“Take him away! I don’t want the bear! I have done my best with your sword.”
“Good!” laughed the boy. “Good-bye, Bruin; run away,” and he freed the great creature, sending him lumbering off into the woods again.
Then, turning to the trembling Nibelung, he again asked for the sword, and Mime handed it to him. The young Volsung took it into his hands quickly, scorn on his handsome face and anger in his eyes. He was dressed in a wild forest costume of wolf-skins, and his yellow hair curled over his shoulders. He, indeed, made a great contrast to Mime, and one could not wonder that they did not get on well together.
“What a toy!” he cried out. “Do you call this a sword?” and, striking it on the anvil, he broke the blade into a hundred slivers, and then burst into a rage with the smith, who had pretended to give him a sword fit for battle, and had shaped him so foolish a switch, as he called it. And finally, thoroughly out of breath, he flung himself upon the stone couch at one side, and not all Mime’s coaxings could appease his anger. He finally confessed that he did not know why he ever returned to the cave, because, he said frankly, he could not help detesting the Dwarf, and was much happier when away from him. And then he broke into a passionate description of the wood-life he loved so well; the mating of the birds in the spring-time, and the way they loved and helped each other; the care that the mother deer lavished upon her little ones; the tenderness among all the forest creatures that seemed so beautiful and mysterious to him.
“I learned watching them,” said Siegfried, almost sorrowfully, “what love must be. Mime, where is she whom I may call mother?”
“Nonsense!” said Mime, and tried to draw Siegfried’s mind away from the dangerous topic; for he had never told him anything about his parents, always calling him his own son. And he feared the boy’s anger if he should ever know that he had been deceived.
But, thoroughly aroused, the young Volsung fiercely demanded the names of his father and mother, declaring that he was far too unlike Mime to be his son. At last the Nibelung confessed the truth, and told him the story of his mother’s death, and of how she had left her child in his care. And, when the boy asked for proof, he slowly crept away, to return with the broken sword Nothung, the mending of which was so hard a riddle even to his sly brain.
Wildly excited, Siegfried commanded him to work at it anew and do his best to weld the pieces; and, with a shout of delight and hope, he went merrily away into the woods, leaving Mime in saddest, deepest perplexity.
Despairing, he murmured at the hopelessness of the task, which his rather unruly young charge had set him, and was sitting, a picture of discouragement and misery, when from the dark woods came a stranger clad as a wanderer, and bearing a great spear. He advanced to the door of the cave and asked in slow, grave tones for rest and shelter. Mime was at first frightened, then angry, and finally refused to harbor the strange guest, until the Wanderer made the following proposal: Mime was to ask him three questions, and if they were not correctly answered the host should have the privilege of cutting off his guest’s head. To this Mime consented, and, after a little thought, thus chose his first question:
“Tell me what is the race down in the earth’s depths?”