warning theme is heard; then that winding, insidious theme associated with Ortrud; and last, four bars of the music heard in the first act when she stands helpless before the king and has nothing wherewith to answer her accusers:  she is as miserable now as she was then, and the cause of it Lohengrin’s edict and her defiance of it under Ortrud’s influence.  The device I have always maintained to be a naive one; but it may be used to a sublime end, as in the Dusk of the Gods funeral procession, or as here, to emphasize Elsa’s situation, and to remind us at once of her being the authoress of her own destruction.  This is followed by acclamations as Lohengrin enters, and nothing further of note occurs until he declares that, for reasons which he cannot give, he will not go forth to fight the foe with the Brabantians; and this declaration is set to the same passage, or part of it, in which he has lately warned Elsa not to question him (p. 175).  The meaning of the words and the dramatic significance of this musical phrase are beyond my understanding.  If Lohengrin did not mean to tell his secret the musical phrase might imply that he had no intention of letting them ask for it.  But he has come there with no other intention than that of revealing everything—­and, in a word, the whole business is incomprehensible because there is nothing to be comprehended—­because it is sheer nonsense.  How Wagner, even supposing he had originally some other idea for the ending of the work, could let so flat a contradiction of his final plan stand—­this also is more than I can understand; for in later years he saw his opera performed.  And at that I must leave the matter.  Lohengrin presently proceeds to disclose his secret in that wondrous “In fernem Land”—­surely the most superb thing of its sort ever written.  The vocal part is—­as I have already pointed out, this is often the case in Wagner—­something between pure song and recitative; and here it is of a quality he himself rarely matched—­not even in Tristan.  Technically, it is a piece of descriptive music for instruments; but the words which give it significance and point are set to phrases themselves so beautiful, pathetic and inevitable that one feels that the vocal part and the orchestral were begotten simultaneously in that marvellous brain.  In other chapters I will point to passages, especially in the Ring, where quite obviously the voice part has been laboriously worked in with instrumental music already conceived in its final form; but that was in Wagner’s later years, when the free inspiration, enthusiasm and energy of his Tristan and Lohengrin and Mastersingers days had for ever departed.  There is an accent of passionate grief in Lohengrin’s words to Elsa, and of remorse in Elsa’s wailings; but the most touching thing in this final scene is the song in which he hands her his sword, horn and ring, to be given to her brother should he return.  The note of regret, especially in the poignant “leb’ wohl,” reminds one irresistibly of Wotan’s farewell to Bruennhilda.  The latter is broader, richer, vaster,—­and yet the tender simplicity of this is inexpressibly touching.  After that the opera proceeds to its conclusion in what one may call a normal manner:  there is nothing, anyhow, in the music that requires analysis.