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Page 31
"I would have gone with them," she pursued, "but the old fisherman,
who is said to be my father--"
"He is, in truth, your father, Bertalda," said Undine, interrupting
her. "See, the stranger whom you took for the master of the water-
works gave me all the particulars. He wished to dissuade me from
taking you with me to Castle Ringstetten, and therefore disclosed to
me the whole mystery."
"Well then," continued Bertalda, "my father--if it must needs be so--
my father said: 'I will not take you with me until you are changed.
If you will venture to come to us alone through the ill-omened
forest, that shall be a proof of your having some regard for us. But
come not to me as a lady; come merely as a fisher-girl.' I do as he
bade me, for since I am abandoned by all the world, I will live and
die in solitude, a poor fisher-girl, with parents equally poor. The
forest, indeed, appears very terrible to me. Horrible spectres make
it their haunt, and I am so fearful. But how can I help it? I have
only come here at this early hour to beg the noble lady of
Ringstetten to pardon my unbecoming behaviour of yesterday. Sweet
lady, I have the fullest persuasion that you meant to do me a
kindness, but you were not aware how severely you would wound me; and
then, in my agony and surprise, so many rash and frantic expressions
burst from my lips. Forgive me, ah, forgive me! I am in truth so
unhappy, already. Only consider what I was but yesterday morning,
what I was even at the beginning of your yesterday's festival, and
what I am to-day!"
Her words now became inarticulate, lost in a passionate flow of
tears, while Undine, bitterly weeping with her, fell upon her neck.
So powerful was her emotion, that it was a long time before she could
utter a word. At length she said:
"You shall still go with us to Ringstetten; all shall remain just as
we lately arranged it; but say 'thou' to me again, and do not call me
'noble lady' any more. Consider, we were changed for each other when
we were children; even then we were united by a like fate, and we
will strengthen this union with such close affection as no human
power shall dissolve. Only first of all you must go with us to
Ringstetten. How we shall share all things as sisters, we can talk
of after we arrive."
Bertalda looked up to Huldbrand with timid inquiry. He pitied her in
her affliction, took her hand, and begged her tenderly to entrust
herself to him and his wife.
"We will send a message to your parents," continued he, "giving them
the reason why you have not come;"--and he would have added more
about his worthy friends of the peninsula, when, perceiving that
Bertalda shrank in distress at the mention of them, he refrained.
He took her under the arm, lifted her first into the carriage, then
Undine, and was soon riding blithely beside them; so persevering was
he, too, in urging forward their driver, that in a short time they
had left behind them the limits of the city, and a crowd of painful
recollections; and now the ladies could take delight in the beautiful
country which their progress was continually presenting.
After a journey of some days, they arrived, on a fine evening, at
Castle Ringstetten. The young knight being much engaged with the
overseers and menials of his establishment, Undine and Bertalda were
left alone. They took a walk upon the high rampart of the fortress,
and were charmed with the delightful landscape which the fertile
Suabia spread around them. While they were viewing the scene, a tall
man drew near, who greeted them with respectful civility, and who
seemed to Bertalda much to resemble the director of the city
fountain. Still less was the resemblance to be mistaken, when
Undine, indignant at his intrusion, waved him off with an air of
menace; while he, shaking his head, retreated with rapid strides, as
he had formerly done, then glided among the trees of a neighbouring
grove and disappeared.
"Do not be terrified, Bertalda," said Undine; "the hateful master of
the fountain shall do you no harm this time." And then she related
to her the particulars of her history, and who she was herself--how
Bertalda had been taken away from the people of the peninsula, and
Undine left in her place. This relation at first filled the young
maiden with amazement and alarm; she imagined her friend must be
seized with a sudden madness. But from the consistency of her story,
she became more and more convinced that all was true, it so well
agreed with former occurrences, and still more convinced from that
inward feeling with which truth never fails to make itself known to
us. She could not but view it as an extraordinary circumstance that
she was herself now living, as it were, in the midst of one of those
wild tales which she had formerly heard related. She gazed upon
Undine with reverence, but could not keep from a shuddering feeling
which seemed to come between her and her friend; and she could not
but wonder when the knight, at their evening repast, showed himself
so kind and full of love towards a being who appeared to her, after
the discoveries just made, more to resemble a phantom of the spirit-
world than one of the human race.
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