Note (return) — Chapter XIX · 159

The warning given by the dying queen was, like most such warnings, unheeded. After three years of widowerhood, Attila sent one of his nephews into Nibelungen-land 173 to ask for the hand of Chriemhild, 174 daughter of Aldrian, loveliest and wisest of the women of her time; but maddened by secret grief for the loss of her first husband, Siegfried, 175 who had been slain by her brothers, Hagen 176 and King Gunther. The suit prospered; with strange blindness of heart, King Gunther gave his consent to the union of the sister who was his deadliest enemy with the mightiest king in Europe. For seven years Chriemhild waited for her revenge; then came that invitation to the Nibelungs to visit the court of Attila, which, in the infatuation of their souls, King Gunther and his brethren accepted, taking with them a chosen band of a thousand warriors. The scheme of vengeance prepared by Chriemhild, the quarrel which she provoked at the banquet, the terrible slaughter suffered and inflicted by the Nibelungs in the palace garden, their desperate rush into the palace-hall, the stand made therein by their ever-dwindling band on the pavement which was slippery with the gore of heroes--all this has been sung by a hundred minstrels, and need not here be repeated. We have only to do with the share Theodoric and his friends took in the fatal combat. Long the Amalungs stood utterly aloof from the fray, grieving sorely that so many of their friends on both sides were falling by one another's hands. For to the Nibelungs, as well as to Attila and the Huns, were they bound by the ties of guest-friendship, and in happier days Theodoric had ridden with Gunther and with Hagen, to test the mettle of their knights against the chivalry of Britain. So Theodoric and his men stood on the battlement of his palace, which looked down on the garden of Attila, and watched from afar the ghastly conflict. But at length they saw the good Margrave Rudiger, the ally of the Amals on so many a hard-fought battle-field, fall by the hand of his own daughter's husband, the young prince, Giselher; and then could Theodoric bear it no longer, but cried, saying: "Now is my best friend, Margrave Rudiger, dead. Take your weapons, comrades, and let us avenge his fall". He descended into the street. He forced his way into the palace-hall. Terrible was the clang of the strong sword Ecke-sax on the helmets of the Nibelungs. Many of them fell before him, but alas! many of his faithful Amals fell there also, far from their home. At length, in all that stately palace-hall, there remained but four men still able to deal blows, and these were Theodoric and Master Hildebrand of the Amalungs, Hagen and Giselher of their foes. And Hagen stood up to fight with Theodoric, and Giselher with Hildebrand. Then, as King Attila came from his tower to watch the combat, Hagen shouted to him: "It were a knightly deed to let young Giselher go unhurt, for he is innocent of the death of Siegfried the Swift". "Yea, truly", said Giselher; "Chriemhild, my sister, knows that I was a little child of five years old in my mother's bed when her husband was killed. I am innocent of this blood-feud, yet care I not to live now that my brethren are slain". Therewith he closed in fight with Master Hildebrand, and soon received his death-wound from the old hero.