Nikolaus was gay and happy, and always puzzled because we were not. He
wore his invention to the bone trying to invent ways to cheer us up, but
it was only a hollow success; he could see that our jollity had no heart
in it, and that the laughs we broke into came up against some obstruction
or other and suffered damage and decayed into a sigh. He tried to find
out what the matter was, so that he could help us out of our trouble or
make it lighter by sharing it with us; so we had to tell many lies to
deceive him and appease him.

But the most distressing thing of all was that he was always making
plans, and often they went beyond the 13th! Whenever that happened it
made us groan in spirit. All his mind was fixed upon finding some way to
conquer our depression and cheer us up; and at last, when he had but
three days to live, he fell upon the right idea and was jubilant over it
--a boys-and-girls' frolic and dance in the woods, up there where we
first met Satan, and this was to occur on the 14th. It was ghastly, for
that was his funeral day. We couldn't venture to protest; it would only
have brought a "Why?" which we could not answer. He wanted us to help
him invite his guests, and we did it--one can refuse nothing to a dying
friend. But it was dreadful, for really we were inviting them to his
funeral.

It was an awful eleven days; and yet, with a lifetime stretching back
between to-day and then, they are still a grateful memory to me, and
beautiful. In effect they were days of companionship with one's sacred
dead, and I have known no comradeship that was so close or so precious.
We clung to the hours and the minutes, counting them as they wasted away,
and parting with them with that pain and bereavement which a miser feels
who sees his hoard filched from him coin by coin by robbers and is
helpless to prevent it.