God, if thy engines, pestilence, and famine, and floods, overwhelm the
just with the unjust? Who can stay the flame, which is kindled to
destroy the hornet's nest, from extending to the blessed harvest? Oh!
fie on the slaughter of women, and children, and the sick! How this
deed weighs me down! It has poisoned my fairest achievements! There he
stands, poor fool, abashed and disgraced in the sight of heaven; the boy
that presumed to wield Jove's thunder, and overthrew pigmies when he
should have crushed Titans. Go, go! 'tis not for thee, puny son of
clay, to wield the avenging sword of sovereign justice! Thou didst fail
at thy first essay. Here, then, I renounce the audacious scheme. I go
to hide myself in some deep cleft of the earth, where no daylight will
be witness of my shame. (He is about to fly.)

            Enter a ROBBER hurriedly.

ROBBER. Look out, captain! There is mischief in the wind! Whole
detachments of Bohemian cavalry are scouring the forests. That infernal
bailiff must have betrayed us.

              Enter more ROBBERS.

2D ROBBER. Captain! captain! they have tracked us! Some thousands of
them are forming a cordon round the middle forest.

            Enter more ROBBERS again.

3D ROBBER. Woe, woe, woe! we are all taken, hanged drawn, and
quartered. Thousands of hussars, dragoons, and chasseurs are mustering
on the heights, and guard all the passes.
                     [Exit CHARLES VON MOOR.]

     Enter SCHWEITZER, GRIMM, ROLLER, SCHWARZ, SCHUFTERLE,
        SPIEGELBERG, RAZMAN, and the whole troop.

SCHWEITZER. Ha! Have we routed them out of their feather-beds at last?
Come, be jolly, Roller! I have long wished to have a bout with those
knights of the bread-basket. Where is the captain? Is the whole troop
assembled? I hope we have powder enough?

RAZ. Powder, I believe you; but we are only eighty in all and therefore
scarcely one to twenty.

SCHWEITZER. So much the better! And though there were fifty against
my great toe-nail--fellows who have waited till we lit the straw under
their very seats. Brother, brother, there is nothing to fear. They
sell their lives for tenpence; and are we not fighting for our necks?
We will pour into them like a deluge, and fire volleys upon their heads
like crashes of thunder. But where the devil is the captain.

SPIEGEL. He forsakes us in this extremity. Is there no hope of escape?

SCHWEITZER. Escape?

SPIEGEL. Oh, that I had tarried in Jerusalem!

SCHWEITZER. I wish you were choked in a cesspool, you paltry coward!
With defenceless nuns you are a mighty man; but at sight of a pair of
fists a confirmed sneak! Now show your courage or you shall be sewn up
alive in an ass's hide and baited to death with dogs.

RAZ. The captain! the captain!

        Enter CHARLES (speaking slowly to himself).

CHARLES. I have allowed them to be hemmed in on every side. Now they
must fight with the energy of despair. (Aloud.) Now my boys! now for
it! We must fight like wounded boars, or we are utterly lost!

SCHWEITZER. Ha! I'll rip them open with my tusks, till their entrails
protrude by the yard! Lead on, captain! we will follow you into the
very jaws of death.

CHARLES. Charge all your arms! You've plenty of powder, I hope?

SCHWEITZER (with energy). Powder? ay, enough to blow the earth up to
the moon.

RAZ. Every one of us has five brace of pistols, ready loaded, and three
carbines to boot.

CHARLES. Good! good! Now some of you must climb up the trees, or
conceal yourselves in the thickets, and some fire upon them in ambush--

SCHWEITZER. That part will suit you, Spiegelberg.

CHARLES. The rest will follow me, and fall upon their flanks like
furies.

SCHWEITZER. There will I be!

CHARLES. At the same time let every man make his whistle ring through
the forest, and gallop about in every direction, so that our numbers may
appear the more formidable. And let all the dogs be unchained, and set
on upon their ranks, that they may be broken and dispersed and run in
the way of our fire. We three, Roller, Schweitzer, and myself, will
fight wherever the fray is hottest.

SCHWEITZER. Masterly! excellent! We will so bewilder them with balls
that they shall not know whence the salutes are coming. I have more
than once shot away a cherry from the mouth. Only let them come on
(SCHUFTERLE is pulling SCHWEITZER; the latter takes the captain aside,
and entreats him in a low voice.)

CHARLES. Silence!

SCHWEITZER. I entreat you--

CHARLES. Away! Let him have the benefit of his disgrace; it has saved
him. He shall not die on the same field with myself, my Schweitzer, and
my Roller. Let him change his apparel, and I will say he is a traveller
whom I have plundered. Make yourself easy, Schweitzer. Take my word
for it he will be hanged yet.

             Enter FATHER DOMINIC.

FATHER DOM. (to himself, starts). Is this the dragon's nest? With your
leave, sirs! I am a servant of the church; and yonder are seventeen
hundred men who guard every hair of my head.

SCHWEITZER. Bravo! bravo! Well spoken to keep his courage warm.

CHARLES. Silence, comrade! Will you tell us briefly, good father, what
is your errand here?

FATHER Dom. I am delegated by the high justices, on whose sentence
hangs life or death--ye thieves--ye incendiaries--ye villains--ye
venomous generation of vipers, crawling about in the dark, and stinging
in secret--ye refuse of humanity--brood of hell--food for ravens and
worms--colonists for the gallows and the wheel--

SCHWEITZER. Dog! a truce with your foul tongue! or ------
(He holds the butt-end of his gun before FATHER DOMINIC'S face.)

CHARLES. Fie, fie, Schweitzer! You cut the thread of his discourse.
He has got his sermon so nicely by heart. Pray go on, Sir! "for the
gallows and the wheel?"

FATHER Dom. And thou, their precious captain!--commander-in-chief of
cut-purses!--king of sharpers! Grand Mogul of all the rogues under the
sun!--great prototype of that first hellish ringleader who imbued a
thousand legions of innocent angels with the flame of rebellion, and
drew them down with him into the bottomless pit of damnation! The
agonizing cries of bereaved mothers pursue thy footsteps! Thou drinkest
blood like water! and thy murderous knife holds men cheaper than
air-bubbles!

CHARLES. Very true--exceedingly true! Pray proceed, Sir!

FATHER DOM. What do you mean? Very true--exceedingly true! Is that an
answer?

CHARLES. How, Sir? You were not prepared for that, it seems? Go on--
by all means go on. What more were you going to say?

FATHER DOM. (heated). Abominable wretch! Avaunt! Does not the blood
of a murdered count of the empire cling to thy accursed fingers? Hast
thou not, with sacrilegious hands, dared to break into the Lord's
sanctuary, and carry off the consecrated vessels of the _sanctissimum_?
Hast thou not flung firebrands into our godly city, and brought down the
powder-magazine upon the heads of devout Christians? (Clasps his
hands). Horrible, horrible wickedness! that stinketh in the nostrils of
Heaven, and provoketh the day of judgment to burst upon you suddenly!
ripe for retribution--rushing headlong to the last trump!

CHARLES. Masterly guesses thus far! But now, sir, to the point! What
is it that the right worshipful justices wish to convey to me through
you?

FATHER Dom. What you are not worthy to receive. Look around you,
incendiary! As far as your eye can reach you are environed by our
horsemen--there is no chance of escape. As surely as cherries grow on
these oaks, and peaches on these firs, so surely shall you turn your
backs upon these oaks and these firs in safety.

CHARLES. Do you hear that, Schweitzer? But go on!

FATHER DOM. Hear, then, what mercy and forbearance justice shows
towards such miscreants. If you instantly prostrate yourselves in
submission and sue for mercy and forgiveness, then severity itself will
relent to compassion, and justice be to thee an indulgent mother. She
will shut one eye upon your horrible crimes, and be satisfied--only
think!--to let you be broken on the wheel.

SCHWEITZER. Did you hear that, captain? Shall I throttle this
well-trained shepherd's cur till the red blood spurts from every pore?

ROLLER. Captain! Fire and fury! Captain! How he bites his lip!
Shall I topple this fellow upside down like a ninepin?

SCHWEITZER. Mine, mine be the job! Let me kneel to you, captain; let
me implore you! I beseech you to grant me the delight of pounding him
to a jelly! (FATHER DOMINIC screams.)

CHARLES. Touch him not! Let no one lay a finger on him!--(To FATHER
DOMINIC, drawing his sword.) Hark ye, sir father! Here stand
nine-and-seventy men, of whom I am the captain, and not one of them has
been taught to trot at a signal, or learned to dance to the music of
artillery; while yonder stand seventeen hundred men grown gray under the
musket. But now listen! Thus says Moor, the captain of incendiaries. It
is true I have slain a count of the empire, burnt and plundered the
church of St. Dominic, flung firebrands into your bigoted city, and
brought down the powder-magazine upon the heads of devout Christians. But
that is not all,--I have done more. (He holds out his right hand.) Do you
observe these four costly rings, one on each finger? Go and report
punctually to their worships, on whose sentence hangs life or death what
you shall hear and see. This ruby I drew from the finger of a minister,
whom I stretched at the feet of his prince, during the chase. He had
fawned himself up from the lowest dregs, to be the first favorite;--the
ruin of his neighbor was his ladder to greatness--orphans' tears helped
him to mount it. This diamond I took from a lord treasurer, who sold
offices of honor and trust to the highest bidder, and drove the sorrowing
patriot from his door. This opal I wear in honor of a priest of your
cloth, whom I dispatched with my own hand, after he had publicly deplored
in his pulpit the waning power of the Inquisition. I could tell you more
stories about my rings, but that I repent the words I have already wasted
upon you--

FATHER DOM. O Pharaoh! Pharaoh!

CHARLES. Do you hear it? Did you mark that sigh? Does he not stand
there as if he were imploring fire from heaven to descend and destroy
this troop of Korah? He pronounces judgment with a shrug of the
shoulders, and eternal damnation with a Christian "Alas!" Is it
possible for humanity to be so utterly blind? He who has the hundred
eyes of Argus to spy out the faults of his brother--can he be so totally
blind to his own? They thunder forth from their clouds about gentleness
and forbearance, while they sacrifice human victims to the God of love
as if he were the fiery Moloch. They preach the love of one's neighbor,
while they drive the aged and blind with curses from their door. They
rave against covetousness; yet for the sake of gold they have
depopulated Peru, and yoked the natives, like cattle, to their chariots.
They rack their brains in wonder to account for the creation of a Judas
Iscariot, yet the best of them would betray the whole Trinity for ten
shekels. Out upon you, Pharisees! ye falsifiers of truth! ye apes of
Deity! You are not ashamed to kneel before crucifixes and altars; you
lacerate your backs with thongs, and mortify your flesh with fasting;
and with these pitiful mummeries you think, fools as you are, to veil
the eyes of Him whom, with the same breath, you address as the
Omniscient, just as the great are the most bitterly mocked by those who
flatter them while they pretend to hate flatterers. You boast of your
honesty and your exemplary conduct; but the God who sees through your
hearts would be wroth with Him that made you, were He not the same that
had also created the monsters of the Nile. Away with him out of my
sight!

FATHER DOM. That such a miscreant should be so proud!

CHARLES. That's not all. Now I will speak proudly. Go and tell the
right worshipful justices--who set men's lives upon the cast of a die--
I am not one of those thieves who conspire with sleep and midnight, and
play the hero and the lordling on a scaling-ladder. What I have done I
shall no doubt hereafter be doomed to read in the register of heaven;
but with his miserable ministers of earth I will waste no more words.
Tell your masters that my trade is retribution--vengeance my occupation!
(He turns his back upon him.)

FATHER DOM. Then you despise mercy and forbearance?---Be it so, I have
done with you. (Turning to the troop.) Now then, sirs, you shall hear
what the high powers direct me to make known to you!--If you will
instantly deliver up to me this condemned malefactor, bound hand and
foot, you shall receive a full pardon--your enormities shall be entirely
blotted out, even from memory. The holy church will receive you, like
lost sheep, with renewed love, into her maternal bosom, and the road to
honorable employment shall be open to you all. (With a triumphant
smile.) Now sir! how does your majesty relish this? Come on! bind him!
and you are free!

CHARLES. Do you hear that? Do you hear it? What startles you? Why do
you hesitate? They offer you freedom--you that are already their
prisoners. They grant you your lives, and that is no idle pretence, for
it is clear you are already condemned felons. They promise you honor
and emolument; and, on the other hand, what can you hope for, even
should you be victorious to-day, but disgrace, and curses, and
persecution? They ensure you the pardon of Heaven; you that are
actually damned. There is not a single hair on any of you that is not
already bespoke in hell. Do you still hesitate? are you staggered? Is
it so difficult, then, to choose between heaven and hell?--Do put in a
word, father!

FATHER DOM. (aside.) Is the fellow crazy? (Aloud.) Perhaps you are
afraid that this is a trap to catch you alive?--Read it yourselves!
Here--is the general pardon fully signed. (He hands a paper to
SCHWEITZER.) Can you still doubt?

CHARLES. Only see! only see! What more can you require? Signed with
their own hands! It is mercy beyond all bounds! Or are you afraid of
their breaking their word, because you have heard it said that no faith
need be kept with traitors? Dismiss that fear! Policy alone would
constrain them to keep their word, even though it should merely have
been pledged to old Nick. Who hereafter would believe them? How could
they trade with it a second time? I would take my oath upon it that
they mean it sincerely. They know that I am the man who has goaded you
on and incited you; they believe you innocent. They look upon your
crimes as so many juvenile errors--exuberances of rashness. It is I
alone they want. I must pay the penalty. Is it not so, father?

FATHER DOM. What devil incarnate is it that speaks out of him? Of
course it is so--of course. The fellow turns my brain.

