The Second Act shows the great court in the citadel of Antwerp,
bounded at the back by the Palace, where the knights are lodged;
at the left, by the Kemenate, the women's apartments; at the right,
by the Minster. It is night. The windows of the Palace are brightly
lighted; smothered bursts of music from time to time issue forth
from them. Telramund and Ortrud, in the poor garb of plebeians,
sit on the church-steps. Excommunication and banishment, following
the condemnation of God signified by such defeat as Telramund has
suffered, have made of them beggars and fugitives. Telramund is
sunk in dark reflection. Ortrud, half-crouched like a dangerous
animal lying in wait, stares intently at the lighted windows. With
sudden effort of resolve Telramund rouses himself and gets to his
feet. "Come, companion of my disgrace!" he speaks to the woman
beside him; "Daybreak must not find us here." She does not stir.
"I cannot move from here," she answers; "I am spell-bound upon
this spot. From the contemplation of this brilliant banqueting of
our enemies let me absorb a fearful mortal venom, whereby I shall
bring to an end both our ignominy and their rejoicing!" Friedrich
shudders, in spite of himself, at such incarnate malignity as seems
represented by that crouching form, those hate-darting eyes. The
sense seizes him, too, in the dreadful soreness of his lacerated
pride, how much this woman is responsible for what he has suffered.
"You fearful woman!" he cries, "What is it keeps me still bound to
you? Why do I not leave you alone, and flee by myself away, away,
where my conscience may find rest? Through you I must lose my honour,
the glory I had won. The praise that attaches to fair fame follows
me no more. My knighthood is turned to a mock! Outlawed, proscribed
am I, shattered is my sword, broken my escutcheon, anathemised
my house! Whatever way I turn, all flee from me, accursed! The
robber himself shuns the infection of my glance. Oh, that I had
chosen death sooner than life so abject and miserable!..." With
the agonised cry, "My honour, oh, my honour! I have lost my honour!"
he casts himself face downward upon the ground.
Ortrud has not stirred, or taken her eyes from the bright orange-gold
windows. As Telramund's harsh voice ceases, music is heard again
from the banquet-hall. Ortrud listens till it has died away; then
asks, with cold quiet: "What makes you waste yourself in these
wild complaints?"--"That the very weapon should have been taken
from me with which I might have struck you dead!" he cries, stung
to insanity. Scornfully calm and cold as before, "Friedrich, you
Count of Telramund, for what reason," she asks, "do you distrust
me?" Hotly he pours forth his reasons. "Do you ask? Was it not your
testimony, your report, which induced me to accuse that innocent
girl? You, living in the dusky woods, did you not mendaciously
aver to me that from your wild castle you had seen the dark deed
committed? With your own eyes seen how Elsa drowned her brother
in the tarn? And did you not ensnare my ambitious heart with the
prophecy that the ancient princely dynasty of Radbot soon should
flourish anew and reign over Brabant, moving me thereby to withdraw
my claim to the hand of Elsa, the immaculate, and take to wife
yourself, because you were the last descendant of Radbot?"--"Ha!
How mortally offensive is your speech!" she speaks, but suppresses
her natural annoyance to continue: "Very true, all you have stated,
I did say, and confirmed it with proof."--"And made me, whose name
stood so high in honour, whose life had earned the prize due to highest
virtue, made me into the shameful accomplice of your lie!"--"Who
lied?" she asks coolly. "You!" he unceremoniously flings at her;
"Has not God because of it, through his judgment, brought me to
shame?"--"God?..." She utters the word with such vigour of derision
that he involuntarily starts back. "Horrible!" he shudders after a
moment; "How dreadful does that name sound upon your lips!"--"Ha!
Do you call your own cowardice God?" He raises against her his
maddened hand: "Ortrud!..."--"Do you threaten me? Threaten a woman?"
she sneers, unmoved; "Oh, lily-livered! Had you been equally bold
in threatening him who now sends us forth to our miserable doom,
full easily might you have earned victory in place of shame. Ha!
