When I placed the tree at her bedside, she smiled and moved her left hand among its branches, but the hand soon fell down by her side.
What wonderful powers of memory lie in a mother's heart! She would tell us of a thousand and one little stories and sayings of Ernst, and of his bright, clever freaks, with as much detail as if they had happened but the moment before; but, strangely enough, she did all this without mentioning his name. She praised his flaxen hair, and moved her hand as if passing it through his locks.
"Do you not recollect how he once said, 'Mother, I cannot imagine how you could have been in the world without me: of course I have never been in the world without you'?"
She repeated the words, "without you--without me," perhaps a hundred times during the night: and she was almost constantly humming snatches of old songs.
In the morning, just as day was breaking, she turned around to me, and said with a smile, "This is his birthday." And that was her last smile. "This is Ernst's birthday."
And when the lost son returned, there was no mother to receive him.
Her silent thoughts had always been of him, but now they were deeper than ever.
She had lost her hearing. Suddenly she exclaimed in a loud voice, "God be praised; Richard will marry her after all!" and then--I cannot go on with the story--I must stop.
It was eleven o'clock (I do not know why I was always looking towards the clock that day) when she said, "Water from my spring."
Richard hurried to bring it.