urn, this bias given to passion, will purify both her and the
guileless, pure fool she seeks to subdue.

Nothing can describe the subtlety of their long interview, the
surprising turns of sentiment and contrasts of feeling. Throughout this
scene Parsifal's instinct is absolutely true and sure. Everything Kundry
says about his mother, Herzeleide, he feels; but every attempt to make
him accept her instead he resists. Her desperate declamation is
splendid. Her heartrending sense of misery and piteous prayer for
salvation, her belief that before her is her savior could she but win
him to her will, the choking fury of baffled passion, the steady and
subtle encroachments made while Parsifal is lost in a meditative dream,
the burning kiss which recalls him to himself, the fine touch by which
this kiss, while arousing in him the stormiest feelings, causes a sharp
pain, as of Amfortas's own wound, piercing his very heart--all this is
realistic, if you will, but it is realism raised to the sublime.

Suddenly Parsifal springs up, hurls the enchantress from him, will forth
from Klingsor's realm. She is baffled--she knows it; for a moment she
bars his passage, then succumbs; the might of sensuality which lost
Amfortas the sacred spear has been met and defeated by the guileless
fool. He has passed from innocence to knowledge in his interview with
the flower-girt girls, in his long converse with Kundry, in her
insidious embrace, in her kiss; but all these are now thrust aside; he
steps forth still unconquered, still "guileless," but no more "a fool."
The knowledge of good and evil has come, but the struggle is already
passed.

"Yes, sinner, I do offer thee Redemption," he can say to Kundry; "not in
thy way, but in thy Lord Christ's way of sacrifice!"

But the desperate creature, wild with passion, will listen to no reason;
she shouts aloud to her master, and Klingsor suddenly appears, poising
the sacred spear. In another moment he hurls it right across the
enchanted garden at Parsifal. It can not wound the guileless and pure
one as it wounded the sinful Amfortas. A miracle! It hangs arrested in
air above Parsifal's head; he seizes it--it is the sacred talisman, one
touch of which will heal even as it inflicted the king's deadly wound.

With a mighty cry and the shock as of an earthquake, the castle of
Klingsor falls shattered to pieces, the garden withers up to a desert,
the girls, who have rushed in, lie about among the fading fl