found himself involved in calamity from which there was no apparent escape.  He himself could not expiate the wrong he had done, nor could he avert the impending doom, the “twilight” of the gods, which was slowly and surely approaching.  Only a free will, independent of the gods, and able to take upon itself the fault, could make reparation for the deed.  At last he yields to despair.  His will is broken, and instead of fearing the inevitable doom he courts it.  In this sore emergency the hero appears.  He belongs to an heroic race of men, the Volsungs.  The unnatural union of the twins, Siegmund and Sieglinde, born of this race, produces the real hero, Siegfried.  The parents pay the penalty of incest with their lives; but Siegfried remains, and Wotan watches his growth and magnificent development with eager interest.  Siegfried recovers the ring from the giants, to whom Wotan had given it, by slaying a dragon which guarded the fatal treasure.  Bruennhilde, the Valkyr, Wotan’s daughter, contrary to his instructions, had protected Siegmund in a quarrel which resulted in his death, and was condemned by the irate god to fall into a deep sleep upon a rock surrounded by flames, where she was to remain until a hero should appear bold enough to break through the wall of fire and awaken her.  Siegfried rescues her.  She wakens into the full consciousness of passionate love, and yields herself to the hero, who presents her with the ring, but not before it has worked its curse upon him, so that he, faithless even in his faithfulness, wounds her whom he deeply loves, and drives her from him.  Meanwhile Gunther, Gutrune, and their half-brother Hagen conspire to obtain the ring from Bruennhilde and to kill Siegfried.  Through the agency of a magic draught he is induced to desert her, after once more getting the ring.  He then marries Gutrune.  The curse soon reaches its consummation.  One day, while traversing his favorite forests on a hunting expedition, he is killed by Hagen, with Gunther’s connivance.  The two murderers then quarrel for the possession of the ring, and Gunther is slain.  Hagen attempts to wrest it from the dead hero’s finger, but shrinks back terrified as the hand is raised in warning.  Bruennhilde now appears, takes the ring, and proclaims herself his true wife.  She mounts her steed, and dashes into the funeral pyre of Siegfried after returning the ring to the Rhine-daughters.  This supreme act of immolation breaks forever the power of the gods, as is shown by the blazing Walhalla in the sky; but at the same time justice has been satisfied, reparation has been made for the original wrong, and the free will of man becomes established as a human principle.