There was Uncle Grünebaum too, very gentle and reticent; Uncle Grünebaum who knew that there is a time for everything and that everything must be regarded and treated and discussed in the proper manner.
Hans now shook hands with Auntie Schlotterbeck and Uncle Grünebaum and they both talked to him comfortingly and soothingly. He looked round him again in the low, dark, shabby room and in spite of all his grief and all his pain he felt a calm, an assurance which, during his torturing journey, he thought he had lost forever.
And now Uncle Grünebaum prepared to express his feelings in a well considered speech; but Auntie Schlotterbeck interfered after his preliminary clearing of the throat and half persuasively, half forcibly led him out of the door so that all he could do was to call back over his shoulder:
"Don't excite her, Hans. Be humane with her; behave like a filial son and composed mind, the doctor has given us strict orders."
As soon as the mother and son were alone the mother said:
"You must forgive me, Hans, that I had you called away from your work; but I had such a great yearning for you I could not help it. You have always been my comfort; you must be it now too. I longed for you so much."
"Oh Mother, dear Mother," cried Hans Unwirrsch, "don't talk as if my happiness and welfare were more important than yours. Oh, if you only knew how gladly I would give everything that I have gained by my work while away if I could only spare you the smallest part of your pain! But you will grow better, you will soon be well again. Oh Mother, you don't know how much I need you; no wisdom that can be taught on earth can give what a mother's word and look gives us."
"Just hear the boy," cried Frau Christine. "Does he want to make fun of the old washerwoman. Such a learned gentleman! But never mind, Hans. Hans, do you know that you are growing more and more like your sainted father! He behaved just like that if the sun went behind the clouds for a little while. He was a scholar too, even if he hadn't been to the university and I often had to wonder at the man. One day he would be as high in the air as a lark and the next day he would creep along the earth like a snail. You will mount up into the blue sky again, Hans, don't worry about me; I have nothing to reproach God with, he has meant well with me; he has given me a happy life and he cannot help the burden that he now lays upon me; that is everyone's lot and no one can escape it."
Hans felt much humiliated at the bedside of this poor, simple woman who had to endure such tortures and yet could speak and comfort so heroically. Even though his grief at the loss which threatened him grew more violent, his weak despondency of the last few days disappeared. He felt sure on his feet again, his true, real sorrow gave him back his inner self-control; in his profession he separated the real, the content from the non-essential, and for the first time really applied it to life. These difficult days had a deeper effect upon him than all the days he had spent in lecture rooms or in only half fruitful study. He now stepped out of the unwholesome spell of flattering, enervating imaginings, and dull, heavy broodings into real life; he did not lose his hunger for the ideal, the transcendental, but to it was now added hunger for the real, and the fusing of both, which took place in such solemn hours, could not but produce a good cast.
He arranged a table for his work at his dying mother's bedside. There he sat and wrote and, at the same time, watched the sick woman's slumber. The consistory had given him his examination themes; he began to work at them with an eagerness which he had believed was quite dead in him. It was a strange, sadly happy time.