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 evenwho 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, whomAlberich'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 Nothungstrikes 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 forcedto 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.
A wild region at the foot of a rocky mountain, the mountain at the summit of which Brünnhilde sleeps. In night and storm Wotan the Wanderer comes to seek Erda, the Wise Woman, the Wala. He conjures her up from the depths of the earth into his presence. We see her appear, as before, rising in the gloom of a rocky hollow up to half her height.
In all his wandering over the earth, in search of wisdom and counsel, none has Wotan found so wise as she. The question he proposes is: How may a rolling wheel be arrested in its course?
Erda is not willingly waked out of her sleep, nor is it her wont to communicate directly with the upper world. In her slow and solemn sleep-weighted tones, she tells him that the Norns spin into their coil the visions of her illuminated sleep. Why does he not consult them? Or why, she asks, when that counsel is rejected, why does he not, still mote aptly, consult Brünnhilde, wise child of Wotan and Erda?
In his reply, Wotan briefly sums Brünnhilde's offence: She defied the Storm-compeller, where he was practising the utmost self-compulsion; what the Leader of Battle yearned to do, but refrained from, his own antagonist,—all too confident, the insolent maid dared to bring about for herself.
At the indication of Brünnhilde's fate, indignation possesses the Wala. In view of such high-handed injustice, she wishes and struggles to return back into the earth and be merged with her wisdom in sleep. But Wotan will not release her until she has satisfied him "You, all-knowing one, once drove the thorn of care into Wotan's daring heart; with the dread of an adverse ignominious ending you filled him by your foreknowledge,so that his courage was in bondage to fear. If you are the wisest woman in the world, tell me now: how shall the god overcome that care?" But the injured mother is not to be conciliated. "You are not," she startlingly announces, "what you call yourself!"—Not a god, Wotan?—"What are you come, wild and turbulent spirit, to disturb the Wala's sleep? Restless one, release me! Loose the spell!" "You are not" he retorts, "what you suppose yourself!"—Not the wisest of women! In that she has not divined what he has really come to impart, rather than seriously to ask counsel. For his true errand is to show her the fruits of time in himself, the mood of patience and reconciliation he has reached, nay, of hope for a future in which he is to have no part, that Brünnhilde's mother may sleep the more quietly, and, untroubled, watch the end overtake him through her dream. "Do you know what it is Wotan wills? I speak it in your ear, unforeseeing one, that with easy heart you may return to your eternal sleep. The thought of the end of the gods no longer grieves me, since it is my desire and my will! The thing which I once, in pain and conflict, torn by despair, resolved, I now joyfully and freely carry out: in raging disgust I once devoted the world to the ill-will of the Nibelung; to the joyous Wälsung I now appoint my inheritance. He whom I have chosen, but who has never known me, an intrepid boy, unaided by counsel of mine, has conquered the Nibelung's Ring. Void of envy, happy and loving, Alberich's curse falls away crippled when it would light on the noble one, for fear is unknown to him. She whom you bore to me, Brünnhilde, shall be tenderly waked by the hero; awake, your wise child shall perform a world-delivering deed! Wherefore, sleep! Close your eye: dreaming watch my passing! Whatever works be theirs, to that Eternally Young One, the god in gladness yields his place.Down, then, Erda! Ancient Fear! Original Care! To your eternal sleep! Down! Down!..." Erda sinks into the earth, the glimmering light fades from the cave.
A bird-note is heard, light and sharp, approaching. A bird flutters into sight and Siegfried, following it, appears upon the scene. The bird, as if at the recognition of danger,—the ravens of Wotan are hovering near—in all haste flies quite away. Siegfried resolves to go on alone. He is stopped by the Wanderer's voice: "Whither, boy, does your way lead you?" Here is some one, thinks Siegfried, who may show him the way. "I seek a rock," he replies; "it is surrounded by fire; there sleeps a woman whom I wish to wake." "Who bade you seek the rock? Who taught you to wish for the woman?" "A little woodland bird told me about it in his singing; he gave me good tidings." "A little bird gossips of many things, but no one can understand him. How did you derive the meaning of his song?" "That was the effect of the blood of a wild dragon,..." and so forth. Wotan continues to ply the youth with questions, just as a kind old grandfather of humankind might lead on a child to talk, for the simple sake of hearing what he will say, for delight in his ingenuousness. The utmost tenderness for this joyous Walsung speaks in the tones of the greybeard. The final object of his questioning is to lead the youth to some acknowledgment of himself as a factor in his fortunes. Without discarding his incognito, he longs to hear on the grandson's lips some name which stands for himself, some reference to him. So, from the question, "Who prompted you to attack the strong Worm?" he passes to the question: "Who shaped the sword, so sharp and hard, that the strongest enemy should succumb to its stroke?" and when Siegfried replies that he did this himself, insists further: "But who shaped the strong pieces, out of which you forged the sword?" The answer tothis is, "Wälse!" It can be nothing else. Siegfried, however, replies: "What do I know? All I know is that the pieces could be of no use to me until I forged the sword over again for myself." Wotan breaks out laughing: "I agree with you!" Siegfried suspecting that he has been quizzed, loses his patience, becomes curt and rough. "What are you laughing at me? Old questioner, you had better stop. Do not keep me chattering here! If you can direct me on my way, speak. If you cannot, hold your mouth!" Deplorable are the manners learned in Mime's cave. "Patience, you boy!" Wanderer mildly checks him; "if I seem old to you, you should offer me reverence!" "That," jeers Siegfried, "is a fine idea! All my