m the queen. To Rudiger, Etzel's envoy, she states:
"He who knows my sharp pain will not ask me to love another man. I lost
more in the one than any woman can ever gain." Still, she asks time for
deliberation. Gernot and Giselher encourage her: "If anyone can reverse
your sorrow, the man is Etzel; from the Rhone to the Rhine, from the
Elbe to the sea, no king is powerful as he; rejoice that he has chosen
thee for his partner in his glorious realm." "Woe is me, lamentation and
mourning beseem me better than marriage; I can no longer go to court as
befits a queen; if once I was beautiful, my beauty has vanished long
ago." With dry eyes, in bitter pain, she awaits the morning. Nothing can
move her to consent. At last, Riidiger vows to her under four eyes with
a solemn oath: "And though you had in Hunland no one but me and my loyal
kinsman and warriors, still anyone who causes sorrow to you, shall
heavily atone for it by my hand." Instantly all the spirits of revenge
are aroused in her breast; but Riidiger knows not the terrible thoughts
that linger in her bosom, as he swears the solemn oath; he knows not
that by his oath he dooms his child, his men, himself to a double death.
Kriemhilde, with her heart thirsting for revenge, proceeds with the
embassy to Etzel's court. Twenty-four mighty kings and princes are sent
by her great husband to meet her. Attila's brother, Blodel, renders her
homage; and so, too, does Havart, the Dane, and his faithful vassal,
Iring, and of others a host. And there she notices, at the head of his
men, whose faces shine forth defiantly from their wolf's helmets, a
lofty, almost gigantic hero a lion-like man with his powerful shoulders
and loins, cast as of iron; he resembles Siegfried in bright looks and
royal brow; but in him Siegfried's serene youth is mellowed to manly
maturity. Heavy storms have raged over the head of the hero, whose hair
is bound with a regal diadem, whose right arm leans upon his lion
shield. This is Theodoric the Goth, Dietrich von Bern of the saga, the
greatest hero of the Migration period, next to Siegfried the centre of
Teutonic epic, now an exile at Etzel's court until he returns as a
victor to the dominions of his fathers.

The strength and majesty of this heroic warrior appeal to the heart of
Kriemhilde, but appeal only as the means to the accomplishment of sure
revenge on the murderers of her husband, Siegfried. The marriage feast
is celebrated at Vienna for seventeen d