They were so big that the branches and boughs of their gigantic crowns had grown tangled into one another, and they arched over the entire cemetery like one enormous roof. The origin of these beautiful lindens, however, lies several centuries further back and is the subject of this story. In Berlin there lived three brothers, among whom there was such hearty friendship and intimacy as is seldom seen. It so happened one day that the youngest of them went out alone in the evening, saying nothing to his brothers, because he was to meet a young woman in another part of town and go walking with her. But before he came to the appointed place, as he made his way thither immersed in pleasant reveries, out of a dark and lonely spot between two houses he heard a gentle, plaintive cry and something that sounded like a death rattle, which he immediately walked toward; for he thought an animal, or perhaps a child, had met with misfortune and lay there waiting for help. Stepping into the darkness of the secluded place, he saw, with horror, that a man lay there in a pool of his own blood.
