CHAPTER 1

On a beautiful evening, many hundred years ago, a worthy old fisherman
sat mending his nets. The spot where he dwelt was exceedingly
picturesque. The green turf on which he had built his cottage ran far
out into a great lake; and this slip of verdure appeared to stretch into
it as much through love of its clear waters as the lake, moved by a like
impulse, strove to fold the meadow, with its waving grass and flowers,
and the cooling shade of the trees, in its embrace of love. They seemed
to be drawn toward each other, and the one to be visiting the other as a
guest.

With respect to human beings, indeed, in this pleasant spot, excepting
the fisherman and his family, there were few, or rather none, to be
met with. For as in the background of the scene, toward the west and
north-west, lay a forest of extraordinary wildness, which, owing to its
sunless gloom and almost impassable recesses, as well as to fear of the
strange creatures and visionary illusions to be encountered in it, most
people avoided entering, unless in cases of extreme necessity. The pious
old fisherman, however, many times passed through it without harm, when
he carried the fine fish which he caught by his beautiful strip of land
to a great city lying only a short distance beyond the forest.

Now the reason he was able to go through this wood with so much ease may
have been chiefly this, because he entertained scarcely any thoughts but
such as were of a religious nature; and besides, every time he crossed
the evil-reported shades, he used to sing some holy song with a clear
voice and from a sincere heart.

Well, while he sat by his nets this evening, neither fearing nor
devising evil, a sudden terror seized him, as he heard a rushing in the
darkness of the wood, that resembled the tramping of a mounted steed,
and the noise continued every instant drawing nearer and nearer to his
little territory.

What he had fancied, when abroad in many a stormy night, respecting
the mysteries of the forest, now flashed through his mind in a moment,
especially the figure of a man of gigantic stature and snow-white
appearance, who kept nodding his head in a portentous manner. And when
he raised his eyes towards the wood, the form came before him in perfect
distinctness, as he saw the nodding man burst forth from the mazy
web-work of leaves and branches. But he immediately felt emboldened,
when he reflected that nothing to give him alarm had ever befallen him
even in the forest; and moreover, that on this open neck of land the
evil spirit, it was likely, would be still less daring in the exercise
of his power. At the same time he prayed aloud with the most earnest
sincerity of devotion, repeating a passage of the Bible. This inspired
him with fresh courage, and soon perceiving the illusion, and the
strange mistake into which his imagination had betrayed him, he could
with difficulty refrain from laughing. The white nodding figure he had
seen became transformed, in the twinkling of an eye, to what in reality
it was, a small brook, long and familiarly known to him, which ran
foaming from the forest, and discharged itself into the lake.

But what had caused the startling sound was a knight arrayed in
sumptuous apparel, who from under the shadows of the trees came riding
toward the cottage. His doublet was violet embroidered with gold, and
his scarlet cloak hung gracefully over it; on his cap of burnished gold
waved red and violet-coloured plumes; and in his golden shoulder-belt
flashed a sword, richly ornamented, and extremely beautiful. The white
barb that bore the knight was more slenderly built than war-horses
usually are, and he touched the turf with a step so light and elastic
that the green and flowery carpet seemed hardly to receive the slightest
injury from his tread. The old fisherman, notwithstanding, did not feel
perfectly secure in his mind, although he was forced to believe that no
evil could be feared from an appearance so pleasing, and therefore, as
good manners dictated, he took off his hat on the knight’s coming near,
and quietly remained by the side of his nets.

When the stranger stopped, and asked whether he, with his horse, could
have shelter and entertainment there for the night, the fisherman
returned answer: “As to your horse, fair sir, I have no better stable
for him than this shady meadow, and no better provender than the grass
that is growing here. But with respect to yourself, you shall be welcome
to our humble cottage, and to the best supper and lodging we are able to
give you.”

The knight was well contented with this reception; and alighting from
his horse, which his host assisted him to relieve from saddle and
bridle, he let him hasten away to the fresh pasture, and thus spoke:
“Even had I found you less hospitable and kindly disposed, my worthy old
friend, you would still, I suspect, hardly have got rid of me to-day;
for here, I perceive, a broad lake lies before us, and as to riding back
into that wood of wonders, with the shades of evening deepening around
me, may Heaven in its grace preserve me from the thought.”

“Pray, not a word of the wood, or of returning into it!” said the
fisherman, and took his guest into the cottage.

There beside the hearth, from which a frugal fire was diffusing its
light through the clean twilight room, sat the fisherman’s aged wife in
a great chair. At the entrance of their noble guest, she rose and gave
him a courteous welcome, but sat down again in her seat of honour,
not making the slightest offer of it to the stranger. Upon this the
fisherman said with a smile:

“You must not be offended with her, young gentleman, because she has not
given up to you the best chair in the house; it is a custom among poor
people to look upon this as the privilege of the aged.”

