be now existing; I know nothing of
it with certainty. But that she was a most devoted and faithful wife is
beyond all dispute. And for fourteen nights past, she has appeared to me
in a dream, standing at my bedside wringing her tender hands in anguish,
and sighing out, 'Ah, prevent him, dear father! I am still living! Ah,
save his life! Ah, save his soul!'

"I did not understand what this vision of the night could mean, then
came your messenger; and I have now hastened hither, not to unite, but,
as I hope, to separate what ought not to be joined together. Leave her,
Huldbrand! leave him, Bertalda! He still belongs to another; and do you
not see on his pale cheek his grief for his lost wife? That is not the
look of a bridegroom; and the spirit says to me, that 'if you do not
leave him you will never be happy!'"

The three felt in their inmost hearts that Father Heilmann spoke the
truth; but they would not believe it. Even the old fisherman was so
infatuated, that he thought it could not be otherwise than as they
had latterly settled amongst themselves. They all, therefore, with a
determined and gloomy eagerness, struggled against the representations
and warnings of the priest, until, shaking his head and oppressed with
sorrow, he finally quitted the castle, not choosing to accept their
offered shelter even for a single night, or indeed so much as to taste a
morsel of the refreshment they brought him. Huldbrand persuaded himself,
however, that the priest was a mere visionary; and sent at daybreak to a
monk of the nearest monastery, who, without scruple, promised to perform
the ceremony in a few days.

CHAPTER 9

It was between night and dawn of day that Huldbrand was lying on his
couch, half waking and half sleeping. Whenever he attempted to compose
himself to sleep, a terror came upon him and scared him, as if his
slumbers were haunted with spectres. But he made an effort to rouse
himself fully. He felt fanned as by the wings of a swan, and lulled as
by the murmuring of waters, till in sweet confusion of the senses he
sank back into his state of half-consciousness.

At last, however, he must have fallen perfectly asleep; for he seemed to
be lifted up by wings of the swans, and to be wafted far away over land
and sea, while their music swelled on his ear most sweetly. "The music
of the swan! the song of the swan!" he could not but repeat to himself
every moment; "is it not a sure foreboding of death?" Proba