more smotheringly, with caresses more and more pressing. He gently
pushes them away. "You wild, lovely, crowding flowers! If I am
to play with you, let me have room!" As they do not obey, and in
addition fall to quarrelling among themselves over him, half-vexed,
he repels them and is turning for retreat, when a voice is heard
from a blossoming thicket near-by: "Parsifal! Stay!..." The flowers,
startled, at once hold still. The youth stands still, too, struck.
_Parsifal_.... He remembers that as one of the names his mother
had called him by, once, as she lay asleep and dreaming. The voice
continues: "Here remain, Parsifal.... You simple light-o'-loves,
depart from him. Early withering flowers, he is destined to other
things than dalliance with you!" The flock of flowers, reluctantly,
lingering as long as they dare, withdraw, their last word one of
derision: "You beautiful one! You proud one! You... fool!" With
whispered laughter they vanish into the house, and Parsifal, in
the once more solitary garden, asks himself: "Was it all a dream?"

For the first time touched with timidity, he turns towards the
blossoming bower from which the voice had come. The branches part,
and reveal Kundry, youthful, gorgeously apparelled and superlatively
beautiful, lying upon a flowery bank. "Did you mean the name you
spoke for me, who have no name?" Parsifal asks, standing shyly
apart.

"I called you, guileless Innocent, Parsifal.... By this name your
father Gamuret, expiring in Arabian land, called his unborn son.
I have sought you here to tell you this...."

"Never had I seen," sighs Parsifal, "never dreamed, such a thing
as I now see and am filled with awe!... Are you, too, a flower
in this garden of flowers?" "No, Parsifal. Far, far away is my
home. I came here only that you might find me. I came from distant
lands where I witnessed many things...." With the calm notes of
the Arch-enchantress, perfectly sure of her power, she unfolds to
him the story of his own past further back than he can remember,
which is of the things she professes to have ocularly witnessed,--his
life with Herzeleide; she relates the death of the latter from grief
over his loss. She takes him in hand with easy masterliness in
the art of reducing a youthful heart. She does not stint to appear
to one so boyish much older and very wise. Not one discomposing
word does she utter about love,--but she brings his heart to a
state of fusion by the picture of his mot