CHARLES. What! no answer yet? Do you think it possible to cut your way
through yon phalanx? Only look round you! just look round! You surely
do not reckon upon that; that were indeed a childish conceit--Or do you
flatter yourselves that you will fall like heroes, because you saw that
I rejoiced in the prospect of the fight? Oh, do not console yourself
with the thought! You are not MOOR. You are miserable thieves!
wretched tools of my great designs! despicable as the rope in the hand
of the hangman! No! no! Thieves do not fall like heroes. Life must be
the hope of thieves, for something fearful has to follow. Thieves may
well be allowed to quake at the fear of death. Hark! Do you hear their
horns echoing through the forest? See there! how their glittering
sabres threaten! What! are you still irresolute? are you mad? are you
insane? It is unpardonable. Do you imagine I shall thank you for my
life? I disdain your sacrifice!

FATHER DOM. (in utter amazement). I shall go mad! I must be gone!
Was the like ever heard of?

CHARLES. Or are you afraid that I shall stab myself, and so by suicide
put an end to the bargain, which only holds good if I am given up alive?
No, comrades! that is a vain fear. Here, I fling away my dagger, and my
pistols, and this phial of poison, which might have been a treasure to
me. I am so wretched that I have lost the power even over my own life.
What! still in suspense? Or do you think, perhaps, that I shall stand
on my defence when you try to seize me? See here! I bind my right hand
to this oak-branch; now I am quite defenceless, a child may overpower
me. Who is the first to desert his captain in the hour of need?

ROLLER (with wild energy). And what though hell encircle us with
ninefold coils! (Brandishing his sword.) Who is the coward that will
betray his captain?

SCHWEITZER (tears the pardon and flings the pieces into FATHER DOMINIC'S
face). Pardon be in our bullets! Away with thee, rascal! Tell your
senate that you could not find a single traitor in all Moor's camp.
Huzza! Huzza! Save the captain!

ALL (shouting). Huzza! Save the captain! Save him! Save our noble
captain!

CHARLES (releasing his hand from the tree, joyfully). Now we are free,
comrades! I feel a host in this single arm! Death or liberty! At the
least they shall not take a man of us alive!

      [They sound the signal for attack; noise and tumult.
            Exeunt with drawn swords.]

                 ACT III.

      SCENE I.--AMELIA in the garden, playing the guitar.

     Bright as an angel from Walhalla's hall,
      More beautiful than aught of earth was he!
     Heaven-mild his look, as sunbeams when they fall,
      Reflected from a calm cerulean sea.

     His warm embrace--oh, ravishing delight!
      With heart to heart the fiery pulses danced--
     Our every sense wrap'd in ecstatic night--
      Our souls in blissful harmony entranced.

     His kisses--oh, what paradise of feeling!
      E'en as two flames which round each other twine--
     Or flood of seraph harp-tones gently stealing
      In one soft swell, away to realms divine!

     They rushed, commingled, melted, soul in soul!
      Lips glued to lips, with burning tremor bound!
     Cold earth dissolved, and love without control
      Absorbed all sense of worldly things around!

     He's gone!--forever gone! Alas! in vain
      My bleeding heart in bitter anguish sighs;
     To me is left alone this world of pain,
      And mortal life in hopeless sorrow dies.

               Enter FRANCIS.

FRANCIS. Here again already, perverse enthusiast? You stole away from
the festive banquet, and marred the mirthful pleasures of my guests.

AMELIA. 'Tis pity, truly, to mar such innocent pleasures! Shame on
them! The funeral knell that tolled over your father's grave must still
be ringing in your ears--

FRANCIS. Wilt thou sorrow, then, forever? Let the dead sleep in peace,
and do thou make the living happy! I come--

AMELIA. And when do you go again?

FRANCIS. Alas! Look not on me thus sorrowfully! You wound me, Amelia.
I come to tell you--

AMELIA. To tell me, I suppose, that Francis von Moor has become lord
and master here.

FRANCIS. Precisely so; that is the very subject on which I wish to
communicate with you. Maximilian von Moor is gone to the tomb of his
ancestors. I am master. But I wish--to be so in the fullest sense,
Amelia. You know what you have been to our house always regarded as
Moor's daughter, his love for you will survive even death itself; that,
assuredly, you will never forget?

AMELIA. Never, never! Who could be so unfeeling as to drown the memory
of it in festive banqueting?

FRANCIS. It is your duty to repay the love of the father to his sons;
and Charles is dead. Ha! you are struck with amazement; dizzy with the
thought! To be sure 'tis a flattering and an elating prospect which may
well overpower the pride of a woman. Francis tramples under foot the
hopes of the noblest and the richest, and offers his heart, his hand,
and with them all his gold, his castles, and his forests to a poor, and,
but for him, destitute orphan. Francis--the feared--voluntarily
declares himself Amelia's slave!

AMELIA. Why does not a thunderbolt cleave the impious tongue which
utters the criminal proposal! Thou hast murdered my beloved Charles;
and shall Amelia, his betrothed, call thee husband? Thou?

FRANCIS. Be not so violent, most gracious princess! It is true that
Francis does not come before you like a whining Celadon--'tis true he
has not learned, like a lovesick swain of Arcadia, to sigh forth his
amorous plaints to the echo of caves and rocks. Francis speaks--and,
when not answered, commands!

AMELIA. Commands? thou reptile! Command me? And what if I laughed
your command to scorn?

FRANCIS. That you will hardly do. There are means, too, which I know
of, admirably adapted to humble the pride of a capricious, stubborn
girl--cloisters and walls!

AMELIA. Excellent! delightful! to be forever secure within cloisters
and walls from thy basilisk look, and to have abundant leisure to think
and dream of Charles. Welcome with your cloister! welcome your walls!

FRANCIS. Ha! Is that it? Beware! Now you have taught me the art of
tormenting you. The sight of me shall, like a fiery-haired fury, drive
out of your head these eternal phantasies of Charles. Francis shall be
the dread phantom ever lurking behind the image of your beloved, like
the fiend-dog that guards the subterranean treasure. I will drag you to
church by the hair, and sword in hand wring the nuptial vow from your
soul. By main force will I ascend your virginal couch, and storm your
haughty modesty with still greater haughtiness.

AMELIA (gives him a slap in the face). Then take that first by way of
dowry!

FRANCIS. Ha! I will be tenfold, and twice tenfold revenged for this!
My wife! No, that honor you shall never enjoy. You shall be my
mistress, my strumpet! The honest peasant's wife shall point her finger
at you as she passes you in the street. Ay, gnash your teeth as
fiercely as you please--scatter fire and destruction from your eyes--
the fury of a woman piques my fancy--it makes you more beautiful, more
tempting. Come, this resistance will garnish my triumph, and your
struggles give zest to my embraces. Come, come to my chamber--I burn
with desire. Come this instant. (Attempts to drag her away).

AMELIA (falls on his neck). Forgive me, Francis! (As he is about to
clasp her in his arms, she suddenly draws the sword at his side, and
hastily disengages herself). Do you see now, miscreant, how I am able
to deal with you? I am only a woman, but a woman enraged. Dare to
approach, and this steel shall strike your lascivious heart to the core
--the spirit of my uncle will guide my hand. Avaunt, this instant!
(She drives him away).

Ah! how different I feel! Now I breathe again--I feel strong as the
snorting steed, ferocious as the tigress when she springs upon the
ruthless destroyer of her cubs. To a cloister, did he say? I thank
thee for the happy thought! Now has disappointed love found a place of
refuge--the cloister--the Redeemer's bosom is the sanctuary of
disappointed love. (She is on the point going).

        . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

In the acting edition the following scene occurs between Herman and
Francis, immediately before that with Amelia. As Schiller himself
thought this among the happiest of his additions, and regretted that it
was "entirely and very unfortunately overlooked in the first edition,"
it seems desirable to introduce it here as well as the soliloquy
immediately following, which has acquired some celebrity.

                SCENE VIII.

               Enter HERMANN.

FRANCIS. Ha! Welcome, my Euryalus! My prompt and trusty instrument!

HERMANN (abruptly and peevishly). You sent for me, count--why?

FRANCIS. That you might put the seal to your master-piece.

HERMANN (gruffly). Indeed?

FRANCIS. Give the picture its finishing touch.

HERMANN. Poh! Poh!

FRANCIS (startled). Shall I call the carriage? We'll arrange the
business during the drive?

HERMANN (scornfully). No ceremony, sir, if you please. For any
business we may have to arrange there is room enough between these four
walls. At all events I'll just say a few words to you by way of
preface, which may save your lungs some unnecessary exertion.

FRANCIS (reservedly). Hum! And what may those words be?

HERMANN (with bitter irony). "You shall have Amelia--and that from my
hand--"

FRANCIS (with astonishment). Hermann!

HERMANN (as before, with his back turned on FRANCIS). "Amelia will
become the plaything of my will--and you may easily guess the rest-in
short all will go as we wish" (Breaks into an indignant laugh, and then
turns haughtily to FRANCIS.) Now, Count von Moor, what have you to say
to me?

FRANCIS (evasively). To thee? Nothing. I had something to say to
Hermann.--

HERMANN, No evasion. Why was I sent for hither? Was it to be your dupe
a second time! and to hold the ladder for a thief to mount? to sell my
soul for a hangman s fee? What else did you want with me?

FRANCIS (as if recollecting). Ha! It just occurs to me! We must not
forget the main point. Did not my steward mention it to you? I wanted
to talk to you about the dowry.

HERMANN. This is mere mockery sir; or, if not mockery, something worse.
Moor, take care of yourself-beware how you kindle my fury, Moor. We are
alone! And I have still an unsullied name to stake against yours!
Trust not the devil, although he be of your own raising.

FRANCIS (with dignity). Does this deportment become thee towards thy
sovereign and gracious master? Tremble, slave!

HERMANN (ironically). For fear of your displeasure, I suppose? What
signifies your displeasure to a man who is at war with himself? Fie,
Moor. I already abhor you as a villain; let me not despise you for a
fool. I can open graves, and restore the dead to life! Which of us now
is the slave?

FRANCIS (in a conciliating tone). Come, my good friend, be discreet,
and do not prove faithless.

HERMANN. Pshaw! To expose a wretch like you is here the best
discretion--to keep faith with you would be an utter want of sense.
Faith? with whom? Faith with the prince of liars? Oh, I shudder at the
thought of such faith. A very little timely faithlessness would have
almost made a saint of me. But patience! patience! Revenge is cunning
in resources.

FRANCIS. Ah, by-the-by, I just remember. You lately lost a purse with
a hundred louis in it, in this apartment. I had almost forgotten it.
Here, my good friend! take back what belongs to you. (Offers him a
purse).

HERMANN (throws it scornfully at his feet). A curse on your Judas
bribe! It is the earnest-money of hell. You once before thought to
make my poverty a pander to my conscience--but you were mistaken, count!
egregiously mistaken. That purse of gold came most opportunely--to
maintain certain persons.

FRANCIS (terrified). Hermann! Hermann! Let me not suspect certain
things of you. Should you have done anything contrary to my
instructions--you would be the vilest of traitors!

HERMANN (exultingly). Should I? Should I really? Well then count,
let me give you a little piece of information! (Significantly.) I will
fatten up your infamy, and add fuel to your doom. The book of your
misdeeds shall one day be served up as a banquet, and all the world be
invited to partake of it. (Contemptuously.) Do you understand me now,
my most sovereign, gracious, and excellent master?

FRANCIS (starts up, losing all command of himself). Ha! Devil!
Deceitful impostor! (Striking his forehead.) To think that I should
stake my fortune on the caprice of an idiot! That was madness! (Throws
himself, in great excitement, on a couch.)

HERMANN (whistles through his fingers). Wheugh! the biter bit!--

FRANCIS (biting his lip). But it is true, and ever will be true--that
there is no thread so feebly spun, or which snaps asunder so readily, as
that which weaves the bands of guilt!--

HERMANN. Gently! Gently! Are angels, then, superseded, that devils
turn moralists?

FRANCIS (starts up abruptly; to HERMANN with a malignant laugh). And
certain persons will no doubt acquire much honor by making the
discovery?

HERMANN (clapping his hands). Masterly! Inimitable! You play your
part to admiration! First you lure the credulous fool into the slough,
and then chuckle at the success of your malice, and cry "Woe be to you
sinner!" (Laughing and clenching his teeth.) Oh, how cleverly these
imps off the devil manoeuvre. But, count (clapping him on the shoulder)
you have not yet got your lesson quite perfect--by Heavens! You first
learn what the losing gamester will hazard. Set fire to the
powder-magazine, says the pirate, and blow all to hell--both friend
and foe!

FRANCIS (runs to the wall, and takes down a pistol). Here is treason!
I must be resolute--

HERMANN (draws a pistol as quickly from his pocket, and presents it at
him). Don't trouble yourself--one must be prepared for everything with
you.

FRANCIS (lets the pistol fall, and throws himself on the sofa in great
confusion). Only keep my council till--till I have collected my
thoughts.

HERMANN. I suppose till you have hired a dozen assassins to silence my
tongue forever! Is it not so! But (in his ear) the secret is committed
to paper, which my heirs will publish.
                            [Exit.]

                SCENE IX.

               FRANCIS, solus.

Francis! Francis! Francis! What is all this? Where was thy courage?
where thy once so fertile wit? Woe! Woe! And to be betrayed by thy
own instruments! The pillars of my good fortune are tottering to their
fall, the fences are broken down, and the raging enemy is already
bursting in upon me. Well! this calls for some bold and sudden resolve!
What if I went in person--and secretly plunged this sword in his body?
A wounded man is but a child. Quick! I'll do it. (He walks with a
resolute step to the end of the stage, but stops suddenly as if overcome
by sensations of horror). Who are these gliding behind me? (Rolling
his eyes fearfully) Faces such as I have never yet beheld. What
hideous yells do I hear! I feel that I have courage--courage! oh yes to
overflowing! But if a mirror should betray me? or my shadow! or the
whistling of the murderous stroke! Ugh! Ugh! How my hair bristles! A
shudder creeps through my frame. (He lets a poigniard fall from under
his clothes.) I am no coward--perhaps somewhat too tenderhearted. Yes!
that is it! These are the last struggles of expiring virtue. I revere
them. I should indeed be a monster were I to become the murderer of my
own brother. No! no! no! That thought be far from me! Let me cherish
this vestige of humanity. I will not murder. Nature, thou hast
conquered. I still feel something here that seems like--affection. He
shall live.
                            [Exit.]

