he fire a second
time. Her sorrow changes to fierce anger; she denounces him, and says he
has not kept faith with Gunther; he does not remember anything that
occurred previous to drinking the potion, knows he has been true to
Gunther, and goes joyfully off with his new bride. Gunther thinks he has
been dishonoured; Brunnhilda is furious at her betrayal; Hagen wants to
get the ring; and the three decide that Siegfried must die. There can be
no explaining away the draught. In _Tristan_ it is not essential that
the philtre is a true love-philtre, but here the case is different. If
it symbolizes, as has been suggested, a sudden passion for Gutruna, then
Siegfried is an out-and-out blackguard, and not the hero Wagner
intended. Besides, if the loss of his memory leads to the sacrifice of
Brunnhilda, afterwards its sudden return, due to another potion, leads
immediately to his own death. We must accept these potions as part of
the machinery. If we do not grumble at talking dragons, tarnhelms,
flying horses and fires and magic swords, we need not boggle at a couple
of glasses of magical liquid.

In the last act Siegfried, out hunting with the Gibichung tribe, finds
himself alone by the riverside. The Rhine-maidens beg the ring from him;
he refuses, and they tell him that this day he must die. The other
hunters arrive, and Siegfried, drinking the second philtre, tells the
story of how he first won Brunnhilda. That is Hagen's opportunity: to
avenge Gunther he stabs Siegfried in the back. To the tremendous funeral
march the body is carried over the hills. It is brought into the hall of
the Gibichungs. Gunther has pangs of remorse, but Hagen, only
half-human, has none; the pair fall out, and Gunther is killed. Gutruna
wails, as a woman will when she loses her husband and brother within a
quarter of an hour; Hagen goes to take the ring from Siegfried's finger,
but the corpse raises its hand menacingly and all draw back aghast.
Brunnhilda enters; all now has become clear to her, and she resolves
that she, like Wotan, will renounce a loveless life--a life based on
fraud and tyranny. She tells Gutruna that Siegfried has never belonged
to her--is hers, Brunnhilda's; and on receiving this crushing blow,
Gutruna creeps to her brother's side and lies there, miserable and
hopeless. He is dead; but he was the list of her kin and only friend,
and, robbed of even the memory of Siegfried, to be near his dead body
seems better than nothing. Then