The Hall of the Gibichungen once more, seen from the outside. It
is night. Hagen sits as we left him, in guard over the hall. He
sleeps leaning against a pillar of the portal. A burst of moonlight
shows Alberich crouching before him. "Are you asleep, Hagen, my
son? Are you asleep and deaf to my voice, whom sleep and rest have
forsaken?" "I hear you, harassed spirit; what message have you
for my sleep?" Remember! remember! is the burden of Alberich's
communication. Be true to the task for the purpose of which you
were created. The old enemy, Wotan, is no longer to be feared;
he has been made powerless by one of his own race. The object now
singly to be kept in view is the destruction of this latter, and
capture of the Ring in his possession. Quickly it must be done,
for "a wise woman there is, living for love of the Wälsung; were
she to bid him restore the Ring to the Rhine-daughters, for ever
and ever lost were the gold!" "The Ring I will have!" Hagen quiets
the care-ridden Nibelung, "rest in peace!" "Do you swear it to me,
Hagen, my hero?" "I swear it to myself!" Dawn has been creeping
over the sky. The form of Alberich fades in the growing light and
his voice dies on the ear: "Be faithful, Hagen, my son, be
faithful--faithful!" Hagen sits alone in the broadening day, seemingly
asleep, yet with eyes wide open. He starts. Flushed with the
morning-red, Siegfried strides up from the river-bank, uttering
his joyful "Hoiho!" "Siegfried, winged hero, whence do you come so
fast?" "From Brünnhilde's rock. I there took in the breath which I
put forth in calling you,--so rapid was my journey. A couple follows
me more slowly. Their journey is by boat. Is Gutrune awake?"
"Now make we welcome, Gibich's-child!" he greets her, as at Hagen's
call she comes hurrying out to him. "I bring good tidings!" In
exuberantly good spirits he tells them the story of his bad action.
The magic draught administered to him had more than destroyed his
memory of Brünnhilde, we must believe; the inflaming potion had
somehow blotted out, or covered over and for the time cast into
the background, his father's part in him, the part of Siegmund, who
fought to the end an unequal and losing battle to save a girl from
a marriage without love. "Across the expiring fire," he concludes
his report, "through the mists of early dawn, she followed me from
the mountain-top to the valley. At the shore, Gunther and I, in
a trice, changed places, and by virtue of the Tarnhelm I wished
myself here. A strong wind is even at the moment driving our dear
pair up the Rhine." "Let us display all kindness in our reception of
her," Gutrune proposes, with the generosity of overflowing happiness;
"that she may be pleased and glad to sojourn with us here! Do you,
Hagen, summon the vassals to the wedding at Gibich's court, while
I will gather the women." Siegfried fondly offers her his help;
hand in hand they go within.
Hagen is conscious, presumably, of an incongruity in the task assigned
to him, the genial office of gathering together the clans for a
wedding-feast. However that may be, he does not, to perform it,
depart at all from his character. Ascending to an eminence, he
blows a melancholy blast through a great steer-horn, and, in a
voice portending tidings the most alarming, gives the call to arms:
"Hoiho! Gibich's men! Up! Arms in the land! Danger! Danger!" In
this he persists until from all sides, singly at first, then in
groups and lastly in crowds, the vassals, hurriedly armed, come
flocking. "Why does the horn sound? Why are we called to arms?
Here we are with our weapons.... Hagen, what danger threatens?
What enemy is near? Who attacks us? Is Gunther in need of us?"
"Forthwith prepare, and dally not, to receive Gunther returning
home. He has wooed a wife!" This still in a tone befitting the
announcement of disaster. "Is he in trouble? Is he hard pressed
by the foe?" "A formidable wife he brings home!" "Is he pursued
by the hostile kindred of the maid?" "He comes alone, unpursued."
"The danger then is past? He has come forth victorious from the
encounter?" "The dragon-slayer succoured him in his need; Siegfried,
the hero, secured his safety." "How then shall his followers further
help him?" "Strong steers you shall slaughter and let Wotan's altar
stream with their blood." "And what, Hagen, are we to do after
that?" "A boar shall you slay for Froh, a mighty ram for Donner;
but to Fricka you shall sacrifice sheep, that she may bless the
marriage!"