             Enter HERMANN, timidly.

HERMANN. Lady Amelia! Lady Amelia!

AMELIA. Unhappy man! why dost thou disturb me?

HERMANN. I must throw this weight from my soul before it drags it down
to hell. (Falls down before her.) Pardon! pardon! I have grievously
injured you, Lady Amelia!

AMELIA. Arise! depart! I will hear nothing. (Going.)

HERMANN (detaining her). No; stay! In the name of Heaven! In the name
of the Eternal! You must know all!

AMELIA. Not another word. I forgive you. Depart in peace. (In the
act of going.)

HERMANN. Only one word--listen; it will restore all your peace of mind.

AMELIA (turning back and looking at him with astonishment). How,
friend? Who in heaven or on earth can restore my peace of mind?

HERMANN. One word from my lips can do it. Hear me!

AMELIA (seizing his hand with compassion). Good sir! Can one word from
thy lips burst asunder the portals of eternity?

HERMANN. (rising). Charles lives!

AMELIA (screaming). Wretch!

HERMANN. Even so. And one word more. Your uncle--

AMELIA. (rushing upon him). Thou liest!

HERMANN. Your uncle--

AMELIA. Charles lives?

HERMANN. And your uncle--

AMELIA. Charles lives?

HERMANN. And your uncle too--betray me not!

              (HERMANN runs off)

AMELIA (stands a long while like one petrified; after which she starts
up wildly, and rushes after HERMANN.) Charles lives!

          SCENE II.--Country near the Danube.

     THE ROBBERS (encamped on a rising ground, under trees,
           their horses are grazing below.)

CHARLES. Here must I lie (throwing himself upon the ground). I feel as
if my limbs were all shattered. My tongue is as dry as a potsherd
(SCHWEITZER disappears unperceived.) I would ask one of you to bring me
a handful of water from that stream, but you are all tired to death.

SCHWARZ. Our wine-flasks too are all empty.

CHARLES. See how beautiful the harvest looks! The trees are breaking
with the weight of their fruit. The vines are full of promise.

GRIMM. It is a fruitful year.

CHARLES. Do you think so? Then at least one toil in the world will be
repaid. One? Yet in the night a hailstorm may come and destroy it all.

SCHWARZ. That is very possible. It all may be destroyed an hour before
the reaping.

CHARLES. Just what I say. All will be destroyed. Why should man
prosper in that which he has in common with the ant, while he fails in
that which places him on a level with the gods. Or is this the aim and
limit of his destiny?

SCHWARZ. I know not.

CHARLES. Thou hast said well; and wilt have done better, if thou never
seekest to know. Brother, I have looked on men, their insect cares and
their giant projects,--their god-like plans and mouse-like occupations,
their intensely eager race after happiness--one trusting to the
fleetness of his horse,--another to the nose of his ass,--a third to his
own legs; this checkered lottery of life, in which so many stake their
innocence and their leaven to snatch a prize, and,--blanks are all they
draw--for they find, too late, that there was no prize in the wheel. It
is a drama, brother, enough to bring tears into your eyes, while it
shakes your sides with laughter.

SCHWARZ. How gloriously the sun is setting yonder!

CHARLES (absorbed in the scene). So dies a hero! Worthy of adoration!

SCHWARZ. You seem deeply moved.

CHARLES. When I, was but a boy--it was my darling thought to live like
him, like him to die--(with suppressed grief.) It was a boyish thought!

GRIMM. It was, indeed.

CHARLES. There was a time--(pressing his hat down upon his face).
I would be alone, comrades.

SCHWARZ. Moor! Moor! Why, what the deuce! How his color changes.

GRIMM. By all the devils! What ails him? Is he ill?

CHARLES. There was a time when I could not have slept had I forgotten
my evening prayers.

GRIMM. Are you beside yourself? Would you let the remembrances of your
boyish years school you now?

CHARLES (lays his head upon the breast of GRIMM). Brother! Brother!

GRIMM. Come! Don't play the child--I pray you

CHARLES. Oh that I were-that I were again a child!

GRIMM. Fie! fie!

SCHWARZ. Cheer up! Behold this smiling landscape--this delicious
evening!

CHARLES. Yes, friends, this world is very lovely--

SCHWARZ. Come, now, that was well said.

CHARLES. This earth so glorious!--

GRIMM. Right--right--I love to hear you talk thus.

CHARLES. (sinking back). And I so hideous in' this lovely world--
a monster on this glorious earth!

GRIMM. Oh dear! oh dear!

CHARLES. My innocence! give me back my innocence! Behold, every living
thing is gone forth to bask in the cheering rays of the vernal sun--why
must I alone inhale the torments of hell out of the joys of heaven? All
are so happy, all so united in brotherly love, by the spirit of peace!
The whole world one family, and one Father above--but He not my father!
I alone the outcast, I alone rejected from the ranks of the blessed--the
sweet name of child is not for me--never for me the soul-thrilling
glance of her I love--never, never the bosom friend's embrace--(starting
back wildly)--surrounded by murderers--hemmed in by hissing vipers--
riveted to vice with iron fetters--whirling headlong on the frail reed
of sin to the gulf of perdition--amid the blooming flowers of a glad
world, a howling Abaddon!

SCHWARZ (to the others). How strange! I never saw him thus before.

CHARLES (with melancholy). Oh, that I might return again to my mother's
womb. That I might be born a beggar! I should desire no more,--no
more, oh heaven!--but that I might be like one of those poor laborers!
Oh, I would toil till the blood streamed down my temples--to buy myself
the luxury of one guiltless slumber--the blessedness of a single tear.

GRIMM (to the others). A little patience--the paroxysm is nearly over.

CHARLES. There was a time when my tears flowed so freely. Oh, those
days of peace! Dear home of my fathers--ye verdant halcyon vales!
O all ye Elysian scenes of my childhood!--will you never return?--will
your delicious breezes never cool my burning bosom? Mourn with me,
Nature, mourn! They will never return! never will their delicious
breezes cool my burning bosom! They are gone! gone! irrevocably gone!

         Enter SCHWEITZER with water in his hat.

SCHWEITZER (offering him water in his hat). Drink, captain; here is
plenty of water, and cold as ice.

SCHWARZ. You are bleeding! What have you been doing?

SCHWEITZER. A bit of a freak, you fool, which had well-nigh cost me two
legs and a neck. As I was frolicking along the steep sandbanks of the
river, plump, in a moment, the whole concern slid from under me, and I
after it, some ten fathoms deep;--there I lay, and, as I was recovering
my five senses, lo and behold, the most sparkling water in the gravel!
Not so much amiss this time, said I to myself, for the caper I have cut.
The captain will be sure to relish a drink.

CHARLES (returns him the hat and wipes his face). But you are covered
with mud, Schweitzer, and we can't see the scar which the Bohemian
horseman marked on your forehead--your water was good, Schweitzer--and
those scars become you well.

SCHWEITZER. Bah! There's room for a score or two more yet.

CHARLES. Yes, boys--it was a hot day's work--and only one man lost.
Poor Roller! he died a noble death. A marble monument would be erected
to his memory had he died in any other cause than mine. Let this
suffice. (He wipes the tears from his eyes.) How many, did you say, of
the enemy were left on the field?

SCHWEITZER. A hundred and sixty huzzars, ninety-three dragoons, some
forty chasseurs--in all about three hundred.

CHARLES. Three hundred for one! Every one of you has a claim upon this
head. (He bares his head.) By this uplifted dagger! As my Soul liveth,
I will never forsake you!

SCHWEITZER. Swear not! You do not know but you may yet be happy, and
repent your oath.

CHARLES. By the ashes of my Roller! I will never forsake you.

               Enter KOSINSKY.

KOSINSKY (aside). Hereabouts, they say, I shall find him. Ha! What
faces are these? Should they be--if these--they must be the men! Yes,
'tis they,'tis they! I will accost them.

SCHWARZ. Take heed! Who goes there?

KOSINSKY. Pardon, sirs. I know not whether I am going right or wrong.

CHARLES. Suppose right, whom do you take us to be?

KOSINSKY. Men!

SCHWEITZER. I wonder, captain, whether we have given any proof of that?

KOSINSKY. I am in search of men who can look death in the face, and let
danger play around then like a tamed snake; who prize liberty above life
or honor; whose very names, hailed by the poor and the oppressed, appal
the boldest, and make tyrants tremble.

SCHWEITZER (to the Captain). I like that fellow. Hark ye, friend! You
have found your men.

KOSINSKY. So I should think, and I hope soon to find them brothers.
You can direct me to the man I am looking for. 'Tis your captain, the
great Count von Moor.

SCHWEITZER (taking him warmly by the hand). There's a good lad. You
and I must be chums.

CHARLES (coming nearer). Do you know the captain?

KOSINSKY. Thou art he!--in those features--that air--who can look at
thee, and doubt it? (Looks earnestly at him for some time). I have
always wished to see the man with the annihilating look, as he sat on
the ruins of Carthage.* That wish is realized.

   *[Alluding to Caius Marius. See Plutarch's Lives.]

SCHWEITZER. A mettlesome fellow!--

CHARLES. And what brings you to me?

KOSINSKY. Oh, captain! my more than cruel fate. I have suffered
shipwrecked on the stormy ocean of the world; I have seen all my fondest
hopes perish; and nought remains to me but a remembrance of the bitter
past, which would drive me to madness, were I not to drown it by
directing my energies to new objects.

CHARLES. Another arraignment of the ways of Providence! Proceed.

KOSINSKY. I became a soldier. Misfortune still followed me in the
army. I made a venture to the Indies, and my ship was shivered on the
rocks--nothing but frustrated hopes! At last, I heard tell far and wide
of your valiant deeds, incendiarisms, as they called them, and I came
straightway hither, a distance of thirty leagues, firmly resolved to
serve under you, if you will deign to accept my services. I entreat
thee, noble captain, refuse me not!

SCHWEITZER (with a leap into the air). Hurrah! Hurrah! Our Roller
replaced ten hundred-fold! An out-and-out brother cut-throat for our
troop.

CHARLES. What is your name?

KOSINSKY. Kosinsky.

CHARLES. What? Kosinsky! And do you know that you are but a
thoughtless boy, and are embarking on the most weighty passage of your
life as heedlessly as a giddy girl? You will find no playing at bowls
or ninepins here, as you probably imagine.

KOSINSKY. I understand you, sir. I am,'tis true, but four-and-twenty
years old, but I have seen swords glittering, and have heard balls
whistling around me.

CHARLES. Indeed, young gentleman? And was it for this that you took
fencing lessons, to run poor travellers through the body for the sake of
a dollar, or stab women in the back? Go! go! You have played truant to
your nurse because she shook the rod at you.

SCHWEITZER. Why, what the devil, captain! what are you about? Do you
mean to turn away such a Hercules? Does he not look as if he could
baste Marechal Saxe across the Ganges with a ladle?

CHARLES. Because your silly schemes miscarry, you come here to turn
rogue and assassin! Murder, boy, do you know the meaning of that word?
You may have slumbered in peace after cropping a few poppy-heads, but to
have a murder on your soul--

KOSINSKY. All the murders you bid me commit be upon my head!

CHARLES. What! Are you so nimble-witted? Do you take measure of a man
to catch him by flattery? How do you know that I am not haunted by
terrific dreams, or that I shall not tremble on my death-bed?--How much
have you already done of which you have considered the responsibility?

KOSINSKY. Very little, I must confess; excepting this long journey to
you, noble count--

CHARLES. Has your tutor let the story of Robin Hood--get into your
hands? Such careless rascals ought to be sent to the galleys. And has
it heated your childish fancy, and infected you with the mania of
becoming a hero? Are you thirsting for honor and fame? Would you buy
immortality by deeds of incendiarism? Mark me, ambitious youth! No
laurel blooms for the incendiary. No triumph awaits the victories of
the bandit--nothing but curses, danger, death, disgrace. Do you see the
gibbet yonder on the hill?

SPIEGEL (going up and down indignantly). Oh, how stupid! How
abominably, unpardonably stupid! That's not the way. I went to work
in a very different manner.

KOSINSKY. What should he fear, who fears not death?

CHARLES. Bravo! Capital! You have made good use of your time at
school; you have got your Seneca cleverly by heart. But, my good
friend, you will not be able with these fine phrases to cajole nature
in the hour of suffering; they will never blunt the biting tooth of
remorse. Ponder on it well, my son! (Takes him by the hand.) I advise
you as a father. First learn the depth of the abyss before you plunge
headlong into it. If in this world you can catch a single glimpse of
happiness--moments may come when you-awake,--and then--it may be too
late. Here you step out as it were beyond the pale of humanity--you
must either be more than human or a demon. Once more, my son! if but
a single spark of hope glimmer for you elsewhere, fly this fearful
compact, where nought but despair enters, unless a higher wisdom has so
ordained it. You may deceive yourself--believe me, it is possible to
mistake that for strength of mind which in reality is nothing more than
despair. Take my counsel! mine! and depart quickly.

KOSINSKY. No! I will not stir. If my entreaties fail to move you, hear
but the story of my misfortunes. And then you will force the dagger
into my hand as eagerly as you now seek to withhold it. Seat yourselves
awhile on the grass and listen.

CHARLES. I will hear your story.

KOSINSKY. Know, then, that I am a Bohemian nobleman. By the early
death of my father I became master of large possessions. The scene of
my domain was a paradise; for it contained an angel--a maid adorned with
all the charms of blooming youth, and chaste as the light of heaven.
But to whom do I talk of this? It falls unheeded on your cars--ye never
loved, ye were never beloved--

SCHWEITZER. Gently, gently! The captain grows red as fire.