life long an old man has stood in my way. I have no more than swept him away. If you continue to stand there stiffly opposing me, beware, I tell you, lest you fare like Mime!" As, with this threat, he takes a stride nearer to the stranger, he is struck by his appearance. "What makes you look like that?" he asks, like a child; "what a great hat you have! Why does it hang down so over your face?... One of your eyes, beneath the brim, is missing.... It was put out, I am sure, by some one whose passage you were stubbornly opposing. Now, take yourself off, or you might easily lose the other!" The indulgent grandsire is still not stirred from his patience, though this must strike a little painfully on his heart. "I see, my son, that, unencumbered by any knowledge, you are quick at disposing of obstacles. With the eye which is missing from my other socket, you yourself are looking at the single eye which I have left for sight." At this riddle, the brilliant Walsung eyes merely flash mirth, while Siegfried laughs at the obscure saying. Not a moment does he waste in reflection upon it, but, with growing impatience to resume his quest, orders Wanderer to guide him or be thrust out of his road. "Ifyou knew me, bold stripling," the suffering god speaks, still gently, "you would spare me this affront. Close to my heart as you are, your threatening strikes me painfully. Though I have ever loved your luminous race, my anger has before this brought terror upon them. You, toward whom I feel such kindness,—you, all-too-bright!—do not to-day move me to anger.... It might destroy both you and me!" All that is plain to Siegfried, mad to be off in search of his sleeper, is that this prattling old personage neither tells him his way nor will consent to move out of it. As he once more rudely bids him clear the path to the sleeping woman, Wotan's anger breaks forth: "You shall not," he exclaims, "go the way the bird pointed!" "Hoho! You forbidder!..." cries Siegfried, amazed, "who are you, trying to prevent me?" "Fear the Guardian of the Rock! My power it is which holds the maid under the spell of sleep. He who awakes her, he who wins her, makes me powerless for ever!"
Wotan, it would seem, is challenging the boy. His anger, justified though it would be by the stalwart cub's behaviour, is half affected. He had declared not far from this very spot, some eighteen years earlier, that no one who feared his spear should ever cross the barrier of fire. The hour is at hand when the spear must offer itself to be braved by this incarnate courage bent upon that same adventure,—when Wotan must take the chances of discovering that this boy is freer than he—the god. He had declared himself but a moment ago, in his communication with Erda, willing to yield his supremacy to the Eternally Young One. Actually to do it must be a little bitter, after enduring that Young One's cavalier treatment. Perhaps—the text admits of the interpretation,—Wotan is sincerely angry; at Siegfried's impertinence he has changed his mind in respect to yielding his throne to him, and with a real intention ofdriving him back from the rock describes the terrors of the mountain: "A sea of fire surges around the woman; hot flames lick the rock; the conflagration rages against him who would push through to the bride. Look up toward the heights! Do you see not the light?... It is waxing in brightness.... Scorching clouds, wavering flames, roaring and crackling, stream down toward us. A sea of light shines about your head, Soon the fire will catch and devour you.... Then, back! mad child!" "Back yourself, you braggart!" cries Siegfried, nothing deterred; "up there where the flames flicker, I must hasten to Brünnhilde!" He is about to push past, when Wotan holds his spear across the path: "If the fire does not frighten you, my spear shall stop your way. My hand still holds the staff of sovereignty. The sword which you swing was once shattered against this shaft, again let it snap on the eternal spear!" Instead of appalling him, the majestic threat creates in Siegfried eagerness and glee: "My father's enemy! Do I find you here? Excellently this happens for my revenge! Swing your spear! With my sword I will split it to pieces!" And he immediately does as he has said. Nothing, it seems, not the spear of the law, can stand against the sword of perfect courage. A clap of thunder accompanies the sundering of the spear. The broken pieces roll at the Wanderer's feet. He picks them quietly up. With godlike calm, the hour having struck, he accepts inevitable fate. The motif of downfall points this beginning of the end of the gods. "Go your way! I cannot hold you!" He vanishes in darkness.
"With broken weapon the coward has fled?" says Siegfried, looking about for his father's enemy. The magic fire, as if to force the intruder back, has been pouring further and further down the mountain-side. But the one whom it should frighten rejoices, glories in the glory of the flames, jubilates. "Ha!Delightful glow! Beaming brightness! A radiant road lies open before me! Oh, to bathe in the fire! In the fire to find the bride! Hoho! Hoho! Hahei! Hahei! Merrily! Merrily! This time I shall lure a dear companion!" He sets the silver horn to his lips and gaily blowing the Lock-weise starts up the mountain and is lost among the swirling sanguine smoke-clouds. The fire burns bright; the merry call is heard from time to time from the unseen climber. The fire pales—the barrier has been past, the region above is reached, the charmed sleeper's domain. When the veiling smoke completely clears, we see the remembered scene of the Valkyries' rock, and Brünnhilde lying under the spreading pine, as Wotan left her.
It is calm golden daylight. Over the brow of the mountain appears Siegfried and stands still a moment, outlined against the cloudless sky, wondering at the peace, the airiness, considering the "exquisite solitude on the sunny height!" The sweet Fricka-motif speaks aloud as it were the unconscious language of his blood, voices the vague instinct toward nest-building which in the Spring lightly turns a young man's fancy to thoughts of love. He has come in search of a bride, upon the word of a little bird; but his ideas concerning the promised "dear companion" are so few, and the novelty of all he is seeing so takes up his mind, that when his eyes presently fall upon the recumbent form his first thought is not that here must be what he has come in search of.
