fully divided in
feeling, you must turn your back upon. Thus it was that I saw what
you could not see. I saw Siegmund. I stood before him announcing
death. I met his eye, I heard his voice, I apprehended the hero's
ineffable distress.... I witnessed that which struck the heart
in my bosom with awe and trembling. Timid and wondering I stood
before him, in shame. I could think only how I might serve him....
And confidently counting upon an intimate understanding of him who
had bred that love in my heart,--of that will which had attached
me to the Waelsung,--I disobeyed your command!"

Wotan, in meeting this, shows how he is not merely a father dealing
with a disobedient child, but a man in strife with himself, with
his own will which has betrayed him into following affection,
inclination, when duty called for an opposite course. "If thy right
hand offend thee, cut if off and cast it from thee." Bruennhilde
is to Wotan that offending flesh and blood, and the safety of the
future depends, it seems, upon his breaking his own heart by cutting
her off from himself. She has done what his heart would have had
him do; but for interests whose claim upon him is in his estimation
greater than that of affection (_einer Welt zu Liebe_: for the sake
of a world), he had elected not to follow his heart's impulse. And
this delinquent, daughter at once and his own will, must not only
be punished for the example of all the disobedient, but cut off
from himself, to provide absolutely against any possible repetition
of the so lovable and forgivable offence.

Bruennhilde, when she has heard him out, has no word further of
argument or defence, but acquiesces with sad submissiveness. "Certainly
the foolish maiden is no fit helpmate for you, who, confused by
your amazing counsel, did not understand your mind, when her own
mind prompted one thing only: to love that which you loved!" She
accepts the punishment as just, only: "If you are to sever that
which was bound together," she pleads, "to keep apart from yourself
the very half of yourself, that I was once completely one with
you, O god, forget it not! Your immortal part you cannot wish to
dishonour. You cannot intend an ignominy which involves you....
Yourself you would be degraded, if you gave me over to insult!"
"You followed, light of heart, the call of love," Wotan replies
unconcedingly: "follow now him whom you must love!" "If I must
depart from Walhalla, if I am to be your companion an