FRANCIS, AMELIA.
FRANCIS. Your face is averted from me, Amelia? Am I less worthy than he who is accursed of his father?
AMELIA. Away! Oh! what a loving, compassionate father, who abandons his son a prey to wolves and monsters! In his own comfortable home he pampers himself with delicious wines and stretches his palsied limbs on down, while his noble son is starving. Shame upon you, inhuman wretches! Shame upon you, ye souls of dragons, ye blots on humanity!— his only son!
FRANCIS. I thought he had two.
AMELIA. Yes, he deserves to have such sons as you are. On his deathbed he will in vain stretch out his withered hands for his Charles, and recoil with a shudder when he feels the ice-cold hand of his Francis. Oh, it is sweet, deliciously sweet, to be cursed by such a father! Tell me, Francis, dear brotherly soul—tell me what must one do to be cursed by him?
FRANCIS. You are raving, dearest; you are to be pitied.
AMELIA. Oh! indeed. Do you pity your brother? No, monster, you hate him! I hope you hate me too.
FRANCIS. I love you as dearly as I love myself, Amelia!
AMELIA. If you love me you will not refuse me one little request.
FRANCIS. None, none! if you ask no more than my life.
AMELIA. Oh, if that is the case! then one request, which you will so easily, so readily grant. (Loftily.) Hate me! I should perforce blush crimson if, whilst thinking of Charles, it should for a moment enter my mind that you do not hate me. You promise me this? Now go, and leave me; I so love to be alone!
FRANCIS. Lovely enthusiast! how greatly I admire your gentle, affectionate heart. Here, here, Charles reigned sole monarch, like a god within his temple; he stood before thee waking, he filled your imaination dreaming; the whole creation seemed to thee to centre in Charles, and to reflect him alone; it gave thee no other echo but of him.
AMELIA (with emotion). Yes, verily, I own it. Despite of you all, barbarians as you are, I will own it before all the world. I love him!
FRANCIS. Inhuman, cruel! So to requite a love like this! To forget her—
AMELIA (starting). What! forget me?
FRANCIS. Did you not place a ring on his finger?—a diamond ring, the pledge of your love? To be sure how is it possible for youth to resist the fascinations of a wanton? Who can blame him for it, since he had nothing else left to give away? and of course she repaid him with interest by her caresses and embraces.
AMELIA (with indignation). My ring to a wanton?
FRANCIS. Fie, fie! it is disgraceful. 'Twould not be much, however, if that were all. A ring, be it ever so costly, is, after all, a thing which one may always buy of a Jew. Perhaps the fashion of it did not please him, perhaps he exchanged it for one more beautiful.
AMELIA (with violence). But my ring, I say, my ring?
FRANCIS. Even yours, Amelia. Ha! such a brilliant, and on my finger; and from Amelia! Death itself should not have plucked it hence. It is not the costliness of the diamond, not the cunning of the pattern—it is love which constitutes its value. Is it not so, Amelia? Dearest child, you are weeping. Woe be to him who causes such precious drops to flow from those heavenly eyes; ah, and if you knew all, if you could but see him yourself, see him under that form?
AMELIA. Monster! what do you mean? What form do you speak of?
FRANCIS. Hush, hush, gentle soul, press me no further (as if soliloquizing, yet aloud). If it had only some veil, that horrid vice, under which it might shroud itself from the eye of the world! But there it is, glaring horribly through the sallow, leaden eye; proclaiming itself in the sunken, deathlike look; ghastly protruding bones; the faltering, hollow voice; preaching audibly from the shattered, shaking skeleton; piercing to the most vital marrow of the bones, and sapping the manly strength of youth—faugh! the idea sickens me. Nose, eyes, ears shrink from it. You saw that miserable wretch, Amelia, in our hospital, who was heavily breathing out his spirit; modesty seemed to cast down her abashed eye as she passed him; you cried woe upon him. Recall that hideous image to your mind, and your Charles stands before you. His kisses are pestilence, his lips poison.
AMELIA (strikes him). Shameless liar!
