"Just at this time my stepfather suddenly died, leaving my mother a large fortune, and there was now no further impediment to our marriage. We wished to have my betrothed husband resign from the army at once; but he would not consent. He wished to take part in the last great campaign against Napoleon before he resigned himself to the happiness of private life. We parted as betrothed lovers; I took his little daughter from her boarding-school to my own home, to be a mother to her, for I loved the child; but my mother clung to the little one with peculiar affection. After the departure of my affianced husband, she was often confined to her bed, but her still youthful and beautiful features beamed with almost superhuman love when she clasped the little girl in her arms. She was then thirty-eight years old, and I two-and-twenty. Alas! it was only later that I first suspected the true cause of my mother's quiet illness. Her poor heart had never known love,--let me be silent." The speaker's bright eyes suddenly grew dim, and tears ran down her pale cheeks. "Oh, God!" murmured _Heinrich_, involuntarily. "She was constantly thinking of what we could do to surprise Edmund on his return," continued Veronica. "One day she said she would like to have him find on our table an urn constructed exactly as he had desired, and that the toy, whose idea she suggested to me, should play his favorite choral, 'Schau hin nach Golgotha!' As I saw how greatly she had set her heart upon it, I instantly gave the order to the celebrated mechanician, Gebhardt, and in the course of a few months the work was completed. Alas! it afforded her the last pleasure she ever knew. It played for the first time one dreary autumn evening. She sat up in bed with her arm around the little girl, and listened with childlike devotion. 'May you solemnize a beautiful service of love with this organ!' said she. 'Make his home-life bright and pleasant, that he may always be glad to stay with you; believe me, a solitary wife is a most wretched creature. Make him happy, my Veronica; he deserves it.' 'Grandmamma,' lisped the child, throwing her little arms lovingly around the neck of the fair, youthful 'grandmother.' Her cheeks flushed feverishly, and she concealed her tears upon the neck of the 'little angel.' Do you know, Veronica, that I have begun to write poetry in my old age!' she said, suddenly, with a mournful smile. Yesterday I composed these verses: "Thank thy God, oh, happy mortal! Love's thy portion here below, And, glorified in death by love, Thy immortal part shall glow. "Love suffered for thee on the cross, Upon Golgotha died for thee; Is ever near, though far away He whom thou lov'st may be.