lous
light down through the deep. Through the wavering ripples of water
and light cuts the bright call of the gold, the call to wake up
and behold. Again and again it rings, regularly a golden voice.
The Rhine-daughters have quickly forgotten their victim. They begin
their blissful circumswimming of their idol, with a song in ecstatic
celebration of it, so penetratingly, joyously sweet, that you readily
forgive them their naughtiness: "Rhine-gold! Rhine-gold! Luminous
joy! How laugh'st thou so bright and clear!"...

Alberich cannot detach his eyes from the vision. "What is it, you
sleek ones," he asks in awed curiosity, "glancing and gleaming
up there?"

"Now where have you barbarian lived," they reply, "never to have
heard of the Rhine-gold?" They mock his ignorance; returning to
their teasing mood, they invite him to come and revel with them
in the streaming light.

"If it is no good save for you to swim around, it is of small use
to me!" is Alberich's dejected observation. As if their treasure had
been disparaged, Woglinde informs him that he would hardly despise
the gold if he knew all of its wonder! And Wellgunde follows this
part-revelation with the whole secret: The whole world would be
his inheritance who should fashion out of the Rhine-gold a magic
ring. Vainly Flosshilde tries to silence her sisters. Wellgunde
and Woglinde laugh at her prudence, reminding her of the gold's
assured safety in view of the condition attached to the creation
of the ring. This is described in a solemn phrase, serious as the
pronouncing of a vow: "Only he who forswears the power of love,
only he who casts from him the joys of love, can learn the spell
by which the gold may be forced into a ring."--Wherefore, they
hold, the gold is safe, "for all that lives wishes to love, no one
will give up love," least of all this Nibelung, the heat of whose
sentiments had come near scorching them! And they laugh and swim
around the gold with their light-hearted Wallalaleia, diversified
with mocking personalities to the gnome down in the gloom.

But they have miscalculated. Without suspecting it, they have gone
too far. The dwarf stands staring at the gold, dreaming what it
would be to own the world. He is hardly at that moment, thanks
to them, in love with love. His resolution is suddenly taken. He
springs to the rock, shouting: "Mock on! Mock on! The Nibelung is
coming!" With fearful activity, hate-inspired strength, he rapidly
climbs the