FRANCIS. Does such a Charles inspire you with horror? Does the mere picture fill you with disgust? Go, then! gaze upon him yourself, your handsome, your angelic, your divine Charles! Go, drink his balmy breath, and revel in the ambrosial fumes which ascend from his throat! The very exhalations of his body will plunge you into that dark and deathlike dizziness which follows the smell of a bursting carcase, or the sight of a corpse-strewn battle-field. (AMELIA turns away her face.) What sensations of love! What rapture in those embraces! But is it not unjust to condemn a man because of his diseased exterior? Even in the most wretched lump of deformity a soul great and worthy of love may beam forth brightly like a pearl on a dunghill. ( With a malignant smile.) Even from lips of corruption love may——. To be sure if vice should undermine the very foundations of character, if with chastity virtue too should take her flight as the fragrance departs from the faded rose—if with the body the soul too should be tainted and corrupted.
AMELIA (rising joyfully). Ha! Charles! now I recognize thee again! Thou art whole, whole! It was all a lie! Dost thou not know, miscreant, that it would be impossible for Charles to be the being you describe? (FRANCIS remains standing for some time, lost in thought, then suddenly turns round to go away.) Whither are you going in such haste? Are you flying from your own infamy?
FRANCIS (hiding his face). Let me go, let me go! to give free vent to my tears! tyrannical father, thus to abandon the best of your sons to misery and disgrace on every side! Let me go, Amelia! I will throw myself at his feet, on my knees I will conjure him to transfer to me the curse that he has pronounced, to disinherit me, to hate me, my blood, my life, my all——.
AMELIA (falls on his neck). Brother of my Charles! Dearest, most excellent Francis!
FRANCIS. Oh, Amelia! how I love you for this unshaken constancy to my brother. Forgive me for venturing to subject your love to so severe a trial! How nobly you have realized my wishes! By those tears, those sighs, that divine indignation—and for me too, for me—our souls did so truly harmonize.
AMELIA. Oh, no! that they never did!
FRANCIS. Alas! they harmonized so truly that I always thought we must be twins. And were it not for that unfortunate difference in person, to be twin-like, which, it must be admitted, would be to the disadvantage of Charles, we should again and again be mistaken for each other. Thou art, I often said to myself, thou art the very Charles, his echo, his counterpart.
AMELIA (shakes her head). No, no! by that chaste light of heaven! not an atom of him, not the least spark of his soul.
FRANCIS. So entirely the same in our dispositions; the rose was his favorite flower, and what flower do I esteem above the rose? He loved music beyond expression; and ye are witnesses, ye stars! how often you have listened to me playing on the harpsichord in the dead silence of night, when all around lay buried in darkness and slumber; and how is it possible for you, Amelia, still to doubt? if our love meets in one perfection, and if it is the self-same love, how can its fruits degenerate? (AMELIA looks at him with astonishment.) It was a calm, serene evening, the last before his departure for Leipzic, when he took me with him to the bower where you so often sat together in dreams of love,—we were long speechless; at last he seized my hand, and said, in a low voice, and with tears in his eyes, "I am leaving Amelia; I know not, but I have a sad presentiment that it is forever; forsake her not, brother; be her friend, her Charles—if Charles—should never—never return." (He throws himself down before her, and kisses her hand with fervor.) Never, never, never will he return; and I stand pledged by a sacred oath to fulfil his behest!
AMELIA (starting back). Traitor! Now thou art unmasked! In that very bower he conjured me, if he died, to admit no other love. Dost thou see how impious, how execrable——. Quit my sight!
FRANCIS. You know me not, Amelia; you do not know me in the least!
AMELIA. Oh, yes, I know you; from henceforth I know you; and you pretend to be like him? You mean to say that he wept for me in your presence? Yours? He would sooner have inscribed my name on the pillory? Begone—this instant!
FRANCIS. You insult me.
AMELIA. Go—I say. You have robbed me of a precious hour; may it be deducted from your life.
FRANCIS. You hate me then!
AMELIA. I despise you—away!
FRANCIS (stamping with fury). Only wait! you shall learn to tremble
before me!—To sacrifice me for a beggar!
[Exit in anger.]
AMELIA. Go, thou base villain! Now, Charles, am I again thine own.
Beggar, did he say! then is the world turned upside down, beggars are
kings, and kings are beggars! I would not change the rags he wears for
the imperial purple. The look with which he begs must, indeed, be a
noble, a royal look, a look that withers into naught the glory, the
pomp, the triumphs of the rich and great! Into the dust with thee,
glittering baubles! (She tears her pearls from her neck.) Let the rich
and the proud be condemned to bear the burden of gold, and silver, and
jewels! Be they condemned to carouse at the tables of the voluptuous!
To pamper their limbs on the downy couch of luxury! Charles! Charles!
Thus am I worthy of thee!
[Exit.]
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