No sweet babe to SMILE him home."


"O, tell me, in the name of Heaven tell me, Undine, where are my
parents?" cried the weeping Bertalda. "You certainly know; you must
have discovered them, you wonderful being; for, otherwise you would
never have thus torn my heart. Can they be already here? May I
believe it possible?" Her eye glanced rapidly over the brilliant
company, and rested upon a lady of high rank who was sitting next to
her foster-father.

Then, bending her head, Undine beckoned toward the door, while her
eyes overflowed with the sweetest emotion. "Where, then, are the
poor parents waiting?" she asked; and the old fisherman, hesitating,
advanced with his wife from the crowd of spectators. They looked
inquiringly, now at Undine, and now at the beautiful lady who was
said to be their daughter.

"It is she! it is she there before you!" exclaimed the restorer of
their child, her voice half choked with rapture. And both the aged
parents embraced their recovered daughter, weeping aloud and praising
God.

But, terrified and indignant, Bertalda tore herself from their arms.
Such a discovery was too much for her proud spirit to bear,
especially at the moment when she had doubtless expected to see her
former splendour increased, and when hope was picturing to her
nothing less brilliant than a royal canopy and a crown. It seemed to
her as if her rival had contrived all this on purpose to humble her
before Huldbrand and the whole world. She reproached Undine; she