"Frau Hamptmann Salden," was the hoarse reply.
At that moment they began to sing beside the tomb; a violent gust of wind shook the snow from the cypresses, and whirled it up from every grave, which had been softly bedded in its lap. The shivering assembly seemed to be animated but by the one desire that the burial ceremony might soon be over.
Blanden rested his head upon a lofty tombstone, his tears flowed unrestrainedly. How deserving of tears every human life seems to be, when a thoughtful mind sums up its years in as many seconds! How mournful are his short-lived joys, and how many terrors does the span of time contain! No funeral oration disturbed his reflections; the ministers who would gladly have spoken beside this grave, dared not perform their office, and from the others accusations were feared which might have disturbed the peacefulness of the tomb.
While the wind buried in its gusts the sounds of the choral singing, Blanden thought of the youthful, beautiful Pauline; he thought of lovely Eva! Mother and daughter were blended in one picture; it was a shadowy portrait in which their features became united. But the one reposed in the ocean's lap, the other in wintry earth!
Already the clods fell with a hollow sound upon the coffin, thrown in hastily by half-frozen hands, and, after a hurried performance of the last verse of the hymn, the assembly rushed away as if carried off by the bride of the storm, which, howling hoarsely, swept over the lonely graves.
Blanden had maintained his concealment behind the monument and cypresses; now he stepped forth; sadly he cast the hard clods of earth upon the coffin; his soul was _one_ thought of love--_one_ prayer for forgiveness, because dark self-accusations were stirred in his heart. Deeply buried in meditation, he did not observe that the wind had become a hurricane, cracking the boughs of the trees on every side, casting one weeping-willow to the ground, that the earth groaned, and hardly permitted him to stand upright. The grave-diggers had already laid their spades aside, and taken refuge in the dead-house.
Suddenly something struggled before him through the snow; he saw a fluttering cloak, and a bare-headed girl upon her knees in front of him; stars of snow nestled in her tangled hair, glassy eyes stared up at him, and glowing kisses covered his hands.