e sinks to the ground dying,
rallies once more to face his murderer, but his strength leaves him, and
dying he commends Kriemhilde to Gunther's care:

"'Would you ever, Gunther, on this world again
To any one show kindness, let it well appear,
In truth and in favor, to my wife so dear.
Let it at least speak for her that she your sister is:
By every princely virtue, pledge your troth in this.'"

The murderer causes Siegfried's corpse to be laid before the door of his
sleeping queen. When leaving her chamber in the morning to go to early
mass, Kriemhilde fainted on viewing the heartrending sight

"She sank down on the ground, no word more did she say;
The lovely, joyless lady before them prostrate lay.
Kriemhild's anguish was terrible to view,
So loud her cries and wailing that the room echoed through."

The body of the divine hero is laid on a bier in the cathedral. Then
Kriemhilde challenges the king and Hagen to approach the shrine
containing Siegfried's corpse and take the test that will decide their
guilt or innocence. The ancient ordeal reveals the murderer, for at
Hagen's approach the wound begins to bleed anew. In Kriemhilde's soul,
that heretofore had been so filled with unspeakable love for her
incomparable hero that other passions found no place, there arises now
an all-destroying hatred and lust of revenge. The expression of this
pervades the second part of the _Nibelungenlied_, and reaches its climax
in an orgy of blood, in a cataclysm that overwhelms alike all the
participants in the murder, her brothers and herself.

Kriemhilde secludes herself at Worms, and mourns her dead for thirteen
long years. During all this weary time no single word is addressed by
her to Gunther her blood-stained brother. The silence becomes
intolerable; and to reconcile her and to divert her thoughts, the kings
send for the Nibelung treasure of red gold and precious jewels which
lies under dwarf Alberich's guard in the land of the Nibelungs. During
four days and nights twelve heavy wagons haul the shining treasure from
the hollow of the mountain to the waiting ship. A truce is patched up
between the widow and the brothers, but she hates Hagen with a deep and
silent hate. Her only consolation lies in chanty toward the poor. Hagen
fears the effect of her liberality. He takes the treasure away from her
and thus adds further to her debt of hate. Upon Gernot's