In Act II the bellman is upon abed of delirium. He has been found and brought down from the mountains by his friends, the priest and the villagers. His wife and children try to comfort him, but he is oblivious, for he sees in his excited trance the figure of a beautiful girl. Suddenly the dream becomes real. Rautendelein sits at his side and woos him back to health. Startling is the end of this scene. The nymph stands against the wall, her eyes fairly blazing at Heinrich, while his wife crouches at his feet, happy at his restoration to sanity. She does not see his glance fondly fastened on the nymph of the forest. He then leaves his home and goes up to the heights, where, unhampered, he may exercise the full play of his artistic faculties. He will make a bell and tune it to the laughter of Rautendelein. It shall make silvery music across the hills and valleys, and summon the stray souls of earth to him. He exalts nature to the priest who follows him to reclaim his soul; this third act is really a glorified burst of Nietzscheism. Then he has bad dreams; he is haunted by visions of home, and, after all the splendour of imagery, of his defiance of the conventionalities of life, something mars his life with the perfect woman he has elected to follow. Appear his two children carrying an urn. "What carry ye?" he demands. "Father, we carry an urn."--"What is in the urn?" "Father, something bitter."--"What is the something bitter?" "Father, our mother's tears."--"Where is your mother?" "Where the water-lilies grow." Then booms down in the valley, where lies the lake, the sound of a bell; an unearthly tone it has, as if struck by no mortal hand; it is touched by the hand of his dead wife who killed herself to escape her misery. Remorse sets in. He is no longer Balder the god of Spring, but a wretched man, and, driving away with revilings the poor Rautendelein, he descends to the valley, but is driven away, and finally dies in front of the witch's hut; but not before Rautendelein finds him. His last words are an ecstatic appeal to the sun--the sun which is the symbol of his striving. The charm, the witchery, the magical bitter-sweetness of this dramatic poem are formidable at the close. Heinrich dies of poison, self-administered, while through his filmy eyes there presses the vision of the beloved one. It is, indeed, Rautendelein, but her very shadow. Deserted, dreary, neither maid nor mortal nor nymph, she accepts the love of the hideous, frog-like Nickelman, and goes down to his slimy couch in the well. She emerges only to see her lover dying, and pathetically denies to him that she is Rautendelein. As the curtain falls on his corpse, we catch a glimpse of the girl sadly returning to the well and to her horrible mate in the mud.