Читать книгу The Wagnerian Romances - Gertrude Hall Brownell - Страница 8

He has reached the summit of the rock, he has laid hands on the gold. He cries, "You shall make love in the dark! … I quench your light, I tear your gold from the reef. I shall forge me the ring of vengeance, for, let the flood hear me declare it: I here curse love!" Tearing from its socket their splendid lamp, which utters just once its golden cry, all distorted and lamentable, he plunges with it into the depths, leaving sudden night over the scene in which the wild sisters, shocked at last into sobriety, with cries of Help and Woe start in pursuit of the robber. His harsh laugh of triumph drifts back from the caves of Nibelheim.

Then occurs a gradual transformation-scene both to the eye and the ear. The rocks disappear, black waves flow past, the whole all the while appearing to sink. Clouds succeed the water, mist the clouds. This finally clears, revealing a calm and lovely scene on the mountain-heights. The music has during this been painting the change, too: Sounds of running water, above which hovers a moment, a memory of the scene just past and a foreboding of its sorrowful consequences, the strain signifying the renunciation of love; when this dies away, the motif of the ring, to be heard so many times after, its fateful character plainly conveyed by the notes, which also literally describe its circular form. By what magic of modulation the uninitiated cannot discern, the ring-motif, as the water by degrees is translated into mist, slides by subtle changes into a motif which seems, when it is reached, conspicuously different from it, the motif of the Gods' Abode.

There in the distance it stands, when the mists have perfectly cleared, bathed in fresh morning light, the tall just-completed castle, with shimmering battlements, crowning a high rocky mountain, at whose base, far down out of sight, flows the Rhine. For the Rhine is the centre of the world we are occupied with: under it, the Nibelungs; above it, the Gods; beside it, the giants and the insignificant human race. The music itself here, while the dwelling of the gods is coming into sight, seems to build a castle: story above story it rises, topped with gleaming pinnacles, one, lighter and taller than all the rest, piercing the clouds.

In the foreground lie sleeping side by side, on a flowery bank, the god and goddess Wotan and Fricka.

He lies dreaming happily of the abode from which the world is to be commanded by him, to the display of immeasurable power and his eternal honour. His wife's sleep is less easy. For the situation is not as free from complications as his untroubled slumbers might lead one to suppose. Wotan has employed to build him this stronghold the giants Fasolt and Fafner, formerly his enemies, but bound to peace by treaties, and has promised them the reward stipulated for, Freia, goddess of beauty and youth, sister of Fricka. And this he has done without any serious thought of keeping his word. "Nie sann es ernstlich mein Sinn," he assures Fricka, when, starting in dismay from her sleep and beholding the completed burg, she reminds him that the time is come for payment, and asks what shall they do. Loge, he enlightens her, counselled the compact and promised to find the means of evading it. He relies upon him to do so. This calm frankness in the god, with its effect of personal clearness from all sense of guilt, suggests the measure of Wotan's distinguishing simplicity. Referring later to the dubious act which so effectually laid the foundation of sorrows, he says, "Unknowingly deceitful, I practised untruth. Loge artfully tempted me." He explains himself to Fricka, when she asks why he continues to trust the crafty Loge, who has often already brought them into straits: "Where frank courage is sufficient, I ask counsel of no one. But slyness and cunning are needed to turn to advantage the ill-will of adversaries, and that is the talent of Loge."

Strong and calm is Wotan; music of might and august beauty, large music, supports everyone of his utterances. There is no departure from this, even when his signal fallibility is in question. Waftures of Walhalla most commonly accompany his steps; the close of his speech is frequently marked by the sturdy motif of his spear, the spear inseparable from him, cut by him from the World-Ash, carved with runes establishing the bindingness of compacts, by aid of which he had conquered the world, subdued the giants, the Nibelungs, and Loge, the Spirit of Fire.

Athirst for power he is, before all: in this trait lie the original seeds of his destruction; it is for the sake of the tokens of power, the castle and later the ring, that he commits the injustices which bring about ruin. Athirst, too, for wisdom: he has given one of his eyes for Wisdom, in the person of Fricka, who combines in herself law and order and domestic virtue. And athirst for love—something of a grievance to Fricka. "Ehr ich die Frauen doch mehr als dich freut," "I honour women more than pleases you," he retorts to her reproach of contempt for woman's love and worth, evidenced in his light ceding of Freia.

He calls himself and all call him a god, adding "eternal" even when the gods' end is glaringly at hand. The other gods look to him as chief among them. But he is ever acknowledging the existence of something outside and above himself, a law, a moral necessity, which it is no use to contend against; through which, do what he may, disaster finally overtakes him for having tried to disregard it. There is a stray hint from him that the world is his very possession and that he could at will destroy it; but this which so many facts contradict we may regard as a dream. Yet he feels toward the world most certainly a responsibility, such as a sovereign's toward his people; a duty, part of which is that for its sake he must not allow his spear to be dishonoured. Compacts it must sacredly guard. All his personal troubles come from this necessity, this constant check to him: he must respect covenants, his spear stands for their integrity. Alberich in a bitter discussion declares his knowledge of where the god is weak, and reminds him that if he should break a covenant sanctioned by the spear in his hand, this, the symbol of his power, would split into spray!