He who should manfully stand up to the encounter with him would
find him weaker than a child!"--"The weaker he," Telramund observes,
ill-pleased, "the more mightily was exhibited the strength of
God!"--"The strength of God!... Ha, ha!" laughs loud Ortrud, with
the same unmoderated effect of scorn and defiance, which sends her
husband staggering back it step, gasping. "Give me the opportunity,"
she proceeds, with a return to that uncanny quiet of hers, "and I
will show you, infallibly, what a feeble god it is protects him!"
Telramund is impressed. She is telling him after all that which he
would like to believe. Still, the impression of the day's events is
strong upon him,--his overthrow at God's own hand. After that, how
dare he trust her? And yet-- But then again-- "You wild seeress," he
exclaims, torn with doubt, "what are you trying, with your mysterious
hints, to entangle my soul afresh?" She points at the Palace, from
the windows of which the lights have disappeared. "The revellers
have laid them down to their luxurious repose. Sit here beside
me! The hour is come when my seer's eye shall read the invisible
for you." Telramund draws nearer, fascinated, reconquered to her by
this suggestion of some dim hope rearising upon his blighted life.
He sits down beside her and holds close his ear for her guarded
tones. "Do you know who this hero is whom a swan brought to the
shore?"--"No!"--"What would you give to know? If I should tell you
that were he forced to reveal his name and kind there would be an
end to the power which laboriously he borrows from sorcery?"--"Ha!
I understand then his prohibition!"--"Now listen! No one here has
power to wring from him his secret, save she alone whom he forbade
so stringently ever to put to him the question!"--"The thing to
do then would be to prevail upon Elsa not to withhold from asking
it!"--"Ha! How quickly and well you apprehend me!"--"But how should
we succeed in that?"--"Listen! It is necessary first of all not
to forsake the spot. Wherefore, sharpen your wit! To arouse
well-justified suspicion in her, step forward, accuse him of sorcery,
whereby he perverted the ordeal!"--"Ha! By sorcery it was, and
treachery!"--"If you fail, there is still left the expedient of
violence."--"Violence?"--"Not for nought am I learned in the most
hidden arts. Every being deriving his strength from magic, if but
the smallest shred of flesh be torn from his body, must instantly
appear in his original weakness."--"Oh, if it might be that you
spoke true!" wistfully groans Telramund. "If in the encounter you
had struck off one of his fingers," Ortrud continues, "nay, but
one joint of a finger, that hero would have been in your power!"
Rage and excitement possess Telramund at the retrospect of the
combat in which he had been beaten, not, as he had supposed, by God,
but by the tricks of a sorcerer, and at the prospect of avenging his
disgrace, proving his uprightness, recovering his honour. But--he
is checked by a sudden return of suspicion of this dark companion and
adviser. "Oh, woman, whom I see standing before me in the night,"
he addresses the dim figure, "if you are again deceiving me, woe to
you, I tell you, woe!" She quiets him with the promise of teaching
him the sweet joys of vengeance. A foretaste of these they have,
sitting on the minster-steps, gloating upon the walls which enclose
the unconscious foes. "Oh, you, sunk in sweet slumber, know that
mischief is awake and lying in wait for you!"
A door opens in the upper story of the Kemenate. A white figure
steps out on to the balcony and leans against the parapet, head
upon hand. The pair in the shade watch with suspended breath,
recognising Elsa. She is too happy, obviously, to sleep; her heart
is too heavily oppressed with gratitude for all that this wonderful
day has brought. The well-born gentle soul that she is must be
offering thanks to everything that has contributed to this hour;
and so, girlishly, she speaks to the wind: "You breezes, whom I
used so often to burden with my sadness and complaints, I must
tell you in very gratitude what happy turn my fortunes have taken!
