I had not closed my eyes for two days, and about midnight I sank into a chair worn out, and on the verge of collapse.
When I opened my eyes again the Grand Duchess was standing by me. In the light of the tall candles soft flickering shadows passed over her face. She put her hand on my forehead and murmured with a sweet, sad smile:
"You are tired out. Go to bed, dear friend, poor friend, whom I once doubted."
Oh, human frailty! Sleep swept me off that night, a night I could have spent entirely alone with her amidst the suggestive scent of funeral wreaths in the very presence of death, from which anything can be expected. I slept in Melusine von Graffenfried's room. The old, half-witted waiting-woman came grumbling to change the sheets.
* * * * * *
It was on Tuesday, the 28th, that Melusine's obsequies were celebrated. The Grand Duke, the Grand Duchess and Duke Joachim walked behind the hearse, its white pall hidden under the fragrant glories of Daghestan.
I was lost in the crowd of officers, palace officials and leaders of Lautenburg society. The Grand Duchess had ordered a squad of the 7th Hussars to render the honours. By the Grand Duke's orders the great bell of the cathedral beat time to the procession with its heavy measured toll. A tall old man, with the ascetic face of a Moltke, in an ancient, shiny black frock coat, came first, with a haughty and sullen lieutenant in the blue uniform of the Brunswick Hussars. They were Richard and Albrecht von Graffenfried, the dead girl's father and brother.
When the coffin entered the Temple of the Siegstrasse my very marrow seemed to freeze. It made me shiver to think that Melusine, whose voluptuous form seemed to cry aloud for the luxurious pomp of the Catholic ritual, should have belonged to the reformed faith.
I had never been in a Protestant temple before. They are awful places. Your very tears seem afraid to rise, lest they should freeze on your eyelids.
Pastor Silbermann delivered a sermon, his thin form, in its uncouth gown, reminiscent of the master of some masonic lodge emerging from a kind of revolving pulpit. For some reason I could not fathom he had selected from the Scriptures the incident of Jephthah's daughter. Nothing could have been less appropriate to the frail departed than this reference to the sacrifice of that dismal, austere Jewess.