SIEGFRIED

I

Fafner, when he had become possessor of the Nibelungen treasure,

conveyed it, as we have seen, to a cave in a lonesome forest, and

there in the shape of a dragon mounted guard over it. Mime, the dwarf,

in order to keep the same treasure under some sort of oversight,

took up his abode in the forest, at a respectful distance from the

flame-breathing monster. Alberich haunted the immediate neighbourhood

of the cave.

Thus it happened that Sieglinde, directed by the Valkyries to that

region, where she should be safest from Wotan's anger, was overheard

by Mime, out in the lonesome wood, moaning in her trouble. He assisted

her into his cave. There Siegfried was born, and there Sieglinde

died. Mime reared the "Wälsungen-shoot" with solicitous care, in

the ulterior view that this scion of a strong race when grown to

man's size should kill Fafner for him and get him the Ring.

At the rise of the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with

a heavy difficulty. He is fashioning a sword for Siegfried,--still

another sword, after ever so many,--realising even as he works that

no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands.

"The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant would

stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it was shaped

he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made him a child's

plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he cannot use Siegfried

for his purposes until he have equipped him with a sword. "A sword

there is," he continues his meditation, "which he could not break.

The fragments of Nothung he never could shatter, could I weld the

strong pieces together, which all my art cannot compass! Nothung

alone could be of use,... and I cannot weld it, Nothung, the sword!"

Half-heartedly he has resumed his toil, when a joyous shout is

heard from the forest, of which a sun-shot patch glimmers through

the cave's mouth, and there storms in, driving before him a tethered

bear, a magnificent youth, clad in skins, a silver horn at his side.

The splendour of Siegfried's appearance is constantly referred

to, the qualifications applied to him suggesting most frequently

an effect he shed of light. This child of the unhappy Wälsungen

seems to have been indelibly stamped with the joy of their one

golden hour. Of Siegmund's tragic consciousness of frustration,

of Sieglinde's sufferings, there is no trace in their vigorous

offspring; but the superabundant vitality of joy which lifted them

to the lovers' seventh heaven for one triumphant hour is all in his

young blood. He is big, strong, sane, comely, fearless, simple,

ignorant of all mean passions and interests; pensive for moments,

gay for hours-nearly boisterous; frank and outspoken to the point

of brutality; unmannerly at times to the point of ruffianism; but

the dice are loaded to secure our cherishing him right through his

bright course, by that irresistible, ingrain joyousness of his,

born of strength, balance, fearlessness.

Laughing immoderately, he urges the bear against Mime, who flees

hither and thither to elude the fearful pair. "I am come in double

force, the better to corner you.... Brownie, ask for the sword!"

When assured by the trembling Mime that the sword is in readiness,

he releases and sends home his shaggy ally. But when Mime hands him

the newly finished sword, and he strikes it on the anvil, it flies

to bits. The angry boy expresses his wish that he had smashed the

sword on the disgraceful bungler's skull. "Shall such a braggart go

on bragging? He prates me of giants and lusty fighting; of gallant

deeds and solid armour; he will forge weapons for me, provide me with

swords; he vaunts his art as if he could do something of account;

but let me take hold of the thing he has hammered, with a single

grip I crush flat the idle rubbish! If the creature were not so

utterly mean, I would drop him into the forge-fire with all the

stuff of his forging, the old imbecile hobgoblin! There might be

an end then to vexation!" He casts himself fuming on a stone seat

and turns his face toward the wall. The dwarf, who has kept his

distance from the storming youth, tries to quiet him, reminds him

of his benefits, of his teachings on the subject of gratitude.

Ingratiatingly he brings him food. Siegfried without turning dashes

spit and pipkin from his hands. The little man affects a deeply

hurt sensibility. He rehearses at length all Siegfried has to thank

him for, material necessities, education,--"With clever counsel

I made you clever, with subtle wisdom I taught you wit...." This

tale of benefactions has been gone over so often that the dwarf has

reached a fine glibness in it; the smooth air on which he enumerates

the instances of his kindness has a peculiar cast of hypocrisy. He

is so touched by the contemplation finally of his own goodness

and Siegfried's hardness of heart that he falls to weeping. "And

for all I have borne this is now the reward, that the hot-tempered

boy torments and hates me!"

