. If thy veil conceals the features of a
spectre, hide them from me still, and let me die in peace."--"Alas!"
rejoined the forlorn one, "wilt thou not look upon me once again? I am
fair, as when thou didst woo me on the promontory."--"Oh, could that
be true!" sighed Huldbrand, "and if I might die in thy embrace!"--"Be
it so, my dearest," said she. And she raised her veil, and the
heavenly radiance of her sweet countenance beamed upon him.

Trembling, at once with love and awe, the Knight approached her; she
received him with a tender embrace; but instead of relaxing her hold,
she pressed him more closely to her heart, and wept as if her soul
would pour itself out. Drowned in her tears and his own, Huldbrand
felt his heart sink within him, and at last he fell lifeless from the
fond arms of Undine upon his pillow.

"I have wept him to death!" said she to the pages, whom she passed in
the ante-chamber; and she glided slowly through the crowd, and went
back to the fountain.

XIX.--HOW THE KNIGHT HULDBRAND WAS INTERRED

Father Heilmann had returned to the castle, as soon as he heard of the
Lord of Ringstetten's death, and he appeared there just after the
monk, who had married the hapless pair, had fled full of alarm and
horror. "It is well," answered Heilmann, when told this: "now is the
time for my office; I want no assistant." He addressed spiritual
exhortations to the widowed bride, but little impression could be made
on so worldly and thoughtless a mind. The old Fisherman, although
grieved to the heart, resigned himself more readily to the awful
dispensation; and when Bertalda kept calling Undine a witch and a
murderer, the old man calmly answered: "The stroke could not be turned
away. For my part, I see only the hand of God therein; and none
grieved more deeply over Huldbrand's sentence, than she who was doomed
to inflict it, the poor forsaken Undine!" And he helped to arrange the
funeral ceremonies in a manner suitable to the high rank of the dead.
He was to be buried in a neighbouring hamlet, whose churchyard
contained the graves of all his ancestors, and which he had himself
enriched with many noble gifts. His helmet and coat of arms lay upon
the coffin, about to be lowered into earth with his mortal remains;
for Lord Huldbrand of Ringstetten was the last of his race.

The mourners began their dismal procession, and the sound of their
solemn dirge rose into the calm blue depths of heaven. Heilmann walked
firs