Until the middle of the winter Moses Freudenstein's wife lay still and peaceful and was no longer afraid. The cruel scenes of the near past faded, God gave poor, beautiful Kleophea a happy death.
When you have become accustomed to the voice of the sea it lulls you very gently to sleep. It seems to you as if to eternity had been given a tongue with which to sing the children of earth to sleep.
It was touching to see how old Uncle Rudolf would not leave his niece's bedside, how he held her head on his breast, how he talked to her—how he cried outside her door. They all wept about poor, beautiful Kleophea: Pastor Tillenius, his assistant Hans Unwirrsch, Fränzchen Unwirrsch, Henriette Trublet, Colonel von Bullau—all of them.
Once more Kleophea wrote to her mother but this letter too was returned unopened; that was the last hurt that her poor, harassed heart received. Hans Unwirrsch had written to Dr. Théophile Stein and even though his letter was not returned no answer came to it. Nothing more was heard in Grunzenow of Dr. Théophile Stein who in Kröppel Street had been Moses Freudenstein, until in the year 1852 when he, despised by those who had made use of him, despised by those against whom he had been used, received the title of "Privy Councillor." To all decent men he was an outcast, a pariah.
In the little churchyard in Grunzenow there was a half-sunken mound beneath which there slept an unknown woman whose body had been washed ashore there by the waves many, many years before. Beside that mound Kleophea was buried, who had been cast ashore by a still wilder sea than the Baltic. Fränzchen had picked out the spot for the poor, shipwrecked girl and a more suitable one could hardly have been found in the whole world. Johannes Unwirrsch preached the funeral sermon; but much as he had to say, just as little could he put it in words; still those who stood nearest to the coffin and to the open grave all understood him.
Franziska Unwirrsch was a good guardian and gardener for Kleophea's grave and many a flower that usually would not live on that bleak shore, of the existence of which the village of Grunzenow had known nothing until then, throve under the care of her blessed hand behind the churchyard wall that protected the mound from the sea wind.
Franziska's hand was blessed, indeed, everything throve under its care—the vicarage, the castle, the village.
Lieutenant Rudolf Götz recovered but slowly from the heavy shock which the death of his niece gave him. For a long time he was again tied to his armchair and Fränzchen could not kiss away from his lips every curse that he sent after Dr. Théophile Stein. The Colonel became more and more gallant, his castle more and more homelike, more and more he came to realize that "without the womenfolk the world was not worth a round of powder." For him as well as for Uncle Rudolf fate had still many a good year in store.
Henriette Trublet could bring herself to remain in Grunzenow only until the following spring. When the first swallows came her Parisian blood stirred. She would have drooped miserably if they had not given her the means of gratifying her longing for "the world." She wept bitterly at parting and thought she should never get over it; fluttered merrily away however, arrived safely, by land, at Mademoiselle Euphrosine's in St. Petersburg and the following year married a very rich German baker there, whom she made as happy as she could.
In the spring of the following year old Josias Tillenius passed away quietly without any illness after a long, beautiful and blessed life, and if the hard, weather-seasoned, sea-faring people shall, when the time comes, cry over Pastor Unwirrsch's coffin as they did over the coffin of this aged man, he will have well fulfilled his office on the shore of the sea.