II

The next scene shows the woods before Fafner's cave. It is night.

Alberich is dimly distinguishable, lurking among the rocks, brooding

his dark thoughts, as he keeps covert watch over the treasure. He

is startled by what seems an untimely break of day, accompanied by

a great gust of wind. This defines itself as a galloping gleam--a

shining horse rushing through the forest. "Is it already the slayer

of the dragon?" he wonders; "is it he, already, who shall kill

Fafner?" A moonbeam breaking through the clouds reveals the form

of the Wanderer advancing toward Neidhöhle. The enemies see and

recognise each other. Alberich, though greatly alarmed at this

inopportune presence, breaks into angry vituperation: "Out of the

way, shameless robber.... Your intrigues have done harm enough!"

"I am come to look on, not to act," Wotan replies, grandly mild and

unruffled; "who shall deny me a wanderer's right of way?" Alberich,

as if words of offence were actually missiles, showers them thick

upon the unmoved god. He points out, virulently, the strength of

his own position compared with Wotan's, in whose hand that spear

of his must fly to pieces should he break a covenant established

as sacred by the runes carved on its shaft. Wanderer, a shade weary

of such a berating, yet losing little of his placidity, retorts:

"Not through any runes of truth to covenants did my spear bind

you, malignant, to me; you my spear forces to bow before me by

its strength; I carefully keep it therefore for purposes of war."

"How haughtily do you threaten in your defiant strength," the rabid

Alberich continues, "yet how uneasy is all within your breast....

Doomed to death through my curse is Fafner, guardian of the treasure.

Who will inherit from him? Will the illustrious Hort come once

more into the possession of the Nibelung? The thought gnaws you

with unsleeping care. For, let me hold it again in this fist, far

otherwise than thick-witted giants shall I employ the power of the

Ring; then let the holy keeper of the heroes tremble; the heights

of Walhalla I shall storm with the hosts of Hella, the world then

will be mine to govern!" Tranquilly Wotan receives this: "I know

your meaning, but it creates in me no uneasiness. He shall rule

through the Ring who obtains it." This calm of Wotan's gives Alberich

the idea that the god must, so to speak, have cards up his sleeve.

"On the sons of heroes," he suggests ironically, "you place your

insolent reliance, fond blossoms of your own blood. Good care have

you taken of a young fellow--not so?--who cunningly shall pluck the

fruit which you dare not yourself break off?" "Not with me"--Wotan

cuts short the discussion, "wrangle with Mime. Danger threatens you

through your brother. He is bringing to this spot a youth who is

to slay Fafner for him. The boy knows nothing of me. The Nibelung

uses him for his own purposes. Wherefore, I tell you, comrade,

do freely as you choose!" Alberich can scarcely believe that he

has heard aright. "You will keep your hand from the treasure?"

Serenely and broadly, Wotan declares--a touch of that tenderness

in his tone which the thought of the Wälsungen always has power

to arouse--"Whom I love I leave to act for himself: let him stand

or fall, his own lord is he. I have no use save for heroes!" This

sounds very fair; to Alberich almost too fair. He presses Wotan

with further questions. The answers are elusive as oracles, but

satisfy Alberich of thus much: that Wotan is himself out of the

struggle for the Ring. To point his personal disinterestedness,

the god even offers to wake the dragon, that Alberich may warn

him of the approaching danger and peradventure receive in token of

gratitude--the Ring! We suspect in this Wotan's taste for a joke,

unless it be an exhibition of that other trait of the god's, the

need to gratify his conscience with a comedy of fairness. At this

moment he is not, it is true, interfering; but he is confidently

watching the play of forces set working by him long ago. The strong

Siegfried armed with the rejuvenated Sieges-schwert is a force

having its impulse originally from him. At this moment, perhaps

because the events immediately impending have cast their shadows

across the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is

in no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring. To

Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who disturbs

my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif

is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead

of the ponderous tread of the brothers it suggests the muffled

ponderous beat of a gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich

explain to the dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him

safety. Having heard them out, Fafner, unseen in the cave, gives

a long lazy comfortable yawn. "I lie and possess! Let me sleep!"