The men are beginning to penetrate through Hagen's sullen aspect
to his joke; with heavy playfulness they help it on. "And when we
have slaughtered the animals, what shall we do?" "From the hands
of fair women take the drinking-horn, pleasantly brimming with
wine and mead." "Horn in hand,--what then?" "Bravely carouse until
drunkenness overwhelm you--all to the honour of the gods, that they
may bless the marriage!" The rough warriors break into laughter,
and in uncouth jollity stamp with their feet and spear-butts. "Great
good fortune is indeed abroad on the Rhine when Hagen the grim
grows jovial!" Not the faintest smile illumines the bleak face. At
sight of Gunther's skiff approaching, he checks the men's laughter.
Moving among them, with careful foresight he drops seed toward
fruits of trouble: "Be loyal to your sovereign mistress, serve
her faithfully; if she should suffer wrong, be swift to avenge
her!" Hagen's plan for bringing about Siegfried's destruction is
not yet at this point settled in outline. We see him grasping at
whatever can be construed into a weapon against him. There are
repeated attempts on his part in the scene following to stir against
Siegfried some fatal demonstration of popular anger.
The skiff draws to land. The vassals greet their lord and his bride
with noisy chorus of welcome, clashing their arms together, beating
their swords against their bucklers.
Brünnhilde stands beside Gunther in the boat, statue-still, her eyes
bent on the ground, like one who neither sees nor hears. Without
resistance she lets Gunther take her hand to help her ashore; but
a suppressed snatch of the motif of Wotan's resentment suggests
the shudder ominous of danger overrunning his Valkyrie daughter
at the contact.
This is Gunther's hour, this for him the supreme occasion in life;
the star of his destiny rides the heavens unclouded; he feels now
magnificent indeed in his seat on the Rhine, as he stands before his
people with the regal creature beside him whom he calls his wife.
As if to express the momentary expansion of his nature, his motif
resounds, as proudly he presents her, quite changed in character; it
has taken on a grandeur approaching pomp: "Brünnhilde, the glory
of her sex, I bring to you here on the Rhine. A nobler wife was
never won! The race of the Gibichungen, by the grace of the gods,
shall now tower to crowning heights of fame!" Brünnhilde does not
heed or hear. When, as Gunther leads her toward the Hall, Siegfried
and Gutrune meet them, coming forth from it with strains of
marriage-music and a festal train of ladies, her eyes never moving
from the ground, she does not see them. "Hail, beloved hero! Hail,
dearest sister!" Gunther greets the bridal pair. "Joyfully I behold
at your side, sister, him who has won you. Two happy pairs are
here met--Brünnhilde and Gunther, Gutrune and Siegfried!"
At the name, Brünnhilde looks quickly up.... Her astonished gaze
fastens upon Siegfried's face and dwells intently upon it. Her
action is so marked that Gunther drops her hand; all watch her
in wonder. A murmur runs through the assembly: "What ails her? Is
she out of her mind?" Brünnhilde, still speechless, falls visibly
to trembling. Siegfried becomes at last aware of something out of
the common in the gaze so persistently fixed upon him. He goes
quietly to the woman and asks: "What trouble burdens Brünnhilde's
gaze?" She has hardly power to frame words, make sounds, her emotion
still further intensified by his cool and disengaged address.
"Siegfried, here!... Gutrune!" she painfully brings forth. "Gunther's
gentle sister," he enlightens her, in his major, matter-of-fact
manner, "wedded to me, as you to Gunther!" At this she recovers her
voice to hurl at him startlingly: "I--to Gunther?... A lie!" She
is swooning with the helpless horror of all this monstrous mystery.
Siegfried, who stands nearest, receives her as she totters, near to
falling. As she lies for a moment in the well-known arms, it seems
impossible, beyond everything impossible, that his unimaginable
purpose should not break down, that he should not be forced to
drop this incomprehensible feint of strangeness. But her dying
eyes searching the face close to them discover in it no glimmer
of feeling. Her heart-broken murmur: "Siegfried.... knows me not?"
touches no chord. The hero is for handing her over with all convenient
haste to her proper guardian. "Gunther, your wife is ailing!" As
Gunther comes, he rouses her: "Awake, woman! Here is your husband!"