By your means he came travelling to me, you smiled upon his voyage,
on his way over the wild waves you kept him safe. Full many a time
have I troubled you to dry my tears. I ask you now of your kindness
to cool my cheek aglow with love!" Ortrud has kept basilisk eyes
fixed upon the sweet love-flushed face touched with moonlight.
"She shall curse the hour," speaks the bitter enemy in her teeth,
"in which my eyes beheld her thus!" She bids Telramund under-breath
leave her for a little while. "Wherefore?" he asks. "She falls to
my share," comes grimly from the wife; "take her hero for yours!"
Telramund slips obediently away into the black shadow.
Ortrud watches Elsa for a time breathing her innocent fancies to
the wind; then abruptly cuts short the pastime, calling her name
in a loud, deliberately-plaintive tone. Elsa peers anxiously down
in the dark court. "Who calls me? How lamentably did my name come
shuddering through the night!"--"Elsa, is my voice so strange to
you? Is it your mind to disclaim all acquaintance with the wretch
whom you have driven forth to exile and misery?"--"Ortrud, is it
you? What are you doing here, unhappy woman?"--"Unhappy woman?..."
Ortrud repeats after her, giving the turn of scorn to the young
girl's pitying intonation; "Ample reason have you indeed to call me
so!" With dark artfulness she rouses in Elsa more than proportionate
compassion for her plight, by casting upon the tender-conscienced
creature the whole blame for it. In no scene does the youthfulness
of Telramund's ward appear more pathetically than in this. "In the
solitary forest, where I lived quiet and at peace, what had I done
to you," Ortrud upbraids, "what had I done to you? Living there
joylessly, my days solely spent in mourning over the misfortunes
that had long pursued my house, what had I done to you,--what had I
done to you?"--"Of what, in God's name, do you accuse me?" asks Elsa,
bewildered. Ortrud pursues in her chosen line of incrimination at all
cost: "However could you envy me the fortune of being chosen for wife
by the man whom you had of your free will disdained?"--"All-merciful
God," exclaims Elsa, "What is the meaning of this?"--"And if, blinded
by an unhappy delusion, he attributed guilt to you, guiltless, his
heart is now torn with remorse; grim indeed has his punishment
been. Oh, you are happy! After brief period of suffering, mitigated
by conscious innocence, you see all life smiling unclouded before
you. You can part from me well-pleased, and send me forth on my
way to death, that the dull shadow of my grief may not disturb your
feasts."
Ortrud's policy is completely successful; this last imputation is
intolerable to the generous girl, made even more tender-hearted
than wont by her overflowing happiness. "What mean sense of Thy
mercies would I be showing," she cries, "All-powerful, who have
so greatly blessed me, should I repulse the wretched bowed before
me in the dust! Oh, nevermore! Ortrud, wait for me! I myself will
come down and let you in!"
She hurries indoors. Ortrud has gained what she wanted, intimate
access to the young Duchess's ear, that she may pour her poison
into it. She has a moment's joy of triumph, while the fair dupe
is hastening down to her within. We discover at this point that
she is no Christian like the rest; that the secret gods of the
secret sorceress are the old superseded ones, Wotan and Freia.
For that reason it was the Silver Knight did not impress her as
he did the others. She could not admit that he came from God, the
false god whose name we heard her pronounce with such unconcealable
scorn; but, herself a witch, supposed that he performed the feat
through wizardry. She had explained the phenomenon to her husband
in good faith; she believed what she said, that were he forced
to tell his name, or might a shred of flesh be torn from him, he
would stand before them undisguised, shorn of his magic power.
Wild with evil joy at the success of her acting, she calls upon
her desecrated gods to help her further against the apostates.
"Wotan, strong god, I appeal to you! Freia, highest goddess, hear
me! Vouchsafe your blessing upon my deceit and hypocrisy, that
I may happily accomplish my vengeance!"
