hole world, the
dynasty of the gods must perish!"

With sudden resolution, Wotan starts from his dark study. "Up, Loge!
Down with me to Nibelheim! I will conquer the gold!"

"The Rhine-daughters, then," speaks wicked Loge, "may look to have
their prayer granted?"

Wotan harshly silences him. "Be still, chatterer!... Freia the good,
Freia must be ransomed!"

Loge drops the subject and offers his services as guide. "Shall
we descend through the Rhine?"

The Rhine, with its infesting nymphs?...

"Not through the Rhine!" says Wotan.

"Then through the sulphur-cleft slip down with me!" And Loge vanishes
down a cleft in the rock, through which Wotan, after bidding his
family wait for him where they are until evening, follows.

Thick vapour pours forth from the sulphur-cleft, dimming and shortly
blotting out the scene. We are travelling downward into the earth.
A dull red glow gradually tinges the vapour. Sounds of diminutive
hammers upon anvils become distinct. The orchestra takes up their
suggestion and turns it into a simple monotonous strongly rhythmical
air--never long silent in this scene--which comes to mean for us
the little toiling Nibelungs, the cunning smiths. A great rocky
subterranean cave running off on every side into rough shafts,
is at last clearly visible, lighted by the ruddy reflection of
forge-fires.

This is where Alberich reigns and by the power of the ring compels
his enslaved brothers to labour for him. Renouncing love has not been
good for the disposition of Alberich. It is not only the insatiable
lust of gold and power now darkening the soul-face of the earlier
fairly gentle-natured Nibelung, it is a savage gloating cruelty,
bespeaking one unnaturally loveless; it is a sanguinary hatred,
too, of all who still can love, of love itself, a thirst and
determination to see it completely done away with in the world,
exterminated--a sort of fallen angel's sin against the Holy Ghost.
A state, beneath the incessant excitement of slave-driving and
treasure-amassing, of inexpressible unhappiness, lightened by moments
of huge exaltation in the sense of his new power.

We find him, when the cavern glimmers into sight, brutally handling
his crumb of a gnome brother. Mime, like Alberich, wins some part of
our heart on first acquaintance, which he later ceases to deserve;
but in the case of Mime I think it is never wholly withdrawn, even
when he is shown to be an unmitigated wretch; he is, to begin wit