you have discovered them, you wonderful
being, for otherwise you would not have thus torn me heart. Are they
perhaps already here? Can it be?" Her eye passed quickly over the
brilliant company and lingered on a lady of high rank who was
sitting next her foster-father. Undine, however, turned toward the
door, while her eyes overflowed with the sweetest emotion. "Where
are the poor waiting parents?" she inquired, and, the old fisherman
and his wife advanced hesitatingly from the crowd of spectators.
Their glance rested inquiringly now on Undine, now on the beautiful
girl who was said to be their daughter "It is she," said the
delighted benefactress, in a faltering tone, and the two old people
hung round the neck of their recovered child, weeping and praising
God.

But amazed and indignant, Bertalda tore herself from their embrace.
Such a recognition was too much for this proud mind, at a moment
when she had surely imagined that her former splendor would even be
increased, and when hope was deluding her with a vision of almost
royal honors. It seemed to her as if her rival had devised all this
on purpose signally to humble her before Huldbrand and the whole
world. She reviled Undine, she reviled the old people, and bitter
invectives, such as "deceiver" and "bribed impostors," fell from her
lips. Then the old fisherman's wife said in a low voice to herself:
"Ah me, she is become a wicked girl; and yet I feel in my heart that
she is my child."

The old fisherman, however, had folded his hands, and was praying
silently that this might not be his daughter. Undine, pale as death,
turned with agitation from the parents to Bertalda, and from
Bertalda to the parents; suddenly cast down from that heaven of
happiness of which she had dreamed, and overwhelmed with a fear and
a terror such as she had never known even in imagination. "Have you
a soul? Have you really a soul, Bertalda?" she cried again and again
to her angry friend, as if forcibly to rouse her to consciousness
from some sudden delirium or maddening nightmare. But when Bertalda
only became more and more enraged, when the repulsed parents began
to weep aloud, and the company, in eager dispute, were taking
different sides, she begged in such a dignified and serious manner
to be allowed to speak in this her husband's hall, that all around
were in a moment silenced. She then advanced to the upper end of the
table, where Bertalda has seated herself, and with a modest and