As Mime gazes after him, violent trembling seizes the poor little smith. The flashing among the leaves of Wotan's winged horse his terror mistakes for the flaming of Fafner's gaping jaws; and the sound of a rushing approach for the monster crashing toward him through the underbrush. With the cry: "The dragon is upon me! Fafner! Fafner!" he cowers behind the anvil.
The alarming noise proves to have been only Siegfried coming with characteristic impetuosity to ask for his sword. "Hey, there! Lazy-bones! Have you finished? Quick! What success with the sword?" Mime is not in sight. His voice is heard, faint, from his hiding-place: "Is it you, child? Are you alone?" Siegfried for some time can draw no satisfactory answer from him, no matter how roughly pressed. The dwarf is caught between two difficulties, and must first of all things try to think out for himself the safest course of action. Only by one who has never known fear can Nothung, the indispensable, be forged. "Too wise am I for such work!" he soliloquizes. On the other hand, his wise head is forfeit to one who has never learned fear. Of the two difficulties, the latter is obviously the one to be first attended to. Siegfried fills the description dangerously well of the foretold fatal enemy. "How shall I contrive to teach him fear?" is Mime's nearest interest. Siegfried, irritated by his continued hesitation, finally catches hold of him. "Ha? Must I lend a hand? What have you forged and furbished to-day?" "With no care but for your welfare," answers Mime, "I was sunk in thought as to how I should instruct you in a thing of great importance." "You were sunk quite under the seat," laughs Siegfried; "what of great importance did you discover there?" "I there learned fear for your sake, that I might teach it to you, dunce." "What about fear?" Siegfried asks. "You know nothing about it, and you are thinking of going from the woods out into the world? Of what use to you would be the strongest sword, if you had no knowledge of fear?... Into the crafty world I shall not let you fare before you have learned fear." "If it is an art, why am I unacquainted with it? Out with it! What about fear?" "Have you never felt,"—asks Mime, in a voice which at the suggestion of his own words falls to quaking, "have you never felt, in the dark woods, at twilight,... when there are sounds in the distance of rustling, humming and soughing, when wild muttering gusts sweep past, disorderly fire-wisps flicker around you, a swelling confused sound surges toward you,—have you not felt a shuddering horror seize upon your limbs? A burning chill shakes your frame, your senses swim and fail; the alarmed heart trembling in your breast hammers to the point of bursting? If you have never felt these things, fear is unknown to you!" The music of fear is a darkened and discoloured fire-music through which we recognise, as if under a disguise veiling something of its beauty, the motif of Brünnhilde's sleep. If one looks for reasons, one can suppose the reference to be, as to a type of fearful things, to the terror-inspiring barrier surrounding Brünnhilde; and imagine a jesting intimation that fear, as Siegfried should eventually learn it, is the sensation suspending the heart-beats at sight of a beautiful woman in her sleep.
Siegfried has listened to Mime in amused wonder: "Strange exceedingly must that be! My heart, I feel, stands firm and hard in its place. That creeping and shuddering, glowing and shivering, turning hot and turning dizzy, hammering and trembling, I wish to feel the terror of it, I long for that delight! But how can you, Mime, bring it about?" "Just follow me. I will guide you to some purpose. I have thought it all out. I know a dreadful dragon; he has slain already and swallowed many; Fafner will teach you fear, if you follow me to his lair." "Where is his lair?" "Neidhöhle it is called. (Neid: envy; Höhle: cavern.) Eastward it lies at the end of the wood." "Then it is not far from the world?" "The world is close by." "You are to take me there, and when I have learned fear, away, into the world! So quick! Give me my sword! I will swing it out in the world!" Mime confesses that he neither has mended, nor ever can mend, the sword in question. "No dwarf's strength is equal to it. More likely," he suggests, "one who knows no fear may discover the art!" Siegfried, heartily weary of Mime's paltering, snatches up the fragments of Nothung: "Here, the pieces! Away with the bungler! My father's steel doubtless will let itself be welded by me. Myself I will forge the sword!" And he falls to work. "If you had taken diligent pains to learn the art, it would now, of a truth, profit you," remarks Mime; "but you were always lazy at the lesson. What proper work can you do now?" "What the master cannot do," Siegfried aptly retorts, "the apprentice might, if he had always minded him? Take yourself off! Meddle not with this, or you may tumble with it into the fire!" He heaps fuel on the hearth, fastens the sword in a vice and starts filing it. Mime watches him, and at this which looks like folly, cannot restrain the exclamation: "What are you doing? Take the solder! You are filing away the file!" But the disposition of the young fellow without fear