A room in OLD MOOR’S castle in Franconia.
[FRANZ VON MOOR, OLD MOOR.]
FRANZ: But are you sure you are well, father? You look so pale.
OLD MOOR: Quite well, my boy; what did you have to tell me?
FRANZ: The post has arrived; a letter from our informant in Leipzig –
OLD MOOR [eagerly]: News of my son Karl?
FRANZ: H’m, h’m! – Yes, indeed. But I am afraid – I don’t know – whether I should – your health – Father, are you really quite well?
OLD MOOR: As fit as a fiddle! Is it about my son, his letter? – why are you so anxious? That is twice you have asked me.
FRANZ: If you are not well – if you have the slightest suspicion that you are not well, then let me – I will tell you at some more appropriate moment [Half aside] This is no news for a delicate constitution.
OLD MOOR: God in Heaven, what can it be?
FRANZ: Let me first turn aside and shed a tear of pity for my lost brother – I ought to hold my peace for ever, for he is your son; I ought to conceal his disgrace for ever, for he is my brother. But to obey you is my first, sad duty; and so forgive me.
OLD MOOR: Oh, Karl, Karl! If only you knew how your wild ways torture your old father’s heart; if only you knew, how a single piece of good news of you would add ten years to my life – would make me young again; while now, ah, every word brings me a step nearer the grave!
FRANZ: If that is so, old man, then goodbye–this very day we should all be tearing our hair over your coffin.
OLD MOOR: Wait! It is only one single short step more – let him have his will. [Sitting down] The sins of the fathers are visited upon the third and the fourth generations – let it be accomplished.
FRANZ [taking the letter from his pocket]: You know our informant. Look! I would give the finger of my right hand to be able to say he was a liar, a black and venomous liar – Be prepared! Forgive me if I do not give you the letter to read for yourself – you shall not at once hear everything.
OLD MOOR: Everything, everything – my son, you will spare me the need for crutches.
FRANZ [reading]: ‘Leipzig, May 1st. – If it were not that the most solemn promise binds me not to conceal the slightest piece of information I can come by regarding the fate of your brother, then, my dear friend, never should my innocent pen have exercised such tyranny over you. From a hundred of your letters I can tell how news of this kind must pierce a brother’s heart like a dagger; it is as if I could see the worthless wretch –’
[OLD MOOR covers his face.]
Father, look! it is only the mildest parts I am reading – ‘see the wretch already costing you a thousand bitter tears’ – ah, they flowed, they poured streaming down my cheeks in pity – ‘it is as if I could see your good old father, deathly pale already’ – Dear God! and so you are, already, before you have heard anything at all?
OLD MOOR: Go on! Go on!
FRANZ: – ‘deathly pale already, reeling in his chair, and cursing the day those childish lips first framed the name “father”. I could not find out everything, and of the little that I know it is only a little that I tell. Your brother, it seems, has run the whole gamut of infamy; I at any rate know nothing worse than the things he has done, though his imagination may well surpass the bounds of mine. Last night at midnight he made a grand resolution – since he had run up debts of forty thousand ducats’ – a pretty sum, father – ‘and as he had robbed a rich banker’s daughter here in town of her honour, and fatally wounded her fiancé, a fine young fellow of good birth, in a duel – to flee with seven others whom he had depraved like himself and escape the arm of the law’ – father! In heaven’s name, father! What is the matter?
OLD MOOR: It is enough! Stop, my son!
FRANZ: I will spare you – ‘he has been declared a wanted man, his victims are crying out for satisfaction, a price has been put on his head – the name of Moor’ – no! my miserable lips shall never be my father’s murderers! [Tearing up the letter] Do not believe it, father! Do not believe one syllable he writes!
OLD MOOR [weeping bitterly]: My name! my honourable name!
FRANZ [throwing his arms round his neck]: Shameful, thrice shameful Karl! Did I not suspect it, when he was still a boy, and was always following after girls, chasing up hill and down dale with street-urchins and ruffians, shunning the sight of the church as a miscreant shuns the gaol, and tossing the pennies he had wheedled from you to the first beggar he met, while we sat at home improving our minds with prayer and with reading pious sermons? Did I not suspect it, when he would rather read the adventures of Julius Caesar and Alexander the Great and other such benighted heathens than the story of the penitent Tobias? A hundred times I prophesied to you – for my love for him always kept the limits set by a son’s duty to his father – the boy will yet bring shame and misery upon us all! Oh, that he did not bear the name of Moor! that my heart did not beat so warmly for him! The sinful love for him, that I cannot suppress, will one day bear witness against me before the judgement seat of God.
OLD MOOR: Ah – my hopes, my golden dreams!
FRANZ: I know; that is what I was saying. The fiery spirit that burns in the lad, so you always said, that makes him yearn so keenly for every kind of beauty and grandeur; the frankness that mirrors his soul in his eyes, the tender feeling that melts him to tears of sympathy at any sight of suffering, the manly courage that sends him climbing hundred-year-old oak trees and leaping ditches and fences and foaming rivers; the youthful ambition, the implacable constancy; all these shining virtues that took root in his father’s favourite son, one day will make him a friend’s true friend, a model citizen, a hero, a great, great man – and now, father, look! the fiery spirit has grown, has burgeoned, has brought forth glorious fruit. See how this frankness has so neatly turned to insolence, see how this tenderness coos for any coquette, so readily yields to the seduction of a Phryne! See how this fiery genius has burnt up the oil of its life in six short years, to the last drop, so that to his very face people can say ‘Voilà, c’est l’amour qui a fait ça!’ No, just look at this bold imagination, just look at the plans it makes and carries out, so that the heroic deeds of a Cartouche or a Howard* pale into insignificance beside them! And only let these magnificent beginnings grow to full maturity – for after all, who can expect perfection at such a tender age? Perhaps, father, you will live to see the glorious day when he is the commander of an army, ensconced in the stillness of the forests, ready to ease the weary wanderer’s journey by taking half his burden from him – perhaps before you are laid to rest you will be able to visit his monument, that he will have erected for him between heaven and earth – perhaps, oh father, father, father – find yourself another name, or shopkeepers and street-urchins will point their fingers at you, for they will have seen your fine son’s portrait at Leipzig fair!
