h his lips. It grows night, the evening star goes out.

A shape in ragged pilgrim's-garb, supporting itself upon a
pilgrim's-staff, as if walking were scarcely possible without, from
terrible weariness, approaches the minstrel. "I heard harp-chords,"
the tottering wayfarer speaks to himself; "How mournful they sounded!
Hardly might such music come from _her!_"--"Who are you, pilgrim,
wandering thus alone?" Wolfram addresses the shadowy figure. "Who
I am?" comes the reply, "And yet I know you well enough. You are
Wolfram, that highly-accomplished minstrel!"--"Heinrich!" cries
Wolfram, not to be mistaken in that mocking voice,--with the scorn
of which is mingled so much wild bitterness that the hearer is
made certain this pilgrim is returned under different conditions
from all the rest. "Heinrich, you?... What brings you in this
neighbourhood? Speak! Are you so bold as, unabsolved, to have let
your feet take the road to this region?"--"Be without fear, my good
minstrel, I am not come looking for you nor any of your tribe.
But I am looking for one who shall show me the road... the road
which of old I found so easily!"--"What road do you mean?"--"The
road to the Hill of Venus!" Wolfram recoils. "Do you know that
road?" persists Heinrich. "Madman! Horror seizes me to hear you!"
the pious knight shudders; "Where have you been? Tell me, did you
not go to Rome?"--"Speak not to me of Rome!"--"Were you not present
at the holy festival?"--"Speak not of it to me!"--"Then you have
not been?... Tell me, I conjure you!" The answer comes, after a
dark pause, with an effect of boundless bitterness: "Aye, I too
was in Rome!"--"Then speak! Tell me of it, unhappy man! I feel a
vast compassion for you surging within my breast!" Tannhaeuser in
the nigh darkness regards him for a moment with astonishment; he
speaks more gently, moved in spite of himself by such gentleness.
"What is that you say, Wolfram? Are you not my enemy?"--"Never was
I such--while I believed you pure of purpose! But speak, you went
on the pilgrimage to Rome?"--"Well, then,--listen! You, Wolfram,
shall hear all." Exhausted he drops on a projection of rock, but
when Wolfram would seat himself beside him he waives him violently
off. "Do not come near me! The place where I rest is accursed!...
Hear, then, Wolfram, hear!" He had started, he relates, on his
pilgrimage to Rome with such passion of repentance in his heart
as never penitent felt before. An angel had shattered in