man husband. But then did
Melchior look like such an one? No.

Again she felt a cold shiver go down her back, for Melchior had taken
the bath sheet and was holding it in front of him waiting to wrap the
child in it as it was taken out of its tub, and it seemed to her as if
he had on a shroud and his bloodless emaciated face with his black hair
and moustache looked ghostly over the top of it.

It annoyed her that she should have these stupid, sad thoughts on the
occasion of such a happy home coming!

She did her best to drive them away and the child helped her, for it, at
least, looked lively enough as it sat in the warm water, and kicked,
and splashed, and laughed, and cooed, calling to its parents and then to
Frau Schimmel. When it tried to pronounce her name, her heart overflowed
and she answered absently, for she was saying a silent Paternoster for
the health and welfare of this blessed child who somehow seemed even
lovelier than Melchior had once been, though in his time she had
considered him "the sweetest baby that had ever lived."

When the child was in bed the mother folded its hands and murmured what
Frau Schimmel knew to be a prayer, but the father touched, its forehead
and the place about the heart with an essence, speaking at the same time
some incomprehensible words. Whatever they meant, they seemed to agree
well enough with the incomparable child.

The young wife was tired after her long journey and went early to bed,
and when the housekeeper was finally left alone with Melchior, he
begged her to tell him how things had gone with his father, after his
departure.

The son of her late master had, then, brought back from Italy his
tender and affectionate heart, however stern and anxious his long and
colourless face might seem; and when he heard of the old man's longing
to see him, and death, his eyes were wet with tears.

He interrupted the course of her narrative but seldom; when she came
to his father's last hours, however, and the success of the experiment
which had been made on her with the elixir, he plied her with question
upon question until he was satisfied as to what he wished to know. Then
he suddenly stood still in the middle of the room and lifting his eyes
and arms on high cried aloud, like one in an ecstasy:

"Eternal Truth, holy Truth! Thy kingdom come!"

These words went through Frau Schimmel like a knife, and as Melchior
stood there looking up at the ceiling as if he expected it to