He is perhaps best understood, on the whole, with his remorse and despair, the tortures of his heart and his struggle with his soul, if one can conceive him as a sort of sublimated aristocrat; a resplendent great personage—just imaginable in the dawn of history, when there were giants upon earth—lifted far above the ordinary of the race by superior gifts, "reigning through beauty," as Fasolt describes; possessing faculties not shared by common mortals, but these rudimentary or else in their decline: the power of divination, not always accurate or clear; the power of miracle, not altogether to be relied upon; remaining young indefinitely, yet not wholly enfranchised from time and circumstance; living indefinitely, but recognising himself as perishable, and passing at last, swallowed in twilight.

A great warrior and leader of heroes, inciter of men to bold actions and novel flights; some of his titles: Father of Hosts, Father of Battles, Father of Victory; riding in the storm-clouds on his Luft-ross, his air-horse, whose hoof-beats and neigh fill us with excited delight. But his air-horse cannot overtake Brünnhilde's air-horse, in his pursuit of her, and Grane reaching the goal falls exhausted. …

A great reveller: reference is repeatedly made to the light-minded, light-hearted, careless humour of the gods, their glorious feasts and joyous life in the light up there. Their tribe is qualified as "laughing." Wotan's unshakable dignity indeed does not prevent a quick easy laugh. And he shows the true aristocratic temper in being little moved by the sorrows of those beneath and unrelated to him: one of his laughs, which we witness, is for the howls of a poor wee dwarf who had been savagely beaten.

And so this powerful clan-chief had had a fancy for a house to live in worthy of their greatness. Fricka had fallen in with his desire, but for reasons of her own. To him the citadel was a fresh addition to his power. But Fricka had been "um des Gatten Treu' besorgt," "ill at ease with regard to her consort's fidelity," and had thought the beautiful dwelling might keep him at home. With her words, "Herrliche Wohnung, wonniger Hausrath," "Beautiful dwelling, delectable household order," first occurs the winning strain which afterward stands for Fricka in her love of domesticity, or, separate from her, for the pure charm of home.

When the giants, however, had been subsidised for the great work of building the house, the narrow-conscienced women had been kept out of the way while an agreement was reached with the builders; a grievance which Fricka remembers, and does not let her spouse forget, when the evil consequences of his act are upon them. Fricka constitutes something of a living reproach to her husband, though a certain tender regard still exists between them through the introductory Opera. A thankless part is Fricka's, like that of Reason in opposition to Feeling and Genius.

Now Loge, who had been tamed by the conquering spear, hated his tamer. He craved back his liberty, and, as the Norn tells us later in Goetterdaemmerung, "tried to free himself by gnawing at the runes on the shaft of the spear." He gave counsel to Wotan which followed must create difficulties from which the god could deliver himself only by an injustice; and this injustice Loge seems clearly to have recognised from the first as the beginning of the end of the strength of the gods. The subtle Loge is more widely awake than Wotan to the "power not ourselves which makes for righteousness." He counselled him to buy the giants' labor by the promise of Freia, knowing that the gods could never endure to let the amiable goddess go. He led them to believe that when the time came he would give them further counsel by which to retain her. And his word Wotan chose to trust, and gave his heart over to the untroubled enjoyment of his plans' completion.

And now Freia comes running to him in terror, crying that one of the giants has told her he is come to fetch her. With her entrance we first hear the slender sweet phrase, delicately wandering upward, which after for a time denoting Freia, comes to mean for us just beauty. Wotan calms the maiden in distress, and asks, as one fancies, a little uneasily, "Have you seen nothing of Loge?"

The arrival of the giants is one of the great comedy moments of the play. Their colossally heavy tread, musically rendered, never fails to call forth laughter from some corner in us of left-over childhood. It is like the ogre's Fee-faw-fum. Fasolt is a good giant, his shaggy hair is blond, his fur-tunic white, and his soft big heart all given over to the touchingly lovely Freia. Fafner is a bad giant and his hair and furs are black. He is much cleverer than his brother. They carry as walking-sticks the trunks of trees.

They make it known that they have come for their wages. Wotan bids them, with a sturdy aplomb worthy of his godhead, state their wishes. What shall the wages be? Fasolt, a shade astonished, replies, "That, of course, which we settled upon. Haye you forgotten so soon? Freia. … It is in the bond that she shall follow us home."

"Have you taken leave of your senses … with you bond?" asks Wotan, with a quick flash. "You must think of a different recompense. Freia is far too precious to me."

