Page:The Garden of Romance - 1897.djvu/248

236 could he reach to the water-jug he had placed by his bedside, and now the last drop was gone. No fever or sickness had brought him down, nothing but old age. It was all the time dark night in the little corner where he lay. A little spider, that he could not see, worked busily, and spun his web just overhead, so that there should be at least a little fresh new shroud for his face when the old man should close his eyes.

Slowly and drearily time went by; he had no tears to shed, and he felt no pain; Molly never came into his thoughts; he had a feeling as though the world and its bustle was nothing to him, as though he lay beyond it, and no one remembered him. Now and then it seemed to him that he felt hunger and thirst;—yes! he was sure that he did!—but no one came to comfort him, no one would come. Then he thought of all those who had ever suffered hardship, and he remembered how the holy Elizabeth, when she lived on the earth, she, the heroine of his home and his childhood, the noble Duchess of Thuringia, the lofty lady, went herself into the poorest cabin, and brought hope and comfort to the sick. Her good deeds shone in his thoughts; he remembered how she had come and spoken words of consolation to those who suffered, how she bound up the wounds of the miserable and brought food to the hungry, although often rebuked for it by her stern husband. Then he remembered a tale about her; how, when she came with her basket packed full of wine and bread, her husband, who watched her comings and goings, strode up in anger, and asked her what it was that she was carrying, whereupon in terror she answered that it was but roses she had plucked in the garden. At that he tore off the cloth, and