“Woe betide the day!” she cried,—“woe betide the day that brought me to Rhineland, and made me the wife of a weakling and coward, and the jest of him who might have done nobler things!”
Hagen smiled. He had long waited for this day.
“It was Siegfried, and Siegfried alone, who plotted to deceive you,” he said. “Had it not been for him, you might still have been the happy maiden-queen of Isenland. And now he laughs at you, and urges his queen, Kriemhild, to scorn you as she would an underling.”
“I know it, I know it,” returned the queen in distress. “And yet how grandly noble is the man! How he rushed through the flames to awaken me, when no one else could save! How brave, how handsome,—and yet he has been my bane. I can have no peace while he lives.”
Hagen smiled again, and a strange light gleamed from his dark eye. Then he said, “Truly handsome and brave is he, but a viler traitor was never born. He even now plots to seize this kingdom, and to add it to his domain. Why else should he bring so great a retinue of Nibelungen warriors to Burgundy? I will see King Gunther at once, and we will put an end to his wicked projects.”
“Do even so, good Hagen,” said Brunhild. “Take him from my path, and bring low the haughty pride of his wife, and I shall be content.”
“That I will do!” cried Hagen. “That I will do! Gunther is and shall be the king without a peer; and no one shall dare dispute the worth and the queenly beauty of his wife.”
Then the wily chief sought Gunther, and with cunning words poisoned his weak mind. The feeble old king was easily made to believe that Siegfried was plotting against his life, and seeking to wrest the kingdom from him. And he forgot the many kind favors he had received at the hero’s hand. He no longer remembered how Siegfried had slain the terror of the Glittering Heath, and freed the Burgundians from many a fear; and how he had routed the warlike hosts of the North-land, and made prisoners of their kings; and how he had brought his voyage to Isenland to a happy and successful ending. He forgot, also, that Siegfried was his sister’s husband. He had ears and mind only for Hagen’s wily words.
“While this man lives,” said the dark-browed chief, “none of us are safe. See how the people follow him! Hear how they shout at his coming! They look upon him as a god, and upon Gunther as a nobody. If we are wise, we shall rid ourselves of so dangerous a man.”
“It is but a week until he takes his leave of us, and goes back to his own home in Nibelungen Land. Watch him carefully until that time, but do him no harm. When he is once gone, he shall never come back again,” said the king. But he spoke thus, not because of any kind feelings towards Siegfried, but rather because he feared the Nibelungen hero.