e it fall to the
inveterate enemy, Alberich.

At the greeting he speaks from the threshold to the "wise smith,"
Mime starts up in affright: "Who is it, pursuing me into the forest
wilderness?" "Wanderer is the world's name for me. Far have I wandered,
much have I bestirred myself on the back of the earth." "Then bestir
yourself now! and do not loiter here, if Wanderer is the world's name
for you!" Mime, with his head full of his dark little projects, has
a deep dread of spies and interference. At every step the Wanderer
takes further into his dwelling, he utters a sharper protest; and at
every protest the Wanderer calmly advances a step further. "Through
much research, much have I learned," speaks Wanderer, "I could
impart to many a one things of importance to him; I could deliver
many a one from that which troubles him--from the gnawing care
of the heart." And after still another irritated dismissal from
Mime: "Many a one has imagined himself to be wise, but the thing
which he most needed to know, he knew not. I gave him leave to ask
me what should help him, and enlightened him by my word." And after
again being nervously shown the door: "Here I sit by the fireside,"
speaks blandly Wanderer, suiting the action to the word, "and I
set my head as stake in a match of wits. My head is yours, you
have won it, if you do not, by questioning me, succeed in learning
what shall profit you; if I do not, by my instructions, redeem the
pledge."

It is plain enough that if Mime would now expose to the Wanderer
the source of the gnawing care at his heart, and ask him how Nothung
might be welded, he would receive the information. Wotan is clearly
eager to give it, yet cannot do so directly, or he would be too
crudely meddling again in the Ring affair: he cannot press on him
his counsel, but, at his old trick of ingenuous double-dealing,
might by means of this guessing-game make shift to convey it to
him.

Mime, old and wise as he is, has yet in certain directions a dwarfed
understanding; certainly not enough generosity to trust anybody,
or conceive of a disinterested desire to do him a good turn. His
whole concern now is how to be rid of this large tactless personage.
"I must question him in such a manner as to trap him," he says to
himself. It is agreed that he shall have three questions. He sits
brooding a moment, trying to find something very difficult indeed.
The motif of Mime's cogitations, which has already been frequently