"May the holy saints bless your homecoming!" the old lady called out, and
Melchior felt himself choke at the host of sweet memories evoked by this
greeting--of how his mother used to fold his hands and teach him to pray
to the holy patrons of the house, of the sad hour when he had received
the news of his father's death--and to his astonishment he felt the warm
tears running down his cheeks, the first he had shed for many years and
almost before he knew it himself, he had caught Frau Schimmel to his
heart and kissed her tenderly.
Then he turned to his slim young wife, who with the boy was standing
behind him, and presented her to the old housekeeper: "The dearest
treasure that I won in Italy! I commend her to your love."
Frau Schimmel raised the beautiful Italian's hand to her lips and lifted
the little boy and hugged him. Melchior in the mean while hurried to the
entrance door, there he bowed three times and solemnly lifted aloft his
arms toward the evening-star that was just showing itself above the roof
of a house across the market-place.
The old housekeeper noticed this, and rejoiced for she thought that
Melchior was returning thanks to the holy saints for a safe journey, but
she was disillusioned when she heard him open his lips and cry towards
heaven an invocation which was neither German nor Latin, for she knew the
sound of the latter tongue, having heard it so often at mass, but a
combination of strange sounding words more like those that she used to
hear her late master muttering over his work in the laboratory, with his
son's letter before him.
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