Read Ebook: The Works of Frederick Schiller by Schiller Friedrich

Font size: 10 px 15 px 20 px 25 px 30 px 35 px

Background color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Text color: BlackWhiteGrayLight GrayDark GrayDim Gray

Apply/Save settings

Ebook has 4671 lines and 353816 words, and 94 pages

FRANCIS. A most amiable and precious child-whose constant study is to get rid of his father. Oh, that you could learn to see clearly! that the film might be removed from your eyes! But your indulgence must confirm him in his vices! your assistance tend to justify them. Doubtless you will avert the curse of Heaven from his head, but on your own, father--on yours--will it fall with twofold vengeance.

OLD M. Just! most just! Mine, mine be all the guilt!

FRANCIS. How many thousands who have drained the voluptuous bowl of pleasure to the dregs have been reclaimed by suffering! And is not the bodily pain which follows every excess a manifest declaration of the divine will! And shall man dare to thwart this by an impious exercise of affection? Shall a father ruin forever the pledge committed to his charge? Consider, father, if you abandon him for a time to the pressure of want will not he be obliged to turn from his wickedness and repent? Otherwise, untaught even in the great school of adversity, he must remain a confirmed reprobate? And then--woe to the father who by a culpable tenderness bath frustrated the ordinances of a higher wisdom! Well, father?

OLD M. I will write to him that I withdraw my protection.

FRANCIS. That would be wise and prudent.

OLD M. That he must never come into my sight again

FRANCIS. 'Twill have a most salutary effect.

OLD M. . Until he reforms.

FRANCIS. Right, quite right. But suppose that he comes disguised in the hypocrite's mask, implores your compassion with tears, and wheedles from you a pardon, then quits you again on the morrow, and jests at your weakness in the arms of his harlot. No, my father! He will return of his own accord, when his conscience awakens him to repentance.

OLD M. I will write to him, on the spot, to that effect.

FRANCIS. Stop, father, one word more. Your just indignation might prompt reproaches too severe, words which might break his heart--and then--do you not think that your deigning to write with your own hand might be construed into an act of forgiveness? It would be better, I think, that you should commit the task to me?

OLD M. Do it, my son. Ah! it would, indeed, have broken my heart! Write to him that--

FRANCIS . That's agreed, then?

OLD M. Say that he has caused me a thousand bitter tears--a thousand sleepless nights--but, oh! do not drive my son to despair!

FRANCIS. Had you not better retire to rest, father? This affects you too strongly.

OLD M. Write to him that a father's heart--But I charge you, drive him not to despair.

FRANCIS . Make thyself easy, old dotard! thou wilt never more press thy darling to thy bosom--there is a gulf between thee and him impassable as heaven is from hell. He was torn from thy arms before even thou couldst have dreamed it possible to decree the separation. Why, what a sorry bungler should I be had I not skill enough to pluck a son from a father's heart; ay, though he were riveted there with hooks of steel! I have drawn around thee a magic circle of curses which he cannot overleap. Good speed to thee, Master Francis. Papa's darling is disposed of--the course is clear. I must carefully pick up all the scraps of paper, for how easily might my handwriting be recognized. And grief will soon make an end of the old gentleman. And as for her-- I must tear this Charles from her heart, though half her life come with him.

Well! these are all most admirable institutions for keeping fools in awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares--yes I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, but my lord claps spurs to his hunter, and away he gallops over the teeming harvest!

Poor hare! thou playest but a sorry part in this world's drama, but your worshipful lords must needs have hares!

CHARLES VON MOOR intent on a book; SPIEGELBERG drinking at the table.

CHARLES VON M. . I am disgusted with this age of puny scribblers when I read of great men in my Plutarch.

SPIEGEL. . Josephus is the book you should read.

A French abbe lays it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose, lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio, because they are obliged to construe them.

SPIEGEL. Spouted in true Alexandrian style.

CHARLES VON M. A brilliant reward for your sweat in the battle-field truly to have your existence perpetuated in gymnasiums, and your immortality laboriously dragged about in a schoolboy's satchel. A precious recompense for your lavished blood to be wrapped round gingerbread by some Nuremberg chandler, or, if you have great luck, to be screwed upon stilts by a French playwright, and be made to move on wires! Ha, ha, ha!

SPIEGEL. . Read Josephus, I tell you.

CHARLES VON M. Fie! fie upon this weak, effeminate age, fit for nothing but to ponder over the deeds of former times, and torture the heroes of antiquity with commentaries, or mangle them in tragedies. The vigor of its loins is dried up, and the propagation of the human species has become dependent on potations of malt liquor.

SPIEGEL. Tea, brother! tea!

