"In ten days," sobbed Johann.
"'Tis very soon," replied Mina, shuddering. "My heart will be scarcely cold, and a single green bud will not have appeared over my grave. But may the earth be green, and the sky blue, and life sweet to him."
Saying these words, she crossed her hands upon her breast, and, speaking no more, remained thus for long hours, without even casting a look upon the weeping Johann or upon her heart-broken father.
The physician soon came, and after him the priest. The first had marvellous secrets to cure the body; the latter had pious consolation and words of peace for the soul. But they sought in vain to cure the body or strengthen the soul of Mina. Each day, each hour, each moment stole a spark of the waning fire of life; her grief was too great for so frail a form to bear, and one evening at the end of July, ten days after Johann's return, she closed her eyes forever, holding her father's hand in hers and the crucifix to her lips. Johann was at her feet and received her last look. She had near her in dying the Supreme Consoler of heaven and her only two friends on earth, and there was in her last moments a tenderness which the heart of the youth never forgot.
Chapter VII.
Two days after, when the body of Mina had been deposited at sunset in the cemetery at Baden, Sebald and Johann, the master and pupil, found themselves alone in the atelier. Strange! It was Johann, the younger, that seemed the most afflicted, most crushed. His eyes were swollen, his cheeks pale, his step tottering, and his face covered with tears. Old Sebald seemed much less changed; a few furrows the more on his brow, a few more white hairs on his head, were the only visible tokens of his grief. His step was as firm, his bearing as proud as before; but a strange, steady glare, glowing and piercing, showing little trace of weariness or tears, shone from his eyes, and it was this look that the master fixed upon his pupil as they entered the atelier that made Johann shudder before its clear and threatening light.
"Johann," said the master, "it is now my turn to ask thee a question. Sawest thou Otho of Arneck when thou wert at the castle of the Countess Gertrude?"
"Ay, master," replied the young man, with flushed face.
"Spokest thou with him?"