e beat upon the coffin-lid with her fist.

Now, in my mature age, when my head, too, is almost covered with
winter's snow, I see that our presence there was essential; drop by drop
we were to drain to the dregs this most bitter cup, which I would had
never fallen to our lot!

Grandmother fell down before the niche and laid her forehead upon the
coffin's edge; her long white hair fell trailing over her.

Long, very long, she lay, and then she rose; her face was no more
distorted, her eyes no longer filled with tears. She turned toward us
and said we should remain a little longer here.

She herself sat down upon the lowest step of the stone staircase, and
placed the lamp in front of her, while we two remained standing before
her.

She looked not at us, only peered intensely and continuously with her
large black eyes into the light of the lamp, as if she would conjure
therefrom something that had long since passed away.

All at once she seized our hands, and drew us toward her to the
staircase.

"You are the scions of a most unhappy house, every member of which dies
by his own hand."

So this was that secret that hung, like a veil of mourning before the
face of every adult member of our family! We continuously saw our elders
so, as if some mist of melancholy moved between us; and this was that
mist.

"This was the doom of God, a curse of man upon us!" continued
grandmother, now no longer with terrifying voice. Besides, she spoke as
calmly as if she were merely reciting to us the history of some strange
family. "Your great-grandfather. Job Aronffy, he who lies in the first
niche, bequeathed this terrible inheritance to his heirs; and it was a
brother's hand that hurled this curse at his head. Oh, this is an
unhappy earth on which we dwell! In other happy lands there are
murderous quarrels between man and man; brothers part in wrath from one
another; the 'mine and thine,'[3] jealousy, pride, envy, sow tares among
them. But this accursed earth of ours ever creates bloodshed; this
damned soil, which we are wont to call our 'dear homeland,' whose pure
harvest we call love of home, whose tares we call treason, while every
one thinks his own harvest the pure one, his brother's the tares, and,
for that, brother slays brother! Oh! you cannot understand it yet.

[Footnote 3: That is, the disputes as to the superiority of each other's
possessions, or as to each other's right to possession.]

"Your great-grandfather live