heard in this act, gives amusingly the unheroic colour of the sordid
little mind's workings. He fixes upon questions concerning things
which might be supposed little known to a wanderer of human descent,
even such a much-travelled and conceited one. First: What race
reigns in the depths of the earth? Second: What race rests upon the
back of the earth? Third: What race dwells on the cloudy heights?
Wotan readily answers all these, giving bits of the histories of
the races in question, the Nibelungen, the Giants, and the Gods.
As he describes the spear of Wotan, whose lord all must eternally
obey, he with an involuntary gesture of command brings his spear
hard down on the stone floor. Faint thunder results. Terror falls
upon Mime, who by the light shining for a moment from his countenance,
has recognised the god. "You have solved the questions and saved your
head," he says hurriedly, without looking Wotan in the face. "Now,
Wanderer, go your way!" But the Wanderer declares that according to
custom in such contests, it is the dwarf's turn now to answer three
questions or lose his head. "It is a long time," Mime ventures timidly,
"since I left my native place; a long time since I departed from the
bosom of earth, my mother; I once saw the gleam of Wotan's eye as
he looked into the cave; my mother-wit dwindles before him...."
But the wee fellow has no mean conceit of his wisdom, and is really
not as uneasy as might be expected of one in his position. "Perhaps
I shall be so lucky," he suggests, not without complacency, "as,
under this compulsion, to deliver the dwarf's head!" Wotan asks him,
for the first question,--and the pain of the memories oppressing
him is translated to us by the motif of parting, the motif of "last
times," while the god's tones are infinitely tender--"What race is
it to which Wotan shows himself stern, and which yet he loves the
best of all living?" Glibly Mime answers, showing a full acquaintance
with the circumstances, "The Waelsungen." Wotan passes on to the
second question: "A wise Nibelung keeps watch over Siegfried. He
is to kill Fafner for him, that he may get the Ring and become
lord of the Hort. What sword now must Siegfried wield, if he is
to deal death to Fafner?" Mime, delighted with himself, readily
replies: "Nothung is the name of a notable sword.... The fragments
of it are preserved by a wise smith, for he knows that with the
Wotan-sword alone an intrepid stupid boy, Siegfried, shall des