'Whom wouldst thou a concubine?' speaks the haughty Queen.
'That will I thee,' quoth Kriemhild; 'thy body fair, I ween,
Was at first embraced by Siegfried, my dear man;
'Sooth was it not my brother who thy maidenhood won.'"
In the agony of shame, Brunhild sank with tears on the threshold. Kriemhilde passes through the door of the church with her attendants, but
"For this must soon perish many knights, brave and good."
The insulted queen swears vengeance; Siegfried's blood alone can wash away her shame. Here begins the work of fierce, grim Hagen, one of the most sombre characters in German legend. Brunhild wins for the execution of her revenge this knight, with his fearful record of crime and passion, though with, on the other hand, his tragic greatness and his unfaltering devotion to his king and master, to whom he is joined by the ties of absolute loyalty. As justified by his oath of vassalage he vows to slay the man who has insulted his sovereign. Gunther reluctantly consents to the murder of the man to whom he is so deeply indebted; Giselher, who decidedly rejects the murderous project, is outvoted.
A treacherous plan is concocted, and to make the perfidy still more flagrant Kriemhilde's innocent cooperation is mendaciously engaged. As Siegfried, after his bath in the blood of the dragon whom he had slain, is invulnerable except at one point between the shoulder-blades where a fallen linden leaf had prevented the skin from becoming "horny," Kriemhilde is persuaded by Hagen to mark the spot with red silk that he may protect him from harm. A hunt is chosen as the occasion for Siegfried's murder. While Siegfried stoops to a fountain to drink the limpid water, wine having intentionally been kept away from the hunting party, he is pierced by Gunther's vassal through the silken mark indicated by his innocent, loving wife. He sinks to the ground dying, rallies once more to face his murderer, but his strength leaves him, and dying he commends Kriemhilde to Gunther's care:
"'Would you ever, Gunther, on this world again
To any one show kindness, let it well appear,