know." "Who directed you here?" "I do not know." "What is
your name?" "I have had many, but no longer remember any of them."
"Truly," grumbles Gurnemanz, "I have so far never in my life met
with any one so stupid--except Kundry." Very sagely, he leaves off
questioning the fool; but when the others, after reverently taking
up the dead swan, have departed with it for burial, he addresses
him: "Of all I have asked you, you know nothing. Now tell me what
you do know! For it can hardly be but that you know something."
Whereupon very simply and obediently the boy begins: "I have a
mother. Her name is Herzeleide. (Heart's-sorrow.) We lived in the
woods and on the wild moor...." And it appears from his own ingenuous
narrative and the additions of Kundry, who in her rangings has
seemingly had opportunities to watch him, that he is the son of
the hero Gamuret, slain in battle before his birth, and that, in
terror of a like early death for him, his mother has reared him in
solitude, far from arms and reports of war, in absolute ignorance
of the world. One day, he tells in joyous excitement, bright-gleaming
men passed along the forest's edge, seated upon splendid animals;
his instant wish was to be like them, but they laughed and galloped
away. He ran after them, but could not overtake them. Up hill and
down dale he travelled, for days and nights. With his bow he was
compelled to defend himself against wild beasts and huge men....
"Yes!" throws in Kundry eagerly, as if at the recollection of splendid
fights witnessed, "he made his strength felt upon miscreants and
giants. They were all afraid of the truculent boy!" He turns upon
her a vaguely pleased wonder: "Who is afraid of me? ... Tell me!"
"The wicked!" He seems trying to grasp a wholly new idea presented
to him. "Those who threatened me were wicked? Who is good?" Gurnemanz
in reply reminds him of his mother, who is good, and from whom
he has run away; she no doubt is seeking him in sorrow. Kundry
brusquely interrupts: "Her sorrow is ended. His mother is dead!"
And, at his incredulous cry of horror: "I was riding past and saw
her die. She bade me take to you, fool, her last blessing." Parsifal
springs upon this bearer of evil tidings with the instinctive attempt
to shut off the breath that could frame such terrible words. Gurnemanz
forcibly disengages her, and, overpowered by the shock and weight of
his pain, Parsifal sinks in a swoon. Tenderly at once both servants
of the Grai