ay before him the causes of
this. The subject complies: The Duke of Brabant had on dying placed
under his guardianship his two children, the young girl Elsa and
the boy Gottfried. As next heir to the throne, his honour was very
particularly implicated in his fidelity to this trust, the boy's
life was the jewel of his honour. Let the King judge then of his
grief at being robbed of that jewel! Elsa had taken her young brother
to the forest, ostensibly for the pleasure of woodland rambling, and
had returned without him, inquiring for him with an anxiety which
Telramund judged to be feigned, saying that she had accidentally
lost him a moment from sight and upon looking for him failed to find
trace of him. All search for the lost child had proved fruitless.
Elsa, accused and threatened by her guardian, had by blanched face
and terrified demeanour, he states, confessed guilt. A fearful
revulsion of feeling toward her had thereupon taken place in him;
he had relinquished the right to her hand, bestowed upon him by her
father, and taken to himself a wife more according to his heart,
Ortrud, descended from Radbot, Prince of the Frisians. Telramund
presents to the King the sombre-browed, haughty-looking Princess at
his side. "And now," he declares, "I here arraign Elsa von Brabant.
I charge her with the murder of her brother, and I lay claim in
my own right upon this land, to which my title is clear as next
of kin to the deceased Duke; my wife belonging, besides, to the
house which formerly gave sovereigns to this land."

A murmur passes through the assembly, in part horror, in part
incredulity of so monstrous a crime. "What dreadful charge is this
you bring?" asks the King, in natural doubt; "How were guilt so
prodigious possible?" Telramund offers as explanation a further
accusation, and in doing it gives a hint, not of his motive in
accusing Elsa, for the violent ambitious personage is honest in
thinking her guilty, but of the disposition of mind toward her
which had made him over-ready to believe evil of her: "This vain
and dreamy girl, who haughtily repelled my hand, of a secret amour
I accuse her. She thought that once rid of her brother she could,
as sovereign mistress of Brabant, autocratically reject the hand
of the liegeman, and openly favour the secret lover." His excess
of vehemence in accusation for a moment almost discredits him. The
King demands to see the accused. The trial shall proceed at once.
He apprehends d