n until I swept him out of my way. I will sweep you in the same
fashion if you don't let me pass. Why do you wear such a big hat; and
what has happened to one of your eyes? Was it knocked out by somebody
whose way you obstructed?" To which Wotan replies allegorically that the
eye that is gone--the eye that his marriage with Fricka cost him--is now
looking at him out of Siegfried's head. At this, Siegfried gives up the
Wanderer as a lunatic, and renews his threats of personal violence. Then
Wotan throws off the mask of the Wanderer; uplifts the world-governing
spear; and puts forth all his divine awe and grandeur as the guardian of
the mountain, round the crest of which the fires of Loki now break into
a red background for the majesty of the god. But all this is lost on
Siegfried Bakoonin. "Aha!" he cries, as the spear is levelled against
his breast: "I have found my father's foe"; and the spear falls in two
pieces under the stroke of Nothung. "Up then," says Wotan: "I cannot
withhold you," and disappears forever from the eye of man. The fires
roll down the mountain; but Siegfried goes at them as exultantly as
he went at the forging of the sword or the heart of the dragon, and
shoulders his way through them, joyously sounding his horn to the
accompaniment of their crackling and seething. And never a hair of his
head is singed. Those frightful flames which have scared mankind for
centuries from the Truth, have not heat enough in them to make a child
shut its eyes. They are mere phantasmagoria, highly creditable to Loki's
imaginative stage-management; but nothing ever has perished or will
perish eternally in them except the Churches which have been so poor and
faithless as to trade for their power on the lies of a romancer.

BACK TO OPERA AGAIN

And now, O Nibelungen Spectator, pluck up; for all allegories come to an
end somewhere; and the hour of your release from these explanations is
at hand. The rest of what you are going to see is opera, and nothing
but opera. Before many bars have been played, Siegfried and the wakened
Brynhild, newly become tenor and soprano, will sing a concerted
cadenza; plunge on from that to a magnificent love duet; and end with
a precipitous allegro a capella, driven headlong to its end by the
impetuous semiquaver triplets of the famous finales to the first act of
Don Giovanni or the coda to the Leonore overture, with a specifically
contrapuntal theme, points d'orgue, and a high C for the