The giant is for a moment still, unable to speak for indignation; but recovering his voice he makes to the "son of light" a series of observations eminently to the point. Wotan to these makes no more retort than as if the words had not been spoken; but—to gain time till Loge shall arrive—when the giant has quite finished, he inquires, "What, after all, can the charm of the amiable goddess signify to you clumsy boors?" Fasolt enlarges, "You, reigning through beauty, shimmering lightsome race, lightly you offer to barter for stone towers woman's loveliness. We simpletons labour with toil-hardened hands to earn a sweet woman who shall dwell with us poor devils. … And you mean to call the bargain naught? … "

Fafner gloomily checks him: Words will not help them. And the possession of Freia in itself is to his mind of little account. But of great account to take her from the gods. In her garden grow golden apples, she alone has the art of tending these. Eating this fruit maintains her kinsmen in unwaning youth. Were Freia removed, they must age and fade. Wherefore let Freia be seized!

Wotan frets underbreath, "Loge is long acoming!"

Freia's cries, as the giants lay hands upon her, bring her brothers Donner and Froh—the god of Thunder and the god of the Fields—quickly to her side. A combat between them and the giants is imminent, when Wotan parts the antagonists with his spear, "Nothing by violence!" and he adds, what it might be thought he had lost sight of, "My spear is the protector of bargains!"

And then finally, finally, comes in sight Loge. Wotan lets out his breath in relief: "Loge at last!"

The music has introduced Loge by a note-painting as of fire climbing up swiftly through airiest fuel. There is a quick flash or two, like darting tongues of flame. A combination of swirling and bickering and pulsating composes the commonest Loge-motif, but the variety is endless of the fire's caprices. Fantastical, cheery, and light it is mostly, sinister sometimes, suggestive of treachery, but terrible never; its beauty rather than its terror is reproduced. So characteristic are the fire-motifs that after a single hearing a person instinctively when one occurs looks for some sign or suggestion of Loge.

He stands now upon the rock, a vivid, charming, disquieting apparition, with his wild red hair and fluttering scarlet cloak. The arch-hypocrite wears always a consummately artless air. He comes near winning us by a bright perfect good-humour, which is as of the quality of an intelligence without a heart. The love of mischief for its own sake, which is one of his chief traits, might be thought to account easily for his many enemies.

He is related to the gods, a half-god, but is regarded coldly by his kin. Wotan is his single friend in the family, and with Wotan he preserves the attitude of a self-acknowledged underling. He stands in fear of his immediate strength, while nourishing a hardly disguised contempt for his wit, as well as that of his cousins collectively. A secret hater of them all, and clear-minded in estimating them. A touch of Mephistophelian there is in the pleasure which he seems to find in the contemplation of the canker-spot in Wotan's nature, drawing from the god over and over again, as if the admission refreshed him, that he has no intention of dealing justly toward the Rhine-maidens.

"Is this your manner of hastening to set aright the evil bargain concluded by you?" Wotan chides, as he appears from the valley.

"How? What bargain concluded by me? … "

Pinned down to accounting for himself, "I promised," he says, "to think over the matter, and try to find means of loosing you from the bargain. … But how should I have promised to perform the impossible?" Under the pressure of all their angers, he finally airily delivers himself: "Having at heart to help you, I travelled the world over, visiting its most recondite corners, in search of such a substitute for Freia as might be found acceptable to the giants. Vainly I sought, and now at last I plainly see that nothing upon this earth is so precious that it can take the place in man's affection of the loveliness and worth of woman."

Struck and uplifted by this thought, the gods, moved, look in one another's faces, and the music expresses the sweet expansion of the heart overflowing with thoughts of beauty and love. It is one of the memorable moments of the Prologue.

"Everywhere," proceeds Loge, "far as life reaches, in water, earth, and air, wherever is quickening of germs and stirring of nature's forces, I investigated and inquired what there might be in existence that a man should hold dearer than woman's beauty and worth? Everywhere my inquiry was met with derision. No creature, in water, earth, or air, is willing to renounce love and woman."

As he pauses, the gods again gaze at one another, with tender tearful smiles, in an exalted emotion over the recognition of this touching truth; and the music reexpresses that blissful expansion of the heart.

"Only one did I see," Loge says further—the light fading out of the music—"who had renounced love; for red gold he had forsworn the favor of woman." He relates Alberich's theft of the gold, as it had been told him by the Rhine-daughters, who had made him their advocate with Wotan, to procure its restitution.

But their plea meets with a deaf ear. "You are stupid, indeed, if not perverse," the god answers Loge, when he delivers their appeal. "You find me in straits myself, how should I help others?"

The giants have been listening to this talk about Alberich, an ancient enemy of theirs. The cleverer brother asks Loge, "What great advantage is involved in the possession of the gold, that the Nibelung should find it all-sufficient?" Loge explains. There drift back to Wotan's memory runes of the Ring, and the thought readily arises that it would be well he possessed the ring himself.

"But how, Loge, should I learn the art to shape it?" At the reply that he who would practise the magic by which it could be shaped must renounce love, the god turns away in conclusive disrelish. Loge informs him that he would in any case have been too late: Alberich has already successfully forged the ring.

This alters the face of things.

"But if he possesses a ring of such power," says simple Donner, "it must be taken from him, lest he bring us all under its compulsion!"

Wotan hesitates no more. "The ring I must have!"

