aeuser_. Lohengrin
is son of Parsifal, head of the mystic Montsalvat monastery where the
Holy Grail is kept; where the monks never seem precisely to die; and
where, without marriage and even without women, children are somehow
born to the favoured ones. He comes in a magic boat drawn by a swan
to aid Elsa against Telramund and his wife, who falsely accuse her of
having murdered her brother; he fights for her and overcomes the
accusers, first exacting a promise that she will never ask him his
name nor where he comes from. She promises, yielding herself
unconditionally to him; and so ends Act One. Next Ortrud, wife of
Telramund, gets Elsa's ear, begging for mercy, and contrives to poison
the girl's mind with doubts regarding Lohengrin; and when later the
wedding procession is nearing the church, Telramund himself accuses
Lohengrin before the king and all the crowd of sorcery and witchcraft.
Nothing happens at the moment; Telramund is pushed on one side, and
the procession goes its way. But in the next act, when Lohengrin and
Elsa are left alone she can no longer restrain her curiosity nor
conceal her fears: in spite of his warnings she questions him. At the
moment Telramund and other nobles rush in to assassinate him; he kills
Telramund, orders the other nobles to bear the body into the judgment
hall, and tells Elsa he must leave her. In the next scene he reveals
himself, and the swan returns to take him away. Ortrud mocks him and
tells how she, after all, has triumphed, for she changed Elsa's
brother into a swan; Lohengrin kneels and prays; the swan disappears
and the missing brother springs up; a dove descends and is attached by
Lohengrin to the boat, and he goes back to Montsalvat.

Now I would ask the reader if this story is reasonable, if any
"meaning" or moral can be read into it. On the face of it Lohengrin's
conditions are preposterous. Yet he is bound by the laws of the magic
domain he comes from; he trusts Elsa and does battle on her behalf
without any proof of her innocence; and she has no patience to wait
for him to explain matters. On the other hand, he hears her prayer in
a magical way, and comes drawn in a magic boat; and she has a perfect
right to assume that he would not have fought for her if he had not
known by his arts that she was innocent. It was just over this
_denouement_, this forsaking of Elsa because of her inquisitiveness,
that many of Wagner's friends boggled; and nothing that he then or
afte