The action takes place in the German city of Harz in the Middle Ages.
Blond Eckbert, a knight of forty, lives with his wife Berta. They love each other, but they have no children. They live in seclusion, their guests are rare, with the exception of a friend of the family of Philip Walter.
Once after dinner, at the request of Eckbert, Bert tells Walter about the strange adventures of his youth. As a child, she lived in the family of a poor shepherd, and when she was eight years old, she ran away from home to the forest, where she met an old woman who sheltered her. In the hut, together with the old woman, there lived a small dog (whose nickname Berta cannot remember) and a bird in a shiny cage, who sang the song: “Solitude is my pleasure. Today, tomorrow is always one pleasure for me - solitude. ” The old woman often prayed and spoke strange words. Berta fell in love with the old woman, and the dog and bird became her friends. Four years later, the old woman revealed a secret: it turned out that every day a bird lays an egg in which there is either a pearl or a gem. A few days later, when the old woman once again went to travel, Berta ran away from the hut and, taking with her a bird and taking a vessel with gems, set off into the so-called light in search of the knight she dreamed of.In a beautiful town, she hired herself a small house and eventually began to forget the old woman. The bird stopped singing, but one night she sang a different song: “Solitude, you are in the distance, wait for regret, about crime! Ah, pleasure is in solitude. ” The bird sang this song without ceasing, and Bertha strangled her. Soon she married the young knight Eckbert.
After telling this story, goodbye, Philip Walter pronounces the following phrase: "Thank you, ma'am, I vividly imagine you with a strange bird and how you feed little Stromian." Blond Ekbert begins to repent that he asked his wife to tell about the adventure, since it was from this evening that Walter rarely visited his friend’s castle, and Berta was very ill due to nervous breakdown. Soon she tells her husband that she could never remember the name of the dog, Walter, that evening, called her! “What connection does this person have with my fate”? She thought, dying.
Eckbert decides to kill Walter because of doubts tormenting him about the loyalty of a friend. He meets him on a hunt in the forest and kills him with a crossbow. At the same time, Berta is dying in a fever. Eckbert meets the knight of Hugo, draws close to him and confesses to him the murder of a friend. A curse hangs over Ekbert, and he begins to lose his mind: now in every man he sees Walter, his ghost constantly haunts Ekbert.
During the trip, he meets the same old woman whom his wife had deceived in her youth. It turns out that the old sorceress is connected not only with Berta, but also with Ekbert himself, or rather with his father.She tells him: “Watch how a crime entails punishment: it was me, and not anyone else, who was your friend Walter, your Hugo ... and Berta was your sister ... Once in early childhood you heard how your father was in favor of his wife he didn’t bring up his daughter from his first marriage, but gave it to the shepherd. ” Lying on the ground, distraught Eckbert dies, paying for the sins of his father and wife.
