Three days later.
My husband says that he finds invigoration in thinking of you. I have also to-day written to the Mother.
[Manna to the Professorin.]
Mother, he is saved! All anxiety has fled. He is saved! He was down with a fever days and nights, and did not recognize me; he knew my dogs, Rose and Thistle, but not me. But once he exclaimed:—
"Oh, the harp-tones!"
I telegraphed at once to New York for my harp to be sent to me; the telegraphist told me of a woman in the place who had a harp; she lived alone, and her lot had been a hard one, as she had learned after her marriage that her husband had another wife living. I went to see the woman, and this woman is the mother of my Heimchen. The Superior had written to her of the love of her child for me, and I had to relate many things to the mother. And now—yes, we are always living in the midst of wonders! Heimchen gave to me the harp from which the tones are to come that will give my husband rest.
I stationed myself in the next room, and with the physician's consent, I played upon the harp. Eric went to sleep, and when he waked, said:—
"Why does not Manna come?"
The physician forbade my entering the room, as it was important he should receive no violent shock. And so I could see him only when his eyes were closed, until at last the surgeon gave his permission.
In the wanderings of fever he always saw me as I was in the convent when I had on the wings, and he spoke French and laughed at sister Seraphine. The shock of my father's death had affected Eric so deeply, that, as the physician told me, he had been for a long time without an hour's sleep.