"Dear son, yesterday evening, at six o'clock, our dear mother passed away. Come home, we are expecting you in the greatest affliction. Your father."
Last evening it had happened, in the poor cottage, while I was striding through the worldly turmoil. And at six o'clock!
Early next morning, I was in the parish village. I entered on the road alone, over hills glittering with snow and through long woods, far into the lonely mountain valley. I had walked that road endless times before, had always delighted in the glistening snow, in the sparkling icicles, in the snowy mantles of the boughs, or, if it was summer, in the green leaves and the blossoms and the fragrance, in the song of the birds, in the drops of light that trickled through the branches, in the profound peace and loneliness. How often had I gone that way with mother, when she was still well and in her prime, and, later, when, crippled through illness, she tottered along on my arm! And, on this forest road, I thought of my parents' life.
He had come to the forest farm a young man.
People called him Lenz, not because he was young and blooming and joyful as the Lenz, or spring, but because his name was Lorenz.
His father had been severely wounded in a brawl, lain ill for but a little while and died an early death.
So now Lenz was the owner of the forest farm. To recover in a measure from his sadness for his father's sake, he did a capital thing: he looked about him for a wife. He took almost the poorest and the most disregarded that the forest valley contained: a girl who was frightfully black all through the week, but had quite a nice little white face on Sundays. She was the daughter of a charcoal-burning woman and worked for her aged mother, but had never seen her father.
One year after the wedding, in the summer, the young woodman's wife presented her Lenz with a first-born. He received the name of Peter and now runs all over the world with it, an everlasting child.
Her life was so peculiar, her life was so good, her life had a crown of thorns.
Our farm was no small one and its days were well-ordered; but my mother did not play the grand farmer's wife: she was housewife and servant-maid in one.