The Wagnerian Romances

by Gertrude Hall Brownell

I

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 commanded the 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 is given 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 dedicated pair 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. He is 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; it has 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 by myself.... 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 he had 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 they good runes which 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. "But not 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 is my 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 made happy! 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 forth the 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 radiant should 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 agonising impossibilities 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!"

II

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.