than he hastened towards the grave-field where the sorcerer was already standing by that of Brunhilda. “Hast thou maturely considered?” enquired he.
“Oh! restore to me the object of my ardent passion,” exclaimed Walter with impetuous eagerness. “Delay not thy generous action, lest I die even this night, consumed with disappointed desire; and behold her face no more.”
“Well then, answered the old man,” return hither again to-morrow at the same hour. But once more do I give thee this friendly warning, ‘wake not the dead.”’
In all the despair of impatience, Walter would have prostrated himself at his feet, and supplicated him to fulfill at once a desire now increased to agony; but the sorcerer had already disappeared. Pouring forth his lamentations more wildly and impetuously than ever, he lay upon the grave of his adored one, until the grey dawn streaked the east. During the day, which seemed to him longer than any he had ever experienced, he wandered to and fro, restless and impatient, seemingly without any