CHARLES. No more! I'll hear you some other time--to-morrow,--or
by-and-by, or--after I have seen blood.

KOSINSKY. Blood, blood! Only hear on! Blood will fill your whole
soul. She was of citizen birth, a German--but her look dissolved all
the prejudices of aristocracy. With blushing modesty she received the
bridal ring from my hand, and on the morrow I was to have led my AMELIA
to the altar. (CHARLES rises suddenly.) In the midst of my intoxicating
dream of happiness, and while our nuptials were preparing, an express
summoned me to court. I obeyed the summons. Letters were shown me
which I was said to have written, full of treasonable matter. I grew
scarlet with indignation at such malice; they deprived me of my sword,
thrust me into prison, and all my senses forsook me.

SCHWEITZER. And in the meantime--go on! I already scent the game.

KOSINSKY. There I lay a whole month, and knew not what was taking
place. I was full of anxiety for my Amelia, who I was sure would suffer
the pangs of death every moment in apprehension of my fate. At last the
prime minister makes his appearance,--congratulates me in honey-sweet
words on the establishment of my innocence,--reads to me a warrant of
discharge,--and returns me my sword. I flew in triumph to my castle, to
the arms of my Amelia, but she had disappeared! She had been carried
off, it was said, at midnight, no one knew whither, and no eye had
beheld her since. A suspicion instantly flashed across my mind. I
rushed to the capital--I made inquiries at court--all eyes were upon
me,--no one would give me information. At last I discovered her through
a grated window of the palace--she threw me a small billet.

SCHWEITZER. Did I not say so?

KOSINSKY. Death and destruction! The contents were these! They had
given her the choice between seeing me put to death, and becoming the
mistress of the prince. In the struggle between honor and love she
chose the latter, and (with a bitter smile) I was saved.

SCHWEITZER. And what did you do then?

KOSINSKY. Then I stood like one transfixed with a thunderbolt! Blood
was my first thought, blood my last! Foaming at the mouth, I ran to my
quarters, armed myself with a two-edged sword, and, with all haste,
rushed to the minister's house, for he--he alone--had been the fiendish
pander. They must have observed me in the street, for, as I went up, I
found all the doors fastened. I searched, I enquired. He was gone,
they said, to the prince. I went straight thither, but nobody there
would know anything about him. I return, force the doors, find the base
wretch, and was on the point when five or six servants suddenly rushed
on me from behind, and wrenched the weapon from my hands.

SCHWEITZER (stamping the ground). And so the fellow got off clear, and
you lost your labor?

KOSINSKY. I was arrested, accused, criminally prosecuted, degraded,
and--mark this--transported beyond the frontier, as a special favor. My
estates were confiscated to the minister, and Amelia remained in the
clutches of the tiger, where she weeps and mourns away her life, while
my vengeance must keep a fast, and crouch submissively to the yoke of
despotism.

SCHWEITZER (rising and whetting his sword). That is grist to our mill,
captain! There is something here for the incendiaries!

CHARLES (who has been walking up and down in violent agitation, with a
sudden start to the ROBBERS). I must see her. Up! collect your
baggage--you'll stay with us, Kosinsky! Quick, pack up!

THE ROBBERS. Where to? What?

CHARLES. Where to? Who asks that question? (Fiercely to SCHWEITZER)
Traitor, wouldst thou keep me back? But by the hope for heaven!

SCHWEITZER. I, a traitor? Lead on to hell and I will follow you!

CHARLES (falling on his neck). Dear brother! thou shalt follow me. She
weeps, she mourns away her life. Up! quickly! all of you! to
Franconia! In a week we must be there.
                         [Exeunt.]

                 ACT IV.

       SCENE I.--Rural scenery in the neighborhood of
            CHARLES VON MOOR'S castle.

        CHARLES VON MOOR, KOSINSKY, at a distance.

CHARLES. Go forward, and announce me. You remember what you have to
say?

KOSINSKY. You are Count Brand, you come from Mecklenburg. I am your
groom. Do not fear, I shall take care to play my part. Farewell!
                         [Exit.]

CHARLES. Hail to thee, Earth of my Fatherland (kisses the earth.)
Heaven of my Fatherland! Sun of my Fatherland! Ye meadows and hills,
ye streams and woods! Hail, hail to ye all! How deliciously the
breezes are wafted from my native hills? What streams of balmy perfume
greet the poor fugitive! Elysium! Realms of poetry! Stay, Moor, thy
foot has strayed into a holy temple. (Comes nearer.)

See there! the old swallow-nests in the castle yard!---and the little
garden-gate!--and this corner of the fence where I so often watched in
ambuscade to teaze old Towzer!--and down there in the green valley,
where, as the great Alexander, I led my Macedonians to the battle of
Arbela; and the grassy hillock yonder, from which I hurled the Persian
satrap--and then waved on high my victorious banner! (He smiles.) The
golden age of boyhood lives again in the soul of the outcast. I was
then so happy, so wholly, so cloudlessly happy--and now--behold all my
prospects a wreck! Here should I have presided, a great, a noble, an
honored man--here have--lived over again the years of boyhood in the
blooming--children of my Amelia--here!--here have been the idol of my
people--but the foul fiend opposed it (Starting.) Why am I here? To
feel like the captive when the clanking of his chains awakes him from
his dream of liberty. No, let me return to my wretchedness! The
captive had forgotten the light of day, but the dream of liberty flashes
past his eyes like a blaze of lightning in the night, which leaves it
darker than before. Farewell, ye native vales! once ye saw Charles as a
boy, and then Charles was happy. Now ye have seen the man his happiness
turned to despair! (He moves rapidly towards the most distant point of
the landscape, where he suddenly stops and casts a melancholy look
across to the castle.) Not to behold her! not even one look?--and only
a wall between me and Amelia! No! see her I must!--and him too!--though
it crush me! (He turns back.) Father! father! thy son approaches. Away
with thee, black, reeking gore! Away with that grim, ghastly look of
death! Oh, give me but this one hour free! Amelia! Father! thy
Charles approaches! (He goes quickly towards the castle.) Torment me
when the morning dawns--give me no rest with the coming night--beset me
in frightful dreams! But, oh! poison not this my only hour of bliss!
(He is standing at the gate.) What is it I feel? What means this, Moor?
Be a man! These death-like shudders--foreboding terrors.
                            [Enters.]

          SCENE II.*--Gallery in the Castle.

       *[In some editions this is the third scene,
       and there is no second.]

           Enter CHARLES VON MOOR, AMELIA.

AMELIA. And are you sure that you should know his portrait among these
pictures?

CHARLES. Oh, most certainly! his image has always been fresh in my
memory. (Passing along thee pictures.) This is not it.

AMELIA. You are right! He was the first count, and received his patent
of nobility from Frederic Barbarossa, to whom he rendered some service
against the corsairs.

CHARLES (still reviewing the pictures). Neither is it this--nor this--
nor that--it is not among these at all.

AMELIA. Nay! look more attentively! I thought you knew him.

CHARLES. As well as my own father! This picture wants the sweet
expression around the mouth, which distinguished him from among a
thousand. It is not he.

AMELIA. You surprise me. What! not seen him for eighteen years, and
still--

CHARLES (quickly, with a hectic blush). Yes, this is he! (He stands as
if struck by lightning.)

AMELIA. An excellent man!

CHARLES (absorbed in the contemplation of the picture). Father!
father! forgive me! Yes, an excellent man! (He wipes his eyes.) A
godlike man!

AMELIA. You seem to take a deep interest in him.

CHARLES. Oh, an excellent man! And he is gone, you say!

AMELIA. Gone! as our best joys perish. (Gently taking him by the
hand.) Dear Sir, no happiness ripens in this world.

CHARLES. Most true, most true! And have you already proved this truth
by sad experience? You, who can scarcely yet have seen your
twenty-third year?

AMELIA. Yes, alas, I have proved it. Whatever lives, lives to die in
sorrow. We engage our hearts, and grasp after the things of this world,
only to undergo the pang of losing them.

CHARLES. What can you have lost, and yet so young?

AMELIA. Nothing--everything--nothing. Shall we go on, count?*

   *[In the acting edition is added--
   "MOOR. And would you learn forgetfulness in that holy garb there?
   (Pointing to a nun's habit.)
   "AMELIA. To-morrow I hope to do so. Shall we continue our walk,
   sir?"]

CHARLES. In such haste? Whose portrait is that on the right? There is
an unhappy look about that countenance, methinks.

AMELIA. That portrait on the left is the son of the count, the present
count. Come, let us pass on!

CHARLES. But this portrait on the right?

AMELIA. Will you not continue your walk, Sir?

CHARLES. But this portrait on the right hand? You are in tears,
Amelia? [Exit AMELIA, in precipitation.]

CHARLES. She loves me, she loves me! Her whole being began to rebel,
and the traitor tears rolled down her cheeks. She loves me! Wretch,
hast thou deserved this at her hands? Stand I not here like a condemned
criminal before the fatal block? Is this the couch on which we so often
sat--where I have hung in rapture on her neck? Are these my ancestral
halls? (Overcome by the sight of his father's portrait.) Thou--thou--
Flames of fire darting from thine eyes--His curse--His curse--He disowns
me--Where am I? My sight grows dim--Horrors of the living God--'Twas I,
'twas I that killed my father!
                        [He rushes off]

         Enter FRANCIS VON MOOR, in deep thought.

FRANCIS. Away with that image! Away with it! Craven heart! Why dost
thou tremble, and before whom? Have I not felt, during the few hours
that the count has been within these walls as if a spy from hell were
gliding at my heels. Methinks I should know him! There is something so
lofty, so familiar, in his wild, sunburnt features, which makes me
tremble. Amelia, too, is not indifferent towards him! Does she not
dart eager, languishing looks at the fellow looks of which she is so
chary to all the world beside? Did I not see her drop those stealthy
tears into the wine, which, behind my back, he quaffed so eagerly that
he seemed to swallow the very glass? Yes, I saw it--I saw it in the
mirror with my own eyes. Take care, Francis! Look about you! Some
destruction-brooding monster is lurking beneath all this! (He stops,
with a searching look, before the portrait of CHARLES.)

His long, crane-like neck--his black, fire-sparkling eyes--hem! hem!--
his dark, overhanging, bushy eyebrows. (Suddenly starting back.)
Malicious hell! dost thou send me this suspicion? It is Charles! Yes,
all his features are reviving before me. It is he! despite his mask!
it is he! Death and damnation! (Goes up and down with agitated steps.)
Is it for this that I have sacrificed my nights--that I have mowed down
mountains and filled up chasms? For this that I have turned rebel
against all the instincts of humanity? To have this vagabond outcast
blunder in at last, and destroy all my cunningly devised fabric. But
gently! gently! What remains to be done is but child's play. Have I
not already waded up to my very ears in mortal sin? Seeing how far the
shore lies behind me, it would be madness to attempt to swim back. To
return is now out of the question. Grace itself would be beggared, and
infinite mercy become bankrupt, were they to be responsible for all my
liabilities. Then onward like a man. (He rings the bell.) Let him be
gathered to the spirit of his father, and now come on! For the dead I
care not! Daniel! Ho! Daniel! I'd wager a trifle they have already
inveigled him too into the plot against me! He looks so full of
mystery!

               Enter DANIEL.

DANIEL. What is your pleasure, my master?

FRANCIS. Nothing. Go, fill this goblet with wine, and quickly! (Exit
DANIEL.) Wait a little, old man! I shall find you out! I will fix my
eye upon you so keenly that your stricken conscience shall betray itself
through your mask! He shall die! He is but a sorry bungler who leaves
his work half finished, and then looks on idly, trusting to chance for
what may come of it.

            Enter DANIEL, with the wine.

Bring it here! Look me steadfastly in the face! How your knees knock
together! How you tremble! Confess, old man! what have you been
doing?

DANIEL. Nothing, my honored master, by heaven and my poor soul!

FRANCIS. Drink this wine! What? you hesitate? Out with it quickly!
What have you put into the wine?

DANIEL. Heaven help me! What! I in the wine?

FRANCIS. You have poisoned it! Are you not as white as snow? Confess,
confess! Who gave it you? The count? Is it not so? The count gave it
you?

DANIEL. The count? Jesu Maria! The count has not given me anything.

FRANCIS (grasping him tight). I will throttle you till you are black in
the face, you hoary-headed liar! Nothing? Why, then, are you so often
closeted together? He, and you, and Amelia? And what are you always
whispering about? Out with it! What secrets, eh? What secrets has he
confided to you?

DANIEL. I call the Almighty to witness that he has not confided any
secrets to me.

FRANCIS. Do you mean to deny it? What schemes have you been hatching
to get rid of me? Am I to be smothered in my sleep? or is my throat to
be cut in shaving? or am I to be poisoned in wine or chocolate? Eh?
Out with it, out with it! Or am I to have my quietus administered in my
soup? Out with it! I know it all!

DANIEL. May heaven so help me in the hour of need as I now tell you the
truth, and nothing but the pure, unvarnished truth!

FRANCIS. Well, this time I will forgive you. But the money! he most
certainly put money into your purse? And he pressed your hand more
warmly than is customary? something in the manner of an old
acquaintance?

DANIEL. Never, indeed, Sir.

FRANCIS. He told you, for instance, that he had known you before? that
you ought to know him? that the scales would some day fall from your
eyes? that--what? Do you mean to say that he never spoke thus to you?

DANIEL. Not a word of the kind.

FRANCIS. That certain circumstances restrained him--that one must
sometimes wear a mask in order to get at one's enemies--that he would be
revenged, most terribly revenged?

DANIEL. Not a syllable of all this.

FRANCIS. What? Nothing at all? Recollect yourself. That he knew the
old count well--most intimately--that he loved him--loved him
exceedingly--loved him like a son!

DANIEL. Something of that sort I remember to have heard him say.

FRANCIS (turning pale). Did he say so? did he really? How? let me
hear! He said he was my brother?