OLD MOOR: And you too, my Franz, you too? Oh, my children! How they pierce my heart!
FRANZ: You see, I have my wits about me too; but my wit is the bite of scorpions. – And then that everyday dullard, that cold, wooden Franz, and all the other names that the contrast between the two of us so often prompted, when he sat on your lap or pinched your cheek – one day he will die within the walls of his own estate, and rot and be forgotten, while the fame of this virtuoso flies from pole to pole – ah! gracious Heaven, see him join his hands in gratitude to you, that dry, cold, wooden Franz – that he is so unlike him!
OLD MOOR: Forgive me, my son; do not be angry with a father whose expectations have been dashed. The God who sends me tears through Karl will wipe them away, my Franz, by your hand.
FRANZ: Yes, father, my hand shall wipe them away. Your Franz will make it his life’s work to lengthen your days. Your life shall be the oracle that I will consult above all else in all my doings; the glass in which I shall see all things; no duty shall be too sacred for me to break it in the service of your precious life. Will you believe me?
OLD MOOR: You bear a heavy burden of duty, my son – God bless you for what you have been and for what you shall be to me!
FRANZ: But tell me, now – If you did not have to call this son your own, would you be a happy man?
OLD MOOR: Oh, still! – when the midwife brought him to me, I lifted him up to Heaven and cried: am I not a happy man?
FRANZ: So you said. And now, have you found it so? You envy the wretchedest of your peasants, that he is not the father of this son – Sorrow will be yours as long as you have this son. That grief will grow with Karl. That sorrow will undermine your days.
OLD MOOR: Oh! it has made me like a man of fourscore years.
FRANZ: Why, then – if you were to disown this son of yours?
OLD MOOR[startingup]: Franz! Franz! What are you saying?
FRANZ: Is it not your love for him that brings you all this grief? Without that love, he exists for you no longer. Without this criminal love, this sinful love, he is dead for you – he was never born to you. Not flesh and blood, the heart makes father and son. Love him no more, and this degenerate is no longer your son, were he cut from the flesh of your own body. He was the apple of your eye, but it is written, if thine eye offend thee, pluck it out; it is better for thee to enter into the kingdom of God with one eye, than having two eyes to be cast into hell fire. Better to enter childless into the kingdom of God, than that father and son should be cast into hell fire. It is the word of God!
OLD MOOR: You would have me curse my son?
FRANZ: Not so, not so! It is not your son that I would have you curse. What is he that you call your son? he whom you gave his life, while he spares no effort to shorten yours?
OLD MOOR: Oh, it is true, it is all too true! it is a judgement upon me! The Lord wills it so!
FRANZ: See how the child of your bosom treats its father. Through your father’s sympathy he strangles you, murders you through your love, has importuned your father’s heart itself to strike the final blow. When once you are no more, he is master of your estates and king of his passions. The dam is broken, and the torrent of his desires can rage freely on. Imagine yourself in his place! How often he must wish them under the earth, his father, his brother, who stand pitiless in the way of his excesses? But is that love for love? Is that filial gratitude for a father’s tenderness? When he sacrifices ten years of your life to a moment’s lust? when he gambles the good name of his fathers, unspotted for seven centuries, on the pleasure of a fleeting minute? Is that he whom you call your son? Answer! Do you call that a son?
OLD MOOR: An unloving child! oh! but still my child! still my child!
FRANZ: A precious, darling child, whose sole pursuit it is, not to know it has a father. Oh, if only you would learn to see it as it is! if only the scales would fall from your eyes! But your indulgence can only confirm him in his depravity, your support give it legitimacy. Yes, indeed, you will turn aside the curse from his head; upon you, father, upon you will the curse of damnation fall.
OLD MOOR: It is just! it is only just! Mine, mine is all the fault!
FRANZ: How many thousands who have drained the cup of pleasure to the dregs have been brought by suffering to see the error of their ways! And does not the bodily pain which accompanies every excess bear the fingerprint of the divine will? Should man by cruel mercifulness turn it aside? Shall a father let go to eternal damnation what is entrusted to him? – Think, father, if you deliver him up to his misery for a little while, will he not have to mend his ways and learn to be a better man? or else he will remain a scoundrel, even in that great school of misery, and then – woe to the father who flouted the decrees of a higher wisdom by his tenderness! – What then, father?
OLDMOOR: I will write and say that my hand is turned from him.
FRANZ: What you do is just and wise.
OLD MOOR: That he shall not show his face before me.
FRANZ: It will work to his salvation.
OLD MOOR [tenderly]: Until he mend his ways!
FRANZ: Very well, very well! But if then he should come with the mask of the hypocrite, should gain your pity by his tears and your forgiveness by his flattery, and the next day should mock your weakness in the arms of his whores? No, father! He will come of his own accord, when his conscience tells him he is free.
OLD MOOR: Then I will write this moment and tell him so.
FRANZ: Stop! just one more word, father! Your indignation, I fear, might dictate too harsh words for your pen, words that would rend his heart – and then, – do you not think he might even take it as a token of forgiveness, that you deign to write to him with your own hand? It will be better to let me write for you.
OLDMOOR: Do so, my son. – Ah! it would have broken my heart! Tell him –
FRANZ [quickly]: Shall I, then?
OLD MOOR: Tell him that a thousand tears of blood – tell him that a thousand sleepless nights – But do not drive my son to despair.
FRANZ: Should you not go to bed, father? It was hard for you to bear.
OLD MOOR: Tell him that his father’s bosom – I tell you, do not drive my son to despair. [Exit, sadly.]