At the sound of Elsa's voice calling: "Ortrud, where are you?"
she assumes the last abjectness. "Here!" she replies, cowering
upon the earth. "Here at your feet!" Simple Elsa's heart melts
at the sight, really out of all reason soft, out of all reason
unsuspecting. Yet she is infinitely sweet, in her exaggeration
of goodness, when she not only pardons, but begs pardon of this
fiendish enemy for what the latter may have had to suffer through
her. She eagerly puts out her hands to lift Ortrud from her knees.
"God help me! That I should see you thus, whom I have never seen
save proud and magnificent! Oh, my heart will choke me to behold
you in so humble attitude. Rise to your feet! Spare me your
supplications! The hate you have borne me I forgive you, and I
pray you to forgive me too whatever you have had to suffer through
me!"--"Receive my thanks for so much goodness!" exclaims feelingly the
accomplished actress. "He who to-morrow will be called my husband,"
continues Elsa, in her young gladness to heap benefits, "I will
make appeal to his gentle nature, and obtain grace for Friedrich
likewise."--"You bind me to you forever with bonds of gratitude!"
With light innocent hand Elsa places the crowning one on top of
her magnanimous courtesies. "At early morning let me see you ready
prepared. Adorned in magnificent attire, you shall walk with me
to the minster. There I am to await my hero, to become his wife
before God. His wife!..." The sweet pride with which she says the
word, the soft ecstasy that falls upon her at the thought, stir in
Ortrud such hatred that she cannot forbear, even though the time
can hardly be ripe, taking the first step at once which is to result
in the quick ruin of the poor child's dreams. "How shall I reward
you for so much kindness, powerless and destitute as I am? Though by
your grace I should dwell beside you, I should remain no better
than a beggar. One power, however, there is left me; no arbitrary
decree could rob me of that. By means of it, peradventure, I shall be
able to protect your life and preserve it from regret."--"What do
you mean?" asks Elsa lightly. "What I mean is--that I warn you not
too blindly to trust in your good fortune; let me for the future
have care for you, lest disaster entangle you unaware." Elsa shrinks
back a little, murmuring, "Disaster?" Ortrud speaks with impressive
mystery close to her ear: "Could you but comprehend what marvellous
manner of being is the man--of whom I say but this: May he never
forsake you through the very same magic by which he came to you!"
Elsa starts away from Ortrud, in horror at such impiety,--disbelief
in the highest. But in a moment her displeasure gives way to sadness
and pity for the darkness in which this other woman lives. "Poor
sister!" she speaks, most gently, "you can hardly conceive how
unsuspecting is my heart! You have never known, belike, the happiness
that belongs to perfect faith. Come in with me! Let me teach you
the sweetness of an untroubled trust. Let me convert you to the
faith that there exists a happiness without leaven of regret!" This
warm young generous sweetness which makes Elsa open to any appeal,
blind to grossest fraud, merely exasperates Ortrud's ill-will. She
reads in it plain pride of superiority. As she could not admit in
the Knight of the swan a god-sent hero, she cannot see in Elsa an
uncommonly good-hearted girl. "Oh, that arrogance!" she is muttering
while Elsa is exhorting her; "It shall teach me how I may undo that
trustfulness of hers! Against it shall the weapons be turned, her
pride shall bring about her fall!"--Elsa by gesture inviting, the
other feigning confusion at so great kindness, the two pass into
the house together.
The first grey of dawn lightens the sky. Telramund, who has been
spying unseen, exults to see mischief in the person of his wife
entering the house of the enemy. He is not an evil man, he cares
beyond all for honour, and his consciousness of a certain unfairness
in the methods his wife will use is implied in his exclamation;
but the violent man so rages under a sense of injustice that all
weapons to him are good which shall bring about the ruin of those who
have ruined him. "Thus does mischief enter that house! Accomplish,
woman, what your subtlety has devised. I feel no power to check you
at your work. The mischief began with my downfall; now shall you
plunge after me, you who brought me to it! One thing alone stands
clear before me: The robbers of my honour shall see destruction!"
Daylight brightens. The warders sound the reveillé from the turret.
