They will let me rot and disappear, and there will be no future for me, no meeting with Assa." The old woman remained silent for a long time; at last she murmured hoarsely with her eyes fixed on the ground: "Death brings release, if only from the torment of remembrance.

But there is a life beyond the grave.

I do not, I will not cease to hope.

The dead shall all be equally judged, and subject to the inscrutable decrees .-- Where shall I find him?
Among the blest, or among the damned?
And I?
It matters not! The deeper the abyss into which they fling me the better.

Can Assa, if he is among the blest, remain in bliss, when he sees to what he has brought me?
Oh! they must embalm me--I cannot bear to vanish, and rot and evaporate into nothingness!" While she was still speaking, the dwarf Nemu had come into the tent; Scherau, seeing the old woman senseless, had run to tell him that his mother was lying on the earth with her eyes shut, and was dying.