FRANZ [watching him go, and laughing]: Console yourself, old man, you will never clasp him to that bosom, the way to it is firmly barricaded to him, as heaven is to hell. – He was torn from your arms before you knew that you could will it so – I should be a poor hand at it, if I could not manage to prise a son from his father’s heart, and if he were bound to it with fetters of brass – I have drawn a magic circle of curses about you, that he will not be able to cross – Good luck, Franz! The favourite is gone; things are looking brighter. I must pick up all these pieces of paper, someone might easily recognize my hand – [collecting the torn pieces of the letter]. And the old man’s grief will soon put an end to him; and she – I must drive her precious Karl from her thoughts too, even if he is half her life to her. I have every right to be resentful of nature; and by my honour, I will make my rights known! Why was I not the first to creep out of our mother’s womb? Why not the only one? Why did nature burden me with this ugliness? why me? Just as if she had been bankrupt when I was born. Why should I have this Laplander’s nose? Why should I have these blackamoor’s lips, these Hottentot’s eyes? I truly think she made a heap of the most hideous parts of every human kind as the ingredients for me. Death and damnation! Who gave her the power to make him like that, and to keep it from me? Could anyone pay court to her before she made him? Or offend her, before he existed? Why was she so partial about her own creation? No, no! I do her an injustice. After all, she gave us the gift of ingenuity too when she set us naked and miserable upon the shores of this great ocean of the world: swim who can, and let sink who is too clumsy! She gave me nothing; what I can make of myself is my affair. Each man has the same right to the greatest and the least; claim destroys claim, impulse destroys impulse, force destroys force. Might is right, and the limits of our strength our only law. It is true, there are certain conventions men have made, to rule the pulses that turn the world. Honourable reputation! A valuable coin indeed, one to drive a fine bargain with for the man who knows how to use it. Conscience – yes, indeed! an excellent scarecrow, to keep the sparrows from the cherry-trees! and a well-written cheque to help the bankrupt too at the last moment. Yes indeed, most admirable devices to keep fools respectful and to hold down the mob, so that clever people can live in better comfort. It must be admitted, most ingenious devices! They remind me of the hedges my peasants plant so cunningly around their fields, so that the rabbits cannot jump over – no, not on your life, not one single rabbit! – But their lord and master sets spur to his horse, and gallops away where the crops were standing. Poor little rabbit! It’s a sad part to play, to be a rabbit in this world! But your lord and master needs his rabbits! So, away we go! Fear nothing, and you are as powerful as if all fear you. It is the fashion nowadays to lace one’s breeches so that one can wear them tight or loose as one pleases. We will have ourselves a conscience made in the latest style, so that we can let it out nicely as we grow. How can we help it? Go to the tailor! I have heard a great deal of idle talk about something called love of one’s kin, enough to turn a sound man’s head. – He is your brother! which, being interpreted, is: he was baked in the same oven that you were; so let him be sacred to you! – Just consider this extraordinary conclusion, this ridiculous argument from the proximity of bodies to the harmony of minds; from the identity of domicile to the identity of feeling; from the uniformity of diet to the uniformity of inclination. But there is more to it – he is your father! He gave you life, you are his flesh and blood; so let him be sacred to you! Another cunning conclusion! I should like to know why he made me? Not out of love for me, surely, since there was no me to love? Did he know me before he made me? Or did he think of me while he was making me? Or did he wish for me as he was making me? Did he know what I should be like? I hope not, or I should want to punish him for making me regardless! Can I feel any gratitude to him for my being a man? No more than I could grudge it him if he had made me a woman. Can I acknowledge any love that does not rest on respect for my person? Could respect for my person exist, when my person could only come into being through that for which it must be the condition? And what is so sacred about it all? The act itself through which I was created? As if that were anything but the animal gratification of animal desires? Or the result of that act, when that is nothing but brute necessity, that one would gladly be rid of if one could, if it were not at the cost of flesh and blood. Am I to speak well of him for loving me? That is vanity, the professional sin of all artists, who fancy their own work, however ugly it may be. – There it is then, the witchcraft that they veil in clouds of holy incense to abuse our fearful natures. Am I too to let myself be led along by it, like a little boy? Very well, then! courage, and to work! I will crush everything that stands in the way of my becoming master. And master I must be, to force my way to goals that I shall never gain through kindness. [Exit.]
A tavern on the borders of Saxony.
[KARL VON MOOR deep in a book, SPIEGELBERG drinking at the table.]
MOOR [laying the book aside]: I hate this age of scribblers, when I can pick up my Plutarch and read of great men.
SPIEGELBERG [puts a glass before him. Drinking]: Josephus is the man you should read.
MOOR: The bright spark of Promethean fire is burnt out. All we have now is a flash of witch-meal – stage lightning, not flame enough to light a pipe of tobacco. Here we scratch about like rats at Hercules’ club, and addle our miserable brains with speculation over what he had between his legs. A French cleric proclaims that Alexander was a coward, a consumptive professor with a bottle of smelling-salts under his nose gives lectures on energy. Fellows who faint when they have had a girl write commentaries on the tactics of Hannibal – boys still wet behind the ears crib their proses from Livy on the battle of Cannae, and snivel over Scipio’s victories because they have to construe them.
SPIEGELBERG: You go on in the grand style.
MOOR: A fine reward for your valour on the battlefield, to live on in the grammar-school, and be dragged around immortal in a schoolboy’s satchel. A worthy repayment for the blood you shed, to be wrapped round buns by a Nuremberg confectioner, or if your luck’s in, to be hoisted on stilts by a French tragedian, and pulled about like puppets on a string! Haha!
SPIEGELBERG [drinking]: I tell you, you should read Josephus.
MOOR: Pah! An age of eunuchs, fit for nothing but chewing over the deeds of bygone days, mutilating the heroes of old with their learned interpretations and mocking them with their tragedies. The strength of their loins is dried up, and the dregs of a beer-barrel must help to propagate mankind.
SPIEGELBERG: Tea, brother, tea!
MOOR: There they go, smother healthy nature with their ridiculous conventions. Haven’t the courage to drain a glass, because they would have to wish ‘Good health!’ Fawn on the man who polishes His Highness’s boots, and make life a misery for the wretch they have no need to fear. Praise each other to the skies for the sake of a dinner, and would gladly poison each other when they lose a bedstead at an auction. Damn the Sadducee who doesn’t show himself enough in church, and reckon up their filthy lucre at the altar; fall on their knees so that they can show off their coat-tails the better; don’t take their eye off the preacher, so as not to miss the cut of his wig. – Fall in a faint if they see a goose bleeding, and clap their hands when their rival goes bankrupt – No, however much I pleaded – ‘Just one more day!’ – no! to gaol with him, the dog! – Pleas! Oaths! Tears! [Stamping his foot] Hell and damnation!
