Should I relate to you how passed the marriage-feast at Castle
Ringstetten, it would be as if you saw a heap of bright and pleasant
things, but all overspread with a black mourning crape, through whose
darkening veil their brilliancy would appear but a mockery of the
nothingness of all earthly joys.

It was not that any spectral delusion disturbed the scene of
festivity; for the castle, as we well know, had been secured against
the mischief of water-spirits. But the knight, the fisherman, and
all the guests were unable to banish the feeling that the chief
personage of the feast was still wanting, and that this chief
personage could be no other than the gentle and beloved Undine.

Whenever a door was heard to open, all eyes were involuntarily turned
in that direction; and if it was nothing but the steward with new
dishes, or the cupbearer with a supply of wine of higher flavour than
the last, they again looked down in sadness and disappointment, while
the flashes of wit and merriment which had been passing at times from
one to another, were extinguished by tears of mournful remembrance.

The bride was the least thoughtful of the company, and therefore the
most happy; but even to her it sometimes seemed strange that she
should be sitting at the head of the table, wearing a green wreath
and gold-embroidered robe, while Undine was lying a corpse, stiff and
cold, at the bottom of the Danube, or carried out by the current into
the ocean. For ever since her father had suggested something of this
sort, his words were continually sounding in her ear; and this day,
in particular, they would neither fade from her memory, nor yield to
other thoughts.