When Wotan and Loki arrive, Loki claims Alberic as an old acquaintance.But the dwarf has no faith in these civil strangers: Greed instinctively mistrusts Intellect, even in the garb of Poetry and the company of Godhead, whilst envying the brilliancy of the one and the dignity of the other.Alberic breaks out at them with a terrible boast of the power now within his grasp.He paints for them the world as it will be when his dominion over it is complete, when the soft airs and green mosses of its valleys shall be changed into smoke, slag, and filth; when slavery, disease, and squalor, soothed by drunkenness and mastered by the policeman's baton, shall become the foundation of society; and when nothing shall escape ruin except such pretty places and pretty women as he may like to buy for the slaking of his own lusts.In that kingdom of evil he sees that there will be no power but his own.These gods, with their moralities and legalities and intellectual subtlety, will go under and be starved out of existence.He bids Wotan and Loki beware of it;and his "Hab' Acht!" is hoarse, horrible, and sinister.Wotan is revolted to the very depths of his being: he cannot stifle the execration that bursts from him.But Loki is unaffected: he has no moral passion: indignation is as absurd to him as enthusiasm.
He finds it exquisitely amusing--having a touch of the comic spirit in him--that the dwarf, in stirring up the moral fervor of Wotan, has removed his last moral scruple about becoming a thief.
Wotan will now rob the dwarf without remorse; for is it not positively his highest duty to take this power out of such evil hands and use it himself in the interests of Godhead? On the loftiest moral grounds, he lets Loki do his worst.
A little cunningly disguised flattery makes short work of Alberic.Loki pretends to be afraid of him; and he swallows that bait unhesitatingly.But how, enquires Loki, is he to guard against the hatred of his million slaves? Will they not steal from him, whilst he sleeps, the magic ring, the symbol of his power, which he has forged from the gold of the Rhine? "You think yourself very clever," sneers Alberic, and then begins to boast of the enchantments of the magic helmet.Loki refuses to believe in such marvels without witnessing them.Alberic, only too glad to show off his powers, puts on the helmet and transforms himself into a monstrous serpent.Loki gratifies him by pretending to be frightened out of his wits, but ventures to remark that it would be better still if the helmet could transform its owner into some tiny creature that could hide and spy in the smallest cranny.
Alberic promptly transforms himself into a toad.In an instant Wotan's foot is on him; Loki tears away the helmet; they pinion him, and drag him away a prisoner up through the earth to the meadow by the castle.
Fourth SceneThere, to pay for his freedom, he has to summon his slaves from the depths to place all the treasure they have heaped up for him at the feet of Wotan.Then he demands his liberty; but Wotan must have the ring as well.And here the dwarf, like the giant before him, feels the very foundations of the world shake beneath him at the discovery of his own base cupidity in a higher power.That evil should, in its loveless desperation, create malign powers which Godhead could not create, seems but natural justice to him.
But that Godhead should steal those malign powers from evil, and wield them itself, is a monstrous perversion; and his appeal to Wotan to forego it is almost terrible in its conviction of wrong.
It is of no avail.Wotan falls back again on virtuous indignation.He reminds Alberic that he stole the gold from the Rhine maidens, and takes the attitude of the just judge compelling a restitution of stolen goods.Alberic knowing perfectly well that the judge is taking the goods to put them m his own pocket, has the ring torn from his finger, and is once more as poor as he was when he came slipping and stumbling among the slimy rocks in the bed of the Rhine.
This is the way of the world.In older times, when the Christian laborer was drained dry by the knightly spendthrift, and the spendthrift was drained by the Jewish usurer, Church and State, religion and law, seized on the Jew and drained him as a Christian duty.When the forces of lovelessness and greed had built up our own sordid capitalist systems, driven by invisible proprietorship, robbing the poor, defacing the earth, and forcing themselves as a universal curse even on the generous and humane, then religion and law and intellect, which would never themselves have discovered such systems, their natural bent being towards welfare, economy, and life instead of towards corruption, waste, and death, nevertheless did not scruple to seize by fraud and force these powers of evil on presence of using them for good.
And it inevitably happens that when the Church, the Law, and all the Talents have made common cause to rob the people, the Church is far more vitally harmed by that unfaithfulness to itself than its more mechanical confederates; so that finally they turn on their discredited ally and rob the Church, with the cheerful co-operation of Loki, as in France and Italy for instance.