DANIEL (astonished). What, my master? He did not say that. But as
Lady Amelia was conducting him through the gallery--I was just dusting
the picture frames--he suddenly stood still before the portrait of my
late master, and seemed thunderstruck. Lady Amelia pointed it out, and
said, "An excellent man!" "Yes, a most excellent man!" he replied,
wiping a tear from his eye.

FRANCIS. Hark, Daniel! You know I have ever been a kind master to you;
I have given you food and raiment, and have spared you labor in
consideration of your advanced age.

DANIEL. For which may heaven reward you! and I, on my part, have
always served you faithfully.

FRANCIS. That is just what I was going to say. You have never in all
your life contradicted me; for you know much too well that you owe me
obedience in all things, whatever I may require of you.

DANIEL. In all things with all my heart, so it be not against God and
my conscience.

FRANCIS. Stuff! nonsense! Are you not ashamed of yourself? An old
man, and believe that Christmas tale! Go, Daniel! that was a stupid
remark. You know that I am your master. It is on me that God and
conscience will be avenged, if, indeed, there be a God and a conscience.

DANIEL (clasping his hands together). Merciful Heaven!

FRANCIS. By your obedience! Do you understand that word? By your
obedience, I command you. With to-morrow's dawn the count must no
longer be found among the living.

DANIEL. Merciful Heaven! and wherefore?

FRANCIS. By your blind obedience! I shall rely upon you implicitly.

DANIEL. On me? May the Blessed Virgin have mercy on me! On me? What
evil, then, have I, an old man, done!

FRANCIS. There is no time now for reflection; your fate is in my hands.
Would you rather pine away the remainder of your days in the deepest of
my dungeons, where hunger shall compel you to gnaw your own bones, and
burning thirst make you suck your own blood? Or would you rather eat
your bread in peace, and have rest in your old age?

DANIEL. What, my lord! Peace and rest in my old age? And I a
murderer?

FRANCIS. Answer my question!

DANIEL. My gray hairs! my gray hairs!

FRANCIS. Yes or no!

DANIEL. No! God have mercy upon me!

FRANCIS (in the act of going). Very well! you shall have need of it.
(DANIEL detains him and falls on his knees before him.)

DANIEL. Mercy, master! mercy!

FRANCIS. Yes or no!

DANIEL. Most gracious master! I am this day seventy-one years of age!
and have honored my father and my mother, and, to the best of my
knowledge, have never in the whole course of my life defrauded any one
to the value of a farthing,--and I have adhered to my creed truly and
honestly, and have served in your house four-and-forty years, and am now
calmly awaiting a quiet, happy end. Oh, master! master! (violently
clasping his knees) and would you deprive me of my only solace in death,
that the gnawing worm of an evil conscience may cheat me of my last
prayer? that I may go to my long home an abomination in the sight of God
and man? No, no! my dearest, best, most excellent, most gracious
master! you do not ask that of an old man turned threescore and ten!

FRANCIS. Yes or no! What is the use of all this palaver?

DANIEL. I will serve you from this day forward more diligently than
ever; I will wear out my old bones in your service like a common
day-laborer; I will rise earlier and lie down later. Oh, and I will
remember you in my prayers night and morning; and God will not reject
the prayer of an old man.

FRANCIS. Obedience is better than sacrifice. Did you ever hear of the
hangman standing upon ceremony when he was told to execute a sentence?

DANIEL. That is very true? but to murder an innocent man--one--

FRANCIS. Am I responsible to you? Is the axe to question the hangman
why he strikes this way and not that? But see how forbearing I am. I
offer you a reward for performing what you owe me in virtue of your
allegiance.

DANIEL. But, when I swore allegiance to you, I at least hoped that I
should be allowed to remain a Christian.

FRANCIS. No contradiction! Look you! I give you the whole day to
think about it! Ponder well on it. Happiness or misery. Do you hear--
do you understand? The extreme of happiness or the extreme of misery!
I can do wonders in the way of torture.

DANIEL (after some reflection). I'll do it; I will do it to-morrow.
                            [Exit.]

FRANCIS. The temptation is strong, and I should think he was not born
to die a martyr to his faith. Have with you, sir count! According to
all ordinary calculations, you will sup to-morrow with old Beelzebub.
In these matters all depends upon one's view of a thing; and he is a
fool who takes any view that is contrary to his own interest. A father
quaffs perhaps a bottle of wine more than ordinary--he is in a certain
mood--the result is a human being, the last thing that was thought of in
the affair. Well, I, too, am in a certain mood,--and the result is that
a human being perishes; and surely there is more of reason and purpose
in this than there was in his production. If the birth of a man is the
result of an animal paroxysm, who should take it into his head to attach
any importance to the negation of his birth? A curse upon the folly of
our nurses and teachers, who fill our imaginations with frightful tales,
and impress fearful images of punishment upon the plastic brain of
childhood, so that involuntary shudders shake the limbs of the man with
icy fear, arrest his boldest resolutions, and chain his awakening reason
in the fetters of superstitious darkness. Murder! What a hell full of
furies hovers around that word. Yet 'tis no more than if nature forgets
to bring forth one man more or the doctor makes a mistake--and thus the
whole phantasmagoria vanishes. It was something, and it is nothing.
Does not this amount to exactly the same thing as though it had been
nothing, and came to nothing; and about nothing it is hardly worth while
to waste a word. Man is made of filth, and for a time wades in filth,
and produces filth, and sinks back into filth, till at last he fouls the
boots of his own posterity.*

   *["To what base uses we may return, Horatio! why, may not
   imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till we find it
   stopping a bunghole?"--HAMLET, Act v, Sc. 1.]

That is the burden of the song--the filthy cycle of human fate; and with
that--a pleasant journey to you, sir brother! Conscience, that
splenetic, gouty moralist, may drive shrivelled old drones out of
brothels, and torture usurers on their deathbeds--with me it shall never
more have audience.
                            [Exit.]

         SCENE III.--Another Room in the Castle.

   CHARLES VON MOOR enters from one side, DANIEL from the other.

CHARLES (hastily). Where is Lady Amelia?

DANIEL. Honored sir! permit an old man to ask you a favor.

CHARLES. It is granted. What is it you ask?

DANIEL. Not much, and yet all--but little, and yet a great deal.
Suffer me to kiss your hand!

CHARLES. That I cannot permit, good old man (embraces him), from one
whom I should like to call my father.

DANIEL. Your hand, your hand! I beseech you.

CHARLES. That must not be.

DANIEL. It must! (He takes hold of it, surveys it quickly, and falls
down before him.) Dear, dearest Charles!

CHARLES (startled; he composes himself, and says in a distant tone).
What mean you, my friend? I don't understand you.

DANIEL. Yes, you may deny it, you may dissemble as much as you please?
'Tis very well! very well. For all that you are my dearest, my
excellent young master. Good Heaven! that I, poor old man, should live
to have the joy--what a stupid blockhead was I that I did not at a
glance--oh, gracious powers! And you are really come back, and the dear
old master is underground, and here you are again! What a purblind dolt
I was, to be sure! (striking his forehead) that I did not on the
instant--Oh, dear me!---who could have dreamt it--What I have so often
prayed for with tears--Oh, mercy me! There he stands again, as large as
life, in the old room!

CHARLES. What's all this oration about? Are you in a fit of delirium,
and have escaped from your keepers; or are you rehearsing a
stage-player's part with me?

DANIEL. Oh, fie! fie! It is not pretty of you to make game of an old
servant. That scar! Eh! do you remember it? Good Heaven! what a
fright you put me into--I always loved you so dearly; and what misery
you might have brought upon me. You were sitting in my lap--do you
remember? there in the round chamber. Has all that quite vanished from
your memory--and the cuckoo, too, that you were so fond of listening to?
Only think! the cuckoo is broken, broken all to shivers--old Susan
smashed it in sweeping the room--yes, indeed, and there you sat in my
lap, and cried, "Cockhorse!" and I ran off to fetch your wooden horse--
mercy on me! what business had I, thoughtless old fool, to leave you
alone--and how I felt as if I were in a boiling caldron when I heard you
screaming in the passage; and, when I rushed in, there was your red
blood gushing forth, and you lying on the ground. Oh, by the Blessed
Virgin! did I not feel as if a bucket of icy cold water was emptied all
over me?--but so it happens, unless one keeps all one's eyes upon
children. Good Heaven! if it had gone into your eye! Unfortunately it
happened to be the right hand. "As long as I live," said I, "never
again shall any child in my charge get hold of a knife or scissors, or
any other edge tool." 'Twas lucky for me that both my master and
mistress were gone on a journey. "Yes, yes! this shall be a warning to
me for the rest of my life," said I--Gemini, Gemini! I might have lost
my place, I might--God forgive you, you naughty boy--but, thank Heaven!
it healed fairly, all but that ugly scar.

CHARLES. I do not comprehend one word of all that you are talking
about.

DANIEL. Eh? eh? that was the time! was it not? How many a ginger-cake,
and biscuit, and macaroon, have I slipped into your hands--I was always
so fond of you. And do you recollect what you said to me down in the
stable, when I put you upon old master's hunter, and let you scamper
round the great meadow? "Daniel!" said you, "only wait till I am grown
a big man, and you shall be my steward, and ride in the coach with me."
"Yes," said I, laughing, "if heaven grants me life and health, and you
are not ashamed of the old man," I said, "I shall ask you to let me have
the little house down in the village, that has stood empty so long; and
then I will lay in a few butts of good wine, and turn publican in my old
age." Yes, you may laugh, you may laugh! Eh, young gentleman, have you
quite forgotten all that? You do not want to remember the old man, so
you carry yourself strange and loftily;--but, you are my jewel of a
young master, for all that. You have, it is true, been a little bit
wild--don't be angry!--as young blood is apt to be! All may be well yet
in the end.

CHARLES (falls on his neck). Yes! Daniel! I will no longer hide it
from you! I am your Charles, your lost Charles! And now tell me, how
does my Amelia?

DANIEL (begins to cry). That I, old sinner, should live to have this
happiness--and my late blessed master wept so long in vain! Begone,
begone, hoary old head! Ye weary bones, descend into the grave with
joy! My lord and master lives! my own eyes have beheld him!

CHARLES. And he will keep his promise to you. Take that, honest
graybeard, for the old hunter (forces a heavy purse upon him). I have
not forgotten the old man.

DANIEL. How? What are you doing? Too much! You have made a mistake.

CHARLES. No mistake, Daniel! (DANIEL is about to throw himself on his
knees before him.) Rise! Tell me, how does my Amelia?

DANIEL. Heaven reward you! Heaven reward you! O gracious me! Your
Amelia will never survive it, she will die for joy?

CHARLES (eagerly). She has not forgotten me then?

DANIEL. Forgotten you? How can you talk thus? Forgotten you, indeed!
You should have been there, you should have seen how she took on, when
the news came of your death, which his honor caused to be spread
abroad--

CHARLES. What do you say? my brother--

DANIEL. Yes, your brother; his honor, your brother--another day I will
tell you more about it, when we have time--and how cleverly she sent him
about his business when he came a wooing every blessed day, and offered
to make her his countess. Oh, I must go; I must go and tell her; carry
her the news (is about to run of).

CHARLES. Stay! stay! she must not know--nobody must know, not even my
brother!

DANIEL. Your brother? No, on no account; he must not know it!
Certainly not! If he know not already more than he ought to know. Oh,
I can tell you, there are wicked men, wicked brothers, wicked masters;
but I would not for all my master's gold be a wicked servant. His honor
thought you were dead.

CHARLES. Humph! What are you muttering about?

DANIEL (in a half-suppressed voice). And to be sure when a man rises
from the dead thus uninvited--your brother was the sole heir of our late
master!

CHARLES. Old man! what is it you are muttering between your teeth, as
if some dreadful secret were hovering on your tongue which you fear to
utter, and yet ought? Out with it!

DANIEL. But I would rather gnaw my old bones with hunger, and suck my
own blood for thirst, than gain a life of luxury by murder.
                          [Exit hastily.]

CHARLES (starting up, after a terrible pause). Betrayed! Betrayed! It
flashes upon my soul like lightning! A fiendish trick! A murderer and
a robber through fiend-like machinations! Calumniated by him! My
letters falsified, suppressed! his heart full of love! Oh, what a
monstrous fool was I! His fatherly heart full of love! oh, villainy,
villainy! It would have cost me but once kneeling at his feet--a tear
would have done it--oh blind, blind fool that I was! (running up
against the wall). I might have been happy--oh villainy, villainy!

Knavishly, yes, knavishly cheated out of all happiness in this life!
(He runs up and down in a rage.) A murderer, a robber, all through a
knavish trick! He was not even angry! Not a thought of cursing ever
entered his heart. Oh, miscreant! inconceivable, hypocritical,
abominable miscreant!

               Enter KOSINSKY.

KOSINSKY. Well, captain, where are you loitering? What is the matter?
You are for staying here some time longer, I perceive?

CHARLES. Up! Saddle the horses! Before sunset we must be over the
frontier!

KOSINSKY. You are joking.

CHARLES (in a commanding tone). Quick! quick! delay not! leave every
thing behind! and let no eye see you!
                         (Exit KOSINSKY.)

I fly from these walls. The least delay might drive me raving mad; and
he my father's son! Brother! brother! thou hast made me the most
miserable wretch on earth; I never injured thee; this was not brotherly.
Reap the fruits of thy crime in quiet, my presence shall no longer
embitter thy enjoyment--but, surely, this was not acting like a brother.
May oblivion shroud thy misdeed forever, and death not bring it back to
light.

               Enter KOSINSKY.

KOSINSKY. The horses are ready saddled, you can mount as soon as you
please.

CHARLES. Why in such haste? Why so urgent? Shall I see her no more?

KOSINSKY. I will take off the bridles again, if you wish it; you bade
me hasten head over heels.

CHARLES. One more farewell! one more! I must drain this poisoned cup
of happiness to the dregs, and then--Stay, Kosinsky! Ten minutes more--
behind, in the castle yard--and we gallop off.

