the brutal violation of her modesty is a less forgivable crime than the taking of her life would be.  The wearing of a veil may be a foolish custom; but use and want hallow even the trivial.  Half of our law is based upon precedent, and we are protected at every turn by unwritten law, which is nothing else than precedent.  Mankind needs to repose in the security of this protection.  Woe to him, said Hebbel, who disturbs the sleep of the world!  Changes must come, but rarely in the way of revolution.

The tragedy of the Nibelungen Hebbel approached somewhat differently from the other subjects that he treated.  He had his own conception of the tragic content of the matter, of course; but he found that the author of the Nibelungenlied, a dramatist from head to foot, has so clearly presented the tragic aspects of the story that the modern dramatist need only make himself the interpreter of the medieval epic poet.  Herewith Hebbel’s trilogy is at once distinguished from such other modern treatments of the subject as Geibel’s Brunhild or Wagner’s Nibelungen Ring.  Geibel eliminated everything supernatural; Wagner made use chiefly of the Old Norse versions of the story; Hebbel, on the contrary, dramatized what he regarded as the significant content of the Middle High German poem, retaining its mythological, Christian, chivalrous, historical, and legendary elements.  The mythological elements of the epic are indeed indistinct survivals of earlier ages.  Hebbel leaned somewhat upon Norse myths in his reproduction of them, though it was part of his plan to preserve a certain indistinctness and mystery in these undramatic presuppositions.  Similarly, he made more of the element of Christianity than is made of it by the Nibelungenlied.  In both epic and drama the Burgundians are only formally Christian; the cardinal principles of heathen ethics, tribal loyalty and vengeance, are entirely unaffected by the Christian doctrine of forgiveness.  In the play, however, the transition from one system to the other is much more strongly emphasized than in the poem.  The heathen ethics lead to the mutual destruction of those who profess them, and out of the ruins of the old civilization a new world rises heralded by Theodoric of Verona, who accepts the sovereignty relinquished by Attila the Hun, “in His name who died on the cross.”

The downfall of two peoples follows in the train of personal calamity.  Siegfried, foreordained by the ancient gods to become the husband of Brunhild, neglects in the adventurous days of youth to woo her, and undertakes for the price of Kriemhild’s hand to secure her as a wife for Gunther.  Hidden in his cloak of invisibility, he twice overcomes Brunhild, thereby committing against her the same kind of outrage as Herod’s against Mariamne, and that of Gyges against Rhodope.  Through no direct fault of Siegfried’s the fraud is discovered; it is an offense to the queen, which insults the State.  Gunther the king will