s, in his soaring
words: "Highest need of a holiest love, devouring need of a love
full of longing, burns bright in my breast, drives me onward to
deeds and to death.... Nothung! Nothung! So do I name you, sword!
(_Noth_: need. _Nothung_: sword-in-need.) Nothung! Nothung! Out
of the scabbard, to me!" With a mighty tug he draws it forth and
holds it before the marvelling eyes of Sieglinde: "Siegmund the
Waelsung stands before you, woman! As a wedding-gift he brings you
this sword. Thus he wooes the fairest of women; from the enemy's
house thus he leads you forth. Far from here follow him now, out
in the laughing house of the Spring. There Nothung, the sword,
shall protect you, when Siegmund lies overthrown, in the power of
love!" "If your are Siegmund," cries the woman, "I am Sieglinde,
who have so longed for you! Your own sister you have won at the same
time as the sword!" Siegmund is given no pause by this revelation.
At the realisation of this double dearness, the joy flares all
the higher of the lawless pupil of Wotan. "Bride and sister are
you to your brother. Let the blood of the Waelsungen flourish!"
And with arms entertwined, forth they take their madly exulting
hearts out into the "laughing house of the Spring."

II

The rising of the curtain for the second act reveals a wild
mountain-pass where Wotan, in a vast good-humour, is giving instructions
to Bruennhilde with regard to the impending meeting between the injured
husband and the abductor of his wife. Victory is allotted to Siegmund;
Hunding, "let them choose him to whom he belongs; he is not wanted
in Walhalla!" In Wotan's complacency the satisfaction speaks of
this thought: At last, at last, a change of fortune,--victory to
the Waelsung, after a trial of his mettle so severe and prolonged
it must have broken a spirit less admirably tempered. The Valkyrie,
in delight over the charge to her, breaks into her jubilant war-cry,
checking herself as she perceives Fricka approaching in the chariot
drawn by rams, and judges from the goddess's merciless urging of
the panting beasts that she comes for a _Zank_, a "scold," with
her husband. "The old storm!" murmurs Wotan, at sight of his liege
lady dismounting and coming toward him with ultramajestic gait, "the
old trouble! But I must stand and face her!" The scene following
has a touch of comical in its resemblance to domestic scenes among
less high-born characters, as, for instance, when Fricka says, "Look
me in