Page:The Enchanted Knights; or The Chronicle of the Three Sisters.djvu/99

Rh what he was unable to find afar, and shared his heart and throne with a daughter of the country; drawing a lot, directed only by chance, he seized a prize which gave him all the sweetness of wedded life without any of its bitterness.

Although the fraternal monarch did everything to dispel the cloud from his guest’s brow he could not succeed in restoring his spirits. He always remained melancholy and downcast, and the image of his former spouse being never distant from his imagination, he often asked the royal seer to divulge her fate. The king frequently eluded Udo’s questions, but finally considering that suspension between hope and fear was more painful than the certainty of misfortune, determined to grant his desire, and, not having any good news to communicate, he used a common-place expression, saying:—“A half-severed nerve pains more than one entirely cut away; the pain of a crushed limb is alleviated by amputation. Listen then, my brother, your wife could not survive the anguish of the separation; her shadow already hovered around me ere you touched this shore; in Walhalla, you will find her again. It was from your own goblet she drank a farewell to love, having mixed poison in her wine, when she learnt that the town