He approaches and marvels at the bright armour. He lifts off the great shield, again like a child, to see what it covers. A man in suit of mail! He can see the face in part only, but warms with instantaneous pleasure in its comeliness. The helmet, he surmises, must press uncomfortably on the beautiful head. Very gently he takes it off. Long curling locks,loosed from confinement, gush abundantly forth. Siegfried is startled by the sight. But the right words, "How beautiful!" rise to his untaught lips. He remains sunk in contemplation of the marvel; the tresses remind him of a thing he has often watched: shimmering clouds bounding with their ripples a clear expanse of sky. As if drawn by a magnet, he bends lower over the quiet form and so feels the sleeper's breath. "The breast heaves with the swelling breath, shall I break the cramping corslet?" Cautiously he makes the attempt, but, finding his fingers unapt at the task, solves his difficulty by aid of Nothung. With delicate care he cuts through the iron and lightly removes the corslet. "This is no man!" he cries, starting away in amazement. Such emotion seizes him, with sensations of dizziness and faintness—such a pressure on the heart, forcing from it burning sigh upon sigh, that, with a sense of having no resource in himself, he casts about for help in this all so unfamiliar exquisite distress: "Whom shall I call on that he may save me? Mother! Mother! Remember me!" Swooning, he sinks with his forehead against Brünnhilde's breast—to be roused again by the goad of his desire to see the eyes of the sleeper unclose. "That she should open her eyes?" He hesitates, in tender trouble. "Would her glance not blind me? Have I the hardihood? Could I endure the light?..." He feels the hand trembling with which he is trying to quiet his agitated heart. "What ails me, coward? Is this fear? Oh, mother! Mother! Your bold child! A woman lies folded in slumber,... she has taught him to be afraid!... How shall I bring this fear to an end? How shall I gain back my courage? That I may myself awake from this dream I must waken the maid!" But awe of the so august and quiet sleeper again restrains him. He does not touch her, but lingeringly gazes at her "blossoming mouth," bows till the warm fragranceof her breath sweeping his face forces forth his impulsive cry: "Awake! Awake! Sacred woman!" He waits with suspended breath. She has not heard. She does not stir. An infinite weakness overtaking him, a mortal coming less, "I will drink life," he sighs, "from sweetest lips, though I should swoon to death in the act!" With closed eyes he bends over Brünnhilde's lips.
Twelve bars, the tempo of which is marked "Sehr mässig," very moderate, sing themselves delicately and gravely to an end. Brünnhilde opens wide her eyes. Siegfried starts from her, not guiltily or to move from his place, only to stand erect and, absorbed, watch her movements.
Slowly she rises to a sitting posture and with beatific looks takes account of the glorious world to which she has reawakened. Solemnly she stretches her arms toward the sky: "Hail to thee, sun!" A great pause, of drinking in further the loveliness of the scene and the joy of life returned to, then: "Hail to thee, light!" And after another great pause of wondering ecstasy: "Hail to thee, radiant day!... Long was my sleep.... I am awake.... Who is the hero that has awakened me?" Siegfried stands spell-bound, in solemn awe at the sound of her voice and the superhuman splendour of her beauty. He answers, in the only way he knows, childlike, direct: "I pressed through the fire which surrounded the rock; I released you from the close helmet; Siegfried I am called who have awakened you!" At the sound of the name, the altogether right one, Brünnhilde takes up again her song of praise: "Hail to you, gods! Hail to thee, world! Hail, sumptuously blooming earth!" And Siegfried breaks forth, in an exalted rapture which inspires his ignorance with expression befitting the hour: "Oh, hail to the mother who bore me, hail to the earth which nourished me, that I might beholdthe eyes which now shine upon me, blessed!" Brünnhilde, joining in his hymn of gratitude, blesses, too, the mother who bore him, and the earth which nourished him, whose eyes alone should behold her, for whom alone she was destined to awake. The love-scene following leaves a singular impression of greatness. The wise daughter of the Wala and the "most splendid hero of the world" are simple as children, sincere as animals or angels, ardent with honest natural fire, like stars. When their love finally reaches a perfect understanding their song is a succession of magnificent shouts, primitive as they are thrilling.
"Oh, if you knew, joy of the world," Brünnhilde exposes her artless heart to the hero, "how I have loved you from all time! You were my care, the object of my solicitude! Before you were shaped, I nurtured you, before you were born, my shield concealed you,—so long have I loved you, Siegfried!" He believes for a moment that his mother has not died but has been sleeping and now speaks to him. In correcting him, Brünnhilde shows herself tenderly feminine. No sooner has she spoken the words which must fall with inevitable dreariness on his ear, "Your mother will not come back to you!" than she hastens to heal his hurt with the sweetest thing her love has to say: "Yourself am I, if you love me, fortunate...." She explains the meaning of her earlier words: "I have loved you from all time, for to me alone Wotan's thought was known. That thought which I must never speak, which I did not think, but only felt; for which I strove, struggled, and fought; for which I braved the one who had framed it; for which I was made to suffer and bound in punishment; that thought—might you but grasp it!—was naught but love for you!"