"Yes, now, as long as love need not be renounced, it will be easy to obtain it," says simple Froh.

"Easy as mocking—child's-play!" sneers Loge.

"Then do you tell us, how? … " Wotan's fine majestic simplicity has no false pride.

The Serpent gleefully replies, "By theft! What a thief stole, you steal from the thief! Could anything be easier? Only, Alberich is on his guard, you will have to proceed craftily if you would overreach the robber … in order to return their treasure to the Rhine-daughters, who earnestly entreat you."

"The Rhine-daughters?" chafes Wotan. "What do you trouble me with them?"

And the goddess of Wisdom—more sympathetic on the whole in this exhibition of weakness than in her hard justice later—exposing the core of her feminine being, breaks in: "I wish to hear nothing whatever of that watery brood. Many a man, greatly to my vexation, have they lured under while he was bathing, with promises of love."

The giants have been listening and have taken counsel together. Fafner now approaches Wotan. "Hear, Wotan. … Keep Freia. … We have fixed upon a lesser reward. We will take in her stead the Nibelung's gold."

Wotan comes near losing his temper. "What I do not own, I shall bestow upon you shameless louts?"

Fafner expresses a perfect confidence in Wotan's equipment for obtaining the gold.

"For you I shall go to this trouble?" rails the irritated god, "For you I shall circumvent this enemy? Out of all measure impudent and rapacious my gratitude has made you clowns! … "

Fasolt who has only half-heartedly accepted his brother's decision in favor of the gold, stays to hear no more, but seizes Freia. With a warning that she shall be regarded as a hostage till evening, but that if when they return the Rhinegold is not on the spot as her ransom, they will keep her forever, the giants hurry her off.

Her cry for help rings back. Her brothers, in the act of rushing to the rescue, look at Wotan for his sanction. No encouragement is to be gathered from his face. He stands motionless, steeped in perplexity, in conflict with himself.

Loge has now a few moments' pure enjoyment in safely tormenting his superiors. He stands, with his fresh, ingenuous air, on a point overlooking the valley, and describes the giants' progress, as does the music, too. "Not happy is Freia, hanging on the back of the rough ones as they wade through the Rhine. … " Her dejected kindred wince.

The heavy footsteps die away. Loge returning his attention to the gods, voices his amazement at the sight which meets him: "Am I deceived by a mist? Am I misled by a dream? How wan and fearful and faded you do look! The glow is dead in your cheeks, the lightening quenched in your glances. Froh, it is still early morning! Donner, you are dropping your hammer! What ails Fricka? Is it chagrin to see the greyness of age creeping over Wotan?" Sounds of woe burst from all, save Wotan, who with his eyes on the ground still stands absorbed in gloomy musing.

The solution of the puzzle suddenly, as he feigns, flashes upon Loge: This is the result of Freia's leaving them! They had not yet that morning tasted her apples. Now, of necessity, those golden apples of youth in her garden, which she alone could cultivate, will decay and drop. "Myself," he says, "I shall be less inconvenienced than you, because she was ever grudging to me of the exquisite fruit, for I am only half of as good lineage as you, Resplendent Ones. On the other hand, you depended wholly upon the rejuvenating apples; the giants knew that and are plainly practising against your lives. Now bethink yourselves how to provide against this. Without the apples, old and grey, a mock to the whole world, the dynasty of the gods must perish!"

With sudden resolution, Wotan starts from his dark study. "Up, Loge! Down with me to Nibelheim! I will conquer the gold!"

"The Rhine-daughters, then," speaks wicked Loge, "may look to have their prayer granted?"

Wotan harshly silences him. "Be still, chatterer! … Freia the good, Freia must be ransomed!"

Loge drops the subject and offers his services as guide. "Shall we descend through the Rhine?"

The Rhine, with its infesting nymphs? …

"Not through the Rhine!" says Wotan.

"Then through the sulphur-cleft slip down with me!" And Loge vanishes down a cleft in the rock, through which Wotan, after bidding his family wait for him where they are until evening, follows.

Thick vapour pours forth from the sulphur-cleft, dimming and shortly blotting out the scene. We are travelling downward into the earth. A dull red glow gradually tinges the vapour. Sounds of diminutive hammers upon anvils become distinct. The orchestra takes up their suggestion and turns it into a simple monotonous strongly rhythmical air—never long silent in this scene—which comes to mean for us the little toiling Nibelungs, the cunning smiths. A great rocky subterranean cave running off on every side into rough shafts, is at last clearly visible, lighted by the ruddy reflection of forge-fires.

This is where Alberich reigns and by the power of the ring compels his enslaved brothers to labour for him. Renouncing love has not been good for the disposition of Alberich. It is not only the insatiable lust of gold and power now darkening the soul-face of the earlier fairly gentle-natured Nibelung, it is a savage gloating cruelty, bespeaking one unnaturally loveless; it is a sanguinary hatred, too, of all who still can love, of love itself, a thirst and determination to see it completely done away with in the world, exterminated—a sort of fallen angel's sin against the Holy Ghost. A state, beneath the incessant excitement of slave-driving and treasure-amassing, of inexpressible unhappiness, lightened by moments of huge exaltation in the sense of his new power.

