s
more completely from the deathlike stupor which had chained him,
agitation seizes upon him, greater from moment to moment. Isolde
still in the region of the sunshine! Still in the light of the
day, Isolde! Unendurable longing to see her repossesses him. For
that it is he has turned back from the portals of death, come back
from among the shadows, to seek for her, to behold her, to find her,
in whom alone it is granted to Tristan to lose himself and cease
to be! His old hatred of the day is upon him, and one's sympathy
feels, well enough, the distress to his fever of being thus drawn
from the dark of unconsciousness and thrust into this glare of
summer. By a natural confusion of ideas, as his agitation turns
to delirium, this day torturing him, this day upon which he calls
a malediction, becomes his old enemy, the Day which used to keep
him from her,--and shifts from that into the signal-light which
even at night used to warn him off. His delusion complete, he calls
imploringly to Isolde, Sweetest, Loveliest, "When, oh, finally,
when, will you quench the torch, that it may announce to me my
happiness? The light... when will it go out?... When will the house
be wrapped in rest?" He falls back exhausted. Kurwenal, whose joy
of a little while before has dropped at the contemplation of this
torment, takes heart again from his hope in the good news he has
to impart. "The one whom of old I braved, from devotion to you,
how am I brought to longing for her now! Rely upon my word, you
shall see her, here, and this very day, if only she be still among
the living!"

The meaning of his words has not penetrated. Tristan is far away
among old scenes. "The torch has not yet gone out! Not yet is the
house wrapped in darkness!... Isolde lives and keeps watch.... She
called to me out of the night!"--"If then she lives," Kurwenal
eagerly, seizes the cue, "let hope comfort you. Dullard as you must
esteem Kurwenal, this time you shall not chide him. Ever since
the day when Melot, the infamous, dealt you the wound, you lay like
one dead. The evil wound, how to heal it? Then I, thick-witted
fellow, reflected that the one who closed the wound made by Morold
could find easy remedy to the injury from Melot's sword. Not long
was I deciding upon the best physician! I have sent to Cornwall,--a
trusty fellow. It cannot be but that he will bring Isolde over
the sea here to you!"

He has understood, Tristan has understood, and started up ablaze,