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Page 11
"The little maid stood before us so prettily adorned, and with such
an air of gracefulness, that the heart of the priest softened at once
in her presence; and she coaxed him so sweetly, and jested with him
so merrily, that he at last remembered nothing of his many objections
to the name of Undine.
"Thus, then, was she baptized Undine; and during the holy ceremony
she behaved with great propriety and gentleness, wild and wayward as
at other times she invariably was; for in this my wife was quite
right, when she mentioned the anxiety the child has occasioned us.
If I should relate to you--"
At this moment the knight interrupted the fisherman, to direct his
attention to a deep sound as of a rushing flood, which had caught his
ear during the talk of the old man. And now the waters came pouring
on with redoubled fury before the cottage-windows. Both sprang to
the door. There they saw, by the light of the now risen moon, the
brook which issued from the wood rushing wildly over its banks, and
whirling onward with it both stones and branches of trees in its
rapid course. The storm, as if awakened by the uproar, burst forth
from the clouds, whose immense masses of vapour coursed over the moon
with the swiftness of thought; the lake roared beneath the wind that
swept the foam from its waves; while the trees of this narrow
peninsula groaned from root to topmost branch as they bowed and swung
above the torrent.
"Undine! in God's name, Undine!" cried the two men in an agony. No
answer was returned. And now, regardless of everything else, they
hurried from the cottage, one in this direction, the other in that,
searching and calling.
CHAPTER 2
The longer Huldbrand sought Undine beneath the shades of night, and
failed to find her, the more anxious and confused he became. The
impression that she was a mere phantom of the forest gained a new
ascendency over him; indeed, amid the howling of the waves and the
tempest, the crashing of the trees, and the entire change of the once
so peaceful and beautiful scene, he was tempted to view the whole
peninsula, together with the cottage and its inhabitants, as little
more than some mockery of his senses. But still he heard afar off
the fisherman's anxious and incessant shouting, "Undine!" and also
his aged wife, who was praying and singing psalms.
At length, when he drew near to the brook, which had overflowed its
banks, he perceived by the moonlight, that it had taken its wild
course directly in front of the haunted forest, so as to change the
peninsula into an island.
"Merciful God!" he breathed to himself, "if Undine has ventured a
step within that fearful wood, what will become of her? Perhaps it
was all owing to her sportive and wayward spirit, because I would
give her no account of my adventures there. And now the stream is
rolling between us, she may be weeping alone on the other side in the
midst of spectral horrors!"
A shuddering groan escaped him; and clambering over some stones and
trunks of overthrown pines, in order to step into the impetuous
current, he resolved, either by wading or swimming, to seek the
wanderer on the further shore. He felt, it is true, all the dread
and shrinking awe creeping over him which he had already suffered by
daylight among the now tossing and roaring branches of the forest.
More than all, a tall man in white, whom he knew but too well, met
his view, as he stood grinning and nodding on the grass beyond the
water. But even monstrous forms like this only impelled him to cross
over toward them, when the thought rushed upon him that Undine might
be there alone and in the agony of death.
He had already grasped a strong branch of a pine, and stood
supporting himself upon it in the whirling current, against which he
could with difficulty keep himself erect; but he advanced deeper in
with a courageous spirit. That instant a gentle voice of warning
cried near him, "Do not venture, do not venture!--that OLD MAN, the
STREAM, is too full of tricks to be trusted!" He knew the soft tones
of the voice; and while he stood as it were entranced beneath the
shadows which had now duskily veiled the moon, his head swam with the
swelling and rolling of the waves as he saw them momentarily rising
above his knee. Still he disdained the thought of giving up his
purpose.
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