"Yesterday at this time we buried Cilli," said Justus.—Ferdinande's Pietà, which I am finishing, will stand over her grave, and declare to the world what a treasure of goodness and love and mercy lies buried there; and to these two here I will erect a monument—I showed Mieting a plan of it on the way.—She says it will be great; but how gladly I would break stone, literally, for the rest of my life, as my father-in-law said, if I could thereby awake the good, noble, brave souls to life again!—The naval uniform is very becoming to you, Reinhold! I should have modeled you that way; we must try it again—the big gold epaulettes are fine for modeling!—And who is going to preach the funeral sermon? The General and Uncle Ernst have directed that they shall both be buried in one grave. I find that beautiful and right, and the objection that they were not even publicly betrothed entirely without basis and genuinely philistine. And here it occurs to me—Uncle Ernst must speak at the grave; he speaks so well, and it will do him good to express his thoughts!—And the General, too; they both stand together, now, like brothers. A dispatch came a while ago for Uncle Ernst; I was present when he opened it, and saw how he winced; I am convinced that it is about poor Philip; they probably caught him; it is horrible that Uncle Ernst must bear that, too—on a day like this! But he didn't tell any one except the General. I saw how they went aside, and he showed the General the dispatch, and they conversed together for a long time, and then shook hands.—Uncle Ernst! who swore that the hand which he should extend to the General would shrivel up, and who asked me, half a dozen times today, whether I thought Ottomar's comrades, who had said they were coming, would really come; it was for that reason we set the funeral so late—it would be very painful for the General if they didn't come!—As if he had no sorrows of his own! He is a heroic soul!—But your Else, too, is admirable. How she loved this brother, and how quietly and calmly she orders everything now, and has a willing ear and a cheerful kindly word for every one! 'That's more than I could do, you know,' said Mieting; 'there's only one Else, you know.'—Of course I know that! But there's also only one Mieting! Am I not right?"
"My dear son-in-law!" said Strummin, turning away.
"He has called me that two hundred times today," said Justus with a sigh, lengthening and quickening his steps.
They had reached the upper end of the deep narrow cut, where they saw the castle directly before them. A strange sight for the President, who was very well acquainted with the situation from former days, and whom Reinhold had led a few steps up to the now very steep slope. For the stream had washed away and carried off the slope to such an extent that here and there the edge projected, and Reinhold was enabled to find and show to the President the place where the fir-tree had stood, whose fall had been so disastrous to Ottomar. Below them, between the steep slope and the castle, a stream still surged—no longer in the foaming waves and roaring whirlpools of that night of terror, but in quiet, smooth eddies, which merged to form new ones and to splash up against the keels of five large boats across which the wide temporary bridge had been made from the mouth of the ravine to the ancient stone gate of the court.
The turrets of the gate, down to the great coat-of-arms of the Warnows above the opening, gleamed in the evening sheen, and so, too, glittered the round tower of the castle and the roofs above it down to the sharply defined line of the blue-gray shadows, which the hill cast over the lower land. And farther on to the right gleamed the tree-tops of the flooded park, and beyond castle and park the still waters that entirely filled the great inlet and seemed to merge into the open sea beyond. Before the slanting, shimmering sunbeams even Reinhold's sharp eyes could not distinguish the few tops of the dunes which still towered above the water; he could scarcely make out the roofs of the Pölitz premises, or here and there on the wide surface a clump of willows on the banks of the dikes.
The President stood absorbed in deep thought; he seemed to have forgotten even Reinhold's presence.—"Some time the daylight will come," Reinhold heard him mutter.
They walked over the pontoon bridge—the water gurgling and splashing against the sharp keels; out of the wide opening of the gate came a sullen murmur. Entering the gate they saw for the first time why the village had looked so deserted. The very large court, particularly the part next to the castle, was filled with a multitude of perhaps a thousand people, who were huddled together in dense groups, and made room, with respectful greeting, for the gentlemen as they approached the portal. They curiously scanned the newcomers, making observations, in low tones, after they had passed. "The man who walked with the Commander was the President!" they who knew him remarked (and there were many) to the others.—"If the President—who is the chief official in the whole district, and, besides being a kind gentleman, is well disposed to every one—would come and be present at the funeral, then the Count might stay at home, Heaven willing!"—"And if the Count wants to play the rôle of gentleman among them—they would make him sorry for it."—"But Mr. Damberg says that is not to be thought of; the Count may be thankful if they spare his life, and, in any case, he would be ostracized."
The gentlemen entered the castle. A still larger and more brilliant group now appeared upon the bridge, and drew the attention of the throng thither. It was a group of officers in full dress uniform, followed at some distance by a larger number of subalterns—from the regiment of von Werben, said they who had served, and had seen Ottomar in the casket.—And the Colonel in the front was, of course, the commander of the regiment!—That he could command, those who had served in France could tell by his eyes and nose. And the Captain, who marched at his side, had been sent by the General Staff by Field-Marshal von Moltke himself; and the tall Lieutenant, also in the uniform of von Werben's regiment, was young von Wartenberg, of the von Wartenbergs of Bolswitz; and as for the old families of von Bolswitz—they had come over an hour before in their equipage, with an outrider, from their castle, three miles away. And the idea that a word of all that stupid talk about young von Werben could be true, that they didn't take him to Berlin because he couldn't have an honorable burial there, and that they came all the way from Berlin to help bury him!
Justus, who had undertaken the direction of the funeral ceremonies with the greatest willingness, and had seen the officers come across the courtyard, waited in the vestibule until he could receive them and conduct them into the room on the right, where the company was assembled. Then he beckoned to Reinhold to follow him, and led him to the door at the end of the hall, which he quietly opened and immediately closed behind him. No one else would be allowed to enter, he declared,—"What do you say, Reinhold?"
The high magnificent rooms, with windows all closed, were flooded with soft light from countless tapers, hung from the walls and ceiling; and among baskets of evergreen plants and young fir-trees which stood in a beautiful ellipse, opening toward the door, rested the two caskets upon an elevated platform, covered with tapestries and flowers. The walls were decorated with old arms which Justus had taken from the armory of the castle—beautiful casts of antiques, and even originals, which a former art-loving occupant of the castle had collected, and which Justus had brought from the halls and rooms, and groups of ornamental plants and evergreens—with lighted candles among them.