Telramund conceals himself behind a buttress of the minster. The
business of the day is gradually taken up in the citadel court. The
porter unlocks the tower-gate that lets out on to the city-road;
servants come and go about their work, drawing water, hanging festive
garlands. At a summons from the King's trumpeters, nobles and burghers
assemble in great number before the Minster. The King's herald
coming out on the Palace-steps makes the following announcements:
Firstly: Banished and outlawed is Friedrich von Telramund, for
having undertaken the ordeal with a knowledge of his own guilt.
Any one sheltering or associating with him shall according to the
law of the realm come under the same condemnation. Secondly: The
King invests the unknown God-sent man, about to espouse Elsa, with
the lands and the crown of Brabant; the hero to be called, according
to his preference, not Duke, but Protector of Brabant. Thirdly: The
Protector will celebrate with them this day his nuptial feast, but
they shall join him tomorrow in battle-trim, to follow, as their
duty is, the King's arms. He himself, renouncing the sweetness of
repose, will lead them to glory.
These proclamations are followed by general assent and gladness.
A small group there is, however, of malcontents, former adherents
of Telramund's, who grumble: "Hear that! He is to remove us out of
the country, against an enemy who has never so much as threatened
us! Such a bold beginning is ill-beseeming. Who will stand up against
him when he is in command?"--"I will!" comes from a muffled figure
that has crept among them, and Friedrich uncovers his countenance.
"How dare you venture here, in danger as you are from the hand of
every churl?" they ask him, frightened. "I shall dare and venture
more than this ere long, and the scales will drop from your eyes.
He who presumptuously calls you forth to war, I will accuse him of
treason in the things of God." The Brabantian gentlemen, afraid
of his being overheard or recognised, conceal the rash lord among
them, and compel him toward the church, out of sight.
Forerunners of the wedding-procession, young pages come from the
Kemenate, and clear a way through the crowd to the church-door. A
long train of ladies walk before the bride. There are happy cheers
when she appears, dazzling in her wedding-pomp; there are blessings
and the natural expressions of devotion from loyal subjects. The
pages and ladies stand massed at either side of the Minster-door
to give their mistress precedence in entering. She is slowly, with
bashful lowered eyes, mounting the stairs, when Ortrud, who in
magnificent apparel has been following in her train, steps quickly
before her, with the startling command, given in a furious voice:
"Back, Elsa! I will no longer endure to follow you like a serving-maid!
Everywhere shall you yield me precedence, and with proper deference
bow before me!" This is, we believe, no part of any deep-laid plan
of Ortrud's, though it does in the event help along her scheme; it
is an uncontrollable outburst of temper at sight of Elsa in her
eminence of bridal and ducal glory. "What does the woman mean?"
ask the people of one another, and step between Elsa and her. "What
is this?" cries Elsa, painfully startled; "What sudden change has
taken place in you?"--"Because for an hour I forgot my proper worth,"
Radbot's daughter continues violently, "do you think that I am
fit only to crawl before you? I will take measures to wipe out
my abasement. That which is due to me I am determined to
receive!"--"Woe's me!" complains Elsa, "Was I duped by your feigning,
when you stole to me last night with your pretended grief? And
do you now haughtily demand precedence of me, you, the wife of a
man convicted by God?" Ortrud sees here her opportunity again to
introduce the wedge of suspicion into her victim's mind. "Though a
false sentence banished my husband, his name was honoured throughout
the land, he was never spoken of save as the pattern of virtue.
His sword was well-tested and was feared--But yours, tell me, who
that is present knows him? You cannot even yourself call him by
his name!... Nay, but can you?" she taunts the shocked, pale-grown
bride, who has found no more than force to gasp,--"What does she
say? She blasphemes! Stop her lips!"--"Can you tell us whether
his lineage, his nobility, be well attested? From whence the river
brought him and whither he will go when he leaves? No, you cannot!
The matter, no doubt, would present difficulties, wherefore the
astute hero forbade all questioning!" Elsa has found her voice
at last, and speaks right hotly: "You slanderer! Abandoned woman!
