cuts short the discussion, "wrangle with Mime. Danger threatens you
through your brother. He is bringing to this spot a youth who is
to slay Fafner for him. The boy knows nothing of me. The Nibelung
uses him for his own purposes. Wherefore, I tell you, comrade,
do freely as you choose!" Alberich can scarcely believe that he
has heard aright. "You will keep your hand from the treasure?"
Serenely and broadly, Wotan declares--a touch of that tenderness
in his tone which the thought of the Waelsungen always has power
to arouse--"Whom I love I leave to act for himself: let him stand
or fall, his own lord is he. I have no use save for heroes!" This
sounds very fair; to Alberich almost too fair. He presses Wotan
with further questions. The answers are elusive as oracles, but
satisfy Alberich of thus much: that Wotan is himself out of the
struggle for the Ring. To point his personal disinterestedness,
the god even offers to wake the dragon, that Alberich may warn
him of the approaching danger and peradventure receive in token of
gratitude--the Ring! We suspect in this Wotan's taste for a joke,
unless it be an exhibition of that other trait of the god's, the
need to gratify his conscience with a comedy of fairness. At this
moment he is not, it is true, interfering; but he is confidently
watching the play of forces set working by him long ago. The strong
Siegfried armed with the rejuvenated Sieges-schwert is a force
having its impulse originally from him. At this moment, perhaps
because the events immediately impending have cast their shadows
across the sensitive consciousness of an at times prophet, he is
in no uneasiness whatever with regard to the fate of the Ring. To
Alberich's mystification, he actually rouses Fafner. "Who disturbs
my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif
is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead
of the ponderous tread of the brothers it suggests the muffled
ponderous beat of a gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich
explain to the dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him
safety. Having heard them out, Fafner, unseen in the cave, gives
a long lazy comfortable yawn. "I lie and possess! Let me sleep!"
Wotan laughs. "Well, Alberich, the plan failed. But abuse me no
more, you rogue! One thing, I further enjoin you, keep well in
mind: Everything is after its kind, and this kind you cannot alter!"
The broad Erda-motif accompanies this maxim. "Take a firm sta