*[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.]