. She
changes with the fire she drinks from his mouth: her icy blood is
aglow with passion; but the heart in her bosom will not beat.

"But the mother was there listening. Soft vows, cries of wailing and
of pleasure.

"'Hush, the cock is crowing: to-morrow night!' Then with kiss on kiss
they say farewell.

"In wrath the mother enters; sees what? Her daughter. He would have
hidden her, covered her up. But freeing herself from him, she grew
from the couch up to the roof.

"'O mother, mother, you grudge me a pleasant night; you would drive me
from this cosy spot! Was it not enough to have wrapped me in my
winding-sheet and borne me to the grave? A greater power has lifted up
the stone. In vain did your priests drone over the trench they dug for
me. Of what use are salt and water, where burns the fire of youth? The
earth cannot freeze up love. You made a promise; I have just reclaimed
my own.

"'Alas, dear friend, thou must die: thou wouldst but pine and dry up
here. I have thy hair; it will be white to-morrow.... Mother, one last
prayer! Open my dark dungeon, set up a stake, and let the loving one
find rest in the flames. Let the sparks fly upward and the ashes
redden. We will go to our olden gods.'"[7]

[7] Here I have suppressed a shocking phrase. Goethe, so
noble in the form, is not so in the spirit of his poem. He
spoils the marvel of the legend by sullying the Greek
conception with a horrible Slavish idea. As they are weeping,
he turns the maiden into a vampire. She comes because she
thirsts for blood, that she may suck the blood from his
heart. And he makes her coldly say this impious and unclean
thing: "When I have done with him, I will pass on to others:
the young blood shall fall a prey to my fury."

In the Middle Ages this story put on a grotesque garb, by way
of frightening us with the _Devil Venus_. On the finger of
her statue a young man imprudently places a ring, which she
clasps tight, guarding it like a bride, and going in the
night to his couch, to assert her rights. He cannot rid
himself of his infernal spouse without an exorcism. The same
tale, foolishly applied to the Virgin, is found in the
_Fabliaux_. If my memory does not mislead me, Luther also, in
his "Table Talk," takes up the old story in a very coarse
way, till you quite smell the body. The Spanish Del Rio
shifts the scene of it to Brabant. The bride dies