Wotan laughs. "Well, Alberich, the plan failed. But abuse me no

more, you rogue! One thing, I further enjoin you, keep well in

mind: Everything is after its kind, and this kind you cannot alter!"

The broad Erda-motif accompanies this maxim. "Take a firm stand! Put

your skill to use with Mime, your brother. He is of the kind you

understand better. What is of a different kind, learn now to know,

too...." When Wotan disappears, the galloping is heard, through the

storm-wind that for a moment agitates the leaves of the forest,

of his rising Luft-ross. His obscure last words have left Alberich

puzzled, sorer and angrier than ever. The air is full of curse-motif.

"Laugh on, you light-minded luxurious tribe of the gods! I shall

still see you all gone to destruction. While the gold shines in the

light there is a wise one keeping watch--His spite will circumvent

you all!" He hides himself among the tumbled rocks near the cave-mouth

from the brightening light of dawn.

Mime enters guiding Siegfried. "This is the spot, go no further!"

Siegfried seats himself under a great tree; they have been travelling

through the woods all night. "This is the place where I am to learn

fear?" he inquires light-heartedly. The excursion, as far as he

knows, has for its single object to teach him that art. He is not

of a suspicious turn and does not ask what interest in his education

has Mime, in whose affection he instinctively does not believe.

"Now, Mime," he instructs the dwarf, "you are after this to avoid

me. If I do not learn here what I should learn, I shall fare further

alone, I shall finally be rid of you!" "Believe me, dear boy,"

says the dwarf, "if you do not learn fear to-day and here, with

difficulty shall you learn it elsewhere and at another time!" He

directs the youth's eye to the black mouth of the dragon-hole and

describes with griesly detail the monster inhabiting it. Siegfried

listens unimpressed. Hearing, in answer to his inquiry, that the

monster has a heart and that it is in the usual place: "I will

drive Nothung into the overweening brute's heart!" he determines

lightly. He is sceptical with regard to the lesson in fear which

he has been promised. "Just wait!" Mime warns him. "What I said

was empty sound in your ears. You must hear and see the creature

himself.... Remain where you are. When the sun climbs high, watch

for the dragon. He will come out of his cave and pass along this

way to go and drink at the spring." "Mime," says Siegfried, with

a laugh for his foolish big-boy joke, "if you are to be at the

spring I will not hinder the dragon from going there. I will not

drive Nothung into his spleen until he has drunk you up. Wherefore,

take my advice: do not lie down to rest at the water's edge, but

take yourself off as far as ever you can, and never come back!" Mime

is too near, as he thinks, the hour of triumph, to take offence.

May he not be permitted, after the fight, to refresh the victor

with a drink? He will be near. Let Siegfried call him if he needs

advice,... or if he finds the sensation of fear delectable!

When Siegfried has freed himself of Mime, whose company seems to

become more and more unendurable as he is nearer parting from him

for ever, he stretches out again under the great tree, folding his

arms beneath his head. "That that fellow is not my father," he

muses, "how glad am I of that! The fresh woodland only begins to

please me, the glad daylight to smile to me, now that the offensive

wretch is out of my sight!" He drives away the thought of him and

lets sweeter reflections gradually absorb him. The leaves rustle

and waver; delicate shafts of sunshine drop through them and play

over the forest floor. The exquisiteness of the hour, by its natural

power over the mood, turns the lonely boy's thoughts toward the only

human beings life has so far given him to love,--and in images so

vague and distant! "How did my father look?" he wonders dreamily,

and answers himself: "Like me, of course!" After a longer spell

of gazing up among the trees, while the soft influences of the

fragrant woodland world and lovely summer day still further overmaster

him: "But--how did my mother look?... That I cannot in the least

picture! Like the doe's, I am sure, shone her limpid lustrous

eyes--only, more beautiful by far!" The thought of her death fills

him with boundless sadness, but not sharp or bitter,--dreamy and

sweet from its tenderness. "When she had born me, wherefore did

she die? Do human mothers always die of their sons? How sad were

that! Oh, might I, son, behold my mother!... My mother--a woman

of humankind!" The motif of mother-love is but a slight, beautiful

variation from the motif of love in nature accompanying Siegfried's

reference to the deer paired in the woods, that strain like the

heaving of a great heart oppressed by its burden of love. The thought

of his never-known mother draws forth sighs from Siegfried's lips.