Siegfried has been calmly gazing into Mime's eyes; trying through

these to get at the truth of him. Mime expresses surprise that

after so many unquestionable services the boy should hate him; and

the boy is not himself without a touch of wonder at the invincible

antipathy with which this creature inspires him, to whom yet he is

actually indebted for many good offices. "Much you have taught me,

Mime, and many a thing have I learned of you; but that which you

have most cared to teach me, never have I succeeded in learning:

how I could bear the sight of you! If you bring me food and drink,

disgust takes the place of dinner; if you spread an easy couch for

me, sleep on it becomes difficult; if you endeavour to teach me

wise conversation, I prefer to be dumb and dull. Whenever I set

eyes on you, I recognise as ill-done everything you do; whether I

watch you stand, or waggle and walk, ducking, nidnodding, blinking

with your eyes, my impulse is to catch the nidnodder by the scruff

of the neck, to hurl out of the way for good and all the odious

blinker! That is my manner, Mime, of being fond of you. Now, if

you are wise, help me to know a thing which I have vainly reflected

upon: I run into the woods to be rid of you; how does it happen

that I come back? All animals are dearer to me than you, trees

and birds, the fish in the stream, I am fonder of them all than

I am of you; then how does it happen that I still come back? If

you are wise, make clear to me this thing!" "My child," replies

Mime, "you are informed by that circumstance how near I lie to

your heart!" "I tell you I cannot bear you! Forget it not so soon!"

Mime argues that such a thing is impossible, is out of nature;

that what to the young bird is the old bird, which feeds it in the

nest until it is fledged, that is to Siegfried, inevitably, Mime!

This simile of Mime's suggests to Siegfried a further question. In

asking it he has one of those brief accesses of pensiveness which

endear him, disclosing the existence of a common human tenderness,

after all, under that sturdy wrapping of joy befitting the child

of demigods. "Now, since you are so wise, tell me still another

thing: When the birds were singing so blithely in Spring, the one

luring the other, you told me, as I wished to know, that they were

male and female. They billed and cooed so engagingly, and would not

leave each other; they built a nest and brooded in it; there was

a fluttering presently of young wings, and the two cared for the

young. I saw how, in the same way, the deer rested in the forest,

in pairs; how even wild faxes and wolves did this. The male brought

food to the lair, the female nursed the cubs. I learned from seeing

this what love is--I never robbed the mother of her young...." The

music has been heaving and falling, as if with the warm palpitation

of a vast breast, Nature's own, blissful with love and happy creative

force. "Now, where, Mime, is your loving mate, that I may call her

mother?" Mime becomes cross: "What has come over you, mad boy?

Now, what a numbskull it is! Are you a bird or a fox?" And at

Siegfried's next question he chafes: "You are to believe what I tell

you: I am your father and mother at the same time!" But Siegfried

vigorously objects: "There you lie, unspeakable gawk! How the young

resemble their parents I have luckily observed for myself. More

than once I have come to a clear stream: I have seen the trees

and animals mirrored in it; the sun and clouds, exactly as they

are, appear repeated on the shining surface. My own image, too, I

have seen. Altogether different from you I seemed to myself: there

is as much likeness between a toad and a gleaming fish, but never

yet did a fish crawl out of a toad!" This latter bit in its short

extent gives an amusing, characteristic illustration of Wagner's

method of painting with notes. With the first phrase, Siegfried's

impatient exclamation, comes the motif of Siegfried's impetuosity;

then, as he is describing it, a representation of the clear stream;

upon this is sketched the image of Siegfried, in the notes of his

proper motif, to which is added a bar of the heroism-of-the-Wälsungen

motif, indicating his resemblance to the father before him. At his

mention of the toad, his metaphor for Mime, we hear the hammer of

the Nibelung; and at his mention of the gleaming fish, the swimming

phrase that accompanies the watery evolutions of the Rhine-maidens.

