"'Women must be instructed,' said Siegfried the good knight,
'To leave off idle talking, and rule their tongues aright.
Keep thy fair wife in order, I'll do by mine the same;
Such overweening folly puts me indeed to shame.'"
"Hasty words have often sundered fair dames before."
The haughty princess of Iceland now perceives that she had from the beginning been practised upon by Gunther, and that Siegfried had performed the principal part in the plot. Against him, therefore, she vows revenge; and, in order to accomplish his purpose, takes into her counsels Hagan chief of Trony, one of the most prominent characters in the poem, and who in fact may be looked on as the hero of the second part, after Siegfried has disappeared from the scene. This Hagan is a person of gigantic energy and great experience, but utterly destitute of gentleness and tenderness; all his aims are selfish, and a cold calculating policy is his highest wisdom. Conscience he seems to have none; and, except for a purpose, will scarcely trouble himself to conceal his perpetration of the foulest crimes. He has the aspect of Napoleon—as he is painted by the graphic pencil of Emerson. Like Napoleon, he never hesitates to use falsehood to effect his ends. Pretending extraordinary friendship for Kriemhild, he worms from her the secret of her husband's invulnerability, or rather of his vulnerability—like Achilles—on only one part of the body.
"Said she 'My husband's daring, and thereto stout of limb;
Of old, when on the mountain he slew the dragon grim,
In its blood he bathed him, and thence no more can feel
In his charmed person the deadly dint of steel.
Still am I ever anxious, whene'er in fight he stands,
And keen-edged darts are hailing from strong heroic bands,
Lest I by one should lose him, my own beloved mate—
Ah! how my heart is beating still for my Siegfried's fate.
So now I'll tell the secret, dear friend, alone to thee—
For thou, I doubt not, cousin, will keep thy faith with me—
Where sword may pierce my darling, and death sit on the thrust:
See, in thy truth and honour, how full, how firm my trust.
As from the dragon's death-wounds gushed out the crimson gore,
With the smoking torrent the warrior washed him o'er;
A leaf then 'twixt his shoulders fell from the linden bough—
There only steel can harm him; for that I tremble now.'"
Possessed of this secret, Hagan finds it easy to watch an opportunity for despatching him. A hunting party is proposed; and when the hunters are dispersed in the tangled wilds of the Wask (Vosges) forest, Hagan, with Gunther, who was accessory, secretly draws Siegfried aside to refresh himself, after hard sport, from the clear waters of a sylvan well; and, while he is kneeling down, transfixes him between the shoulders on the fatal spot with a spear. Then—
"His lively colour faded; a cloud came o'er his sight;
He could stand no longer; melted all his might;
In his paling visage the mark of death he bore:
Soon many a lovely lady sorrowed for him sore.
So the lord of Kriemhild among the flowerets fell;
From the wound fresh gushing his life's blood fast did well.
Then thus, amidst his tortures, even with his failing breath,
The false friends he upbraided who had contrived his death.