troy
the dragon." He rubs his hands in goblin glee. "Am I, dwarf, in
the second instance still to retain my head?" Wanderer, with a
laugh for his antics, felicitates him: "The most keen-witted are
you among the wise; who can equal you in acuteness? But seeing you
are so cunning as to use the boyish hero for your dwarf-purposes,
with the third question I now make bold: Tell me, wise armourer,
who, out of the strong fragments, shall forge Nothung anew?"
Consternation falls upon the dwarf. Who, indeed? Was not that question
the very hub around which turned all his troubled reflections? Had
it not been that which was forcing tears from him at the moment
of the Wanderer's arrival? He runs hither and thither distracted,
in broken exclamations admitting that he himself cannot forge the
sword, and how should he know who can perform the miracle? The
Wanderer rises from his seat beside the hearth. "Three questions
you were free to ask. Three times I was open to consultation. You
inquired of things idle and remote, but that which was closest to
you, that which might profit you, did not enter your mind. Now
that I have guessed it, you lose your senses with fright. I have
won the witty head. Now, brave conqueror of Fafner, hear, doomed
dwarf: Only one who has never known fear can forge Nothung anew."
On his way to the mouth of the cave, he turns for another word to
the chap-fallen Mime: "Look out for your wise head from this day
forth: I leave it in forfeit to him who has never learned fear!"
With a laugh for the double-horned dilemma in which he leaves the
"honest dwarf," he passes forth into the woods.

As Mime gazes after him, violent trembling seizes the poor little
smith. The flashing among the leaves of Wotan's winged horse his
terror mistakes for the flaming of Fafner's gaping jaws; and the
sound of a rushing approach for the monster crashing toward him
through the underbrush. With the cry: "The dragon is upon me! Fafner!
Fafner!" he cowers behind the anvil.

The alarming noise proves to have been only Siegfried coming with
characteristic impetuosity to ask for his sword. "Hey, there!
Lazy-bones! Have you finished? Quick! What success with the sword?"
Mime is not in sight. His voice is heard, faint, from his hiding-place:
"Is it you, child? Are you alone?" Siegfried for some time can draw
no satisfactory answer from him, no matter how roughly pressed.
The dwarf is caught between two difficulties, and must first of all
thi