The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller (large screen ebook reader .TXT) 📖

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