I spread your bride-bed, and if need be, to save you from worse things, I will lay you dead before me and myself dead across your body.

Then let God or Satan--I care not which--deal with my soul.
At least, I shall have done my best and died faithful." "You should not speak so," sighed Rachel.

"But, dear, I know it is because you love me, and I wish to die as easily as may be and to join my husband.

Only if the child could have lived, as I think, all three of us would have dwelt together eternally.

Nay, not all three, all four, for you are well-nigh as dear to me, Nou, as husband or as child." "That cannot be, I do not wish that it should be, who am but a slave woman, the dog beneath the table.