It could hardly be hoped that the young forester should at this moment be able to grasp anything so subtle, as he helplesslyconfesses: "Wonderful sounds what you winningly sing; but the sense of it is dark to me. I see your eye beam bright; I feel your warm breath; I hear the sweet singing of your voice; but that which in your singing you would impart, stupefied, I understand it not! I cannot grasp the sense of distant things, when all my senses are absorbed in seeing and feeling only you. With anxious fear you bind me: you alone have taught me to fear. Whom you have bound in mighty bonds, no longer withhold from me my courage!" Brünnhilde at this, with the touch of nature which makes the Valkyrie kin to the young lady of drawing-rooms, turns her head away and talks of something else. She talks of Grane, whom she sees grazing a little way off. As her eyes fall upon the corslet, cut from her body with a sword, the sight smites upon her saddeningly, as a symbol. A consciousness of danger and defencelessness oppresses her, and when Siegfried, made bold in his fear of her by the very need he feels of overcoming that fear, impetuously seizes her in his arms, in terror she starts away from him and wrings her hands with a woful sense of not being any more that Brünnhilde "whom no god had ever approached, before whom reverently the heroes had bowed, who holy had departed from Walhalla." She feels her wisdom forsaking her, her light failing, night and terror closing down upon her. She appeals to him at last against himself: "Oh, Siegfried, see my distress!"
He stands so still for a time, silent, puzzled by her, unwilling certainly to frighten her further, that her immediate fear subsides; her countenance betrays, the stage-directions read, that "a winning picture rises before her soul." The character of this may be divined from the melody rippling softly forth, the motif of peaceful love. A fresh green branch, it makes one think of, with a nest upon it, swinging in a summer wind. More gently she addresses him, pleading rather than repelling,winning him to give up his way for hers. "Eternal am I,... but eternal for your weal! Oh, Siegfried, joyous hero! Renounce me.... Approach me not with ardent approach.... Constrain me not with shattering constraint.... Have you not seen your own image in the clear stream? Has it not gladdened you, glad one? If you stir the water into turmoil, the smooth surface is lost, you cannot see your own reflection any longer. Wherefore, touch me not, trouble me not; eternally bright then shall you shine back at yourself from me. Oh, Siegfried, luminous youth! love—yourself, and withhold from me. Destroy not what is your own!" His robust young love to this replies—after the simple outburst: "You I love, oh, might you love me! No longer have I myself, oh, had I you!"—that it matters little his image should be broken in the glorious river before him, for, burning and thirsting, he would plunge into it himself, that its waves might blissfully engulf him and his longing be quenched in the flood. It is he who appeals now, with ancient arguments, simple and telling as his blows at the dragon. When at the end of them he clasps Brünnhilde again, she does not as before wrest herself free, but laughs in joy as she feels her love surging, till it, as it seems to her, more than matches his own, and he is the one, she judges, who should feel afraid. She, indeed, asks him, does he not fear?... But the opposite takes place. With her love, ardent as his own, frankly given him, all his courage comes back, "And fear, alas!" he observes, a little disconcerted at the queerness of this new experience, "fear, which I never learned,—fear, which you had hardly taught me,—fear, I believe, I, dullard, have already forgotten it!" Brünnhilde laughs in delight—all of joy and laughter is their love after this up on the sunny height—and declares to the "mad-cap treasury of glorious deeds" that laughing she will love him, laughing lose the lightof her eyes, laughing they will accept destruction, laughing accept death! Let the proud world of Walhalla crumble to dust, the eternal tribe of the gods cease in glory, the Norns rend the coil of fate, the dusk of the gods close down,—Siegfried's star has risen, and he shall be, to Brünnhilde, for ever, everything! In equally fine and joyous ravings Siegfried's voice has been pouring forth alongside of hers; reaching at last an identical sentiment and the same note, the two rush together like flashing mountain torrents, and are lost to us behind the descending curtain.
THE TWILIGHT OF THE GODS
(DIE GOETTERDAEMMERUNG)
In the Prologue of "The Twilight of the Gods" we learn from report the portion of Wotan's history which belongs between the breaking of his spear and the final events which bring about the gods' end.
At the rising of the curtain the three Norns are dimly discerned upon the well-known scene of Brünnhilde's sleep, before the entrance to the rocky hall where Siegfried and she have their dwelling. The fiery palisade around their fastness casts a faint glow upon the night. The Norns, as it were to while away the heavy hour before dawn, spin and sing. Their "spinning" consists in casting a golden coil from one to the other, after some peculiar ritual, involving fastening it to this pine-tree, winding it about that point of rock, casting it over the shoulder, northward. Their song is of no frivolous matter, but as if we should entertain ourselves recounting the Creation, the Fall of Man, the Deluge. Of the World-Ash they tell, in whose shade a well flowed, murmuring runes of wisdom; of a daring god who came to drink at the well, paying in toll one of his eyes. From the World-Ash, he, Wotan, broke a branch and fashioned it into the shaft of a spear. This he carved with runes of truth to compacts, and held it as the "haft of the world." An intrepid hero clove it asunder. Wotan thereupon commandedthe heroes of Walhalla to hew down the World-Ash and cut it to pieces. "High looms the castle built by giants," sings the youngest of the Norns; "there in the hall sits Wotan amid the holy clan of the gods and heroes. Wooden billets heaped to a lofty pile surround the room. That was once the World-Ash! When the wood shall burn hot and clear, when the flame shall devour the shining hall, the day of the end of the gods shall have dawned!" Wotan himself, when the danger is no longer to be averted of a dishonoured end,—if Alberich, that is, shall regain possession of the Ring,—will plunge the splinters of his defeated spear deep into Loge's breast and himself set the World-Ash ablaze.
As night begins to yield to dawn, confusion falls on the minds of the Norns; their visions, they complain, are dim. The strands of the coil become tangled between their fingers. One of them descries an angry face—Alberich's—floating before her; another becomes aware of an avenging curse gnawing at the threads of the coil. This suddenly snaps—terrific omen! Appalled, with the cry that "eternal wisdom is at an end," they vanish in search of their mother, Erda, in the earth's depths.