The ingeniousness of all this would not perhaps of itself especially

recommend the piece, were it not that the scheme is worked out to

such beautiful purpose that the whole thing is lovely, and that,

though one should know nothing whatever of the motifs, his ear

must be charmed.

Satisfied by his own logic that Mime cannot be his progenitor,

Siegfried now himself answers his earlier question: "When I run

into the woods in the thought of forsaking you, how does it happen

that I still return home? It is because from you I am to learn who

are my father and mother!" Mime evades him: "What father! What

mother! Idle question!" But Siegfried catches him by the throat,

and the terrified dwarf communicates, grudgingly, a scant fact or

two of his history. "Oh, ungrateful and wicked child! now hear

for what it is you hate me. I am neither your father nor any kin

of yours, and yet to me you owe your life...." Making his own part

in the story as meritorious as possible, he relates his taking

into shelter the woman whom he had found moaning out in the wild

woods. Siegfried, for once penetrated with sadness, wonder, and

awe, breathes forth softly, when the sorrowful story is ended,

"My mother--died then--of me?" He tries by questions to complete

the dwarf's bare account: "Whence am I named Siegfried?" "Thus

did your mother bid me call you." "What was my mother's name?"

Mime feigns to have forgotten, but, roughly pressed, recalls it.

"Then, I ask you, what was my father's name?" "Him I never saw!"

"But my mother spoke the name?" "She only said that he had been

slain." Siegfried is smitten with the suspicion that Mime may be

lying to him, and demands some proof of all this which he has heard.

Mime, after a moment's resistance, in terror of the boy's rising

wrath, fetches from its hiding and shows him the pieces of a broken

sword. "This was given me by your mother. For trouble, cost and

care, she left it as paltry remuneration. Behold it! A broken sword!

Your father, she said, carried it in the last battle, when he was

slain." Siegfried's strong good spirits have already returned.

"And these fragments," he cries, with enthusiasm, "you are to weld

together for me. Then I shall swing my proper sword! Hurry, Mime!

Quick to work!... Cheat me not with trumpery toys! In these fragments

alone I place my faith. If I find you idle, if you join them

imperfectly, if there are flaws in the hard steel, you shall learn

burnishing from me! For this very day, I swear it, I mean to have

the sword!" "What do you want this very day of the sword?" Mime

inquires in alarm. Siegfried, his heart inexpressibly lightened

by the positive knowledge that Mime is neither father nor any kin

to him, bursts into merry singing: "To go away, out of the woods

into the world. Never shall I come back!... As the fish gaily swims

in the flood, as the finch freely flies afar, so shall I fly, so

shall I dart... that I may never, Mime, see you more!" Off he storms

into the forest, leaving Mime shouting after him, a prey to the

utmost anxiety. The dwarf's difficulty is now twofold: "To the

old care I have a new one added!" How to retain the wild fellow

and guide him to Fafner's nest, and how to mend those pieces of

stubborn steel. "No forge is there whose glow can soften the

thorough-bred fragments. No dwarf's hammer can compel the hard

pieces...." In unmitigated despair, void of counsel, he drops on

his seat behind the anvil and weeps.

Ushered by great calm chords, measured and dignified as the gait

of a god on his travels, a wayfarer appears at the entrance of the

cave. He wears an ample deep-blue mantle, and for staff carries

a spear. On his head is a broad hat, the brim of which dips so

as to conceal one of his eyes. It is Wotan. Since parting from

Brünnhilde he has had no heart for warfare, no heart to ride to

battle without the "laughing joy of his eyes." Alone, unresting,

he has wandered all over the wide earth in search of counsel and,

very likely, distraction. A spectator he is in these days and not

an actor. His spirit has reached a state of philosophic calm. He has

learned better certainly than to meddle any more with anything that

concerns the accursed Ring. He is brought into the neighbourhood of

the still interested actors in that old drama in part by curiosity;

in part, no doubt, by the wish to watch the actions of Siegfried, his

beloved children's child. But in some faintest degree, at least, it

would seem, he is brought here by the invincible need to influence

these fortunes just a little, though it be firmly fixed that he

is not to try directly or indirectly to divert the Ring into any

channel which shall bring it eventually to himself. All else being

equal, he had a little rather strengthen Mime's chances of getting

the Ring, through Siegfried, than inactively see it fall to the

inveterate enemy, Alberich.

