gi replies: "Thine is the blame; for every tear
which thou weepest falls as a cold and piercing drop of blood upon my
bosom. But let us be of good cheer and drink the sweet mead, let no one
complain of the wound on my breast, since, though dead am I, my wife is
with me." Sigrun prepares the couch to sleep on the breast of the
beloved dead, as she did when he was still alive. Helgi, touched by so
much love, exclaims: "It has happened what no one ever deemed possible:
the white daughter of Hagen, the living one, sleeps in the arms of the
dead." At the morning dawn, before the cock crows, Helgi is obliged to
return to Valhalla, and Sigrun returns to her solitary palace. In the
evening she awaits him, but waits in vain, and in her sorrow her heart
breaks.

The motive of this legend lives in German literature in varied forms.
Burger has reawakened it in _Lenore_, the greatest German ballad.

But, to conclude the chapter on the Teutonic women of antiquity, it is
necessary to return once more to the prose of history, where, for the
first time, the women of the Teutons, in their general aspect, enter
into the bright light of historical observation, in this instance so
much the more valuable, since it is the observation of the enemy. In
conformity with our other sources, the Greek-Roman historians, Plutarch,
Dion Cassius, and Strabo, have to report regarding Teutonic womanhood
only traits of tremendous strength, power, and love of liberty. Savage
virtue and heroism are there, but not a single trait of grace and
loveliness appears in their accounts. And if there is exaggeration, it
simply proves the terror the furor Teutonicus which was inculcated by
the Teutons into the hearts of the Romans at their very first encounter.
The years B. C. 113-101 witnessed the first Titanic clash and conflict
between the Cimbri and the Teutones, mere splinters of the Teutonic
race, and the world power of the Roman Republic at the height and zenith
of its greatness. For the first time, Teutons thundered at the gates of
the Alpine entrance to Rome, and thus began the incessant struggle which
continued for nearly six centuries between the two most powerful races
in the history of the world, until the Empire finally succumbed.

When one legionary army after another, led by the foremost commanders of
Rome, had been destroyed under the onslaught of the two combined tribes,
the Cimbri and the Teutones, it was only the military genius of Marius
which fi