Many a stone full precious gleam'd from Arabian gold; That the women were not idle, scarcely need be told. Within seven weeks, now ready was the vesture bright, Ready too the weapons of each death-daring knight." With the arrival of the kingly travellers, and their reception at Iceland, we cannot afford to detain ourselves. Suffice it to say, that, by the aid of the secret invisible cloak (_Tarnkappe_) of Siegfried, and his good sword Balmung, Gunther is greeted by the vanquished Brunhild as her legitimate lord and master; and sails back with him to Worms, where she is most hospitably and magnificently received by her mother-in-law, dame Uta, and her now sister, the lovely Kriemhild. A double marriage then takes place; that of King Gunther with Brunhild, and that of Siegfried with Kriemhild; and the festivities which then took place furnish the poet with another opportunity for exercising his descriptive powers, and displaying the sunny joyousness of his social nature. Herein, as in many other points, he is quite Homeric; a certain magnificence and amplitude in the common acts of eating and drinking being as essential to his idea of poetry as the luxuriant energy of more lofty functions. But in the midst of this connubial hilarity, the black spot of destiny begins perceptibly to enlarge into a threatening cloud; and the stately Brunhild begins to show herself as possessed by that pride which the wise man tells us was not made for man, and which, wherever it is harboured, is not long of banishing love, confidence, peace, and happiness from palace as from cabin. The haughty spouse of Gunther looks with an evil eye at Siegfried, whom she had known only in his assumed character as vassal of her husband, judging it an affront that her sister-in-law should be given away to a mere vassal. The respect with which the hero of Netherland is treated by her husband, and the whole court, she cannot and will not understand. Either he is a vassal, and then her pride is justly offended at the unequal match; or he is not, and then Gunther had deceived her with regard to the true character of his companion--and there must be some mystery beneath this, which, as a true daughter of Eve, she can have no rest till she unveils. Possessed by these feelings, she takes a course worthy of the masculine character for which she had early been so notable. On the marriage-night she resumes her old virgin obstinacy, and will not be tamed:-- "'Sir knight,' said she, 'it suits not--you'd better leave me free From all your present purpose--it must and shall not be. A maid still will I keep me--(think well the matter o'er) Till I am told that story.' This fretted Gunther sore." Alas, poor Gunther! So has it ever fared with men who marry women with beards. The embrace-less bride took a cord, which she wove strong and tough about her wrist, and with that