ouring forest of Laach, where a little later she
gave birth to a boy. Thenceforth mother and son lived together in the
wilds, and though these were infested by wild robbers, and full of
wolves and other ravening beasts, the pair of exiles contrived to go
unscathed year after year, while, more wonderful still, they managed
to find daily sustenance. And now romance reached a happy moment; for
behold, Count Siegfried went hunting one day in the remoter parts of
the forest, and fortuitously he passed by the very place where the two
wanderers were living--his wife and the child whom he had never seen.

'Tis in the woody vales of Laach the hunter's horn is wound,
And fairly flies the falcon, and deeply bays the hound;
But little recks Count Siegfried for hawk or quarry now:
A weight is on his noble heart, a gloom is on his brow.
Oh! he hath driven from his home--he cannot from his mind--
A lady, ah! the loveliest of all her lovely kind;
His wife, his Genofeva!--and at the word of one,
The blackest traitor ever looked upon the blessed sun.
He hath let the hunters hurry by, and turned his steed aside,
And ridden where the blue lake spreads its waters calm and wide,
And lo! beneath a linden-tree, there sits a lady fair,
But like some savage maiden clad in sylvan pageant rare.
Her kirtle's of the dappled skin of the rapid mountain roe;
A quiver at her back she bears, beside her lies a bow;
Her feet are bare, her golden hair adown her shoulders streams,
And in her lap a rosy child is smiling in its dreams.

The count had never thought to see his wife again. He imagined that she
had long since starved to death or been devoured; and now, finding her
alive, his pulses quicken. He knows well that only a miracle could have
preserved her during all this period of estrangement, and reflects that
on behalf of the virtuous alone are miracles worked. Seeing herein ample
proof of Genofeva's innocence, he welcomes her back to his arms and with
beating heart bears her to the castle:

Oh! there was joy in Andernach upon that happy night:
The palace rang with revelry, the city blazed with light:
And when the moon her paler beams upon the turrets shed,
Above the Roman gate was seen the traitor Golo's head.

The Brothers

Doubtless it was the thaumaturgic element in this pretty romance
which chiefly made it popular among its pristine audiences