IV
And when the evening breezes blow,
And father seeks his own fireside,
He smiles, forgetful of his woe,
But ah! his tears that smile shall hide.
V
Father knows that in his home
Deathlike stillness dwells for aye;
The voice of mirth no more shall come,
And mother sighs the livelong day.
"O Undine, for God's sake, where are my parents?" cried Bertalda, weeping. "Surely you know, you have discovered it, most wonderful woman; else how could you have stirred my inmost heart as you have done? They are perhaps even now in the room—can it be?"—and her eyes glanced over the gay assembly, and fixed upon a reigning Princess who sat next to the Duke. But Undine bent forward to the door, her eyes overflowing with the happiest tears. "Where are they, the poor anxious parents?" said she; and the old Fisherman and his wife came out from the crowd of bystanders. They turned an inquiring eye upon Undine, and then upon the handsome lady whom they were to call daughter. "There she is," faltered the delighted Undine, and the aged couple caught their long-lost child in their arms, thanking God, and weeping aloud.
Affrighted and enraged, Bertalda shrank from their embrace. It was more than her proud spirit could bear, to be thus degraded; at a moment, too, when she was fully expecting an increase of splendour, and fancy was showering pearls and diadems upon her head. She suspected that her rival had contrived this, on purpose to mortify her before Huldbrand and all the world. She reviled both Undine and the old people; the hateful words, "Treacherous creature! and bribed wretches!" burst from her lips. The old woman said in a half whisper, "Dear me, she has grown up a wicked woman; and yet my heart tells me she is my own child." The Fisherman has clasped his hands, and was praying silently that this girl might not prove to be theirs indeed. Undine, pale as death, looked from Bertalda to the parents, from the parents to Bertalda, and could not recover the rude shock she had sustained, at being plunged from all her happy dreams into a state of fear and misery, such as she had never known before.
"Have you a soul? Have you indeed a soul, Bertalda?" she exclaimed once or twice, trying to recall her angry friend to reason, from what she took for a fit of madness, or a kind of nightmare. But Bertalda only stormed the louder; the repulsed parents wailed piteously, and the company began to dispute angrily and to side with one or the other; when Undine stepped forward, and asked with so much earnest gentleness to be listened to in her husband's house that all was hushed in a moment. She took the place which Bertalda had left, at the head of the table, and as she stood there in modest dignity, the eyes of all turned toward her, and she said: "You all that cast such angry looks at each other, and so cruelly spoil the joy of my poor feast, alas! I little knew what your foolish angry passions were, and I think I never shall understand you. What I had hoped would do so much good has led to all this; but that is not my fault, it is your own doing, believe me; I have little more to say, but one thing you must hear: I have told no falsehood. Proofs I have none to give, beyond my word, but I will swear to the truth of it. I heard it from him who decoyed Bertalda from her parents into the water, and then laid her down in the meadow where the Duke was to pass."
"She is a sorceress," cried Bertalda, "a witch who has dealings with evil spirits! she has acknowledged it."
"I have not," said Undine, with a heaven of innocence and guilelessness in her eyes. "Nor am I a witch—only look at me!"
"Then she lies," cried Bertalda, "and she dares not assert that I was born of these mean people. My noble parents, I beseech you take me out of this room, and this town, where they are leagued together to insult me."