So you have nothing to ask menothing?
I have been waiting for a word from you.
And could you then endure in all this time
Not once to speak his name?
[THEKLA remaining silent, the COUNTESS rises and advances to her.]
Why, how comes this!
Perhaps I am already grown superfluous,
And other ways exist, besides through me?
Confess it to me, Thekla: have you seen him?
THEKLA.
Today and yesterday I have not seen him.
COUNTESS.
And not heard from him, either? Come, be open.
THEKLA.
No syllable.
COUNTESS.
And still you are so calm?
THEKLA.
I am.
COUNTESS.
May 't please you, leave us, Lady Neubrunn. [Exit LADY NEUBRUNN.]
SCENE II
The COUNTESS, THEKLA
COUNTESS.
It does not please me, Princess, that he holds
Himself so still, exactly at this time.
THEKLA.
Exactly at this time?
COUNTESS.
He now knows all:
'Twere now the moment to declare himself.
THEKLA.
If I'm to understand you, speak less darkly.
COUNTESS.
'Twas for that purpose that I bade her leave us.
Thekla, you are no more a child. Your heart
Is now no more in nonage: for you love,
And boldness dwells with lovethat you have proved
Your nature molds itself upon your father's
More than your mother's spirit. Therefore may you
Hear, what were too much for her fortitude.
THEKLA.
Enough: no further preface, I entreat you.
At once, out with it! Be it what it may,
It is not possible that it should torture me
More than this introduction. What have you
To say to me? Tell me the whole, and briefly!
COUNTESS.
You'll not be frighten'd
THEKLA.
Name it, I entreat you.
COUNTESS.
It lies within your power to do your father
A weighty service
THEKLA.
Lies within my power?
COUNTESS.
Max Piccolomini loves you. You can link him
Indissolubly to your father.
THEKLA.
I?
What need of me for that? And is he not
Already link'd to him?
COUNTESS.
He was.
THEKLA.
And wherefore
Should he not be so nownot be so always?
COUNTESS.
He cleaves to the Emperor too.
THEKLA.
Not more than duty
And honor may demand of him.
COUNTESS.
We ask
Proofs of his love, and not proofs of his honor.
Duty and honor!
Those are ambiguous words with many meanings.
You should interpret them for him: his love
Should be the sole definer of his honor.
THEKLA.
How?
COUNTESS.
The Emperor or you must he renounce.
THEKLA.
He will accompany my father gladly
In his retirement. From himself you heard,
How much he wish'd to lay aside the sword.
COUNTESS.
He must not lay the sword aside, we mean;
He must unsheath it in your father's cause.
THEKLA.
He'll spend with gladness and alacrity
His life, his heart's blood in my father's cause,
If shame or injury be intended him.
COUNTESS.
You will not understand me. Well, hear then:
Your father has fallen off from the Emperor,
And is about to join the enemy
With the whole soldiery
THEKLA.
Alas, my mother!
COUNTESS.
There needs a great example to draw on
The army after him. The Piccolomini
Possess the love and reverence of the troops;
They govern all opinions, and wherever
They lead the way none hesitate to follow.
The son secures the father to our interests
You've much in your hands at this moment.
THEKLA.
Ah!
My miserable mother! what a death-stroke
Awaits thee!No! she never will survive it.
COUNTESS.
She will accommodate her soul to that
Which is and must be. I do know your mother;
The far-off future weighs upon her heart
With torture of anxiety; but is it
Unalterably, actually present,
She soon resigns herself, and bears it calmly.
THEKLA.
O my foreboding bosom! Even now,
E'en now 'tis here, that icy hand of horror!
And my young hope lies shuddering in its grasp;
I knew it wellno sooner had I enter'd,
An heavy ominous presentiment
Reveal'd to me that spirits of death were hovering
Over my happy fortune. But why think I
First of myself? My mother! O my mother!
COUNTESS.
Calm yourself! Break not out in vain lamenting!
Preserve you for your father the firm friend,
And for yourself the lover, all will yet
Prove good and fortunate.
THEKLA.
Prove good! What good?
Must we not part?part ne'er to meet again?
COUNTESS.
He parts not from you! He cannot part from you.
THEKLA.
Alas for his sore anguish! It will rend
His heart asunder.
COUNTESS.
If indeed he loves you,
His resolution will be speedily taken.
THEKLA.
His resolution will be speedily taken
O do not doubt of that! A resolution!
Does there remain one to be taken?
COUNTESS.
Hush,
Collect yourself! I hear your mother coming.
THEKLA.
How shall I bear to see her?
COUNTESS.
Collect yourself.
SCENE III
To them enter the DUCHESS
DUCHESS (to the COUNTESS).
Who was here, sister? I heard someone talking,
And passionately too.
COUNTESS.
Nay! there was no one.
DUCHESS.
I am grown so timorous, every trifling noise
Scatters my spirits, and announces to me
The footstep of some messenger of evil.
And you can tell me, sister, what the event is?