SPIEGELBERG: And all for a few thousand miserable ducats –
MOOR: No, I’ll not think of it. I am supposed to lace my body in a corset, and strait-jacket my will with laws. The law has cramped the flight of eagles to a snail’s pace. The law never yet made a great man, but freedom will breed a giant, a colossus. They ensconce themselves in a tyrant’s belly, humour every whim of his digestion, and draw in their breath when his guts rumble. – Oh, if only Arminius’s spirit still glowed in the ashes! – Give me an army of fellows like me to command, and I’ll turn Germany into a republic that will make Rome and Sparta look like nunneries. [Tosses his sword onto the table and stands up.]
SPIEGELBERG [jumping up]: Bravo! bravissimo! just what I wanted to talk to you about! Look, Moor, I’ll tell you something I’ve been thinking about for a long time, you’re just the man for it – drink up, have another – suppose we all turned Jews, and started talking about the Kingdom again?
MOOR [laughing out loud]: Ha! I see, I see! You want to put foreskins out of fashion, because the barber has had yours already?
SPIEGELBERG: You clown! It is true, I do happen, strangely enough, to be circumcised in advance. But look, isn’t it a brave and cunning plan? We’ll send out a manifesto to all the corners of the world and summon everyone who won’t eat pork to Palestine. I shall have authentic documents to prove that Herod the Tetrarch was my great-great-grand-father, and so on. Man, what a jubilation, when they find their feet again, and can build Jerusalem anew. Then clear the Turks out of Asia while the iron is still hot, cut down the cedars of Lebanon, build ships, and flog ribbons and old tat to all the nations. And then –
MOOR [smiling, and taking him by the hand]: Now, friend! No more pranks of that kind.
SPIEGELBERG [taken aback]: Bah, you’re not going to play the prodigal son now, are you? A fellow like you, who has written enough on faces with his sword to fill three attorneys’ books in a leap year? Do you want me to tell the tale of the dog’s funeral? What? I shall have to remind you of your own doings; that will put a spark into you again, if nothing else can stir you up. Do you remember? Those fellows on the Council had had your mastiff’s leg shot off, and to pay them back, you proclaimed a fast in the whole town. People grumbled about it. But you lost no time, bought up all the meat in Leipzig, so that in eight hours there wasn’t a bone left to gnaw in the whole place, and the price offish began to rise. The town council and the worthies were plotting revenge. Seventeen hundred of us lads out on the streets, and you leading us, and butchers and tailors and grocers following, and publicans, and barbers and all the tradesmen, and swore they would wreck the town if anyone touched a hair of our heads. So they drew a blank, and went off with their tails between their legs. You sent for a whole panel of doctors, and offered three ducats to the one who would write a prescription for the dog. We thought the gentlemen would think it beneath their dignity and say no, and had already agreed we were going to force them to do it. But that wasn’t necessary, they fought for the three ducats, even when it was knocked down to threepence, they wrote a dozen prescriptions in the hour, that soon finished the brute off.
MOOR: Miserable creatures!
SPIEGELBERG: The funeral was arranged with all pomp and ceremony, there were odes in honour of the departed dog, and we went out at night, nearly a thousand of us, a lantern in one hand and sword in the other, and so on through the town with bells and music till we had buried the dog. Then we stuffed ourselves with food till it was broad daylight, and you thanked the gentlėmen for their heartfelt sympathy, and sold all the meat at half price. Mort de ma vie! They respected us then, like a garrison in a conquered fortress –
MOOR: And you are not ashamed to boast of such a thing? Haven’t even shame enough to be ashamed of playing such tricks?
SPIEGELBERG: Go along with you! I don’t recognize Moor any longer. Don’t you remember how you have railed a thousand times against the old skinflint, and said: let him pinch and scrape, so that you could swill to your heart’s content! Don’t you remember? eh? don’t you remember? Oh, you Godforsaken coxcomb, that was spoken like a man, like a man of breeding, but now –
MOOR: Curse you for reminding me of it! Curse myself for saying it! But it was only in the heat of the wine, and my heart knew not the vain things my tongue spoke.
SPIEGELBERG [shaking his head]: No, no, no! it cannot be! No, brother, you can never be in earnest. My dear fellow, is it hardship that makes you so downcast? Come, let me tell you one of my exploits when I was a lad. There beside my house was a ditch, eight feet wide at least, and we lads used to have contests, trying to jump across it. But it was no good. Flop! there you lay, and they hissed you and laughed at you, and threw snowballs at you, one after the other. Next door to our house a ranger kept his dog on a chain, a bad-tempered brute that used to bite, it would catch the girls by the skirt in no time if they didn’t look out and went a shade too close. It was the best thing I knew to tease that dog whenever I could, and I would laugh till I was half dead to see the creature glowering so and longing to take a jump at me, if it could only get free. What happened? Another time I was giving it my usual treatment, and threw a stone and hit it so hard in the ribs, that it broke the chain, it was so furious, and was at me, and I was off and away like greased lightning. But hell’s bells! there was the damned ditch in my way. What then? The dog at my heels, mad with rage, so never say die, a quick run up and – over I go. That jump saved my skin; the brute would have torn me to pieces.
MOOR: But why are you telling me this?
SPIEGELBERG: Why, to make you see – that necessity brings out the best in us! That’s why I shan’t be afraid if it comes to the worst. Danger fortifies our courage; our strength grows in adversity. Fate must intend to make a great man of me, since it crosses me so often.
MOOR [irritated]: What should we need courage for, that we have not dared already?
SPIEGELBERG: What? So you will let your talents moulder? Hide your light under a bushel? Do you really think your tomfooleries in Leipzig exhaust the range of human wit? Just wait till we have seen the wide world! Paris and London! – where you earn a box on the ears for calling anyone an honest man. It’s a sight for sore eyes, to see business done on the grand scale! – I’ll make you stare! I’ll make your eyes pop! How to forge a signature – how to load dice – how to pick a lock – how to see the insides of a safe –just wait, and Spiegelberg will show you! The first gallows we come to, for the milksop who will rather go hungry than get his fingers dirty.
MOOR [absently]: What? You have done all that, and more, I suppose?
SPIEGELBERG: I do believe you don’t trust me. Just wait, let me really get warmed up; you shall have the surprise of your life, your brain will turn somersaults in your head, when my wits are delivered of their progeny. [Standing up, heatedly] Why, I see it, all now! Great thoughts are taking shape in my soul! Mighty plans are fermenting in my ingenious mind! Curse me for sleeping! [striking his forehead] for letting my energies lie fettered, my prospects barred and thwarted; I am awake, I feel what I am – what I must and shall be!
