The Fountain Is Reopened on Huldbrand’s Wedding Night

The reopening of the Castle Ringstetten fountain on Bertalda’s wedding night turns a request for beauty into the threshold of death. When the stone covering the spring is lifted, Undine rises from it in a white, weeping form, crosses the castle, and confronts Sir Huldbrand of Ringstetten: the water’s return has brought her back, and she tells him that he must die. The scene makes the fountain more than a sealed household amenity; it is a passage between the human world and the water that claims Undine, and the means by which a broken marriage’s supernatural consequences arrive at the wedding itself.

Background: A Marriage Bound to Water

The fountain’s reopening belongs to a story in which water has repeatedly marked the boundary between loss and unexpected reunion. Years before, a fisherman and his wife lost their infant daughter when she slipped from her mother’s arms into the lake and disappeared without a trace. That same evening, a richly dressed little girl, wet from the water, appeared at the cottage door. The couple took her in, and, after she rejected the name Dorothea that they proposed, she was baptized Undine. The fisherman understood her arrival as a gift and comfort in their grief, though her strange account of her origins and her chosen name pointed beyond an ordinary human life.

Water also frames Undine’s first intimacy with Sir Huldbrand of Ringstetten. During a storm, a brook overflowed and flooded the peninsula near the cottage. Sir Huldbrand searched for Undine and found her on a small island formed by the flood, sheltered beneath interwoven branches. He crossed to her, and she drew him beside her beneath the leafy cover. The later fountain scene reverses that early image of water making a temporary island and bringing the pair together: now a water source that has been deliberately closed becomes the route by which Undine returns to him, while their relationship is already irreparably changed.

Their marriage followed suddenly, at Undine’s childhood home. Seeing her lean close beside him, Sir Huldbrand announced to the priest that the two were pledged and asked to be married that very evening. Undine’s world, however, was not merely human. She explained that water spirits lived in lakes and streams, in crystal dwellings beneath the waters, and that beings of this kind were called Undines. The explanation establishes the divide the fountain later crosses: Undine has lived as a wife among humans, but her return through the spring reveals that her bond to the water has never ceased to matter.

Bertalda’s Request and the Stone’s Removal

On the evening of her wedding to Sir Huldbrand, Bertalda tried to turn her thoughts toward the pleasure of choosing her morning attire. She ordered her jewels, rich clothing, and veils to be spread out before her, while her attendants praised her appearance. Looking in a mirror, she noticed freckles at the side of her neck. Her attendants attempted to recast them as beauty spots, but Bertalda insisted that a blemish remained a defect. She wished for the precious, purifying water she had once used from the fountain, now closed.

An alert waiting-maid responded by summoning workmen. Bertalda was surprised that the woman would arrange for the covering stone to be removed that very evening, but she did not countermand the decision. Instead, she affirmed that she wanted the fountain opened, provided the work did not take too long, and watched from the window as the men crossed the moonlit courtyard carrying levers and other tools. Her request is modest in its immediate purpose: she wants water for her skin. Yet the reopening is also a change in what Bertalda can command. She takes pleasure in the thought that a look from her can accomplish what had once been refused, without reckoning with the consequences of restoring access to the spring.

The workmen hesitated because they remembered that the fountain had been closed by their former beloved mistress. Even so, lifting the enormous stone proved far easier than expected. They felt as though a force within the spring were helping them; the water seemed to push the stone upward until it rolled onto the pavement with a hollow sound. What they first mistook for a renewed, leaping fountain became a solemn white column. As the figure rose from the opening, they saw that it was not simply water but a pale woman veiled in white, weeping and wringing her hands. The servants fled, while Bertalda stood at the window, pale and rigid with horror.

Undine Returns to the Castle

The figure looked up toward Bertalda’s room as it passed beneath the window. Bertalda thought she could recognize Undine beneath the veil. The recognition links the apparition directly to the woman whose absence had made the fountain seem available for ordinary use; the source has not merely been restored, but its reopening has returned its former mistress. Undine continued toward the castle slowly and reluctantly, as if on her way to an execution. Still at the window, Bertalda called for Sir Huldbrand, but none of the attendants dared leave their place, and Bertalda herself fell silent.

Inside, Sir Huldbrand had dismissed his attendants and stood partly undressed before a large mirror, with a taper burning dimly beside him. A gentle tap at the door recalled the playful way Undine used to announce herself. He dismissed the sound as fancy and turned toward his wedding night. Then Undine’s tearful voice answered from outside that he would indeed go to bed, but it would be a cold one. In the mirror he saw the door open slowly and the white figure enter, closing it carefully behind her. She explained that the spring had been opened and that she was there; now he must die.

The scene’s progression narrows from a public disturbance in the courtyard to an intimate encounter in the bedroom. At first the workmen and wedding party witness a strange form emerging from the fountain; then Bertalda recognizes the returning woman; finally, Sir Huldbrand meets her alone. The mirror extends the moment of recognition: he sees the door open and the figure enter while he is still confronting the possibility that what he fears may be real. His response is not defiance but terror. He asks her not to reveal a hideous face if she wears one, and to take his life without making him look. Undine answers that she is as fair as when he wooed her on the promontory. Her beauty remains, but the meaning of her return has changed from reunion to death.

Consequences and Significance

The reopening makes the wedding night the point at which Bertalda’s casual wish and Undine’s return collide. The former bridegroom’s private encounter with Undine follows the removal of the stone, and her words explicitly connect the two: the spring has been opened, so she has come, and Sir Huldbrand must die. The fountain thus supplies the immediate cause and setting for a fatal return, while the wedding celebrations sharpen the reversal. Bertalda has just taken pleasure in the authority of her new position; instead, the reopened water makes visible a past relationship and a consequence that her new status cannot control.

The episode also draws on the novel’s recurring association of water with thresholds. The lake is where the fisherman’s child was lost; the water’s edge is where Undine appeared; floodwater once created the island where she and Sir Huldbrand came together; and now the spring releases her into the castle. In each case, water changes what can cross between one state and another. Here, the crossing is especially stark: a sealed fountain becomes an entrance, a domestic request becomes a supernatural event, and the wedding’s anticipated new life is interrupted by the return of the abandoned wife. After Sir Huldbrand’s death, Undine’s grief remains visible in the funeral procession, where the white-veiled figure follows behind Bertalda. At the grave, the place where Undine kneels becomes a little silver spring that flows around the grave, carrying the fountain’s association with water, attachment, and loss beyond the wedding night.