During midsummer, we would carry her, once in a way, with bed and all, out of the stuffy room into the air, so that she might see the sunshine once more. I do not know if she saw it: she kept her eyes open and looked up at the sun; her optic nerves seemed dead.
Then, suddenly, days came when she was different. She was cheerful and longed to go out into the open.
"Do get quite well again, Maria," said her husband, "and we shall remain together a long while yet."
"Yes," she answered.
I thought of all this on my way through the forest—and now it was all over with this poor rich life.
When, at last, after walking for hours through the woods along the mountain-path, I saw the thatched cottage on the hill-side, then it was as though a misty shadow covered woods and plains and all; and yet the sunlight hung over it. A puff of grey smoke rose from the little chimney. Does she suspect my coming? thought I. Is she cooking my favourite dish? No, strangers are preparing a funeral feast.
You stood long, Peterl, outside the half-open door; and your hand trembled when at last it touched the latch. The door opened, you walked in, it was dark in the narrow passage, with only a dim little oil-lamp flickering in a glass, and yet you saw it clearly: against the wall, under the smoky stairs, on a plank lay the bier, covered entirely with a big white cloth. At the head stood a crucifix and the holy-water stoup, with a sprig of fir in it….
You fell upon your knees…. And the tears came at last. The tears which the mother's heart once gave us to take with us into this world for our relief in sorrow and for our only consolation in the hour when no other comfort reaches the soul, when strangers cannot understand us and when the mother's heart has ceased to beat. Hail, O rich and eternal legacy!
Now the door of the parlour opened softly and Maria, the younger sister, stepped out. The girl at once began to cry when she saw the brother of whom they had all spoken so often, for whom mother's last glance had asked and who was far away when she closed her eyes. Now he lay there on his knees and cried over the memory of her life.
Even her children here at home had slept through the night of the death. Not till the glow of early morning lit up the little windows did father go to the girls in the bedroom and say: