She became very lavish in her gifts, and eager to pour out all her riches, if only it brought added honour upon Siegfried’s memory. No one who came to beg alms of her ever went away empty-handed, and the palace was always full of suppliants for her bounty. This extravagant giving went on for some time, until one day Hagen came to the king and said:—
“If your sister continues to distribute so much gold among the people, we will soon have them idle and rebellious, and then they will be useless to us in time of warfare. Bid her, therefore, to cease her giving.”
But Gunther answered, “I have brought enough sorrow upon her through my evil deeds, and if this lavish giving can soften her grief, let her continue to dispose of her wealth as it pleases her, even though she should exhaust all the treasure that is in the hoard.”
Hagen determined, however, that it must not be so, and seeing that he could get no help from the king, he planned to gain his end by other means. So he made every appearance of approving Kriemhild’s lavish gifts, and in time prevailed upon her to give him access to the treasure, that he might help her in disposing of it. Then one dark night he gathered together a band of his own followers, and stole all that remained of the hoard. They carried it from the palace by a secret passage, and brought it down to the river, where Hagen sunk it many fathoms deep. Neither he nor any one else could ever regain it, but at least it was out of Kriemhild’s hands.
Thus was the hoard of Andvari, with its fateful curse, placed forever beyond the reach of men; but the charm and the mystery which hung around its very name still lingered through all the centuries that followed, and to-day the sailors upon the river Rhine are still looking for some glimpse of the sunken treasure.
The Punishment of Loki
THE curse which the dwarf Andvari had placed upon the hoard, and particularly upon the serpent ring which Loki had wrested from him, did not end with the sinking of the treasure in the river. Both Hagen and Kriemhild had been wearers of the ring, and evil soon fell upon them as it had upon Fafnir, Regin, Siegfried and Brunhilde. Some years after Siegfried’s death, Kriemhild married Etzel, king of the Huns, and was slain by one of his knights. Before this, however, she herself had struck the blow that killed the treacherous and cruel Hagen. With the burial of Kriemhild, the ill-fated ring passed forever from the sight of men, and the curse of Andvari was never again visited upon its unfortunate possessors.
Any other of the gods than Loki would have regretted the greed which made him tear the serpent ring from Andvari’s finger, and thus bring misfortune upon so many innocent people; but Loki did not care whether human lives were wrecked by his misdoing any more than he felt one moment’s remorse for having slain the shining Balder.
The gods had never forgiven Loki for this wicked deed, and they longed very much to drive him out of their beautiful city, which had never harboured any other evil thing. But Loki was Odin’s brother, and they dared not punish him until the All-Wise One was ready to give his consent. Odin knew as well as they, that the slayer of Balder was not fit to live among the gods; but he waited for Loki to commit one more act of cruelty before he drove the offender out of Asgard. This occasion came, at last, sooner than Odin expected.