shows in his method with the sword. With a brave thoroughness he reduces the whole blade to steel filings. Mime follows all his movements. "Now I am as old as this cavern and these woods, but such a thing have I never seen! He will succeed with the sword, that I plainly apprehend. In his fearlessness he will make it whole. The Wanderer knew it well! How, now, shall I hide my endangered head? It is forfeit to the intrepid boy unless Fafner shall teach him fear—But, woe's me, poor wretch, how will he slay the dragon, if he learns fear from him? How will he obtain the Ring for me? Accursed dilemma! Here am I fast caught, unless I find me wise counsel how to bring under compulsion the fearless one himself...." "Quick, Mime!" Siegfried interrupts Mime's meditations; "what is the name of the sword which I have ground into filings?" "Nothung is the name of the notable sword; your mother gave me the information." Siegfried at work falls to lusty singing, a song of primitive character, of a kind with what one can suppose Tubal-cain singing at his ancient anvil. We see him pumping the forge-bellows while the steel melts, pouring the metal into a mould, cooling the mould in a water-trough, breaking the plaster, heating the sword, hammering the red blade, cooling it again, riveting the handle, polishing the whole,—all of which actions his song celebrates: "Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword! (Neidliches Schwert is literally "covetable sword") Why must you of old be shattered? To powder I have ground your sharp magnificence. I now melt the filings in the crucible. Hoho! Hoho! Hahei! Hahei! Blow, bellows, brighten the glow! Wild in the forest grew a tree. I hewed it down, I burned the brown ash to charcoal. It lies heaped now on the hearth. The coals of the tree, how bravely they burn, how bright and clear they glow! Upward they fly in a spray of sparks and melt the steel-dust. Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword! Your powdered steel is melting, in your own sweat you are swimming, soon I shall swing you as my sword!"
Mime during this has been revolving his own problem, and has hit upon a plan which seems to him to meet all the difficulties of his case: Siegfried, beyond a doubt, will forge the sword and kill Fafner. While he is tired and heated from the encounter, Mime will offer him a drink brewed from simples of his culling, a few drops of which will plunge the boy into deep sleep, when, with the weapon he is at this moment forging, Mime will clear him out of the way and take possession of Ring and treasure. Enchanted with his inspiration, he sets to work at once preparing the somniferous drink.
Siegfried is singing at the top of his lungs: "In the water flowed the stream of fire, it hissed aloud in anger, but the cold tamed and chilled it; in the water it flows no more, stiff and hard it is become, the lordly steel—but hot blood will bathe it soon. Now sweat again that I may forge you, Nothung, notable sword!" He catches sight of Mime pottering with the cooking utensils. "There is a wise smith come to shame," the old man answers the youth's mocking inquiry; "the teacher receives lessons from his pupil; all is up with art for the old one, he will serve the young one as cook! While the young one makes iron into broth, the old one will prepare a dish of eggs!" With impish relish of the inwardness of the situation, he stirs the mixture in the pot.
"Hoho! Hahei! Hoho!" Siegfried proceeds with his work and his singing; "shape, my hammer, a hard sword! Blood once dyed your pallid blue, its trickling red brightened you, you laughed coldly, you cooled off the hot liquid. Now the fire has made you glow red, your soft hardness yields to the hammer; you dart angry sparks at me, because I have tamed you, stubborn! The merry sparks, how they delight me! Anger adorns the brave. You are gaily laughing at me, though you feign to be angry and sullen. Hoho! Hahei! By means of heat and hammer I have achieved it, with stalwart blows I have shaped you; now let the red shame vanish, become as hard and cold as you can...."
Mime is meanwhile revelling in dreams of the greatness which is to follow upon his acquisition of the Ring. He fairly skips up and down as he thinks of it all: Brother Alberich himself reduced to subjection, the whole world bowing at the nod of his, Mime's, head. No more toil, others to toil for him.... "Mime is king, Prince of the Nibelungen, lord over all! Hei, Mime! who would have thought it of you?"
"Nothung! Nothung! Notable sword!" harmoniously bellows Siegfried; "now you are fast in your hilt. You were in two, I have forced you into one. No blow after this shall break you. In the dead father's hand the steel snapped, the living son forged it anew; now its bright gleam flashes like laughter, its sharp edge cuts clean. Nothung! Nothung! Young and renewed! I have brought you back to life. You lay dead there, in fragments; now you flash lightning, defiant and brave! Show caitiffs your gleam! Strike the traitor! Fell the villain!" He waves over his head the finished sword: "Look, Mime, you smith—thus cuts Siegfried's sword!" He brings it down upon the anvil, which falls apart, cleft from top to bottom. Mime tumbles over with amazement.
