with the clinking anvils of the dwarfs
toiling miserably to heap up treasure for their master, Alberic has set
his brother Mime--more familiarly, Mimmy--to make him a helmet. Mimmy
dimly sees that there is some magic in this helmet, and tries to keep
it; but Alberic wrests it from him, and shows him, to his cost, that it
is the veil of the invisible whip, and that he who wears it can appear
in what shape he will, or disappear from view altogether. This helmet is
a very common article in our streets, where it generally takes the form
of a tall hat. It makes a man invisible as a shareholder, and changes
him into various shapes, such as a pious Christian, a subscriber to
hospitals, a benefactor of the poor, a model husband and father, a
shrewd, practical independent Englishman, and what not, when he is
really a pitiful parasite on the commonwealth, consuming a great deal,
and producing nothing, feeling nothing, knowing nothing, believing
nothing, and doing nothing except what all the rest do, and that only
because he is afraid not to do it, or at least pretend to do it.

When Wotan and Loki arrive, Loki claims Alberic as an old acquaintance.
But the dwarf has no faith in these civil strangers: Greed instinctively
mistrusts Intellect, even in the garb of Poetry and the company of
Godhead, whilst envying the brilliancy of the one and the dignity of the
other. Alberic breaks out at them with a terrible boast of the power now
within his grasp. He paints for them the world as it will be when his
dominion over it is complete, when the soft airs and green mosses of
its valleys shall be changed into smoke, slag, and filth; when slavery,
disease, and squalor, soothed by drunkenness and mastered by the
policeman's baton, shall become the foundation of society; and when
nothing shall escape ruin except such pretty places and pretty women as
he may like to buy for the slaking of his own lusts. In that kingdom of
evil he sees that there will be no power but his own. These gods, with
their moralities and legalities and intellectual subtlety, will go under
and be starved out of existence. He bids Wotan and Loki beware of
it; and his "Hab' Acht!" is hoarse, horrible, and sinister. Wotan
is revolted to the very depths of his being: he cannot stifle the
execration that bursts from him. But Loki is unaffected: he has no moral
passion: indignation is as absurd to him as enthusiasm. He finds it
exquisitely amusing--having a touch of the comic s