ever break through the fiery barrier!" there falls, prophetic,
across the dream of Bruennhilde's charmed sleep, the great shadow
of the Deliverer, so distant yet in time, Siegfried, who when the
hour came of test was found to fear Wotan's spear as little as
he feared anything else.

With that firm spell placed upon his magnificent and adequate fence,
Wotan departs; and, guarded by the singing flames, which weave
into the rhythm of their bright dance the tenderest of lullabies,
Bruennhilde is left to her long rest.

SIEGFRIED

SIEGFRIED

I

Fafner, when he had become possessor of the Nibelungen treasure,
conveyed it, as we have seen, to a cave in a lonesome forest, and
there in the shape of a dragon mounted guard over it. Mime, the dwarf,
in order to keep the same treasure under some sort of oversight,
took up his abode in the forest, at a respectful distance from the
flame-breathing monster. Alberich haunted the immediate neighbourhood
of the cave.

Thus it happened that Sieglinde, directed by the Valkyries to that
region, where she should be safest from Wotan's anger, was overheard
by Mime, out in the lonesome wood, moaning in her trouble. He assisted
her into his cave. There Siegfried was born, and there Sieglinde
died. Mime reared the "Waelsungen-shoot" with solicitous care, in
the ulterior view that this scion of a strong race when grown to
man's size should kill Fafner for him and get him the Ring.

At the rise of the curtain we see Mime at his anvil, struggling with
a heavy difficulty. He is fashioning a sword for Siegfried,--still
another sword, after ever so many,--realising even as he works that
no sword he can forge but will break in the lad's strong hands.
"The best sword I ever forged, which in the hands of a giant would
stand stiff, the insignificant stripling for whom it was shaped
he whacks and snaps it in two, as if I had made him a child's
plaything!" It is sober fact to Mime that he cannot use Siegfried
for his purposes until he have equipped him with a sword. "A sword
there is," he continues his meditation, "which he could not break.
The fragments of Nothung he never could shatter, could I weld the
strong pieces together, which all my art cannot compass! Nothung
alone could be of use,... and I cannot weld it, Nothung, the sword!"

Half-heartedly he has resumed his toil, when a joyous shout is
heard from the forest, of which a sun-shot patch glimmers through
the cave's mouth, and there