CHARLES VON M. They curb honest nature with absurd conventionalities; have scarcely the heart to charge a glass, because they are tasked to drink a health in it; fawn upon the lackey that he may put in a word for them with His Grace, and bully the unfortunate wight from whom they have nothing to fear. They worship any one for a dinner, and are just as ready to poison him should he chance to outbid them for a feather-bed at an auction. They damn the Sadducee who fails to come regularly to church, although their own devotion consists in reckoning up their usurious gains at the very altar. They cast themselves on their knees that they may have an opportunity of displaying their mantles, and hardly take their eyes off the parson from their anxiety to see how his wig is frizzled. They swoon at the sight of a bleeding goose, yet clap their hands with joy when they see their rival driven bankrupt from the Exchange. Warmly as I pressed their hands,--"Only one more day." In vain! To prison with the dog! Entreaties! Vows! Tears! . Hell and the devil!

SPIEGEL. And all for a few thousand paltry ducats!

Set me at the head of an army of fellows like myself, and out of Germany shall spring a republic compared to which Rome and Sparta will be but as nunneries.

SPIEGEL. . Bravo! Bravissimo! you are coming to the right key now. I have something for your ear, Moor, which has long been on my mind, and you are the very man for it--drink, brother, drink! What if we turned Jews and brought the kingdom of Jerusalem again on the tapis? But tell me is it not a clever scheme? We send forth a manifesto to the four quarters of the world, and summon to Palestine all that do not eat Swineflesh. Then I prove by incontestable documents that Herod the Tetrarch was my direct ancestor, and so forth. There will be a victory, my fine fellow, when they return and are restored to their lands, and are able to rebuild Jerusalem. Then make a clean sweep of the Turks out of Asia while the iron is hot, hew cedars in Lebanon, build ships, and then the whole nation shall chaffer with old clothes and old lace throughout the world. Meanwhile--

CHARLES VON M. . Comrade! There must be an end now of our fooleries.

You sent for doctors--a whole posse of them--and offered three ducats to any one who would write a prescription for your dog. We were afraid the gentlemen would stand too much upon honor and refuse, and had already made up our minds to use force. But this was quite unnecessary; the doctors got to fisticuffs for the three ducats, and their competition brought down the price to three groats; in the course of an hour a dozen prescriptions were written, of which, of course, the poor beast very soon died.

CHARLES VON M. The vile rascals.

CHARLES VON M. And are you not ashamed to boast of these things? Have you not shame enough in you to blush even at the recollection of such pranks?

SPIEGEL. Come, come! You are no longer the same Moor. Do you remember how, a thousand times, bottle in hand, you made game of the miserly old governor, bidding him by all means rake and scrape together as much as he could, for that you would swill it all down your throat? Don't you remember, eh?--don't you remember?' O you good-for-nothing, miserable braggart! that was speaking like a man, and a gentleman, but--

CHARLES VON M. A curse on you for reminding me of it! A curse on myself for what I said! But it was done in the fumes of wine, and my heart knew not what my tongue uttered.

CHARLES VON M. And to what does all this tend?

SPIEGEL. To this--that you may be taught that strength grows with the occasion. For which reason I never despair even when things are the worst. Courage grows with danger. Powers of resistance increase by pressure. It is evident by the obstacles she strews in my path that fate must have designed me for a great man.

CHARLES VON M. . I am not aware of anything for which we still require courage, and have not already shown it.

CHARLES VON M. . How now? I should not wonder if your proficiency went further still.

SPIEGEL. I begin to think you mistrust me. Only wait till I have grown warm at it; you shall see wonders; your little brain shall whirl clean round in your pericranium when my teeming wit is delivered. How it clears up within me! Great thoughts are dawning in on my soul! Gigantic plans are fermenting in my creative brain. Cursed lethargy , which has hitherto enchained my faculties, cramped and fettered my prospects! I awake; I feel what I am--and what I am to be!

CHARLES VON M. You are a fool! The wine is swaggering in your brain.

CHARLES VON M. A pleasant journey to you! I leave you to climb to the summit of glory on the pillars of infamy. In the shade of my ancestral groves, in the arms of my Amelia, a nobler joy awaits me. I have already, last week, written to my father to implore his forgiveness, and have not concealed the least circumstance from him; and where there is sincerity there is compassion and help. Let us take leave of each other, Moritz. After this day we shall meet no more. The post has arrived. My father's forgiveness must already be within the walls of this town.

Enter SCHWEITZER, GRIMM, ROLLER, SCHUFTERLE, and RAZMAN.

ROLLER. Are you aware that they are on our track!

GRIMM. That we are not for a moment safe from being taken?

CHARLES VON M. I don't wonder at it. It must be as it will! Have none of you seen Schwarz? Did he say anything about having a letter for me?

ROLLER. He has been long in search of you on some such errand, I suspect.

CHARLES VON M. Where is he? where, where? .

Share on: WhatsApp @Hash Facebook Tweet