nce upon him, death upon him, nay,--at the
climax of her rage and insupportable pain,--death upon them both!
With impetuous tenderness Brangaene showers words of endearment on
the exhausted friend, hushes her with caresses, heaps, as it were,
smothering flowers upon her angry coals. She forces her gently
to a seat, comforting her with word and touch. Then she holds up
all in a different light, endeavours to make her see the thing
reasonably, as it must appear to others. "What delusion is this?
What idle raving? How can you stultify yourself till you neither
can see nor hear? Whatever debt of gratitude Sir Tristan owes you,
tell me, could he better repay it than with the most magnificent of
crowns? Thus does he at the same time faithfully serve his noble
uncle and bestow upon you the world's most enviable prize. He has
renounced, generous and true-hearted, his own inheritance, and
placed it at your feet, that he may call you Queen. And if through
him you are to wed Mark, how should you find fault with the choice?
Can you fail to prize and honour the man? Of great lineage and
gentle nature, where is his equal in power and splendour? Who would
not wish to share his good fortune, as consort to tarry beside
him, whom the greatest of heroes so devotedly serves?" Isolde,
but half heeding, has fallen again to her miserable brooding.
Brangaene's last words find their way to her brain and produce an
image there which she stares at with gloomy and tragic eyes. As
before, unconscious in her perturbation that she is doing it, she
voices her inmost thoughts audibly, like a somnambulist: "Unloved by
him, to behold the unrivalled man ever near, how could I endure the
torment?" Brangaene catches the words, and innocently supposes them
applied to King Mark. She presses fondly against this unaccountably
humble-minded mistress: "What are you dreaming, perverse one? Unloved?
Where does the man live who would not love you? Who could see Isolde
and not blissfully dissolve in love for her? But, if so were that
he who has been chosen for you should be of a nature to that degree
cold, if so were that some evil magic drew him away from you, I
should know how very soon to bind the unkind one to you, the power
of love should work its spell upon him...." She draws so near to
Isolde that she can speak without fear of being overheard. "Do you
forget your mother's magic? Do you imagine that she, who ponders
all things so sagely, has sent me void of cou