COUNTESS.

What! you know not? 
Does not your own heart tell you?  O! then I
Will tell it you.  Your father is a traitor,
A frightful traitor to us—­he has plotted
Against our General’s life, has plunged us all
In misery—­and you’re his son!  ’Tis yours
To make the amends—­Make you the son’s fidelity
Outweigh the father’s treason, that the name
Of Piccolomini be not a proverb
Of infamy, a common form of cursing
To the posterity of Wallenstein.

MAX.

Where is that voice of truth which I dare follow! 
It speaks no longer in my heart.  We all
But utter what our passionate wishes dictate: 
O that an angel would descend from heaven,
And scoop for me the right, the uncorrupted,
With a pure hand from the pure fount of Light!

     [His eyes glance on THEKLA.]

What other angel seek I?  To this heart,
To this unerring heart, will I submit it;
Will ask thy love, which has the power to bless
The happy man alone, averted ever
From the disquieted and guilty—­canst thou
Still love me, if I stay?  Say that thou canst,
And I am the Duke’s—­

COUNTESS.

Think, niece—­

MAX.

Think, nothing, Thekla! 
Speak what thou feelest.

COUNTESS.

Think upon your father.

MAX.

I did not question thee, as Friedland’s daughter. 
Thee, the beloved and the unerring god
Within thy heart, I question.  What’s at stake? 
Not whether diadem of royalty
Be to be won or not—­that mightst thou think on. 
Thy friend, and his soul’s quiet, are at stake: 
The fortune of a thousand gallant men,
Who will all follow me; shall I forswear
My oath and duty to the Emperor? 
Say, shall I send into Octavio’s camp
The parricidal ball?  For when the ball
Has left its cannon, and is on its flight,
It is no longer a dead instrument! 
It lives, a spirit passes into it,
The avenging furies seize possession of it,
And with sure malice guide it the worst way.

THEIKLA.

O!  Max—­

MAX (interrupting her).

Nay, not precipitately either, Thekla,
I understand thee.  To thy noble heart
The hardest duty might appear the highest. 
The human, not the great part, would I act
Even from my childhood to this present hour. 
Think what the Duke has done—­for me, how loved me
And think, too, how my father has repaid him. 
O likewise the free lovely impulses
Of hospitality, the pious friend’s
Faithful attachment, these, too, are a holy
Religion to the heart; and heavily
The shudderings of nature do avenge
Themselves on the barbarian that insults them. 
Lay all upon the balance, all—­then speak,
And let thy heart decide it.

THEKLA.

O, thy own
Hath long ago decided.  Follow thou
Thy heart’s first feeling—­