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, l