It is then most especially that the calm notes of Wotan fall healingly
upon the sense: They have heard tales of novel events in Nibelheim, of
mighty wonders worked there by Alberich, and are come from curiosity
to witness these.
After this simple introduction from the greater personage, his
light-foot, volatile, graceful minister takes Alberich in hand and
practising confidently upon his intoxicated conceit of power, his
pride in the cleverness which had contrived ring and wishing-cap,
uses him like a puppet of which all the strings should be in his
hand.
Alberich recognises in Loge an old enemy. Loge's reply to Alberich's,
"I know you well enough, you and your kind!" is perhaps, with its
cheerful dancing flicker, his prettiest bit of self-description.
"You know me, childish elf? Then, say, who am I, that you should
be surly? In the cold hollow where you lay shivering, how would
you have had light and cheering warmth, if Loge had never laughed
for you?..."
But Alberich seems to remember too many reasons for distrusting
him. "I can now, however," he boasts, "defy you all!" and he calls
to their notice the heaped riches,--the _Hort_.
"But," remarks Wotan, "of what use is all that wealth in cheerless
Nibelheim, where there is nothing to buy?"
"Nibelheim," replies Alberich, "is good to furnish treasures and
to keep them safe. But when they form a sufficient heap, I shall
use them to make myself master of the world!"
"And how, my good fellow, shall you accomplish this?"
Alberich has apprehended in this guest one of the immortals,--which,
taken into consideration a speech suggestive every time it resounds
of calm heights and stately circumstances, is not strange. Alberich
hates him, hates them all. This is his exposition of his plan:
"You who, lapped in balmy airs, live, laugh, and love up there,
with a golden fist I shall catch you all! Even as I renounced love,
all that lives shall renounce it! Ensnared and netted in gold,
you shall care for gold only! You immortal revellers, cradling
yourselves on blissful heights in exquisite pastimes, you despise
the black elf! Have a care!... For when you men have come to be
the servants of my power, your sweetly adorned women, who would
despise the dwarf's love, since he cannot hope for love, shall
be forced to serve his pleasure. Ha ha! Do you hear? Have a care,
have a care, I say, of the army of the night, when the riches of
the Nibelungs once climb into the light!"
Wotan, whose Olympian self-sufficiency is usually untroubled by what
any mean other-person may say, at this cannot contain himself, but
starting to his feet cries out a command for the blasphemous fool's
annihilation! Before Alberich, however, has caught the words--his
deafness perhaps it is which saves his life--Loge has called Wotan
back to his reason. Practising on Alberich's not completely outlived
simplicity, he by the ruse of feigning himself very stupid and
greatly impressed by his cleverness, now induces him to show off for
their greater amazement the power of the Tarnhelm, which it appears
has not only the trick of making the wearer at will invisible, but
of lending him whatever shape he may choose. Later we find that
it has also the power to transport the wearer at pleasure to the
ends of the earth in a moment of time.
To put Loge's incredulity to shame, Alberich, Tarnhelm on head,
turns himself into a dragon, drawing its cumbersome length across
the stage to a fearsome tune which gives all of its uncouthness,
and never fails to call forth laughter, like the giants' tread. As
a further exhibition of his power, after full measure of flattery
in Loge's pretended fright, he at the prompting of the same changes
himself into a toad, which has but time for a hop or two, before
Wotan places his calm foot upon it. Loge snatches the Tarnhelm
off its head and Alberich is seen in his own person writhing under
Wotan. Loge binds him fast, and the gods, with their struggling
prey between them, hurry off through the pass by which they came.
Then reoccurs, but reversed, the transformation between Nibelheim
and the upper world. The region of the stithies is passed, the little
hammers are heard. At last Wotan and Loge with Alberich reappear
through the sulphur-cleft.
"Look, beloved," says Loge to the unhappy captive, "there lies
the world which you think of conquering for your own. Tell me now,
what little corner in it do you intend as a kennel for me?" And he
dances around him, snapping his fingers to the prettiest, heartlessly
merry fire-music.
Alberich replies with raving insult. Wotan's cool voice reminds
him of the vanity of this and calls him to the consideration of
his ransom. When Alberich, after a time, grumblingly inquires what
they will have, he says, largely and frankly, "The treasure, your
shining gold."
If he can only retain the ring, reflects Alberich, the loss of
the treasure may be quickly repaired. At his request they free
his right hand; he touches the ring with his lips and murmurs the
spell by which after a moment the swarm of little smoke-grimed
Nibelungs arrives groaning and straining under the weight of the
Hort; again they pile it in a heap, and at Alberich's command scurry
home.
"Now I have paid, now let me go," says the humbled Nibelung-lord,
"and that helmet-like ornament which Loge is holding, have the
kindness to give it me back." But Loge flings the Tarnhelm on the
heap as part of the ransom. Hard to bear is this, but Mime can
after all forge another. "Now you have gotten everything; now,
you cruel ones, loose the thongs." But Wotan remarks, "You have a
gold ring upon your finger; that, I think, belongs with the rest."
At this, a madness of terror seizes Alberich. "The ring?..." "You
must leave it for ransom." "My life--but not the ring!" With that
bitter coldness of the aristocrat which in time brings about
revolutions, Wotan replies, "It is the ring I ask for--with your
life do what you please!" The dull Nibelung pleads still after
that, and his words contain thorns which he might reasonably expect
to tell: "The thing which I, anguish-harried and curse-crowned,
earned through a horrible renunciation, you are to have for your
own as a pleasant princely toy?... If I sinned, I sinned solely
against myself, but against all that has been, is, or shall be,
do you, Immortal, sin, if you wrest this ring from me...."
