“I did not understand what this vision of the night could mean, then came your messenger; and I have now hastened hither, not to unite, but, as I hope, to separate what ought not to be joined together.  Leave her, Huldbrand! leave him, Bertalda!  He still belongs to another; and do you not see on his pale cheek his grief for his lost wife?  That is not the look of a bridegroom; and the spirit says to me, that ‘if you do not leave him you will never be happy!’”

The three felt in their inmost hearts that Father Heilmann spoke the truth; but they would not believe it.  Even the old fisherman was so infatuated, that he thought it could not be otherwise than as they had latterly settled amongst themselves.  They all, therefore, with a determined and gloomy eagerness, struggled against the representations and warnings of the priest, until, shaking his head and oppressed with sorrow, he finally quitted the castle, not choosing to accept their offered shelter even for a single night, or indeed so much as to taste a morsel of the refreshment they brought him.  Huldbrand persuaded himself, however, that the priest was a mere visionary; and sent at daybreak to a monk of the nearest monastery, who, without scruple, promised to perform the ceremony in a few days.

CHAPTER 9

It was between night and dawn of day that Huldbrand was lying on his couch, half waking and half sleeping.  Whenever he attempted to compose himself to sleep, a terror came upon him and scared him, as if his slumbers were haunted with spectres.  But he made an effort to rouse himself fully.  He felt fanned as by the wings of a swan, and lulled as by the murmuring of waters, till in sweet confusion of the senses he sank back into his state of half-consciousness.

At last, however, he must have fallen perfectly asleep; for he seemed to be lifted up by wings of the swans, and to be wafted far away over land and sea, while their music swelled on his ear most sweetly.  “The music of the swan! the song of the swan!” he could not but repeat to himself every moment; “is it not a sure foreboding of death?” Probably, however, it had yet another meaning.  All at once he seemed to be hovering over the Mediterranean Sea.  A swan sang melodiously in his ear, that this was the Mediterranean Sea.  And while he was looking down upon the waves, they became transparent as crystal, so that he could see through them to the very bottom.

At this a thrill of delight shot through him, for he could see Undine where she was sitting beneath the clear crystal dome.  It is true she was weeping very bitterly, and looked much sadder than in those happy days when they lived together at the castle of Ringstetten, both on their arrival and afterward, just before they set out upon their fatal passage down the Danube.  The knight could not help thinking upon all this with deep emotion, but it did not appear that Undine was aware of his presence.