they offer up their morning prayer the chorale is heard again.  As they wend their way to the castle, they meet two knights preceding the litter upon which the wounded Amfortas, King of the Grail, is carried.  In the subsequent dialogue Gurnemanz tells the story of the King’s mishap.  He is suffering from a wound which refuses to close, and which has been inflicted by the sacred spear,—­the spear, according to the legend, with which our Saviour’s side was pierced.  Klingsor, a magician, had aspired to become a knight of the Grail, but his application was refused; for only those of holy lives could watch the sacred vessel and perform its ministrations.  In revenge, Klingsor studied the magic arts and created for himself a fairy palace, which he peopled with beautiful women, whose sole duty it was to seduce the Knights of the Grail.  One of these women, a mysterious creature of wonderful fascinations, Kundry by name, had beguiled Amfortas, who thus fell into the power of Klingsor.  He lost his spear, and received from it a wound which will never heal so long as it remains in the hands of the magician.  In a vision he has been told to wait for the one who has been appointed to cure him.  A voice from the Grail tells him the following mystery:—­

  “Durch Mitleid wissend,
     Der reine Thor,
   Harre sein’
     Den ich erkor.”

  ["Let a guileless fool only, knowing by compassion, await him whom I
   have chosen.”]

Meanwhile, as the shield-bearers are carrying Amfortas towards the lake, the savage, mysterious Kundry is seen flying over the fields.  She overtakes Gurnemanz and gives him a balm, saying that if it will not help the King, nothing in Arabia can, and then, refusing to accept thanks or reveal her identity, sinks to the ground in weariness.  The King takes the drug with gratitude; but she scorns thanks, and sneers at those about her with savage irony.  Gurnemanz’s companions are about to seize her, but the old Knight warns them that she is living incarnate to expiate the sins of a former life, and that in serving the Order of the Grail she is purchasing back her own redemption.  As Gurnemanz concludes, cries are heard in the wood, and two knights, approaching, announce that a swan, the bird sacred to the Grail, which was winging its way over the lake, and which the King had hailed as a happy omen, has been shot.  Parsifal, the murderer, is dragged in, and when questioned by Gurnemanz, is unaware that he has committed any offence.  To every question he only answers he does not know.  When asked who is his mother, Kundry answers for him:  “His mother brought him an orphan into the world, and kept him like a fool in the forest, a stranger to arms, so that he should escape a premature death; but he fled from her and followed the wild life of nature.  Her grief is over, for she is dead.”  Whereupon Parsifal flies at her and seizes her by the throat; but Gurnemanz holds him back, and Kundry sinks down exhausted.  Parsifal answers to the “Thor,” but it remains to be seen whether he is the “reine Thor.”  Gurnemanz conducts him to the temple where the holy rites of the Grail are to be performed, hoping he is the redeemer whom the Grail will disclose when the love-feast of the Saviour is celebrated.