We find him, when the cavern glimmers into sight, brutally handling his crumb of a gnome brother. Mime, like Alberich, wins some part of our heart on first acquaintance, which he later ceases to deserve; but in the case of Mime I think it is never wholly withdrawn, even when he is shown to be an unmitigated wretch; he is, to begin with, so little, and he has a funny, fetching twist or quaver in his voice, indicated by the notes themselves of his rather mean little sing-song melodies. Alberich's nominal reason for indulging his present passion for hurting—he is haling Mime by the ear—is that the latter is overslow with certain piece of work which, with minute instructions, he has been ordered to do. Mime, under pressure, produces the article, which he had in truth been trying to keep for his own, suspecting in it some mysterious value. It is the Tarnhelm, a curious cap of linked metal. Its uncanny character is confided to us even before we see it at work, by the motif which first appears with its appearance: a motif preparing for some unearthly manifestation the mind pricked to disquieted attention by the weirdness of the air. Alberich places it upon his head, utters a brief incantation, and disappears from sight. A column of vapour stands in his place.

"Do you see me?" asks Alberich's disembodied voice. Mime looks around, astonished. "Where are you? I see you not!" "Then feel me!" cries the power-drunken tyrant, and Mime winces and cowers under blows from an unseen scourge, while Alberich's voice laughs. Out of measure exhilarated by his successful new device for ensuring diligence and inspiring fear, he storms out of hearing with the terrible words, "Nibelungs all, bow to Alberich! … He can now be everywhere at once, keeping watch over you. Rest and leisure are done and over with for you! For him you must labour. … His conquered slaves are you forever!" The moment of his overtaking the Nibelungs is indicated by their sudden distant outcry.

Mime has been left crouching and whimpering on the rocky floor. Thus Wotan and Loge find him.

Loge is in all the following scene Wotan's very active vizier, furnishing the invention and carrying out the stratagems. Wotan, except to the eye, takes the background and has little to say; but as the blue of his mantle and the fresh chaplet on his locks strike the eye refreshingly in the fire-reddened cave, so his voice, with echoes in it of the noble upper world, comes like gusts of sweet air.

Loge sets the cowering dwarf on his feet and by artful questions gets the whole story from him of the ring and the Nibelungs' woe. About the Tarnhelm, too, Mime tells Loge. At the recollection of the stripes he has suffered, he rubs his back howling. The gods laugh. That gives Mime the idea that these strangers must be of the great. He is in his turn questioning them, when he hears Alberich's bullying voice approaching. He runs hither and thither in terror and calls to the strangers to look to themselves, Alberich is coming! Wotan quietly seats himself on a stone to await him.

Alberich enters driving before him with his scourge a whole army of little huddling, hurrying Nibelungs, groaning under the weight of great pieces of gold and silver smithwork, which, while he threatens and urges them, they heap in a duskily glimmering mound. In the fancy that they are not obeying fast or humbly enough, he takes the magic ring from his finger, kisses and lifts it commandingly over them, whereupon with cries of dismay they scramble away, scattering down the shafts, in feverish haste to be digging and delving.

Heavy groans are in the music when it refers to the oppression of the Nibelungs; groans so tragic and seriously presented that they bring up the thought of other oppressions and killing labours than those of the Nibelungs. The music which later depicts the amassing of riches, indicates such horror of strain, such fatigue, such hopeless weariness of heart and soul, that the hearer must think with sharpened sympathy of all that part of humanity which represents the shoulder placed against the wheel.

Alberich turns an angry eye upon the intruders: "What do you want?"

It is then most especially that the calm notes of Wotan fall healingly upon the sense: They have heard tales of novel events in Nibelheim, of mighty wonders worked there by Alberich, and are come from curiosity to witness these.

After this simple introduction from the greater personage, his light-foot, volatile, graceful minister takes Alberich in hand and practising confidently upon his intoxicated conceit of power, his pride in the cleverness which had contrived ring and wishing-cap, uses him like a puppet of which all the strings should be in his hand.

Alberich recognises in Loge an old enemy. Loge's reply to Alberich's, "I know you well enough, you and your kind!" is perhaps, with its cheerful dancing flicker, his prettiest bit of self-description. "You know me, childish elf? Then, say, who am I, that you should be surly? In the cold hollow where you lay shivering, how would you have had light and cheering warmth, if Loge had never laughed for you? … "

But Alberich seems to remember too many reasons for distrusting him. "I can now, however," he boasts, "defy you all!" and he calls to their notice the heaped riches—the Hort.

"But," remarks Wotan, "of what use is all that wealth in cheerless Nibelheim, where there is nothing to buy?"

"Nibelheim," replies Alberich, "is good to furnish treasures and to keep them safe. But when they form a sufficient heap, I shall use them to make myself master of the world!"

"And how, my good fellow, shall you accomplish this?"

