So shall this very day the knights of both kings see,
Whether, before the Queen, the church I enter may.'"

Arrived at the same moment at the entrance to the church, Brunhild calls
out to her sister-in-law:

"'Before wife of a monarch, a subject shall not go.'"

Kriemhilde, forgetting herself and all about her, breaks out in terrible
passion:

"'Couldst thou have kept silent, 't would have been for thy good.
Thou hast thyself dishonored thine own body fair;
How could a concubine as a king's wife appear?'
'Whom wouldst thou a concubine?' speaks the haughty Queen.
'That will I thee,' quoth Kriemhild; 'thy body fair, I ween,
Was at first embraced by Siegfried, my dear man;
'Sooth was it not my brother who thy maidenhood won.'"

In the agony of shame, Brunhild sank with tears on the threshold.
Kriemhilde passes through the door of the church with her attendants,
but

"For this must soon perish many knights, brave and good."

The insulted queen swears vengeance; Siegfried's blood alone can wash
away her shame. Here begins the work of fierce, grim Hagen, one of the
most sombre characters in German legend. Brunhild wins for the execution
of her revenge this knight, with his fearful record of crime and
passion, though with, on the other hand, his tragic greatness and his
unfaltering devotion to his king and master, to whom he is joined by the
ties of absolute loyalty. As justified by his oath of vassalage he vows
to slay the man who has insulted his sovereign. Gunther reluctantly
consents to the murder of the man to whom he is so deeply indebted;
Giselher, who decidedly rejects the murderous project, is outvoted.

A treacherous plan is concocted, and to make the perfidy still more
flagrant Kriemhilde's innocent cooperation is mendaciously engaged. As
Siegfried, after his bath in the blood of the dragon whom he had slain,
is invulnerable except at one point between the shoulder-blades where a
fallen linden leaf had prevented the skin from becoming "horny,"
Kriemhilde is persuaded by Hagen to mark the spot with red silk that he
may protect him from harm. A hunt is chosen as the occasion for
Siegfried's murder. While Siegfried stoops to a fountain to drink the
limpid water, wine having intentionally been kept away from the hunting
party, he is pierced by Gunther's vassal through the silken mark
indicated by his innocent, loving wife. H