But Huldbrand murmured moodily, “So I must be a prisoner in my own castle and be able to breathe only so long as the fountain is closed!  I would your mad kindred—­” Undine lovingly pressed her fair hand upon his lips.  He paused, pondering in silence over much that Undine had before said to him.

Bertalda had meanwhile given herself up to a variety of strange thoughts.  She knew a good deal of Undine’s origin, and yet not the whole, and the fearful Kuehleborn especially had remained to her a terrible but wholly unrevealed mystery.  She had indeed never even heard his name.  Musing on these strange things, she unclasped, scarcely conscious of the act; a gold necklace, which Huldbrand had lately purchased for her of a traveling trader; half dreamingly she drew it along the surface of the water, enjoying the light glimmer it cast upon the evening-tinted stream.  Suddenly a huge hand was stretched out of the Danube, seizing the necklace and vanishing with it beneath the waters.  Bertalda screamed aloud, and a scornful laugh resounded from the depths of the stream.  The knight could now restrain his anger no longer.  Starting up, he inveighed against the river; he cursed all who ventured to intrude upon his family and his life, and challenged them, be they spirits or sirens, to show themselves before his avenging sword.

Bertalda wept meanwhile for her lost ornament, which was so precious to her, and her tears added fuel to the flame of the knight’s anger, while Undine held her hand over the side of the vessel, dipping it into the water, softly murmuring to herself, and only now and then interrupting her strange mysterious whisper, as she entreated her husband, “My dearly loved one, do not scold me here; reprove others if you will, but not me here.  You know why!” And indeed, he restrained the words of anger that were trembling on his tongue.

Presently in her wet hand which she had been holding under the waves she brought up a beautiful coral necklace of so much brilliancy that the eyes of all were dazzled by it.  “Take this,” said she, holding it out kindly to Bertalda; “I have ordered this to be brought for you as a compensation, and don’t be grieved any more, my poor child.”

But the knight sprang between them.  He tore the beautiful ornament from Undine’s hand, hurled it again into the river, exclaiming in passionate rage, “Have you then still a connection with them?  In the name of all the witches, remain among them with your presents and leave us mortals in peace, you sorceress!” Poor Undine gazed at him with fixed but tearful eyes, her hand still stretched out as when she had offered her beautiful present so lovingly to Bertalda.  She then began to weep more and more violently, like a dear innocent child, bitterly afflicted.  At last, wearied out, she said:  “Alas, sweet friend, alas! farewell!  They shall do you no harm; only remain true, so that I may be able to keep them from you.  I must, alas, go away; I must go hence at this early stage of life.  Oh woe, woe!  What have you done!  Oh woe, woe!”