protection against them. Their purposes are quite honest; and
they have no doubt of the god's faith. There stands their part
of the contract fulfilled, stone on stone, port and pinnacle all
faithfully finished from Wotan's design by their mighty labor.
They have come undoubtingly for their agreed wage. Then there
happens what is to them an incredible, inconceivable thing. The
god begins to shuffle. There are no moments in life more tragic
than those in which the humble common man, the manual worker,
leaving with implicit trust all high affairs to his betters, and
reverencing them wholly as worthy of that trust, even to the
extent of accepting as his rightful function the saving of them
from all roughening and coarsening drudgeries, first discovers
that they are corrupt, greedy, unjust and treacherous. The shock
drives a ray of prophetic light into one giant's mind, and gives
him a momentary eloquence. In that moment he rises above his
stupid gianthood, and earnestly warns the Son of Light that all
his power and eminence of priesthood, godhood, and kingship must
stand or fall with the unbearable cold greatness of the
incorruptible law-giver. But Wotan, whose assumed character of
law-giver is altogether false to his real passionate nature,
despises the rebuke; and the giant's ray of insight is lost in
the murk of his virtuous indignation.

In the midst of the wrangle, Loki comes at last, excusing himself
for being late on the ground that he has been detained by a
matter of importance which he has promised to lay before Wotan.
When pressed to give his mind to the business immediately in
hand, and to extricate Wotan from his dilemma, he has nothing to
say except that the giants are evidently altogether in the right.
The castle has been duly built: he has tried every stone of it,