And he was tired, very tired. His wife had laid him on the sofa under the pictures, that he might look out at the window as much as he liked, Louisa had covered him comfortably with rugs and shawls, and then they had both left the room softly that he might rest undisturbed. Out of doors the first flakes of snow were falling slowly, slowly from the sky; it was as quiet and still outside as within his heart, and he felt as if the blessing of Christ were resting upon him. No one saw it, but his Regina was the first to find it out--he rose, and, pushing the large arm-chair up to the cupboard, opened the door, and sitting down, began to examine the treasures that he had kept as relics of the past. Some of them had belonged to his father, and some to his mother, they were all reminiscences of what he had loved.
This cupboard was the place where he had stowed away whatever reminded him of all the chief events of his life, and they had become relics the sight of which did him good when he was down-hearted. They were not preserved in crystal vessels or in embroidered cases, but were simply placed on the shelf, and kept there to be looked at whenever he wanted to see them. When he felt low and sad it did him good to take out these relics, and to live over again in thought the happy days of which they reminded him, and he never closed the cupboard-door without gaining strength and courage, or without thanking God silently for his many blessings. There lay the Bible his father had given him when he was a boy; the beautiful glass vase his old college-friend had sent him; the pocket-book his Regina had worked for him during their engagement; the shell which a sailor had sent him in token of his gratitude for having been shown the way to become a better man; the pieces of paper on which Louisa, Mina and Lina had written their Christmas and New Year's-day messages of affection, as also some of their earlier bits of handiwork; the withered myrtle wreath his wife had worn on her wedding-day; the large pictorial Bible with the silver-clasps that Hawermann had given him on his seventieth birthday, and the silver-mounted meerschaum that Bräsig had given him on the same occasion, and down below on the lowest shelf were three pairs of shoes, the shoes that Louisa, Regina and he had worn when they first entered the parsonage.