point of least strength. This inveterate spirit of seduction it must be which Klingsor apostrophises as "Most Ancient of Devils," and "Rose of Hell."

The character of Kundry has many aspects, exhibited here and there by a flash, but, when all is said, and before all else, what we are watching is an upward-struggling human soul, whose storm-beaten progress could never move us as it does did we not feel in her simply our sister.

We saw her, forspent, crawl into the thicket to sleep. Now, Klingsor who can command her while in that state, has compelled her to him to accomplish the undoing of Parsifal. The idea is to her, all heavy and clogged with sleep, the personality of the Gralsbotin still in the ascendant, one of horror only. With wails of protest at having been waked, and lamentation over what is proposed, she refuses to obey, rejecting Klingsor's claim to be her master. Even when he puts his request in the form of the suggestion: "He who should defy you would set you free. Try it then with the boy at hand!" she stubbornly refuses. "He is even now climbing the rampart!" Klingsor persists. Kundry wrings her hands. "Woe! Woe! Have I waked for this? Must I, indeed?... Must I?" At which first intimation of weakening, Klingsor ceases to press his authority, and adopts a different method of persuasion. Climbing to the battlement, he describes the approaching figure: "Ha! He is beautiful, the boy!" "Oh! Oh!" moans Kundry, "woe is me!"

Klingsor blows his horn, to warn the garrison of the palace—the host of the victims of folly, the lost knights—of the approaching enemy. A commotion is heard of arms caught up in haste and of fighting; Klingsor from his post follows the contest, with glee in the daring of the beautiful boy, who has snatched the sword from one of his assailants and with it, one against the swarm, is cutting his way through them. Kundry, ceasing from her moans, has begun to laugh, and as Klingsor continues his report of the skirmish laughs more and more uncontrollably. "They yield, they flee, each of them carries home his wound! Ha! How proudly he stands upon the rampart! How the roses bloom and smile in his cheeks, as, in childlike amazement, he gazes down upon the solitary garden! ... Hey! Kundry!" But with her laughter ending in a scream, Kundry has abruptly vanished. "What? Already at work?" muses Klingsor. "Ha ha! I knew the charm which will always bring you back into my service!" Then turning his attention once more to the youthful intruder filling his eyes with the unimagined glories of the garden: "You there, fledgling! Whatever prophecy may have had to say concerning you, too young and green you have fallen into my power. Purity wrested from you, you will become my willing subject!"

The tower, with Klingsor, vanishes from sight; there lies outspread before us the enchanted garden, glowing, tropical, displaying the last luxuriance of flowers; and we see for ourselves Parsifal standing upon the wall, calmly gazing. A swarm of beautiful young creatures, waked by the clash of arms have, even as their lovers turned and fled to cover, rushed forth to discover what is the matter. With confused cries they pour from the palace and, recognising in Parsifal the whole of the enemy, assail him with abuse scarcely more unendurable than a pelting with thorny rose-buds. "You there! You there! Why did you do us this injury? A curse upon you! A curse upon you!" As Parsifal undismayed leaps down into the garden, they fall to twittering like angry sparrows: "Ha! You bold thing! Do you dare to brave us? Why did you beat our beloved?" And the raw boy, acquitting himself rather neatly for such a beginner: "Ought I not to have beaten them? They were barring my passage to you!" "You wanted to come to us? Had you ever seen us before?" "Never had I seen anything so pretty. I speak rightly, do I not, in calling you lovely?" A rapid change takes place in the attitude toward him of the exceedingly pretty persons. They adorn themselves in haste, fantastically, to charm him, with the flowers of the garden; singing a wooing song, of the most melting, persuasive, irresistible, they weave around him, circling as in a child's game of ring-a-rosy, sweeping the heady perfumes of their garlands under his nostrils. They do not appear wholly human, but rather like strange tall-stemmed animated flowers, swaying and jostling in the wind, and whose odor should have turned into music; or, better still, like incarnate emanations from the intoxicating flower-beds of this magical Garden of the Senses. Parsifal stands in their midst, pleased and watchful, fleetingly again like Siegfried, with his cheerful calm and poise. "How sweet you smell! ... Are you flowers?" They close around him more and more smotheringly, with caresses more and more pressing. He gently pushes them away. "You wild, lovely, crowding flowers! If I am to play with you, let me have room!" As they do not obey, and in addition fall to quarrelling among themselves over him, half-vexed, he repels them and is turning for retreat, when a voice is heard from a blossoming thicket near-by: "Parsifal! Stay!..." The flowers, startled, at once hold still. The youth stands still, too, struck. Parsifal.... He remembers that as one of the names his mother had called him by, once, as she lay asleep and dreaming. The voice continues: "Here remain, Parsifal.... You simple light-o'-loves, depart from him. Early withering flowers, he is destined to other things than dalliance with you!" The flock of flowers, reluctantly, lingering as long as they dare, withdraw, their last word one of derision: "You beautiful one! You proud one! You... fool!" With whispered laughter they vanish into the house, and Parsifal, in the once more solitary garden, asks himself: "Was it all a dream?"

For the first time touched with timidity, he turns towards the blossoming bower from which the voice had come. The branches part, and reveal Kundry, youthful, gorgeously apparelled and superlatively beautiful, lying upon a flowery bank. "Did you mean the name you spoke for me, who have no name?" Parsifal asks, standing shyly apart.

"I called you, guileless Innocent, Parsifal.... By this name your father Gamuret, expiring in Arabian land, called his unborn son. I have sought you here to tell you this...."

"Never had I seen," sighs Parsifal, "never dreamed, such a thing as I now see and am filled with awe!... Are you, too, a flower in this garden of flowers?" "No, Parsifal. Far, far away is my home. I came here only that you might find me. I came from distant lands where I witnessed many things...." With the calm notes of the Arch-enchantress, perfectly sure of her power, she unfolds to him the story of his own past further back than he can remember, which is of the things she professes to have ocularly witnessed,—his life with Herzeleide; she relates the death of the latter from grief over his loss. She takes him in hand with easy masterliness in the art of reducing a youthful heart. She does not stint to appear to one so boyish much older and very wise. Not one discomposing word does she utter about love,—but she brings his heart to a state of fusion by the picture of his mother's sorrowful end, and when, overcome by anguish and remorse, he sinks at her feet with the cry: "What have I done?... Sweetest, loveliest mother! Your son, your son must bring about your death!..." she gently places her arm about his neck and administers needed comfort: "Never before had you known sorrow, and so have not known either the sweetness of consolation. Let