it, that we may have the joyous night together!... Oh, do not die of
the wound! Let the light of life go out for us clasped together!...
Too late! Too late!... Hard-hearted!... Do you punish me so with
ruthless sentence? Do you shut your heart to my complaint?... Only
once... only once more!... Look, he wakes! Beloved!..." Consciousness
mercifully forsakes her. She sinks senseless upon his body.

Kurwenal has been standing apart with eyes bent in dumb and rigid
despair upon his master. A confused tumult of arms is heard. The
shepherd climbs hurriedly over the parapet with the announcement:
"A second ship!" Kurwenal starts from his trance of grief and rushes
to look off. He breaks into curses, recognising Mark and Melot
among the men just landed. His resolution is instantly taken. "Arms
and stones! Help me! To the gate!" With the shepherd's help he is
fastening and barricading the castle-gate, when Isolde's skipper
hurries in with the cry: "Mark is behind me with men-of-arms and
folk. Vain to attempt defence, we are overpowered!" Kurwenal does
not pause in his preparations: "While I live, no one shall look in
here! Take your post and help!" Brangaene's voice is heard, calling
her mistress. Kurwenal's excitement, his rage of determination
to keep the sight of those helpless embraced bodies sacred from
profane eyes, shuts his reason to every sign. Brangaene's cry to
him not to close the gate he takes to signify that she is in league
with the enemy. Melot's voice, just outside: "Back, madman! Bar not
the way!" calls forth a fierce laugh: "Hurrah for the day which
gives me the chance to have at you!" The gate resists but a moment;
Melot is first to break in. Kurwenal with a savage cry cuts him
down. Brangaene is heard calling to him that he labours under a
mistake; Mark calling upon him to desist from this insanity. He sees,
understands but one thing, to keep out these enemies of Tristan's,
defend the master to the last against this intrusion. He orders
one of his party to throw back Brangaene, who is coming by the
way of the wall; he hurls himself at the invaders now crowding
in. In self-defence they draw arms upon the slashing madman. He
extorts his death-wound as it were by force from one of them...

Painfully he drags himself along the earth, until he can touch his
master's hand: "Tristan, dear lord! Chide not that the faithful
one comes along too!" The last note about him as he expires is
a fragment of the theme of de