ssible, that the flat of
Nothung would have been sufficient for anything so small, though
so venomous,--he gives it the obsequies which seem to him the most
fitting. He throws him in the cave, that he may lie on the heaped
gold and have the coveted treasure at last for his own. He drags
Fafner to the cave's mouth, that his bulk may block it. "Lie there,
you too, dark dragon! Guard at once the shining treasure and the
treasure-loving enemy; thus have you both found rest!"

The sun is high; heated with his exertions, Siegfried returns to
his mossy couch under the trees, and is presently again looking
overhead for the friendly bird. "Once more, dear little bird, after
such a troublesome interruption, I should be glad to listen to your
singing. I can see you swinging happily on the bough; brothers
and sisters flutter around you, blithe and sweet, twittering the
while...." A vague sadness touches his mood, and this pensive moment
goes far toward gaining back to him the sympathy which his overgreat
sturdiness in dealing death had perhaps forfeited. He is now a poor
lonesome beautiful boy, completely sweet-blooded and brave--the
hunter that has never robbed the mother of her young--whose heart
full of instinctive affection has never had an object on which
it could spend itself. "But I," he says envyingly to the bird,
"I am so alone! I have neither brother nor sister! My mother
vanished,--my father fell,--their son never saw them...." In this
humour he lets a shade of regret transpire for the necessity to
kill Mime. "My only companion was a loathly dwarf; goodness never
knit the bond of affection between us; artful toils the cunning foe
spread for me. I was at last even forced to slay him!" He stares
sorrowfully at the sky through the trees. "Friendly bird, I ask
you now: will you assist my quest for a good comrade? Will you
guide me to the right one? I have called so often and never found
one; you, my trusty one, will surely hit it better! So apt has
been the counsel given by you already! Now sing! I am listening
for your song!" Readily the bright voice from above answers in
a joyous warble: "Hei! Siegfried has slain the wicked dwarf! I
have in mind for him now the most glorious mate! On a high rock
she sleeps, a wall of flame surrounds her abode. If he should push
through the fire, if he should waken the bride, then were Bruennhilde
his own!" With an instantaneousness touchingly significant of his
hard heart-hunger, an atta