When we were all safely in the next room, we all by one impulse began to weep. I sobbed,—
"He looks so dreadfully ill. I think they have all but murdered him."
And Elsè said,—
"She has exactly the same look on her face that came over it when she was recovering from the plague, and he stood motionless beside her, with that rigid hopeless tranquility on his face, just before he left to be a monk. What will happen next?"
And my grandmother said in a feeble broken voice,
"He looks just as your grandfather did when he took leave of me in prison. Indeed, sometimes I am quite confused in mind. It seems as if things were coming over again. I can hardly make out whether it is a dream, or a ghost, or a resurrection."
Our father only did not join in our tears. He said what was very much wiser.
"Children, the greatest joy our house has known since Fritz left has came to it to-day. Let us give God thanks." And we all stood around him while he took the little velvet cap from his bald head and thanked God, while we all wept out our Amen. After that we grew calmer; the overwhelming tumult of feeling, in which we could scarcely tell joy from sorrow, passed, and we began to understand it was indeed a great joy which had been given to us.
Then we heard a little stir in the house, and my mother summoned us back; but we found her alone with Fritz, and would insist on his submitting to an unlimited amount of family caresses and welcomes.
"Come, Fritz, and assure our grandmother that you are alive, and that you have never been dead," said Elsè. And then her eyes filling with tears, she added, "What you must have suffered! If I had not remembered you before you received the tonsure, I should scarcely have known you now with your dark, long beard, and your white thin face."