A long time he lies silent. The Freia-motif, the motif of beauty,

clambers upward like a dewy branch of wild clematis. All is still

around, but the little wind-stirred leaves, which weave and weave

as if a delicate green gold-shot fabric of sound. Against this airy

tapestry suddenly stands forth like a vivid pattern the warbling

of a bird. Over and over, with pretty variations, the bird gives

its note. It catches Siegfried's attention; he listens. "You sweet

little bird," he at last addresses the singer up among the branches,

"I never heard you before. Is your home here in the forest?..." The

thought occurs to him, so natural to the simple: "Could I but understand

the sweet babbling, certainly it would tell me something--perhaps

about the dear mother!" He remembers hearing from Mime that one

might come to understand the language of the birds. Attractive

possibility! Pricked by his desire at once to bring it about, he

springs up, cuts one of the reeds growing around the pool where

Fafner goes to drink, and fashions it into a pipe. He tries upon

it to imitate the bird-note. "If I can sing his language," is his

reasoning, "I shall understand, no doubt, what he sings!" After

repeated attempts, charmingly comical, and much vain mending of

the reed with the edge of Nothung, he grows impatient, is ashamed

of his unsuccess before the "roguish listener." He tosses away the

silly reed and takes his silver horn. "A merry wild-wood note,

such as I can play, you shall hear! I have sounded it as a call to

draw to me some dear companion. So far, nothing better has come

than a wolf or a bear. Let us see, now, what it attracts this time,

whether a dear comrade will come to the call?" He places the horn

to his lips and sounds the cheery _Lock-weise_ (lure-call) over

and over, with long sustained notes between the calls, during which

he looks up at the bird, to see how he likes it. As a variation

he plays the motifs which describe himself, the large heroic

Siegfried-motif, and then the gay, rash, lesser Nothung-Siegfried

motif. He has returned to the Lock-weise, and is repeating it with

obstinate persistence, a-mind not to stop until the companion his

lonesomeness yearns for shall have answered him when a bellowing

sound behind him makes him face about. We had been warned already

by the _Wurm_-motif, heard before in Nibelheim, when Alberich by

the power of the Tarnhelm turned himself into a dragon. Siegfried

at sight of Fafner, whom the loud Lock-weise has drawn from his

slumbers and his cave, laughs aloud: "My tune has charmed forth

something truly lovely! A tidy comrade you would make for me!"

"What is that?" roars Fafner, fixing the glare of his eyes upon

the shapely form of Siegfried, insignificant in size, as he counts

it. "Haha!" cries Siegfried, enchanted to hear from an animal talk

which he can understand. "If you are an animal that can speak,

you very likely can teach me something. Here is one who does not

know fear; can he learn it from you?" "Is this insolence?" asks

the amazed brute. "Call it insolence or what you please, but I

shall fall upon you bodily, unless you teach me fear." Fafner laughs

grimly, as if he licked his chops: "I wanted drink, I now find

meat as well!" He shows the red interior of his vast jaws fringed

with teeth. There is a brief further exchange of threats and jeers,

then Fafner bellows: "Pruh! Come on, swaggering child!" Siegfried

shouts: "Look out, bellower, the swaggerer comes!" and, Nothung in

hand, leaps to the assault. Vainly Fafner spouts flame to blind

and terrify him. The fight ends as it must. The dragon falls beneath

the Wotan-sword, wielded by the hero without fear.

With his failing breath, in a tone strangely void of resentment,

the dragon questions his slip of an adversary, so unexpectedly

victorious: "Who are you, intrepid boy, that have pierced my heart?

Who incited the child to the murderous deed? Your brain never conceived

that which you have done...." A motif we have come to know well

punctuates the dying speech of this still another victim of the

curse on the Ring. "I do not know much, as yet," Siegfried replies;

"I do not know even who I am. But it was yourself roused my temper

to fight with you." The last of the giants, his hollow voice growing

fainter, tells the "clear-eyed boy," the "rosy hero," who it is he

has slain, and warns him of the treachery surrounding the owner

of the Hort. "Tell me further from whom I am descended," speaks

Siegfried; "wise, of a truth, do you appear, wild one, in dying.

