death passed by them, and rested upon the cities of Bohemia.