er. I shared her grief without
understanding much about it. She was passionately devoted to her
children, and I was passionately fond of her. What there was left of
life to her, she gave to us, she lived for us only, and tried very
hard not to deprive our childhood of all brightness. She was certainly
most beautiful, and quite different from all other ladies at Dessau,
not only in the eyes of her son, but as it seemed to me, of everybody.
Then she had a most perfect voice, and when I first began music she
helped and encouraged me in every possible way. We played _a quatre
mains_, and soon she made me accompany her when she sang. As far as I
can recollect, I was never so happy as when I could be with her. She
read so much to us that I was quite satisfied, and saw perhaps less of
my young friends than I ought. When my mother said she wished to
die, and to be with our father, I feel sure that my sister and I were
only anxious that she should take us with her, for there were few
golden chains that bound us as yet to this life. I see her now,
sitting on a winter's evening near the warm stove, a candle on the
table, and a book from which she read to us in her hands, while the
spinning-wheel worked by the servant-maid in the corner went on
humming all the time. She read Paul Gerhard's translation of St.
Bernard's:

"Salve caput cruentatum,
Totum spinis coronatum,
Conquassatum, vulneratum,
Arundine verberatum,
Facies sputis illita."

"O Haupt voll Blut und Wunden,
Voll Schmerz und voller Hohn!
O Haupt zu Spott gebunden
Mit einer Dornenkron,
O Haupt sonst schoen gezieret
Mit hoechster Ehr und Zier,
Jetzt aber hoch schimpfiret:
Gegruesset seist du mir!"

Though the German translation does not come near the powerful majesty
of the original, yet such was the effect produced on me that I saw the
bleeding head before my eyes, and cried and cried until my mother had
to comfort me by assuring me that the sufferer was now in Heaven and
that it was only a song to be sung in church. How deeply such scenes
seem engraved on the memory; how vividly they return when the rubbish
of many years is swept away and all is again as it was then, and the
_caput cruentatum_ looks down on us once more, as it did then, with
the human eyes full of divine love, so truly human that one could say
with St. Bernard, "Tuum caput huc inclina, in meis pausa brachiis."
But willingly as I list