in reply, tells him of the dwarfs and of Alberic; of the earth,
and the giants Fasolt and Fafnir; of the gods and of Wotan:
himself, as Mimmy now recognizes with awe.

Next, it is Mimmy's turn to face three questions. What is that
race, dearest to Wotan, against which Wotan has nevertheless done
his worst? Mimmy can answer that: he knows the Volsungs, the race
of heroes born of Wotan's infidelities to Fricka, and can tell
the Wanderer the whole story of the twins and their son
Siegfried. Wotan compliments him on his knowledge, and asks
further with what sword Siegfried will slay Fafnir? Mimmy can
answer that too: he has the whole history of the sword at his
fingers' ends. Wotan hails him as the knowingest of the knowing,
and then hurls at him the question he should himself have asked:
Who will mend the sword? Mimmy, his head forfeited, confesses
with loud lamentations that he cannot answer. The Wanderer reads
him an appropriate little lecture on the folly of being too
clever to ask what he wants to know, and informs him that a smith
to whom fear is unknown will mend Nothung. To this smith he
leaves the forfeited head of his host, and wanders off into the
forest. Then Mimmy's nerves give way completely. He shakes like a
man in delirium tremens, and has a horrible nightmare, in the
supreme convulsion of which Siegfried, returning from the forest,
presently finds him.

A curious and amusing conversation follows. Siegfried himself
does not know fear, and is impatient to acquire it as an
accomplishment. Mimmy is all fear: the world for him is a
phantasmagoria of terrors. It is not that he is afraid of being
eaten by bears in the forest, or of burning his fingers in the