“That selfsame evening we were sitting, childless and alone, in the cottage. Neither had any pleasure in talk, nor indeed would our tears have allowed it. It seemed better to gaze into the fire and utter never a word. On a sudden, something rustled outside the door, which straightway opened; and lo! A beautiful little girl, clad in rich garments, stood there on the threshold, smiling at us. Marvellously astonied were we; as for me, I wist not whether it might be illusion or reality on which I gazed. But I saw the water dripping from her golden hair and her rich garment, and methought the pretty child had been lying in the water and needed our help. ‘Good wife’, said I, ‘no one hath been able to save our dear one; let us, at least, do for others what would have been so blessed a boon for ourselves.’ So we took the little one and undressed her, put her to bed and gave her something warm; but she, meanwhile, spoke not a word. Only she smiled upon us with eyes full of the colour of lake and sky.
“Next morning we saw at once that she had taken no hurt from her wetting, and methought I should ask her about her parents, and by what odd chance she had come hither. But full strange and confused was the account that she gave. Far away from here must she have been born; for, during these fifteen years past, not a word have I learnt of her parentage. Moreover, both then and since, her talk has been of such strange things that, for aught we can tell, she may have dropped down to us from the moon! Golden castles, crystal domes of such does she prattle, and I know not what marvels beside. The simplest and clearest tale she tells is that, being out with her mother on the great lake she fell into the water, and that she only came to her senses here under the trees, when she found herself with joy on this right happy shore.
“Certès, we have had our fill of misgiving and perplexities. It was our mind forthwith to keep the child we had found, and to bring her up in the place of our lost darling, but who could reveal to us whether she had been baptized or no? On this matter she had naught to tell us. When we questioned her, it was her wont to answer that she knew full well that she was created for God’s praise and glory, and that whatever might appertain to God’s praise and glory she was well content should be done to her.
“Now it seemed to my wife and to me that, an she had not been baptized, there was no time for delay; whereas, an she had, we could not repeat a good thing too often. So, thinking it out, we sought for a good name for the child, for we were often at a loss what to call her. And, as we pondered, it seemed that Dorothea might be the best name, for I had heard that it signifieth a gift of God, and full sure had she been sent to us by God as a gift and comfort in our woe. But she would not hear of this; it irked her sore; Undine, she said, her parents had named her, and Undine she still would be. Now this appeared to me to be but a heathenish name, not to be found in any calendar; and for this reason I took counsel of a priest in the city. He approved the name no better than I did, but yet at my prayer he came with me through the forest in order to perform the right of baptism here in my cottage. So prettily clad was the little one, so sweetly did she bear herself, that she at once won the priest’s heart. With such soft speech and cozening words did she flatter him, using the while such merry mockery, that he could remember none of the grave arguments he thought to use against the name Undine. Undine, therefore, was she baptized; and while the ceremony went on she held herself with much simplicity and sweetness, and seemed to have forgotten all the wild and untamed restlessness of her daily behaviour. For indeed, Sir Knight, my wife was wholly in the right when she told you that she hath been most difficult to bear with. If I were to tell—”
And here the knight stayed the fisherman’s talk. He would fain call his notice to a sound of rushing waters which ever and anon had caught his ear while the old man rambled on. Now the water seemed to burst against the cottage window with redoubled force, and both sprang to the door. There, by the light of the lately risen moon, they saw the brook, which came from the forest, wildly overflowing its banks, and sweeping away stones and tree-trunks in its impetuous course. The storm, as if awakened by the tumult, broke furiously from the clouds that passed swiftly over the moon; the lake howled under the mad buffet of the wind; the trees of the little peninsula groaned from root to topmost bough, and bent dizzily over the surging waters.
“Undine! For Heaven’s sake, Undine!” cried the two men in terror. Not a word came back in answer, and without further thought they rushed out of the cottage, one in this direction, and the other in that, searching and calling for Undine.