            Scene IV.--In the Garden.

AMELIA. "You are in tears, Amelia!" These were his very words--and
spoken with such expressionsuch a voice!--oh, it summoned up a thousand
dear remembrances!--scenes of past delight, as in my youthful days of
happiness, my golden spring-tide of love. The nightingale sung with the
same sweetness, the flowers breathed the same delicious fragrance, as
when I used to hang enraptured on his neck.*

   *[Here, in the acting edition, is added, 'Assuredly, if the spirits
   of the departed wander among the living, then must this stranger be
   Charles's angel!']

Ha! false, perfidious heart! And dost thou seek thus artfully to veil
thy perjury? No, no! begone forever from my soul, thou sinful image!
I have not broken my oath, thou only one! Avaunt, from my soul, ye
treacherous impious wishes! In the heart where Charles reigns no son
of earth may dwell. But why, my soul, dost thou thus constantly, thus
obstinately turn towards this stranger? Does he not cling to my heart
in the very image of my only one! Is he not his inseparable companion
in my thoughts? "You are in tears, Amelia?" Ha! let me fly from him!--
--fly!--never more shall my eyes behold this stranger!
                   [CHARLES opens the garden gate.]

AMELIA (starting). Hark! hark! did I not hear the gate creak? (She
perceives CHARLES and starts up.) He?--whither?--what? I am rooted to
the spot,--I can not fly! Forsake me not, good Heaven! No! thou shalt
not tear me from my Charles! My soul has no room for two deities, I am
but a mortal maid! (She draws the picture of CHARLES from her bosom.)
Thou, my Charles! be thou my guardian angel against this stranger, this
invader of our loves! At thee will I look, at thee, nor turn away my
eyes--nor cast one sinful look towards him! (She sits silent, her eyes
fixed upon the picture.)

CHARLES. You here, Lady Amelia?--and so sad? and a tear upon that
picture? (AMELIA gives him no answer.) And who is the happy man for
whom these silver drops fall from an angel's eyes? May I be permitted
to look at--(He endeavors to look at the picture.)

AMELIA. No--yes--no!

CHARLES (starting back). Ha--and does he deserve to be so idolized?
Does he deserve it?

AMELIA. Had you but known him!

CHARLES. I should have envied him.

AMELIA. Adored, you mean.

CHARLES. Ha!

AMELIA. Oh, you would so have loved him?---there was so much, so much
in his face--in his eyes--in the tone of his voice,--which was so like
yours--that I love so dearly! (CHARLES casts his eyes down to the
ground.) Here, where you are standing, he has stood a thousand times--
and by his side, one who, by his side, forgot heaven and earth. Here
his eyes feasted on nature's most glorious panorama,--which, as if
conscious of his approving glance, seemed to increase in beauty under
the approbation of her masterpiece. Here he held the audience of the
air captive with his heavenly music. Here, from this bush, he plucked
roses, and plucked those roses for me. Here, here, he lay on my neck;
here he imprinted burning kisses on my lips, and the flowers hung their
heads with pleasure beneath the foot-tread of the lovers.*

   *[In the acting edition the scene changes materially at this point,
   and the most sentimental part of the whole drama is transformed
   into the most voluptuous. The stage direction here is,--(They give
   way to their transports without control, and mingle their kisses.
   MOOR hangs in ecstacy on her lips, while she sinks half delirious
   on the couch.) O Charles! now avenge thyself; my vow is broken.

   MOOR (tearing himself away from her, as if in frenzy). Can this be
   hell that still pursues me! (Gazing on her.) I felt so happy!

   AMELIA (perceiving the ring upon her finger, starts up from the
   couch). What! Art thou still there--on that guilty hand? Witness
   of my perjury. Away with thee! (She pulls the ring from her
   finger and gives it to CHARLES.) Take it--take it, beloved
   seducer! and with it what I hold most sacred--take my all--my
   Charles! (She falls back upon the couch.)

   MOOR (changes color). O thou Most High! was this thy almighty
   will? It is the very ring I gave her in pledge of our mutual
   faith. Hell be the grave of love! She has returned my ring.

   AMELIA (terrified). Heavens! What is the matter? Your eyes roll
   wildly, and your lips are pale as death! Ah! woe is me. And are
   the pleasures of thy crime so soon forgotten?

   MOOR (suppressing his emotion). 'Tis nothing! Nothing! (Raising
   his eyes to heaven.) I am still a man! (He takes of his own ring
   and puts it on AMELIA'S finger.) In return take this! sweet fury of
   my heart! And with it what I hold most sacred--take my all--my
   Amelia!

   AMELIA (starting up). Your Amelia!

   MOOR (mournfully). Oh, she was such a lovely maiden, and faithful
   as an angel. When we parted we exchanged rings, and vowed eternal
   constancy. She heard that I was dead--believed it--yet remained
   constant to the dead. She heard again that I was living--yet
   became faithless to the living. I flew into her arms--was happy
   as--the blest in Paradise. Think what my heart was doomed to feel,
   Amelia! She gave me back my ring--she took her own.

   AMELIA (her eyes fixed on the earth in amazement). 'Tis strange,
   most strange! 'Tis horrible!

   MOOR. Ay, strange and horrible! My child, there is much--ay, much
   for man to learn ere his poor intellect can fathom the decrees of
   Him who smiles at human vows and weeps at human projects. My
   Amelia is an unfortunate maiden!

   AMELIA. Unfortunate! Because she rejected you?

   MOOR. Unfortunate. Because she embraced the man she betrayed.

   AMELIA (with melancholy tenderness). Oh, then, she is indeed
   unfortunate! From my soul I pity her! She shall be my sister.
   But there is another and a better world."]

CHARLES. He is no more?

AMELIA. He sails on troubled seas--Amelia's love sails with him. He
wanders through pathless, sandy deserts--Amelia's love clothes the
burning sand with verdure, and the barren shrubs with flowers. Southern
suits scorch his bare head, northern snows pinch his feet, tempestuous
hail beats down on his temples, but Amelia's love lulls him to sleep in
the midst of the storm. Seas, and mountains, and skies, divide the
lovers--but their souls rise above this prison-house of clay, and meet
in the paradise of love. You appear sad, count!

CHARLES. These words of love rekindle my love.

AMELIA (pale). What? You love another? Alas! what have I said?

CHARLES. She believed me dead, and in my supposed death she remained
faithful to me--she heard again that I was alive, and she sacrificed for
me the crown of a saint. She knows that I am wandering in deserts, and
roaming about in misery, yet her love follows me on wings through
deserts and through misery. Her name, too, like yours, is Amelia.

AMELIA. How I envy your Amelia!

CHARLES. Oh, she is an unhappy maid. Her love is fixed upon one who is
lost--and it can never--never be rewarded.

AMELIA. Say not so! It will be rewarded in heaven. Is it not agreed
that there is a better world, where mourners rejoice, and where lovers
meet again?

CHARLES. Yes, a world where the veil is lifted--where the phantom love
will make terrible discoveries--Eternity is its name. My Amelia is an
unhappy maid.

AMELIA. Unhappy, and loves you?*

   *[In the acting edition the scene closes with a different
   denouement. Amelia here says, "Are all unhappy who live with you,
   and bear the name of Amelia.
   "CHARLES. Yes, all--when they think they embrace an angel, and
   find in their arms--a murderer. Alas, for my Amelia! She is
   indeed unfortunate.
   "AMELIA (with an expression of deep affliction). Oh, I must weep
   for her.
   "CHARLES (grasping her hand, and pointing to the ring). Weep for
   thyself.
   "AMELIA (recognizing the ring). Charles! Charles! O heaven and
   earth!
   (She sinks fainting; the scene closes.)"]

CHARLES. Unhappy, because she loves me! What if I were a murderer?
How, Lady Amelia, if your lover could reckon you up a murder for every
one of your kisses? Woe to my Amelia! She is an unhappy maid.

AMELIA (gayly rising). Ha! What a happy maid am I! My only one is a
reflection of Deity, and Deity is mercy and compassion! He could not
bear to see a fly suffer. His soul is as far from every thought of
blood as the sun is from the moon. (CHARLES suddenly turns away into a
thicket, and looks wildly out into the landscape. AMELIA sings, playing
the guitar.)

     Oh! Hector, wilt thou go forevermore,
     Where fierce Achilles, on the blood-stained shore,
      Heaps countless victims o'er Patroclus' grave?
     Who then thy hapless orphan boy will rear,
     Teach him to praise the gods and hurl the spear,
      When thou art swallowed up in Xanthus' wave?

CHARLES (silently tunes the guitar, and plays).

     Beloved wife!--stern duty calls to arms
     Go, fetch my lance! and cease those vain alarms!

             [He flings the guitar away, and rushes off.]

     SCENE V.--A neighboring forest. Night. An old ruined
          castle in the centre of the scene.

       The band of ROBBERS encamped on the ground.

              The ROBBERS singing.

        To rob, to kill, to wench, to fight,
         Our pastime is, and daily sport;
        The gibbet claims us morn and night,
         So let's be jolly, time is short.

        A merry life we lead, and free,
         A life of endless fun;
        Our couch is 'neath the greenwood tree,
        Through wind and storm we gain our fee,
         The moon we make our sun.
        Old Mercury is our patron true,
        And a capital chap for helping us through.

        To-day we make the abbot our host,
         The farmer rich to-morrow;
        And where we shall get our next day's roast,
         Gives us nor care nor sorrow.

        And, when with Rhenish and rare Moselle
         Our throats we have been oiling,
        Our courage burns with a fiercer swell,
        And we're hand and glove with the Lord of Hell,
         Who down in his flames is broiling.

        For fathers slain the orphans' cries,
         The widowed mothers' moan and wail,
        Of brides bereaved the whimpering sighs,
         Like music sweet, our ears regale.

        Beneath the axe to see them writhe,
         Bellow like calves, fall dead like flies;
        Such bonny sights, and sounds so blithe,
         With rapture fill our ears and eyes.

        And when at last our death-knell rings--
         The devil take that hour!
        Payment in full the hangman brings,
         And off the stage we scour.
        On the road a glass of good liquor or so,
        Then hip! hip! hip! and away we go!

SCHWEITZER. The night is far advanced, and the captain has not yet
returned.

RAZ. And yet he promised to be back before the clock struck eight.

SCHWEITZER. Should any harm have befallen him, comrades, wouldn't we
kindle fires! ay, and murder sucking babes?

SPIEGEL. (takes RAZMANN aside). A word in your ear, Razmann!

SCHWARZ (to GRIMM). Should we not send out scouts?

GRIMM. Let him alone. He no doubt has some feat in hand that will put
us to shame.

SCHWEITZER. Then you are out, by old Harry! He did not part from us
like one that had any masterpiece of roguery in view. Have you
forgotten what he said as he marched us across the heath? "The fellow
that takes so much as a turnip out of a field, if I know it, leaves his
head behind him, as true as my name is Moor." We dare not plunder.

RAZ. (aside to SPIEGELBERG). What are you driving at? Speak plainer.

SPIEGEL. Hush! hush! I know not what sort of a notion you and I have of
liberty, that we should toil under the yoke like bullocks, while we are
making such wonderful fine speeches about independence. I like it not.

SCHWEITZER (to GRIMM). What crotchet has that swaggering booby got in
his numskull, I wonder?

RAZ. (aside to SPIEGELBERG). Is it the captain you mean?--

SPIEGEL. Hush! I tell you; hush! He has got his eavesdroppers all
around us. Captain, did you say? Who made him captain over us? Has he
not, in fact, usurped that title, which by right belongs to me? What?
Is it for this that we stake our lives--that we endure all the splenetic
caprices of fortunes--that we may in the end congratulate ourselves upon
being the serfs of a slave? Serfs! When we might be princes? By
heaven! Razmann, I could never brook it.

SCHWEITZER (overhearing him--to the others). Yes--there's a hero for
you! He is just the man to do mighty execution upon frogs with stones.
The very breath of his nostrils, when he sneezes, would blow you through
the eye of a needle.

SPIEGEL. (to RAZMANN). Yes--and for years I have been intent upon it.
There must be an alteration, Razmann. If you are the man I always took
you for--Razmann! He is missing--he is almost given up--Razmann--
methinks his hour is come. What? does not the color so much as mount to
your cheek when you hear the chimes of liberty ringing in your ears?
Have you not courage enough to take the hint?

RAZ. Ha! Satan! What bait art thou spreading for my soul?

SPIEGEL. Does it take? Good! then follow me! I have marked in what
direction he slunk off. Come along! a brace of pistols seldom fail;
and then--we shall be the first to strangle sucking babes. (He
endeavors to draw him of.)

SCHWEITZER (enraged, draws his sword). Ha! caitiff! I have overheard
you! You remind me, at the right moment, of the Bohemian forest! Were
not you the coward that began to quail when the cry arose, "the enemy is
coming!" I then swore by my soul--(They fight, SPIEGELBERG is killed.)
To the devil with thee, assassin!

ROBBERS (in agitation). Murder! murder!--Schweitzer!--Spiegelberg!--
Part them!

SCHWEITZER (throwing the sword on the body). There let him rot! Be
still, my comrades! Don't let such a trifle disturb you. The brute has
always been inveterate against the captain and has not a single scar on
his whole body. Once more, be still. Ha, the scoundrel! He would stab
a man behind his back--skulk and murder! Is it for this that the hot
sweat has poured down us in streams? that we may sneak out of the world
at last like contemptible wretches? The brute! Is it for this that we
have lived in fire and brimstone? To perish at last like rats?

GRIMM. But what the devil, comrade, were you after? What were you
quarreling about? The captain will be furious.

SCHWEITZER. Be that on my head. And you, wretch (to RAZMANN) you were
his accomplice, you! Get out of my sight! Schufterle was another of
your kidney, but he has met his deserts in Switzerland--has been hanged,
as the captain prophesied. (A shot is heard.)

SCHWARZ (jumping up). Hark! a pistol shot! (Another shot is heard.)
Another! Hallo! the captain!