Because her senses seem clouded and she a moment before rejected
the statement that she was married to Gunther, he singles out for
her with his finger the personage he means. Her eyes, as he makes
this gesture, are caught by the Ring on his hand. Her mind leaps,
inevitably, to the conclusion that Siegfried, who feigns not to
know her, not only has cast her off, but is in collusion with this
man Gunther, her captor.
Trying by a supreme effort to govern her agitation and anger at
the revelation of this unspeakable baseness, till she shall have
sounded the affair, "A ring I saw upon your finger," she addresses
him; "not to you does it belong; it was torn from me by this man!"
indicating Gunther. "How should you have received the ring from
him?" Siegfried looks reflectively at the ring. Since all trace of
the former Brünnhilde is wiped from his brain, he cannot remember
his parting gift to her of the Ring. Certainly, he wrested a ring
from this woman, in the twilight.... What became of it?... But
the ring on his hand is indisputably a relic of the old days of
the fight with the dragon. "I did not receive the ring from him,"
he replies. She turns to Gunther: "If you took from me the ring,
by which you claimed me for wife, declare to him your right to it,
demand back the token!" Gunther is sore perplexed. "The ring?...
I gave him none.... Are you sure that is the one?" "Where do you
conceal the ring," Brünnhilde presses him, "which you robbed from
me?" Gunther is stupidly silent, not knowing what he should say; his
confusion is so obvious and his blankness so convincingly unassumed,
that the truth is borne upon Brünnhilde: It was not he, despite
all appearances, who took the ring from her, and if not he--"Ha!"
she cries, in a burst of furious indignation, "This is the man
who tore the ring from me; Siegfried, trickster and thief!"
Siegfried has been still gazing at the ring on his hand, trying
to puzzle out points which the lacunæ in his memory do not permit
him to make clear. The contemplation has brought back old scenes
and distant events. He speaks, unruffled: "From no woman did I
receive the ring; nor did I take it from any woman. Full well do
I recognise the prize of battle, won by me before Neidhöhle, when
I slew the mighty dragon."
With what quiet and conviction he makes the statement, as if verily
he spoke the truth! Such assurance is hardly imaginable, save as based
upon conscious integrity.... Hagen now, the fisher in troubled waters,
interferes, still further to increase Brünnhilde's bewilderment:
"Are you sure you recognise the ring? If it is the one you gave
to Gunther, it belongs to him, and Siegfried obtained it by some
artifice which the deceiver shall be made to rue!"
Plainly, there is no way of help in clearing up this desperate
tangle. The goaded woman bursts into a wild outcry, sharp as a
knife by which she should hope to cut through the coil in which
she is caught: "Deceit! Deceit! Dastardly deceit!... Treachery!
Treachery! such as never until this moment called for vengeance!"
Gutrune catches her breath: "Deceit?..." The quickly roused suspicion
of the crowd takes up Brünnhilde's word: "Treachery?... To whom?..."
"Holy gods! Heavenly leaders!" Brünnhilde's madness clamours to
heaven: "Did you appoint this in your councils? Do you impose upon
me sufferings such as never were suffered? Do you create ignominy
for me such as never was endured? Prompt me then to vengeance such
as never yet raged! Enkindle anger in me such as never was quelled!
Teach Brünnhilde to break her own heart that she may shatter the
one who betrayed her!" The ineffectual Gunther tries vainly to
hush her, to stop the scandalous scene. "Away!" she thrusts him
from her, "cheat!... Yourself cheated!" and she announces ringingly
to them all the one thing which in all this confusion she knows
to be true: "Not to him (Gunther) am I married, but to that man,
there!"
"Siegfried?... Gutrune's husband?" the murmur passes through the
astonished crowd.
"Love and delight he forced from me...." Her momentary hatred of
Siegfried thus distorts the image of the past. Siegfried's only
possible interpretation of this astonishing declaration is that
the Tarnhelm did not properly conceal his identity--but even so
the woman is not speaking the truth. What her purpose can be in
thus darkening her own fame he is at a loss to divine. He replies
to her charge directly, careless at this point that the plot between
Gunther and himself stands betrayed by his words. "Hear, whether I
have broken my faith! Blood-brotherhood I swore to Gunther: Nothung,
my worthy sword, guarded the vow of truth; its sharp blade divided
me from this unhappy woman!" Brünnhilde hears him with a jeer. They
are speaking at cross purposes; he, as it should be remembered,
of the foregoing night alone, while she speaks of that past so
wholly blotted from his mind. "Oh, wily hero! see how you lie!
how ill-advisedly you call to witness your sword! I am acquainted
indeed with its sharpness, but acquainted, too, with the sheath--in
which, pleasantly encased, Nothung, the faithful friend, hung against
the wall, while the master courted his dear!"
