y peak, they let the culprit cower out of sight among them.
But Wotan is not deceived; he addresses to the hidden daughter such
sharp and searching reproaches that, her fear for herself losing
all importance as these strike her heart, she steps forth from
among the sister-Valkyries and meekly stands before her father,
awaiting condemnation.

"Not I," he speaks, "punish you. Yourself you have framed your
punishment!" And he exposes how by forgetting the whole duty of a
Valkyrie--to deal victory or defeat according to Wotan's decree--she
had made herself in effect no longer a Valkyrie. "No more shall I
send you from Walhalla.... No longer shall you bring warriors to
my hall.... From the tribe of the gods you are cut off, rejected
from the eternal line.... Our tie is severed.... You are banished
from my face!" The sisters break into lamentation. "Upon this mountain
I banish you. In undefended sleep I shall seal you. Let the man
then capture the maid who finds her upon his road and wakes her."
The sisters endeavour to restrain him, pointing out that their
own honour will suffer from such a scandal. He rejects this on
the ground that they have nothing more whatever to do with the
faithless sister. "A husband is to win her feminine favor; masterful
man is henceforth to have her duty. By the fireside she shall sit
and spin, an object of scorn to all beholders!" Bruennhilde drops
at his feet, overwhelmed. Cries of horror and protest break from
the others; he drives them from his presence with the threat of a
similar fate to Bruennhilde's if they do not forthwith depart from
her, and keep afar from the rock where she suffers her sentence.
In a confusion of terror, which is not without the slightest point
of humour, the strong girls flee like leaves in the blast before
Wotan's menace,--and Bruennhilde is left alone to plead her poor
cause with the stern incensed father.

She conjures him first to silence his anger, and define to her
the dark fault which has impelled him to reject the most loyal
of his children. "I carried out your order," she protests. "Did
I order you to fight for the Waelsung?" he inquires. "You did,"
she reminds him. "But I took back my instructions." "When Fricka
had estranged you from your own mind.... Not wise am I, but this
one thing I knew, that the Waelsung was dear to you. I was aware of
the conflict which compelled you to turn from the remembrance of
this.... I kept in sight for you that which, pain