GRIMM. Patience! If it be he, there will be a third. (The third shot
is heard.)

SCHWARZ. 'Tis he! 'Tis the captain! Absent yourself awhile,
Schweitzer--till we explain to him! (They fire.)

          Enter CHARLES VON MOOR and KOSINSKY.

SCHWEITZER (running to meet them). Welcome, captain. I have been
somewhat choleric in your absence. (He conducts him to the corpse.) Be
you judge between him and me. He meant to waylay and assassinate you.

ROBBERS (in consternation). What; the captain?

CHARLES (after fixing his eyes for some time upon the corpse, with a
sudden burst of feeling). Oh, incomprehensible finger of the avenging
Nemesis! Was it not he whose siren song seduced me to be what I am?
Let this sword be consecrated to the dark goddess of retribution! That
was not thy deed, Schweitzer.

SCHWEITZER. By heaven, it was mine, though! and, as the devil lives,
it is not the worst deed I have done in my time. (Turns away moodily.)

CHARLES (absorbed in thought). I comprehend--Great Ruler in heaven--
I comprehend. The leaves fall from the trees, and my autumn is come.
Remove this object from my sight! (The corpse of SPIEGELBERG is carried
out.)

GRIMM. Give us your orders, captain! What shall we do next?

CHARLES. Soon--very soon--all will be accomplished. Hand me my lute;
I have lost myself since I have been there. My lute, I say--I must
nurse up my strength again. Leave me!

ROBBERS. 'Tis midnight, captain.

CHARLES. They were only stage tears after all. Let me bring to memory
the song of the old Roman, that my slumbering genius may wake up again.
Hand me my lute. Midnight, say you?

SCHWARZ. Yes, and past, too! Our eyes are as heavy as lead. For three
days we have not slept a wink.

CHARLES. What? does balmy sleep visit the eyes of murderers? Why doth
it flee mine? I never was a coward, nor a villain. Lay yourselves to
rest. At day-break we march.

ROBBERS. Good night, captain. (They stretch them selves on the ground
and fall asleep.)

       Profound silence. CHARLES VON MOOR takes up his
              guitar, and plays.

BRUTUS.
Oh, be ye welcome, realms of peace and rest!
Receive the last of all the sons of Rome!
From dread Philippi's field, where all the best
Fell bleeding in her cause, I wearied come.
Cassius, no more! And Rome now prostrate laid!
My brethren all lie weltering in their gore!
No refuge left but Hades' gloomy shade;
No hope remains!--No world for Brutus more!

CAESAR.
Who's he that, with a hero's lofty bearing,
Comes striding o'er yon mountain's rocky bed?
Unless my eyes deceive, that noble daring
Bespeaks the Roman warrior's fearless tread.
Whence, son of Tiber, do thy footsteps bend!
Say, stands the seven-hilled city firmly yet?
No Caesar there, to be the soldiers friend!
Full oft has he that orphaned city wept.

BRUTUS.
Ha! thou of three-and-twenty wounds! Avaunt!
Thou unblest shade, what calls thee back to light?
Down with thee, down, to Pluto's deepest haunt,
And shroud thy form in black, eternal night,
Proud mourner! triumph not to learn our fall!
Phillippi's altars reek with freedom's blood?
The bier of Brutus is Rome's funeral pall;
He Minos seeks. Hence to thy Stygian flood!

CAESAR.
That death-stroke, Brutus, which thy weapon hurled!
Thou, too, Brutus?--that thou shouldst be my foe!
Oh, son! It was thy father! Son! The world
Was thine by heritage! Now proudly go,
Well mayst thou claim to be the chief in glory,
'Twas thy fell sword that pierced thy father's heart!
Now go--and at yon gates relate thy story--
Say Brutus claims to be the chief in glory,
'Twas his fell sword that pierced his father's heart!
Go--Now thou'rt told what staid me on this shore,
Grim ferryman, push off, and swiftly ply thine oar.

BRUTUS.
Stay, father, stay! Within the whole bright round
Of Sol's diurnal course I knew but one
Who to compare with Caesar could be found;
And that one, Caesar, thou didst call thy son!
'Twas only Caesar could destroy a Rome;
Brutus alone that Caesar could withstand--
Where Brutus lives, must Caesar die! Thy home
Be far from mine. I'll seek another land.

        [He lays down his guitar, and walks to and
        fro in deep meditation.]

Who will give me certainty! All is so dark--a confused labyrinth--no
outlet--no guiding star. Were but all to end with this last gasp of
breath. To end, like an empty puppet-show. But why then this burning
thirst after happiness? Wherefore this ideal of unattained perfection?
This looking to an hereafter for the fulfilment of our hopes? If the
paltry pressure of this paltry thing (putting a pistol to his head)
makes the wise man and the fool--the coward and the brave--the noble and
the villain equal?--the harmony which pervades the inanimate world is so
divinely perfect--why, then, should there be such discord in the
intellectual? No! no! there must be something beyond, for I have not
yet attained to happiness.

Think ye that I will tremble, spirits of my slaughtered victims? No,
I will not tremble. (Trembling violently.) The shrieks of your dying
agonies--your black, convulsive features--your ghastly bleeding wounds--
what are they all but links of one indissoluble chain of destiny, which
hung upon the temperament of my father, the life's blood of my mother,
the humors of my nurses and tutors, and even upon the holiday pastimes
of my childhood! (Shaking with horror.) Why has my Perillus made of me
a brazen bull, whose burning entrails yearn after human flesh? (He
lifts the pistol again to his head.)

Time and Eternity!--linked together by a single instant! Fearful key,
which locks behind me the prisonhouse of life, and opens before me the
habitations of eternal night--tell me--oh, tell me--whither--whither
wilt thou lead me? Strange, unexplored land! Humanity is unnerved at
the fearful thought, the elasticity of our finite nature is paralyzed,
and fancy, that wanton ape of the senses, juggles our credulity with
appalling phantoms. No! no! a man must be firm. Be what thou wilt,
thou undefined futurity, so I remain but true to myself. Be what thou
wilt, so I but take this inward self hence with me. External forms are
but the trappings of the man. My heaven and my hell is within.

What if Thou shouldst doom me to be sole inhabitant of some burnt-out
world which thou hast banished from thy sight, where darkness and
never-ending desolation were all my prospect; then would my creative
brain people the silent waste with its own images, and I should have
eternity for leisure to unravel the complicated picture of universal
wretchedness. Or wilt thou make me pass through ever-repeated births
and ever-changing scenes of misery, stage by stage*--to annihilation?

   [This and other passages will remind the reader of Cato's soliloquy
   "It must be so, Plato; thou reasonest well." But the whole bears a
   strong resemblance to Hamlet's "To be or not to be;" and some
   passages in Measure for Measure, Act iii, Sc. 1.]

Can I not burst asunder the life-threads woven for me in another world
as easily as I do these? Thou mayest reduce me into nothing; but Thou
canst not take from me this power. (He loads the pistol, and then
suddenly pauses.) And shall I then rush into death from a coward fear
of the ills of life? Shall I yield to misery the palm of victory over
myself? No! I will endure it! (He flings the pistol away.) Misery
shall blunt its edge against my pride! Be my destiny fulfilled! (It
grows darker and darker.)

HERMANN (coming through the forest). Hark! hark! the owl screeches
horribly--the village clock strikes twelve. Well, well--villainy is
asleep--no listeners in these wilds. (He goes to the castle and
knocks.) Come forth, thou man of sorrow! tenant of the miserable
dungeon! thy meal awaits thee.

CHARLES (stepping gently back, unperceived). What means this?

VOICE (from within the castle). Who knocks? Is it you, Hermann, my
raven?

HERMANN. Yes, 'tis Hermann, your raven. Come to the grating and eat.
(Owls are screeching.) Your night companions make a horrid noise, old
man! Do you relish your repast?

VOICE. Yes--I was very hungry. Thanks to thee, thou merciful sender of
ravens, for this thy bread in the wilderness! And how is my dear child,
Hermann?

HERMANN. Hush!--hark!--A noise like snoring! Don't you hear something?

VOICE. What? Do you hear anything?

HERMANN. 'Tis the whistling of the wind through the crannies of the
tower--a serenading which makes one's teeth chatter, and one's nails
turn blue. Hark! tis there again. I still fancy I hear snoring. You
have company, old man. Ugh! ugh! ugh!

VOICE. Do you see anything?

HERMANN. Farewell! farewell! this is a fearful place. Go down into
your bole,--thy deliverer, thy avenger is above. Oh! accursed son! (Is
about to fly.)

CHARLES (stepping forth with horror). Stand!

HERMANN (screaming). Oh, me!*

   *[In the acting edition Hermann, instead of this, says,--
   'Tis one of his spies for certain, I have lost all fear (draws his
   sword). Villain, defend yourself! You have a man before you.]

   MOOR. I'll have an answer (strikes the sword out of his hand).
   What boots this childish sword-play? Didst thou not speak of
   vengeance? Vengeance belongs especially to me--of all men on
   earth. Who dares interfere with my vocation?

   HERMANN (starts back in affright). By heaven! That man was not
   born of woman. His touch withers like the stroke of death.

   VOICE. Alas, Hermann! to whom are you speaking?

   MOOR. What! still those sounds? What is going on there? (Runs
   towards the tower.) Some horrible mystery, no doubt, lies concealed
   in that tower. This sword shall bring it to light.

   HERMANN (comes forward trembling). Terrible stranger! art thou
   the demon of this fearful desert--or perhaps 'one of the ministers
   of that unfathonable retribution who make their circuit in this
   lower world, and take account of all the deeds of darkness? Oh!
   if thou art, be welcome to this tower of horrors!

   MOOR. Well guessed, wanderer of the night! You have divined my
   function. Exterminating Angel is my name; but I am flesh and blood
   like thee. Is this some miserable wretch, cast out of men, and
   buried in this dungeon? I will loosen his chains. Once more,
   speak! thou voice of terror Where is the door?

   HERMANN. As soon could Satan force the gates of heaven as thou
   that door. Retire, thou man of might! The genius of the wicked is
   beyond the ordinary powers of man.

   MOOR. But not the craft of robbers. (He takes some pass-keys from
   his pocket.) For once I thank heaven I've learned that craft!
   These keys would mock hell's foresight. (He takes a key, and opens
   the gate of the tower. An old man comes from below emaciated like
   a skeleton. MOOR springs back with of right.) Horrible spectre!
   my father!

CHARLES. Stand! I say.

HERMANN. Woe! woe! woe! now all is discovered!

CHARLES. Speak! Who art thou? What brought thee here? Speak!

HERMANN. Mercy, mercy! gracious sir! Hear but one word before you
kill me.

CHARLES (drawing his sword). What am I to hear?

HERMANN. 'Tis true, he forbade me at the peril of my life--but I could
not help it--I dare not do otherwise--a God in heaven--your own
venerable father there--pity for him overcame me. Kill me, if you will!

CHARLES. There's some mystery here--Out with it! Speak! I must know
all.

VOICE (from the castle). Woe! woe! Is it you, Hermann, that are
speaking? To whom are you speaking, Hermann?

CHARLES. Some one else down there? What is the meaning of all this?
(Runs towards the castle.) It is some prisoner whom mankind have cast
off! I will loosen his chains. Voice! Speak! Where is the door?

HERMANN. Oh, have mercy, sir--seek no further, I entreat--for mercy's
sake desist! (He stops his way.)

CHARLES. Locks, bolts, and bars, away! It must come out. Now, for the
first time, come to my aid, thief-craft! (He opens the grated iron door
with, housebreaking tools. An OLD MAN, reduced to a skeleton, comes up
from below.)

THE OLD MAN. Mercy on a poor wretch! Mercy!

CHARLES (starts back in terror). That is my father's voice!

OLD MOOR. I thank thee, merciful Heaven! The hour of deliverance has
arrived.

CHARLES. Shade of the aged Moor! what has disturbed thee in thy grave?
Has thy soul left this earth charged with some foul crime that bars the
gates of Paradise against thee? Say?--I will have masses read, to send
thy wandering spirit to its home. Hast thou buried in the earth the
gold of widows and orphans, that thou art driven to wander howling
through the midnight hour? I will snatch the hidden treasure from the
clutches of the infernal dragon, though he should vomit a thousand
redhot flames upon me, and gnash his sharp teeth against my sword. Or
comest thou, at my request, to reveal to me the mysteries of eternity?
Speak, thou! speak! I am not the man to blanch with fear!

OLD MOOR. I am not a spirit. Touch me--I live but oh! a life indeed of
misery!

CHARLES. What! hast thou not been buried?

OLD MOOR. I was buried--that is to say, a dead dog lies in the vault of
my ancestors, and I have been pining for three long moons in this dark
and loathsome dungeon, where no sunbeam shines, no warm breeze
penetrates, where no friend is seen, where the hoarse raven croaks and
owls screech their midnight concert.

CHARLES. Heaven and earth! Who has done this?

OLD MOOR. Curse him not! 'Tis my son, Francis, who did this.

CHARLES. Francis? Francis? Oh, eternal chaos!

OLD MOOR. If thou art a man, and hast a human heart--oh! my unknown
deliverer--then listen to a father's miseries which his own sons have
heaped upon him. For three long moons I have moaned my pitiful tale to
these flinty walls--but all my answer was an empty echo, that seemed to
mock my wailings. Therefore, if thou art a man, and hast a human
heart--

CHARLES. That appeal might move even wild beasts to pity.

OLD MOOR. I lay upon a sick bed, and had scarcely begun to recover a
little strength, after a dangerous illness, when a man was brought to
me, who pretended that my first-born had fallen in battle. He brought a
sword stained with his blood, and his last farewell--and said that my
curse had driven him into battle, and death, and despair.

CHARLES (turning away in violent agitation). The light breaks in upon
me!

