Siegfried has listened to Mime in amused wonder: "Strange exceedingly
must that be! My heart, I feel, stands firm and hard in its place.
That creeping and shuddering, glowing and shivering, turning hot
and turning dizzy, hammering and trembling, I wish to feel the
terror of it, I long for that delight! But how can you, Mime, bring
it about?" "Just follow me. I will guide you to some purpose. I
have thought it all out. I know a dreadful dragon; he has slain
already and swallowed many; Fafner will teach you fear, if you
follow me to his lair." "Where is his lair?" "Neidhoehle it is called.
(_Neid:_ envy; _Hoehle:_ cavern.) Eastward it lies at the end of the
wood." "Then it is not far from the world?" "The world is close
by." "You are to take me there, and when I have learned fear, away,
into the world! So quick! Give me my sword! I will swing it out in
the world!" Mime confesses that he neither has mended, nor ever
can mend, the sword in question. "No dwarf's strength is equal to
it. More likely," he suggests, "one who knows no fear may discover
the art!" Siegfried, heartily weary of Mime's paltering, snatches up
the fragments of Nothung: "Here, the pieces! Away with the bungler!
My father's steel doubtless will let itself be welded by me. Myself
I will forge the sword!" And he falls to work. "If you had taken
diligent pains to learn the art, it would now, of a truth, profit
you," remarks Mime; "but you were always lazy at the lesson. What
proper work can you do now?" "What the master cannot do," Siegfried
aptly retorts, "the apprentice might, if he had always minded him?
Take yourself off! Meddle not with this, or you may tumble with it
into the fire!" He heaps fuel on the hearth, fastens the sword in
a vice and starts filing it. Mime watches him, and at this which
looks like folly, cannot restrain the exclamation: "What are you
doing? Take the solder! You are filing away the file!" But the
disposition of the young fellow without fear shows in his method
with the sword. With a brave thoroughness he reduces the whole
blade to steel filings. Mime follows all his movements. "Now I
am as old as this cavern and these woods, but such a thing have I
never seen! He will succeed with the sword, that I plainly apprehend.
In his fearlessness he will make it whole. The Wanderer knew it
well! How, now, shall I hide my endangered head? It is forfeit to
the intrepid boy unless Fafner shall teach him fear--But, woe's
me, poor wretch