brutalized toilers, honest fellows enough until their betters
betrayed them. Fafnir goes off with his booty. It is quite
useless to him. He has neither the cunning nor the ambition to
establish the Plutonic empire with it. Merely to prevent others
from getting it is the only purpose it brings him. He piles it in
a cave; transforms himself into a dragon by the helmet; and
devotes his life to guarding it, as much a slave to it as a
jailor is to his prisoner. He had much better have thrown it all
back into the Rhine and transformed himself into the
shortest-lived animal that enjoys at least a brief run in the
sunshine. His case, however, is far too common to be surprising.
The world is overstocked with persons who sacrifice all their
affections, and madly trample and batter down their fellows to
obtain riches of which, when they get them, they are unable to
make the smallest use, and to which they become the most
miserable slaves.

The gods soon forget Fafnir in their rejoicing over Freia.
Donner, the Thunder god, springs to a rocky summit and calls the
clouds as a shepherd calls his flocks. They come at his summons;
and he and the castle are hidden by their black legions. Froh,
the Rainbow god, hastens to his side. At the stroke of Donner's
hammer the black murk is riven in all directions by darting
ribbons of lightning; and as the air clears, the castle is seen in
its fullest splendor, accessible now by the rainbow bridge which
Froh has cast across the ravine. In the glory of this moment
Wotan has a great thought. With all his aspirations to establish
a reign of noble thought, of righteousness, order, and justice,
he has found that day that there is no race yet in the world that
quite spontaneously, naturally, and unconsciously realizes his