Freiherr de Friedrich Heinrich Karl La Motte-Fouqué 2 hr 46 min read

Amid thunder and lightning over a Gascon castle, the pious Bertha keeps her lonely vigil as the quest of the magic ring drives toward its destined end and the fates of the knights are sealed.

Baron de la Motte Fouqué's 1825 romance (volume three), by the author of Undine, concludes his classic of German Romantic fantasy. Chivalric, dreamlike, richly imagined. Read it for the culmination of a sweeping medieval fairy-romance of knighthood, sorcery, and destiny from a founding master of the fantastic, whose enchanted tales enthralled the Romantic age.

In its time

Published in 1825, during the 1820s, tales of mesmerism, ghosts, and the fantastic voyage flourish in the romantic imagination.

Reading it

2 hr 46 min read (a novel-length work, settle in).