Page:The Mythology of the Aryan Nations.djvu/156

124 BOOK At length Hagen and Kriemhild stand face to face : but when ^ the wife of Etzel asks what gifts he has brought, Hagen answers that geance of wealthy needs no gifts. The question is then put plainly, Kriem- "Where is the Niblungs' hoard? It was my own, as ye well know." nild. Hagen answers that at his master's bidding it has been sunk in the Rhine, and there it must remain till the day of judgment. But when Kriemhild tells the Burgundians that they must give up their arms before going into the hall. Hagen begs to be excused. The honour is greater than he deserves, and he will himself be chamberman. Kriemhild sees that he has been warned, and learns to her grief and rage that the warning has come through Dietrich.^ But the time for the avenging of Siegfried draws nigh. Etzel's men see Kriemhild weeping as through a window she looks down on Hagen and Volker, and when they assure her that the man who has called forth her tears shall pay for his offence with his blood, she bids them avenge her of Hagen, so that he may lose his life. Sixty men are ready to slay them, but Kriemhild says that so small a troop can never suffice to slay two heroes so powerful as Hagen and the still more mighty Volker who sits by his side, — words which at once show that we have before us no beings of human race, and that Hagen is akin to the Panis, while Volker is the whispering breeze or the strong wind of the night, whose harping, like that of Orpheus, few or none may withstand. Kriemhild herself goes down to them : but Hagen will not rise to greet her. On his knees she sees the gleaming sword which he had taken from Siegfried, the good blade Gram, which Odin left in the house of Volsung. The words which burst from her bespeak the grief of a Penelope who nurses her sorrow in a harsher .xlime than that of Ithaka. She asks Hagen how he could venture into the lion's den, and who had sent for him to the Huns' countr}*. To his reply that he had come only by constraint of the masters whose man he was, she rejoins by asking why he did the deed for which she bears hate to him. He has slain her beloved Siegfried, for whom if she weeps all her life long she could never weep enough. It is useless to deny the deed, and Hagen does not care to disown it He tells the queen that he is in truth the man who slew Siegfried and has done to her great wrong; and the preparations for the last struggle go on with more speed and certainty. It is impossible not to think of the suitors in the house of Odysseus, although the bearing

' It is at this point that the passage in our present inquiry tlian as sliowing IS inserted which connects the Xibe- the composite character of the great lungenlied with the story of Walthar of Teutonic epic. — Ludlow, Popular Epics, Aquitainc. It is of no further interest i. 146.