In the mine, which resounds with the clinking anvils of the
dwarfs toiling miserably to heap up treasure for their master,
Alberic has set his brother Mime--more familiarly, Mimmy--to make
him a helmet. Mimmy dimly sees that there is some magic in this
helmet, and tries to keep it; but Alberic wrests it from him, and
shows him, to his cost, that it is the veil of the invisible
whip, and that he who wears it can appear in what shape he will,
or disappear from view altogether. This helmet is a very common
article in our streets, where it generally takes the form of a
tall hat. It makes a man invisible as a shareholder, and changes
him into various shapes, such as a pious Christian, a subscriber
to hospitals, a benefactor of the poor, a model husband and
father, a shrewd, practical independent Englishman, and what not,
when he is really a pitiful parasite on the commonwealth,
consuming a great deal, and producing nothing, feeling nothing,
knowing nothing, believing nothing, and doing nothing except what
all the rest do, and that only because he is afraid not to do it,
or at least pretend to do it.

When Wotan and Loki arrive, Loki claims Alberic as an old
acquaintance. But the dwarf has no faith in these civil
strangers: Greed instinctively mistrusts Intellect, even in the
garb of Poetry and the company of Godhead, whilst envying the
brilliancy of the one and the dignity of the other. Alberic
breaks out at them with a terrible boast of the power now within
his grasp. He paints for them the world as it will be when his
dominion over it is complete, when the soft airs and green mosses
of its valleys shall be changed into smoke, slag, and filth; when
slavery, disease, and squalor, soothed by drunkenness and