says.  Gurnemanz does not know who she is—­nor, for that small matter, do I—­but she comes and serves these knight-monks faithfully for whiles and then disappears; and generally, it seems, during her period of disappearance disaster falls on some treasured pearl of a saint of a knight.  Enter Parsifal, “the pure fool”—­Siegfried with all his bull-strength and energy shorn away.  He carries a bow and arrow, and promptly shoots a Swan, one of the prides of Montsalvat.  He is too stupid to understand that he has done any wrong—­wrong to a helpless bird or his own nature.  Gurnemanz explains in very unconvincing accents; Parsifal, the poor, “pure” fool, bursts into tears, breaks his weapons and throws them away.  And now the reader must bear with me if I am both tedious and inexplicable in my explanation.  At some unknown period in the past it was prophesied that only the “pure fool” taught by suffering could redeem suffering Amfortas:  mankind, that is, could only be made perfect by a perfect idiot.  Gurnemanz thinks he has found the required man—­and he has, if only he knew it—­and he takes him on the most curious promenade in the history of mankind—­to the Hall of the Grail.  The two men do not walk:  it is the scenery that walks.  “Here,” says Gurnemanz, “time and space are one.”

Arrived there, we are confronted by a scene much more Oriental than anything we know of mediaeval Christianity:  a sort of mosque with a huge dome, a circular set of Lockhart’s Cocoa-rooms tables and benches; at the back a mysterious catafalque.  The pure fool is pushed aside; Amfortas is carried in; he screams in agony of spirit; and then the service begins.  It is a sheer burlesque of the Lord’s Supper.  When the last chords of the mysterious choir in the dome have died away, Gurnemanz asks Parsifal what he comprehends of it all.  “Nothing,” Parsifal replies, and is immediately turned out of doors.

The origin of the guileless fool has already been indicated:  this—­as it seems to us to-day—­idiotic notion of the eighteenth century started Wagner on the notion that if a modern child, with all the developed brain of a modern child, could suddenly be transplanted into a state of nature, all would be well with the world.  What could possibly happen?  But it is silly to ask the question:  the whole juvenile population of the earth would have to be so transplanted, and they would have to find a new earth to live on—­at least an earth not frequented by modern men and women.

In the next Act we are taken to Klingsor’s magic castle.  Klingsor calls up Kundry and changes his castle into an enchanted garden full of flower-maidens; Parsifal comes in, and, though curious about the maidens, does not know what they would be at; he angrily drives them off; Kundry calls him.  She tells him of the death of his mother who had loved him so dearly; he again weeps and learns the meaning of compassion; Kundry kisses him, and he learns the meaning of sex and temptation.  In horror he casts her from him; Klingsor throws the spear at him—­the sacred Spear with which Christ’s side was wounded, stolen by Klingsor from Montsalvat—­it remains suspended above his head; he seizes and waves it, and at once garden, flower-maidens and all are reduced to withered stalks and leaves.  Parsifal returns, an “enlightened” fool, and by touching the wound of Amfortas, cures him, becoming himself head of the order.