With his failing breath, in a tone strangely void of resentment, the dragon questions his slip of an adversary, so unexpectedly victorious: "Who are you, intrepid boy, that have pierced my heart? Who incited the child to the murderous deed? Your brain never conceived that which you have done...." A motif we have come to know well punctuates the dying speech of this still another victim of the curse on the Ring. "I do not know much, as yet," Siegfried replies; "I do not know even who I am. But it was yourself roused my temper to fight with you." The last of the giants, his hollow voice growing fainter, tells the "clear-eyed boy," the "rosy hero," who it is he has slain, and warns him of the treachery surrounding the owner of the Hort. "Tell me further from whom I am descended," speaks Siegfried; "wise, of a truth, do you appear, wild one, in dying. Guess it from my name. Siegfried I am called!" But the Worm sighing, "Siegfried!..." gives up the breath.
After a moment's contemplation of the mountainous dead, Siegfried resolutely drags from his breast the sword which he had driven in up to the hilt. A drop of the dragon's blood spurts against his hand. With the exclamation: "The blood burns like fire!" he lifts his finger to his mouth. At once his attention is arrested by the voices of the birds. With increasing interest he harkens: It seems to him almost as if the birds were speaking to him; a distinct impression he receives of words. "Is it the effect of tasting the blood?" he wonders. "That curious little bird there, hark, what is he saying to me?" From the tree-top come clear words on a bird's warble: "Hei, to Siegfried belongs now the Nibelung's treasure! Oh, might he find the Hort in the cave! If he should win the Tarnhelm it would serve him for delightful adventures; but if he should find the Ring it would make him sovereign of the world!" Siegfried has listened with bated breath. "Thanks, dear little bird, for your advice. Gladly will I do as you bid!" He enters the cave. As he disappears, Mime crawls near to convince himself ocularly of Fafner's death. At the same moment, Alberich slips from his hiding-place and throws himself across Mime's path, to bar his way to the treasure. A bitter quarrel at once springs up between the brothers; Alberich claims the treasure because it is rightly his, Mime because he reared the youth who has recovered it from the dragon. Mime, whom Alberich's violence cows still as in the old days, offers to share, if he may have the Tarnhelm--a sly proposition,--he will renounce the Ring; but this Alberich hears with furious scorn, and the wrangle is at its height when Siegfried reappears at the cave's mouth. In his hands are Tarnhelm and Ring. Returning into sight after the angry cat-fight between the ill-conditioned pair, he appears more than ever large, serene, fair, noble. Mime and Alberich betake themselves quickly back to their lurking-places. Siegfried stands considering his odd-looking acquisitions: "Of what use you may be to me I know not; but I took you from the heaped gold of the treasure because a good adviser bade me. As ornaments you shall serve, bearing witness to this day; these baubles shall remind me that in combat I slew Fafner, but failed still to learn fear!" He places the ring on his finger and the Tarnhelm at his belt. In the silence that falls, he listens again for the voice of the bird. It suddenly drops from the tree-top: "Hei! Siegfried possesses the Tarnhelm and Ring! Oh, let him not trust Mime the false! If Siegfried should listen closely to the wretch's hypocritical words, he would penetrate the true meaning of Mime's heart; such is the virtue of the taste of dragon's blood!" No sooner has Siegfried heard, than he sees Mime approaching. He waits for him, leaning on his sword, quietly watchful. The little man contorts body and face into postures and expressions as humbly flattering and cajoling as he can; at every few steps he scrapes and curtseys. "Welcome, Siegfried! Tell me, you soul of courage, have you learned fear?" "Not yet have I found the teacher!" "But the Serpent-Worm which you slew, a fearsome fellow, was he not?" "Grim and malignant though he were, his death verily grieves me, since miscreants of deeper dye still live at large. The one who bade me murder him, I hate more than the dragon!" Mime to all appearance takes these words as if they carried no offence. What he thinks he is saying in reply we know not; but this is what, spoken in a voice of tenderest affection, Siegfried hears: "Gently now! Not much longer shall you see me. I shall soon close your eyes for their eternal sleep. That which I needed you for you have accomplished; all I wish, now, is to wrest from you the treasure.