Now, too, she could think of external things.  There was little to be done in the last arrangement of the dead, but she could place the delicate, pale hands in a more natural position, and the flowers which the gardener had brought to adorn the coffin did not satisfy her.  She knew all that grew in the woods and fields near Nuremberg, and no one could dispose bouquets more gracefully.  Her mother had been especially fond of some of them, and was always pleased when she brought them home from her walks with the abbess or Sister Perpetua, the experienced old doctress of the convent.  Many grew in the forest, others on the brink of the water.  The beloved dead should not leave the house, whose guide and ornament she had been, without her favourite blossoms.

Eva arranged the flowers brought by the gardener as gracefully as possible, and then asked Sister Perpetua to go to walk with her, telling her father and sister that she wished to be out of doors with the nun for a short time.

She told no one what she meant to do.  Her mother’s favourite flowers should be her own last gift to her.

Old Martsche received the order to send Ortel, the youngest manservant in the household, a good-natured fellow eighteen years old, with a basket, to wait for her and Sister Perpetua at the weir.

After the thunderstorm of the day before the air was specially fresh and pure; it was a pleasure merely to breathe.  The sun shone brightly from the cloudless sky.  It was a delightful walk through the meadows and forest over the footpath which passed near the very Dutzen pool, where Katterle the day before had resolved to seek death.  All Nature seemed revived as though by a refreshing bath.  Larks flew heavenward with a low sweet song, from amidst the grain growing luxuriantly for the winter harvest, and butterflies hovered above the blossoming fields.  Slender dragon-flies and smaller busy insects flitted buzzing from flower to flower, sucking honey from the brimming calyxes and bearing to others the seeds needed to form fruit.  The songs of finches and the twitter of white-throats echoed from many a bush by the wayside.

In the forest they were surrounded by delightful shade animated by hundreds of loud and low voices far away and close at hand.  Countless buds were opening under the moss and ferns, strawberries were ripening close to the ground, and the delicate leafy boughs of the bilberry bushes were full of juicy green oared fruit.

Near the weir they heard a loud clanking and echoing, but it had a very different effect from the noise of the city; instead of exciting curiosity there was something soothing in the regularity of the blows of the iron hammer and the monotonous croaking of the frogs.

In this part of the forest, where the fairest flowers grew, the morning dew still hung glittering from the blossoms and grasses.  Here it was secluded, yet full of life, and amidst the wealth of sounds in which might be heard the tapping of the woodpecker, the cry of the lapwing, and the call of the distant wood-pigeon, it was so still and peaceful that Eva’s heart grew lighter in spite of her grief.