ght. He calls for his
night-draught, sends Sieglinda into the sleeping-room, and follows
her. She glances repeatedly from Siegmund to a spot on the ash-trunk;
but he does not take her meaning.

There follows a strange and beautiful scene. Siegmund lies down to
rest; the fire glimmers fitfully, then blazes up, revealing at the
point on the trunk at which Sieglinda had gazed a shining sword-hilt,
the blade embedded in the trunk. Still Siegmund does not understand,
and the fire dies down; he is beginning to slumber when Sieglinda
enters and calls him. He starts up; she has put a sleeping-powder in
Hunding's cup, and they are safe; and thus begins the greatest
love-duet, next to the _Tristan_, in the world. Sieglinda tells how
when she, full of grief, was wedded to Hunding, a grey old man, with
one eye, clad in a blue cloak, came in uninvited, drove the sword
Nothung into the ash-tree, and said that it should belong to the hero
strong enough to draw it out. From all parts warriors came, but none
could move it. Sieglinda feels that the appointed man has come;
Siegmund grasps the weapon and triumphantly pulls it out. Then they
reveal their names, and recognise one another as brother and sister,
and the Act ends.

This is the first step towards Wotan's discomfiture. The significance
of the Sword theme in the _Rhinegold_ at the moment when he has the
Master-idea will now be apparent. The sword was so endowed by Wotan
that only a fearless hero could use it; therefore, when Siegmund draws
it from the wood, Wotan, watching from Valhalla, knows he has
succeeded in raising up the hero he needed. Siegmund had been tested
by all manner of misfortune; no harder life could have been his; Wotan
had never aided him, but thrown disasters in his path; and had he
failed or succumbed Wotan's device would have failed. But freely,
independently, with no help from the god, he had come through all, and
now his own strength enabled him to take the sword to--to what?--to
work Wotan's will! That is, in creating Siegmund, even in testing him,
in preparing for him a weapon that none could stand against, Wotan,
far from successfully accomplishing his purpose, was accomplishing his
ruin. Disillusionment comes swiftly. The first deed of his hero is to
break two of the most sacred laws of heaven--laws binding on Wotan
until he gets the Ring--for he carries off another man's wife, who is,
moreover, his own sister. The punishment for that is matter for th