Read "Landolin" by Berthold Auerbach online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
Thoma had often looked into the cold, stony face of death; she did not force herself where misery and sickness were, but she never refused a call. But how different it was now, when she knelt beside her mother's dead body! It seemed incomprehensible that the good, faithful mother, who was always so ready for every call, could not answer any moan of sorrow or cry for help. That is the bitterness of death. Thoma had really only learned to know her mother since trouble had broken in upon the house. In the days before that, she, like her father, had paid little attention to her quiet, modest, busy mother, although she had never refused her childlike respect.
"Mother! Dear, dear, good mother! " cried Thoma; but that is the bitterness of death -- it gives no answer.