MOOR: You are a fool. The wine has gone to your head.
SPIEGELBERG [in greater excitement]: Spiegelberg, they will say, are you a magician, Spiegelberg? What a pity you did not become a general, Spiegelberg, the King will say, you would have beaten the Austrians into a cocked hat. Yes, I can hear the doctors complaining, it is wicked that he didn’t take up medicine, he would have discovered a new powder for the goitre.* Ah! and that he didn’t study economics, the Sullys* will sigh in their treasuries, he would have conjured louis d’or from stones. And Spiegelberg will be the name, in east and west, and into the mud with you, cowards and toads, as Spiegelberg spreads his wings and flies high into the temple of fame.
MOOR: Good fortune to you! Climb up on pillars of shame to the summits of glory. In the shady groves of my father’s home, in my Amalia’s arms a nobler pleasure waits for me. A week ago and more I wrote to my father begging his forgiveness. I did not conceal the slightest detail from him, and where there is honesty, there too is compassion and a helping hand. Let us say good-bye, Moritz. We shall see no more of each other after today. The post has arrived. My father’s forgiveness is already within the walls of this town.
[Enter SCHWEITZER, GRIMM, ROLLER, SCHUFTERLE, RATZMANN.]
ROLLER: Do you know they are looking for us already?
GRIMM: That we are not safe from arrest at any minute?
MOOR: I am not surprised. Let it be as it will! Didn’t you see Schwarz? Didn’t he say anything about a letter he had for me?
ROLLER: He has been looking for you for a long time, I think it’s something of the kind.
MOOR: Where is he, where, where? [Making as if to hurry away.]
ROLLER: Don’t go! We told him to come here. You are shaking?
MOOR: I am not shaking. Why should I be shaking? Comrades! that letter – rejoice with me! I am the happiest man on earth, why should I tremble?
[Enter SCHWARZ.]
MOOR [rushing to meet him]: Brother! brother! the letter, the letter!
SCHWARZ [giving him the letter, which he hurriedly opens]: What is it? You are as white as a sheet!
MOOR: My brother’s hand!
SCHWARZ: What is the matter with Spiegelberg?
GRIMM: The fellow is crazy. He looks as though he has caught St Vitus’s dance.
SCHUFTERLE: He must be out of his mind. I think he is composing verses.
RATZMANN: Spiegelberg! Hey, Spiegelberg! – The brute won’t listen.
GRIMM [shaking him]: Man, are you dreaming, or –?
SPIEGELBERG[who has all the while been miming a mountebank’s act in the corner of the room, jumping up wildly]: La bourse ou la vie!
[He seizes SCHWEITZER by the throat; SCHWEITZER calmly pushes him back against the wall. MOOR drops the letter on the ground and runs out. All start back.]
ROLLER [after him]: Moor! Where are you going, Moor? What are you doing?
GRIMM: What’s the matter, what’s the matter? He’s as pale as a corpse!
SCHWEITZER: Fine news that must be! Let’s see!
ROLLER [picks up the letter, and reads]: ‘Unfortunate brother!’ That’s a jolly way to begin. ‘I am obliged to tell you in brief that your hopes are in vain; Father asks me to tell you that you are to go wherever your disgraceful deeds may take you. He also says that you are to entertain no hope of ever weeping your way to forgiveness at his feet, unless you are prepared to live on bread and water in the deepest of his dungeons, till your hairs are grown like eagles’ feathers, and your nails like birds’ claws. These are his very words. He commands me to write no more. Farewell for ever! I pity you – Franz von Moor.’
SCHWEITZER: A sweet, charming brother! Indeed, Franz is the creature’s name?
SPIEGELBERG [creeping up quietly]: Bread and water, do I hear? That’s a fine life! But I have made other plans for you! Didn’t I say I should have to think for you all one day?
SCHWEITZER: What does he say, the donkey? He think for us all, the sheep’s-head?
SPIEGELBERG: Cowards, cripples, lame dogs is what you are, all of you, if you have not the courage for a great venture!
ROLLER: Well, that’s true, so we should be; but is it going to get us out of this damned fix, your great venture? Is it?
SPIEGELBERG [laughing contemptuously]: You poor fool! Get you out of this fix? Ha, ha! Out of this fix? Is that all your thimbleful of brain can think of? Is that enough to see your horses home? Don’t call me Spiegelberg, if that was all I had in mind. Heroes, I tell you, lords, princes, gods it will make of you!
RATZMANN: That’s enough to be getting on with, to be sure! But it will be a breakneck job, it will cost us our heads at least.
SPIEGELBERG: It will cost nothing but courage, for I will supply what wits are needed. Courage, I say, Schweitzer! Courage, Roller, Grimm, Ratzmann, Schufterle! Courage!
SCHWEITZER: Courage? Is that all? I’ve enough courage to go barefoot through hell.
SCHUFTERLE: Courage enough to scrap with the devil at the gallows’ foot for a poor sinner’s soul.
SPIEGELBERG: That’s what I like to hear! If you have courage, let one amongst you say he still has anything to lose, and not everything to gain!
SCHWARTZ: Indeed, there would be plenty to lose, if I were to lose what I still have to gain!
RATZMANN: Yes, in hell’s name! and plenty to gain, if I were to gain what I can’t lose!
SCHUFTERLE: If I were to lose everything I have on me that’s borrowed, then by tomorrow I should have nothing left to lose.
SPIEGELBERG: Very well, then! [He takes his place in the midst of them, and adopts an imperious tone.] If there is still one drop of heroic German blood running in your veins – then come! We will hide in the forests of Bohemia, raise a robber band, and – why are you staring at me? Has your little bit of courage melted away already?
ROLLER: I don’t suppose you are the first rogue to overlook the gallows – and yet – what else is there we can do?
SPIEGELBERG: What else? Nothing else! There is no choice in the matter! Do you want to sit starving in the debtors’ prison till the last trump blows? Do you want to scratch with spade and hoe for a scrap of stale bread? Do you want to beg for alms, singing ballads at people’s windows? Do you want to take the King’s shilling – if they would trust the looks of you, that’s the first question – and do your stint in Purgatory while you are still on earth, at the mercy of some splenetic tyrant of a corporal? Or be drummed out to run the gauntlet, or tramp the galleys and drag the whole arsenal of Vulcan’s smithy behind you? That is what else there is, that is all the choice you have!
