But he has been reared in a wilderness, far from courts and the institutions of chivalry and in ignorance of the world lying beyond his forest boundaries.  His father died before he was born, and his mother withheld from him all knowledge of knighthood, hoping thus to keep him for herself.  One day, however, he saw a cavalcade of horsemen in brilliant trappings.  The spectacle stirred the chivalric spirit slumbering within him; he deserted his mother, followed after the knights, and set out in quest of adventure.  The mother died:—­

[Musical excerpt—­the symbol of Herzeleide]

In the domain whither his quarry had led the lad, all animals were held sacred.  A knight (Gurnemanz) rebukes him for his misdeed in shooting the swan, and rue leads him to break his bow and arrows.  From a strange creature (Kundry),—­

[Musical excerpt—­the penitent Kundry]

in the service of the knights, he learns of the death of his mother, who had perished for love of him and grief over his desertion.  He is questioned about himself, but is singularly ignorant of everything, even of his own name.  Hoping that the lad may prove to be the guileless fool to whom knowledge was to come through pity, the knight escorts him to the temple, which is the sanctuary of the talisman whose adoration is the daily occupation of the brotherhood.  They walk out of the forest and find themselves in a rocky defile of the mountain.  A natural gateway opens in the face of a cliff, through which they pass, and are lost to sight for a space.  Then they are seen ascending a sloping passage, and little by little the rocks lose their ruggedness and begin to take on rude architectural contours.  They are walking to music which, while merely suggesting their progress and the changing natural scene in the main, ever and anon breaks into an expression of the most poignant and lacerating suffering and lamentation:—­

[Musical excerpt—­suffering and lamentation]

Soon the pealing of bells is heard:—­

[Musical excerpt]

and the tones blend synchronously and harmonously with the music of their march:—­

[Musical excerpt—­fundamental phrase of the march]

At last they arrive in a mighty Byzantine hail, which loses itself upward in a lofty, vaulted dome, from which light streams downward and illumines the interior.  Under the dome, within a colonnade, are two tables, each a segment of a circle.  Into the hall there come in procession knights wearing red mantles on which the image of a white dove is embroidered.  They chant a pious hymn as they take their places at the refectory tables:—­

[Musical excerpt—­“Zum letzten Liebesmahle Gerustet Tag fur Tag.”  The eucharistic hymn]