aw the curtains, that unseen they might weep, and ask themselves
how such wrongs could have been inflicted upon the dead woman and
themselves.

The respect of high and low for the Ortlieb family had been most
brilliantly displayed when the body of the son, slain in battle, had
been interred in the chapel of his race. And their mother? How many had
held her dear! to how many she had been kind, loving, and friendly! How
great a sympathy the whole city had shown during her illness, and how
many of all classes had attended the mass for her soul! And the burial
which had just taken place?

True, on her father's account all the members of the Council were
present, but scarcely half the wives had appeared. Their daughters--Els
had counted them--numbered only nine, and but three were included among
her friends. The others had probably come out of curiosity. And the
common people, the artisans, the lower classes, who in countless numbers
had accompanied her brother's coffin to its resting place, and during
the mass for the dead had crowded the spacious nave of St. Sebald's?
There had been now only a scanty group. The nuns from the convent were
present, down to the most humble lay Sister; but they were under great
obligations to her mother, and their abbess was her father's sister.
There were few other women except the old crones from the hospitals and
nurseries, who were never absent when there was an opportunity to weep
or to backbite. In going through the nave of the church into the chapel
the sisters had passed a group of younger lads and maidens, who had
nudged one another in so disrespectful a way, whispering all sorts of
things, that Els had tried to draw Eva past them as swiftly as possible.

Her wish to keep her more sensitive sister from noticing the
disagreeable gestures and insulting words of the cruel youths and girls
was gratified. True, Eva also felt with keen indignation that far too
little honour was paid to her beloved dead; that the blinded people
believed the slanderers who repeated even worse things of her Els than
of herself, and made their poor mother, who had lived and suffered like
a saint, atone for what they imagined were the sins of her daughters;
but the jeers and scorn which had obtruded themselves upon her father
and sister from more than one quarter, in many a form, had entirely
escaped her notice. She had accustomed herself from childhood to
indulge in reflections and emotions apart from the dem