_To them enter the_ COUNTESS
COUNTESS.
This suspense,
This horrid fear--I can no longer bear it.
For heaven's sake tell me what has taken place?
ILLO.
The regiments are all falling off from us.
TERZKY.
Octavio Piccolomini is a traitor.
COUNTESS.
O my foreboding! [_Rushes out of the room_.]
TERZKY.
Hadst thou but believed me!
Now seest thou how the stars have lied to thee.
[Illustration: WALLENSTEIN HEARS OF OCTAVIO'S TREASON As
performed at the Municipal Theatre, Hamburg, 1906.]
WALLENST.
The stars lie not; but we have here a work
Wrought counter to the stars and destiny.
The science is still honest: this false heart
Forces a lie on the truth-telling heaven.
On a divine law divination rests;
Where nature deviates from that law, and stumbles
Out of her limits, there all science errs.
True I did not suspect! Were it superstition
Never by such suspicion t' have affronted
The human form, O may that time ne'er come
In which I shame me of the infirmity.
The wildest savage drinks not with the victim,
Into whose breast he means to plunge the sword.
This, this, Octavio, was no hero's deed:
'Twas not thy prudence that did conquer mine;
A bad heart triumph'd o'er an honest one.
No shield received the assassin stroke; thou plungest
Thy weapon on an unprotected breast--
Against such weapons I am but a child.