s taking the goods to put them in his own pocket, has the ring
torn from his finger, and is once more as poor as he was when he came
slipping and stumbling among the slimy rocks in the bed of the Rhine.

This is the way of the world. In older times, when the Christian laborer
was drained dry by the knightly spendthrift, and the spendthrift was
drained by the Jewish usurer, Church and State, religion and law, seized
on the Jew and drained him as a Christian duty. When the forces of
lovelessness and greed had built up our own sordid capitalist systems,
driven by invisible proprietorship, robbing the poor, defacing the
earth, and forcing themselves as a universal curse even on the generous
and humane, then religion and law and intellect, which would never
themselves have discovered such systems, their natural bent being
towards welfare, economy, and life instead of towards corruption, waste,
and death, nevertheless did not scruple to seize by fraud and force
these powers of evil on presence of using them for good. And it
inevitably happens that when the Church, the Law, and all the Talents
have made common cause to rob the people, the Church is far more
vitally harmed by that unfaithfulness to itself than its more mechanical
confederates; so that finally they turn on their discredited ally and
rob the Church, with the cheerful co-operation of Loki, as in France and
Italy for instance.

The twin giants come back with their hostage, in whose presence Godhead
blooms again. The gold is ready for them; but now that the moment has
come for parting with Freia the gold does not seem so tempting; and
they are sorely loth to let her go. Not unless there is gold enough to
utterly hide her from them--not until the heap has grown so that they
can see nothing but gold--until money has come between them and every
human feeling, will they part with her. There is not gold enough to
accomplish this: however cunningly Loki spreads it, the glint of Freia's
hair is still visible to Giant Fafnir, and the magic helmet must go on
the heap to shut it out. Even then Fafnir's brother, Fasolt, can catch a
beam from her eye through a chink, and is rendered incapable thereby of
forswearing her. There is nothing to stop that chink but the ring; and
Wotan is as greedily bent on keeping that as Alberic himself was; nor
can the other gods persuade him that Freia is worth it, since for
the highest god, love is not the highest good, but only the universal
d