"How?... How?..." the agitated followers are beginning to ask. "Has
he broken his word? Has he smirched Gunther's honour?" Gunther,
Gutrune, the vassals, all a little shaken in their faith in Siegfried
by the assurance of his accuser, press him to refute her charge,
clear himself, take the oath which shall silence the disgraceful
accusation. He unhesitatingly asks for a weapon upon which to swear.
Hagen craftily offers his spear. Siegfried placing his right hand
on the point, solemnly calls upon the sacred weapon to register
his oath, wording it in the following ill-omened fashion: "Where
sharpness may pierce me, do you pierce me; where death shall strike
me, do you strike me, if yonder woman spoke the truth, if I broke
my vow to my brother!" Brünnhilde hearing, flings his hand from the
spear-point, and grasping it in her own, pronounces the counter-oath:
"Your weight I consecrate, spear, that it may overthrow him! Your
sharpness I bless, that it may pierce him! For, having broken every
vow, this man now speaks perjury!" Siegfried and Brünnhilde each
believe that what he swears is true; but the Oath, the blind power
which takes no account of intention, of moral right or wrong, gives
right in sequence to Brünnhilde. The spear pierces the hero who
invokes it so to do "if the woman spoke true."
There is nothing more, the solemn oath taken, that Siegfried can
do, and in his stalwart fashion he turns his back on the whole
troublesome business, with the sensible suggestion that the wild
woman from the mountains be given rest and quiet "until the impudent
rage shall have spent itself which some unholy wizardry has suscitated"
against them all.
"You men, come away!" he subjoins, all his heroic good-humour recovered.
"When the fighting is to be done with tongues, we will willingly
pass for cowards!" For Gunther, whom he sees darkly brooding, he
has a word in the ear: "Believe me, I am more vexed than you that I
should not have more perfectly deceived her; the Tarnhelm, I could
almost believe, only half disguised me. But the anger of women is
soon appeased. The woman will beyond a doubt be grateful hereafter
that I should have won her for you!" The winged exhilaration of
the bridegroom repossessing him, he invites them all in to the
wedding-feast, and casting his arm gaily around Gutrune draws her
along with him into the Hall--whither the people swarm after them.
The three are left outside whom no festivity can allure. In long
silence they remain, sunk in gloomy study, each on his side. To
attempt arriving at clearness by questions does not occur to them;
and, indeed, what to each is the principal thing, known from the
proof of his eyes, no discussion could affect: for Brünnhilde,
Siegfried is estranged from her; for Gunther, his marriage is turned
to Dead-Sea apples.
The cheerful music, the summons to the wedding, dies away. Hagen
bends his black brow in reflection as to how he shall utilise to
his advantage the passions he has aroused; covertly he watches
his victims. Gunther has cast himself down and muffled his face
from the day, in the clutch of his jealous suspicion of Siegfried
and the smart of his public shame.
Brünnhilde stands staring ahead, with set countenance of horror
and grief. In an hour she has lived the tragedy which, spread over
howsoever many years, is still one of the hardest in human experience,
the tragedy which extorted Othello's groan: "But there, where I
have garnered up my heart, where either I must live or bear no
life--to be discarded thence!" She seeks in the void and blackness
some glimmer of light on the incredible mystery of these events.
With returning calm, a flash of the truth illuminates her, to the
extent that she suspects in the unnatural developments of the last
hour the work of sorcery. While hardly helping the actual situation,
this interpretation frees Siegfried from the hatefulness of such
black guilt as has appeared his, and we feel from this moment that
Brünnhilde's undeterred reaching after vengeance, her consent to
Siegfried's death, is less a personal need to make an offender
pay, than the instinct to cut short the dishonour in which the most
magnificent hero in the world is fallen. Impossible of endurance
is a world where Siegfried is false to all his vows, where Siegfried
and Brünnhilde are no longer each to the other "for ever and ever,
his only and his all!" Heartbreak much more than resentment stamps
Brünnhilde's cry: "Where is my wisdom against this enigma? Where
are my runes? Oh, lamentation! All my wisdom I bestowed on him.
