into joy and hope; but the Landgrave succeeded no better than the
others in inducing young Heinrich to open his heart.

"'"Alas, my lord!" he said, while the hot tears came to his eyes, "I
cannot myself tell what hellish monster has clutched me with fiery
talons, and is holding me suspended halfway between heaven and earth. I
belong no more to this world; and I thirst in vain for the joys up in
the heaven above me. The heathen poets have told of the desolate shades
of the dead, who do not belong to Elysium or to Orcus; they flit and
wander to and fro on Acheron's banks, and the darksome air, where no
star of hope can ever shine, resounds with their cries of sorrow; and
the terrible wailings of their inexpressible pain, their weeping, their
prayers are vain; the inexorable ferryman drives them away when they
try to enter the mysterious barge, and this condition of theirs--this
frightful perdition--is mine."

"'Soon after Heinrich had thus spoken with the Landgrave, he left the
Wartburg in a state of real bodily sickness, and betook himself to
Eisenach. The masters sorrowed that so fair a flower was lost from
their garland, faded before its time, as if by the blight of some
poisonous blast; but Wolfframb of Eschinbach by no means gave up all
hope--rather he thought that, now that Ofterdingen's mental trouble had
turned to a bodily sickness, recovery might be near at hand, for it is
not seldom the case that the mind falls sick, presaging bodily pain,
and it might be so with Ofterdingen, whom he determined to go and
faithfully comfort and tend.

"'So Wolfframb went at once to Eisenach, and when he went in to
Ofterdingen, he found him stretched on his couch, deathly pale, with
half-closed eyes; his lute was hung on the wall covered thickly with
dust, and many of its strings were broken. When he saw his friend, he
raised himself a little, and stretched out his hand to him with a
melancholy smile. Wolfframb having taken a seat beside him, and
delivered to him the hearty greetings of the Landgrave, and of the
other masters; and spoken many other kindly words--Heinrich, in the
languid voice of a sick man said, "Much that is strange has happened to
me; doubtless I have borne myself as one bereft of his senses. Well
might you all believe that some secret, penned up within my breast, was
what was driving me so wildly hither and thither; but alas, my wretched
state was a mystery even to myself; a raging torture was eating at my
h