“You already know, my beloved lord, something of my evil uncle, Kuehleborn, and you have frequently been displeased at meeting him in the galleries of this castle.  He has several times frightened Bertalda into illness.  This is because he is devoid of soul, a mere elemental mirror of the outward world, without the power of reflecting the world within.  He sees, too, sometimes, that you are dissatisfied with me; that I, in my childishness, am weeping at this, and that Bertalda perhaps is at the very same moment laughing.  Hence he imagines various discrepancies in our home life, and in many ways mixes unbidden with our circle.  What is the good of my reproving him?  What is the use of my sending him angrily away?  He does not believe a word I say.  His poor nature has no idea that the joys and sorrows of love have so sweet a resemblance, and are so closely linked that no power can separate them.  Amid tears a smile shines forth, and a smile allures tears from their secret chambers.”

She looked up at Huldbrand, smiling and weeping; and he again experienced within his heart all the charm of his old love.  She felt this, and, pressing him more tenderly to her, she continued amid tears of joy, “As the disturber of our peace was not to be dismissed with words, I have been obliged to shut the door upon him.  And the only door by which he obtains access to us, is that fountain.  He is at odds with the other water-spirits in the neighborhood, counting from the adjacent valleys, and his kingdom only recommences further off on the Danube, into which some of his good friends direct their course.  For this reason I had the stone placed over the opening of the fountain, and I inscribed characters upon it which cripple all my uncle’s power, so that he can now neither intrude upon you, nor upon me, nor upon Bertalda.  Human beings, it is true, can raise the stone again with ordinary effort, in spite of the characters inscribed on it; the inscription does not hinder them.  If you wish, therefore, follow Bertalda’s desire, but, truly, she knows not what she asks!  The ill-bred Kuehleborn has set his mark especially upon her; and if this or that came to pass which he has predicted to me and which might indeed happen without your meaning any evil—­ah! dear one, even you would then be exposed to danger!”

Huldbrand felt deeply the generosity of his sweet wife, in her eagerness to shut up her formidable protector while she had even been chided for it by Bertalda.  He pressed her therefore in his arms with the utmost affection, and said with emotion, “The stone shall remain, and all shall remain, now and ever, as you wish to have it, my sweet little Undine.”