The Robbers by Friedrich Schiller (ebook reader that looks like a book txt) 📕

lighted candle). My lord!

FRANCIS. Who said I trembled? No! - 'twas but a dream. The dead still rest in their graves! Tremble! or pale? No, no! I am calm - quite tranquil.

DANIEL. You are as pale as death, my lord; your voice is weak and faltering.

FRANCIS. I am somewhat feverish. When the minister comes be sure you say I am in a fever. Say that I intend to be bled in the morning.

DANIEL. Shall I give you some drops of the balsam of life on sugar?

FRANCIS. Yes, balsam of life on sugar! The minister will not be here just yet. My voice is weak and faltering. Give me of the balsam of life on sugar!

DANIEL. Let me have the keys, I will go down to the closet and get it.

FRANCIS. No! no! no! Stay! - or I will go with you. You see I must not be left alone! How easily I might, you see - faint - if I should be left alone. Never mind, never mind! It will pass off - you must not leave me.

DANIEL. Indeed, Sir, you are ill, very ill.

FRANCIS. Yes, just so, just so, nothing more. And illness, you know, bewilders the brain, and breeds strange and maddening dreams. What signify dreams? Dreams come from the stomach and cannot signify anything. Is it not so, Daniel? I had a very comical dream just now. (He sinks down fainting.)

DANIEL. Oh, merciful heaven! what is this? George! - Conrad! Sebastian! Martin! Give but some sign of life! (Shaking him.) Oh, the Blessed Virgin! Oh, Joseph! Keep but your reason! They will say I have murdered him! Lord have mercy upon me!

FRANCIS (confused). Avaunt! - avaunt! - why dost thou glare upon me thus, thou horrible spectre? The time for the resurrection of the dead is not yet come.

DANIEL. Merciful heavens! he has lost his senses.

FRANCIS (recovering himself gradually). Where am I? You here, Daniel? What have I said? Heed it not. I have told a lie, whatever I said. Come, help me up! 'T was only a fit of delirium - because - because - I have not finished my night's rest.

DANIEL. If John were but here! I'll call for help - I'll send for the physician.

FRANCIS. Stay! Seat yourself by my side on this sofa! There. You are a sensible man, a good man. Listen to my dream!

DANIEL. Not now; another time! Let me lead you to bed; you have great need of rest.

FRANCIS. No, no; I prythee, listen, Daniel, and have a good laugh at me. You must know I fancied that I held a princely banquet, my heart was merry, and I lay stretched on the turf in the castle garden; and all on a sudden - it was at midday - and all on a sudden - but mind you have a good laugh at me!

DANIEL. All on a sudden.

FRANCIS. All on a sudden a tremendous peal of thunder struck upon my slumbering ear; I started up staggering and trembling; and lo, it seemed as if the whole hemisphere had burst forth in one flaming sheet of fire, and mountains, and cities, and forests melted away like wax in the furnace; and then rose a howling whirlwind, which swept before it the earth, and the sea, and heaven; then came a sound, as from brazen trumpets, "Earth, give up thy dead: sea, give up thy dead!" and the open plains began to heave, and to cast up skulls, and ribs, and jawbones, and legs, which drew together into human bodies, and then came sweeping along in dense, interminable masses - a living deluge. Then I looked up, and to! I stood at the foot of the thundering Sinai, and above me was a multitude, and below me a multitude; and on the summit of the mountain, on three smoking thrones, sat three men, before whose gaze all creation trembled.

DANIEL. Why, this is a living picture of the day of judgment.

FRANCIS. Did I not tell you? Is it not ridiculous stuff? And one stepped forth who, to look upon, was like a starlight night; he had in his hand a signet ring of iron, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Eternal, holy, just, immutable! There is but one truth; there is but one virtue! Woe, woe, woe! to the doubting sinner!" Then stepped forth a second, who had in his hand a flashing mirror, which he held up between the east and west, and said, "This is the mirror of truth; hypocrisy and deceit cannot look on it." Then was I terrified, and so were all, for we saw the forms of snakes, and tigers, and leopards reflected from that fearful mirror. Then stepped forth a third, who had in his hand a brazen balance, which he held up between the east and the west, and said, "Approach, ye sons of Adam! I weigh your thoughts in the balance of my wrath! and your deeds with the weight of my fury!"

DANIEL. The Lord have mercy upon me!

FRANCIS. They all stood pale and trembling, and every heart was panting with fearful expectation. Then it seemed to me as if I heard my name called the first from out the thunders of the mountain, and the innermost marrow froze within my bones, and my teeth chattered loudly. Presently the clang of the balance was heard, the rocks sent forth thunders, and the hours glided by, one after the other, towards the left scale, and each threw into it a mortal sin!

DANIEL. Oh, may God forgive you!

FRANCIS. He forgave me not! The left scale grew mountains high, but the other, filled with the blood of atonement, still outweighed it. At last came an old man, heavily bowed down with grief, his arm gnawed through with raging hunger. Every eye turned away in horror from the sight. I knew the man - he cut off a lock of his silver hair, and cast it into the scale of my sins, when to! in an instant, it sank down to the abyss, and the scale of atonement flew up on high. Then heard I a voice, issuing like thunder from the bowels *[Some editions of the original read Rauch (smoke), some Bauch, as translated.] of the mountain, "Pardon, pardon to every sinner of the earth and of the deep! Thou alone art rejected!" (A profound pause.) Well, why don't you laugh?

DANIEL. Can I laugh while my flesh creeps? Dreams come from above.

FRANCIS. Pshaw! pshaw! Say not so! Call me a fool, an idiot, an absurd fool! Do, there's a good Daniel, I entreat of you; have a hearty laugh at me!

DANIEL. Dreams come from God. I will pray for you.

FRANCIS. Thou liest, I tell thee. Go, this instant, run! be quick! see where the minister tarries all this time; tell him to come quickly, instantly! But, I tell thee, thou liest!

DANIEL. Heaven have mercy upon you!
[Exit.]

FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above! - if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just - the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them?

Enter PASTOR MOSER.

MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble?

FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me.

MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter.

FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away.

MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you - fool and miscreant - are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue.

FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you.

MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner - one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness - but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night?

FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles - if I dash this Venus to pieces - there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your