ROLLER: It’s not such a bad idea of Spiegelberg’s. I have been making plans too, but it is the same kind of thing. How would it be, I thought, if you all sat down and cooked up an anthology or an almanac or something like that, or wrote reviews for a shilling or two? It’s all the rage nowadays.
SCHUFTERLE: I’ll be hanged if your plans aren’t very much like mine. I was thinking to myself, what if you were to turn evangelical, and hold weekly classes in spiritual improvement?
GRIMM: That’s it! and if that was no good, turn atheist, blaspheme against the four gospels, have our book burnt by the hangman, and we should do a roaring trade.
RATZMANN: Or we could set up to cure the pox – I know a doctor who built himself a house on a foundation of mercury, so the motto over the door says.
SCHWEITZER [stands up and gives SPIEGELBERG his hand]: Moritz, you are a great man – or a blind pig has found an acorn.
SCHWARZ: Excellent plans! most reputable professions! How great minds think alike! All that’s left now is to turn into women and become bawds, or even sell our own virginity on the streets.
SPIEGELBERG: Nonsense, nonsense! And what is to stop you being most of these things in one person? My plan will still do the best for you, and make you famous and immortal too! Look, you poor things! As far ahead as that you must think! Think of the fame that will live after you, the sweet feeling that you will never be forgotten –
ROLLER: And at the top of the list of honest people! You are a master orator, Spiegelberg, when it comes to turning an honest man into a villain. – But doesn’t anyone know where Moor is?
SPIEGELBERG: Honest, do you say? What, do you think it will make you any less of an honest man than you are today? What do you call being honest? Relieving rich skinflints of a third of their worries, that only disturb their golden slumbers; bringing idle money into circulation, restoring the fair distribution of wealth, in a word bringing back the golden age; taking away some of the good Lord’s burdens, so that he can be rid of them without war, pestilence, famine and doctors – that’s what I call being an honest man, that’s what I call being a worthy instrument in the hand of Providence; and with every joint you roast to be able to flatter yourself with the thought that it’s your own cunning, your own lion’s courage, your own long vigils that have earned it; to be respected by great and small –
ROLLER: And in the end to be hoisted up to heaven in the flesh, and come wind come weather, in spite of old father fine and his greedy appetite, to swing there with sun and moon and all the stars in the firmament, while the birds sing a heavenly concert at the feast and the long-tailed angels sit in sacred council? What? And while monarchs and potentates make a feast for moths and worms, to have the honour of being visited by Jove’s royal bird? Moritz, Moritz, Moritz! Beware, beware the three-legged beast!
SPIEGELBERG: And that frightens you, coward? Why, there’s many a virtuoso rotting on the gibbet who might have reformed the world, and won’t such a one be spoken of for hundreds and thousands of years, while many a king and many an elector might be left out of history altogether, if it weren’t that the historians were afraid to leave a gap in the line of succession, and if it weren’t that it made their books a few pages thicker and brought in more cash from the publisher. And if the passer-by does see you floating back and forth in the wind, why, he’ll think to himself, that must have been no ordinary fellow, and he’ll sigh that the world has gone to the dogs.
SCHWEITZER [slapping him on the back]: Superb, Spiegelberg I Superb! Why the devil do you stand there hesitating?
SCHWARZ: And even if it meant degradation – What more can there be? One can always have a pinch of powder with one, to speed one across the Acheron if it should come to that, so that one will never hear the cock crow again. No, friend moritz! it’s a good proposal. That’s my catechism too.
SCHUFTERLE: Hell! And mine as well. Spiegelberg, I’m your man!
RATZMANN: Like another Orpheus, you have sung my howling brute of a conscience to sleep. Take me as I am!
GRIMM: Si omnes consentiunt ego non dissentio. With no comma, mind.* They are holding an auction in my head: evangelist, quack-doctor, reviewer and rogue. I’m to be had for the best offer. Here, Moritz, my hand!
ROLLER: And you too, Schweitzer? [Offering SPIEGELBERG his right hand] Then the devil can take my soul.
SPIEGELBERG: But your name shall be written in the stars! What does it matter where your soul goes? When troops of couriers gallop ahead to announce our descent, so that the devils put on their Sunday best, rub the soot of millennia out of their eyes, and horned heads in their thousands poke from the smoky chimneys of their sulphur-ovens to see our arrival? Comrades! [Jumping up] Away! Comrades! Is there anything in the world so glorious, so thrilling? Come, comrades, and away!
ROLLER: Gently now, gently! where are you going? the beast must have its head, children!
SPIEGELBERG [venomously]: What words of hesitation are these? Wasn’t the head there before a single limb stirred? follow me, comrades!
ROLLER: Steady on, I say. Even liberty must have its master. Without a head, Rome and Sparta were destroyed.
SPIEGELBERG [ingratiatingly]: Yes – wait, Roller is right. And the head must be a brilliant one. Do you understand? A shrewd political head it must be. Yes, if I think of what you were an hour ago, and what you are now – are by virtue of a single lucky idea – Yes, of course, of course you must have a chief – and the man who thought up that idea, tell me, mustn’t he have a brilliant, political head?
ROLLER: If we could only hope – if we could only dream – but I am afraid he will not do it.
SPIEGELBERG: Why not? Speak your mind, friend! Heavy though the task may be of steering the struggling ship against the gale, heavy though the weight of a crown may weigh – speak without fear, Roller! Perhaps he will do it after all.
ROLLER: And the whole thing falls to pieces if he will not. Without Moor we’re a body without a soul.
SPIEGELBERG [turning away from him in disgust]: Blockhead!
[Enter MOOR in wild agitation. He paces violently up and down the room, talking to himself.]
MOOR: Men, men! False breed of hypocrites and crocodiles! Their eyes water, but their hearts are of iron! Kisses on their lips, but swords in their bosom! Lions and leopards feed their young, ravens take their chicks to feast on corpses, and he, he – Wickedness I have learnt to endure. I can smile when my arch-enemy is drinking my heart’s blood; but when blood kinship turns traitor, when a father’s love becomes a raging fury; oh, then catch fire, manly resignation, be as a ravening tiger, gentle lamb, and let every fibre stiffen to hatred and destruction!
