This is the way of the world. In older times, when the Christian
laborer was drained dry by the knightly spendthrift, and the
spendthrift was drained by the Jewish usurer, Church and State,
religion and law, seized on the Jew and drained him as a
Christian duty. When the forces of lovelessness and greed had
built up our own sordid capitalist systems, driven by invisible
proprietorship, robbing the poor, defacing the earth, and forcing
themselves as a universal curse even on the generous and humane,
then religion and law and intellect, which would never themselves
have discovered such systems, their natural bent being towards
welfare, economy, and life instead of towards corruption, waste,
and death, nevertheless did not scruple to seize by fraud and
force these powers of evil on presence of using them for good.
And it inevitably happens that when the Church, the Law, and all
the Talents have made common cause to rob the people, the Church
is far more vitally harmed by that unfaithfulness to itself than
its more mechanical confederates; so that finally they turn on
their discredited ally and rob the Church, with the cheerful
co-operation of Loki, as in France and Italy for instance.

The twin giants come back with their hostage, in whose presence
Godhead blooms again. The gold is ready for them; but now that
the moment has come for parting with Freia the gold
does not seem so tempting; and they are sorely loth to let her
go. Not unless there is gold enough to utterly hide her from
them--not until the heap has grown so that they can see nothing
but gold--until money has come between them and every human
feeling, will they part with her. There is not gold enough to
accomplish this: however cunningly Loki spreads it, the glint of
Freia's hair is still visible to Giant Fafnir, and the magic