Page:The Spirit of French Music.djvu/179

 aggravate the difficulty, that the characters in this romance instead of being taken from the lower-middle classes of France and Germany are taken from Germanic mythology and prehistoric legend; especially when, from above the clouds or out of the abysm of time they address us in the language in use yesterday or the day before and quite familiar to us. In these two senses the Ring is a very clear work. The fantastic on a vast scale, a chain of wonderful stories put on the stage, and a romance modelled on the old romantic theses of sentimental anarchism, the whole mixed with certain riddles of metaphysical terminology, that for my part I think are only too easily deciphered, such are the elements of which the invention of the Tetralogy is composed.

I will summarise its story in as consecutive a manner as possible.

In the luminous depths of the Rhine, the gnome Alberich pursues the water-sprites who elude him and mock him, springing from rock to rock. But while thus disporting themselves they neglect to guard the divine treasure entrusted to them, comprising Gold, the Ring and the Helm; the Ring is capable of procuring for its possessor the sovereignty of the universe; the Helm is the instrument of all metamorphoses. The dwarf, forced to abandon the pursuit of the fair daughters of the wave, and preferring the joys of greed and power to those of unattainable love, gets possession of these magic objects. Changed into a monster he thinks he is secure against robbers. But he has reckoned without Wotan, the master of the gods, who on the advice of his gossip Loge (the Mercury of Nordic mythology) comes to the cave of Alberich, and defies him to change himself into a toad; the fool