LE PLONGEUR

Page 92. The original of the story on which Schiller founded The Diver, remarkable for its power and descriptive beauty, is to be found in Kircher, a copions writer on history and antiquity. The name of the Diver was Nicholas, surnamed " The Fish." The king was either Frederick I. or Frederick II. of Sicily. The legend runs thus :

The king flung a golden goblet into the surging pool that whirled beneath the cliff. " Who," quoth he, " will bring me back the goblet f rom the deep ? " But knights and squires alike were silent and afraid, till a youth of noble mien stepped forth and plunged into the whirling wave. Ail stand aghast, and hear the hoUow sounding of the roaring waters, and cry aloud dismayed. But ère long from out the darkest depth shone upward a white arm, the hand clasping the goblet of gold. They throng around him, he kneels, blesses the light of day, and bids the king, " ail hail ! I hâve seen things unspeakable and a darkness that might be felt. Let no man attempt again the depths and solitude wherein are things creeping innumerable. From a coral branch I caught the goblet ère the nameless horror seized me, and lo ! I am saved." " Go again," cried the king, "and bring me further secrets of the main, then my daughter shall be thy reward." And he cast the goblet into the depths anew. The youth looked on the maiden, then on the roaring gulf; love conquered fear; for life or for death he plunged into the abyss. The surges swept him from the maiden's wistful gaze, and still they sweep on, returning never more the brave.

Schiller has preserved ail that is striking in the legend, refining and ennobling the thème. The description of the whirlpool has been spoken of by Goethe as wonderfully true to nature as observed by himself at the Falls of the Rhine. Schiller had never even seen a waterfall and he acknowledges his indebtedness to Homer's description of Charybdis:

"Drawing down Into her horrid gulf the briny flood ; And as she threw it forth again, it tossed And murmured as upon a glowing fire The water in a caldron, while the spray,

Thrown upward, fell on both the summit-rocks ; And when once more she swallowed the salt-sea, It whirled within the abyss, while far below The bottom of blue sand was seen."

— Bryant's translation of the Odyssey,

22. comme travaillées par le feu: as when fire is with water contending.

27. ainsi qu'un soupirail de l'enfer: in the same manner as a vent-hole of hell.

Page 93. 3. la gueule du monstre: the jaws of the monster; meaning the sea. Oliver Wendell Holmes in the Autocrat of the Breakfast Table describes the sea as a monster that remembers nothing. He says : ' It will crack your bones and eat you, and wipe the crimson foam from its jaws as if nothing had happened."

13. Ame vivante n'a redit les secrets du gouffre aboyant: No soûl has lived to tell the secrets of the howling deep.

Page 94. 2:^,. lueur rougeâtre: reddish light. Red is the complementary color of green. The expression " reddish light " is used because light would appear to be of this color to any one who had just left the green depths of the sea.