would have been too painful, for similar things have been known to him by sad experience, and he shrinks from their shadow even in remembrance.  You know probably a like feeling, dear reader, for such is the lot of mortal man.  Happy are you if you have received rather than inflicted the pain, for in such things it is more blessed to receive than to give.  If it be so, such recollections will bring only a feeling of sorrow to your mind, and perhaps a tear will trickle down your cheek over the faded flowers that once caused you such delight.  But let that be enough.  We will not pierce our hearts with a thousand separate things, but only briefly state, as I have just said, how matters were.

Poor Undine was very sad, and the other two were not to be called happy.  Bertalda, especially, thought that she could trace the effect of jealousy on the part of the injured wife whenever her wishes were in any way thwarted.  She had therefore habituated herself to an imperious demeanor, to which Undine yielded in sorrowful submission, and the now blinded Huldbrand usually encouraged this arrogant behavior in the strongest manner.  But the circumstance that most of all disturbed the inmates of the castle was a variety of wonderful apparitions which met Huldbrand and Bertalda in the vaulted galleries of the castle, and which had never been heard of before as haunting the locality.  The tall white man, in whom Huldbrand recognized only too plainly Uncle Kuehleborn, and Bertalda the spectral master of the fountain, often passed before them with a threatening aspect, and especially before Bertalda, on so many occasions that she had several times been made ill with terror and had frequently thought of quitting the castle.  But still she stayed there, partly because Huldbrand was so dear to her, and she relied on her innocence, no words of love having ever passed between them, and partly also because she knew not whither to direct her steps.  The old fisherman, on receiving the message from the lord of Ringstetten that Bertalda was his guest, had written a few lines in an almost illegible hand but as well as his advanced age and long disuse would admit of.  “I have now become,” he wrote, “a poor old widower, for my dear and faithful wife is dead.  However lonely I now sit in my cottage, Bertalda is better with you than with me.  Only let her do nothing to harm my beloved Undine!  She will have my curse if it be so.”  The last words of this letter Bertalda flung to the winds, but she carefully retained the part respecting her absence from her father—­just as we are all wont to do in similar circumstances.

One day, when Huldbrand had just ridden out, Undine summoned the domestics of the family and ordered them to bring a large stone and carefully to cover with it the magnificent fountain which stood in the middle of the castle-yard.  The servants objected that it would oblige them to bring water from the valley below.  Undine smiled sadly.  “I am sorry, my people,” she replied, “to increase your work.  I would rather myself fetch up the pitchers, but this fountain must be closed.  Believe me that it cannot be otherwise, and that it is only by so doing that we can avoid a greater evil.”