Alberich has apprehended in this guest one of the immortals—which, taken into consideration a speech suggestive every time it resounds of calm heights and stately circumstances, is not strange. Alberich hates him, hates them all. This is his exposition of his plan: "You who, lapped in balmy airs, live, laugh, and love up there, with a golden fist I shall catch you all! Even as I renounced love, all that lives shall renounce it! Ensnared and netted in gold, you shall care for gold only! You immortal revellers, cradling yourselves on blissful heights in exquisite pastimes, you despise the black elf! Have a care! … For when you men have come to be the servants of my power, your sweetly adorned women, who would despise the dwarf's love, since he cannot hope for love, shall be forced to serve his pleasure. Ha ha! Do you hear? Have a care, have a care, I say, of the army of the night, when the riches of the Nibelungs once climb into the light!"

Wotan, whose Olympian self-sufficiency is usually untroubled by what any mean other-person may say, at this cannot contain himself, but starting to his feet cries out a command for the blasphemous fool's annihilation! Before Alberich, however, has caught the words—his deafness perhaps it is which saves his life—Loge has called Wotan back to his reason. Practising on Alberich's not completely outlived simplicity, he by the ruse of feigning himself very stupid and greatly impressed by his cleverness, now induces him to show off for their greater amazement the power of the Tarnhelm, which it appears has not only the trick of making the wearer at will invisible, but of lending him whatever shape he may choose. Later we find that it has also the power to transport the wearer at pleasure to the ends of the earth in a moment of time.

To put Loge's incredulity to shame, Alberich, Tarnhelm on head, turns himself into a dragon, drawing its cumbersome length across the stage to a fearsome tune which gives all of its uncouthness, and never fails to call forth laughter, like the giants' tread. As a further exhibition of his power, after full measure of flattery in Loge's pretended fright, he at the prompting of the same changes himself into a toad, which has but time for a hop or two, before Wotan places his calm foot upon it. Loge snatches the Tarnhelm off its head and Alberich is seen in his own person writhing under Wotan. Loge binds him fast, and the gods, with their struggling prey between them, hurry off through the pass by which they came.

Then reoccurs, but reversed, the transformation between Nibelheim and the upper world. The region of the stithies is passed, the little hammers are heard. At last Wotan and Loge with Alberich reappear through the sulphur-cleft.

"Look, beloved," says Loge to the unhappy captive, "there lies the world which you think of conquering for your own. Tell me now, what little corner in it do you intend as a kennel for me?" And he dances around him, snapping his fingers to the prettiest, heartlessly merry fire-music.

Alberich replies with raving insult. Wotan's cool voice reminds him of the vanity of this and calls him to the consideration of his ransom. When Alberich, after a time, grumblingly inquires what they will have, he says, largely and frankly, "The treasure, your shining gold."

If he can only retain the ring, reflects Alberich, the loss of the treasure may be quickly repaired. At his request they free his right hand; he touches the ring with his lips and murmurs the spell by which after a moment the swarm of little smoke-grimed Nibelungs arrives groaning and straining under the weight of the Hort; again they pile it in a heap, and at Alberich's command scurry home.

"Now I have paid, now let me go," says the humbled Nibelung-lord, "and that helmet-like ornament which Loge is holding, have the kindness to give it me back." But Loge flings the Tarnhelm on the heap as part of the ransom. Hard to bear is this, but Mime can after all forge another. "Now you have gotten everything; now, you cruel ones, loose the thongs." But Wotan remarks, "You have a gold ring upon your finger; that, I think, belongs with the rest." At this, a madness of terror seizes Alberich. "The ring? … " "You must leave it for ransom." "My life—but not the ring!" With that bitter coldness of the aristocrat which in time brings about revolutions, Wotan replies, "It is the ring I ask for—with your life do what you please!" The dull Nibelung pleads still after that, and his words contain thorns which he might reasonably expect to tell: "The thing which I, anguish-harried and curse-crowned, earned through a horrible renunciation, you are to have for your own as a pleasant princely toy? … If I sinned, I sinned solely against myself, but against all that has been, is, or shall be, do you, Immortal, sin, if you wrest this ring from me. … "

Wotan without further discussion stretches out his hand and tears from Alberich's finger the ring, which gives once more, under this violence, the golden call, saddened and distorted. "Here, the ring!—Your chattering does not establish your right to it!" Alberich drops to earth, felled. Wotan places the ring on his hand and stands in gratified contemplation of it. "I hold here what makes me the mightiest lord of the mighty!"

Loge unties Alberich and bids him slip home. But the Nibelung is past care or fear, and rising to insane heights of hatred lays upon the ring such a curse as might well shake its owner's complacency. "As it came to me through a curse, accursed be this ring! As it lent me power without bounds, let its magic now draw death upon the wearer! Let no possessor of it be happy. … Let him who owns it be gnawed by care and him who owns it not be gnawed by envy! Let every one covet, no one enjoy it! … Appointed to death, fear-ridden let its craven master be! While he lives, let his living be as dying! The ring's master be the ring's slave—until my stolen good return to me! … Now keep it! Guard it well! My curse you shall not escape!"

