MAX. PICCOLOMINI, OCTAVIO PICCOLOMINI, QUESTENBERG.
MAX.
Ha! there he is himself. Welcome, my father!
[He embraces his father. As he turns round, he observes
QUESTENBERG, and draws back with a cold and reserved air.
You are engaged, I see. I'll not disturb you.
OCTAVIO.
How, Max.? Look closer at this visitor.
Attention, Max., an old friend merits—reverence
Belongs of right to the envoy of your sovereign.
MAX. (drily).
Von Questenberg!—welcome—if you bring with you
Aught good to our headquarters.
QUESTENBERG (seizing his hand).
Nay, draw not
Your hand away, Count Piccolimini!
Not on my own account alone I seized it,
And nothing common will I say therewith.
[Taking the hands of both.
Octavio—Max. Piccolomini!
O savior names, and full of happy omen!
Ne'er will her prosperous genius turn from Austria,
While two such stars, with blessed influences
Beaming protection, shine above her hosts.
MAX.
Heh! Noble minister! You miss your part.
You come not here to act a panegyric.
You're sent, I know, to find fault and to scold us—
I must not be beforehand with my comrades.
OCTAVIO (to MAX.).
He comes from court, where people are not quite
So well contented with the duke as here.
MAX.
What now have they contrived to find out in him?
That he alone determines for himself
What he himself alone doth understand!
Well, therein he does right, and will persist in't
Heaven never meant him for that passive thing
That can be struck and hammered out to suit
Another's taste and fancy. He'll not dance
To every tune of every minister.
It goes against his nature—he can't do it,
He is possessed by a commanding spirit,
And his, too, is the station of command.
And well for us it is so! There exist
Few fit to rule themselves, but few that use
Their intellects intelligently. Then
Well for the whole, if there be found a man
Who makes himself what nature destined him,
The pause, the central point, to thousand thousands
Stands fixed and stately, like a firm-built column,
Where all may press with joy and confidence—
Now such a man is Wallenstein; and if
Another better suits the court—no other
But such a one as he can serve the army.
QUESTENBERG.
The army? Doubtless!
MAX.
What delight to observe
How he incites and strengthens all around him,
Infusing life and vigor. Every power
Seems as it were redoubled by his presence
He draws forth every latent energy,
Showing to each his own peculiar talent,
Yet leaving all to be what nature made them,
And watching only that they be naught else
In the right place and time; and he has skill
To mould the power's of all to his own end.
QUESTENBERG.
But who denies his knowledge of mankind,
And skill to use it? Our complaint is this:
That in the master he forgets the servant,
As if he claimed by birth his present honors.
MAX.
And does he not so? Is he not endowed
With every gift and power to carry out
The high intents of nature, and to win
A ruler's station by a ruler's talent?
QUESTENBERG.
So then it seems to rest with him alone
What is the worth of all mankind beside!
MAX.
Uncommon men require no common trust;
Give him but scope and he will set the bounds.
QUESTENBERG.
The proof is yet to come.
MAX.
Thus are ye ever.
Ye shrink from every thing of depth, and think
Yourselves are only safe while ye're in shallows.
OCTAVIO (to QUESTENBERG).
'Twere best to yield with a good grace, my friend;
Of him there you'll make nothing.
MAX. (continuing).
In their fear
They call a spirit up, and when he comes,
Straight their flesh creeps and quivers, and they dread him
More than the ills for which they called him up.
The uncommon, the sublime, must seem and be
Like things of every day. But in the field,
Ay, there the Present Being makes itself felt.
The personal must command, the actual eye
Examine. If to be the chieftain asks
All that is great in nature, let it be
Likewise his privilege to move and act
In all the correspondences of greatness.
The oracle within him, that which lives,
He must invoke and question—not dead books,
Not ordinances, not mould-rotted papers.
OCTAVIO.
My son! of those old narrow ordinances
Let us not hold too lightly. They are weights
Of priceless value, which oppressed mankind,
Tied to the volatile will of their oppressors.
For always formidable was the League
And partnership of free power with free will.
The way of ancient ordinance, though it winds,
Is yet no devious path. Straight forward goes
The lightning's path, and straight the fearful path
Of the cannon-ball. Direct it flies, and rapid;
Shattering that it may reach, and shattering what it reaches,
My son, the road the human being travels,
That, on which blessing comes and goes, doth follow
The river's course, the valley's playful windings,
Curves round the cornfield and the hill of vines,
Honoring the holy bounds of property!
And thus secure, though late, leads to its end.
