ife long an old man has stood in my way.
I have no more than swept him away. If you continue to stand there
stiffly opposing me, beware, I tell you, lest you fare like Mime!"
As, with this threat, he takes a stride nearer to the stranger, he
is struck by his appearance. "What makes you look like that?" he
asks, like a child; "what a great hat you have! Why does it hang
down so over your face?... One of your eyes, beneath the brim, is
missing.... It was put out, I am sure, by some one whose passage
you were stubbornly opposing. Now, take yourself off, or you might
easily lose the other!" The indulgent grandsire is still not stirred
from his patience, though this must strike a little painfully on
his heart. "I see, my son, that, unencumbered by any knowledge,
you are quick at disposing of obstacles. With the eye which is
missing from my other socket, you yourself are looking at the single
eye which I have left for sight." At this riddle, the brilliant
Walsung eyes merely flash mirth, while Siegfried laughs at the
obscure saying. Not a moment does he waste in reflection upon it,
but, with growing impatience to resume his quest, orders Wanderer
to guide him or be thrust out of his road. "If you knew me, bold
stripling," the suffering god speaks, still gently, "you would spare
me this affront. Close to my heart as you are, your threatening
strikes me painfully. Though I have ever loved your luminous race,
my anger has before this brought terror upon them. You, toward
whom I feel such kindness,--you, all-too-bright!--do not to-day
move me to anger.... It might destroy both you and me!" All that
is plain to Siegfried, mad to be off in search of his sleeper,
is that this prattling old personage neither tells him his way
nor will consent to move out of it. As he once more rudely bids
him clear the path to the sleeping woman, Wotan's anger breaks
forth: "You shall not," he exclaims, "go the way the bird pointed!"
"Hoho! You forbidder!..." cries Siegfried, amazed, "who are you,
trying to prevent me?" "Fear the Guardian of the Rock! My power
it is which holds the maid under the spell of sleep. He who awakes
her, he who wins her, makes me powerless for ever!"

Wotan, it would seem, is challenging the boy. His anger, justified
though it would be by the stalwart cub's behaviour, is half affected.
He had declared not far from this very spot, some eighteen years
earlier, that no one who feared his spear should ever cross the
barrier o