"Did you hear his affectionate greeting?" asks Loge, when Alberich has vanished down the rocky cleft.

Wotan, absorbed in the contemplation of the ring, has heard the curse with the same degree of interest he might have bestowed upon the trickle of a brook. He replies magnanimously, "Grudge him not the luxury of railing!"

Fricka, Donner, and Froh hasten to welcome the returning gods. The approach of Freia, whom the giants are bringing between them, is felt before she appears, in a subtle sweetening of the air, a simultaneous lightening of all the hearts and return of youth to the faces, which Froh's daintily expansive greeting describes.

Fricka is hurrying toward her. Fasolt interposes: Not to be touched! She still belongs to them until the ransom have been paid. Fasolt does not fall in willingly with the arrangement which shall give them the gold in place of the woman; he has been overpersuaded by the black brother; his regret at losing Freia is so great, he tells the gods, that the treasure, if she is to be relinquished, will have to be piled so high as completely to hide the blooming maid.

"Let it be measured according to Freia's stature!" decrees Wotan, and the giants drive their great staves into the earth so that they roughly frame the figure of Freia. Helped by Loge and Froh, they begin stopping the space between with the treasure. Wotan's fastidiousness cannot endure the visible sordid details of his bargain; he turns from the sight of the incarnate rose, as she stands drooping in a noble shame, to be valued against so much gold. "Hasten with the work!" he bids them, "it sorely goes against me!" When Fafner's rough greed orders the measure to be more solidly pressed down, and he ducks spying for crevices still to be stopped with gold, Wotan turns away, soul-sick: "Humiliation burns deep in my breast!"

The Hort is exhausted, when Fafner looking for crannies exclaims, "I can still see the shining of her hair," and demands, to shut it from view, the Tarnhelm which Loge has attempted to retain. "Let it go!" commands Wotan, when Loge hesitates.

The affair, it now would seem, must be closed; but Fasolt, in his grief over the loss of the Fair one, still hovers about, peering if perchance he may still see her, and so he catches through the screen of gold the gleam of her eye, and declares that so long as the lovely glance is visible he will not renounce the woman.

"But can you not see, there is no more gold?" remonstrates Loge. Fafner, who has not failed to store in his brain what he earlier overheard, replies, "Nothing of the kind. There is a gold ring still on Wotan's finger. Give us that to stop the cranny."

"This ring? … " cries Wotan, like Alberich before him.

"Be advised," Loge says to the giants, as if in confidence. "That ring belongs to the Rhine-maidens. Wotan intends to return it to them."

But Wotan has no subterfuges or indirections of his own—not conscious ones; when he needs their aid, he uses another, as he had told Fricka. "What are you prating?" he corrects Loge; "what I have obtained with such difficulty, I shall keep without compunction for myself." Loge amuses himself with probing further the grained spot in his superior. "My promise then stands in bad case, which I made to the Rhine-daughters when they turned to me in their trouble." Wotan, with the coldness of the Pharisee's "Look thou to that," replies, "Your promise does not bind me. The ring, my capture, I shall keep."

"But you will have to lay it down with the ransom," Fafner insists.

"Ask what else you please, you shall have it; but not for the whole world will I give up the ring."

Fasolt instantly lays hands again upon Freia and draws her from behind the Hort. "Everything then stands as it stood before. Freia shall come with us now for good and all." An outcry of appeal goes up from all the gods to Wotan. He turns from them unmoved. "Trouble me not. The ring I will not give up." And the idleness of further appeal, howsoever eloquent, cannot be doubted.

But now unaccountable darkness invades the scene; from the hollow alcove in the rocks, letting down to the interior earth, breaks a bluish light; while all, breathless, watch the strange phenomenon, the upper half of a woman becomes discernible in it, wrapped in smoke-coloured veils and long black locks. It is the Spirit of the Earth, the all-knowing Erda, whose motif describes the stately progression of natural things, and is the same as the Rhine-motif, which describes a natural thing in stately progression. She lifts a warning hand to Wotan. "Desist, Wotan, desist! Avoid the curse on the ring … The possession of it will doom you to dark ruin. … "

Wotan, struck, inquires in awe, "Who are you, warning woman?"

The one who knows all that was, is, and shall be, she tells him; the ancestress of the everlasting world, older than time; the mother of the Norns who speak with Wotan nightly. Gravest danger has brought her to seek him in person. Let him hear and heed! The present order is passing away. There is dawning for the gods a dark day. … At this prophesied ruin, the music reverses the motif of ascending progression, and paints melancholy disintegration and crumbling downfall, a strain to be heard many times in the closing opera of the trilogy, when the prophecy comes to pass and the gods enter their twilight. The apparition is sinking back into the earth. Wotan beseeches it to tarry and tell him more. But with the words, "You are warned. … Meditate in sorrow and fear!" it vanishes. The masterful god attempts to follow, to wrest from the weird woman further knowledge. His wife and her brothers hold him back. He stands for a time still hesitating, uncertain, wrapped in thought. With sudden resolve at last he tosses the ring with the rest of the treasure, and turns heart-wholly to greet Freia returning among them, bringing back their lost youth.

