The lad spoke to her, giving expression to his sympathy, and she accepted it; but she said such strange things, and answered him so utterly at random, that he began to fear that grief had turned her brain.  She went on to ask him point-blank how much money she now had, and as he happened to know approximately, he could tell her; she clasped her hands, for how could any one human being who was not a king possess such enormous wealth!  Finally she enquired whether he knew how a will should be drawn up, and that, too, he answered affirmatively.

She made him describe it all, and then he added that the signature must be made valid by those of two witnesses; but she, he added, was too young to be thinking of making her will.

“Why?” said she.  “Is Paula much older than I am?”

“And the day after to-morrow,” the boy went on, “she is to be cast into the Nile.  All the people call her the Bride of the Nile.”

At this that hideous, malignant smile again curled her lips, but she hastily suppressed it and walked straight on into the house.  At the door he timidly asked her whether he might once more look on his mistress; but she was obliged to forbid it for fear of infection.  However, he proudly replied:  “What you do not fear, has no terrors for me,” and he followed her to the side of the bed where the corpse now lay washed and in fine array; and when he saw Katharina kiss the dead woman’s hand he, too, as soon as she looked away, pressed his lips on the place hers had touched.  Then he sat down by the bed and remained there till she sent him away.

Before noon the bishop arrived to perform the last rites.  He found the body surrounded by beautiful flowers.  Katharina had been out in the garden again and had cut all the rarest and finest; and though she had allowed the gardener to carry the basket for her, she would not have him help her in gathering them.  The feeling that she was doing something for her mother had been a comfort to her; still, by day everything about her seemed even more intolerable than by night.  Everything looked so large, so coarse, so insistent, so menacing, and reminded her at every step of some injustice or some deed of which she was ashamed.  Every eye, she fancied, must see through her; and now and then it seemed as though the pillars of the great banqueting-hall, where her mother still lay, were tottering, and the ceiling about to fall in and crush her.

She answered the bishop’s questions absently and often quite at random, and the old man supposed that she was stunned by her great sorrow; so to give her thoughts a new direction he began telling her about Paula, and believing that Katharina was fond of her, he confided to her that he had taken Paula, the day before, to Orion’s cell, and consecrated their betrothal.

At this her face was convulsed in a manner that alarmed the bishop; a fearful tumult raged in her soul, her bosom rose and fell spasmodically, and all she could utter was the question:  “But they will sacrifice her all the same?”