hands and spoke to her master about it.

She began by saying she had not forgotten that, according to his dead
father the saints had endowed her with a very limited intelligence, but
that she knew enough to be certain that it could be neither wise, nor
right for a man who had been blessed with such a fine son, to be
indifferent to his treasure and indeed to estrange it.

The extraordinary man looked at her with his sad eyes and answered
thoughtfully: "I demand nothing from the boy be cause I have no other
idea than to give him all I have and am. For his benefit I am seeking
something higher than the world has yet known, and I shall find it."

The lofty words silenced Frau Schimmel, but she thought to herself: "With
my few brains I am yet wiser than you. A heartfelt, willing kiss from
your child would make you happier than all the learning that you make so
much fuss about, and a caress or a spank from you--each at the proper
time--would do little Zeno more good than all the world-improving
discoveries in search of which you embitter your days and nights."

One beautiful afternoon in June on her return from the graveyard, whither
she regularly took the boy, and where she herself carefully tended the
white roses on Bianca's grave, she found the doctor stretched on the
sofa, instead of being in the laboratory as usual, and as he sighed
heavily when she entered, she asked him respectfully what it was that
oppressed him.

At first he shook his head as if he wished to be left alone, but when
she, in spite of this, remained and he noticed that her gray eyes were
full of tears, he suddenly remembered that by the side of his mother's