While the gods are expressing tender rapture over the restoration of Freia, and she goes from one to the other receiving their caresses, Fafner spreads open a gigantic sack and in this is briskly stuffing the gold. Fasolt, otherwise preoccupied, had not thought to bring a sack. He attempts to stay Fafner's too active hand. "Hold on, you grasping one, leave something for me! An honest division will be best for us both!" Fafner objects, "You, amorous fool, cared more for the maid than the gold. With difficulty I persuaded you to the exchange. You would haved wooed Freia without thought of division, wherefore in the division of the spoil I shall still be generous if I keep the larger half for myself." Fasolt's anger waxes great. He calls upon the gods to judge between them and divide the treasure justly. Wotan turns from his appeal with characteristic contempt. Loge, the mischief-lover, whispers to Fasolt, "Let him take the treasure, do you but reserve the ring!" Fafner has during this not been idle, but has sturdily filled his sack; the ring is on his hand. Fasolt demands it in exchange for Freia's glance. He snatches at it, Fafner defends it, and when in the wrestling which ensues Fasolt has forced it from his brother, the latter lifts his tree-trunk and strikes him dead. Having taken the ring from his hand, he leisurely proceeds to finish his packing, while the gods stand around appalled, and the air shudderingly resounds with the notes of the curse. A long, solemn silence follows. Fafner is seen, after a time, shouldering the sack, into which the whole of the glimmering Hort has disappeared, and, bowed under its weight, leaving for home.

"Dreadful," says Wotan, deeply shaken; "I now perceive to be the power of the curse!" Sorrow and fear lie crushingly upon his spirit. Erda, who warned him of the power of the curse, now proven before his eyes, warned him likewise of worse things, of old order changing, a dark day dawning for the gods. He must seek Erda, learn more, have counsel what to do. He is revolving such thoughts when Fricka, who believes all their trouble now ended, approaches him with sweet words, and directs his eyes to the beautiful dwelling hospitably awaiting its masters. "An evil price I paid for the building!" Wotan replies heavily.

Mists are still hanging over the valley, clinging to the heights; nor have the clouds yet wholly lifted from their spirits. Donner, to clear the atmosphere, conjures a magnificent storm, by the blow of his hammer bringing about thunder and lightning. When the black cloud disperses which for a moment enveloped him and Froh on the high rock from which he directs this festival of the elements, a bright rainbow appears, forming a bridge between the rock and the castle now shining in sunset light. A bridge of music is here built, too; the tremulous weaving of it in tender and gorgeous colours is seen through the ear, and its vaulting the valley with an easy overarching spring. Froh, architect of the bridge, bids the gods walk over it fearlessly: It is light but will prove solid under their feet.

Wotan stands sunk in contemplation of the castle; his reflections, still upon the shameful circumstances of his bargain, are not happy. In the midst of them he is struck by a great thought, and recovers his courage and hardihood. The sharp, bright, resolute motif which represents his inspiration is afterward indissolubly connected with the Sword—a sword aptly embodying his idea, which is one of defence for his castle and clan. A suggestion of his idea is contained, too, in the word which he gives to Fricka as the castle's name, when he now invites her to accompany him thither: Walhalla, Hall of the Slain in Battle, or, Hall of Heroes.

Headed by Wotan and Fricka, the gods ascend toward the bridge. Loge looks after them in mingled irony and contempt. "There they hasten to their end, who fancy themselves so firmly established in being. I am almost ashamed to have anything to do with them. … " And he revolves in his mind a scheme for turning into elemental fire again and burning them all up, those blind gods. He is nonchalantly adding himself to their train, when from the Rhine below rises the lament of the Rhine-daughters, begging that their gold may be given back to them. Wotan pauses with his foot on the bridge: "What wail is that?" Loge enlightens him, and, at Wotan's annoyed, "Accursed nixies! Stop their importunity!" calls down to them, "You, down there in the water, what are you complaining about? Hear what Wotan bids: No longer having the gold to shine for you, make yourselves happy basking in the sunshine of this new pomp of the gods!" Loud laughter from the gods greets this sally, and they pass over the bridge, Walhalla-ward, followed by the water-nymphs' wail for their lost gold, closing with the reproach, "Only in the pleasant water-depths is truth; false and cowardly are those making merry up there!" With Walhalla and rainbow shedding a radiance around them of which we are made conscious through the delighted sense of hearing, the curtain falls.

So we lose sight of them, moving into their new house; in spite of their glory a little like the first family of the county. But while to triumphant strains they seek their serene stronghold, we know that the lines have been laid for disaster. The Ring is in the world, with its terrific power; and there is in the world one whom wrong has turned into a deadly enemy, whose soul is undividedly bent upon getting possession of the Ring, which Wotan may not himself attempt to get—stopped, if not by Erda's warning or by terror of the curse, by the fact that he finally gave it to the giants in payment of an acknowledged debt, and that his spear stands precisely for honor in relations of the sort.

THE VALKYRIE

(DIE WALKUERE)