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Page 29
Well he knows, within his dwelling,
Still as death he'll find the gloom,
Only hear the mother moaning,--
No sweet babe to SMILE him home."
"O, tell me, in the name of Heaven tell me, Undine, where are my
parents?" cried the weeping Bertalda. "You certainly know; you must
have discovered them, you wonderful being; for, otherwise you would
never have thus torn my heart. Can they be already here? May I
believe it possible?" Her eye glanced rapidly over the brilliant
company, and rested upon a lady of high rank who was sitting next to
her foster-father.
Then, bending her head, Undine beckoned toward the door, while her
eyes overflowed with the sweetest emotion. "Where, then, are the
poor parents waiting?" she asked; and the old fisherman, hesitating,
advanced with his wife from the crowd of spectators. They looked
inquiringly, now at Undine, and now at the beautiful lady who was
said to be their daughter.
"It is she! it is she there before you!" exclaimed the restorer of
their child, her voice half choked with rapture. And both the aged
parents embraced their recovered daughter, weeping aloud and praising
God.
But, terrified and indignant, Bertalda tore herself from their arms.
Such a discovery was too much for her proud spirit to bear,
especially at the moment when she had doubtless expected to see her
former splendour increased, and when hope was picturing to her
nothing less brilliant than a royal canopy and a crown. It seemed to
her as if her rival had contrived all this on purpose to humble her
before Huldbrand and the whole world. She reproached Undine; she
reviled the old people; and even such offensive words as "deceiver,
bribed and perjured impostors," burst from her lips.
The aged wife of the fisherman then said to herself, in a low voice:
"Ah, my God, she has become wicked! and yet I feel in my heart that
she is my child."
The old fisherman had meanwhile folded his hands, and offered up a
silent prayer that she might NOT be his daughter.
Undine, faint and pale as death, turned from the parents to Bertalda,
from Bertalda to the parents. She was suddenly cast dawn from all
that heaven of happiness in which she had been dreaming, and plunged
into an agony of terror and disappointment, which she had never known
even in dreams.
"Have you, then, a soul? Have you indeed a soul, Bertalda?" she
cried again and again to her angry friend, as if with vehement effort
she would arouse her from a sudden delirium or some distracting dream
of night, and restore her to recollection.
But when Bertalda became every moment only more and more enraged--
when the disappointed parents began to weep aloud--and the company,
with much warmth of dispute, were espousing opposite sides--she
begged, with such earnestness and dignity, for the liberty of
speaking in this her husband's hall, that all around her were in an
instant hushed to silence. She then advanced to the upper end of the
table, where, both humbled and haughty, Bertalda had seated herself,
and, while every eye was fastened upon her, spoke in the following
manner:--
"My friends, you appear dissatisfied and disturbed; and you are
interrupting, with your strife, a festivity I had hoped would bring
joy to you and to me. Ah! I knew nothing of your heartless ways of
thinking; and never shall understand them: I am not to blame for the
mischief this disclosure has done. Believe me, little as you may
imagine this to be the case, it is wholly owing to yourselves. One
word more, therefore, is all I have to add; but this is one that must
be spoken:--I have uttered nothing but truth. Of the certainty of
the fact, I give you the strongest assurance. No other proof can I
or will I produce, but this I will affirm in the presence of God. The
person who gave me this information was the very same who decoyed the
infant Bertalda into the water, and who, after thus taking her from
her parents, placed her on the green grass of the meadow, where he
knew the duke was to pass."
"She is an enchantress!" cried Bertalda; "a witch, that has
intercourse with evil spirits. She acknowledges it herself."
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