"
Whereupon Siegmund, as little constrained by the husband's presence
as the wife herself, with his eyes upon hers, addressing her directly,
tells his story: of Wolf, his father, of the twin sister lost to him
in infancy, the enmity of the Neidingen clan, who in the absence
of the men burned down their house, slew the mother, abducted the
sister; of his life in the forest with Wolf, their numberless foes
and perpetual warfare. Hunding recalls vaguely wild dark tales he
has heard of the mighty pair, the Woelfingen. The disappearance of
his father, Siegmund further relates, from whom he had been separated
in a fight, and whom he could never, long though he sought, find
again, nor any trace of him save an empty wolf-skin. "Then,--"
follow the strange cruel fortunes this father had arranged for
him, "then I was impelled to forsake the woods, I was impelled
to seek men and women. As many as I found, and wherever I found
them,--whether I sought for friend, or wooed for woman, always I
met with denial, ill-fortune lay upon me!" With ingenuous wonder
he describes the natural fruits of the education bestowed on him
by Wotan: "What I thought right, others held to be wrong; what
had ever seemed to me abominable, others considered with favour.
I fell into feud wherever I was, anger fell upon me wherever I
went. If I reached out toward happiness, I never failed to bring
about calamity! For that reason it is I named myself Wehwalt, I
command calamity alone!"

Hunding has listened attentively. His small superstitious heart has
taken alarm. "Fortune was not fond of you, who appointed for you
so miserable a lot. The man can hardly welcome you with gladness,
whom, a stranger to him, you approach as a guest." With a vivacity
which cannot have been the common habit of her intercourse with
her husband, Sieglinde pronounces judgment aloud and at once upon
this ungenerous speech and speaker, whose prudence must certainly,
in contrast with the Waelsung's frank magnificence of courage, seem
to her unspeakably bourgeois: "Only cowards fear one going his way
unarmed and alone!" And turning again eagerly to the guest: "Tell
further, guest, how you lately lost your arms in battle!" Siegmund
as eagerly satisfies her. The circumstances which he describes
further exemplify the disposition fostered in him by his father,
his non-recognition or acceptance of established law and custom,
however sacred, his pursuit of an ideal unattached to any conventio