is yet unknown, although the attendance was very large, the
audience being composed of people from all parts of the world.
Thus Wagner completed and rendered the series of operas, which
include plays 'for three days and a fore evening,' whence the
series is generally called a 'trilogy,' although it is really
composed of four whole operas.

Away down in the translucent depths of the Rhine, three beautiful
nymphs, Woglinde, Wellgunde, and Flosshilde, daughters of the
river-god, dart in and out among the jagged rocks. They have
been stationed there to guard the Rhinegold, the priceless
treasure of the deep, whence comes all the warm golden light
which illumines the utmost recesses of their dark and damp abode.

The nymphs suddenly pause in their merry game, for the wily
dwarf Alberich has emerged from one of the sombre chasms. He
is a Nibelung, a spirit of night and darkness, and slowly
gropes his way to one of the upper ridges, whence he can see
the graceful forms of the nymphs, watch their merry evolutions,
and overhear them repeatedly admonish each other to keep watch
over the gleaming treasure, which their father, the Rhinegod,
has intrusted to their keeping, warning them that just such a
dark and misshapen creature as the dwarf would try to wrest it
from their grasp:--

'Guard the gold!
Father said
That such was the foe.'

But all Alberich's senses are fascinated by the water-nymphs'