“‘Women must be instructed,’ said Siegfried the good knight,
’To leave off idle talking and rule their tongues aright. 
Keep thy fair wife in order.  I’ll do by mine the same. 
Such overweening folly puts me indeed to shame.’”

          
                                                          Nibelungenlied (Lettsom’s tr.).

To carry out this good resolution he led Kriemhild home, where, sooth to say, he beat her black and blue,—­an heroic measure which Gunther did not dare to imitate.

Brunhild, smarting from the public insult received, continued to weep aloud and complain, until Hagen, inquiring the cause of her extravagant grief, and receiving a highly colored version of the affair, declared that he would see that she was duly avenged.

“He ask’d her what had happen’d—­wherefore he saw her weep;
She told him all the story; he vow’d to her full deep
That reap should Kriemhild’s husband as he had dar’d to sow,
Or that himself thereafter content should never know.”

          
                                                                  Nibelungenlied (Lettsom’s tr.).

To keep this promise, Hagen next tried to stir up the anger of Gunther, Gernot, and Ortwine, and to prevail upon them to murder Siegfried; but Giselher reproved him for these base designs, and openly took Siegfried’s part, declaring: 

“’Sure ‘tis but a trifle to stir an angry wife.’”
Nibelungenlied (Lettsom’s tr.).

But although he succeeded in quelling the attempt for the time being, he was no match for the artful Hagen, who continually reminded Gunther of the insult his wife had received, setting it in the worst possible light, and finally so worked upon the king’s feelings that he consented to a treacherous assault.

[Sidenote:  Hagen’s treachery.] Under pretext that his former enemy, Ludeger, was about to attack him again, Gunther asked Siegfried’s assistance, and began to prepare as if for war.  When Kriemhild heard that her beloved husband was about to rush into danger she was greatly troubled.  Hagen artfully pretended to share her alarm, and so won her confidence that she revealed to him that Siegfried was invulnerable except in one spot, between his shoulders, where a lime leaf had rested and the dragon’s blood had not touched him.

“’So now I’ll tell the secret, dear friend, alone to thee
(For thou, I doubt not, cousin, wilt keep thy faith with me),
Where sword may pierce my darling, and death sit on the thrust. 
See, in thy truth and honor how full, how firm, my trust!

“’As from the dragon’s death-wounds gush’d out the crimson gore,
With the smoking torrent the warrior wash’d him o’er,
A leaf then ’twixt his shoulders fell from the linden bough. 
There only steel can harm him; for that I tremble now.’”
Nibelungenlied (Lettsom’s
tr.).