ds open. This
gives entrance into ascending rocky galleries; sounds of clarions
come stealing to the ear; church-bells are heard--and we are presently
translated into the interior of the Castle of the Grail, the great
domed hall.

Parsifal entering with Gurnemanz stops still beside the threshold,
spell-bound in presence of all the lofty beauty: "Now watch with
attention," his guide instructs him, before leaving him where he
stands, "and let us see, if you are a simple soul and pure, what
light shall be vouchsafed you."

The scene now enacting itself before him is well calculated to
strike the imagination of the boy from the lonely moors. The knights
of the Grail, beautiful in their clear robes, enter in procession,
chanting. When they cease, the singing is taken up by younger voices,
of personages unseen up in the dome, and, after them, by children's
voices from the airy summit of the dome, floating, angelic. The
wounded king is brought in on his litter, and laid upon the high
canopied seat before the altar, upon which the shrine is placed
enclosing the Grail. The knights have ranged themselves along tables
prepared with silver goblets. In the silence of recollection which
falls upon all, a voice is heard, as if from the grave: "My son
Amfortas, are you at your post?" It is the aged Titurel, whose
resting-place is a recess behind the altar and the raised seat.
There he is kept alive solely by the contemplation of the Grail,
mystical means of life and strength. "Are you at your post? Shall I
look upon the Grail once more and live?" But long-gathering despair
to-day reaches its climax in Amfortas, at the necessity to perform
the rite required. The torture to him cannot be measured of the
vision which creates ecstasy in the others. "Woeful inheritance
fallen to me!" he complains, in his passion of revolt against this
divine infliction, "that I, the only sinner among all, should be
condemned to be keeper of holiest holies, and call down blessings
upon those purer than I!" But the worst of his anguish is still
that when the holy blood glows in the Cup, and, in sympathy, the
blood gushes forth anew from the wound in his side--the wound made
by the same Spear--the consciousness ever returns to burning life
that, whereas those holy drops were shed in a heavenly compassion
for the misery of man, these are unregenerate blood, hot with sinful
human passion and longing, which no chastening has availed to drive
out. The wretched