Day breaks. The reflection of Loge's defence pales. There greets our ear suddenly a sturdy strain, resembling something we have heard before. By analysis, we discover in it one of the Siegfried-motifs, the horn-call, but grown so robust and weighty, so firm, strong, commanding, that it hardly more than reminds us of the youthful Lock-weise, fluttering forth hopefully to find a "dear companion." The dear companion has long been found. Hard upon this motif of the grown-up Siegfried comes a wholly new motif, the motif of Brünnhilde Wedded, wonderful for its entwining tenderness, yet the elevation it combines with its immensely feminine quality. It isgiven over and over; the instruments pass it from one to the other, like a watchword.
The two thus announced come forth into the sunrise from their chamber in the rock, Siegfried full-armed, Brünnhilde leading Grane. They are glorious in this scene of parting. A nobler passion we do not remember hearing expressed than animates them and the music which interprets their being. It is all a little more than life-size.
"To new exploits, beloved hero, how poor were my love, did I not let you go! One single care restrains me, fear of the insufficiency of all I could bestow. What I learned from the gods I have given you, a rich treasury of holy runes, but the maidenly staff of my strength the hero took from me, before whom I now bow. Despoiled of wisdom, though filled with desire to serve; rich in love, but devoid of power, oh, despise not the poor lover who can only wish you, not give you, more!"
But not all the wisdom of the Wala's daughter, not the rich treasury of runes, have availed to change Siegfried from his big incurable simplicity,—as his answer in effect declares: "More did you give me, wonder-woman, than I have capacity to retain! Be not angry that your teaching should have left me still untaught. One knowledge there is which I, none the less, hold fast: that Brünnhilde lives and is mine; one lesson I learned with ease: to think ever of Brünnhilde!"
The gift she asks of his love is that he shall think of himself, think of his great deeds, increase his glory. He bestows on her in leaving the Ring, in which the virtue is condensed of all great deeds he ever did. In exchange she gives him Grane. After offering each other, in their great mood, the consolation that to part is for them not to be parted, for where he goes there in very truth goes she, and where she remains there does he too abide, they call upon the gods to feed their eyes upon the dedicatedpair they are, and with jubilant appellations for each other—Victorious light! Effulgent star! Radiant love! Radiant life!—the last good words ever exchanged between them!—they tear apart, without sorrow or foreboding. She watches him out of sight. The stage-directions say: "From her happy smile may be divined the appearance of the cheerfully departing hero." The emphatic phrase is heard, as he descends into the valley, in which at their first meeting (in the opera "Siegfried") they vowed that each was to the other "eternally and for ever, his inheritance and his possession, his only and his all!" The curtain closes on the Prologue.
By the music we can follow Siegfried on his journey. We know when he comes to the fire, when he comes to the Rhine. There floats to us, with the effect of a folk-song, a legend, the lament of the Rhine-nymphs for their lost gold. Sounds of warning are in the air as Siegfried approaches the Hall of the Gibichungen, but to such the hardy hero, no need to say, is fast sealed.
The curtain unclosing shows the interior of the Hall of the Gibichungen, open at the further end on the Rhine. Gunther, his sister Gutrune, and their half-brother Hagen, sit at a table set with drinking-horns and flagons.
This Hagen is the Nibelung's son of Erda's prophecy: "When the dark enemy of Love shall in wrath beget a son, the end of the gods shall not be long delayed." An allusion of Hagen's there is to his mother, as having succumbed to the craft of Alberich. On the other hand, a reference of Gunther's to Frau Grimhild, his mother and Hagen's, would seem to show that her history, whatever it may have been, bore no outward blot.
He is early old, this "child of hate," as Wotan long ago called him, sere and pallid, totally unglad and hating the glad. Heis the tool created by Alberich—even as Siegmund was Wotan's tool,—to win back for him the Ring. From his Nibelung father he has more than human powers and knowledge. In the conversation which we overhear between the brethren, we witness Hagen laying lines for the recapture of the Ring and Siegfried's destruction, for he, like Mime, understands that there can be no safety for him who shall unrightfully get from Siegfried the Ring, while the strong-handed fellow lives.
