Her hands, that had once given so freely, would be held out no more to receive. Never again would she have to suffer humble uncertainty for the gifts of food and raiment. The body, no longer needing food, was itself become as raiment, cast off.... Her feet, that had forever fallen away from the ranks of those who in aged misery still flitted through the wintry streets of Vienna seeking their midday meal of charity ... the Mariahilferstrasse, endless, the Alserstrasse separated from the Hoher Markt by so many wide, open places, the narrow, crowded Kaerntnerstrasse and all those other streets that had sounded a last time to her diminished step.... Irma would never again give her the thin part of the soup, and never again would she watch to see that her sister-in-law drew back the curtains of the alcove. Alcove! Ildefonse Stacher, born von Berg, in the name of Principalities and Powers, in the name of the Cherubim and Seraphim, was about to take possession of her whole heavenly mansion, her very own from all time unto all time, and big and beautiful. * * * * * Fanny not only buried her aunt decently, but splendidly as such things in such times were rated. A Requiem Mass was sung at the Capuchin Church. Expensive wreaths were ordered in the name of each niece for which Fanny herself paid; (except for Mizzi's, Mizzi got the bill, unjustly, she considered, and she ran into the office and said some horrible things to Hermann when it came).... They were but more tokens of Fanny, those many flowers, Fanny inescapably, confusingly beneficent to the end. Wet with the dew of the Church's blessing, they almost concealed Tante Ilde's coffin, as to the sound of those sable horses over the cobbly streets she was carried to her grave ... at last to be alone behind the heaviest door known to mortals.... As they drove back, each was saying in one or another tone, "what a pity," that Tante Ilde couldn't have been there to enjoy it in her fine, gentle way, and that if they had known she was going to die so soon they would have arranged differently. They had spoken of Baden, too, and of childhood things. They had mourned, yes, but their mourning, as would have been any cheer, was after their several and varying natures. Anna had not gone to Fanny's to see her aunt laid out. No, indeed! She and Hermine went only to the church and cemetery, as likewise did four of Kaethe's children and Irma and her boys. Hermine had been all eyes for her veiled, but still discernibly lovely aunt, whose crisp, deep black stood out cypress-like against the greyer, cheaper hues of the other mourning figures, and she had been pleasantly conscious of a sort of pricking interest in some one in her very own family who, by all accounts, would go straight to Hell when she died. Ferry had wept over-much for his strength and years, but Resl in her high, true voice had sung "In Paradise, In Paradise" about the house for days.