Wilhelm Tell by Friedrich Schiller (best books for students to read .txt) 📕

has returned). Lives he?
[TASKMASTER shakes his head.
Ill-fated towers, with curses built, And doomed with curses to be tenanted!

[Exit.


SCENE IV.

The House of WALTER FURST. WALTER FURST and ARNOLD
VON MELCHTHAL enter simultaneously at different sides.

MELCHTHAL. Good Walter Furst.

FURST.
If we should be surprised! Stay where you are. We are beset with spies.

MELCHTHAL. Have you no news for me from Unterwald? What of my father? 'Tis not to be borne, Thus to be pent up like a felon here! What have I done of such a heinous stamp, To skulk and hide me like a murderer? I only laid my staff across the fingers Of the pert varlet, when before my eyes, By order of the governor, he tried To drive away my handsome team of oxen.

FURST. You are too rash by far. He did no more Than what the governor had ordered him. You had transgressed, and therefore should have paid The penalty, however hard, in silence.

MELCHTHAL. Was I to brook the fellow's saucy words? "That if the peasant must have bread to eat; Why, let him go and draw the plough himself!" It cut me to the very soul to see My oxen, noble creatures, when the knave Unyoked them from the plough. As though they felt The wrong, they lowed and butted with their horns. On this I could contain myself no longer, And, overcome by passion, struck him down.

FURST. Oh, we old men can scarce command ourselves! And can we wonder youth shall break its bounds?

MELCHTHAL. I'm only sorry for my father's sake! To be away from him, that needs so much My fostering care! The governor detests him, Because he hath, whene'er occasion served, Stood stoutly up for right and liberty. Therefore they'll bear him hard - the poor old man! And there is none to shield him from their gripe. Come what come may, I must go home again.

FURST. Compose yourself, and wait in patience till We get some tidings o'er from Unterwald. Away! away! I hear a knock! Perhaps A message from the viceroy! Get thee in! You are not safe from Landenberger's [6] arm In Uri, for these tyrants pull together.

MELCHTHAL. They teach us Switzers what we ought to do.

FURST. Away! I'll call you when the coast is clear.

[MELCHTHAL retires.

Unhappy youth! I dare not tell him all The evil that my boding heart predicts! Who's there? The door ne'er opens but I look For tidings of mishap. Suspicion lurks With darkling treachery in every nook. Even to our inmost rooms they force their way, These myrmidons of power; and soon we'll need To fasten bolts and bars upon our doors.

[He opens the door and steps back in surprise as
WERNER STAUFFACHER enters.

What do I see? You, Werner? Now, by Heaven! A valued guest, indeed. No man e'er set His foot across this threshold more esteemed. Welcome! thrice welcome, Werner, to my roof! What brings you here? What seek you here in Uri?

STAUFFACHER (shakes FURST by the hand). The olden times and olden Switzerland.

FURST. You bring them with you. See how I'm rejoiced, My heart leaps at the very sight of you. Sit down - sit down, and tell me how you left Your charming wife, fair Gertrude? Iberg's child, And clever as her father. Not a man, That wends from Germany, by Meinrad's Cell, [7] To Italy, but praises far and wide Your house's hospitality. But say, Have you come here direct from Flueelen, And have you noticed nothing on your way, Before you halted at my door?

STAUFFACHER (sits down).
I saw A work in progress, as I came along, I little thought to see - that likes me ill.

FURST. O friend! you've lighted on my thought at once.

STAUFFACHER. Such things in Uri ne'er were known before. Never was prison here in man's remembrance, Nor ever any stronghold but the grave.

FURST. You name it well. It is the grave of freedom.

STAUFFACHER. Friend, Walter Furst, I will be plain with you. No idle curiosity it is That brings me here, but heavy cares. I left Thraldom at home, and thraldom meets me here. Our wrongs, e'en now, are more than we can bear. And who shall tell us where they are to end? From eldest time the Switzer has been free, Accustomed only to the mildest rule. Such things as now we suffer ne'er were known Since herdsmen first drove cattle to the hills.

FURST. Yes, our oppressions are unparalleled! Why, even our own good lord of Attinghaus, Who lived in olden times, himself declares They are no longer to be tamely borne.

STAUFFACHER. In Unterwalden yonder 'tis the same; And bloody has the retribution been. The imperial seneschal, the Wolfshot, who At Rossberg dwelt, longed for forbidden fruits - Baumgarten's wife, that lives at Alzellen, He wished to overcome in shameful sort, On which the husband slew him with his axe.

FURST. Oh, Heaven is just in all its judgments still! Baumgarten, say you? A most worthy man. Has he escaped, and is he safely hid?

