A coffin ....... 15 thalers.
The place in the church-yard 10 thalers.
For the verger ..... 5 thalers.
Linen for the shroud ... 2 thalers.
Then the expenses of the funeral, which his father undoubtedly would wish to have conducted as grandly as possible:
10 bottles of port-wine .. 10 thalers.
1 box of cigars ..... 2 thalers.
2 small casks of beer ... 2 thalers.
Ingredients for the cake: the flour they had in the house, but sugar, raisins, almonds, rose-water, etc., had to be purchased. How much would these amount to? He calculated busily, but his additions would not agree. “Mother will know very well,” he thought, and was just about to ask her advice when he saw that she was dead.
He was horrified. Only now, when his imagination had brought her back to life again, he understood that he had lost her. He wanted to cry out, but mastered himself, for he had to go on with his calculations.
“Forgive me, darling mother,” he said, stroking her cold cheeks with his right hand. “I cannot yet mourn for you; I must first lay you under the earth.”
The funeral was to take place three days later.
As Paul had foreseen, his father could not be prevented from arranging a great festivity. He had sent invitations to all his friends in town, on beautiful glazed paper with a black edge as wide as your finger. Therein he had given expression to his grief in well-chosen, elegant phrases, and had nowhere forgotten to provide his signature with an elaborate flourish.
In the evening, just when the remains were being laid in the coffin, his two brothers arrived. They had not been at home for many years, and Paul almost failed to recognize them. Gottfried, the tutor, a dignified man with a severe expression of countenance and somewhat portly appearance, had on his arm a young lady veiled in black—his betrothed, who with a wondering glance took stock of the low, miserable rooms, and endeavored to show a face at once friendly and full of grief as the situation demanded. Max, the merchant, came behind them. He looked rather dissolute; his smart-looking mustache gave him an air ill-befitting the feelings of a newly-orphaned son, and his mourning was more evident in discomfort than in grief.