第18章 THE VALKYRIES(5)

Now here were Mimmy's opportunity, had he only the wit to ask what he wants to know, instead of pretending to know everything already.It is above all things needful to him at this moment to find out how that sword can be mended; and there has just dropped in upon him in his need the one person who can tell him.In such circumstances a wise man would hasten to show to his visitor his three deepest ignorances, and ask him to dispel them.The dwarf, being a crafty fool, desiring only to detect ignorance in his guest, asks him for information on the three points on which he is proudest of being thoroughly well instructed himself.His three questions are, Who dwell under the earth? Who dwell on the earth? and Who dwell in the cloudy heights above? The Wanderer, 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 forge fire.A lively objection to being destroyed or maimed does not make a man a coward: on the contrary, it is the beginning of a brave man's wisdom.But in Mimmy, fear is not the effect of danger: it is natural quality of him which no security can allay.

He is like many a poor newspaper editor, who dares not print the truth, however simple, even when it is obvious to himself and all his readers.Not that anything unpleasant would happen to him if he did--not, indeed that he could fail to become a distinguished and influential leader of opinion by fearlessly pursuing such a course, but solely because he lives in a world of imaginary terrors, rooted in a modest and gentlemanly mistrust of his own strength and worth, and consequently of the value of his opinion.

Just so is Mimmy afraid of anything that can do him any good, especially of the light and the fresh air.He is also convinced that anybody who is not sufficiently steeped in fear to be constantly on his guard, must perish immediately on his first sally into the world.To preserve Siegfried for the enterprise to which he has destined him he makes a grotesque attempt to teach him fear.He appeals to his experience of the terrors of the forest, of its dark places, of its threatening noises its stealthy ambushes, its sinister flickering lights its heart-tightening ecstasies of dread.

All this has no other effect than to fill Siegfried with wonder and curiosity; for the forest is a place of delight for him.He is as eager to experience Mimmy's terrors as a schoolboy to feel what an electric shock is like.Then Mimmy has the happy idea of describing Fafnir to him as a likely person to give him an exemplary fright.Siegfried jumps at the idea, and, since Mimmy cannot mend the sword for him, proposes to set to work then and there to mend it for himself.Mimmy shakes his head, and bids him see now how his youthful laziness and frowardness have found him out--how he would not learn the smith's craft from Professor Mimmy, and therefore does not know how even to begin mending the sword.Siegfried Bakoonin's retort is simple and crushing.He points out that the net result of Mimmy's academic skill is that he can neither make a decent sword himself nor even set one to rights when it is damaged.Reckless of the remonstrances of the scandalized professor, he seizes a file, and in a few moments utterly destroys the fragments of the sword by rasping them into a heap of steel filings.Then he puts the filings into a crucible; buries it in the coals; and sets to at the bellows with the shouting exultation of the anarchist who destroys only to clear the ground for creation.When the steel is melted he runs it into a mould; and lo! a sword-blade in the rough.Mimmy, amazed at the success of this violation of all the rules of his craft, hails Siegfried as the mightiest of smiths, professing himself barely worthy to be his cook and scullion; and forthwith proceeds to poison some soup for him so that he may murder him safely when Fafnir is slain.Meanwhile Siegfned forges and tempers and hammers and rivets, uproariously singing the while as nonsensically as the Rhine maidens themselves.Finally he assails the anvil on which Mimmy's swords have been shattered, and cleaves it with a mighty stroke of the newly forged Nothung.