On rainy days, our favourite walk was under the arcades, where we wandered up and down, looking in at the shop windows, that seemed to me an Eldorado, with all the treasures they displayed. And never shall I forget my sensations, the day that for the first time I possessed a whole thaler of my own, to spend as I liked! I drove with grandmamma to the Arcade, and we got out there, that I might make my purchase. Now I had long since set my heart on the loveliest little basket, lined with pink silk, which I had often gazed at with longing eyes, thinking it quite an unattainable object. “That costs a gulden,” said the shopkeeper, in answer to my somewhat embarrassed question, for it seemed to me rather an indelicate thing to ask the price of anything, a feeling I have not altogether got over to this day. A gulden! my spirits sank. “Ah! I have only a thaler!” “But that is a great deal too much,” replied the friendly shopman, with whom I was delighted, as in addition to my purchase, he handed me back numberless little coins, with which I at once bought several other charming knicknacks. For I could not tolerate the idea of taking a single pfennig home with me. To have money in one’s pocket seemed to me already then a real misfortune, and I have never changed in that respect. How should one change? Does one not remain the same from the cradle to the grave? And what a number of pretty little things I had for my money! Some of them I have to this day, for I could not bear to part with them, and brought them with me to Roumania.
The year 1856 saw us for the last time all assembled round grandmamma, in the month of February, to celebrate her forty-fifth birthday. I was just twelve years old, but already so familiar with the outward signs of ill-health and sickness, that the change in her appearance at once astonished and even disquieted me. It was the strange bright patch of red on each cheek that struck me especially. Her complexion had always remained brilliant, and her cheeks rosy, but now they were much redder, and seemed to be encircled by a hard line that made the skin around look whiter than ever. I think she had also a little dry hacking cough. It soon became evident that her lungs were attacked, her fits of coughing were accompanied by hemorrhage, and the doctors pronounced her to be in a decline. We saw but little of my mother that spring and summer, as she was constantly in Wiesbaden, the invalid always asking for her, and liking no other nursing so well as hers. Already early in July it was announced that there was no longer any hope, and my mother, whose perpetual dread it was that my naturally impulsive nature should gain more and more the upper hand, counting on the solemn impressions of such a scene to sober me for life, resolved to take me with her to the death-bed.
Such an experience was indeed well calculated to damp a child’s high spirits, and it remains with me as the most vivid recollection of my youth. For accustomed as I was to sickness and suffering, death I was yet unacquainted with. And now, all at once, I was to see someone die! But what a radiant, blissful death that was! The evening before she passed away, grandmamma seemed positively transfigured. A rapturous expression was on her face, as she lay there stretching out her arms towards something that was seen by her alone, and repeating with marked emphasis the words “at four o’clock!” For many hours we all sat or knelt round her bed, until at last my mother sent me away to get a little sleep, promising to have me awakened when the end approached. I stopped to press my lips once more to the dear wasted hand, and at that grandmamma opened her eyes, looked at me and smiled, and her lips shaped themselves as if to give me a kiss. My eyes were running over with tears, as I stooped over her for that last kiss. Even then, almost in her death-agony, her natural sweetness and affability never deserted her for a moment, and as with her failing eyes she caught sight of a doctor who had been summoned in haste, with one of her own peculiarly graceful gestures she pointed to a chair by her bedside, begging him to be seated.
Meanwhile, in the next room, still, in my little dressing-gown I had thrown myself on a camp-bedstead that had been placed there for anyone able to snatch a few minutes’ rest, and had fallen into an uneasy sleep, until a little before four o’clock my mother woke me, everyone thinking that the end must come then.
In these few hours I found that a great change had taken place,—still the same hot flush on the cheeks, but the eyes sunken, and without the slightest look of consciousness, and her breath coming in short quick gasps. I trembled all over. Through the door open into the boudoir beyond, I could see the old clergyman, Pastor Dilthey, who had officiated both at my mother’s confirmation and at her marriage, sitting there in his full canonicals, grave and imposing, waiting to perform the last solemn rites. The room was left in darkness, only the first rays of morning stealing in through the closed shutters flickered strangely here and there, and fell over the old pastor’s silvery hair, making his pale serious face look still more grave and pale. I watched him from the doorway, but felt in too great awe to go up and speak to him, so I stole up quietly to grandmamma’s writing-table, and looked once more at all the little articles standing on it, with which I had sometimes been allowed to play and all of which had the scent of the filagree vinaigrettes she kept among them. The hands of the little clock there already pointed to four,—when she suddenly began to breathe a little more freely, and the danger seemed no longer so imminent. We knelt round her bed, without a sound, except when one or other of her daughters, unable to control her sobs, was immediately called to order by my mother lest the calm of the death-bed should be disturbed.
