ime they had left behind them the
limits of the city, and a crowd of painful recollections; and now the
ladies could take delight in the beautiful country which their progress
was continually presenting.

After a journey of some days, they arrived, on a fine evening, at Castle
Ringstetten. The young knight being much engaged with the overseers and
menials of his establishment, Undine and Bertalda were left alone. They
took a walk upon the high rampart of the fortress, and were charmed with
the delightful landscape which the fertile Suabia spread around them.
While they were viewing the scene, a tall man drew near, who greeted
them with respectful civility, and who seemed to Bertalda much
to resemble the director of the city fountain. Still less was the
resemblance to be mistaken, when Undine, indignant at his intrusion,
waved him off with an air of menace; while he, shaking his head,
retreated with rapid strides, as he had formerly done, then glided among
the trees of a neighbouring grove and disappeared.

"Do not be terrified, Bertalda," said Undine; "the hateful master of the
fountain shall do you no harm this time." And then she related to her
the particulars of her history, and who she was herself--how Bertalda
had been taken away from the people of the peninsula, and Undine left in
her place. This relation at first filled the young maiden with amazement
and alarm; she imagined her friend must be seized with a sudden
madness. But from the consistency of her story, she became more and more
convinced that all was true, it so well agreed with former occurrences,
and still more convinced from that inward feeling with which truth
never fails to make itself known to us. She could not but view it as an
extraordinary circumstance that she was herself now living, as it were,
in the midst of one of those wild tales which she had formerly heard
related. She gazed upon Undine with reverence, but could not keep from a
shuddering feeling which seemed to come between her and her friend;
and she could not but wonder when the knight, at their evening repast,
showed himself so kind and full of love towards a being who appeared to
her, after the discoveries just made, more to resemble a phantom of the
spirit-world than one of the human race.

CHAPTER 7

The writer of this tale, both because it moves his own heart and he
wishes it to move that of others, asks a favour of you, dear reader.
Forgive him if he passes over a c