"O Eva, how can you bear to sing the hymns Fritz loved so dearly? I
could not sing a line steadily of any song he had cared to hear me sing!
And he delighted always so much to listen to you. His voice would echo
'never, never more' to every note I sung, and the songs would all end in
sobs."
"But I do not feel separated from Fritz, Cousin Else," she said, "and I
never shall. Instead of hearing that melancholy chant you think of,
'never, never more' echo from all the hymns he loved, I always seem to
hear his voice responding, 'For ever and for evermore.' And I think of
the time when we shall sing them together again."
"Do you mean in heaven, Eva?" I said, "that is so very far off, if we
ever reach it--"
"Not so very far off, Cousin Else," she said. "I often think it is very
near. If it were not so, how could the angels be so much with us and yet
with God?"
"But life seems so long, now Fritz is gone."
"Not so very long, Cousin Else," she said. "I often think it may be very
short, and often I pray it may."
"Eva!" I exclaimed, "you surely do not pray that you may die?"
"Why not?" she said, very quietly. "I think if God took us to himself,
we might help those we love better there than at Eisenach, or perhaps
even in the convent. And it is there we shall meet again, and there are
never any partings. My father told me so," she added, "before he died."
Then I understood how Eva mourns for Fritz, and why she does not weep;
but I could only say--
"O Eva, do not pray to die. There are all the saints in heaven: and you
help us so much more here!"
_February_ 8.
I cannot feel at all reconciled to losing Fritz, nor do I think I ever
shall. Like all the other troubles, it was no doubt meant to do me good;
but it does me none, I am sure, although of course, that is my fault.
What did me good was being happy, as I was when Fritz came back; and
that is passed for ever.
My great comfort is our grandmother. The mother and Eva look on
everything from such sublime heights; but my grandmother feels more as I
do. Often, indeed, she speaks very severely of Fritz, which always does
me good, because, of course, I defend him, and then she becomes angry,
and says we are an incomprehensible family, and have the strangest ideas
of right and wrong, from my father downward, she ever heard of; and then
I grow angry, and say my father is the best and wisest man in the
Electoral States. Then our grandmother begins to lament over her poor,
dear daughter, and the life she has led, and rejoices, in a plaintive
voice, that she herself has nearly done with the world altogether; and
then I try to comfort her, and say that I am sure there is not much in
the world to make any one wish to stay in it; and, having reached this
point of despondency, we both cry and embrace each other, and she says I
am a poor, good child, and Fritz was always the delight of her heart,
which I know very well;--and thus we comfort each other. We have,
moreover, solemnly resolved, our grandmother and I, that, whatever comes
of it, we will never call Fritz anything but Fritz.
"Brother Sebastian, indeed!" she said, "your mother might as well take a
new husband as your brother a new name! Was not she married, and was not
he christened in church? Is not Friedrich a good, honest name, which
hundreds of your ancestors have borne? And shall we call him instead a
heathen foreign name, that none of your kindred were ever known by?"
"Not heathen, grandmother," I ventured to suggest. "You remember telling
us of the martyrdom of St. Sebastian by the heathen emperor?"
"Do you contradict me, child?" she exclaimed.
"Did I not know the whole martyrology before your mother was born? I say
it is a heathen name. No blame to the saint if his parents were poor
benighted Pagans, and knew no better name to give him; but that our
Fritz should adopt it instead of his own is a disgrace. My lips at least
are too old to learn such new fashioned nonsense. I shall call him the
name I called him at the font and in his cradle, and no other."
Yes, Fritz! Fritz! he is to us, and shall be always. Fritz in our hearts
till death!
_February_ 15.
We have just heard that Fritz has finished his first month of probation,
and has been invested with the frock of the novice. I hate to think of
his thick, dark, waving hair clipped in the circle of the tonsure. But
the worst part of it is the effect of his becoming a monk has had on the
other boys, Christopher and Pollux.
They, who before this thought Fritz the model of everything good and
great, seem repelled from all religion now. I have difficulty even in
getting them to church.