ysterious promise of help: "Wise through
compassion.... The immaculate Fool.... Await him.... My appointed
one...." And they, impressed, are saying it after him, when, at the
words "_Der reine Thor_," the pure--the clean-lived--the immaculate
Fool, a commotion develops in the direction of the lake-side, cries
of "Woe! A pity! A shame! Who did it?" A great wild swan flies
in sight, sinks to earth hurt to death by an arrow, and the king's
esquires bring in, chiding and accusing him, a tall, innocent-eyed,
fresh-cheeked boy, armed with bow and arrows,--Parsifal. Rustic
enough is his outfit, but his bearing unmistakably that of the
high-born, as Gurnemanz does not fail to remark. A sturdy, brave,
gay-hearted strain has ushered him in, and for just a moment he
stands quite like a brother of Siegfried's, fearless, unconscious
of himself, as ignorant of the world as he is unspotted by it, but
engagingly wide-awake, serene in watching its mysterious actions.
"Are you the one who killed the swan?" Gurnemanz asks him sternly.
And he answers, unabashed, quite as Siegfried might have done:
"Certainly! Whatever flies I shoot on the wing!" But at once after
this the difference between the two is manifest. To both whole
regions of emotion are unknown, but certain emotions which are
outside the nature of one, are potentially the very strongest in
the other. Siegfried is not pitiful. The strong, radiant being
is incomplete on that side, so that the Christian heart winces
a little, here and there, at the bright resoluteness with which
he pursues his course when it involves, for instance, death to
the little foster-father, unrighteous imp though he be, or horror
to Bruennhilde, captured by violence and offered to his friend.
Whereas Parsifal, when Gurnemanz now makes plain to him the cruelty
of his thoughtless action, when he points out the glazing eye,
the blood dabbling the snowy plumage of the noble swan, faithful
familiar of the lake, killed as he circled in quest of his mate,
is seized with a passion of realizing pity, impulsively breaks
and flings from him his bow, and hides his eyes from the work of
his hands. "How--how could you commit such a wrong?" Gurnemanz
pursues unrelenting, even after these expressions of contrition.
"I did not know," Parsifal answers. Then to the amazement of all
are revealed the most extravagant ignorance and simplicity ever met.
"Where do you come from?" "I do not know." "Who is your father?"
"I do not