I noticed that I was in the midst of the storm-cloud. How glorious it would have been to die at that moment--to be struck dead by lightning!
"But my children, my children!" I uttered the words in a loud voice, but the thunder drowned my cries.
The flashes of lightning succeeded each other so rapidly that they blinded me; I could see nothing more. I closed my eyes and held fast to a rock by the wayside. I had never heard such fearful roaring of the thunder, or seen such uninterrupted flashes of lightning. I stood still and concluded to wait there, while I thought of the many other beings who were also exposed to this storm; and at last, I could weep. I had not wept since her death, and now it did me good. The hail beat into my face, already wet with tears.
Suddenly Rothfuss appears and exclaims: "Martella sends me. Oh, God be praised! there is a good bed waiting for you at home."
Guided by Rothfuss, I reached the house. Although my family were greatly concerned as to the effect it might have, the shock that I had undergone had really benefited me. I slept until noon, and when I arose I felt as if breathing a new life.
I must stop here. I cannot go on. I was obliged to learn how to begin life anew. When one has buried his dearest love in the earth, the earth itself becomes a changed world, and one's step upon it a different one. I trust that I shall not be obliged hereafter to repeat my lamentations for my own life. The first tranquillizing influence I found was in the statue gallery, with its figures from another world, so silent, so unchanging. We can offer them nothing, and yet they give us so much: they are without life or color, but they represent life in its imperishable beauty.
Rothfuss offered me a strange solace. He said, "Master, there must be another woman somewhere in this world just as she was."
"Why?"
"I always thought that God only suffered the sun to shine because she was here, but I see that the sun still shines, and so there must be others like her."
Martella, however, could not realize that she was dead.