At the greeting he speaks from the threshold to the "wise smith,"

Mime starts up in affright: "Who is it, pursuing me into the forest

wilderness?" "Wanderer is the world's name for me. Far have I wandered,

much have I bestirred myself on the back of the earth." "Then bestir

yourself now! and do not loiter here, if Wanderer is the world's name

for you!" Mime, with his head full of his dark little projects, has

a deep dread of spies and interference. At every step the Wanderer

takes further into his dwelling, he utters a sharper protest; and at

every protest the Wanderer calmly advances a step further. "Through

much research, much have I learned," speaks Wanderer, "I could

impart to many a one things of importance to him; I could deliver

many a one from that which troubles him--from the gnawing care

of the heart." And after still another irritated dismissal from

Mime: "Many a one has imagined himself to be wise, but the thing

which he most needed to know, he knew not. I gave him leave to ask

me what should help him, and enlightened him by my word." And after

again being nervously shown the door: "Here I sit by the fireside,"

speaks blandly Wanderer, suiting the action to the word, "and I

set my head as stake in a match of wits. My head is yours, you

have won it, if you do not, by questioning me, succeed in learning

what shall profit you; if I do not, by my instructions, redeem the

pledge."

It is plain enough that if Mime would now expose to the Wanderer

the source of the gnawing care at his heart, and ask him how Nothung

might be welded, he would receive the information. Wotan is clearly

eager to give it, yet cannot do so directly, or he would be too

crudely meddling again in the Ring affair: he cannot press on him

his counsel, but, at his old trick of ingenuous double-dealing,

might by means of this guessing-game make shift to convey it to

him.

Mime, old and wise as he is, has yet in certain directions a dwarfed

understanding; certainly not enough generosity to trust anybody,

or conceive of a disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His

whole concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless personage.

"I must question him in such a manner as to trap him," he says to

himself. It is agreed that he shall have three questions. He sits

brooding a moment, trying to find something very difficult indeed.

The motif of Mime's cogitations, which has already been frequently

heard in this act, gives amusingly the unheroic colour of the sordid

little mind's workings. He fixes upon questions concerning things

which might be supposed little known to a wanderer of human descent,

even such a much-travelled and conceited one. First: What race

reigns in the depths of the earth? Second: What race rests upon the

back of the earth? Third: What race dwells on the cloudy heights?

Wotan readily answers all these, giving bits of the histories of

the races in question, the Nibelungen, the Giants, and the Gods.

As he describes the spear of Wotan, whose lord all must eternally

obey, he with an involuntary gesture of command brings his spear

hard down on the stone floor. Faint thunder results. Terror falls

upon Mime, who by the light shining for a moment from his countenance,

has recognised the god. "You have solved the questions and saved your

head," he says hurriedly, without looking Wotan in the face. "Now,

Wanderer, go your way!" But the Wanderer declares that according to

custom in such contests, it is the dwarf's turn now to answer three

questions or lose his head. "It is a long time," Mime ventures timidly,

"since I left my native place; a long time since I departed from the

bosom of earth, my mother; I once saw the gleam of Wotan's eye as

he looked into the cave; my mother-wit dwindles before him...."

