Secretary.  My lord! my lord!

Egmont.  I stand high, but I can and must rise yet higher.  Courage, strength, and hope possess my soul.  Not yet have I attained the height of my ambition; that once achieved, I will stand firmly and without fear.  Should I fall, should a thunder-clap, a storm-blast, ay, a false step of my own, precipitate me into the abyss, so be it!  I shall lie there with thousands of others.  I have never disdained, even for a trifling stake, to throw the bloody die with my gallant comrades; and shall I hesitate now, when all that is most precious in life is set upon the cast?

Secretary.  Oh, my lord! you know not what you say!  May Heaven protect you!

Egmont Collect your papers.  Orange is coming.  Dispatch what is most urgent, that the couriers may set forth before the gates are closed.  The rest may wait.  Leave the Count’s letter till to-morrow.  Fail not to visit Elvira, and greet her from me.  Inform yourself concerning the Regent’s health.  She cannot be well, though she would fain conceal it.

[Exit Secretary.

[Enter Orange.

Egmont.  Welcome, Orange; you appear somewhat disturbed.

Orange.  What say you to our conference with the Regent?

Egmont.  I found nothing extraordinary in her manner of receiving us.  I have often seen her thus before.  She appeared to me to be somewhat indisposed.

Orange.  Marked you not that she was more reserved than usual?  She began by cautiously approving our conduct during the late insurrection; glanced at the false light in which, nevertheless, it might be viewed; and finally turned the discourse to her favourite topic—­that her gracious demeanour, her friendship for us Netherlanders, had never been sufficiently recognized, never appreciated as it deserved; that nothing came to a prosperous issue; that for her part she was beginning to grow weary of it; that the king must at last resolve upon other measures.  Did you hear that?

Egmont.  Not all; I was thinking at the time of something else.  She is a woman, good Orange, and all women expect that every one shall submit passively to their gentle yoke; that every Hercules shall lay aside his lion’s skin, assume the distaff, and swell their train; and, because they are themselves peaceably inclined, imagine forsooth, that the ferment which seizes a nation, the storm which powerful rivals excite against one another, may be allayed by one soothing word, and the most discordant elements be brought to unite in tranquil harmony at their feet.  ’Tis thus with her; and since she cannot accomplish her object, why she has no resource left but to lose her temper, to menace us with direful prospects for the future, and to threaten to take her departure.

Orange.  Think you not that this time she will fulfil her threat?

Egmont.  Never!  How often have I seen her actually prepared for the journey?  Whither should she go?  Being here a stadtholder, a queen, think you that she could endure to spend her days in insignificance at her brother’s court, or to repair to Italy, and there drag on her existence among her old family connections?