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When Freya again reached her own country, the sun grew brighter, the air grew sweeter, and the glow of youth came back to the cheeks of Wotan and his family. "Here, Fafner, is your gold!" great Wotan cried. "I am sorry to give Freya up," said Fafner. "Pile up the gold between her and me. You may keep her if there is gold enough to hide her completely from my sight.
But the Spirit is there, the right Spirit. It is a little flame it will be very easily quenched and nothing can kill it so easily as success guard it, my son, guard it." Peter felt as Siegfried must have felt when confronted by Wotan. His poor little book was dwindling now before his eyes. He was conscious of a great despair. How useless of him to attempt so impossible a task....
All such sweet littlenesses must be left to the humble stupid giants to make their toil sweet to them; and the god must, after all, pay for Olympian power the same price the dwarf has paid for Plutonic power. Wotan has forgotten this in his dreams of greatness. Not so Fricka.
She has to be punished the laws that bind Wotan are inexorable and he has to put away love; in order to rule, love must have no place in his thoughts nor influence his actions. Brunnhilde is put to sleep, and a hedge of fire set blazing round her. There she must sleep until a hero arrives who has no fear of Wotan or his spear, and will pass through the fire and take her for bride.
Siegmund rushes to the top of one of the cloudy summits, and the clash of their arms resounds in the mists. A sudden gleam of light shows Brünnhilde hovering over Siegmund, and protecting him with her shield. As he prepares himself to deal a deadly thrust at Hunding, the angry Wotan appears in a storm-cloud and interposes his spear. Siegmund's sword is shivered to pieces.
A combat between them and the giants is imminent, when Wotan parts the antagonists with his spear, "Nothing by violence!" and he adds, what it might be thought he had lost sight of, "My spear is the protector of bargains!" And then finally, finally, comes in sight Loge. Wotan lets out his breath in relief: "Loge at last!"
Wotan knows that life without love is no life, and he is compelled to part from love by the very bargain which enables him to rule. Rather than live such a life, he deliberately, solemnly wills his own death; and a great part of "Siegfried" and the whole of "The Dusk of the Gods" are devoted to showing how his death, and the death of all the gods, comes about through Wotan's first act.
Siegmund raises his sword for a deathblow to Hunding, when a fiery beam drops through the storm-cloud; in the red glow of it is distinguished the form of Wotan at Hunding's side, holding his spear between the combatants. His voice is heard, terrible: "Back from the spear! To pieces, the sword!" Nothung snaps against the spear, and, run through the body by his adversary, Siegmund falls.
I shall always think of the Valley of the Tombs as a place of terror and splendour, meant to be hidden from mortals by the spells of Thoth, who circled the rock-houses of the dead with a zone of fire, as Wotan hid Brunhilda, and decreed that they should be lost forever in the blazing desert.
"Who disturbs my sleep?" comes a hollow roar from the cave. The Fafner-motif is the old motif of the giants, slightly altered so that instead of the ponderous tread of the brothers it suggests the muffled ponderous beat of a gigantic sinister heart. Wotan and Alberich explain to the dragon his danger and indicate what may buy him safety.
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