“Wherefore, O my heart’s fair mistress.
Are thy glances so directed
Tow’rd the hall’s most distant corner?”
Thus the knight exclaim’d with wonder.
“Seest thou not, then, Don Fernando,
Yonder man in dark cloak hidden?”
And the knight with smiling answered:
“Ah, ’tis nothing but a shadow.”
But the shadow soon approach’d them,
And a man was in the mantle,
And Ramiro recognising,
Clara greeted him with blushes.
And the dancing has begun now,
And the dancers whirl round gaily
In the waltz’s giddy mazes,
And the ground beneath them trembles.
“Gladly will I, Don Ramiro,
In the dance become thy partner,
But thou didst not well to come here
In a black and nightlike mantle.”
But with eyes all fix’d and piercing
Looks Ramiro on the fair one;
Clasping her, with gloom thus speaks he:
“At thy bidding have I come here!”
And the pair of dancers vanish
In the dance’s giddy mazes,
And the kettle-drums sound loudly,
And the trumpets, too, are crashing.
“Snow-white are thy cheeks, Ramiro,”
Clara speaks with secret trembling.
“At thy bidding have I come here!”
In a hollow voice replies he.
In the hall the wax-lights glimmer
Through the ebbing, flowing masses,
And the kettle-drums sound loudly,
And the trumpets, too, are crashing.
“Ice-cold are thy hands, Ramiro,”
Clara speaks with shudd’ring terror.
“At thy bidding have I come here!”
And within the whirl they vanish.