“Go and see if you can find her,” said the Count, “and bring me word.”
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During the wedding feast Hermann von Filsen appeared joyous and attentive to his bride, the new Countess, but the effort to appear so caused his perspiration to break out profusely, especially when all of a sudden a small woman’s foot, white and delicate, appeared to his eyes, and to his only, on the ceiling of the dinner-hall.
He felt a chill in all his limbs. He rose suddenly and fled to another room, followed by his wife, his mother, and all the guests, who thought he had been seized with sudden illness.
In this room he saw, and he alone again saw, a white hand raise a curtain and with the forefinger beckon him to follow.
Long time ago Hermann had heard, without paying any attention at that time to the statement, that such a small white foot and a small white hand indicated the presence of an Undine and the coming of an inevitable calamity.
Now he believed it.