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"To look well on thine apples," Loki said. "I am wondering if the apples I saw yesterday are really as shining as the apples that are in thy basket." "There are no apples in the world as shining as mine," said Iduna. "The apples I saw were more shining," said Loki. "Aye, and they smelled better, Iduna." Iduna was troubled at what Loki, whom she deemed so wise, told her.
His consort has cost him half his vision; his castle has cost him his affections; and the attempt to retain both has cost him his honor. On every side he is shackled and bound, dependent on the laws of Fricka and on the lies of Loki, forced to traffic with dwarfs for handicraft and with giants for strength, and to pay them both in false coin. After all, a god is a pitiful thing.
The Dwellers of Asgard, gathered together in the hall of Ægir, waited for Odin. Before Odin came Loki made the company merry by the tales that he told in mockery of Thor. Loki long since had his lips unloosed from the thong that the Dwarf Brock had sewn them with. And Thor had forgotten the wrong that he had done to Sif.
Loki looked round on the Dwellers in Asgard and he saw that their judgment was that he must kneel before the Dwarf. He knelt down with a frown upon his brow. "Draw your lips together, Loki," said Brock. Loki drew his lips together while his eyes flashed fire. With an awl that he took from his belt Brock pierced Loki's lips. He took out a thong and tightened them together.
But when the banquet was ended Odin, the Eldest of the Gods, turned toward this figure and said, "O Skyrmir, Giant King of Utgard, rise up now and tell Thor of all you practiced upon him when he and Loki came to your City." Then the stranger at the banquet stood up, and Thor and Loki saw he was the Giant King in whose halls they had had the contests.
At length some one whispered, "Let us kill him," and the wolf turned and showed his teeth at the speaker; for as he was the son of Loki, he could understand and speak the language of the gods. "That cannot be," said Odin. "Have we not sworn that the streets of our city shall never be stained with blood? Let us leave the matter until another time."
Freya turned to Loki and reproved him for speaking injurious words at a feast. "Freya," said Loki, "why were you not so mild when Odur was with you? Would it not have been well to have been wifely with your husband instead of breaking faith with him for the sake of a necklace that you craved of the Giant women?" Amazement fell on all at the bitterness that was in Loki's words and looks.
Loki, within the fish, vowed to himself that he would not return to his own shape; but the fish's body could not live long out of the water, and soon he found himself growing weak and faint. At length, therefore, he was obliged to assume his own form, and there he stood, handsome, but evil-looking, before the waiting gods.
And since, on this world-embracing scale, it was clear that Siegfried must come into conflict with many baser and stupider forces than those lofty ones of supernatural religion and political constitutionalism typified by Wotan and his wife Fricka, these minor antagonists had to be dramatized also in the persons of Alberic, Mime, Fafnir, Loki, and the rest.
They are one of the oldest survivals, and among the most primitive relics in the race. They are as old as Loki among the gods, as Lucifer among the Sons of the Morning, as the serpent in the Garden of Eden, as pain and dislocation in the web of human life.
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