“Why, husband!” cried the old lady, with a quiet smile, “where can your
wits be wandering? Our guest, to say the least of him, must belong to
a Christian country; and how is it possible, then, that so well-bred
a young man as he appears to be could dream of driving old people from
their chairs? Take a seat, my young master,” continued she, turning to
the knight; “there is still quite a snug little chair on the other side
of the room there, only be careful not to shove it about too roughly,
for one of its legs, I fear, is none of the firmest.”

The knight brought up the seat as carefully as she could desire, sat
down upon it good-humouredly, and it seemed to him almost as if he must
be somehow related to this little household, and have just returned home
from abroad.

These three worthy people now began to converse in the most friendly and
familiar manner. In relation to the forest, indeed, concerning which the
knight occasionally made some inquiries, the old man chose to know and
say but little; he was of opinion that slightly touching upon it at
this hour of twilight was most suitable and safe; but of the cares and
comforts of their home, and their business abroad, the aged couple
spoke more freely, and listened also with eager curiosity as the knight
recounted to them his travels, and how he had a castle near one of
the sources of the Danube, and that his name was Sir Huldbrand of
Ringstetten.

Already had the stranger, while they were in the midst of their talk,
heard at times a splash against the little low window, as if some one
were dashing water against it. The old man, every time he heard the
noise, knit his brows with vexation; but at last, when the whole sweep
of a shower came pouring like a torrent against the panes, and bubbling
through the decayed frame into the room, he started up indignant, rushed
to the window, and cried with a threatening voice–

“Undine! will you never leave off these fooleries?–not even to-day,
when we have a stranger knight with us in the cottage?”

All without now became still, only a low laugh was just audible, and
the fisherman said, as he came back to his seat, “You will have the
goodness, my honoured guest, to pardon this freak, and it may be a
multitude more; but she has no thought of evil or of any harm. This
mischievous Undine, to confess the truth, is our adopted daughter, and
she stoutly refuses to give over this frolicsome childishness of hers,
although she has already entered her eighteenth year. But in spite of
this, as I said before, she is at heart one of the very best children in
the world.”

“YOU may say so,” broke in the old lady, shaking her head; “you can give
a better account of her than I can. When you return home from fishing,
or from selling your fish in the city, you may think her frolics very
delightful, but to have her dancing about you the whole day long, and
never from morning to night to hear her speak one word of sense; and
then as she grows older, instead of having any help from her in the
family, to find her a continual cause of anxiety, lest her wild humours
should completely ruin us, that is quite another thing, and enough at
last to weary out the patience even of a saint.”

“Well, well,” replied the master of the house with a smile, “you have
your trials with Undine, and I have mine with the lake. The lake often
beats down my dams, and breaks the meshes of my nets, but for all that I
have a strong affection for it, and so have you, in spite of your mighty
crosses and vexations, for our graceful little child. Is it not true?”

“One cannot be very angry with her,” answered the old lady, as she gave
her husband an approving smile.

That instant the door flew open, and a fair girl, of wondrous beauty,
sprang laughing in, and said, “You have only been making a mock of me,
father; for where now is the guest you mentioned?”

The same moment, however, she perceived the knight also, and continued
standing before the young man in fixed astonishment. Huldbrand was
charmed with her graceful figure, and viewed her lovely features with
the more intense interest, as he imagined it was only her surprise that
allowed him the opportunity, and that she would soon turn away from his
gaze with increased bashfulness. But the event was the very reverse of
what he expected; for, after looking at him for a long while, she became
more confident, moved nearer, knelt down before him, and while she
played with a gold medal which he wore attached to a rich chain on his
breast, exclaimed,

“Why, you beautiful, you kind guest! how have you reached our poor
cottage at last? Have you been obliged for years and years to wander
about the world before you could catch one glimpse of our nook? Do you
come out of that wild forest, my beautiful knight?”

The old woman was so prompt in her reproof as to allow him no time to
answer. She commanded the maiden to rise, show better manners, and go to
her work. But Undine, without making any reply, drew a little footstool
near Huldbrand’s chair, sat down upon it with her netting, and said in a
gentle tone–

“I will work here.”

The old man did as parents are apt to do with children to whom they have
been over-indulgent. He affected to observe nothing of Undine’s strange
behaviour, and was beginning to talk about something else. But this the
maiden did not permit him to do. She broke in upon him, “I have asked
our kind guest from whence he has come among us, and he has not yet
answered me.”

“I come out of the forest, you lovely little vision,” Huldbrand
returned; and she spoke again:

“You must also tell me how you came to enter that forest, so feared and
shunned, and the marvellous adventures you met with in it; for there is
no escaping without something of this kind.”

Huldbrand felt a slight shudder on remembering what he had witnessed,
and looked involuntarily toward the window, for it seemed to him that
one of the strange shapes which had come upon him in the forest must be
there grinning in through the glass; but he discerned nothing except the
deep darkness of night, which had now enveloped the whole prospect. Upon
this he became more collected, and was just on the point of beginning
his account, when the old man thus interrupted him:

“Not so, sir knight; this is by no means a fit hour for such relations.”

