owers,
themselves withered up and dead. Kundry sinks down in a deathly swoon,
while Parsifal steps over a ruined wall and disappears, saluting her
with the words: "Thou alone knowest when we shall meet again!"

* * * * *

The long shadows were stealing over the hills when I came out at the
second pause. Those whom I met and conversed with were subdued and
awed. What a solemn tragedy of human passion we had been assisting at!
Not a heart there but could interpret that struggle between the flesh
and the spirit from its own experiences. Not one but knew the
desperately wicked and deceitful temptations that come like
enchantresses in the wizard's garden, to plead the cause of the devil in
the language of high-flown sentiment or even religious feeling.

Praise and criticism seemed dumb; we rather walked and spoke of what we
had just witnessed like men convinced of judgment, and righteousness,
and sin. It was a strange mood in which to come out of a theater after
witnessing what would commonly be called an "Opera." I felt more than
ever the impossibility of producing the _Parsifal_ in London, at Drury
Lane or Covent Garden, before a well-dressed company of loungers, who
had well dined, and were on their way to balls and suppers afterward.

I would as soon see the Oberammergau play at a music-hall.

No; in _Parsifal_ all is solemn, or all is irreverent. At Bayreuth we
came on a pilgrimage; it cost us time, and trouble, and money; we were
in earnest--so were the actors; the spirit of the great master who had
planned every detail seemed still to preside over all; the actors lived
in their parts; not a thought of self remained; no one accepted applause
or recall; no one aimed at producing a personal effect; the actors were
lost in the drama, and it was the drama and not the actors which has
impressed and solemnized us. When I came out they asked me who was
Amfortas? I did not know. I said "the wounded king."

As the instruments played out the Faith and Love motive for us to
reenter, the mellow sunshine broke once more from the cloud-rack over
city, and field, and forest, before sinking behind the long low range of
the distant hills.

Act III

The opening prelude of the third and last act seems to warn me of the
lapse of time. The music is full of pain and restlessness--the pain of
wretched years of long waiting for a deliverer, who comes not; the
restlessness and misery of a hope de