"Neither husband or wife had ever known a mother and kept silence."
"A father!" repeated Gabriel, with an expression of the most poignant despair, and as though he would force back the overflowing tide of his feelings, he pressed his hands violently against his breast; and then after a short pause recovered himself, wiped the sweat, that had collected in heavy drops, from his forehead and said with a visible effort, "Excuse me, my friends, but you know, profound sorrow cannot be restrained."
"Your sorrow must still be fresh," remarked Schlome.
"Oh, a deep heart-wound is never healed. But enough of this, proceed," exclaimed Gabriel; "the twenty years have not yet elapsed, and you are still unacquainted with the affecting fortunes of your father-in-law?"
"No, it is but nine years since he passed into a more beautiful existence, his life-history still rests unopened in the chest that stands in your room.--We do not even know the name of his family."
"Strange!" said Gabriel; "you too never knew your mother? dear housewife."--
"My father never alluded to his past history," she replied, "my mother must have died in my earliest childhood."--
"Well for you!" cried Gabriel, and as both gazed at him in astonishment, he continued hurriedly, "Well for you, that you cleave to your father with the indissoluble link of love, that he still survives in your memory; may you some day thus survive in the heart of your--but you have no children?"
"God has not blessed our union with children," answered Schöndel, sadly.
"What God doeth, is well done! cling fast to that belief," now interposed Schlome, in quiet and earnest accents. "See, I was once sore troubled about it; we, my wife and I, have neither brethren, nor friends--we always lived so retired from all company--and even if we had friends, the love of a child for its parents can be supplied by nothing else, nothing can be weighed in the balance with it.... It made me sad when I thought that if the Lord should call me or my wife to himself, one of us must be left behind, desolate and forsaken in bitterest woe.--It made me sad when I thought, that with us would be entombed the memory of my father and father-in-law, that with me the long web would be broken, that humanity was ever destined to weave since the world's creation.--But consoling encouraging thoughts in time germinated in my heart. 'Murmur not! this world is but a vestibule of the next,' had my father said, and says not also the prophet? 'Oh, let not the childless lament, I am as grass that withereth!--Thus saith the Lord to them that are childless, they that observe my feast-days, and choose that which pleaseth me and hold fast to my covenant. Even unto them will I give in my house and within my walls a place, and a name better than of sons and of daughters. I will give them an everlasting name that shall not be cut off.' I bow to the decree of the Allwise, what he doeth is well done--I live happy in the performance of my duties, for the future, One that is above will provide--if, hereafter, my soulless body be lowered by strangers into the vault, my spirit will mount upwards to God!"--