Hear, whether I can answer you! So pure and lofty is his nature,
so filled with virtue is that noblest man, that never shall the
person obtain forgiveness who presumes to doubt his mission! Did
not my hero overcome your husband by the power of God in singular
combat? You shall tell me then, all of you, which of the two must
lawfully be held true?"--"Ha! That truth of your hero's!" mocks
Ortrud, fearfully ready of tongue; "How soon were it cast in doubt,
should he be forced to confess the sorcery by which he practises
such power! If you fear to question him concerning it, all may
believe with good right that you are not free yourself from the
suspicion that his truth must not be too closely looked into!"
Elsa is near fainting with the anguish of this encounter; her women
surround and comfort her.
The doors of the Palace have opened, the King and the Knight of
the Swan, with great retinue of nobles, issue forth, bound for
the church and wedding-ceremony. They arrive upon the scene before
the confusion is allayed occasioned by the quarrel between vulture
and dove. Elsa runs to the arms of the Protector. Receiving her and
glancing naturally about for explanation, he beholds the dangerous
Ortrud, whom his clear eye reads, restored to splendour, part of the
wedding-train, and remarks upon it with amazement to the trembling
bride. "What do I see? That unhappy woman at your side?"--"My
deliverer," weeps Elsa, "shield me from her! Scold me, for having
disobeyed you! I found her in tears here before my door; I took
her in out of her wretchedness. Now see how dreadfully she rewards
my kindness!... She taunts me for my over-great trust in you!" The
Knight fixes his eyes sternly upon the offender, who somehow cannot
look back bold insult as she would wish, but stands spell-bound
under the calm severity of his glance. "Stand off from her, you
fearful woman. Here shall you never prevail!--Tell me, Elsa," he
bends over her tearful face, "tell me that she tried vainly to
drop her venom into your heart?" Elsa hides her face against his
breast without answering. But the gesture with its implied confidence
satisfies him; the tears increase his protecting tenderness. "Come!"
he draws her toward the church; "Let your tears flow in there as
tears of joy!"
The wedding-train forms again and moves churchward in wake of King
and bride and groom. But the wedding to-day is not to come off
without check and interruption--an ill omen, according to the lore
of all peoples. As the bridal party is mounting the Minster-steps,
there starts up in front of it, before the darkly gaping door,
the figure of Telramund. The crowd sways back as if from one who
should spread infection, so tainted did a man appear against whom
God through his ordeal had spoken judgment. "Oh, King, oh, deluded
princes, stand!" he cries, barring their way. He will not be silenced
by their indignant threats; he makes himself heard in spite of
shocked and angry prohibitions. "Hear me to whom grim injustice
has been done! God's judgment was perverted, falsified! By the
tricks of a sorcerer you have been beguiled!" The King's followers
are for seizing and thrusting him aside; but the soldier, famous
no longer ago than yesterday for every sort of superiority, stands
his ground and says what he is determined to say. "The man I see
yonder in his magnificence, I accuse of sorcery! As dust before
God's breath, let the power be dispersed which he owes to a black
art! How ill did you attend to the matters of the ordeal which was
to strip me of honour, refraining as you did from questioning him,
when he came to undertake God's fight! But you shall not prevent
the question now, I myself will put it to him. Of his name, his
station, his honours, I inquire aloud before the whole world. Who
is he, who came to shore guided by a wild swan? One who keeps in
his service the like enchanted animals is to my thinking no true
man! Let him answer now my accusation. If he can do so, call my
condemnation just, but if he refuse, it must be plain to all that
his virtue will not bear scrutiny!" All eyes turn with unmistakable
interest of expectation toward the man thus accused; wonder concerning
what he will reply is expressed in undertones.
