"She sank down on the ground, no word more did she say; The lovely, joyless lady before them prostrate lay. Kriemhild's anguish was terrible to view, So loud her cries and wailing that the room echoed through." The body of the divine hero is laid on a bier in the cathedral. Then Kriemhilde challenges the king and Hagen to approach the shrine containing Siegfried's corpse and take the test that will decide their guilt or innocence. The ancient ordeal reveals the murderer, for at Hagen's approach the wound begins to bleed anew. In Kriemhilde's soul, that heretofore had been so filled with unspeakable love for her incomparable hero that other passions found no place, there arises now an all-destroying hatred and lust of revenge. The expression of this pervades the second part of the _Nibelungenlied_, and reaches its climax in an orgy of blood, in a cataclysm that overwhelms alike all the participants in the murder, her brothers and herself. Kriemhilde secludes herself at Worms, and mourns her dead for thirteen long years. During all this weary time no single word is addressed by her to Gunther her blood-stained brother. The silence becomes intolerable; and to reconcile her and to divert her thoughts, the kings send for the Nibelung treasure of red gold and precious jewels which lies under dwarf Alberich's guard in the land of the Nibelungs. During four days and nights twelve heavy wagons haul the shining treasure from the hollow of the mountain to the waiting ship. A truce is patched up between the widow and the brothers, but she hates Hagen with a deep and silent hate. Her only consolation lies in chanty toward the poor. Hagen fears the effect of her liberality. He takes the treasure away from her and thus adds further to her debt of hate. Upon Gernot's advice, Hagen sinks the Nibelung hoard in the Rhine, at a place between Worms and Lorsch, and there it rests, according to popular belief, to this very day. Those who knew where it rested swore solemnly never to betray its hiding place, and not one of those who knew survived Kriemhilde's hate. Nemesis now passes from Siegfried the Nibelung to the Burgundian Nibelungs. The Nibelungs' distress begins with the second part of the national epic.