But the wee fellow has no mean conceit of his wisdom, and is really

not as uneasy as might be expected of one in his position. "Perhaps

I shall be so lucky," he suggests, not without complacency, "as,

under this compulsion, to deliver the dwarf's head!" Wotan asks him,

for the first question,--and the pain of the memories oppressing

him is translated to us by the motif of parting, the motif of "last

times," while the god's tones are infinitely tender--"What race is

it to which Wotan shows himself stern, and which yet he loves the

best of all living?" Glibly Mime answers, showing a full acquaintance

with the circumstances, "The Wälsungen." Wotan passes on to the

second question: "A wise Nibelung keeps watch over Siegfried. He

is to kill Fafner for him, that he may get the Ring and become

lord of the Hort. What sword now must Siegfried wield, if he is

to deal death to Fafner?" Mime, delighted with himself, readily

replies: "Nothung is the name of a notable sword.... The fragments

of it are preserved by a wise smith, for he knows that with the

Wotan-sword alone an intrepid stupid boy, Siegfried, shall destroy

the dragon." He rubs his hands in goblin glee. "Am I, dwarf, in

the second instance still to retain my head?" Wanderer, with a

laugh for his antics, felicitates him: "The most keen-witted are

you among the wise; who can equal you in acuteness? But seeing you

are so cunning as to use the boyish hero for your dwarf-purposes,

with the third question I now make bold: Tell me, wise armourer,

who, out of the strong fragments, shall forge Nothung anew?"

Consternation falls upon the dwarf. Who, indeed? Was not that question

the very hub around which turned all his troubled reflections? Had

it not been that which was forcing tears from him at the moment

of the Wanderer's arrival? He runs hither and thither distracted,

in broken exclamations admitting that he himself cannot forge the

sword, and how should he know who can perform the miracle? The

Wanderer rises from his seat beside the hearth. "Three questions

you were free to ask. Three times I was open to consultation. You

inquired of things idle and remote, but that which was closest to

you, that which might profit you, did not enter your mind. Now

that I have guessed it, you lose your senses with fright. I have

won the witty head. Now, brave conqueror of Fafner, hear, doomed

dwarf: Only one who has never known fear can forge Nothung anew."

On his way to the mouth of the cave, he turns for another word to

the chap-fallen Mime: "Look out for your wise head from this day

forth: I leave it in forfeit to him who has never learned fear!"

With a laugh for the double-horned dilemma in which he leaves the

"honest dwarf," he passes forth into the woods.

As Mime gazes after him, violent trembling seizes the poor little

smith. The flashing among the leaves of Wotan's winged horse his

terror mistakes for the flaming of Fafner's gaping jaws; and the

sound of a rushing approach for the monster crashing toward him

through the underbrush. With the cry: "The dragon is upon me! Fafner!

Fafner!" he cowers behind the anvil.

The alarming noise proves to have been only Siegfried coming with

characteristic impetuosity to ask for his sword. "Hey, there!

Lazy-bones! Have you finished? Quick! What success with the sword?"

Mime is not in sight. His voice is heard, faint, from his hiding-place:

"Is it you, child? Are you alone?" Siegfried for some time can draw

no satisfactory answer from him, no matter how roughly pressed.

The dwarf is caught between two difficulties, and must first of all

things try to think out for himself the safest course of action.

Only by one who has never known fear can Nothung, the indispensable,

be forged. "Too wise am I for such work!" he soliloquizes. On the

other hand, his wise head is forfeit to one who has never learned

fear. Of the two difficulties, the latter is obviously the one to

be first attended to. Siegfried fills the description dangerously

well of the foretold fatal enemy. "How shall I contrive to teach

him fear?" is Mime's nearest interest. Siegfried, irritated by

his continued hesitation, finally catches hold of him. "Ha? Must

I lend a hand? What have you forged and furbished to-day?" "With

no care but for your welfare," answers Mime, "I was sunk in thought

as to how I should instruct you in a thing of great importance."