He refuses point-blank, with a bearing of such superiority as an
attack of the sort can hardly ruffle. "Not to you, so forgetful
of your honour, have I need here to reply. I set aside your evil
aspersion; truth will hardly suffer from the like!"--"If I am in
his eyes not worthy of reply," Friedrich bitterly re-attacks, "I
call upon you, King, high in honour indeed. Will he, on the ground
of insufficient nobility, refuse likewise to answer you?" Aye,
the Knight refuses again, with an assurance partaking in no wise
of haughtiness, but speaking a noble consciousness of what he is
which places him above men's opinions. "Yes! even the King I must
refuse to answer, and the united council of all the princes! They
will not permit doubt of me to burden them, they were witnesses
of my good deed. There is but one whom I must answer. Elsa!" He
turns toward her with bright face of confidence, and stops short
at sight of her, so troubled, so visibly torn by inward conflict,
her bosom labouring, her face trembling. There is no concealing
it, she would have wished him to answer loudly and boldly, to crush
those mocking enemies, Ortrud and Telramund, with the mention of
a name, a rank, which should have bowed them down before him in
the dust, abject. There is silence, while all, entertaining their
respective reflections, watch Elsa, and she struggles with herself,
staring blindly ahead. His secret no doubt,--thus run her pitiable
feminine thoughts,--if revealed publicly like this would involve
him in some danger. Ungrateful indeed were it in her, saved by him,
to betray him by demanding the information here. If she knew his
secret, however, she would surely keep it faithfully.... But--but--she
is helpless against it, doubt is upheaving the foundations of her
heart!
It is the good King who speaks the right, the pertinent word. "My
hero, stand up undaunted against yonder faithless man! You are
too indubitably great to consider accusations of his!" The nobles
readily accept the King's leadership, in this as in other matters.
"We stand by you," they say to the Knight. "Your hand! We believe
that noble is your name, even though it be not spoken."--"Never
shall you repent your faith!" the Knight assures them. While the
nobles crowd about him; offering their hands in sign of allegiance,
and Elsa stands apart blindly dealing with her doubt, Telramund
steals unperceived to her side and whispers to her: "Rely on me!
Let me tell you a method for obtaining certainty!" She recoils,
frightened, yet without denouncing him aloud. "Let me take from
him the smallest shred of flesh," he continues hurriedly, "the
merest tip of a finger, and I swear to you that what he conceals
you shall see freely for yourself...." In his eagerness, forgetful
really at last of honour, he adds the inducement, "And, true to
you forever, he will never leave you!"--"Nevermore!" cries Elsa,
not so vigourously, however, but that he finds it possible still
to add: "I will be near to you at night. Do but call me, without
injury to him it shall be quickly done!" The Knight has caught sight
of him and is instantly at Elsa's side, crying astonished, "Elsa,
with whom are you conversing?" The poor girl sinks overwhelmed with
trouble and confusion at his feet. "Away from her, you accursed!"
speaks the Knight in a terrible authoritative voice to the evil
pair; "Let my eye never again behold you in her neighbourhood!"
Gently he lifts the bride; he scans her face wistfully: "In your
hand, in your loyalty, lies the pledge of all happiness! Have you
fallen into the unrest of doubt? Do you wish to question me?" He
asks it so frankly and fearlessly, albeit sorrowfully; he stands
there so convincingly brave-looking and clear-eyed, full of the
calm effect of power, that Elsa gazing at him comes back to her
true self and answers with all her heart: "Oh, my champion, who
came to save me! My hero, in whom I must live and die! High above
all power of doubt my love shall stand!" He clasps her in his arms,
solemnly saluting her....
And once more the wedding-party sets itself upon the way to church.
Organ-music pours forth from the Minster-portals. With her foot on
the threshold the bride turns an eager, instinctive, searching,
almost frightened look upon the groom. In answer, he folds reassuring
arms around her. But, even so held, woman-like she looks back, in
spite of herself, over her shoulder, toward Ortrud, who receives
the timid glance with a detestable gesture of triumph. Properly
frightened, the bride turns quickly away, and the procession enters
the church.