Gunther—whose motif betrays him, with its little effect of shallow self-satisfaction, like a jaunty toss of the head,—Gunther asks Hagen, is he not magnificent, sitting beside the Rhine; to the glory of Gibich? "It is my habit," remarks Hagen evasively, "to envy you." "Nay, for me it is to envy you, and not you me," Gunther in his pleasant humour rejoins; "true, I inherited the right of the first-born, but wisdom is yours alone, and I am, in fact, but lauding your good counsel when I inquire of my fame!" "I blame the counsel then," speaks Hagen, "for indifferent is as yet the fame. I know of high advantages which the Gibichung has not yet won...." Gunther's inquiry he satisfies: "In summer ripeness and vigour I behold the stem of Gibich: you, Gunther, without wife,—you, Gutrune, still unwed." Gunther and Gutrune, struck, are silent a moment. Then Gunther inquires whom should he wed that lustre might be added to the glory of the House? "I know a woman," Hagen replies, "the most glorious in the world. On a high rock is her throne; a fire surrounds her abode; only he who shall break through the fire may proffer his suit for Brünnhilde." Gunther's mediocrity and his sense of it stand ingenuously confessed in his question: "Is my courage sufficient for the test?" "The achievement is reserved for one stronger even than you." "Who is this unparalleled champion?" "Siegfried, the son of the Wälsungen....He, grown in the forest to mighty size and strength, is the man I wish Gutrune for her lord." Gutrune's motif, sweet and shallow, like Gunther's betrays her; an innocent admission of mediocrity, too, is in her exclamation: "You mocker! Unkind Hagen! How should I be able to attach Siegfried to me?" She is unsure of her feminine charm as her brother of his manly courage. As he finds nothing repugnant in the proposition to win his bride through another, so she accepts to win her love through a magic potion. Gunther, Gutrune, and Hunding are the only plain human beings in the drama of the Ring, and certainly they produce the effect of rampant creatures among winged ones. Acquiescently Gutrune hears Hagen's suggestion: "Remember the drink in the cupboard; trust me who provided it. By means of it, the hero whom you desire shall be bound to you by love. Were Siegfried now to enter, were he to taste the spiced drink, that he ever saw a woman before you, that ever a woman approached him, he must totally forget!" Thus they have it planned: Siegfried shall by a love-potion be won to Gutrune, and, as a task by which to obtain her from her brother, shall be deputed to fetch Brünnhilde for him from her flame-surrounded heights. Hagen is alone, of the three, to know of the tie existing between Siegfried and Brünnhilde. But, "How shall we find him?" very pertinently asks Gunther. While storming light-heartedly about the world in search of adventures, it can hardly be, Hagen judges, but that he shall come too to Gibich's shore on the Rhine. Even while he is speaking, Siegfried's horn is heard in the distance. Hagen from the riverside describes the figure he sees approaching: "In a boat, a hero and a horse: he it is, so merrily blowing the horn. By an easy stroke, as if with an idle hand, he drives the craft against the stream." (We hear that easy stroke of the idle hand,—the power and gaiety of Siegfried are in it; ithas a family resemblance to the horn-call.) "So vigourous a hand at the swinging of the scull he alone can boast who slew the dragon. It is Siegfried, surely no other!" Hagen makes a speaking-tube of his hands: "Hoiho! Whither, blithesome hero?" "To the strong son of Gibich!" comes answer from the river. "Here! Here come ashore! Hail, Siegfried, beloved hero!" The hero lands. As he stands at the entrance, holding Grane by the bridle, with the unconstraint of ancient manners they all quietly before speaking take one another's measure with their eyes. Siegfried's fame has preceded him. He is known as the slayer of the dragon, the possessor of the Hort, and commander of the Nibelungen. "Which is the son of Gibich?" he inquires. Gunther presents himself. "I heard you lauded far down the Rhine," Siegfried says; and, with the fresh directness again of ancient manners: "Either fight with me, or be my friend!" As we see him for the first time among common mortals, we perceive the effect of high elegance which pertains to Siegfried's calm, his careless perfect strength and simplicity. Gutrune who has not removed her marvelling gaze from him since his entrance, withdraws—to prepare the drink. As Hagen takes his horse to stable, Siegfried charges him, while a dear memory sings in his heart: "Take good care of Grane for me. Never did you hold by the bridle a horse of nobler breed!"
Magnificent is Gunther in expressions of welcome to the great guest: "Joyfully hail, O hero, the Hall of my fathers! The ground you tread, all you see, regard as your own. Yours is my inheritance, yours are my land and my people. To these add my body. I offer myself as your vassal." Siegfried replies: "I offer neither land nor people; no father's mansion nor court. My sole inheritance is my own body, which I expend day by day in living. Nothing have I but a sword, forged bymyself.... This I pledge with myself to our alliance." Hagen, overhearing, ventures; "Yet report calls you possessor of the Nibelungen-Hort...." And Siegfried; "I had almost forgotten the treasure, so do I prize its idle wealth! I left it lying in a cave where it once was guarded by a dragon." (The reason is clear why the curse must drop away crippled, powerless to blight this free nature, unenfeebled by covetousness as by fear!) "And you brought away no part of it?" "This metal-work, unaware of its use." Hagen recognises the Tarnhelm and explains its virtues. "And you took from the Hort nothing further?" "A ring." "You have it no doubt in safe keeping?" "It is in the keeping of a gracious woman," Siegfried replies dreamily.
Bashful, blushing, tremulous, as different as is well possible from Brünnhilde, Gutrune approaches, holding a filled drinking-horn. "Welcome, guest, in Gibich's house! His daughter offers you drink!"
Siegfried holds the cup before him a moment without drinking, his thoughts flying afar. The words come back to him spoken to Brünnhilde at parting. An infinite tenderness invades him. "Though I should forget all you ever taught me," he murmurs, "one teaching I shall still hold fast. My first draught, to faithful love, Brünnhilde, I drink to you!" With which secret toast to the absent beloved he sets the horn to his lips and drains it—to the motif of Evil Enchantment, the motif of the Cup of Forgetfulness, closely resembling the Tarnhelm-motif, but sweeter,—cruel as a treacherous caress. This whole passage, surpassingly exquisite to the ear, is painful to the heart as hardly another in the opera, fertile as this is in tragic moments. It marks the end of so much happiness.
