After a journey of some days, they arrived, on a fine evening, at Castle Ringstetten.  The young knight being much engaged with the overseers and menials of his establishment, Undine and Bertalda were left alone.  They took a walk upon the high rampart of the fortress, and were charmed with the delightful landscape which the fertile Suabia spread around them.  While they were viewing the scene, a tall man drew near, who greeted them with respectful civility, and who seemed to Bertalda much to resemble the director of the city fountain.  Still less was the resemblance to be mistaken, when Undine, indignant at his intrusion, waved him off with an air of menace; while he, shaking his head, retreated with rapid strides, as he had formerly done, then glided among the trees of a neighbouring grove and disappeared.

“Do not be terrified, Bertalda,” said Undine; “the hateful master of the fountain shall do you no harm this time.”  And then she related to her the particulars of her history, and who she was herself—­how Bertalda had been taken away from the people of the peninsula, and Undine left in her place.  This relation at first filled the young maiden with amazement and alarm; she imagined her friend must be seized with a sudden madness.  But from the consistency of her story, she became more and more convinced that all was true, it so well agreed with former occurrences, and still more convinced from that inward feeling with which truth never fails to make itself known to us.  She could not but view it as an extraordinary circumstance that she was herself now living, as it were, in the midst of one of those wild tales which she had formerly heard related.  She gazed upon Undine with reverence, but could not keep from a shuddering feeling which seemed to come between her and her friend; and she could not but wonder when the knight, at their evening repast, showed himself so kind and full of love towards a being who appeared to her, after the discoveries just made, more to resemble a phantom of the spirit-world than one of the human race.

CHAPTER 7

The writer of this tale, both because it moves his own heart and he wishes it to move that of others, asks a favour of you, dear reader.  Forgive him if he passes over a considerable space of time in a few words, and only tells you generally what therein happened.  He knows well that it might be unfolded skilfully, and step by step, how Huldbrand’s heart began to turn from Undine and towards Bertalda—­how Bertalda met the young knight with ardent love, and how they both looked upon the poor wife as a mysterious being, more to be dreaded than pitied—­how Undine wept, and her tears stung the conscience of her husband, without recalling his former love; so that though at times he showed kindness to her, a cold shudder soon forced him to turn from her to his fellow-mortal Bertalda;—­all this, the writer knows, might have been drawn out fully, and perhaps