"You were sunk quite under the seat," laughs Siegfried; "what of

great importance did you discover there?" "I there learned fear

for your sake, that I might teach it to you, dunce." "What about

fear?" Siegfried asks. "You know nothing about it, and you are

thinking of going from the woods out into the world? Of what use

to you would be the strongest sword, if you had no knowledge of

fear?... Into the crafty world I shall not let you fare before you

have learned fear." "If it is an art, why am I unacquainted with

it? Out with it! What about fear?" "Have you never felt,"--asks

Mime, in a voice which at the suggestion of his own words falls to

quaking, "have you never felt, in the dark woods, at twilight,... when

there are sounds in the distance of rustling, humming and soughing,

when wild muttering gusts sweep past, disorderly fire-wisps flicker

around you, a swelling confused sound surges toward you,--have

you not felt a shuddering horror seize upon your limbs? A burning

chill shakes your frame, your senses swim and fail; the alarmed

heart trembling in your breast hammers to the point of bursting?

If you have never felt these things, fear is unknown to you!" The

music of fear is a darkened and discoloured fire-music through

which we recognise, as if under a disguise veiling something of its

beauty, the motif of Brünnhilde's sleep. If one looks for reasons,

one can suppose the reference to be, as to a type of fearful things,

to the terror-inspiring barrier surrounding Brünnhilde; and imagine

a jesting intimation that fear, as Siegfried should eventually

learn it, is the sensation suspending the heart-beats at sight of

a beautiful woman in her sleep.

Siegfried has listened to Mime in amused wonder: "Strange exceedingly

must that be! My heart, I feel, stands firm and hard in its place.

That creeping and shuddering, glowing and shivering, turning hot

and turning dizzy, hammering and trembling, I wish to feel the

terror of it, I long for that delight! But how can you, Mime, bring

it about?" "Just follow me. I will guide you to some purpose. I

have thought it all out. I know a dreadful dragon; he has slain

already and swallowed many; Fafner will teach you fear, if you

follow me to his lair." "Where is his lair?" "Neidhöhle it is called.

(_Neid:_ envy; _Höhle:_ cavern.) Eastward it lies at the end of the

wood." "Then it is not far from the world?" "The world is close

by." "You are to take me there, and when I have learned fear, away,

into the world! So quick! Give me my sword! I will swing it out in

the world!" Mime confesses that he neither has mended, nor ever

can mend, the sword in question. "No dwarf's strength is equal to

it. More likely," he suggests, "one who knows no fear may discover

the art!" Siegfried, heartily weary of Mime's paltering, snatches up

the fragments of Nothung: "Here, the pieces! Away with the bungler!

My father's steel doubtless will let itself be welded by me. Myself

I will forge the sword!" And he falls to work. "If you had taken

diligent pains to learn the art, it would now, of a truth, profit

you," remarks Mime; "but you were always lazy at the lesson. What

proper work can you do now?" "What the master cannot do," Siegfried

aptly retorts, "the apprentice might, if he had always minded him?

Take yourself off! Meddle not with this, or you may tumble with it

into the fire!" He heaps fuel on the hearth, fastens the sword in

a vice and starts filing it. Mime watches him, and at this which

looks like folly, cannot restrain the exclamation: "What are you

doing? Take the solder! You are filing away the file!" But the

disposition of the young fellow without fear shows in his method

with the sword. With a brave thoroughness he reduces the whole

blade to steel filings. Mime follows all his movements. "Now I

am as old as this cavern and these woods, but such a thing have I

never seen! He will succeed with the sword, that I plainly apprehend.

In his fearlessness he will make it whole. The Wanderer knew it

well! How, now, shall I hide my endangered head? It is forfeit to

the intrepid boy unless Fafner shall teach him fear--But, woe's

me, poor wretch, how will he slay the dragon, if he learns fear from

him? How will he obtain the Ring for me? Accursed dilemma! Here

am I fast caught, unless I find me wise counsel how to bring under

compulsion the fearless one himself...." "Quick, Mime!" Siegfried

interrupts Mime's meditations; "what is the name of the sword which

I have ground into filings?" "Nothung is the name of the notable

sword; your mother gave me the information." Siegfried at work

falls to lusty singing, a song of primitive character, of a kind

with what one can suppose Tubal-cain singing at his ancient anvil.

