London. He comes now with a fruitful impulse in him, in search
of what he lacks in himself, beauty, lightness of heart,
imagination, music. The Rhine maidens, representing all these to
him, fill him with hope and longing; and he never considers that
he has nothing to offer that they could possibly desire, being
by natural limitation incapable of seeing anything from anyone
else's point of view. With perfect simplicity, he offers himself
as a sweetheart to them. But they are thoughtless, elemental,
only half real things, much like modern young ladies. That the
poor dwarf is repulsive to their sense of physical beauty and
their romantic conception of heroism, that he is ugly and
awkward, greedy and ridiculous, disposes for them of his claim to
live and love. They mock him atrociously, pretending to fall in
love with him at first sight, and then slipping away and making
game of him, heaping ridicule and disgust on the poor wretch
until he is beside himself with mortification and rage. They
forget him when the water begins to glitter in the sun, and the
gold to reflect its glory. They break into ecstatic worship of
their treasure; and though they know the parable of Klondyke
quite well, they have no fear that the gold will be wrenched away
by the dwarf, since it will yield to no one who has not forsworn
love for it, and it is in pursuit of love that he has come to
them. They forget that they have poisoned that desire in him by
their mockery and denial of it, and that he now knows that life
will give him nothing that he cannot wrest from it by the
Plutonic power. It is just as if some poor, rough, vulgar, coarse
fellow were to offer to take his part in aristocratic society,
and be snubbed into the knowledge that only as a millionaire
could he ever hope to bring that society to his feet and buy
himself a beautiful and refined wife. His choice is forced on