She urged me to go up the steep staircase to the attic-room.  The door stood open, and the room itself had been cleared of everything except the coffin in the centre, which, already closed, was waiting for the pall-bearers.  At the head sat a rather stout woman no longer in the prime of life, in a colored cotton dress, but with a black shawl and a black ribbon in her bonnet.  It seemed almost as though she could never have been beautiful.  Before her stood two almost grown-up children, a boy and a girl, whom she was evidently instructing how to behave at the funeral.  Just as I entered she was pushing the boy’s arm away from the coffin, on which he had been leaning in rather awkward fashion; then she carefully smoothed the projecting corners of the shroud.  The gardener’s wife led me up to the coffin, but at that moment the trombones began to play, and at the same time the butcher’s voice was heard from the street, “Barbara, it’s time.”  The pall-bearers appeared and I withdrew to make room for them.  The coffin was lifted and carried down, and the procession began to move.  First came the school children with cross and banner, then the priest and the sexton.  Directly behind the coffin marched the two children of the butcher, and behind them came the parents.  The man moved his lips incessantly, as if in devout prayer, yet looked constantly about him in both directions.  The woman was eagerly reading in her prayer-book, but the two children caused her some trouble.  At one time she pushed them ahead, at another she held them back; in fact the general order of the funeral procession seemed to worry her considerably.  But she always returned to her prayer-book.  In this way the procession arrived at the cemetery.  The grave was open.  The children threw down the first handful of earth, being followed by their father, who remained standing while their mother knelt, holding her book close to her eyes.  The grave-diggers completed their business, and the procession, half disbanded, returned.  At the door there was a slight altercation, as the wife evidently considered some charge of the undertaker too high.  The mourners scattered in all directions.  The old musician was buried.

A few days later—­it was a Sunday—­I was impelled by psychological curiosity and went to the house of the butcher, under the pretext that I wished to secure the violin of the old man as a keepsake.  I found the family together, showing no token of recent distress.  But the violin was hanging beside the mirror and a crucifix on the opposite wall, the objects being arranged symmetrically.  When I explained the object of my visit and offered a comparatively high price for the instrument, the man didn’t seem averse to concluding a profitable bargain.  The woman, however, jumped up from her chair and said, “Well, I should say not.  The violin belongs to James, and a few gulden more or less make no difference to us.”  With that she took the instrument from the wall, looked at it from all sides, blew off