! And then the music rises--gentle and almost
undistinguishable at first from the singing ripple of the water--then
clearer and more distinct, but with still a tinkling ripple in every
cadence, and the name of the listener insensibly blended. Flattery has
come with indulgence, and the subtle wine of its intoxication is
mounting to his brain. Then he turns dreamily on his couch of moss, and
looks over the bank into the river. Above the water white hands are
circling and snowy bosoms are gleaming, and in the midst is one form of
matchless rounded beauty, with a face of angelic splendor, her eye-lids
gemmed with the tear-drops of an awakened affection, and her waved brown
hair caressed by the tide as it sweeps backward. All the white hands are
beckoning to him, and all the coral lips are uttering those low musical
words in which his name is blended. The brain of the knight grows
dizzy--chains of which he only feels a pleasure in the slight pressure,
twine around his limbs. Voluptuous enjoyment takes the place of
energy--he is himself no longer. He cannot even laugh--he can only
sigh--Karl has gone chasing some Lurline of his own, far down the
meadow. Ermengarde, who has been for hours leaning out of the high
window at Steinbrunnen, and looking anxiously for her expected lover--is
nothing to him now. His promised aid to Sir Rudolph to-morrow, with helm
on brow and lance in rest, against the invader who threatens the lands
of both with ravage, is nothing to him now. Love and duty are alike
forgotten. The temptation has done its full work through indolence and
indulgence, and the knight is lost. The brown-haired Lurline is worth
all earth and heaven. Let all the rest go, without a sigh or a
regret--be his the murmur of the river, the delicious music embodying
his name, and the beckoning of the white hands towards him! He does not
leap into the water, as some have held: he merely bends nearer to the
verge, then slips down with eager eyes and outstretched hands; the white
arms twine around him; the music sounds for one moment more sweetly but
more sadly than ever, as the waves close above the pair so unholily
wedded; then the ripples sing on and all is quiet beauty as before--calm
and quiet beauty, as if no tomb had closed above the energies of a human
soul.

Sir Huldebrand may come back again, after a time, as the legend is fond
of making him do. He may even marry the golden-haired Ermengarde and
sire children to heir his land