Wotan without further discussion stretches out his hand and tears
from Alberich's finger the ring, which gives once more, under this
violence, the golden call, saddened and distorted. "Here, the
ring!--Your chattering does not establish your right to it!" Alberich
drops to earth, felled. Wotan places the ring on his hand and stands
in gratified contemplation of it. "I hold here what makes me the
mightiest lord of the mighty!"
Loge unties Alberich and bids him slip home. But the Nibelung is
past care or fear, and rising to insane heights of hatred lays upon
the ring such a curse as might well shake its owner's complacency.
"As it came to me through a curse, accursed be this ring! As it
lent me power without bounds, let its magic now draw death upon
the wearer! Let no possessor of it be happy.... Let him who owns
it be gnawed by care and him who owns it not be gnawed by envy! Let
every one covet, no one enjoy it!... Appointed to death, fear-ridden
let its craven master be! While he lives, let his living be as
dying! The ring's master be the ring's slave,--until my stolen good
return to me!... Now keep it! Guard it well! My curse you shall
not escape!"
"Did you hear his affectionate greeting?" asks Loge, when Alberich
has vanished down the rocky cleft.
Wotan, absorbed in the contemplation of the ring, has heard the
curse with the same degree of interest he might have bestowed upon
the trickle of a brook. He replies magnanimously, "Grudge him not
the luxury of railing!"
Fricka, Donner, and Froh hasten to welcome the returning gods.
The approach of Freia, whom the giants are bringing between them,
is felt before she appears, in a subtle sweetening of the air, a
simultaneous lightening of all the hearts and return of youth to
the faces, which Froh's daintily expansive greeting describes.
Fricka is hurrying toward her. Fasolt interposes: Not to be touched!
She still belongs to them until the ransom have been paid. Fasolt
does not fall in willingly with the arrangement which shall give
them the gold in place of the woman; he has been overpersuaded
by the black brother; his regret at losing Freia is so great, he
tells the gods, that the treasure, if she is to be relinquished,
will have to be piled so high as completely to hide the blooming
maid.
"Let it be measured according to Freia's stature!" decrees Wotan,
and the giants drive their great staves into the earth so that
they roughly frame the figure of Freia. Helped by Loge and Froh,
they begin stopping the space between with the treasure. Wotan's
fastidiousness cannot endure the visible sordid details of his
bargain; he turns from the sight of the incarnate rose, as she
stands drooping in a noble shame, to be valued against so much
gold. "Hasten with the work!" he bids them, "it sorely goes against
me!" When Fafner's rough greed orders the measure to be more solidly
pressed down, and he ducks spying for crevices still to be stopped
with gold, Wotan turns away, soul-sick: "Humiliation burns deep
in my breast!"
The Hort is exhausted, when Fafner looking for crannies exclaims,
"I can still see the shining of her hair," and demands, to shut
it from view, the Tarnhelm which Loge has attempted to retain.
"Let it go!" commands Wotan, when Loge hesitates.
The affair, it now would seem, must be closed; but Fasolt, in his
grief over the loss of the Fair one, still hovers about, peering
if perchance he may still see her, and so he catches through the
screen of gold the gleam of her eye, and declares that so long
as the lovely glance is visible he will not renounce the woman.
"But can you not see, there is no more gold?" remonstrates Loge.
Fafner, who has not failed to store in his brain what he earlier
overheard, replies, "Nothing of the kind. There is a gold ring
still on Wotan's finger. Give us that to stop the cranny."
"This ring?..." cries Wotan, like Alberich before him.
"Be advised," Loge says to the giants, as if in confidence. "That
ring belongs to the Rhine-maidens. Wotan intends to return it to
them."
But Wotan has no subterfuges or indirections of his own--not conscious
ones; when he needs their aid, he uses another, as he had told
Fricka. "What are you prating?" he corrects Loge; "what I have
obtained with such difficulty, I shall keep without compunction
for myself." Loge amuses himself with probing further the grained
spot in his superior. "My promise then stands in bad case, which I
made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned to me in their trouble."
Wotan, with the coldness of the Pharisee's "Look thou to that,"
replies, "Your promise does not bind me. The ring, my capture,
I shall keep."
"But you will have to lay it down with the ransom," Fafner insists.
"Ask what else you please, you shall have it; but not for the whole
world will I give up the ring."
Fasolt instantly lays hands again upon Freia and draws her from
behind the Hort. "Everything then stands as it stood before. Freia
shall come with us now for good and all." An outcry of appeal goes
up from all the gods to Wotan. He turns from them unmoved. "Trouble
me not. The ring I will not give up." And the idleness of further
appeal, howsoever eloquent, cannot be doubted.
But now unaccountable darkness invades the scene; from the hollow
alcove in the rocks, letting down to the interior earth, breaks a
bluish light; while all, breathless, watch the strange phenomenon,
the upper half of a woman becomes discernible in it, wrapped in
smoke-coloured veils and long black locks. It is the Spirit of
the Earth, the all-knowing Erda, whose motif describes the stately
progression of natural things, and is the same as the Rhine-motif,
which describes a natural thing in stately progression. She lifts
a warning hand to Wotan. "Desist, Wotan, desist! Avoid the curse
on the ring... The possession of it will doom you to dark ruin...."