The high magnificent rooms, with windows all closed, were flooded with soft light from countless tapers, hung from the walls and ceiling; and among baskets of evergreen plants and young fir-trees which stood in a beautiful ellipse, opening toward the door, rested the two caskets upon an elevated platform, covered with tapestries and flowers. The walls were decorated with old arms which Justus had taken from the armory of the castle--beautiful casts of antiques, and even originals, which a former art-loving occupant of the castle had collected, and which Justus had brought from the halls and rooms, and groups of ornamental plants and evergreens--with lighted candles among them. "Haven't I made it look beautiful!" he whispered; "and all in the few morning hours. They would both be delighted with it--he with the arms, and she with the sculptures. But they themselves are the most beautiful of all! I must now call the family, Reinhold, before we close the caskets; meanwhile, take your last look. You haven't had as much opportunity as the others." Justus vanished through the door leading to the apartments. Reinhold ascended the steps and went between the caskets in which the two were sleeping their eternal sleep. Yes, they were beautiful--more beautiful than they had been in life. Death appeared to have removed every trace of earth from them, so that noble Nature might reveal herself in all her splendor. How fair, how noble, the face of this girl, and how beautiful the face of the youth, as if their souls had been truly united in death, and each had fondly given to the other what was fairest in life! So, around their lips, once so proud, a sweet, blissful, meek smile rested, for, along with the restless shifting of the nervous eyes and the impatient trembling of the fine mouth, death had blotted out all that was incomplete, imperfect, from the young man's clear features, and had left nothing but the expression of heroic will with which he had gone to his death, and of which the broad red wound on his white brow was the awful seal. There was a slight noise in the firs behind him; he turned and opened his arms to Else. She laid her head on his breast, weeping. "Only for a moment can I feel your dear heart beating, and know that you are still left me--you, my sweet solace, my unfailing treasure!" She arose. "Farewell, farewell, for the last time, farewell, dear brother, farewell! Fair, proud sister, how I would have loved you!" She kissed the pale lips of the two corpses; Reinhold took her in his arms and led her from the platform, down to where he saw Justus and Mieting standing, hand in hand, at a respectful distance, among the shrubbery; while, following the General, Valerie and Sidonie, Uncle Ernst and Aunt Rikchen appeared upon the platform to take leave of the dead.