Slumber and silence reigned in the palace which, but the morning before, had resounded with the clash of weapons and a cheerful bustling life; for King Gunther, accompanied by his brothers and his bravest men-at-arms, had that day set out on a warlike expedition, leaving the town and the castle and his fair queen Brunhild to the care of the truest of the true, bold Haco, in whose courage and wisdom he placed the fullest confidence.
With a loose velvet mantle half hiding his gold-gleaming armour, Haco paced the streets of the lonely city, and listened attentively for some sound to break the stillness of the night. A distant noise like the rumbling of many wheels reached his ear, and an eager look came into his eyes. He glanced over at the palace, in the safest room of which lay Brunhild, his honoured queen. Out of love to her he had murderously slain the noble Siegfried, the immortal hero of the Nibelungen; and the shame of the deed will last to the remotest ages, dimming with rust the splendid escutcheon of his fame.
When he had convinced himself of the undisturbed repose of the royal household, he turned and walked towards the minster, in whose shadow lay another palace. There dwelt the beautiful Kriemhild, King Gunther's sister, and widow of the noble Siegfried, whose death she mourned with inconsolable grief. The stillness of repose hovered also round these walls. The windows were dark, the doors barred, and amidst her maids lay the royal widow in her first deep sleep.
The moonbeams glided over the roof of the palace, and glanced suspiciously at the dark figure of the man who stood gazing anxiously up at the windows. When he saw that there was no movement, he went towards the tower built of huge blocks which guarded the entrance to the castle, took a bunch of rusty keys from under his mantle, and opened the locks and bolts of the ironbound door which led into the vaults. The last bolt was loosed, the heavy gate opened, and the moonlight streamed in freely over the treasures which were here displayed in splendid piles. Crowns of gold richly adorned with diamonds, bracelets and chains gleaming with jewels, lay there in rich profusion. Wrought by the skilful hands of the dwarfs, they had been kept hid by the little folk in secret mountain recesses until Siegfried came, and Alberich, the dwarf-king, had been obliged, notwithstanding his magic power and cunning, to yield to the might of the hero's arm, and give him the precious hoards of jewels. And beside these, heaped up to the very roof, were bars upon bars of uncoined gold, only waiting the impress of the mint to change them into an exhaustless hoard. This was the treasure of the Nibelungen, the widow Kriemhild's rightful possession, which the heroes had brought her a few weeks before from the land of the Nibelungen. With full hands she had scattered gold among these heroes, and had also given rich gifts to the vassals of her brother, the king of Burgundy, for she had now come to live in his land that she might be near the corpse of her beloved husband. And what Kriemhild's beauty and misfortune had failed to do, her bounteous gifts accomplished. The hearts of the Burgundians were turned towards her, so that Haco, the watchful hero, began to be anxious about his own influence and her probable revenge. So he determined to rob her of the Nibelungen treasure, that she might be deprived of the means of working his ruin.
At a place not far from the royal city, where the Rhine flows in a still deeper channel, stood Haco a few hours later in a boat on the river, and watched the high-piled waggons, the first of which now passed over the shaking bridge, rolled on with threatening rumble, and stopped close to the low parapet. Haco stretched forth his stalwart arm and removed the back of the waggon, so that its precious burden slid into the depths below.
The stream gleamed brightly in the radiance of gold and precious stones, the jewels whirled round and round in the rapid waters, then sank down flashing from wave to wave, till they had reached the still, deep bed of the river. Waggon after waggon was silently emptied by Haco's powerful hand, and each time the costly load made the Rhine river flash with borrowed splendour. So hour after hour went by in silent and restless haste. When the last gold bar had disappeared beneath the water, the drivers swore an oath of eternal secrecy, received rich rewards of gold, and led their waggons away in endless line. Haco stood alone in the boat, and watched them till the last man had vanished in the shades of night; then he stooped to gaze down into the stream.
There far down lay the treasure of the Nibelungen, and the Rhine flowed on in silence over the golden secret that it hid. No tongue would ever tell the tale, no arm would ever reach the hoards. Why, then, did Haco still stand lost in thought?—why did he gaze down gloomily into the river depths? Was it that the shadows of the past, or visions of a bloody future, rose from the gleaming waves? Was he thinking of Kriemhild's beauty and the passionate love which his now hard heart had once felt for the beautiful princess, and which, when rejected, changed into anger and hatred that moved his arm to the murder of Siegfried and the robbery of the Nibelungen treasure? Or did he see with prophetic eye that time in which the now helpless one should take revenge on all who had injured her—a revenge which should exterminate the heroes of Burgundy to the last man.
Many hundred years had passed over the world since that night robbery; blood and tears had been shed, dried, and forgotten; new nations had arisen and the old ones fallen, so that there was scarcely a page of the world's chronicle to tell of their struggles, hopes, and tears. All things had changed. The new had taken the place of the old, only to yield in its turn to a newer order still. Nothing was the same but ever young, ever beautiful, ever innocent nature, and the human heart with its love and hate. The Rhine still flowed and the Wonnegau on its banks still bloomed as of old, but its name was changed; the Cathedral of Worms still pointed to the sky, but it was not the same building in the shadow of which Kriemhild's palace used to stand. The generation that now trod the same soil knew nothing of the Nibelungen—the tradition of those heroes lived only in some half-forgotten songs. The sunken treasure had long since been thought a myth, and with an incredulous smile the wise men of those days pointed to the stream which was said to hide such a "golden secret."