ng to the streets that
Fritz Nettenmair had trodden on that occasion. Outside the town-gate
the willows melted again into mist or the mist into willows. Here and
there mist-men carried mist-coffins near the real one. At the
cross-ways, where Fritz Nettenmair had seen the journeyman disappear
in the mist, he himself disappeared. In Tambach they were bearing the
journeyman to burial. The two must have had much to say to each other.
Fritz Nettenmair could have told the workman how carefully he had
carried out the thought sown by him, even to the cutting of the rope;
and the workman could have told his former master how he became a
victim to the cuts thus made. The pastor who preached the sermon over
Fritz Nettenmair's grave, who was buried with all the honors due to
his standing or to be bought with money, did not know what an
awe-inspiring theme had eluded him.

The last word of the funeral sermon had died away, the last spadeful
of earth had fallen on the coffin, the mourners had gone home; it
became night, and again day, and again night, and again and again day
and night; other things drove Fritz Nettenmair's unfortunate death
from the minds of the townsmen--and still other things these things. A
stone was erected over his grave, and his honest death was vouched for
by a sculptor and impressed with chisel-strokes upon forgetful
posterity. One might think that the dark cloud that had hovered over
the house with the green shutters would have burst in the storm that
dashed the older son from the tower-roof of St. George's to the
pavement below, and that life would now be bright there, as its outer
aspect promised. One might indeed think so if one saw only the young
widow and her children. The three strong young beings raised their
drooping heads as soon as the burden which had oppressed them was
lifted. The young widow did not look as if she had been a wife, still
less an unhappy wife; from day to day she seemed more like a bridal
maiden or a maidenly bride. And why should she not? Did she not know
that he loved her? Did she not love him? Did not the teasing words of
others, even if she did not think of it herself, remind her that her
love was no longer a forbidden one? The marriage was so natural, so
necessary according to traditional ideas that those who were too old
or too dignified to jest took it as a matter of course without
mentioning it, and did not mention it merely because they took it as a
matter of course.