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He thought he recognized Bertalda's robe; and he directed his course towards it.
And yet he could distinguish it to be a woman, dressed in long white garments like Bertalda's, asleep or in a swoon. He came close to her, made the boughs rustle, and his sword ring but she stirred not. "Bertalda!" cried he; first gently, then louder and louder in vain.
Under the influence of this mutual regard, they found means to persuade, the one her foster-parents, and the other her husband, to defer the day of separation to a period more and more remote; nay, more, they had already begun to talk of a plan for Bertalda's accompanying Undine to Castle Ringstetten, near one of the sources of the Danube.
The servants of the castle were as happy in obeying their gentle mistress as in opposing Bertalda's haughty defiance; and in spite of all the rude scolding and threatening of the latter, the stone was soon firmly lying over the opening of the fountain. Undine leaned thoughtfully over it and wrote with her beautiful fingers on its surface.
Displeased as she was at the interruption and its cause, she stepped a little aside with the stranger, and both began to whisper together, as it seemed, in a foreign tongue. Huldbrand fancied he knew the strange man, and he stared so fixedly at him that he neither heard nor answered Bertalda's astonished inquiries.
That evening I was Bertalda's partner in the dance, and I enjoyed the same distinction during the remainder of the festival." A sharp pain in his left hand, as it hung carelessly beside him, here interrupted Huldbrand's relation, and drew his eye to the part affected.
Therefore I stopped the mouth of our fountain, and inscribed the stone with characters which cripple the might of my restless uncle; so that he can no longer cross your path, or mine, or Bertalda's. Men can indeed lift the stone off as easily as ever; the inscription has no power over them. So you are free to comply with Bertalda's wish; but indeed, she little knows what she asks.
Every little difficulty that had occurred to their favourite plan, seemed to vanish upon nearer examination, and the three friends could not imagine that Bertalda's consent to the journey need be delayed a moment.
So prepared were the minds of the people to find something mysterious in her, that her strange discovery of Bertalda's origin scarcely surprised them; while, on the other hand, everyone that heard of Bertalda's history and of her passionate behaviour, was moved with indignation.
This resolution of the old fisherman, and the fearful solitude that, on Bertalda's departure, threatened to oppress the knight in every hall and passage of the deserted castle, brought to light what had disappeared in his sorrow for Undine, I mean, his attachment to the fair Bertalda; and this he made known to her father. The fisherman had many objections to make to the proposed marriage.
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