he desert into a garden of wicked
loveliness, peopled by beautiful sirens, through whose charms many of
the knights have already fallen from their state of good. Lastly
Amfortas, sallying forth in the pride of his heart to subdue the
sorcerer, armed with the sacred spear that clove the Saviour's side, has
succumbed to the charms of the beauteous Kundry, a strange being over
whom Klingsor exercises an hypnotic power. He has lost the spear, and
further has sustained a grievous wound from its point dealt by Klingsor,
which no balm or balsam can heal.

The first scene opens in a cool woodland glade near the castle of
Monsalvat, where Gurnemanz, one of the knights, and two young esquires
of the Grail are sleeping. Their earnest converse is interrupted by
Kundry, who flies in with a healing medicine for the wounded King, which
she has brought from Arabia. This strange woman is that Herodias who
laughed at our Saviour upon the Cross, and thenceforth was condemned to
wander through the world under a curse of laughter, praying only for the
gift of tears to release her weary soul. Klingsor has gained a magic
power over her, and, to use the language of modern theosophy, can summon
her astral shape at will to be the queen of his enchanted garden,
leaving her body stark and lifeless; but when not in his power she
serves the ministers of the Grail in a wild, petulant, yet not wholly
unloving manner. Gurnemanz tells the young esquires the story of the
Grail, and together they repeat the prophecy which promises relief to
their suffering King:--

Wise through pity,
The sinless fool.
Look thou for him
Whom I have chosen.

Their words are interrupted by loud cries from without, and several
knights and esquires rush in, dragging with them Parsifal, who has slain
one of the sacred swans with his bow and arrow. Gurnemanz protects
Parsifal from their violence, and seeing that the youth, who has lived
all his life in the woods, is as innocent as a child, leads him up to
the castle of the Grail, in the hope that he may turn out to be the
sinless fool of the prophecy. In the vast hall of the Grail the knights
assemble, and fulfil the mystic rites of the love-feast. Amfortas, the
one sinner in that chaste community, pleads to be allowed to forgo his
task of uncovering the Grail, the source to him of heartburning remorse
and anguish; but Titurel, speaking from the tomb where he lies between
life and death, sustained only by th