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Page 10
Thus speaking he took his cap reverently from his bald head, and
continued to sit for a considerable time in devout thought. He then
covered himself again, and went on with his relation.
"On this side the forest, alas! it was on this side, that woe burst
upon me. My wife came wildly to meet me, clad in mourning apparel,
and her eyes streaming with tears. 'Gracious God!' I cried, 'where's
our child? Speak!'
"'With Him on whom you have called, dear husband,' she answered, and
we now entered the cottage together, weeping in silence. I looked for
the little corpse, almost fearing to find what I was seeking; and
then it was I first learnt how all had happened.
"My wife had taken the little one in her arms, and walked out to the
shore of the lake. She there sat down by its very brink; and while
she was playing with the infant, as free from all fear as she was
full of delight, it bent forward on a sudden, as if seeing something
very beautiful in the water. My wife saw her laugh, the dear angel,
and try to catch the image in her tiny hands; but in a moment--with a
motion swifter than sight--she sprang from her mother's arms, and
sank in the lake, the watery glass into which she had been gazing.
I searched for our lost darling again and again; but it was all in
vain; I could nowhere find the least trace of her.
"The same evening we childless parents were sitting together by our
cottage hearth. We had no desire to talk, even if our tears would
have permitted us. As we thus sat in mournful stillness, gazing into
the fire, all at once we heard something without,--a slight rustling
at the door. The door flew open, and we saw a little girl, three or
four years old, and more beautiful than I can say, standing on the
threshold, richly dressed, and smiling upon us. We were struck dumb
with astonishment, and I knew not for a time whether the tiny form
were a real human being, or a mere mockery of enchantment. But I
soon perceived water dripping from her golden hair and rich garments,
and that the pretty child had been lying in the water, and stood in
immediate need of our help.
"'Wife,' said I, 'no one has been able to save our child for us; but
let us do for others what would have made us so blessed could any one
have done it for us.'
"We undressed the little thing, put her to bed, and gave her
something to drink; at all this she spoke not a word, but only turned
her eyes upon us--eyes blue and bright as sea or sky--and continued
looking at us with a smile.
"Next morning we had no reason to fear that she had received any
other harm than her wetting, and I now asked her about her parents,
and how she could have come to us. But the account she gave was both
confused and incredible. She must surely have been born far from
here, not only because I have been unable for these fifteen years to
learn anything of her birth, but because she then said, and at times
continues to say, many things of so very singular a nature, that we
neither of us know, after all, whether she may not have dropped among
us from the moon; for her talk runs upon golden castles, crystal
domes, and Heaven knows what extravagances beside. What, however,
she related with most distinctness was this: that while she was once
taking a sail with her mother on the great lake, she fell out of the
boat into the water; and that when she first recovered her senses,
she was here under our trees, where the gay scenes of the shore
filled her with delight.
"We now had another care weighing upon our minds, and one that caused
us no small perplexity and uneasiness. We of course very soon
determined to keep and bring up the child we had found, in place of
our own darling that had been drowned; but who could tell us whether
she had been baptized or not? She herself could give us no light on
the subject. When we asked her the question, she commonly made
answer, that she well knew she was created for God's praise and
glory, and that she was willing to let us do with her all that might
promote His glory and praise.
"My wife and I reasoned in this way: 'If she has not been baptized,
there can be no use in putting off the ceremony; and if she has been,
it still is better to have too much of a good thing than too little.'
"Taking this view of our difficulty, we now endeavoured to hit upon a
good name for the child, since, while she remained without one, we
were often at a loss, in our familiar talk, to know what to call her.
We at length agreed that Dorothea would be most suitable for her, as
I had somewhere heard it said that this name signified a gift of God,
and surely she had been sent to us by Providence as a gift, to
comfort us in our misery. She, on the contrary, would not so much as
hear Dorothea mentioned; she insisted, that as she had been named
Undine by her parents, Undine she ought still to be called. It now
occurred to me that this was a heathenish name, to be found in no
calendar, and I resolved to ask the advice of a priest in the city.
He would not listen to the name of Undine; and yielding to my urgent
request, he came with me through the enchanted forest in order to
perform the rite of baptism here in my cottage.
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