s unknown
will mend Nothung. To this smith he leaves the forfeited head of his
host, and wanders off into the forest. Then Mimmy's nerves give way
completely. He shakes like a man in delirium tremens, and has a horrible
nightmare, in the supreme convulsion of which Siegfried, returning from
the forest, presently finds him.

A curious and amusing conversation follows. Siegfried himself does not
know fear, and is impatient to acquire it as an accomplishment. Mimmy
is all fear: the world for him is a phantasmagoria of terrors. It is not
that he is afraid of being eaten by bears in the forest, or of burning
his fingers in the forge fire. A lively objection to being destroyed
or maimed does not make a man a coward: on the contrary, it is the
beginning of a brave man's wisdom. But in Mimmy, fear is not the effect
of danger: it is natural quality of him which no security can allay.
He is like many a poor newspaper editor, who dares not print the truth,
however simple, even when it is obvious to himself and all his readers.
Not that anything unpleasant would happen to him if he did--not, indeed
that he could fail to become a distinguished and influential leader
of opinion by fearlessly pursuing such a course, but solely because
he lives in a world of imaginary terrors, rooted in a modest and
gentlemanly mistrust of his own strength and worth, and consequently of
the value of his opinion. Just so is Mimmy afraid of anything that can
do him any good, especially of the light and the fresh air. He is also
convinced that anybody who is not sufficiently steeped in fear to be
constantly on his guard, must perish immediately on his first sally
into the world. To preserve Siegfried for the enterprise to which he has
destined him he makes a grotesque attempt to teach him fear. He appeals
to his experience of the terrors of the forest, of its dark places, of
its threatening noises its stealthy ambushes, its sinister flickering
lights its heart-tightening ecstasies of dread.

All this has no other effect than to fill Siegfried with wonder and
curiosity; for the forest is a place of delight for him. He is as eager
to experience Mimmy's terrors as a schoolboy to feel what an electric
shock is like. Then Mimmy has the happy idea of describing Fafnir to him
as a likely person to give him an exemplary fright. Siegfried jumps at
the idea, and, since Mimmy cannot mend the sword for him, proposes to
set to work then and there to mend it for himse