Page:The Nibelungenlied - tr. Shumway - 1909.pdf/363

Rh you false, for Rüdeger’s sake, and that he still did live, for whom both man and wife may well ever weep.”

When they heard aright that he was dead, the warriors made wail for him, as their fealty bade them. Over the beards and chins of Dietrich’s champions the tears were seen to run. Great grief had happened to them.

Siegstab, the Duke of Berne, then spake: “Now hath come to an end the cheer, that Rüdeger did give us after our days of dole. The joy of all wayfaring folk lieth slain by you, sir knights.”

Then spake the Knight Wolfwin of the Amelungs: “And I saw mine own father dead to-day, I should not make greater dole, than for his death. Alas, who shall now comfort the good margrave’s wife?”

Angry of mood Knight Wolfhart spake: “Who shall now lead the warriors to so many a fight, as the margrave so oft hath done? Alas, most noble Rüdeger, that we should lose thee thus!”

Wolfbrand and Helfrich and Helmnot, too, with all their men bewailed his death. For sighing Hildebrand might no longer ask a whit. He spake: “Sir knights, now do what my lord hath sent you here to do. Give us the corse of Rüdeger from out the hall, in whom our joy hath turned to grief, and let us repay to him the great fealty he hath shown to us and to many another man. We, too, be exiles, just as Rüdeger, the knight. Why do ye let us wait thus? Let us bear him away, that we may yet requite the knight in death. More justly had we done it, when he was still alive.”

Then spake King Gunther: “Never was there so good a service as that, which a friend doth do to a friend after his death. When any doeth that, I call it