the solemn
_reveille_--the Grail motive--rings out, and all three sink on their
knees in prayer. The sun bursts forth in splendor as the hymn rises to
mingle with the voices of universal nature. The waves of sound well up
and fill the soul with unspeakable thankfulness and praise.

The talk is of Amfortas, the king, and of his incurable wound. A wild
gallop, a rush of sound--and a weird woman, with streaming hair, springs
toward the startled group. She bears a phial with rare balsam from the
Arabian shores. It is for the king's wound. Who is the wild horsewoman?
Kundry--strange creation--a being doomed to wander, like the Wandering
Jew, the wild Huntsman, or Flying Dutchman, always seeking a deliverance
she can not find--Kundry, who, in ages gone by, met the Savior on the
road to Calvary and derided him. Some say she was Herodias's daughter.
Now filled with remorse, yet weighted with sinful longings, she serves
by turns the Knights of the Grail, then falls under the spell of
Klingsor, the evil knight sorcerer, and, in the guise of an enchantress,
is compelled by him to seduce, if possible, the Knights of the Grail.

Eternal symbol of the divided allegiance of a woman's soul! She it was
who, under the sensual spell, as an incarnation of loveliness, overcame
Amfortas, and she it is now who, in her ardent quest for salvation,
changed and squalid in appearance, serves the Knights of the Grail, and
seeks to heal Amfortas's wound!

No sooner has she delivered her balsam to the faithful Gurnemanz, and
thrown herself exhausted upon the grass--where she lies gnawing her hair
morosely--than a change in the sound atmosphere, which never ceases to
be generated in the mystic orchestral gulf, presages the approach of
Amfortas.

He comes, borne on a litter, to his morning bath in the shining lake
hard by. Sharp is the pain of the wound--weary and hopeless is the king.
Through the Wound-motive comes the sweet woodland music and the breath
of the blessed morning, fragrant with flowers and fresh with dew. It is
one of those incomparable bursts of woodland notes, full of bird-song
and the happy hum of insect life and rustling of netted branches and
waving of long tasseled grass. I know of nothing like it save the forest
music in _Siegfried_.

The sick king listens, and remembers words of hope and comfort that fell
from a heavenly voice, what time the glory of the Grail passed:

"Durch Mitleid wissend
Der reine Thor,