occasion was left undone,
and Lisabethli had no cause to complain of her dower, her outfit, or
the wedding banquet. One thing only was lacking--the smile of joy on
the face of the bride's mother. She was kind and courteous to all, to
strangers and relatives alike, and bowed assent when the guests
remarked to her how completely made for each other the young couple
were, and that both houses might well be congratulated on so fitting
and honourable an alliance. But amidst all the loud cheer of the bridal
banquet, she sat pale and silent as a ghost, and though the rest of the
family of the bridegroom who had not known her before, gradually grew
reconciled to this, and whispered to each other that it was the sorrow
for her absent son which pressed so hardly upon her on this joyous
day--yet Kurt had not been wont to see his mother-in-law thus, and it
struck him as strange that she never once gave him her hand, or
pressed him in her arms as she had done the stranger-guest when, but
half-recovered, he had ventured to woo her child. It was only when the
youthful pair set out to their new home, that the mother kissed her
daughter with such a violent burst of tears, it seemed as though her
heart would break and melt away, and then laid her damp hand on her
son-in-law's brow, murmuring words that no one could understand. Then
she turned hurriedly away, and even before they left the house, locked
herself up in the solitude of her own room.

There she spent the few years that she had to live, avoiding all
society, reading religious books, and only opening her door to the poor
and the sorrowful. When, in a year's time, letters came from Augsburg,
pressingly inviting her to the christening of a grandson, she excused
herself on account of her age and infirmities which unfitted her to
travel. Yet she was often seen to walk with vigorous step in solitary
roads outside the town--old Valentin a few paces behind her. But she
never addressed him and seemed, indeed, almost to have lost the habit
of speech. It was only on her death-bed, when she felt her end drawing
near, that she sent for the parish priest, who spent some hours with
her. What she then imparted was told by him to one of her daughter's
children who travelled to Berne to see his grandmother's grave. That
she had ordered to be dug by the churchyard wall, close to the
long-ago-levelled mound under which her lost son had found his last
resting-place.