property-enslaved mankind, transcribed in Latin law-books. Kaisers were still appointed, though directly after the downfall of the Wibelungen their rank had already been hawked to the highest bidder; no sooner were they chosen, than to work they set to 'acquire' a goodly family-seat 'by grace of God,' as one henceforth styled the forcible appropriation or nibbling-off of districts. Grown wiser, one gladly left the World- dominion to dear God, who behaved by far more leniently and humanely to the actually-reigning most selfish and depraved vulgarity of the Sons of the Holy Roman Empire than erewhile the old heathen Nibelung warriors, who for any act of meanness made no bones of packing off a man from court and holding.-
The 'poor Folk' sang, read, and printed in time, the Nibelungenlieder, its only keepsake from the Hoard belief in it never wavered; only, one knew it was no longer in the world,-for it had been sunk into an old God's-hill again, a cave like that whence Siegfried once had won it from the Nibelungen. The great Kaiser himself had brought it back to that hill, to save it up for better times. There in the Kyffhäuser he sits, the old 'Redbeard Friedrich'; all round him the treasures of the Nibelungen, by his side the sharp sword that one- time slew the dreaded Dragon.
