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 to free the universe from the ancient servitude of of [sic] Gold and the Laws, and by that very fact belongs to the reign of Gold and the Laws, and must disappear with it, together with the gods who upheld it. He has no justification for existence in a universe in which will shine the spendour of an entirely new law; this Brünnhilde on her pyre announces will be the law of Love. That is what I make of this conclusion, what I seem to discern in the dust of the ruins of Valhalla.

The subject matter of these stories was borrowed by Wagner from the old Germanic-Scandinavian poem of the Nibelungen. One can understand the attraction it must have exercised, apart from all philosophic and symbolic aims, on a composer of operas the bent of whose mind led him in the direction of spectacular opera. For such is indeed the trend of Wagner's mind, at any rate such is one of the faculties that constituted his genius; he has a passionate taste for theatrical decoration and the composition of scenic effects; he adores their fascination, and he has a wonderful aptitude for their processes and artifices. Initiated early in all the mysteries of the boards by his step-father, Geyer, who was both an actor and a decorative painter, he was able to apply confidently his rare powers of imagination to scenic inventions: he would have made his fortune as a promoter of pantomimes if he had not been a great musician. Among the attractions which he found in the fable of the Nibelungen, not the least was the quality of the scenic effects to which it lent itself. The under-water Rhine caves, with the gambolling of the water sprites, the palace of the gods in the clouds, the cavern of the Nibelungen and the metamorphoses of Alberich,