helmet must go on the heap to shut it out. Even then Fafnir's
brother, Fasolt, can catch a beam from her eye through a chink,
and is rendered incapable thereby of forswearing her. There is
nothing to stop that chink but the ring; and Wotan is as greedily
bent on keeping that as Alberic himself was; nor can the other
gods persuade him that Freia is worth it, since for the highest
god, love is not the highest good, but only the universal delight
that bribes all living things to travail with renewed life. Life
itself, with its accomplished marvels and its infinite
potentialities, is the only force that Godhead can worship. Wotan
does not yield until he is reached by the voice of the fruitful
earth that before he or the dwarfs or the giants or the Law or
the Lie or any of these things were, had the seed of them all in
her bosom, and the seed perhaps of something higher even than
himself, that shall one day supersede him and cut the tangles and
alliances and compromises that already have cost him one of his
eyes. When Erda, the First Mother of life, rises from her
sleeping-place in the heart of the earth, and warns him to yield
the ring, he obeys her; the ring is added to the heap of gold;
and all sense of Freia is cut off from the giants.

But now what Law is left to these two poor stupid laborers
whereby one shall yield to the other any of the treasure for
which they have each paid the whole price in surrendering Freia?
They look by mere habit to the god to judge for them; but he,
with his heart stirring towards higher forces than himself, turns
with disgust from these lower forces. They settle it as two
wolves might; and Fafnir batters his brother dead with his staff.
It is a horrible thing to see and hear, to anyone who knows how
much blood has been shed in the world in just that way by its