emarks Hagen evasively, "to
envy you." "Nay, for me it is to envy you, and not you me," Gunther
in his pleasant humour rejoins; "true, I inherited the right of
the first-born, but wisdom is yours alone, and I am, in fact, but
lauding your good counsel when I inquire of my fame!" "I blame
the counsel then," speaks Hagen, "for indifferent is as yet the
fame. I know of high advantages which the Gibichung has not yet
won...." Gunther's inquiry he satisfies: "In summer ripeness and
vigour I behold the stem of Gibich: you, Gunther, without wife,--you,
Gutrune, still unwed." Gunther and Gutrune, struck, are silent a
moment. Then Gunther inquires whom should he wed that lustre might
be added to the glory of the House? "I know a woman," Hagen replies,
"the most glorious in the world. On a high rock is her throne; a
fire surrounds her abode; only he who shall break through the fire
may proffer his suit for Bruennhilde." Gunther's mediocrity and
his sense of it stand ingenuously confessed in his question: "Is my
courage sufficient for the test?" "The achievement is reserved for
one stronger even than you." "Who is this unparalleled champion?"
"Siegfried, the son of the Waelsungen.... He, grown in the forest to
mighty size and strength, is the man I wish Gutrune for her lord."
Gutrune's motif, sweet and shallow, like Gunther's betrays her; an
innocent admission of mediocrity, too, is in her exclamation: "You
mocker! Unkind Hagen! How should I be able to attach Siegfried
to me?" She is unsure of her feminine charm as her brother of his
manly courage. As he finds nothing repugnant in the proposition
to win his bride through another, so she accepts to win her love
through a magic potion. Gunther, Gutrune, and Hunding are the only
plain human beings in the drama of the Ring, and certainly they produce
the effect of rampant creatures among winged ones. Acquiescently
Gutrune hears Hagen's suggestion: "Remember the drink in the cupboard;
trust me who provided it. By means of it, the hero whom you desire
shall be bound to you by love. Were Siegfried now to enter, were
he to taste the spiced drink, that he ever saw a woman before you,
that ever a woman approached him, he must totally forget!" Thus
they have it planned: Siegfried shall by a love-potion be won to
Gutrune, and, as a task by which to obtain her from her brother,
shall be deputed to fetch Bruennhilde for him from her flame-surrounded
heights. Hagen is alone, of the three, to kno