Then, turning to the trembling Nibelung, he again asked for the sword, and Mime handed it to him. The young Volsung took it into his hands quickly, scorn on his handsome face and anger in his eyes. He was dressed in a wild forest costume of wolf-skins, and his yellow hair curled over his shoulders. He, indeed, made a great contrast to Mime, and one could not wonder that they did not get on well together. “What a toy!” he cried out. “Do you call this a sword?” and, striking it on the anvil, he broke the blade into a hundred slivers, and then burst into a rage with the smith, who had pretended to give him a sword fit for battle, and had shaped him so foolish a switch, as he called it. And finally, thoroughly out of breath, he flung himself upon the stone couch at one side, and not all Mime’s coaxings could appease his anger. He finally confessed that he did not know why he ever returned to the cave, because, he said frankly, he could not help detesting the Dwarf, and was much happier when away from him. And then he broke into a passionate description of the wood-life he loved so well; the mating of the birds in the spring-time, and the way they loved and helped each other; the care that the mother deer lavished upon her little ones; the tenderness among all the forest creatures that seemed so beautiful and mysterious to him. “I learned watching them,” said Siegfried, almost sorrowfully, “what love must be. Mime, where is she whom _I_ may call mother?” “Nonsense!” said Mime, and tried to draw Siegfried’s mind away from the dangerous topic; for he had never told him anything about his parents, always calling him his own son. And he feared the boy’s anger if he should ever know that he had been deceived. But, thoroughly aroused, the young Volsung fiercely demanded the names of his father and mother, declaring that he was far too unlike Mime to be his son. At last the Nibelung confessed the truth, and told him the story of his mother’s death, and of how she had left her child in his care. And, when the boy asked for proof, he slowly crept away, to return with the broken sword Nothung, the mending of which was so hard a riddle even to his sly brain. Wildly excited, Siegfried commanded him to work at it anew and do his best to weld the pieces; and, with a shout of delight and hope, he went merrily away into the woods, leaving Mime in saddest, deepest perplexity.