nd! Put
your skill to use with Mime, your brother. He is of the kind you
understand better. What is of a different kind, learn now to know,
too...." When Wotan disappears, the galloping is heard, through the
storm-wind that for a moment agitates the leaves of the forest,
of his rising Luft-ross. His obscure last words have left Alberich
puzzled, sorer and angrier than ever. The air is full of curse-motif.
"Laugh on, you light-minded luxurious tribe of the gods! I shall
still see you all gone to destruction. While the gold shines in the
light there is a wise one keeping watch--His spite will circumvent
you all!" He hides himself among the tumbled rocks near the cave-mouth
from the brightening light of dawn.

Mime enters guiding Siegfried. "This is the spot, go no further!"
Siegfried seats himself under a great tree; they have been travelling
through the woods all night. "This is the place where I am to learn
fear?" he inquires light-heartedly. The excursion, as far as he
knows, has for its single object to teach him that art. He is not
of a suspicious turn and does not ask what interest in his education
has Mime, in whose affection he instinctively does not believe.
"Now, Mime," he instructs the dwarf, "you are after this to avoid
me. If I do not learn here what I should learn, I shall fare further
alone, I shall finally be rid of you!" "Believe me, dear boy,"
says the dwarf, "if you do not learn fear to-day and here, with
difficulty shall you learn it elsewhere and at another time!" He
directs the youth's eye to the black mouth of the dragon-hole and
describes with griesly detail the monster inhabiting it. Siegfried
listens unimpressed. Hearing, in answer to his inquiry, that the
monster has a heart and that it is in the usual place: "I will
drive Nothung into the overweening brute's heart!" he determines
lightly. He is sceptical with regard to the lesson in fear which
he has been promised. "Just wait!" Mime warns him. "What I said
was empty sound in your ears. You must hear and see the creature
himself.... Remain where you are. When the sun climbs high, watch
for the dragon. He will come out of his cave and pass along this
way to go and drink at the spring." "Mime," says Siegfried, with
a laugh for his foolish big-boy joke, "if you are to be at the
spring I will not hinder the dragon from going there. I will not
drive Nothung into his spleen until he has drunk you up. Wherefore,
take my advice: do not lie down to res