Original (English)

Paul was born. That was a hard time indeed. Frau Elsbeth, with her haggard face and melancholy smile, lay in her big four-post bed, with the cradle of the new-born child near her, and listened to every noise that reached her in her sad sickroom from the yard and the house. At each suspicious sound she started up, and each time, when a strange man’s voice was heard, or a vehicle came driving along with a rolling sound, she asked, clinging with great anxiety to the bedposts: “Has it come to the wo