the second act where he ponders the question, what he shall do with his wife and child.  Truly, when he decides to leave them in the fortress, so that the garrison shall not lose courage, I cannot suppress the thought that the daughter has already had an illegitimate child and the wife has been a heroine in the wrong place; for if he had considered them worth a straw, he could not, for such a reason, have exposed them to such a danger.  And is that a courageous garrison which is calm because it believes itself to be still safe?  And shall its eyes never be opened simply because it sees that the danger is shared for a while by the wife and child of the commander—­for whom, as Zriny himself remarks, there are secret passages which can be used in case of necessity.  Mr. Zriny did not consider all this; his circumspection, therefore, is surely not very great.  Just one sample of the noble simplicity and modesty of this hero: 

  “Thou knowest me, Maximilian,
  I thank thee for thy high imperial trust,
  Thou knowest Zriny, thou dost not mistake.”

It is nauseating to continue, I have the impression at this moment that I am trying to prove that a soap-bubble is really only a soap-bubble.  Just one word more about Helena.  The tender child, who faints away at the end of the first act when Juranitsch takes leave of her to go into battle, has made such progress in bravery in the seventh scene of the second act, that she exclaims: 

“Yes, father, father, send us not from thee!”

and at the conclusion of the fourth (indeed it is time, for in the next act the piece comes to an end) she even says: 

“Yes, let us die!  What care we for the sun!”

Spare your sympathy, reader or spectator; you must not think that you have to do with men who care anything for their lives, and who therefore are making a sacrifice—­no indeed!  They have nothing in common with such a weakling as you.

I hope I shall not be accused of hastiness—­I must hurry on to the end, for there are just as many absurdities in Zriny as there are verses—­if from all this I draw the conclusion that Theodor Koerner had not the slightest talent for the drama.  I promised, a while ago, to specify some plagiarisms from Schiller, but I may safely refer to the whole book.  Instead I will make a few more remarks on the death-scene of Helena, scene six, act five.

This scene is not badly constructed.  I will not, indeed, examine too closely how far love made it justifiable for a girl to ask of her lover to kill her.  For once we will take Helena’s word for it that under similar circumstances she would have done the like had Juranitsch demanded it, and then she, as well as the poet, is held excused.  We will only listen to what Juranitsch answers when she has made her wish clear to him.  He says: 

“Thee, I must kill?  Thee? no, I cannot kill thee!”

This would be human, but listen to what follows: