“Dost thou know the charge that is brought against thee?” he demanded sternly.
Again Elsa assented, dropping her head sadly, but without speaking.
“What answer canst thou make? Dost admit thy guilt?” the king inquired.
She gazed around her with a bewildered air, as though trying to remember something long forgotten.
“Alas,” she sighed, “my poor brother!”
The people murmured: “’Tis marvellous! What can it mean?”
“Speak, Elsa!” urged the king, wondering at her strange behavior. “Dost thou not trust in thy king?”
Then Elsa spoke in a low gentle voice, as to herself when alone in the prison: “In my misery I knelt one night and besought God’s aid. My woeful cry seemed all at once caught up to the highest heaven. I listened wondering, then peace fell on my spirit, and a gentle sleep came over me.”
The King thought Elsa’s mind was certainly affected, whether from brooding on her crime, or on her innocence and the injustice of her imprisonment, he could not tell. “Come, Elsa,” he said, in a rousing tone, “defend thyself now before the judge.”
But Elsa appeared neither to hear nor understand, and continued her dream with a look of rapture: “Borne through the air he came—a knight of such perfection and nobility never yet I saw! Clothed in glittering armor—in his hand a sword—slung round his neck a golden horn! No word he spake, but gazed on me tenderly. Peace and comfort came to me with his look. That knight will be my champion and deliverer!”