Undine | Page 3

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This Gutenberg edition of "Undine" was scanned and proofed by
Sandra Laythorpe, [email protected]. A web page for Charlotte
M Yonge can be found at http://www.menorot.com/cmyonge.htm. A
copy of this book can also be found at the same web site.

Undine
by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque with foreword by Charlotte M Yonge.

Introduction

Four tales are, it is said, intended by the Author to be appropriate to the
Four Seasons: the stern, grave "Sintram", to winter; the tearful, smiling,

fresh "Undine", to Spring; the torrid deserts of the "Two Captains", to
summer; and the sunset gold of "Aslauga's Knight", to autumn. Of
these two are before us.
The author of these tales, as well as of many more, was Friedrich,
Baron de la Motte Fouque, one of the foremost of the minstrels or
tale-tellers of the realm of spiritual chivalry--the realm whither Arthur's
knights departed when they "took the Sancgreal's holy quest,"--whence
Spenser's Red Cross knight and his fellows came forth on their
adventures, and in which the Knight of la Mancha believed, and
endeavoured to exist.
La Motte Fouque derived his name and his title from the French
Huguenot ancestry, who had fled on the Revocation of the Edict of
Nantes. His Christian name was taken from his godfather, Frederick the
Great, of whom his father was a faithful friend, without compromising
his religious principles and practice. Friedrich was born at Brandenburg
on February 12, 1777, was educated by good parents at home, served in
the Prussian army through disaster and success, took an enthusiastic
part in the rising of his country against Napoleon, inditing as many
battle-songs as Korner. When victory was achieved, he dedicated his
sword in the church of Neunhausen where his estate lay. He lived there,
with his beloved wife and his imagination, till his death in 1843.
And all the time life was to him a poet's dream. He lived in a continual
glamour of spiritual romance, bathing everything, from the old deities
of the Valhalla down to the champions of German liberation, in an
ideal glow of purity and nobleness, earnestly Christian throughout,
even in his dealings with Northern mythology, for he saw Christ
unconsciously shown in Baldur, and