In the next room my mother asked me to show her what I could play on the piano, wisely hoping to divert my father’s thoughts by the sound.  I played Ueb’ immer Treu und Redlichkeit, and my father said to her, ‘Is it possible he has musical talent?’

In the early hours of the next morning my mother came into the great night nursery, and, standing by the bedside of each of us in turn, told us, with sobs, that our father was dead, and gave us each a message with his blessing.  To me she said, ’He hoped to make something of you.’

In the afternoon my schoolmaster, Wetzel, came to take me back to the country.  We walked the whole way to Possendorf, arriving at nightfall.  On the way I asked him many questions about the stars, of which he gave me my first intelligent idea.

A week later my stepfather’s brother arrived from Eisleben for the funeral.  He promised, as far as he was able, to support the family, which was now once more destitute, and undertook to provide for my future education.

I took leave of my companions and of the kind-hearted clergyman, and it was for his funeral that I paid my next visit to Possendorf a few years later.  I did not go to the place again till long afterwards, when I visited it on an excursion such as I often made, far into the country, at the time when I was conducting the orchestra in Dresden.  I was much grieved not to find the old parsonage still there, but in its place a more pretentious modern structure, which so turned me against the locality, that thenceforward my excursions were always made in another direction.

This time my uncle brought me back to Dresden in the carriage.  I found my mother and sister in the deepest mourning, and remember being received for the first time with a tenderness not usual in our family; and I noticed that the same tenderness marked our leave-taking, when, a few days later, my uncle took me with him to Eisleben.

This uncle, who was a younger brother of my stepfather, had settled there as a goldsmith, and Julius, one of my elder brothers, had already been apprenticed to him.  Our old grandmother also lived with this bachelor son, and as it was evident that she could not live long, she was not informed of the death of her eldest son, which I, too, was bidden to keep to myself.  The servant carefully removed the crape from my coat, telling me she would keep it until my grandmother died, which was likely to be soon.

I was now often called upon to tell her about my father, and it was no great difficulty for me to keep the secret of his death, as I had scarcely realised it myself.  She lived in a dark back room looking out upon a narrow courtyard, and took a great delight in watching the robins that fluttered freely about her, and for which she always kept fresh green boughs by the stove.  When some of these robins were killed by the cat, I managed to catch others for her in the neighbourhood, which pleased her very much, and, in return, she kept me tidy and clean.  Her death, as had been expected, took place before long, and the crape that had been put away was now openly worn in Eisleben.