QUESTENBERG.
Oh, hear your father, noble youth! hear him
Who is at once the hero and the man.
OCTAVIO.
My son, the nursling of the camp spoke in thee!
A war of fifteen years
Hath been thy education and thy school.
Peace hast thou never witnessed! There exists
An higher than the warrior's excellence.
In war itself war is no ultimate purpose,
The vast and sudden deeds of violence,
Adventures wild, and wonders of the moment,
These are not they, my son, that generate
The calm, the blissful, and the enduring mighty!
Lo there! the soldier, rapid architect!
Builds his light town of canvas, and at once
The whole scene moves and bustles momently.
With arms, and neighing steeds, and mirth and quarrel
The motley market fills; the roads, the streams
Are crowded with new freights; trade stirs and hurries,
But on some morrow morn, all suddenly,
The tents drop down, the horde renews its march.
Dreary, and solitary as a churchyard;
The meadow and down-trodden seed-plot lie,
And the year's harvest is gone utterly.
MAX.
Oh, let the emperor make peace, my father!
Most gladly would I give the blood-stained laurel
For the first violet 5 of the leafless spring,
Plucked in those quiet fields where I have journeyed.
OCTAVIO.
What ails thee? What so moves thee all at once?
MAX.
Peace have I ne'er beheld? I have beheld it.
From thence am I come hither: oh, that sight,
It glimmers still before me, like some landscape
Left in the distance,—some delicious landscape!
My road conducted me through countries where
The war has not yet reached. Life, life, my father—
My venerable father, life has charms
Which we have never experienced. We have been
But voyaging along its barren coasts,
Like some poor ever-roaming horde of pirates,
That, crowded in the rank and narrow ship,
House on the wild sea with wild usages,
Nor know aught of the mainland, but the bays
Where safeliest they may venture a thieves' landing.
Whate'er in the inland dales the land conceals
Of fair and exquisite, oh, nothing, nothing,
Do we behold of that in our rude voyage.
OCTAVIO (attentive, with an appearance of uneasiness).
And so your journey has revealed this to you?
MAX.
'Twas the first leisure of my life. O tell me,
What is the meed and purpose of the toil,
The painful toil which robbed me of my youth,
Left me a heart unsouled and solitary,
A spirit uninformed, unornamented!
For the camp's stir, and crowd, and ceaseless larum,
The neighing war-horse, the air-shattering trumpet,
The unvaried, still returning hour of duty,
Word of command, and exercise of arms—
There's nothing here, there's nothing in all this,
To satisfy the heart, the gasping heart!
Mere bustling nothingness, where the soul is not—
This cannot be the sole felicity,
These cannot be man's best and only pleasures!
OCTAVIO.
Much hast thou learnt, my son, in this short journey.
MAX.
Oh day, thrice lovely! when at length the soldier
Returns home into life; when he becomes
A fellow-man among his fellow-men.
The colors are unfurled, the cavalcade
Mashals, and now the buzz is hushed, and hark!
Now the soft peace-march beats, home, brothers, home!
The caps and helmet are all garlanded
With green boughs, the last plundering of the fields.
The city gates fly open of themselves,
They need no longer the petard to tear them.
The ramparts are all filled with men and women,
With peaceful men and women, that send onwards.
Kisses and welcomings upon the air,
Which they make breezy with affectionate gestures.
From all the towers rings out the merry peal,
The joyous vespers of a bloody day.
O happy man, O fortunate! for whom
The well-known door, the faithful arms are open,
The faithful tender arms with mute embracing.
QUESTENBERG (apparently much affected).
O that you should speak
Of such a distant, distant time, and not
Of the to-morrow, not of this to-day.
MAX. (turning round to him quick and vehement).
Where lies the fault but on you in Vienna!
I will deal openly with you, Questenberg.
Just now, as first I saw you standing here
(I'll own it to you freely), indignation
Crowded and pressed my inmost soul together.
'Tis ye that hinder peace, ye!—and the warrior,
It is the warrior that must force it from you.
Ye fret the general's life out, blacken him,
Hold him up as a rebel, and heaven knows
What else still worse, because he spares the Saxons,
And tries to awaken confidence in the enemy;
Which yet's the only way to peace: for if
War intermit not during war, how then
And whence can peace come? Your own plagues fall on you!
Even as I love what's virtuous, hate I you.
And here I make this vow, here pledge myself,
My blood shall spurt out for this Wallenstein,
And my heart drain off, drop by drop, ere ye
Shall revel and dance jubilee o'er his ruin.
[Exit.
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