COUNTESS.

Art thou in earnest?  I entreat thee!  Canst thou
Consent to bear thyself to thy own grave,
So ignominiously to be dried up? 
Thy life, that arrogated such an height
To end in such a nothing!  To be nothing,
When one was always nothing, is an evil
That asks no stretch of patience, a light evil;
But to become a nothing, having been—­

WALLENSTEIN (starts up in violent agitation).

Show me a way out of this stifling crowd,
Ye powers of Aidance!  Show me such a way
As I am capable of going.  I
Am no tongue-hero, no fine virtue-prattler;
I cannot warm by thinking; cannot say
To the good luck that turns her back upon me,
Magnanimously:  “Go; I need thee not.” 
Cease I to work, I am annihilated. 
Dangers nor sacrifices will I shun,
If so I may avoid the last extreme;
But ere I sink down into nothingness,
Leave off so little, who began so great,
Ere that the world confuses me with those
Poor wretches whom a day creates and crumbles,
This age and after ages[25] speak my name
With hate and dread; and Friedland be redemption
For each accursed deed.

COUNTESS.

What is there here, then,
So against nature?  Help me to perceive it! 
O let not Superstition’s nightly goblins
Subdue thy clear bright spirit!  Art thou bid
To murder?—­with abhorr’d, accursed poinard,
To violate the breasts that nourish’d thee? 
That were against our nature, that might aptly
Make thy flesh shudder, and thy whole heart sicken,[26]
Yet not a few, and for a meaner object,
Have ventured even this, ay, and perform’d it. 
What is there in thy case so black and monstrous? 
Thou art accused of treason—­whether with
Or without justice is not now the question—­
Thou art lost if thou dost not avail thee quickly
Of the power which thou possessest—­Friedland! Duke!
Tell me where lives that thing so meek and tame,
That doth not all his living faculties
Put forth in preservation of his life? 
What deed so daring, which necessity
And desperation will not sanctify?

WALLENST.

Once was this Ferdinand so gracious to me;
He loved me; he esteem’d me; I was placed
The nearest to his heart.  Full many a time
We like familiar friends, both at one table,
Have banqueted together.  He and I—­
And the young kings themselves held me the basin
Wherewith to wash me—­and is’t come to this?

COUNTESS.

So faithfully preserves thou each small favor,
And hast no memory for contumelies? 
Must I remind thee, how at Regensburg
This man repaid thy faithful services? 
All ranks and all conditions in the empire
Thou hadst wronged, to make him great,—­hadst loaded on thee,
On thee, the hate, the curse of the whole world. 
No friend existed for thee in all Germany,