The Wagner Story Book | Page 8

it back to the nymphs; so they must suffer too.
"But it is not yet time for that, for now, as the fire burns up, the whole
picture grows brighter again. That is because the giants are bringing
back the Goddess of Love and Youth, to see if the treasure is ready for
them. The trees lift up their branches again and the happy sunlight
pours down through them; the flowers open their eyes to see it; the sky
is clear and bright, and the grass is again fresh; while the faces of the
gods, who run to meet their sister, look young and happy as before.
Only the castle is still hidden by the shining silver river mist. The
giants have come near. 'Is the ransom ready for us?' they cry.
"'There is your treasure.' says the Father of the Gods, 'take it and be
gone.'
"'We must see that it is enough first,' they answer; 'our treasure must be
as much as your goddess, so you must pile it up before her till she is
quite hidden by it; then we will take it, and you shall have her back.'
"They heap up the gold and the jewels before the goddess, higher and
higher, till everything is gone from the old pile to the new one. Then
one of the giants looks over it and still sees the gold of her hair above
the gold of the treasure. 'Give me that helmet that you carry,' he says to
the Fire God, 'to put on the top.' and he gives it. Now the other giant
peeps through a chink in the pile and sees one of her eyes. 'Quick,' he
cries to the Father of the Gods, 'give me that ring you wear to stop this
chink.'
"'No,' says the Father of the Gods, 'you shall not have that; it is the ring
that gives the power to rule the world, and I will keep it.'
"' Very well, then,' say the giants, 'we will have no more to do with you,
and we will take the goddess back with us.'
"All the gods stand terrified and pale. Will their great father let the
Goddess of Love be taken from them again, and must they all grow old
and die, that he may keep this ring? Everything grows dark again, as
our fire here drops down; only there is that pale blue flame that gives
no light, away at the back of the hearth. And now, right in the pale blue
flame, rises the form of a woman out of the ground. It is the Earth
Goddess, the wisest woman in the world, who knows all that ever was,
all that is, and all that ever shall be. She speaks to the Father of the

Gods and tells him to give the ring to the giants, for the curse that the
dwarf has laid upon it will surely destroy him who keeps it. Then she
sinks out of sight, and the Father of the Gods takes from his finger the
ring, and gives it.
"And even while the giants are stowing the treasure in a sack to carry it
away, they fall to quarrelling about how it shall be divided, and one of
them strikes the other a terrible blow with his club which lays him dead
upon the ground. Then he strides away with the treasure, leaving the
gods filled with horror at the first fatal work done by the curse of the
ring.
"Yet only for a moment; their grand new castle is ready for them now.
High up upon a rock stands the Thunder God. He swings his hammer
and the black clouds roll around him. The thunder mutters, and
lightning flames flash out from the dark vapors. The fire flickers and
blazes up again, the clouds part and melt away, and all is light at last. A
rainbow reaches across the river from shore to shore, and the gods
slowly walk across upon it toward their castle. Up from the river, far
below them, comes a sad cry of the nymphs, begging the gods to give
them back their gold. But the gods do not heed it. They rest upon the
rainbow, gazing only at their castle, as it stands before them, stately,
graceful, radiant, and rosy in the warm glow of the sunset."
"And did you really, really see it all in the fire?" the little girl asked,
after she had thought it all over for a few minutes. "It sounds just as if it
was a story you had read in a book."
"Well, perhaps I may have seen something, or heard something, or read
something of the kind somewhere," I replied, "but you know I told you
at first that you must think