Will he agree to do the Emperor's pleasure,
And send the horse-regiments to the Cardinal?
Tell me, has he dismiss'd Von Questenberg
With a favorable answer?
COUNTESS.
No, he has not.
With a favorable answer?
COUNTESS.
No, he has not.
DUCHESS.
Alas! then all is lost! I see it coming,
The worst that can come! Yes, they will depose him;
The accursed business of the Regensburg diet
Will all be acted o'er again!
COUNTESS.
No! never!
Make your heart easy, sister, as to that.
[THEKLA, in extreme agitation, throws herself upon her mother, and enfolds her in her arms, weeping.]
DUCHESS
Yes, my poor child!
Thou too hast lost a most affectionate godmother
In the Empress. O that stern unbending man!
In this unhappy marriage what have I
Not suffer'd, not endured? For even as if
I had been link'd on to some wheel of fire
That restless, ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward,
I have pass'd a life of frights and horrors with him,
And ever to the brink of some abyss
With dizzy headlong violence he bears me.
Nay, do not weep, my child. Let not my sufferings
Presignify unhappiness to thee,
Nor blacken with their shade the fate that waits thee.
There lives no second Friedland: thou, my child,
Hast not to fear thy mother's destiny.
THEKLA.
O let us supplicate him, dearest mother!
Quick! quick! here's no abiding place for us.
Here every coming hour broods into life
Some new affrightful monster.
DUCHESS.
Thou wilt share
An easier, calmer lot, my child! We too,
I and thy father, witnessed happy days.
Still think I with delight of those first years,
When he was making progress with glad effort,
When his ambition was a genial fire,
Not that consuming flame which now it is.
The Emperor loved him, trusted him: and all
He undertook could not but be successful.
But since that ill-starr'd day at Regensburg,
Which plunged him headlong from his dignity,
A gloomy uncompanionable spirit,
Unsteady and suspicious, has possess'd him.
His quiet mind forsook him, and no longer
Did he yield up himself in joy and faith
To his old luck and individual power;
But thenceforth turn'd his heart and best affections
All to those cloudy sciences, which never
Have yet made happy him who follow'd them.
COUNTESS.
You see it, sister, as your eyes permit you,
But surely this is not the conversation
To pass the time in which we are waiting for him.
You know he will be soon here. Would you have him
Find her in this condition?
DUCHESS.
Come, my child!
Come wipe away thy tears, and show thy father
A cheerful countenance. See, the tie-knot here
Is offthis hair must not hang so dishevell'd.
Come, dearest! dry thy tears up. They deform
Thy gentle eye.Well nowwhat was I saying?
Yes, in good truth, this Piccolomini
Is a most noble and deserving gentleman.
COUNTESS.
That is he, sister!
THEKLA (to the COUNTESS, with marks of great oppression of spirits).
Aunt, you will excuse me?
[Is going.]
COUNTESS.
But whither? See, your father comes.
THEKLA.
I cannot see him now.
COUNTESS.
Nay, but bethink you.
THEKLA.
Believe me, I cannot sustain his presence.
COUNTESS.
But he will miss you, will ask after you.
DUCHESS.
What now? Why is she going?
COUNTESS.
She's not well.
DUCHESS (anxiously).
What ails then my beloved child?
[Both follow the PRINCESS, and endeavor to detain her. During this WALLENSTEIN appears, engaged in conversation with ILLO.]
SCENE IV
WALLENSTEIN, ILLO, COUNTESS, DUCHESS, THEKLA
WALLENST
All quiet in the camp?
ILLO.
It is all quiet.
WALLENST.
In a few hours may couriers come from Prague
With tidings that this capital is ours.
Then we may drop the mask, and to the troops
Assembled in this town make known the measure
And its result together. In such cases
Example does the whole. Whoever is foremost
Still leads the herd. An imitative creature
Is man. The troops at Prague conceive no other
Than that the Pilsen army has gone through
The forms of homage to us; and in Pilsen
They shall swear fealty to us, because
The example has been given them by Prague.
Butler, you tell me, has declared himself?
ILLO.
At his own bidding, unsolicited,
He came to offer you himself and regiment.
WALLENST.
I find we must not give implicit credence
To every warning voice that makes itself
Be listen'd to in the heart. To hold us back,
Oft does the lying Spirit counterfeit
The voice of Truth and inward Revelation,
Scattering false oracles. And thus have I
To entreat forgiveness, for that secretly
I've wrong'd this honorable, gallant man,
This Butler: for a feeling, of the which
I am not master (fear I would not call it),
Creeps o'er me instantly, with sense of shuddering
At his approach, and stops love's joyous motion.
And this same man, against whom I am warn'd,
This honest man is he, who reaches to me
The first pledge of my fortune.
ILLO.
And doubt not
That his example will win over to you
The best men in the army.
WALLENSTEIN.
Go and send
Isolani hither. Send him immediately;
He is under recent obligations to me:
With him will I commence the trial. Go.
[Exit ILLO.]
WALLENSTEIN (turns himself round to the females