nd
he wrung his hands in utter despair.

The funeral train that followed the young Italian, who had appeared
among them like a fleeting vision of Paradise, would have done honour to
the wife of the Chief Justice.

Every one who was respectable and aristocratic in Leipsic followed her,
as well as many humbler folk on whom Bianca's glance had rested but
once. People were now so open-hearted, and seemed to wish to give to the
dead what they had withheld from the living. Hot tears were shed, for
though not one of all the mourners had ever really known Bianca, they
felt that they had lost something beautiful.

The only member of the family of Ueberhell who did not make part of
the funeral train was the chief mourner, the bereaved Doctor Melchior
himself.

Alone and tearless he paced the chamber that Bianca had occupied. He
denied himself to all who wished to see him or to comfort him, he even
refused to admit the notary Winckler.

That the flower of his life was crushed, and that he carried a
death-wound in his heart was all that he felt or thought.

Frau Schimmel began at last to fear that he too would die. If the vision
that showed her Frau Bianca on her death-bed had come true, why should
not the other one concerning the doctor? He ate and drank less than a
Carthusian on a fast-day, he offended all the good people who had shown
his wife such honour, he went neither to mass nor to his work in the
laboratory, and consequently her husband, too, was idle and threatened
to become unbearable once more.

How would it all end?

The burghers exhibited great indulgence towards him. He had received
a terrible blow, and one must forgive him for not having followed the
coffin, particularly, as nothing else was wanting that was necessary to
an imposing and expensive funeral: Frau Schimmel had taken care of that,
having arranged it on her own responsibility. When the great healer,
Time, had comforted him, then would he draw near to them again, most of
his friends thought, yes even nearer than before, now that he had lost
his invalid wife who had hindered him from joining their gay circles.

We are so willing to be lenient to the unfortunate, for a Greater than
we has visited them with sorrow such as man could not inflict.

But it ended otherwise than his friends anticipated. The Three Kings lay
there like a deserted house, and although the tall chimney on the roof
began to belch forth streams of smoke by night, as well as by