OLD MOOR. Hear me on! I fainted at the dreadful news. They must have
thought me dead; for, when I recovered my senses, I was already in my
coffin, shrouded like a corpse. I scratched against the lid. It was
opened--'twas in the dead of night--my son Francis stood before me--
"What!" said he, with a tremendous voice, "wilt thou then live forever?"
--and with this he slammed-to the lid of the coffin. The thunder of
these words bereft me of my senses; when I awoke again, I felt that the
coffin was in motion, and being borne on wheels. At last it was opened
--I found myself at the entrance of this dungeon--my son stood before
me, and the man, too, who had brought me the bloody sword from Charles.
I fell at my son's feet, and ten times I embraced his knees, and wept,
and conjured, and supplicated, but the supplications of a father reached
not his flinty heart. "Down with the old carcass!" said he, with a
voice of thunder, "he has lived too long;"--and I was thrust down
without mercy, and my son Francis closed the door upon Me.

CHARLES. Impossible!--impossible! Your memory or senses deceive you.

OLD MOOR. Oh, that it were so! But hear me on, and restrain your rage!
There I lay for twenty hours, and not a soul cared for my misery. No
human footstep treads this solitary wild, for 'tis commonly believed
that the ghosts of my ancestors drag clanking chains through these
ruins, and chant their funeral dirge at the hour of midnight. At last
I heard the door creak again on its hinges; this man opened it, and
brought me bread and water. He told me that I had been condemned to die
of hunger, and that his life was in danger should it be discovered that
he fed me. Thus has my miserable existence been till now sustained--but
the unceasing cold--the foul air of my filthy dungeon--my incurable
grief--have exhausted my strength, and reduced my body to a skeleton. A
thousand times have I implored heaven, with tears, to put an end to my
sufferings--but doubtless the measure of my punishment is not
fulfilled,--or some happiness must be yet in store for me, for which he
deigns thus miraculously to preserve me. But I suffer justly--my
Charles! my Charles!--and before there was even a gray hair on his Head!

CHARLES. Enough! Rise! ye stocks, ye lumps of ice! ye lazy unfeeling
sleepers! Up! will none of you awake? (He fires a pistol over their
heads.)

THE ROBBERS (starting up). Ho! hallo! hallo! what is the matter?

CHARLES. Has not that tale shaken you out of your sleep? 'Tis enough
to break the sleep eternal! See here, see here! The laws of the world
have become mere dice-play; the bonds of nature are burst asunder; the
Demon of Discord has broken loose, and stalks abroad triumphant! the Son
has slain his Father!

THE ROBBERS. What does the captain say?

CHARLES. Slain! did I say? No, that is too mild a term! A son has
a thousand-fold broken his own father on the wheel,--impaled, racked,
flayed him alive!--but all these words are too feeble to express what
would make sin itself blush and cannibals shudder. For ages, no devil
ever conceived a deed so horrible. His own father!--but see, see him!
he has fainted away! His own father--the son--into this dungeon--cold--
naked--hungry--athirst--Oh! see, I pray you, see!--'tis my own father,
in very truth it is.

THE ROBBERS (come running and surround the old man). Your father?
Yours?

SCHWEITZER (approaches him reverently, and falls on his knees before
him). Father of my captain! let me kiss thy feet! My dagger is at thy
command.

CHARLES. Revenge, revenge, revenge! thou horribly injured, profaned
old man! Thus, from this moment, and forever, I rend in twain all ties
of fraternity. (He rends his garment from top to bottom.) Here, in the
face of heaven, I curse him--curse every drop of blood which flows in
his veins! Hear me, O moon and stars! and thou black canopy of night,
that lookest down upon this horror! Hear me, thrice terrible avenger.
Thou who reignest above yon pallid orb, who sittest an avenger and a
judge above the stars, and dartest thy fiery bolts through darkness on
the head of guilt! Behold me on my knees behold me raise this hand
aloft in the gloom of night--and hear my oath--and may nature vomit me
forth as some horrible abortion from out the circle of her works if I
break that oath! Here I swear that I will never more greet the light of
day, till the blood of that foul parricide, spilt upon this stone, reeks
in misty vapor towards heaven. (He rises.)

ROBBERS. 'Tis a deed of hell! After this, who shall call us villains?
No! by all the dragons of darkness we never have done anything half so
horrible.

CHARLES. True! and by all the fearful groans of those whom your daggers
have despatched--of those who on that terrible day were consumed by
fire, or crushed by the falling tower--no thought of murder or rapine
shall be harbored in your breast, till every man among you has dyed his
garments scarlet in this monster's blood. It never, I should think,
entered your dreams, that it would fall to your lot to execute the
great decrees of heaven? The tangled web of our destiny is unravelled!
To-day, to-day, an invisible power has ennobled our craft! Worship Him
who has called you to this high destiny, who has conducted you hither,
and deemed ye worthy to be the terrible angels of his inscrutable
judgments! Uncover your heads! Bow down and kiss the dust, and rise up
sanctified. (They kneel.)

SCHWEITZER. Now, captain, issue your commands! What shall we do?

CHARLES. Rise, Schweitzer! and touch these sacred locks! (Leading him
to his father, and putting a lock of hair in his hand.) Do you remember
still, how you, cleft the skull of that Bohemian trooper, at the moment
his sabre was descending on my head, and I had sunk down on my knees,
breathless and exhausted? 'Twas then I promised thee a reward that
should be right royal. But to this hour I have never been able to
discharge that debt.

SCHWEITZER. You swore that much to me, 'tis true; but let me call you
my debtor forever!

CHARLES. No; now will I repay thee, Schweitzer! No mortal has yet been
honored as thou shalt be. I appoint thee avenger of my father's wrongs!
(SCHWEITZER rises.)

SCHWEITZER. Mighty captain! this day you have, for the first time, made
me truly proud! Say, when, where, how shall I smite him?

CHARLES. The minutes are sacred. You must hasten to the work. Choose
the best of the band, and lead them straight to the count's castle!
Drag him from his bed, though he sleep, or he folded in the arms of
pleasure! Drag him from the table, though he be drunk! Tear him from
the crucifix, though he lie on his knees before it! But mark my words--
I charge thee, deliver him into my hands alive! I will hew that man to
pieces, and feed the hungry vultures with his flesh, who dares but graze
his skin, or injure a single hair of his head! I must have him whole.
Bring him to me whole and alive, and a million shall be thy reward.
I'll plunder kings at the risk of my life, but thou shalt have it, and
go free as air. Thou hast my purpose--see it done!

SCHWEITZER. Enough, captain! here is my hand upon it. You shall see
both of us, or neither. Come, Schweitzer's destroying angels, follow
me! (Exit with a troop.)

CHARLES. The rest of you disperse in the forest--I remain here.

                 ACT V.

        SCENE I. A vista of rooms. Dark night.

        Enter DANIEL, with a lantern and a bundle.

DANIEL. Farewell, dear home! How many happy days have I enjoyed within
these walls, while my old master lived. Tears to thy memory, thou whom
the grave has long since devoured! He deserves this tribute from an old
servant. His roof was the asylum of orphans, the refuge of the
destitute, but this son has made it a den of murderers. Farewell, thou
dear floor! How often has old Daniel scrubbed thee! Farewell, dear
stove, old Daniel takes a heavy leave of thee. All things had grown so
familiar to thee,--thou wilt feel it sorely, old Eleazar. But heaven
preserve me through grace from the wiles and assault of the tempter.
Empty I came hither--empty I will depart,--but my soul is saved! (He is
in the act of going out, when he is met by FRANCIS, rushing in, in his
dressing-gown.) Heaven help me! Master! (He puts out his lantern.)

FRANCIS. Betrayed! betrayed! The spirit of the dead are vomited from
their graves. The realm of death, shaken out of its eternal slumber,
roars at me, "Murderer, murderer!" Who moves there?

DANIEL (frightened). Help, holy Virgin! help! Is it you, my gracious
master, whose shrieks echo so terribly through the castle that every one
is aroused out of his sleep?

FRANCIS. Sleep? And who gave thee leave to sleep? Go, get lights!
(Exit DANIEL. Enter another servant.) No one shall sleep at this hour.
Do you hear? All shall be awake--in arms--let the guns be loaded! Did
you not see them rushing through yon vaulted passages?

SERVANT. See whom, my lord?

FRANCIS. Whom? you dolt, slave! And do you, with a cold and vacant
stare, ask me whom? Have they not beset me almost to madness? Whom?
blockhead! whom? Ghosts and demons! How far is the night advanced?

SERVANT. The watch has just called two.

FRANCIS. What? will this eternal night last till doomsday? Did you
hear no tumult near? no shout of victory? no trampling of horses?
Where is Char--the Count, I would say?

SERVANT. I know not, my lord.

FRANCIS. You know not? And are you too one of his gang? I'll tread
your villain's heart out through your ribs for that infernal "I know
not!" Begone, fetch the minister!

SERVANT. My lord!

FRANCIS. What! Do you grumble? Do you demur? (Exit servant hastily.)
Do my very slaves conspire against me? Heaven, earth, and hell--all
conspire against me!

DANIEL (returns with a lighted candle). My lord!

FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No!--'twas but a dream. The dead still
rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm--quite
tranquil.

DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and
faltering.

FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you
say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning.

DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar?

FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here
just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of
life on sugar!

DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it.

FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay!--or I will go with you. You see I must not
be left alone! How easily I might, you see--faint--if I should be left
alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off--you must not leave
me.

DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill.

FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know,
bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What
signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify
anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now.
(He sinks down fainting.)

DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George!--Conrad!
Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the
Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I
have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me!

FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt!--avaunt!--why dost thou glare upon me thus,
thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not
yet come.

DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses.

FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel?
What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said.
Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium--because--because--I
have not finished my night's rest.

DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help--I'll send for the
physician.

FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are
a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream!

DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great
need of rest.

FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at
me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart
was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all
on a sudden--it was at midday--and all on a sudden--but mind you have a
good laugh at me!

DANIEL. All on a sudden.

FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my
slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed
as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire,
and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the
furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the
earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen
trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open
plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones,
and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping
along in dense, interminable masses--a living deluge. Then I looked up,
and lo! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a
multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain,
on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation
trembled.

DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment.

FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one
stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in
his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and
the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one
truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!"
Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror,
which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the
mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I
terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers,
and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a
third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between
the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh
your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight
of my fury!"

DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me!

FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting
with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name
called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the
innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly.
Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth
thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left
scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin!

DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you!

FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the
other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last
came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through
with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I
knew the man--he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the
scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and
the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing
like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch
(smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to
every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!"
(A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh?

DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above.

FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an
absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty
laugh at me!

DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you.

FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick!
see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly,
instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest!

DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you!
                             [Exit.]

FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been
proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye
above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph!
But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an
avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor
within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth!
What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say.
All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge,
beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should
be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it
cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should
all have been registered above!--if they should be counted over to thee
this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die!
Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger,
there, above the stars! and if he should be just--the wails of orphans
and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and
he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been
permitted to trample upon them?

              Enter PASTOR MOSER.

MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in
my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you
tremble?

FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer
me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to
make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the
peril of your life you shall answer me.

MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He
will answer you hereafter.

FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit
the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the
pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly
pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to
you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with
all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will
blow them away.

MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will
alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons'
weight! That omniscient God, whom you--fool and miscreant--are denying
in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the
mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest
smile of triumphant virtue.

FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you.

MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing
one who, like myself, is a sinner--one whom I care not to please. I
must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from
your obdurate wickedness--but if your conviction is so firm, why have
you sent for me in the middle of the night?

FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has
ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with
the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well
aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to
eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that
our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its
last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the
infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its
dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of
water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which
borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation
is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken,
cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles--if I dash this Venus to
pieces--there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is
it with your immortal soul!

MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart,
which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue,
gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by
the single word--"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the
test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your
principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to
have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least
shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself.

FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me?

MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at
defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion
vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying--I should
much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you
steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand,
and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks
up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid
is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard
and Nero!

FRANCIS. No! no!

MOSER. Even that very "No" will then be turned to a howling "Yea!" An
inward tribunal, which you can no longer cheat with sceptical delusions,
will then wake up and pass judgment upon you. But the waking up will be
like that of one buried alive in the bowels of the churchyard; there
will come remorse like that of the suicide who has committed the fatal
act and repents it;--'twill be a flash of lightning suddenly breaking in
upon the midnight darkness of your life! There will be one look, and,
if you can sustain that, I will admit that you have won!

FRANCIS (walking up and down restlessly). Cant! Priestly cant!

MOSER. Then, for the first time, will the sword of eternity pass
through your soul;--and then, for the first time, too late, the thought
of God will wake up a terrible monitor, whose name is Judge. Mark this,
Moor; a thousand lives hang upon your beck; and of those thousand every
nine hundred and ninety-nine have been rendered miserable by you. You
wanted but the Roman empire to be a Nero, the kingdom of Peru to be a
Pizarro. Now do you really think that the Almighty will suffer a worm
like you to play the tyrant in His world and to reverse all his
ordinances? Do you think the nine hundred and ninety-nine were created
only to be destroyed, only to serve as puppets in your diabolical game?
Think it not! He will call you to account for every minute of which you
have robbed them, every joy that you have poisoned, every perfection
that you have intercepted. Then, if you can answer Him--then, Moor,
I will admit that you have won.

FRANCIS. No more, not another word! Am I to be at the mercy of thy
drivelling fancies?

MOSER. Beware! The different destinies of mankind are balanced with
terrible nicety. The scale of life which sinks here will rise there,
and that which rises here will sink there. What was here temporary
affliction will there be eternal triumph; and what here was temporary
triumph will there be eternal despair.

FRANCIS (rushing savagely upon him.) May the thunder of heaven strike
thee dumb, thou lying spirit! I will tear thy venomed tongue out of thy
mouth!

MOSER. Do you so soon feel the weight of truth? Before I have brought
forward one single word of evidence? Let me first proceed to the
proofs--