Wherefore with your commission of to-day,
You were not all too willing to remember
Your former one.
QUESTENBERG.
Why not, Count Isolani?
No contradiction sure exists between them.
It was the urgent business of that time
To snatch Bavaria from her enemy's hand;
And my commission of to-day instructs me
To free her from her good friends and protectors.
ILLO.
A worthy office! After with our blood
We have wrested this Bohemia from the Saxon,
To be swept out of it is all our thanks,
The sole reward of all our hard-won victories.
QUESTENBERG.
Unless that wretched land be doomed to suffer
Only a change of evils, it must be
Freed from the scourge alike of friend or foe.
ILLO.
What? 'Twas a favorable year; the boors
Can answer fresh demands already.
QUESTENBERG.
Nay,
If you discourse of herds and meadow-grounds--
ISOLANI.
The war maintains the war. Are the boors ruined
The emperor gains so many more new soldiers.
QUESTENBERG.
And is the poorer by even so many subjects.
ISOLANI.
Poh! we are all his subjects.
QUESTENBERG.
Yet with a difference, general! The one fill
With profitable industry the purse,
The others are well skilled to empty it.
The sword has made the emperor poor; the plough
Must reinvigorate his resources.
ISOLANI.
Sure!
Times are not yet so bad. Methinks I see
[Examining with his eye the dress and ornaments of QUESTENBERG.
Good store of gold that still remains uncoined.
QUESTENBERG.
Thank Heaven! that means have been found out to hide
Some little from the fingers of the Croats.
ILLO.
There! The Stawata and the Martinitz,
On whom the emperor heaps his gifts and graces,
To the heart-burning of all good Bohemians-
Those minions of court favor, those court harpies,
Who fatten on the wrecks of citizens
Driven from their house and home-who reap no harvests
Save in the general calamity-
Who now, with kingly pomp, insult and mock
The desolation of their country-these,
Let these, and such as these, support the war,
The fatal war, which they alone enkindled!
BUTLER.
And those state-parasites, who have their feet
So constantly beneath the emperor's table,
Who cannot let a benefice fall, but they
Snap at it with dogs' hunger-they, forsooth,
Would pare the soldiers bread and cross his reckoning!
ISOLANI.
My life long will it anger me to think,
How when I went to court seven years ago,
To see about new horses for our regiment,
How from one antechamber to another
They dragged me on and left me by the hour
To kick my heels among a crowd of simpering
Feast-fattened slaves, as if I had come thither
A mendicant suitor for the crumbs of favor
That fell beneath their tables. And, at last,
Whom should they send me but a Capuchin!
Straight I began to muster up my sins
For absolution-but no such luck for me!
This was the man, this Capuchin, with whom
I was to treat concerning the army horses!
And I was forced at last to quit the field,
The business unaccomplished. Afterwards
The duke procured me in three days what I
Could not obtain in thirty at Vienna.
QUESTENBERG.
Yes, yes! your travelling bills soon found their way to us!
Too well I know we have still accounts to settle.
ILLO.
War is violent trade; one cannot always
Finish one's work by soft means; every trifle
Must not be blackened into sacrilege.
If we should wait till you, in solemn council,
With due deliberation had selected
The smallest out of four-and-twenty evils,
I' faith we should wait long-
"Dash! and through with it!" That's the better watchword.
Then after come what may come. 'Tis man's nature
To make the best of a bad thing once past.
A bitter and perplexed "what shall I do?"
Is worse to man than worst necessity.
QUESTENBERG.
Ay, doubtless, it is true; the duke does spare us
The troublesome task of choosing.
BUTLER.
Yes, the duke
Cares with a father's feelings for his troops;
But how the emperor feels for us, we see.
QUESTENBERG.
His cares and feelings all ranks share alike,
Nor will he offer one up to another.
ISOLANI.
And therefore thrusts he us into the deserts
As beasts of prey, that so he may preserve
His dear sheep fattening in his fields at home.
QUESTENBERG (with a sneer).
Count! this comparison you make, not I.
ILLO.
Why, were we all the court supposes us
'Twere dangerous, sure, to give us liberty.
QUESTENBERG (gravely).
You have taken liberty-it was not given you,
And therefore it becomes an urgent duty
To rein it in with the curbs.
ILLO.
Expect to find a restive steed in us.
QUESTENBERG.
A better rider may be found to rule it.
ILLO.
He only brooks the rider who has tamed him.
QUESTENBERG.
Ay, tame him once, and then a child may lead him.
ILLO.
The child, we know, is found for him already.
QUESTENBERG.
Be duty, sir, your study, not a name.
BUTLER (who has stood aside with PICCOLOMINI, but with visible interest
in the conversation, advances).
Sir president, the emperor has in Germany
A splendid host assembled; in this kingdom
Full twenty thousand soldiers are cantoned,
With sixteen thousand in Silesia;
Ten regiments are posted on the Weser,
The Rhine, and Maine; in Swabia there are six,
And in Bavaria twelve, to face the Swedes;
Without including in the account the garrisons
Who on the frontiers hold the fortresses.
This vast and mighty host is all obedient
To Friedland's captains; and its brave commanders,
Bred in one school, and nurtured with one milk,
Are all excited by one heart and soul;
They are as strangers on the soil they tread,
The service is their only house and home.
No zeal inspires then for their country's cause,
For thousands like myself were born abroad;
Nor care they for the emperor, for one half
Deserting other service fled to ours,
Indifferent what their banner, whether 'twere,
The Double Eagle, Lily, or the Lion.
Yet one sole man can rein this fiery host
By equal rule, by equal love and fear;
Blending the many-nationed whole in one;
And like the lightning's fires securely led
Down the conducting rod, e'en thus his power
Rules all the mass, from guarded post to post,
From where the sentry hears the Baltic roar,
Or views the fertile vales of the Adige,