"Will it impair the authenticity of this document that I am unable to sign it? I cannot, unfortunately, move my hand."
"Not at all," said the lawyer. "These two gentlemen, Herr Geheimrath Heim and the surgeon Lederer, will have the kindness to affix their signatures as witnesses, and the instrument will be legally correct. If you are strong enough to dictate your will, there is nothing now to prevent your doing so."
"Oh, yes! oh, yes!" gasped Hartwich, as the Geheimrath supported him; "every moment is precious."
The preliminary sentences were written at Hartwich's request. The Geheimrath closed the door, and the dying man began to dictate in such feverish haste that the lawyer was obliged to entreat him to speak more slowly. Some irregularities in the formula were arranged, and the will was completed before the glimmering spark of life in the testator was extinguished. Little Ernestine was made heir to a property of ninety thousand thalers. The document was read aloud to Hartwich, and the Geheimrath and Lederer affixed their signatures instead of his own.
"Now I can die!" said the sick man, with the air of a released captive; and instantly his mental and physical powers failed him.
"Geheimrath!" he faltered, and a strange smile transfigured his countenance, "lay the will upon my child's bed, as her--father's--last--farewell--thanks--thanks." And his eyelids closed, he muttered unintelligibly, and relapsed into unconsciousness.
The Geheimrath nodded to the lawyers, and said, "It was high time!"
[CHAPTER IV.]
THE SAD SURVIVORS.
The next day, at about the same hour, Frau Bertha was in her kitchen, beating whites of eggs for a cake, her round cheeks shaking merrily with the exercise. She had sent her maid into the garden with Gretchen, and was supplying the maid's place. She turned the bowl upside down, to convince herself that the eggs were sufficiently beaten; not a drop fell,--they were all right. She set them aside with an air of great satisfaction, and turned to a bag beneath the table, whence issued a melancholy flapping and cooing. A white dove poked its head out of the mouth of the bag, and Bertha thrust it back again, securing the opening more tightly. A pot of water on the fire boiled over with a loud hissing, and she hastened to roll up her sleeves over her large, well-formed arms, and lift the heavy vessel from the glowing coals. She was a beautiful sight, as the glare from the fire illuminated her massive proportions; as she moved hither and thither, now arranging her various cooking-utensils, now opening the door beneath the oven, to thrust in huge pieces of wood, hastily picking up and tossing back the bits of burning coal that fell out, she might have been Frau Venus, the coarse Frau Venus of the popular German imagination, fresh from the infernal regions in the Hörselberg, who, clad in a kitchen apron, was here in the likeness of a cook-maid to seduce the calm, cold-blooded Dr. Gleissert by the magic charms of her cookery. She tossed a net full of crabs into a pot of cold water, and looked thoughtlessly on at their slow death over the fire. She never dreamed that just at that moment a human life was leaving its mortal tenement beneath her roof, and when, a few minutes later, she was pounding ingredients in her huge mortar, that the noise she was making was the death-knell of a departing soul. She did not hear her husband's approach until he stood before her, and seizing her by the arm, said breathlessly, "Wife, this is our last day of torment!"