When Siegfried's eyes, as he returns the cup to Gibich's daughter, rest upon her, it is, as Hagen had foretold, as if hehad never before beheld a woman. The inflammable heart which suffocated him of old at sight of Brünnhilde asleep, now makes his voice falter with instantaneous passion as he exclaims: "You, whose beauty dazzles like lightning, wherefore do you drop your eyes before me?" And when shyly she looks up: "Ha, fairest woman, hide your glance! Its beam scorches the heart within my breast—Gunther, what is your sister's name?... Gutrune!... Are theygood runeswhich I read in her eye?..." Impetuously he seizes her hand; "I offered myself to your brother as his vassal, the haughty one repelled me; will you exhibit the same arrogance toward me, if I offer myself as your ally?" She cannot answer, for the confusion of joy which overwhelms her; signifying by a gesture her unworthiness of this high honour, with unsteady step she leaves the room. Siegfried, closely observed by the other two, gazes lingeringly after her, fast-bewitched. Some sketch of a project for winning her it must be prompting his next words: "Have you, Gunther, a wife?" "Not yet have I courted, and hardly shall I rejoice in a wife! I have set my heart upon one whom no well-advised endeavour can win for me!" "In what can you fail," speaks Siegfried's brisk assurance, "if I stand by you?" "Upon a high rock is her throne, a fire surrounds her abode," Gunther in hopeless tone describes the forbidding circumstances. "Upon a high rock is her throne, a fire surrounds her abode,..." Siegfried rapidly says the words after him, which his lips know so strangely well. "Only he who breaks through the fire..." "Only he who breaks through the fire,..." Siegfried is visibly making a tremendous effort to remember, to account for the something so curiously familiar in the image evoked. "May be Brünnhilde's suitor...." By this, the cup of forgetfulness has completely done its work,—the name suggests to him nothing, the effort itself to remember is forgotten. "Butnot for me," sighs Gunther, "to climb the rock; the fire will not die down for me!" "I fear no fire! I will win the woman for you," Siegfried declares, "for your man am I, and my valour is yours, if I may obtain Gutrune for my wife!" Gutrune is promised him. It is Siegfried's heated brain—for the first time fruitful in stratagem—which throws off the plan to deceive this strange woman up in the fire-girdled fastness of whom they tell him, by means of the Tarnhelm, which lends the wearer any shape he wish to adopt. The future brothers swear "blood-brotherhood," pledging their truth in wine, into which each has let trickle a drop of his blood. "If one of the brothers shall break the bond, if one of the friends shall betray his faithful ally, let that which in kindness we drink to-day by drops gush forth in streams, sacred reparation to the friend!" They clasp hands upon the compact, and Hagen with his sword cleaves in two the drinking-horn. "Why," it occurs to Siegfried, "did not you, Hagen, join in the oath?" "My blood would have spoiled the drink," replies the joyless man; "it does not flow noble and untroubled like yours; cold and morose it stagnates in me, and will not colour my cheek. Wherefore I keep afar from the fiery league." The ancient conception of the power of a vow, as of the power of a curse, is interestingly illustrated in this story. The effectiveness of a vow, as we discover, has nothing to do with persons or circumstances; an oath becomes a sort of independent creation with a precise operation of its own. Hagen, capable of any breach of faith, meditating nothing but treachery, dare not join in the formality of the oath because of sure and deadly danger in breaking it. Siegfried deceives Gunther without intending or knowing it, yet his blood must "gush forth in streams" as appointed, to wash out his offence.
Siegfried is for starting without delay on the quest: "There ismy skiff; it will take us quickly to the rock; one night you shall wait in the boat on the shore, then shall you lead home the bride."
The Hall is left in Hagen's care. Followed by Gutrune's eyes, the heroes hurry off. Hagen places himself with spear and shield in the doorway, and, while sitting there sentinel-wise, reflects upon the success of his devices: "Blown along by the wind, the son of Gibich goes a-wooing. Helmsman to him is a strong hero, who is to brave danger in his stead. His own bride this latter will bring for him to the Rhine, but to me he will bring—the Ring! You frank good fellows, light-hearted companions, sail cheerfully on! Abject though he may seem to you, you are yet his servants—the servants of the Nibelung's son!" The curtain closes.
When it reopens we see the scene once more of Siegfried's and Brünnhilde's leave-taking. Brünnhilde sits sunk in contemplation of the Ring and the memories attached to it. Distant thunder disturbs her dreams; her ear seizes a familiar sound, not heard for many a day, the gallop of an approaching air-horse. Her name comes borne on the wind. She rushes to receive Waltraute, whose call she has joyfully recognised. In her delight, she does not at once take account of the Valkyrie's sorrowful and preoccupied mien. She presses rapid questions upon her: "You dared then for love of Brünnhilde brave Walvater's commandment? Or—how? Oh, tell me! Has Wotan's disposition softened toward me? When I protected Siegmund against the god, while it was a fault, I know that I was fulfilling his wish. I know, too, that his anger was appeased, for even though he sealed me in slumber, left me bound on a rock, to be the bondmaid of the man who should find and wake me, yet he granted favour to the prayer of my terror, he surrounded the rock with a devouring fire which should close the way to the base. Thus was I through my punishment madehappy! The most splendid of heroes won me for wife. In the light of his love to-day I beam and laugh!" With uncontrolled joy she embraces the sister, unconscious of the latter's impatience and shy attempt to repel her. "Did my fate, sister, allure you? Have you come to pasture your sight upon my bliss, to share that which has befallen me?"
The suggestion is verily too much! "To share the tumult which, insensate, possesses you? A different matter it is which impelled me, fearful, to break Wotan's commandment...." Brünnhilde wakes to the sister's troubled looks, but she can still think of but one reason for them. "The stern one has not forgiven? You stand in terror of his anger?" "Had I need to fear him—there would be a term to my fear!" "Amazed, I do not understand you!" "Master your agitation, listen attentively. The terror which drove me forth from Walhalla, drives me back thither...." "What has happened to the eternal gods?" cries Brünnhilde, at last alarmed. Waltraute unfolds to her then the sorrowful plight of the gods, making her even over the events in Walhalla since her cutting off from the eternal dynasty. She describes Walvater returning home from his wanderings with his broken spear, the erection around the Hall of the Blessed of the funeral pile cut from the World-Ash, the assembling about Wotan's throne of the gods and heroes. "There he sits, speaks no word, the splinters of the spear clenched in his hand. Holda's (Freia's) apples he will not touch. Fear and amazement bind the gods. His ravens both he has sent ranging; should they return with good tidings, then once again—for the last time!—the god would divinely smile. Clasping his knees lie we Valkyries; he is blind to our entreating looks. I pressed weeping against his breast, his glance wavered—Brünnhilde, he thought of you! Deeply he sighed; he closed his eyes and as if in dream he breathed forththe words: "If to the daughters of the deep Rhine she would restore the Ring, delivered from the weight of the curse were the gods and the world!" I bethought me then; from his side, between the rows of silent heroes, I stole. In secret haste I mounted my horse and rode upon the storm to you. You, oh, my sister, I now conjure: that which lies in your power, bravely do it,—end the misery of the Immortals!"
