ught, blind one, to a
comprehension of that which was demanded of her, which she had so
haughtily refused to consider when Waltraute pleaded for the gods.
She bows now under his heavy hand, but not without reproach and
arraignment: "Oh you, holy guardians of vows! Turn your eyes upon
my broad-blown woe: behold your eternal guilt! Hear my accusation,
most high god! Through his bravest action, desired by you and of
use to you, you devoted him who performed it to dark powers of
destruction...." (The old story of the Ring!) "By the truest of
all men born must I be betrayed, that a woman might grow wise!...
And have I understood at last what it is you want of me?... Aye,
of everything, of everything, everything, I have understanding!
All has in this hour become clear to me.... I hear the rustling,
too, of your ravens: with the message so fearfully yearned for
I send them both home.... Be at rest, be at rest, you god!" The
tone of these last words is that of the old Bruennhilde once more,
the tender daughter pitying her father's sorrows. Yes, let him be
at rest, for the Ring shall go back to the Rhine, to obtain which
result her dearest happiness has been sacrificed. She takes it from
Siegfried's finger, and places it--Siegfried's love-token, not to
be yielded up while she lives--upon her own. The Rhine-daughters,
when the funeral pile has burned to the ground, shall take it from
her ashes. She has had conversation in the night with the wise
sisters of the deep; no fear but that they will be at hand.

And is that what will be Bruennhilde's prophesied world-delivering
act? Restoring the Ring to the Rhine, thus saving the world definitely
from Alberich and the army of the night? Or can we suppose it to
be the act which she accomplishes in the same stroke,--the act of
plunging into their twilight the whole tribe of the tired unjust
gods, so long now tremulously awaiting their end? Or, is the latter
act Bruennhilde's supreme vengeance? Or,--this seems more likely,--an
act of supreme benevolence, the result of at last understanding
"everything, everything, everything!"?

The funeral pile decked with precious covers and flowers stands
ready, Siegfried's body upon it. Bruennhilde seizes a torch from
one of the attendants: "Fly home, you ravens, report to your master
what you have heard here by the shore of the Rhine! Pass, on your
way, near to Bruennhilde's rock: direct Loge, who is still smouldering
there, to Walhalla. For the d