Yes, my poor child! 
Thou too hast lost a most affectionate godmother
In the Empress.  O that stern unbending man! 
In this unhappy marriage what have I
Not suffer’d, not endured?  For even as if
I had been link’d on to some wheel of fire
That restless, ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward,
I have pass’d a life of frights and horrors with him,
And ever to the brink of some abyss
With dizzy headlong violence he bears me. 
Nay, do not weep, my child.  Let not my sufferings
Presignify unhappiness to thee,
Nor blacken with their shade the fate that waits thee. 
There lives no second Friedland:  thou, my child,
Hast not to fear thy mother’s destiny.

THEKLA.

O let us supplicate him, dearest mother! 
Quick! quick! here’s no abiding place for us. 
Here every coming hour broods into life
Some new affrightful monster.

DUCHESS.

Thou wilt share
An easier, calmer lot, my child!  We too,
I and thy father, witnessed happy days. 
Still think I with delight of those first years,
When he was making progress with glad effort,
When his ambition was a genial fire,
Not that consuming flame which now it is. 
The Emperor loved him, trusted him:  and all
He undertook could not but be successful. 
But since that ill-starr’d day at Regensburg,
Which plunged him headlong from his dignity,
A gloomy uncompanionable spirit,
Unsteady and suspicious, has possess’d him. 
His quiet mind forsook him, and no longer
Did he yield up himself in joy and faith
To his old luck and individual power;
But thenceforth turn’d his heart and best affections
All to those cloudy sciences, which never
Have yet made happy him who follow’d them.

COUNTESS.

You see it, sister, as your eyes permit you,
But surely this is not the conversation
To pass the time in which we are waiting for him. 
You know he will be soon here.  Would you have him
Find her in this condition?

DUCHESS.

Come, my child! 
Come wipe away thy tears, and show thy father
A cheerful countenance.  See, the tie-knot here
Is off—­this hair must not hang so dishevell’d. 
Come, dearest! dry thy tears up.  They deform
Thy gentle eye.—­Well now—­what was I saying? 
Yes, in good truth, this Piccolomini
Is a most noble and deserving gentleman.

COUNTESS.

That is he, sister!

THEKLA (to the COUNTESS, with marks of great oppression of spirits).

Aunt, you will excuse me?

[Is going.]

COUNTESS.

But whither?  See, your father comes.

THEKLA.

I cannot see him now.

COUNTESS.

Nay, but bethink you.

THEKLA.

Believe me, I cannot sustain his presence.

COUNTESS.

But he will miss you, will ask after you.