eath combat, entrust your
cause to the judgment of God?" Telramund gives assent. "And you
I ask, Elsa von Brabant, will you entrust your cause to a champion
who shall fight for you under the judgment of God?" She assents
likewise. "Whom do you choose for your champion?" the King asks
of her. "Now--" eagerly interjects Telramund, "now you shall hear
the name of her lover!"--"Listen!" say the rest, with sharpened
curiosity. The girl has fixed her eyes again upon the vacancy which
to her apparently is full of things to see. "I will await the Knight.
My champion he shall be! Hear what to the messenger of God I offer
in guerdon. In my father's dominions let him wear the crown. Happy
shall I hold myself if he take all that is mine, and if he please
to call me consort I give him all I am!"

Four trumpeters turn to the four points of the compass and blow
a summons. The herald calls loud: "He who will do battle here,
under judgment of God, as champion for Elsa van Brabant, let him
appear,--let him appear!" The vibrations die of horns and herald's
voice. There is silence and tension. No one appears, nothing happens.
Elsa, at first calm in her security of faith, gives evidence of
anxiety. Telramund calls attention to her: "Now witness, witness if
I have accused her falsely. Right, by that token, is on my side!"
Elsa with childish simplicity appeals to the King: "Oh, my kind
sovereign, let me beseech you, one more call for my champion! He
is far away, no doubt, and has not heard!" At the King's command,
the trumpets sound again, the herald repeats his summons. There
is no answer. The surrounding stillness is unbroken by movement
or sound. "By gloomy silence," the men murmur, "God signifies his
sentence!" Elsa falls upon her knees: "Thou didst bear to him my
lament, he came to me by Thy command. Oh, Lord, now tell my Knight
that he must help me in my need! Vouchsafe to let me see him as I
saw him before, even as I saw him before let him come to me now!"
The women kneel beside her, adding their prayers to hers.

Elsa's last word has but died when a cry breaks from certain of
the company standing upon an eminence next the river. "Look! Look!
What a singular sight!"--"What is it?" ask the others. All eyes turn
toward the river. "A swan! A swan, drawing a skiff!... A knight
standing erect in it.... How his armour gleams! The eye cannot
endure such brightness.... See, he is coming toward us. The swan
draws the skiff by a golden chain!