ation and pardon both to Kundry and the
wretched king, Amfortas.

The full music flows on while Gurnemanz relates how the knights have all
grown weak and aged, deprived of the vision and sustenance of the Holy
Grail, while the long-entranced Titurel is at last dead.

At this news Parsifal, overcome with grief, swoons away, and Gurnemanz
and Kundry loosen his armor, and sprinkle him with water from the holy
spring. Underneath his black suit of mail he appears clad in a long
white tunic.

The grouping here is admirable. Gurnemanz is in the Templar's red and
blue robe. Parsifal in white, his auburn hair parted in front and
flowing down in ringlets on either side, recalls Leonardo's favorite
conception of the Savior's head, and, indeed, from this point Parsifal
becomes a kind of symbolic reflection of the Lord Himself. Kundry,
subdued and awed, lies weeping at his feet; he lifts his hands to bless
her with infinite pity. She washes his feet, and dries them with the
hairs of her head. It is a bold stroke, but the voices of nature, the
murmur of the summer woods, come with an infinite healing tenderness and
pity, and the act is seen to be symbolical of the pure devotion of a
sinful creature redeemed from sin. Peace has at last entered into that
wild and troubled heart, and restless Kundry, delivered from Klingsor's
spell, receives the sprinkling of baptismal water at the hands of
Parsifal.

* * * * *

The great spaces of silence in the dialog, broken now by a few sentences
from Parsifal, now from Gurnemanz, are more eloquent than many words.
The tidal music flows on in a ceaseless stream of changing harmonies,
returning constantly to the sweet and slumbrous sound of a summer-land,
full of teeming life and glowing happiness.

Then Gurnemanz takes up his parable. It is the Blessed Good Friday on
which our dear Lord suffered. The Love and Faith phrases are chimed
forth, the pain-notes of the Cross agony are sounded and pass, the Grail
motive seems to swoon away in descending harmonies, sinking into the
woodland voices of universal Nature--that trespass-pardoned Nature that
now seems waking to the day of her glory and innocence.

In that solemn moment Parsifal bends over the subdued and humbled
Kundry, and kisses her softly on the brow--_her_ wild kiss in the garden
had kindled in him fierce fire, mingled with the bitter wound-pain;
_his_ is the seal of her eternal pardon and peace.

In th