so beside himself with joy that after the great incredulous cry:
"Isolde is coming! Isolde is near!" he struggles vainly for breath
and words. Then his overflowing gratitude finds an immediate, a
pertinent thing to do, and Kurwenal has all in a moment the reward
of his long passionately-devoted service. The master in his madness
of joy throws his arms around the servant to whom he owes the hope
which in a moment has made him strong and well again. "My Kurwenal,
you faithful friend, whose loyalty knows no wavering, how shall
Tristan ever thank you? My shield and defence in battle and warfare,
in pleasure and pain equally prompt at command,--whom I have hated,
you have hated, whom I have cherished, you have cherished; when
in all truth I served the good Mark, how were you true to him as
gold! When I must betray the noble King, how willingly did you
deceive him! Not your own, but wholly mine, you suffer with me when
I suffer, but what I suffer--that you cannot suffer!" As before the
excitement of his pain, now the excitement of his joy is gradually
turning to delirium. "This dreadful longing which consumes me,
this languishing fire which devours me, if I could describe it,
if you could comprehend it, not here would you loiter but would
haste to the watch-tower, with every sense astrain longingly would
you reach out and spy toward the point where her sail shall appear,
where, blown by the wind and urged on by the fire of love, Isolde
comes steering to me!... There it comes!..." he points wildly,
"There it comes, with brave speed!... See it wave, see it wave,
the pennant at the mast!... The ship! The ship! It streaks along
the reef! Do you not see it?... Kurwenal, do you not see it?" With
watchful intensity he scans Kurwenal's face. Kurwenal hesitates,
between the wish to humour him by going to the watch-tower, and
the fear of leaving him, when the shepherd's pipe is heard again in
the same plaintive tune, and Kurwenal has no heart to pretend. "No
ship as yet on the sea!" he announces heavily. Tristan's excitement,
as the notes spin out their thin music, whose message he seems to
divine, gradually dies; the happy delusion fades; a deeper sadness
than ever, of reaction, closes down upon him. The minor strains
which now for a moment hold his flickering attention are full of
associations for him, all sorrowful. The sound of them came wafted
to him upon the breath of evening when as a child he was told the
manner of his father'