It was early spring.
Forth through the green Danube valley they went,—the mother and her son, Snorro the old castellan, and Gunhilda the nurse, with other faithful old servants of the house.
At night they slept under a tent, or in any lowly hut they could find.
In the morning they awoke with no stately walls between them and Nature.
To the boy, the journey amongst the forests and by the streams was one perpetual holiday.
And on the mother also soft dews of healing began to fall, from sunsets and sunrises, and the opening of leaves, and the songs of birds, and the life of all the humble happy creatures.
But most of all from this, that she had stepped down from the cold height of her solitary sorrow, and went forth as one bearing the common burden of humanity.
"We are going to the Holy Grave that belongs to us all!" she said to herself. "We go with Thy poor, Thou who wast poor Thyself! We go to Thy sepulchre, mortal, mourning human creatures, for Thou also wast mortal once. Thou also hast died and hast been buried!"
Thus, in stooping lowly, nearer her fellow-men, she grew nearer Him who stooped lowest of all.
"The whole earth is a sepulchre," she said; "for it was Thine! Not our beloved only; Thou also hast lain in the grave! When we and our beloved lie down in ours, it will be but where Thou hast lain before."