ust 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, "