"Elsa, I love thee," murmurs the unknown knight with deepest tenderness. The king blesses the arms, and the combat begins. The knight gains an easy victory over his adversary, whose life he spares. Elsa's innocence is proclaimed by the entire people in a triumphal hymn of joy.

But Ortrud, Telramund's wife, daughter of the King of Friesia, who aspires to the throne of Brabant, succeeds in exciting feminine curiosity in Elsa, and in pouring the poison of doubt into her heart in order to blight her joy. She torments her until at last Elsa, distracted, violates her oath, exacting from her spouse the avowal of his origin. Doubt has killed faith, which carries with it all happiness; the night of love ends in despair. It is upon a meadow near the border of the Scheldt, amid flying, banners and flourishing trumpets, in the presence of Brabant counts, followed by their vassals called by King Henry for an expedition against the Hungarians, that the mysterious knight will unveil his origin. "In a distant country," he says, "upon a high mountain, called Mont Salvat, stands a magnificent temple, in which knights of absolute purity guard a miraculous cup; it is the Holy Grail, the cup in which Christ consecrated the bread and wine at the time of the Lord's Supper, and in which, later, Joseph of Arimathea received his blood. This cup had been carried to heaven by the angels, but they brought it back again to the holy king, Titurel, who founded the temple of the Grail, and the order of its knights. Those who serve the Grail are endowed with wonderful virtue, but an inflexible law forces them to remain unknown among men. If their name be discovered, they must immediately depart, and once more regain the sacred mountain. For this reason I must leave you, informing you that Parsifal, my father, is King of the Grail, and I, his knight, am named Lohengrin." The swan reappears upon the shore to bear the warrior away to his miraculous country; Elsa has destroyed her happiness; she sees her guardian angel depart forever.

Lohengrin is, perhaps, the most perfect of the three lyric dramas which form the second period in the master's work. From Lohengrin to Tristan and Isolde as great a distance is marked as between Rienzi and the Flying Dutchman. It is a new revelation, a new art,—something perfect and definite, a prodigious flight toward the future. There is no longer, so to speak, any question of music in the sense formerly attached to this word; it is poetry in superb and precise form, with a sonorous resonant soul,—Apollo and Orpheus melted in a single lyre. The works following may, perhaps, be grander, but Tristan and Isolde is and will remain the masterpiece of masterpieces, by reason of the poetical subject which, in art as in the human soul, takes by right the first place. In Tristan and Isolde love itself, in its most complete and perfect form, finds utterance. The most pointed phases of the passion are pushed to their extreme. In the first act it is unavailing love, heroically conquered, which consumes the heart while not a cry escapes the lips,—Tristan, conducting toward another the royal betrothed, whose hand he himself, in his blind love, has solicited for the King of Cornwall. Tristan's love believes itself despised. Isolde, consumed with anger and tenderness, powerless to master the tumult in her soul, wishes shipwreck to the vessel which bears her away, with the hero who disdains her, toward the shore which she hopes never to reach. "Death rather, death for us both!" she cries. And when the tempest betrays her, when already the hated land is signaled, she offers poison.

Tristan cannot refuse to empty a cup in Isolde's honor, to drink to their reconciliation, for a debt of blood lies between them, long since effaced by their unavowed love, but which she begins to remember. Tristan well knows that eternal forgetfulness is poured out for him by the hand which he secretly adores; he accepts with gratitude this mitigation of evils which have no remedy. On the threshold of death, however, both drop their mask, the fire then breaks out triumphant, love casts them into one another's arms in the intoxication of a supreme joy which should repay them for their past sufferings. Heart against heart, eyes looking into eyes, thus will their hearts cease to beat, and their mutual gaze be extinguished. But alas! they are betrayed; the two devoted followers have substituted for the mortal draught a love-drink, and instead of the kindly shade which reunited them, behold the detested shore, and the deceitful day which separates them.

Such a love once free can no longer be stifled or conquered. It is a formidable conflagration, a flame which death itself cannot extinguish. It has devoured everything,—loyalty, honor, virtue. The earth itself becomes effaced in the ravishing rapture of mutual possession. Infinite and sublime ecstasy follows, which no heart can have either experienced or foreseen. Their happiness even crushes and stifles them; the heart cannot contain such love, the human voice has no words to express it; the most burning embraces leave them disunited. Tristan and Isolde are two, and they would become one soul, a single thought, a scintillation of love in an unlimited night. Desperate and unsatisfied, they aspire to the infinity of death. They dream of a flight beyond all worlds in that mysterious shade which protects them upon earth, but over which the day and the empty phantoms of life triumph, ceaselessly inflicting the tortures of impending separation. The eternal and great night of love without the terrors of the morning! A long enchanting dream in unlimited space; no names to separate; a single flame; a single thought; a sweet swoon in each other's arms; the ardent rapture of death without end, without awakening! Such is their thought. But suddenly, behold the cruel day, and with it shame. This sublime love is dragged before the world, which calls it an indiscretion, and censures. Then follows the combat, in which Tristan, overcome with a divine ecstasy, is no longer the victorious hero, but falls mortally wounded.

When we see him again, in the agonies of death, it is in the ancient dungeon of his ancestors in Brittany. The faithful shield-bearer has taken him across the seas in a bark. Now he is sheltered from all surprise. But Isolde? When his eyes, which seem to be forever closed, will awake to life, if they are not gladdened by his soul's sweet sovereign, they will close again forever. Isolde knows her loved one's retreat; she is coming to him, but the minutes are centuries, and the sea is deserted and void, even to the silent horizon. See, the hero now comes to himself with the dear name upon his lips. Tristan cannot die while Isolde is still in the empire of the sun. The gates of death, which had already closed upon him with a clang, reopen wide before this invincible desire to see once more her with whom alone he can lose himself in eternal night. Void and deserted is the sea! Thus it is that the fury of despair tears Tristan's soul. Love and fever mingling their delirium, he writhes upon his bed of pain with cries of superhuman suffering. Nothing can render the impression of this frightful agony, in which the flame of love cannot be extinguished by death, of this distracted and expectant soul, retarding the supreme departure. At intervals the hero falls to the ground, seemingly dead; but when the weeping shield-bearer stoops to hear a last sigh, a last palpitation, Tristan in a low voice murmurs the name of Isolde! Yet once again hope springs to life in the breast of this martyr to love; he perceives the ship, although common eyes cannot distinguish it, and on the ship Isolde, who makes a sign to him. "Dost thou not see it yet? Tender and majestic she crosses the breadth of the sea like a sovereign; she comes carried toward land as by waves of intoxicating flowers; her smile will pour out supreme consolation. Oh, Isolde! Isolde! how beautiful, how welcome art thou!" The ship is, in truth, signalled. The soul's eyes are not deceived. All sails spread, it flies over the waters. She approaches—she,