Guess it from my name. Siegfried I am called!" But the Worm sighing,

"Siegfried!..." gives up the breath.

After a moment's contemplation of the mountainous dead, Siegfried

resolutely drags from his breast the sword which he had driven

in up to the hilt. A drop of the dragon's blood spurts against

his hand. With the exclamation: "The blood burns like fire!" he

lifts his finger to his mouth. At once his attention is arrested

by the voices of the birds. With increasing interest he harkens:

It seems to him almost as if the birds were speaking to him; a

distinct impression he receives of words. "Is it the effect of

tasting the blood?" he wonders. "That curious little bird there,

hark, what is he saying to me?" From the tree-top come clear words

on a bird's warble: "Hei, to Siegfried belongs now the Nibelung's

treasure! Oh, might he find the Hort in the cave! If he should

win the Tarnhelm it would serve him for delightful adventures;

but if he should find the Ring it would make him sovereign of the

world!" Siegfried has listened with bated breath. "Thanks, dear

little bird, for your advice. Gladly will I do as you bid!" He

enters the cave. As he disappears, Mime crawls near to convince

himself ocularly of Fafner's death. At the same moment, Alberich

slips from his hiding-place and throws himself across Mime's path,

to bar his way to the treasure. A bitter quarrel at once springs

up between the brothers; Alberich claims the treasure because it

is rightly his, Mime because he reared the youth who has recovered

it from the dragon. Mime, whom Alberich's violence cows still as

in the old days, offers to share, if he may have the Tarnhelm--a

sly proposition,--he will renounce the Ring; but this Alberich

hears with furious scorn, and the wrangle is at its height when

Siegfried reappears at the cave's mouth. In his hands are Tarnhelm

and Ring. Returning into sight after the angry cat-fight between

the ill-conditioned pair, he appears more than ever large, serene,

fair, noble. Mime and Alberich betake themselves quickly back to

their lurking-places. Siegfried stands considering his odd-looking

acquisitions: "Of what use you may be to me I know not; but I took

you from the heaped gold of the treasure because a good adviser

bade me. As ornaments you shall serve, bearing witness to this

day; these baubles shall remind me that in combat I slew Fafner,

but failed still to learn fear!" He places the ring on his finger

and the Tarnhelm at his belt. In the silence that falls, he listens

again for the voice of the bird. It suddenly drops from the tree-top:

"Hei! Siegfried possesses the Tarnhelm and Ring! Oh, let him not

trust Mime the false! If Siegfried should listen closely to the

wretch's hypocritical words, he would penetrate the true meaning of

Mime's heart; such is the virtue of the taste of dragon's blood!"

No sooner has Siegfried heard, than he sees Mime approaching. He

waits for him, leaning on his sword, quietly watchful. The little

man contorts body and face into postures and expressions as humbly

flattering and cajoling as he can; at every few steps he scrapes

and curtseys. "Welcome, Siegfried! Tell me, you soul of courage,

have you learned fear?" "Not yet have I found the teacher!" "But

the Serpent-Worm which you slew, a fearsome fellow, was he not?"

"Grim and malignant though he were, his death verily grieves me,

since miscreants of deeper dye still live at large. The one who bade

me murder him, I hate more than the dragon!" Mime to all appearance

takes these words as if they carried no offence. What he thinks

he is saying in reply we know not; but this is what, spoken in a

voice of tenderest affection, Siegfried hears: "Gently now! Not

much longer shall you see me. I shall soon close your eyes for their

eternal sleep. That which I needed you for you have accomplished;

all I wish, now, is to wrest from you the treasure. I believe I shall

effect this with small trouble. You know you are not difficult to

befool!" "So you are meditating harm to me?" Siegfried asks quietly.

Mime starts in amazement. "Did I say anything of the sort?"

