t the knight,
wrathfully threatened him, stamped on the ground, and then shot like an
arrow beneath the waves. He seemed to swell in his fury to the size of
a whale. Again the swans began to sing, to wave their wings and fly; the
knight seemed to soar away over mountains and streams, and at last to
alight at Castle Ringstetten, and to awake on his couch.

Upon his couch he actually did awake; and his attendant entering at the
same moment, informed him that Father Heilmann was still lingering in
the neighbourhood; that he had the evening before met with him in the
forest, where he was sheltering himself under a hut, which he had formed
by interweaving the branches of trees, and covering them with moss and
fine brushwood; and that to the question "What he was doing there, since
he would not give the marriage blessing?" his answer was--

"There are many other blessings than those given at marriages; and
though I did not come to officiate at the wedding, I may still officiate
at a very different solemnity. All things have their seasons; we must
be ready for them all. Besides, marrying and mourning are by no means so
very unlike; as every one not wilfully blinded must know full well."

The knight made many bewildered reflections on these words and on his
dream. But it is very difficult to give up a thing which we have
once looked upon as certain; so all continued as had been arranged
previously.

Should I relate to you how passed the marriage-feast at Castle
Ringstetten, it would be as if you saw a heap of bright and pleasant
things, but all overspread with a black mourning crape, through whose
darkening veil their brilliancy would appear but a mockery of the
nothingness of all earthly joys.

It was not that any spectral delusion disturbed the scene of festivity;
for the castle, as we well know, had been secured against the mischief
of water-spirits. But the knight, the fisherman, and all the guests were
unable to banish the feeling that the chief personage of the feast was
still wanting, and that this chief personage could be no other than the
gentle and beloved Undine.

Whenever a door was heard to open, all eyes were involuntarily turned in
that direction; and if it was nothing but the steward with new dishes,
or the cupbearer with a supply of wine of higher flavour than the last,
they again looked down in sadness and disappointment, while the flashes
of wit and merriment which had been passing at times from one to