to make a woman. So the corpse was done with and Venik’s little mother lay in the grave.
After this began the funeral in due form. Krista began to weep, and Venik wept with her. And they wept in earnest. Then Venik took his violin and played a “miserere,” just as he usually did in the cemetery, and Krista sang. Then Krista sang over the funeral hymns, and Venik accompanied her on his violin. They sang and played everything they knew; they sang funeral hymns for the burial of a child; then those for youths, and lastly those for adults. And they sang and played with so much earnestness and with so much warmth of feeling that they were both quite ill after it, and hiccoughed with emotion. A more touching funeral never took place in reality than the imaginary one conducted by these children. If the spirit of Venik’s mother hovered above them, doubtless it rejoiced and wept with them.
Then the little gravedigger filled in the grave with earth, and his little mother was buried. They still had to sing over, “Oh! rest in peace,” and afterwards “We bid adieu to this body, we bury it in peace.” Thereupon they quitted the tomb to the sound of the song and the violin. But once more they returned, not indeed to the grave exactly, but aside to the hollow tree, for Venik said that he would compose a requiem, and that there should be a full choral mass. And he played and Krista sang. They
