Alone, in the dark and silent night, she wept.  And these were the first tears she had shed since the terrible events through which she had passed.

It was evening when Irma awoke.  She put her hand to her forehead.  A wet cloth had been bound round it.  She had been sleeping nearly twenty-four hours.  The grandmother was sitting by her bed.

“You’ve a strong constitution,” said the old woman, “and that helped you.  It’s all right now.”

Irma arose.  She felt strong, and guided by the grandmother, walked over to the dwelling-house.

“God be praised that you’re well again,” said Walpurga, who was standing there with her husband; and Hansei added, “yes, that’s right.”

Irma thanked them, and looked up at the gable of the house.  What words there met her eye?

“Don’t you think the house has a good motto written on its forehead?” asked Hansei.

Irma started.  On the gable of the house she read the following inscription:—­

Eat and drink:  Forget not god:  Thine honor guard: 
     Of all thy store,
     THOU’LT carry hence
     A winding-sheet
     and nothing more.

Translation of S.A.  Stern.

THE COURT PHYSICIAN’S PHILOSOPHY

From ‘On the Heights’

Gunther continued, “I am only a physician, who has held many a hand hot with fever or stiff in death in his own.  The healing art might serve as an illustration.  We help all who need our help, and do not stop to ask who they are, whence they come, or whether when restored to health they persist in their evil courses.  Our actions are incomplete, fragmentary; thought alone is complete and all-embracing.  Our deeds and ourselves are but fragments—­the whole is God.”

“I think I grasp your meaning [replied the Queen].  But our life, as you say, is indeed a mere fraction of life as a whole; and how is each one to bear up under the portion of suffering that falls to his individual lot?  Can one—­I mean it in its best sense—­always be outside of one’s self?”

“I am well aware, your Majesty, that passions and emotions cannot be regulated by ideas; for they grow in a different soil, or, to express myself correctly, move in entirely different spheres.  It is but a few days since I closed the eyes of my old friend Eberhard.  Even he never fully succeeded in subordinating his temperament to his philosophy; but in his dying hour he rose beyond the terrible grief that broke his heart—­grief for his child.  He summoned the thoughts of better hours to his aid,—­hours when his perception of the truth had been undimmed by sorrow or passion,—­and he died a noble, peaceful death.  Your Majesty must still live and labor, elevating yourself and others, at one and the same time.  Permit me to remind you of the