In the second scene of the Act there is one fine passage--Brünnhilda's long address--and the rest is manufactured with dexterity and quite uninspired. The body is brought in; Hagen wishes to take the Ring, and a thrill is sent through us as the dead man's arm rises threateningly. Günther interferes, and Hagen kills him; Brünnhilda comes on and sees clearly everything; Gutruna claims Siegfried as hers--"he never was yours; he is mine," Brünnhilda replies, and (by trick of true stage-craft) Gutruna is seen to kneel down by the side of her dead brother. She is absolutely alone--even Siegfried, dead, is taken from her, and she instinctively creeps to the only thing that is in any sense hers. Brünnhilda orders the funeral fire to be built; the body is put on it and consumed: Brünnhilda mounts Grani and scatters the ashes, and with them the Ring, into the river; the waters rise, and Hagen rushes after the Ring, to be drawn down; Wotan's power went when the spear was shattered, and now that the Ring is returned to the Rhine no other power controls Loge. He flares up, and we see Valhalla on high in flames. So ends the _Dusk of the Gods_ and the whole gigantic cycle. A noble race has come and gone, and the world is prepared to make a fresh start. I have discussed the music as we went along, and there is nothing more to add. CHAPTER XVIII 'PARSIFAL'; THE END; THE MAN I After Wagner had completed the _Ring_, a work which, in regard to its gigantic size and proportions, stands without a parallel in music, he was an exhausted and beaten man. Outwardly he was a highly prosperous musician--more successful from some points of view than Mendelssohn or Meyerbeer: at least he had, without means, achieved a greater triumph than they, starting with their fathers' thousands or millions, had dreamed of. No Mendelssohn, no Meyerbeer, no Rossini, would have dreamed of gaining a king, even the king of a minor bankrupt state, as his lackey--and his generous paymaster. After the first Bayreuth festival a Rossini would have retired as swiftly as such a person could with his percentage of the gross profits, leaving the guarantors to straighten the little matter of the deficit; Meyerbeer had too much of cold cunning in him to have gone on such an adventure at all; Mendelssohn would have paid up everything and shaken the dust of _his_ Bayreuth off his feet for ever and a six-days week longer. I take these three because they are three of the most successful financial composers the world has seen; minor prophets of their order might be added. That is what they would have done: made a little money they did not need and retired from a hard conflict. Wagner was more successful than they. He never accumulated the thousands of marks or ducats or francs that they did: he did not want them, but in proportion to his needs he accumulated more; he was richer than they were, as Diogenes in his tub was richer than Alexander. Wagner's tub,