Page:The lay of the Nibelungs; (IA nibelungslay00hortrich).pdf/51

Rh politeness, requests of her sister never more to touch upon while she lives. The result may be foreseen: rejoinder follows reply, statement grows assertion; flint-sparks have fallen on the dry flax, which from smoke bursts into conflagration. The two queens part in hottest, though still clear-flaming anger. Not, however, to let their anger burn out, but only to feed it with more solid fuel. Chriemhild dresses her forty maids in finer than royal apparel; orders out all her husband’s Recken; and so attended, walks foremost to the Minster, where mass is to be said; thus practically asserting that she is not only a true queen, but the worthier of the two. Brunhild, quite outdone in splendour, and enraged beyond all patience, overtakes her at the door of the Minster, with peremptory order to stop: “before king’s wife shall vassal’s never go.”

Then said the fair Chriemhilde, Right angry was her mood:

“Couldest thou but hold thy peace, It were surely for thy good;

Thyself hast all polluted With shame thy fair bodye;

How can a Concubine By right a King’s wife be?”

“Whom hast thou Concubined?” The King’s wife quickly spake;

“That do I thee,” said Chriemhild; “For thy pride and vaunting’s sake;

Who first had thy fair body Was Siegfried my belaved Man;

My Brother it was not That thy maidhood from thee wan.”

In proof of which outrageous saying, she produces that Ring and Girdle; the innocent conquest of which, as we well know, had a far other origin. Brunhild burst into tears; “sadder day she never saw.” Nay, perhaps a new light now rose on her over much that had been dark in her late history; “she rued full sore that ever she was born.”

Here, then, is the black injury, which only blood will wash away. The evil fiend has begun his work; and the issue of it lies beyond man’s control. Siegfried may protest his innocence of that calumny, and chastise his indiscreet spouse for uttering it even in the heat of anger: the female heart is wounded beyond healing; the old springs of bitterness against this hero unite into