But Undine, in a state of high excitement, sprang up from her little
stool and cried, placing herself directly before the fisherman: “He
shall NOT tell his story, father? he shall not? But it is my will:–he
shall!–stop him who may!”

Thus speaking, she stamped her little foot vehemently on the floor,
but all with an air of such comic and good-humoured simplicity, that
Huldbrand now found it quite as hard to withdraw his gaze from her wild
emotion as he had before from her gentleness and beauty. The old man,
on the contrary, burst out in unrestrained displeasure. He severely
reproved Undine for her disobedience and her unbecoming carriage towards
the stranger, and his good old wife joined him in harping on the same
string.

By these rebukes Undine was only excited the more. “If you want to
quarrel with me,” she cried, “and will not let me hear what I so much
desire, then sleep alone in your smoky old hut!” And swift as an arrow
she shot from the door, and vanished amid the darkness of the night.

Huldbrand and the fisherman sprang from their seats, and were rushing to
stop the angry girl; but before they could reach the cottage-door, she
had disappeared in the stormy darkness without, and no sound, not so
much even as that of her light footstep, betrayed the course she had
taken. Huldbrand threw a glance of inquiry towards his host; it almost
seemed to him as if the whole of the sweet apparition, which had so
suddenly plunged again amid the night, were no other than a continuation
of the wonderful forms that had just played their mad pranks with him in
the forest. But the old man muttered between his teeth,

“This is not the first time she has treated us in this manner. Now must
our hearts be filled with anxiety, and our eyes find no sleep for the
whole night; for who can assure us, in spite of her past escapes, that
she will not some time or other come to harm, if she thus continue out
in the dark and alone until daylight?”

“Then pray, for God’s sake, father, let us follow her,” cried Huldbrand
anxiously.

“Wherefore should we?” replied the old man. “It would be a sin were I
to suffer you, all alone, to search after the foolish girl amid the
lonesomeness of night; and my old limbs would fail to carry me to this
wild rover, even if I knew to what place she has betaken herself.”

“Still we ought at least to call after her, and beg her to return,” said
Huldbrand; and he began to call in tones of earnest entreaty, “Undine!
Undine! come back, come back!”

The old man shook his head, and said, “All your shouting, however loud
and long, will be of no avail; you know not as yet, sir knight, how
self-willed the little thing is.” But still, even hoping against hope,
he could not himself cease calling out every minute, amid the gloom of
night, “Undine! ah, dear Undine! I beseech you, pray come back–only
this once.”

It turned out, however, exactly as the fisherman had said. No Undine
could they hear or see; and as the old man would on no account consent
that Huldbrand should go in quest of the fugitive, they were both
obliged at last to return into the cottage. There they found the fire
on the hearth almost gone out, and the mistress of the house, who took
Undine’s flight and danger far less to heart than her husband, had
already gone to rest. The old man blew up the coals, put on dry wood,
and by the firelight hunted for a flask of wine, which he brought and
set between himself and his guest.

“You, sir knight, as well as I,” said he, “are anxious on the silly
girl’s account; and it would be better, I think, to spend part of the
night in chatting and drinking, than keep turning and turning on our
rush-mats, and trying in vain to sleep. What is your opinion?”

Huldbrand was well pleased with the plan; the fisherman pressed him to
take the empty seat of honour, its late occupant having now left it for
her couch; and they relished their beverage and enjoyed their chat as
two such good men and true ever ought to do. To be sure, whenever the
slightest thing moved before the windows, or at times when even nothing
was moving, one of them would look up and exclaim, “Here she comes!”
Then would they continue silent a few moments, and afterward, when
nothing appeared, would shake their heads, breathe out a sigh, and go on
with their talk.

But, as neither could think of anything but Undine, the best plan they
could devise was, that the old fisherman should relate, and the knight
should hear, in what manner Undine had come to the cottage. So the
fisherman began as follows:

“It is now about fifteen years since I one day crossed the wild forest
with fish for the city market. My wife had remained at home as she was
wont to do; and at this time for a reason of more than common interest,
for although we were beginning to feel the advances of age, God had
bestowed upon us an infant of wonderful beauty. It was a little girl;
and we already began to ask ourselves the question, whether we ought
not, for the advantage of the new-comer, to quit our solitude, and, the
better to bring up this precious gift of Heaven, to remove to some more
inhabited place. Poor people, to be sure, cannot in these cases do all
you may think they ought, sir knight; but we must all do what we can.

“Well, I went on my way, and this affair would keep running in my head.
This slip of land was most dear to me, and I trembled when, amidst
the bustle and broils of the city, I thought to myself, ‘In a scene of
tumult like this, or at least in one not much more quiet, I must soon
take up my abode.’ But I did not for this murmur against our good God;
on the contrary, I praised Him in silence for the new-born babe. I
should also speak an untruth, were I to say that anything befell me,
either on my passage through the forest to the city, or on my returning
homeward, that gave me more alarm than usual, as at that time I had
never seen any appearance there which could terrify or annoy me. The
Lord was ever with me in those awful shades.”

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.

“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.