WALLENSTEIN.

What now?

SENI.

Flee ere the day break! 
Trust not thy person to the Swedes!

WALLENSTEIN.

What now
Is in thy thoughts?

SENI (with louder voice).

Trust not thy person to the Swedes.

WALLENSTEIN.

What is it, then?

SENI (still more urgently).

O wait not the arrival of these Swedes! 
An evil near at hand is threatening thee
From false friends.  All the signs stand full of horror! 
Near, near at hand the net-work of perdition—­
Yea, even now ’tis being cast around thee!

WALLENST.

Baptista, thou art dreaming!—­Fear befools thee.

SENI.

Believe not that an empty fear deludes me. 
Come, read it in the planetary aspects;
Read it thyself that ruin threatens thee
From false friends.

WALLENSTEIN.

From the falseness of my friends
Has risen the whole of my unprosperous fortunes. 
The warning should have come before!  At present
I need no revelation from the stars
To know that.

SENI.

Come and see! trust thine own eyes! 
A fearful sign stands in the house of life—­
An enemy; a fiend lurks close behind
The radiance of thy planet.—­O be warn’d! 
Deliver not up thyself to these heathens,
To wage a war against our holy church.

WALLENSTEIN (laughing gently).

The oracle rails that way!  Yes, yes!  Now
I recollect.  This junction with the Swedes
Did never please thee—­lay thyself to sleep,
Baptista!  Signs like these I do not fear.

GORDON (who during the whole of this dialogue has shown marks of extreme agitation, and now turns to WALLENSTEIN).

My Duke and General!  May I dare presume?

WALLENST.

Speak freely.

[Illustration:  WALLENSTEIN WARNED BY HIS FRIENDS As performed at the Municipal Theatre, Hamburg, 1906]

GORDON.

What if ’twere no mere creation
Of fear, if God’s high providence vouchsafed
To interpose its aid for your deliverance,
And made that mouth its organ?

WALLENSTEIN.

Ye’re both feverish! 
How can mishap come to me from the Swedes! 
They sought this junction with me—­’tis their
interest.

GORDON (with difficulty suppressing his emotion).

But what if the arrival of these Swedes—­
What if this were the very thing that wing’d
The ruin that is flying to your temples?

          [Flings himself at his feet.]

There is yet time, my Prince.

SENI.

O hear him! hear him!

GORDON (rises).