We see him pumping the forge-bellows while the steel melts, pouring

the metal into a mould, cooling the mould in a water-trough, breaking

the plaster, heating the sword, hammering the red blade, cooling

it again, riveting the handle, polishing the whole,--all of which

actions his song celebrates: "Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!

(_Neidliches Schwert_ is literally "covetable sword") Why must

you of old be shattered? To powder I have ground your sharp

magnificence. I now melt the filings in the crucible. Hoho! Hoho!

Hahei! Hahei! Blow, bellows, brighten the glow! Wild in the forest

grew a tree. I hewed it down, I burned the brown ash to charcoal.

It lies heaped now on the hearth. The coals of the tree, how bravely

they burn, how bright and clear they glow! Upward they fly in a

spray of sparks and melt the steel-dust. Nothung! Nothung! Notable

sword! Your powdered steel is melting, in your own sweat you are

swimming, soon I shall swing you as my sword!"

Mime during this has been revolving his own problem, and has hit

upon a plan which seems to him to meet all the difficulties of

his case: Siegfried, beyond a doubt, will forge the sword and kill

Fafner. While he is tired and heated from the encounter, Mime will

offer him a drink brewed from simples of his culling, a few drops

of which will plunge the boy into deep sleep, when, with the weapon

he is at this moment forging, Mime will clear him out of the way and

take possession of Ring and treasure. Enchanted with his inspiration,

he sets to work at once preparing the somniferous drink.

Siegfried is singing at the top of his lungs: "In the water flowed

the stream of fire, it hissed aloud in anger, but the cold tamed

and chilled it; in the water it flows no more, stiff and hard it

is become, the lordly steel--but hot blood will bathe it soon.

Now sweat again that I may forge you, Nothung, notable sword!" He

catches sight of Mime pottering with the cooking utensils. "There

is a wise smith come to shame," the old man answers the youth's

mocking inquiry; "the teacher receives lessons from his pupil;

all is up with art for the old one, he will serve the young one

as cook! While the young one makes iron into broth, the old one

will prepare a dish of eggs!" With impish relish of the inwardness

of the situation, he stirs the mixture in the pot.

"Hoho! Hahei! Hoho!" Siegfried proceeds with his work and his singing;

"shape, my hammer, a hard sword! Blood once dyed your pallid blue,

its trickling red brightened you, you laughed coldly, you cooled

off the hot liquid. Now the fire has made you glow red, your soft

hardness yields to the hammer; you dart angry sparks at me, because

I have tamed you, stubborn! The merry sparks, how they delight

me! Anger adorns the brave. You are gaily laughing at me, though

you feign to be angry and sullen. Hoho! Hahei! By means of heat

and hammer I have achieved it, with stalwart blows I have shaped

you; now let the red shame vanish, become as hard and cold as you

can...."

Mime is meanwhile revelling in dreams of the greatness which is

to follow upon his acquisition of the Ring. He fairly skips up

and down as he thinks of it all: Brother Alberich himself reduced

to subjection, the whole world bowing at the nod of his, Mime's,

head. No more toil, others to toil for him.... "Mime is king, Prince

of the Nibelungen, lord over all! Hei, Mime! who would have thought

it of you?"

"Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!" harmoniously bellows Siegfried;

"now you are fast in your hilt. You were in two, I have forced you

into one. No blow after this shall break you. In the dead father's

hand the steel snapped, the living son forged it anew; now its

bright gleam flashes like laughter, its sharp edge cuts clean.

Nothung! Nothung! Young and renewed! I have brought you back to

life. You lay dead there, in fragments; now you flash lightning,

defiant and brave! Show caitiffs your gleam! Strike the traitor!

Fell the villain!" He waves over his head the finished sword: "Look,

Mime, you smith--thus cuts Siegfried's sword!" He brings it down

upon the anvil, which falls apart, cleft from top to bottom. Mime

tumbles over with amazement.