STAUFFACHER. Your son-in-law conveyed him o'er the lake, And he lies hidden in my house at Steinen. He brought the tidings with him of a thing That has been done at Sarnen, worse than all, A thing to make the very heart run blood!

FURST (attentively). Say on. What is it?

STAUFFACHER.
There dwells in Melchthal, then, Just as you enter by the road from Kearns, An upright man, named Henry of the Halden, A man of weight and influence in the Diet.

FURST. Who knows him not? But what of him? Proceed.

STAUFFACHER. The Landenberg, to punish some offence, Committed by the old man's son, it seems, Had given command to take the youth's best pair Of oxen from his plough: on which the lad Struck down the messenger and took to flight.

FURST. But the old father - tell me, what of him?

STAUFFACHER. The Landenberg sent for him, and required He should produce his son upon the spot; And when the old man protested, and with truth, That he knew nothing of the fugitive, The tyrant called his torturers.

FURST (springs up and tries to lead him to the other side).
Hush, no more!

STAUFFACHER (with increasing warmth). "And though thy son," he cried, "Has escaped me now, I have thee fast, and thou shalt feel my vengeance." With that they flung the old man to the earth, And plunged the pointed steel into his eyes.

FURST. Merciful heavens!

MELCHTHAL (rushing out).
Into his eyes, his eyes?

STAUFFACHER (addresses himself in astonishment to WALTER FURST). Who is this youth?

MELCHTHAL (grasping him convulsively).
Into his eyes? Speak, speak!

FURST. Oh, miserable hour!

STAUFFACHER.
Who is it, tell me?

[STAUFFACHER makes a sign to him.

It is his son! All righteous heaven!

MELCHTHAL.
And I Must be from thence! What! into both his eyes?

FURST. Be calm, be calm; and bear it like a man!

MELCHTHAL. And all for me - for my mad wilful folly! Blind, did you say? Quite blind - and both his eyes?

STAUFFACHER. Even so. The fountain of his sight's dried up. He ne'er will see the blessed sunshine more.

FURST. Oh, spare his anguish!

MELCHTHAL.
Never, never more!

[Presses his hands upon his eyes and is silent for some
moments; then turning from one to the other, speaks in a
subdued tone, broken by sobs.

O the eye's light, of all the gifts of heaven, The dearest, best! From light all beings live - Each fair created thing - the very plants Turn with a joyful transport to the light, And he - he must drag on through all his days In endless darkness! Never more for him The sunny meads shall glow, the flowerets bloom; Nor shall he more behold the roseate tints Of the iced mountain top! To die is nothing, But to have life, and not have sight - oh, that Is misery indeed! Why do you look So piteously at me? I have two eyes, Yet to my poor blind father can give neither! No, not one gleam of that great sea of light, That with its dazzling splendor floods my gaze.

STAUFFACHER. Ah, I must swell the measure of your grief, Instead of soothing it. The worst, alas! Remains to tell. They've stripped him of his all; Naught have they left him, save his staff, on which, Blind and in rags, he moves from door to door.

MELCHTHAL. Naught but his staff to the old eyeless man! Stripped of his all - even of the light of day, The common blessing of the meanest wretch. Tell me no more of patience, of concealment! Oh, what a base and coward thing am I, That on mine own security I thought And took no care of thine! Thy precious head Left as a pledge within the tyrant's grasp! Hence, craven-hearted prudence, hence! And all My thoughts be vengeance, and the despot's blood! I'll seek him straight - no power shall stay me now - And at his hands demand my father's eyes. I'll beard him 'mid a thousand myrmidons! What's life to me, if in his heart's best blood I cool the fever of this mighty anguish.

[He is going.

FURST. Stay, this is madness, Melchthal! What avails Your single arm against his power? He sits At Sarnen high within his lordly keep, And, safe within its battlemented walls, May laugh to scorn your unavailing rage.

MELCHTHAL. And though he sat within the icy domes Of yon far Schreckhorn - ay, or higher, where Veiled since eternity, the Jungfrau soars, Still to the tyrant would I make my way; With twenty comrades minded like myself, I'd lay his fastness level with the earth! And if none follow me, and if you all, In terror for your homesteads and your herds, Bow in submission to the tyrant's yoke, I'll call the herdsmen on the hills around me, And there beneath heaven's free and boundless roof, Where men still feel as men, and hearts are true Proclaim aloud this foul enormity!

STAUFFACHER (to FURST). 'Tis at its height - and are we then to wait Till some extremity - -

MELCHTHAL.
What extremity Remains for apprehension, where men's eyes Have ceased to be secure within their sockets? Are we defenceless? Wherefore