Brünnhilde speaks to her pityingly and gently; it is so long since she emerged from the vapour-dimmed atmosphere of her heavenly home that she receives no clear impression, she owns, of the affair related to her; but: "What, pale sister, do you crave from me?"
"Upon your hand, the ring—that is the one! Listen to my counsel, for Wotan's sake cast it from you!" "The ring? Cast it from me?" "To the Rhine-daughters give it back!" "To the Rhine-daughters, I, this ring? Siegfried's love-token? Are you mad?"
Brünnhilde is unshaken by Waltraute's insistence. Good or bad arguments have nothing to do with the case, as it stands in her feeling. Indignation possesses her at the bare notion of the exchange proposed to her, out of all reason and proportion: Siegfried's love, of which his ring is the symbol, for Walhalla's and the world's peace! "Ha! do you know what the ring is to me? How should you grasp it, unfeeling maid? More than the joys of Walhalla, more than the glory of the Immortals, is to me this ring; one look at its clear gold, one flash of its noble lustre, I prize more than the eternally enduring joy of all the gods, for it is Siegfried's love which beams at me from the ring! Oh, might I tell you the bliss.... And that bliss is safeguarded by the ring. Return to the holy council of the gods; inform them, concerning my ring: Love I will never renounce; they shall never take love from me, not though Walhalla the radiantshould crash down in ruins!" When Waltraute with cries of "Woe!" flees to horse, she looks after her unmoved: "Lightning-charged cloud, borne by the wind, go your stormy way! Nevermore steer your course toward me!" She has no regrets; the request has been in her judgment so monstrous that it has hardened and shut her heart toward those who made it. She gazes quietly over the landscape. Her sense of security in Siegfried's love is no doubt at its firmest in these moments following her fiery defence of it, her sacrifice to it of old allegiances. The very peace of possession is upon her.
Twilight has fallen; the guardian fire glows more brightly as the darkness thickens. Of a sudden, the flames leap high,—Loge's signal that some one draws near. At the same moment Siegfried's horn is heard, approaching. With the cry: "In my god's arm!" Brünnhilde rushes to meet him.
A figure springs from the flames upon a rock, a form foreign to Brünnhilde's eyes. The flames drop back. The figure remains, dark against the dim glow of the sky. His head and the greater part of his face are concealed by a helmet of curious fashion; she does not, in the uncertain light, recognise the Tarnhelm. The fact itself of his being there is terrifying, arguing some singular treachery somewhere. "Treason!" is Brünnhilde's first cry, as she recoils and from a distance stares breathlessly at the sinister intruder. He stands motionless, leaning upon his shield and regarding her. "Who is it that has forced his way to me?" she gasps. He is silent still; the horror of him is increased by his silence and motionlessness and his metal mask. The motif of evil enchantment is woven through the whole of this scene. In a hard masterful voice he speaks at length: "Brünnhilde! A suitor is come whom your fire does not alarm! I seek you for my wife; follow me unresistingly." It is all so strange, so like the agonisingimpossibilities of a dream,—Brünnhilde falls to trembling. "Who are you, dreadful one? Are you a mortal? Do you come from Hella's army of the night?" Still watching her, motionless on his point of vantage, he replies: "A Gibichung am I, and Gunther is the hero's name, whom, woman, you must follow." It flashes upon Brünnhilde that this, this must have been the true point of Wotan's punishment. When the figure springs from the rock and approaches her, she raises, to hold him off, the hand with Siegfried's ring. "Stand back! Fear this sign!... Stronger than steel I am made by this ring; never shall you rob me of it!" "You teach me," he replies, with his dark calm, "to detach it from you!" He reaches for it, she defends it. They wrestle. She escapes from him with a victorious cry. He seizes her again. The former Valkyrie, reinforced by the Ring, is a match very nearly for the stalwart Wälsung. A shriek is heard. He has caught her hand, and draws the ring from her finger. As if all her strength had been in it and were gone with its loss, she sinks, broken, in the arms of the disguised Siegfried. He coldly lets her down upon the seat of rock. "Now you are mine, Brünnhilde,—Gunther's bride. Withhold not your favour from me now!" She cowers, shattered and stupefied, murmuring, "How could you have helped yourself, miserable woman!" The right of the stronger she recognises, primitive woman, as a right. Fairly vanquished, she must accept the fate of battle,—no dignity, as no success, would pertain to further struggle. When with a gesture of command he points her to her stone chamber, trembling and with faltering step she obeys. Siegfried, following, draws his sword and in his natural voice again, smooth and happy, addresses it: "Now, Nothung, do you bear witness to the restraint which marks my wooing. Guarding my truth to my brother, divide me from his bride!"
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 withour 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 bringingabout 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. Twohappy 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, hesingles 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 broughtback 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 betrue: "Not to him (Gunther) am I married, but to that man, there!"