In the forest he meets and falls in love with Ondine, a water sprite who is attracted to the world of mortal man.

And here lives Ondine whom the old couple found as a baby at the edge of the lake, and brought up in place of their own daughter who was mysteriously snatched away as an infant.

He is welcomed and while he is in the midst of telling Auguste and Eugenie about his betrothed, the princess Bertha, Ondine appears.

In the great hall of the king's palace, it is the day that Hans is to present his bride Ondine at court.

The Lord Chamberlain, who needs to arrange an entertainment for the day's ceremonies, is in conference with the director of the royal theater, the trainer of the seals, and the Illusionist (in actuality the King of the Ondines).

The Illusionist gives the spectators a further glimpse into the future showing them the scene when Hans realizes that he married the wrong woman.

Bertha intimately knows the Wittenstein family history, she plays the lute, she recites, she illuminates manuscripts—she is the perfect woman.

When Bertha asks Hans what Ondine does that might advance her husband's interests at court, he replies, "Oh, she swims.

Continuing the play-within-a-play structure, the Illusionist presents the remaining events of the day in scenes which the astonished participants themselves watch from behind the pillar.

Ondine tactlessly mentions that the Chamberlain's hand is damp and constantly interrupts him to talk to Bertram with whom she immediately establishes a rapport.

Hans remembers the day that Ondine left and asks, "But why does she proclaim to the world that she deceived me with Bertram?"

In addition to being preoccupied with Ondine, Hans is worried because the servants are starting to speak in poetry and there is a Wittenstein legend that this always happens just before misfortune strikes.

In the end the judges decide that Ondine transgressed the boundaries of nature, but in so doing she brought only kindness and love.

Ondine is a medieval love story of a water nymph[1] and a knight, and the folly that results from their union.

[2] The playwright tells the tale of this doomed relationship in a theatrical fantasy where charming fable mingles with the rigor of classical tragedy.

Maurice Valency puts it: "A young man of good family is engaged to a girl of his own class.

But she doesn't make him happy, and after the vicissitudes usual in such cases of misalliance, the young man goes back to his first love, a brunette who is socially most acceptable.

"[3] Giraudoux based his tale on the 1811 novella Undine by the German Romantic Friedrich de la Motte Fouqué.

The theme of the water nymph who seeks to gain a soul while in human form is a typical fairy tale, and is also found in the Celtic myth of Melusine.

"[4] The story bears a fairly close resemblance to de la Motte Fouqué's original tale, but, "Instead of being the story of a water-sprite who marries a man to acquire a soul, the play becomes the tragedy of man divorced from nature and stultified by his confinement within the strictly human sphere.

But if man dreams of such love which turns life into paradise, he cannot endure its reality," adding that the closing scenes "constitute a remarkably poignant lovers' farewell ...

"[6] Donald Inskip wrote there "is about Ondine a completeness, a sense of fully-rounded achievement, accompanied by an all-pervading if gentle melancholia gripping audience and actors alike, which puts this play in a category of its own ...

The naive and the ultra sophisticated are blended here in such a manner as to blur the frontiers of human experience and transport audiences completely out of themselves.

"[7] Drama historian Philip George Hill called the 1954 Broadway production "a work of extraordinary beauty".

[8] "Giraudoux's lines, imaginatively adapted by Maurice Valency, glint with romantic gems... [and] exotic verbal nuggets..." (Milton Shulman, Evening Standard, January 13, 1961)[9] "With Giraudoux's lyrical insights and elegiac phrasing, his plays read like a combination of epic poetry and a Henry James novel.

The characters and situations are hyperbolic, mythical, biblical and canonical, and yet the text contains disorienting psychological insight" (Julia Jonas in a 2004 review).

[15] The play was adapted by Maurice Valency, opening on Broadway in 1954[16] in a production by Alfred Lunt, starring Mel Ferrer, John Alexander, Alan Hewitt, Robert Middleton, Marian Seldes, Lloyd Gough, and, in the title role, Audrey Hepburn in the role that won her a Tony Award for Best Actress,[17] (the same year she was awarded an Oscar for Best Actress in the film Roman Holiday).

[citation needed] The London production of Ondine was presented by the Royal Shakespeare Company in 1961, directed by Peter Hall, with Leslie Caron in the title role.

The rest of the cast included Richard Johnson, Diana Rigg, Eric Porter, Clive Swift, Siân Phillips, Gwen Ffrangcon-Davies, Roy Dotrice, Ian Holm and Peter Jeffrey.

This site-integrated production ran in 2015 using the original English translation by Maurice Valency, co-directed by Carly Cioffi and Ava Roy.