“Rejoice, rejoice! I bring you my John!”
“My John,” shrieked the old woman. “My John! Oh, God, my son? How long—how long! I have thee! I have thee! I thank thee, oh! my God! A thousand and a thousand times! Oh, my child, I see thee at last! I see thee with a thousand eyes, a thousand times over! There, there thy hand! Come close, come close! There in that chest is thy portion! Take my hand! My son! My son! Yes, yes—it is my son! John, my son, my dear son!” She laughed convulsively, and fell back in her bed. Amrie and John had been kneeling at her bedside, and as they rose and bent over her, the old woman breathed no more.
“Oh, God, she is dead! Joy has killed her,” cried Amrie. “She took thee for her own son. She died happy, then! God be praised! Oh, how every thing goes! All in this world!”
She sank down by the bed and wept and sobbed bitterly. At length John raised her up, and Barefoot closed the eyes of the dead. They stood long, silently together, by the bed. Then Amrie said, “I will wake some one in the village to watch by her. How good God has been. She had no one to take care of her after I had gone, and God has given her the greatest joy in her last moment. Oh, how long she had waited for this joy!”
“Yes! But now you can stay here no longer,” said John. “Now you will come with me, and we will go on immediately.”
Barefoot waked the wife of the Sacristan, and sent her to Mariann. She was herself so wonderfully self-possessed, that she charged the woman to have Mariann’s flowers planted upon her grave, and not to forget to place her hymn-book, and that of her son, beneath her head, as Amrie had always promised her.
As at last every thing was placed in order, she turned to John and said, “Now all is ready, but forgive me, thou good soul, that I have brought you to this miserable scene, and forgive me also, that I am now so sad. I see that it is all good, and that God has done all for the best, but the shock is yet in all my limbs. I tremble from head to foot—for death is a frightful thing. You would not believe how much my thoughts and my fears have dwelt upon it. But now it is all well. I shall soon again be cheerful, for am I not the happiest bride on earth?”
“Yes, you are right!” said John. “But come, now we will go. Will you sit with me upon the horse?”
“Yes, is it the white horse that you rode at Endringen?”
“Certainly—the same.”