German fiction -- Translations into English; Leipzig (Germany) -- Fiction
Then he added that having brought Truth into the world he was glad to
depart to that region where it was always day, where there were no
deceits and no uncertainties, and where the star of his life that had
set would arise for him once more.
He murmured Bianca's name and closed his eyes, while a happy smile lit
up his worn, thin face. His breast rose and fell with his irregular
breathing, shaken now and then by his cough and feverish shivering, and
often he cried out like one inspired: "Infinite labour, measureless
reward! All, all fulfilled!"
Frau Schimmel realised that the end had come. After he had received the
sacrament, the old lady laid his hand upon the curly head of his son.
Melchior gazed fondly into the sweet face of his child, and quietly
closed his eyes.
The priest who administered extreme unction to him was fond of telling
the story of this last sacrament, for he had never seen any dying man
exhibit greater confidence and faith.
Frau Schimmel cried herself nearly blind.
On the third day after the death of Doctor Melchior Ueberhell, his mortal
remains were carried to rest with great ceremony, and buried in the place
that he himself had chosen during his lifetime.
Between his wife and his mother, rose the little mound that marked his
resting-place, and later many who visited the churchyard used to stop
beside the graves of Bianca and Melchior, perhaps because of the creeping
roses which had been planted beneath the cross of his beloved, and which
spread so luxuriantly that they soon covered the husband's grave as well
as the wife's, and in the month of June decked them both with a wondrous
wealth of blossom.
In the letter which the doctor handed to Herr Winckler, the guardian of
his son, shortly before his death, he desired the notary, or his
successor, to give to his son Zeno, on the morning of his twenty-fifth
birthday, the sealed package containing the phial, together with the
accompanying manuscript.
In a second letter on which was written: "To be opened in case my son
Zeno should die before reaching his twenty-fifth birth day," he informed
the notary of the power that dwelt within the phial, and charged him to
employ it for the benefit of mankind.
Both letters--the one to Zeno and the other to the notary--contained
precise directions for the making of the elixir, and also the
recommendation that it should be sent to all universities and faculties,
as well as to the spiritual and temporal authorities of his beloved
fatherlands, Saxony and Germany, that it might become the common property
of the whole world.
To Frau Schimmel the doctor entrusted the worldly welfare of little Zeno,
and to the notary the responsibility of his education, and both of these
people not only fulfilled their duties, but gave the child a large share
of their love, so that the orphan throve both in mind and body.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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