It was half-witted Kätchen--he had recognised her at once.
"What brings you here? What do you want here in this tempest?"
"Beautiful Eva's mother is buried; I want what you do!"
"And what do you want of me?"
"Have had a little note for you, for a long, long time--now I can give it to you. Eva wrote it upon the ocean."
"Mad woman--and now, for the first time, you speak of it to me?"
"To others I would not show it, and to you I could not give it sooner. I am staying with Mother Hecht, the herbalist; you will find me there every evening."
And she kissed his hands once more, and the following moment had disappeared amongst the whirling snow.
The tempest became so violent that Blanden was obliged to take refuge in the dead-house, where he found several participators in the funeral who had also fled thither; amongst them a Gerichtsrath whom he knew. The former had never belonged to the pious community, but, as legal assistant, had often imparted advice to Frau von Salden, and had also conducted the case instituted against half-witted Kätchen. He gave information to Blanden which possessed great interest for the latter. Since Eva's death, Pauline had constantly been ailing, and succumbed to a consumptive disorder.
As to Kätchen--the prosecution in which Blanden was called as a witness--although she persisted in the most obstinate silence, no proof of her guilt could be obtained; she had been handed over to the supervision of an institution in which mentally disordered and weak persons were looked after by the State. The medical man had pronounced her dull, obtuse demeanour not to proceed from any malady of the brain, but to be partially the consequences of the defective bringing up by her tyrannical parents, partially to be connected with her physical development. In fact, after the expiration of a year an unmistakable alteration had taken place in her; she had commenced to speak more naturally, indeed, more distinctly and coherently, so that the medical man could release her from his establishment.