II
The next scene shows the woods before Fafner's cave. It is night. Alberich is dimly distinguishable, lurking among the rocks, brooding his dark thoughts, as he keeps covert watch over the treasure. He is startled by what seems an untimely break of day, accompanied by a great gust of wind. This defines itself as a galloping gleam—a shining horse rushing through the forest. "Is it already the slayer of the dragon?" he wonders; "is it he, already, who shall kill Fafner?" A moonbeam breaking through the clouds reveals the form of the Wanderer advancing toward Neidhöhle. The enemies see and recognise each other. Alberich, though greatly alarmed at this inopportune presence, breaks into angry vituperation: "Out of the way, shameless robber.... Your intrigues have done harm enough!" "I am come to look on, not to act," Wotan replies, grandly mild and unruffled; "who shall deny me a wanderer's right of way?" Alberich, as if words of offence were actually missiles, showers them thick upon the unmoved god. He points out, virulently, the strength of his own position compared with Wotan's, in whose hand that spear of his must fly to pieces should he break a covenant established as sacred by the runes carved on its shaft. Wanderer, a shade weary of such a berating, yet losing little of his placidity, retorts: "Not through any runes of truth to covenants did my spear bind you, malignant, to me; you my spear forces to bow before me by its strength; I carefully keep it therefore for purposes of war." "How haughtily do you threaten in your defiant strength," the rabid Alberich continues, "yet how uneasy is all within your breast.... Doomed to death through my curse is Fafner, guardian of the treasure. Who will inherit from him? Will the illustrious Hort come once more into the possession of the Nibelung? The thought gnaws you with unsleeping care. For, let me hold it again in this fist, far otherwise than thick-witted giants shall I employ the power of the Ring; then let the holy keeper of the heroes tremble; the heights of Walhalla I shall storm with the hosts of Hella, the world then will be mine to govern!" Tranquilly Wotan receives this: "I know your meaning, but it creates in me no uneasiness. He shall rule through the Ring who obtains it." This calm of Wotan's gives Alberich the idea that the god must, so to speak, have cards up his sleeve. "On the sons of heroes," he suggests ironically, "you place your insolent reliance, fond blossoms of your own blood. Good care have you taken of a young fellow—not so?—who cunningly shall pluck the fruit which you dare not yourself break off?" "Not with me"—Wotan cuts short the discussion, "wrangle with Mime. Danger threatens you through your brother. He is bringing to this spot a youth who is to slay Fafner for him. The boy knows nothing of me. The Nibelung uses him for his own purposes. Wherefore, I tell you, comrade, do freely as you choose!" Alberich can scarcely believe that he has heard aright. "You will keep your hand from the treasure?" Serenely and broadly, Wotan declares—a touch of that tenderness in his tone which the thought of the Wälsungen always has power to arouse—"Whom I love I leave to act for himself: let him stand or fall, his own lord is he. I have no use save for heroes!" This sounds very fair; to Alberich almost too fair. He presses Wotan with further questions. The answers are elusive as oracles, but satisfy Alberich of thus much: that Wotan is himself out of the struggle for the Ring. To point his personal disinterestedness, the god even offers to wake the dragon, that Alberich may warn him of the approaching danger and peradventure receive in token of gratitude—the Ring! We suspect in this Wotan's taste for a joke, unless it be an exhibition of that other trait of the god's, the need to gratify his conscience with a comedy of fairness. At this moment he is not, it is true, interfering; but he is confidently watching the play of forces set working by him long ago. The strong Siegfried armed with the rejuvenated Sieges-schwert is a force having its impulse originally from him. At this moment, perhaps because the events immediately impending have cast their shadows across the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is in no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring. To Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who disturbs my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead of the ponderous tread of the brothers it suggests the muffled ponderous beat of a gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich explain to the dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him safety. Having heard them out, Fafner, unseen in the cave, gives a long lazy comfortable yawn. "I lie and possess! Let me sleep!" Wotan laughs. "Well, Alberich, the plan failed. But abuse me no more, you rogue! One thing, I further enjoin you, keep well in mind: Everything is after its kind, and this kind you cannot alter!" The broad Erda-motif accompanies this maxim. "Take a firm stand! Put your skill to use with Mime, your brother. He is of the kind you understand better. What is of a different kind, learn now to know, too...." When Wotan disappears, the galloping is heard, through the storm-wind that for a moment agitates the leaves of the forest, of his rising Luft-ross. His obscure last words have left Alberich puzzled, sorer and angrier than ever. The air is full of curse-motif. "Laugh on, you light-minded luxurious tribe of the gods! I shall still see you all gone to destruction. While the gold shines in the light there is a wise one keeping watch—His spite will circumvent you all!" He hides himself among the tumbled rocks near the cave-mouth from the brightening light of dawn.