Then she rose and, smiling, kissed Els, who was sleeping, on the forehead, told Sister Renata that she would go to rest, and lay down on her bed in the darkened chamber.

Whilst praying and reflecting she had thought constantly of her mother.  Now she dreamed that Heinz Schorlin had borne her in his strong arms out of the burning convent, as Sir Boemund Altrosen had saved the Countess von Montfort, and carried her to the dead woman, who looked as fresh and well as in the days before her sickness.

When, three hours before noon, she awoke, she returned greatly refreshed to her dead mother.  How mild and gentle her face was even now; yet the dear, silent lips could never again give her a morning greeting and, overwhelmed by grief, she threw herself on her knees before the coffin.

But she soon rose again.  Her recent slumber had transformed the passionate anguish into quiet sorrow.

Now, too, she could think of external things.  There was little to be done in the last arrangement of the dead, but she could place the delicate, pale hands in a more natural position, and the flowers which the gardener had brought to adorn the coffin did not satisfy her.  She knew all that grew in the woods and fields near Nuremberg, and no one could dispose bouquets more gracefully.  Her mother had been especially fond of some of them, and was always pleased when she brought them home from her walks with the abbess or Sister Perpetua, the experienced old doctress of the convent.  Many grew in the forest, others on the brink of the water.  The beloved dead should not leave the house, whose guide and ornament she had been, without her favourite blossoms.

Eva arranged the flowers brought by the gardener as gracefully as possible, and then asked Sister Perpetua to go to walk with her, telling her father and sister that she wished to be out of doors with the nun for a short time.

She told no one what she meant to do.  Her mother’s favourite flowers should be her own last gift to her.

Old Martsche received the order to send Ortel, the youngest manservant in the household, a good-natured fellow eighteen years old, with a basket, to wait for her and Sister Perpetua at the weir.

After the thunderstorm of the day before the air was specially fresh and pure; it was a pleasure merely to breathe.  The sun shone brightly from the cloudless sky.  It was a delightful walk through the meadows and forest over the footpath which passed near the very Dutzen pool, where Katterle the day before had resolved to seek death.  All Nature seemed revived as though by a refreshing bath.  Larks flew heavenward with a low sweet song, from amidst the grain growing luxuriantly for the winter harvest, and butterflies hovered above the blossoming fields.  Slender dragon-flies and smaller busy insects flitted buzzing from flower to flower, sucking honey from the brimming calyxes and bearing to others the seeds needed to form fruit.  The songs of finches and the twitter of white-throats echoed from many a bush by the wayside.