And so the hours passed. I grew more and more tired. Then, between one and two o’clock that afternoon, a terrific storm broke out. The open windows banged to and fro, the rain splashed and dashed against the window-panes, the thunder rolled, and grandmamma’s breath came in fitful gasps. She could no longer swallow even the few drops of water that were held to her lips. So the storm raged on, and her breathing grew more painful and irregular, and I knelt on like the rest at her bedside, when suddenly I knew no more, all grew dark before my eyes, and I had fallen forward, my dark curls streaming across my mother’s feet, fast asleep. Or was it perhaps in reality faintness that had overcome me, and that then passed into the sound sleep of childhood, worn out as I was with the unwonted hours of watching and fasting I had gone through? It is very possible, for I had eaten nothing for the last four-and-twenty hours, and was exhausted with kneeling and with all the tears I had shed. When I came to myself again, the storm had spent its fury, the flashes of lightning were less frequent, the thunder only went on rumbling in the distance, the rain had stopped, and a ray of sunshine streamed into the room and right across the face of the dying woman, whose breathing was still slower and feebler. At last, as the big belfry clocks in the town began to strike the hour, one after the other, there were still longer pauses between the gasps for breath. I saw then for the first time what it means to smile from sheer despair. Good old Dr. Fritze, who had attended grandmamma all her life, and who literally idolised her, had seated himself on the bed and lifted her in his arms, to try to ease her breathing a little. When the clocks began striking, he smiled, and said aloud,—“one more breath!” and then,—“one more!” And again:—“and just one more!” And after that there was a deathly silence, whilst the old Black Forest clock above her head struck four. Her daughters hid their faces in the pillows to stifle their sobs, and the deep rich voice of the old pastor rang out in words of solemn prayer. Then the head of the family, the Duke of Nassau, rose to his feet, and stretching out his hand across the sleeping form, called on his brother and sisters to unite with him in the vow, that her dear memory should hold them together in all things henceforth, just as if she were still living in their midst. Their tears fell fast over the still white face, so unmoved in death, as they joined hands with him in answer to his appeal. The one daughter, the Princess of Waldeck, was so beside herself with grief, that it took all my mother’s firmness to enable her to regain her composure, the latter being indeed a tower of strength to them all in that sad hour.
After a little while we were all sent away, in order that the laying out of the corpse might be attended to, before too great rigidity should have set in, and once more I became sadly conscious of the shortcomings of human nature, at least in my own person, as the pangs of hunger began to assert themselves, after this prolonged fast. It was perhaps not very astonishing, considering my youth, that I should have been able to enjoy even at such a moment the repast which was now provided for me, but I felt terribly ashamed of myself, above all that the servants waiting on me should see me eating with such hearty appetite, and I wondered if everyone thought me very hard-hearted! Had I not fallen asleep just at the wrong moment too? I felt thoroughly small, and there was no one to comfort me with the assurance that it was not my heart that was in fault, but only my poor little body demanding its rights!
In the one drawing-room, that which was known as the “sisters’-room,” as it had specially belonged to my aunts, three beds were put up, and here my mother and I were to sleep together with her youngest sister, for the house was so overfull that proper accommodation was wanting, the dining-room, the largest room of all, being converted into a chapelle ardente. Of this last detail I knew nothing. I had been so simply brought up, the ways of a Court were unfamiliar and even quite distasteful to me. Next morning I was up betimes, and without disturbing anyone I crept out into the garden, taking with me the first tablecloth that came to hand, and this I filled with all the roses I could gather, fresh fragrant roses, still wet with dew, to take to grandmamma. Without a word to anyone, I made my way upstairs very softly to her room, and began placing my roses in a big garland round her. I did not feel at all afraid at first, but in course of time the intense stillness began to affect me, so that I was quite glad when Fräulein von Preen, grandmamma’s lady-in-waiting, came into the room with one or two of the maids and helped me to arrange my flowers. The day passed slowly, chiefly taken up with giving orders for mourning, bonnets of the correct shape, with the point coming very low down on the forehead, and long crape veils, falling right over the heavy folds of the black woollen dresses with their long trains. I too was to have a little black woollen dress, and that made me sadder than ever, it seemed to me such a melancholy garb. The following morning I again got up as early as possible, feeling rather impatient to see my aunt go on sleeping so soundly, for she was never an early riser, and had not yet made up for the rest she had lost. But I hardly knew what to do with myself, having been told that I could not go to see grandmamma to-day, and I turned and twisted about restlessly in the room. All at once I caught sight of a sheet of grandmamma’s own special pale green note-paper, with something written on it in her hand-writing, lying on a table. Young as I was, I quite understood that one must not read every paper one sees lying about, my mother never even opened a letter addressed to me, so as to set me the example of the respect due to private correspondence. But this paper lay spread wide open for every one to see, and was evidently not a letter at all, that much was clear to me, notwithstanding my short-sight. It was certainly allowable, I told myself, to look at dear grandmamma’s hand-writing once more. It turned out to be a translation of some English verses,—a poem of Longfellow’s, which is known to everybody, but with which I first made acquaintance then, through the medium of grandmamma’s German version. The first verse of the original runs:
The day is cold, and dark, and dreary,
It rains, and the rain is never weary;
The vine still clings to the mouldering wall,
And at every gust the dead leaves fall,
And the day is dark and dreary.
Quick as thought I had made a copy of the verses, and leaving the paper where I found it, I was reading my treasure through once more when my aunt awoke and called her sister, and it was only then that I noticed that my mother must have been up and dressed before me, as she had already left the room. Thrusting my beloved verses back in my pocket, I softly approached my aunt’s bedside, wishing her good morning.—“Good morning!” she replied, continuing with a sigh:—“to-day is my birthday!”—“Oh!” I said, and could find no more to say. I felt perfectly well how unkind and unfeeling I must appear, I quite understood how tragic it was for her, to celebrate her eighteenth birthday beside her mother’s open coffin, I was simply choking with affection and sympathy—but I could not get out a single word to express what I felt. And what indeed could a small child say to help and console! Myself I had just found great comfort in those beautiful verses, and I longed to show her these, but was not quite sure whether I had done right in copying them, and so my poor aunt and I just went on looking at one another in silence, when fortunately my mother came in, breaking the ice with the warmth of her presence, and, finding exactly the right thing to say, in the fewest words possible, as she folded her sister in her arms. I withdrew, very quietly, leaving them together, and that was perhaps the only sensible thing that I did, or could have done, under the circumstances.