, she commonly made answer, that she well knew
she was created for God's praise and glory, and that she was willing to
let us do with her all that might promote His glory and praise.
"My wife and I reasoned in this way: 'If she has not been baptized,
there can be no use in putting off the ceremony; and if she has been, it
still is better to have too much of a good thing than too little.'
"Taking this view of our difficulty, we now endeavoured to hit upon a
good name for the child, since, while she remained without one, we were
often at a loss, in our familiar talk, to know what to call her. We at
length agreed that Dorothea would be most suitable for her, as I had
somewhere heard it said that this name signified a gift of God, and
surely she had been sent to us by Providence as a gift, to comfort us
in our misery. She, on the contrary, would not so much as hear Dorothea
mentioned; she insisted, that as she had been named Undine by her
parents, Undine she ought still to be called. It now occurred to me that
this was a heathenish name, to be found in no calendar, and I resolved
to ask the advice of a priest in the city. He would not listen to the
name of Undine; and yielding to my urgent request, he came with me
through the enchanted forest in order to perform the rite of baptism
here in my cottage.
"The little maid stood before us so prettily adorned, and with such an
air of gracefulness, that the heart of the priest softened at once in
her presence; and she coaxed him so sweetly, and jested with him so
merrily, that he at last remembered nothing of his many objections to
the name of Undine.
"Thus, then, was she baptized Undine; and during the holy ceremony she
behaved with great propriety and gentleness, wild and wayward as at
other times she invariably was; for in this my wife was quite right,
when she mentioned the anxiety the child has occasioned us. If I should
relate to you--"
At this moment the knight interrupted the fisherman, to direct his
attention to a deep sound as of a rushing flood, which had caught his
ear during the talk of the old man. And now the waters came pouring on
with redoubled fury before the cottage-windows. Both sprang to the door.
There they saw, by the light of the now risen moon, the brook which
issued from the wood rushing wildly over its banks, and whirling onward
with it both stones and branches of trees in its rapid course. The
storm, as if awakened by the uproar, burst forth f
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