ring they might have!" Too large to feel demeaned by an
inconsistency, he shouts to them: "Hey, you lively water-beauties!
Come quickly! I make you a gift of the ring!" Taking it off, he holds
it toward them. This is the point in his fortunes where we perceive
the working of Siegfried's fate. If the nymphs, as one would have
felt safe in counting upon their doing, had risen and caught the
Ring from him with a laugh louder than any before, all might have
been well. Hagen would have had nothing to gain by killing him.
But the curse which doomed the owner of the Ring to a bloody end
would not have it so. It had been crippled, it is true, against the
noble one; it had failed to make him suspicious, sad, and careful.
But his violent death we see provided for when, by what seems the
merest hazard, his offer of the Ring to the Rhine-maidens is not
accepted on the expected terms. The sisters rise to his call, but
instead of faces dancing with laughter they show him grave and
warning countenances. Their subaqueous deliberations have resulted
in a most ill-inspired change of tactics. Instead of snatching at
the proffered Ring and glad to have it, they represent to Siegfried
that he will be under an obligation to them for ridding him of it.
His mood of giving is changed by a threat into one of refusal.
"Keep it, hero, and guard it with care, until you become aware of
the evil fate you are cherishing under its shape. Then you will
be glad if we will deliver you from the curse!" He slips back the
Ring on his finger and bids them tell what they know. "Siegfried!
We know of evil threatening you! To your danger you retain the
Ring! Out of the Rhine-gold it was forged; he who shaped it and
miserably lost it, placed a curse upon it long ago, that it should
bring death upon him who wore it. As you slew the dragon, even
so shall you be slain, and this very day, of this we warn you,
unless you give us the Ring to bury in the deep Rhine; its water
alone can allay the curse!" "You artful ladies," the hero shakes
his head, "let be that policy! If I hardly trusted your flatteries,
your attempt to alarm me deceives me still less...." When more
impressively still they reiterate their warning, protesting their
truth, urging the irresistible strength of the curse woven by the
Norns into the coil of the eternal law, he answers, and the nature
against which the curse had so long been of no effect shows brightly
forth in the brief tirade: "My sword o