In his power he holds the bondmaid, in thongs the captive, whom,
wailing over her wrong, the rich one joyously makes gift of to
another! Where shall I find a sword with which to cut the thongs?"
Hagen approaches her: "Place your trust in me, deceived woman! I
will avenge you on him who betrayed you...."
"On whom?..." she inquires, hazily. _Him who betrayed you_ describes
more than one. "On Siegfried, who betrayed you." "On Siegfried...
you?..." She laughs, bitterly, while her unquelled pride in her
faithless lord mocks: "A single glance of his flashing eye, which
even through the lying disguise shed its radiance upon me, and
your best courage would fail you!"
"But is he not, by reason of his perjury, reserved for my spear?"
"Perjury or none, you must fortify your spear by something stronger,
if you think of attacking that strongest of all!" "Well I know," the
subtle Hagen, with an effect of humbleness, continues, "Siegfried's
victorious strength, and how difficult to overcome him in battle;
wherefore do you give me good counsel: by what device may this
giant be defeated by me?"
She breaks into complaint over the shameful requital with which
the love has met that, unknown to him, by charms woven all about
his body, made him invulnerable.
"No weapon then can hurt him?" asks Hagen.
"No weapon that is borne in battle...." But she corrects herself,
remembering suddenly that he might, in truth, be wounded in the
back. "Never, I knew, would he retreat or in flight show his back to
the foe. Upon it therefore I spared to place the spell." "And there
my spear shall strike him!" determines Hagen. Having learned from her
all that he need, he turns to Gunther: "Up, noble Gibichung! Here
stands your strong wife. Why do you hang back there in dejection?"
Gunther breaks into passionate exclamations over the indignity
he has suffered. Close indeed upon his hour of glory comes the
hour of his humiliation, when he must hear from the queenly woman
in whom his pride was placed such words as these: "Oh, ignoble,
false companion! Behind the hero you concealed yourself, that he
might gain for you the prize of courage! Low indeed has your precious
race sunk, when it produces such dastards!" Gunther utters broken
excuses, "while deceiving her he was himself deceived,--betraying
her, he was betrayed--" and appeals to Hagen to stamp him out of
life or help him to wash the stain off his honour!
Hagen has them now both where, for his purposes, he wishes them.
"No brain can help you," he replies to Gunther, "nor can any hand!
There is but one thing can help you--Siegfried's death!" The two
words fall awfully on the air, followed by a long silence. The
irresolute Gunther at the sound of the sentence writhes amid doubts
and hesitations, such as do not for a moment move his stern
fellow-sufferer. He remembers the blood-brotherhood sworn to Siegfried;
he begins to question whether the blood-brother has in very fact
been false. A returning wave of affection and admiration for the
beautiful fellow calls forth a sigh, and then the thought of Gutrune:
"Gutrune, to whom myself I freely gave him! If we punish her husband
so, with what face shall we stand before her?" At this mention of
Gutrune, a light breaks upon Brünnhilde; "Gutrune!... is the name
of the magic charm which has enchanted away from me my husband....
Terror smite her!" "If the manner of his death must offend her, let
the deed be hidden from her," Hagen soothes Gunther's scruple.
"We will to-morrow fare on a merry hunting-expedition. The noble
one will, according to his impetuous wont, go ranging ahead of
us, and meet his death by a wild boar."
The three, coming to a common determination upon the fall of Siegfried,
are calling upon the different powers to whom they refer their
deeds to hear their vows of revenge--Brünnhilde and Gunther upon
Wotan, guardian of promises, Hagen upon Alberich--who through the
happy working of this vow of vengeance will be master once more of
the Ring--when from the Hall comes pouring forth, with music and
strewing of flowers, the bridal procession. Gutrune, rose-wreathed,
is borne shoulder-high upon a gilded and begarlanded throne. At the
vision of her and the glowing Siegfried at her side, Brünnhilde
shrinks back. Hagen forces her hand into Gunther's, and this second
bridal pair falls into the train winding up the hillside to offer
the nuptial sacrifices.