ROLLER: Listen, Moor! What do you think? A robber’s life is better than bread and water in the deepest dungeon after all, isn’t it?
MOOR: Why was this spirit not formed into a tiger, that fastens its savage jaws in human flesh? Is this a father’s devotion? Is this love for love? Would that I were a bear, and could raise the bears of the north against this race of murderers – repentance, and no forgiveness! Oh, would that I might poison the ocean, that they might drink death from every spring! Trust, submission that none could turn away, and no pity!
ROLLER: Moor, listen to what I am saying!
MOOR: It is unbelievable, it is a dream, a delusion – such moving pleas, such keen representation of my misery and my melting repentance – a brute beast would have wept in compassion! Stones would have shed tears, and yet – it would be thought a wicked slur on all mankind, if I were to say so – and yet, and yet – oh, would that I could blow the trumpet of rebellion throughout the realm of nature, to stir up earth, sky and sea to battle against this brood of hyenas!
GRIMM: Listen, will you! You are so mad you do not hear.
MOOR: Get away from me! Are you not a man? Are you not born of woman? Out of my sight, you creature with man’s face! – I loved him so unspeakably! no son loved so, my life I would a thousand times – [foaming, stamping on the ground] ha! he who should put a sword into my hand, to deal a deadly blow to this generation of vipers! he who should say to me: if I can pierce the heart of its life, crush it, strangle it – that man shall be my friend, my angel, my god – I will worship him!
ROLLER: We want to be those friends of yours, let us tell you!
SCHWARZ: Come with us into the forests of Bohemia! We are going to raise a band of robbers, and you –
[MOOR stares at him.]
SCHWEITZER: You are to be our captain! you must be our captain!
SPIEGELBERG [hurling himself into a chair injury]: Slaves and cowards!
MOOR: Who gave you that idea? Listen, fellow! [Seizing SCHWARZ fiercely] It did not come from your man’s soul! Who prompted you? Yes, by the thousand arms of death! we shall, we must! a thought fit for gods! Robbers and murderers! As sure as my soul breathes, I am your captain!
ALL [shouting aloud]: Long live our captain!
SPIEGELBERG[jumping up, aside]: Until I see him off!
MOOR: See, the scales have fallen from my eyes! What a fool I was, to seek to return to the cage! My spirit thirsts for deeds, my lungs for freedom – murderers, robbers! at that word I trampled the law beneath my feet – men showed me no humanity, when to humanity I appealed; so let me forget sympathy and human feeling! I have no father now, I have no love now, and blood and death shall teach me to forget that ever I held anything dear! Oh, my amusement shall be the terror of the earth – it is agreed, I shall be your captain! and good fortune to the champion among you who lights the fiercest fires, who does the foulest murders, for I say to you, he shall have a kingly reward! Gather round me every one, and swear loyalty and obedience till death! Swear by this man’s right hand of mine!
ALL [reaching him their hands]: We swear loyalty and obedience to you till death!
MOOR: Now, and by this man’s right hand of mine! I swear to you to remain your captain in loyalty and constancy till death! If any show cowardice or hesitation or retreat, this arm shall strike him down on the spot; the same fate meet me from any and every one of you, if I offend against my oath! Are you agreed?
[SPIEGELBERG paces furiously up and down.]
ALL [throwing their hats in the air]: We are agreed!
MOOR: Very well then, let us go! Fear not death or danger, for an inflexible fate rules over us all. We must endure our going hence, be it on soft pillows of down, be it in the hurly-burly of battle, or be it on the gallows and the wheel! one or the other must be our lot! [Exeunt.]
SPIEGELBERG [watching them go, after a pause]: There is one missing in your list Poison you have forgotten. [Exit.]
OLD MOOR’s castle, AMALIA’S rooms.
[FRANZ, AMALIA.]
FRANZ: You look away, Amalia? Am I less worthy than he whom my father has cursed?
AMALIA: Away! – oh, merciful, loving father, who will cast his son to the wolves and the wild beasts! while he at home is refreshed with sweet, precious wine, and cossets his feeble limbs in pillows of eiderdown, while his great and glorious son may perish! Shame on you, inhuman creatures! shame on you, you monsters, you abomination of mankind! his only son!
FRANZ: I thought that he had two.
AMALIA: Yes, it is sons like you that he deserves. On his deathbed he will stretch out his withered hands in vain to seek his Karl, and start back in horror when he catches the icy hand of his Franz – oh, it is sweet, it is a sweet and noble thing, to earn your father’s curse! Speak, Franz, good soul, good brother, what must one do if one would earn his curse?
FRANZ: My poor love, your fantasy is leading you astray.
AMALIA: Oh, I beg you – do you pity your brother? No, inhuman creature, you hate him! and you hate me too?
FRANZ: I love you as I love myself, Amalia.
AMALIA: If you love me, can you refuse me one request?
FRANZ: Not one, not one! if it is not more than my life.
AMALIA: Oh, if that is true! One request, that you will fulfil so easily, so gladly – [Proudly] Hate me! I cannot but blush crimson with shame, if I think of Karl and realize that you do not hate me. You promise me? Now go, and leave me – let me be alone!
FRANZ: My sweet dreamer! how I adore your gentle loving heart. [Touching her breast] Here, here Karl reigned like a god in his temple, Karl stood before you while you were awake, Karl ruled your dreams, all creation seemed to you to be dissolved in him, to reflect him, to echo him and him alone.
AMALIA [moved]: Yes, it is true, I admit it. In spite of you, barbarians, I confess it to all the world – I love him!
FRANZ: Inhuman, cruel! To reward such love like this! To forget the one –
AMALIA [starting up]: What, to forget me?
FRANZ: Did you not put a ring upon his finger? a diamond ring, as a pledge of your constancy? But after all, how can a young man withstand a courtesan’s charms? Who can blame him when he had nothing left to give away? And did she not pay him with interest for it, with her embraces, with her caresses?
AMALIA [indignantly]: A courtesan, my ring?
