nymphs.  The tumult reaches its height, whereupon the Graces rise in horror and seek to put a stop to the wild conduct of the dancing rout and drive the mad roisterers from the scene.  Fearful that they themselves might be drawn into the whirlpool, they turn to the sleeping amorettes and drive them aloft.  They flutter about, then gather into ranks on high, filling the upper spaces of the cave, whence they send down a hail of arrows upon the wild revellers.  These, wounded by the arrows, filled with a mighty love-longing, cease their dance and sink down exhausted.  The Graces capture the wounded and seek, while separating the intoxicated ones into pairs, to scatter them in the background.  Then, still pursued by the flying amorettes, the bacchantes, fauns, satyrs, nymphs, and youths depart in various directions.  A rosy mist, growing more and more dense, sinks down, hiding first the amorettes and then the entire background, so that finally only Venus, Tannhauser, and the Graces remain visible.  The Graces now turn their faces to the foreground; gracefully intertwined, they approach Venus, seemingly informing her of the victory they have won over the mad passions of her subjects.

The dense mist in the background is dissipated, and a tableau, a cloud picture, shows the rape of Europa, who, sitting on the back of a bull decorated with flowers and led by tritons and nereids, sails across the blue lake.

Song of the Sirens:—­

[Musical excerpt]

The rosy mist shuts down, the picture disappears, and the Graces suggest by an ingratiating dance the secret significance that it was an achievement of love.  Again the mists move about.  In the pale moonlight Leda is discovered reclining by the side of the forest lake; the swan swims toward her and caressingly lays his head upon her breast.  Gradually this picture also disappears and, the mist blown away, discloses the grotto deserted and silent.  The Graces courtesy mischievously to Venus and slowly leave the grotto of love.  Deepest silence. (The duet between Venus and Tannhauser begins.)

The work which Wagner accomplished in behalf of the legend of Tannhauser is fairly comparable with the tales which have been woven around the figure of King Arthur.  The stories of the Knights of the Round Table are in the mouths of all English-speaking peoples because of the “Idylls of the King”; the legend of Tannhauser was saved from becoming the exclusive property of German literary students by Wagner’s opera.  Like many folk-tales, the story touches historical circumstance in part, and for the rest reaches far into the shadowy realm of legendary lore.  The historical element is compassed by the fact that the principal human characters involved in it once had existence.  There was a Landgrave Hermann of Thuringia whose court was held in the Wartburg—­that noble castle which in a later century gave shelter to Martin Luther while he endowed the German people with a reformed religion, their version of the Bible