"So the old man has no pall!" they grumbled. "Such a thing has never been known: carrying out a dead person all naked and bare. But it must be true with the poor woodman's wife: a pauper she lived and a pauper she died!"
My two sisters began to hunt in their turn; and Maria exclaimed, plaintively:
"Dear Jesus, my mother mustn't be buried without a pall; she would do better than that to stay at home here; and I will give my christening-money and buy her her last dress. Who was it put away the linen sheet? O God, they want to deny her the last thing of all, as well as all the rest!"
I tried to calm the girl and said we should be sure to get a linen sheet out in the village and, if not, then she must rest in peace under the bare deal boards.
"How can you speak like that!" she cried. "Didn't mother in her time buy your clothes for you out of her hard-saved kreuzers? And now you want her to rise on the Day of Judgment in her shabby clothes, when all the others are wearing a white garment!"
She burst into loud crying and leant her glowing forehead against the wall.
But, soon after, the people breathed again: they had found the pall.
And, when they had eaten--we others did not take a bite--and everything was ready, they opened the door of the front passage and knelt down before the coffin and prayed aloud, saying Our Lord's Five Wounds.
Then four men placed the coffin on the litter and lifted it up and carried it out of the poor dwelling into the wood and thence over the commons and fields and through mountain forests.
And round about was the winter night and over all hung the starry sky.
One more look at the empty bier-plank and then I quickly drew my little brother out with me; and father and sisters also hurried after; and the elder brother locked the door; and then the cottage in the wood lay there in the dark and in the deepest stillness. Life had left it--and death had left it: there is no greater loneliness possible.
We heard the hum of the praying funeral procession, we saw the flicker of the two or three lanterns among the trunks of the trees. The bearers walked at a quick pace; those who followed and prayed could hardly keep up with them on the rough, snow-covered paths. I was a long way behind with my little brother: the boy could not walk so fast. Mother would never have left us behind like that, when living: she would have waited, laughing a little and chiding a little, and led the child by the hand. Now, however, she only longed for rest.