Then again, in accents sickly-sweet, with the writhings and grimaces

of an excessive affection: "Siegfried, listen, my son! You and the

like of you I have always hated from my very heart. Out of love

I did not rear you, burdensome nuisance. The trouble I took was

for the sake of the treasure in Fafner's keeping. If you do not

give it to me willingly, Siegfried, my son, it must be plain even

to yourself, you will have to leave me your life!" This formal and

direct declaration of hate, proving the justice of his instinctive

dislike all along of Mime, calls forth from Siegfried's relief

even in this moment the exclamation: "That you hate me, I gladly

hear!" Mime, while giving himself visibly all the pains in the

world to disguise from Siegfried his intentions, to each of the

youth's questions answers, in the supposition that he is telling

his lies, the exact truth. Thus Siegfried learns that the drink

Mime has prepared for his refreshment will plunge him into deep

sleep, upon which, for greater security in his enjoyment of the

treasure, Mime will with Nothung cut off his head. The little monster

chuckles genially while making these revelations. As Mime reaches

him the treacherous drink, Siegfried, moved by an impulse of

overpowering disgust, with a sudden swift blow of Nothung strikes

him down. Alberich's laugh of glee and derision rings out from

his hiding-place.

After gazing for a moment at the body of the repulsive little

traitor,--with the after-thought, it is possible, that the flat of

Nothung would have been sufficient for anything so small, though

so venomous,--he gives it the obsequies which seem to him the most

fitting. He throws him in the cave, that he may lie on the heaped

gold and have the coveted treasure at last for his own. He drags

Fafner to the cave's mouth, that his bulk may block it. "Lie there,

you too, dark dragon! Guard at once the shining treasure and the

treasure-loving enemy; thus have you both found rest!"

The sun is high; heated with his exertions, Siegfried returns to

his mossy couch under the trees, and is presently again looking

overhead for the friendly bird. "Once more, dear little bird, after

such a troublesome interruption, I should be glad to listen to your

singing. I can see you swinging happily on the bough; brothers

and sisters flutter around you, blithe and sweet, twittering the

while...." A vague sadness touches his mood, and this pensive moment

goes far toward gaining back to him the sympathy which his overgreat

sturdiness in dealing death had perhaps forfeited. He is now a poor

lonesome beautiful boy, completely sweet-blooded and brave--the

hunter that has never robbed the mother of her young--whose heart

full of instinctive affection has never had an object on which

it could spend itself. "But I," he says envyingly to the bird,

"I am so alone! I have neither brother nor sister! My mother

vanished,--my father fell,--their son never saw them...." In this

humour he lets a shade of regret transpire for the necessity to

kill Mime. "My only companion was a loathly dwarf; goodness never

knit the bond of affection between us; artful toils the cunning foe

spread for me. I was at last even forced to slay him!" He stares

sorrowfully at the sky through the trees. "Friendly bird, I ask

you now: will you assist my quest for a good comrade? Will you

guide me to the right one? I have called so often and never found

one; you, my trusty one, will surely hit it better! So apt has

been the counsel given by you already! Now sing! I am listening

for your song!" Readily the bright voice from above answers in

a joyous warble: "Hei! Siegfried has slain the wicked dwarf! I

have in mind for him now the most glorious mate! On a high rock

she sleeps, a wall of flame surrounds her abode. If he should push

through the fire, if he should waken the bride, then were Brünnhilde

his own!" With an instantaneousness touchingly significant of his

hard heart-hunger, an attack of impassioned sighing seizes the

young Siegfried. "Oh, lovely song! Oh, sweetest breath! How its

message glows within my breast, burning me! How it sets my enkindled

heart to throbbing! What is it rushing so wildly through my heart

and senses?... It drives me, exulting, out of the woods to the

mountain-rock. Speak to me again, charming singer: shall I break

through the fiery wall? Can I waken the bride?" "Never," replies the

bird, "shall the bride be won, Brünnhilde wakened, by a faint-heart!

Only by one who knows no fear!" Siegfried shouts with delight: "The

stupid boy who knows no fear--little bird, why, that am I! This

very day I gave myself fruitless pains to learn it from Fafner. I

now burn with the desire to learn it from Brünnhilde! How shall I

find the way to her rock?" The bird forsakes the treetop, flutters

over the youth's head and flies further. Siegfried interprets this

as an invitation. "Thus is the way shown me. Wherever you fly, I

follow your flight!" We see him going hither and thither in his

attempt to follow the erratic flight of a bird. His guide after

a moment bends in a definite direction and Siegfried disappears

after him among the trees.