Grandfathers -- Fiction; Mountain life -- Switzerland -- Fiction; Orphans -- Fiction; Switzerland -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction
"Yes, I dream every night, and always about the same things. I
think I am back with the grandfather and I hear the sound in the
fir trees outside, and I see the stars shining so brightly, and
then I open the door quickly and run out, and it is all so
beautiful! But when I wake I am still in Frankfurt." And Heidi
struggled as she spoke to keep back the sobs which seemed to
choke her.
"And have you no pain anywhere? no pain in your head or back?"
"No, only a feeling as if there were a great stone weighing on
me here."
"As if you had eaten something that would not go down."
"No, not like that; something heavy as if I wanted to cry very
much."
"I see, and then do you have a good cry?"
"Oh, no, I mustn't; Fraulein Rottenmeier forbade me to cry."
"So you swallow it all down, I suppose? Are you happy here in
Frankfurt?"
"Yes," was the low answer; but it sounded more like "No."
"And where did you live with your grandfather?"
"Up on the mountain."
"That wasn't very amusing; rather dull at times, eh?"
"No, no, it was beautiful, beautiful!" Heidi could go no
further; the remembrance of the past, the excitement she had just
gone through, the long suppressed weeping, were too much for the
child's strength; the tears began to fall fast, and she broke
into violent weeping.
The doctor stood up and laid her head kindly down on the pillow.
"There, there, go on crying, it will do you good, and then go to
sleep; it will be all right to-morrow."
Then he left the room and went downstairs to Herr Sesemann; when
he was once more sitting in the armchair opposite his friend,
"Sesemann," he said, "let me first tell you that your little
charge is a sleep-walker; she is the ghost who has nightly
opened the front door and put your household into this fever of
alarm. Secondly, the child is consumed with homesickness, to such
an extent that she is nearly a skeleton already, and soon will be
quite one; something must be done at once. For the first
trouble, due to her over-excited nerves, there is but one remedy,
to send her back to her native mountain air; and for the second
trouble there is also but one cure, and that the same. So to-
morrow the child must start for home; there you have my
prescription."
Herr Sesemann had arisen and now paced up and down the room in
the greatest state of concern.
"What!" he exclaimed, "the child a sleep-walker and ill! Home-
sick, and grown emaciated in my house! All this has taken place
in my house and no one seen or known anything about it! And you
mean, doctor, that the child who came here happy and healthy, I
am to send back to her grandfather a miserable little skeleton? I
can't do it; you cannot dream of my doing such a thing! Take the
child in hand, do with her what you will, and make her whole and
sound, and then she shall go home; but you must do something
first."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account