FRANZ: Pah! it is shameful. But if that was all! A ring, however precious, any Jew can replace, if it comes to that – perhaps he did not like the setting, perhaps he changed it for a better one.
AMALIA [angrily]: But my ring, my ring, I say?
FRANZ: The very same, Amalia – ah, such a jewel, on my finger – and from Amalia! – death itself could not have torn it from me – is it not so, Amalia? it is not the size of the diamond, it is not the skill of the cutting – it is love that makes it precious – dearest child, you are weeping? Cursed be he who makes these heavenly eyes shed their precious drops – oh, and if only you knew everything, if only you could see him, as he is now! –
AMALIA: Monster! What do you mean, as he is now?
FRANZ: Be still, sweet creature, do not ask me! [As if to himself, but aloud] If only there were some veil that could hide it, that filthy vice, so that it could creep out of sight of the world! But no! it shows in all its vileness, in the yellow leaden ring round the eye; the deathly pallor of the sunken cheeks betrays it, and the hideous protruding bones – the stifled, strangled voice mutters of it – the tottering, decrepit frame proclaims it aloud in all its horror – it gnaws the very marrow of the bones, and saps the bold youth’s strength – there, there! the suppurating juices start forth from forehead and cheeks and lips and cover the whole body with their loathsome sores, and fester in the dark hollows of bestial disgrace – pah! it revolts me. Nose, ears, eyes shudder at it – you saw him, Amalia, that wretch who coughed out his soul in our infirmary, the modest eye of shame seemed to turn aside from the sight of him – alas for him, you cried! Think of it, summon up that vision once more before your mind’s eye, and it is Karl that you see! – His kisses are a pestilence, his lips would poison yours!
AMALIA [striking him]: Shameless slanderer!
FRANZ: Does it fill you with horror, the thought of such a Karl? Does even my pale sketch disgust you? Go, gape at him himself, your handsome, angelic, divine Karl! Go, breathe in the perfume of his breath, let the sweet vapours that his throat streams forth envelop you; one breath from his lips, and you would feel the same black swoon of death upon you as if you smelt a rotting corpse, or saw the carrion of a battlefield.
[AMALIA turns her face away.]
FRANZ: What surging tide of love! What bliss in his embrace! – But is it not unjust to damn a man for the sickness of his body? Even the most miserable cripple of an Aesop may hide a great and noble soul, as the mud hides the ruby. [Smiling maliciously] Even scabbed lips may breathe of love – But yet, if vice has sapped the strength of his character as well, if virtue has fled with chastity, as the perfume fades from the withered rose – if with the body the spirit too is crippled –
AMALIA [starting up, joyfully]: Ah, Karl! Now I see you truly again! you are still your own true self! It was all a lie! Do you not know, wicked creature, that these things can never touch my Karl?
[FRANZ stands for a while deep in thought, then turns suddenly as if to go.]
Where are you hurrying to, would you fly from your own shame?
FRANZ [hiding his face]: Let me go, let me go! let my tears flow – tyrant of a father! to cast the best of your sons into such misery – to expose him to shame on every side – let me go, Amalia! I will fall on my knees at his feet, I will implore him to let me, me bear the curse that he spoke – to disinherit me – me – to – my life, my blood – everything –
AMALIA [throwing her arms round his neck]: Oh, my Karl’s brother, dearest, most precious Franz!
FRANZ: Oh, Amalia! how I love you for your unshakeable constancy to my brother – forgive me, for presuming to put your love to so harsh a test! How perfectly you vindicate my hopes! With these your tears, these your sighs, this your heavenly displeasure – for me, me too – our souls were always as one.
AMALIA: No, that they never were!
FRANZ: Oh, they were as one, in such sweet harmony, I always thought that we should have been twins! and if it were not for the unhappy difference in outward looks between us, which I admit is not to his advantage, then ten times the one might have been taken for the other. Yes, you are, I said to myself so often, you are Karl himself, his echo, his living image!
AMALIA [shaking her head]: No, no! by the chaste light of Heaven! not one drop of his blood, not one spark of his spirit!
FRANZ: So alike in all our tastes: the rose was his favourite flower – what flower did I ever rate above the rose? He loved music more than words can tell, and I! you stars are my witnesses, how often you have heard me at the keyboard in the silence of the night, when all around me lay buried in shadows and sleep – how can you doubt it still, Amalia, when our love coincided in the same point of perfection, and if love is one, how can its children deny their ancestry?
[AMALIA stares at him in amazement.]
FRANZ: It was a clear, still evening, the last night before he set off for Leipzig, when he took me with him to the arbour where you so often sat together, dreaming of love – we sat there long in silence – at last he took my hand and spoke softly and with tears in his eyes: I am leaving Amalia, I do not know – I feel that it may be for ever – do not you leave her, brother! be her friend – her Karl – if Karl should – not -return – ![He falls on his knees before her and kisses her hand passionately.] No, he will not return, never, never, and I have promised him with a sacred oath!
AMALIA [drawing back sharply]: Traitor, I have found you out! In this same arbour he made me swear, never to love another – if he should not – see, how blasphemously, how vilely you – out of my sight!
FRANZ: You mistake me, Amalia, you are quite mistaken in me!
AMALIA: Oh, I am not mistaken in you, I know you from this moment – and you would be his equal? And you say it was to you he wept for my sake? To you? He would sooner have written my name upon the pillory! Go, this instant!
FRANZ: You do me an injustice!
AMALIA; Go, I say! You have robbed me of a precious hour, let your life be so much the shorter.
FRANZ: You hate me.
AMALIA: I despise you, go!
FRANZ [stamping his foot]: Wait! I will make you tremble before me! To sacrifice me to a beggar? [Exit, angrily.]
AMALIA: Go, base creature! – now I am with Karl again – a beggar, did he say? Why then, the world is turned upside – down, beggars are kings and kings are beggars! I would not change the rags he wears for the purple of the anointed – the look with which he begs for alms must be a noble and a kingly look – a look to wither the pomp and splendour, the triumphs of the great and rich! Into the dust with you, idle jewels! [Tearing the pearls from her throat.] Be condemned, you great and rich, to wear your gold and silver and your precious stones, to glut yourselves at feasts and banquets, to stretch your limbs on the soft couch of ease! Karl! Karl! You see that I am worthy of you. [Exit.]