And if her body were truly lying cold and stiff at the bottom of the Danube, or had floated away with the current into the ocean, even then Bertalda was in some measure to blame for her death, and it was unfitting for her to step into the place of the poor supplanted one.

Yet the fisherman had a strong regard for the knight also; and the entreaties of his daughter, who had become much more gentle and submissive, and her tears for Undine, turned the scale, and he must at length have given his consent, for he remained at the castle without objection, and a messenger was despatched to Father Heilmann, who had united Undine and Huldbrand in happy days gone by, to bring him to the castle for the second nuptials of the knight.
The holy man, however, had scarcely read the letter from the knight of Ringstetten, than he set out on his journey to the castle, with far greater expedition than even the messenger had used in going to him.

Whenever his breath failed in his rapid progress, or his aged limbs ached with weariness, he would say to himself: "Perhaps the evil may yet be prevented; fail not, my tottering frame, till you have reached the goal!" And with renewed power he would then press forward, and go on and on without rest or repose, until late one evening he entered the shady court-yard of castle Ringstetten.
The betrothed pair were sitting side by side under the trees, and the old fisherman was near them, absorbed in thought.

The moment they recognized Father Heilmann, they sprang up, and pressed round him with warm welcome.

But he, without making much reply, begged Huldbrand to go with him into the castle; and when the latter looked astonished, and hesitated to obey the grave summons, the reverend father said to him:-- "Why should I make any delay in wishing to speak to you in private, Herr von Ringstetten?
What I have to say concerns Bertalda and the fisherman as much as yourself, and what a man has to hear, he may prefer to hear as soon as possible.