ificant in size, as he counts
it. "Haha!" cries Siegfried, enchanted to hear from an animal talk
which he can understand. "If you are an animal that can speak,
you very likely can teach me something. Here is one who does not
know fear; can he learn it from you?" "Is this insolence?" asks
the amazed brute. "Call it insolence or what you please, but I
shall fall upon you bodily, unless you teach me fear." Fafner laughs
grimly, as if he licked his chops: "I wanted drink, I now find
meat as well!" He shows the red interior of his vast jaws fringed
with teeth. There is a brief further exchange of threats and jeers,
then Fafner bellows: "Pruh! Come on, swaggering child!" Siegfried
shouts: "Look out, bellower, the swaggerer comes!" and, Nothung in
hand, leaps to the assault. Vainly Fafner spouts flame to blind
and terrify him. The fight ends as it must. The dragon falls beneath
the Wotan-sword, wielded by the hero without fear.

With his failing breath, in a tone strangely void of resentment,
the dragon questions his slip of an adversary, so unexpectedly
victorious: "Who are you, intrepid boy, that have pierced my heart?
Who incited the child to the murderous deed? Your brain never conceived
that which you have done...." A motif we have come to know well
punctuates the dying speech of this still another victim of the
curse on the Ring. "I do not know much, as yet," Siegfried replies;
"I do not know even who I am. But it was yourself roused my temper
to fight with you." The last of the giants, his hollow voice growing
fainter, tells the "clear-eyed boy," the "rosy hero," who it is he
has slain, and warns him of the treachery surrounding the owner
of the Hort. "Tell me further from whom I am descended," speaks
Siegfried; "wise, of a truth, do you appear, wild one, in dying.
Guess it from my name. Siegfried I am called!" But the Worm sighing,
"Siegfried!..." gives up the breath.

After a moment's contemplation of the mountainous dead, Siegfried
resolutely drags from his breast the sword which he had driven
in up to the hilt. A drop of the dragon's blood spurts against
his hand. With the exclamation: "The blood burns like fire!" he
lifts his finger to his mouth. At once his attention is arrested
by the voices of the birds. With increasing interest he harkens:
It seems to him almost as if the birds were speaking to him; a
distinct impression he receives of words. "Is it the effect of
tasting the blood?" he wonders. "That curious