FRANCIS (hiding his face). Let me go, let me go! to give free vent to my tears! tyrannical father, thus to abandon the best of your sons to misery and disgrace on every side! Let me go, Amelia! I will throw myself at his feet, on my knees I will conjure him to transfer to me the curse that he has pronounced, to disinherit me, to hate me, my blood, my life, my all--.
AMELIA (falls on his neck). Brother of my Charles! Dearest, most excellent Francis!
FRANCIS. Oh, Amelia! how I love you for this unshaken constancy to my brother. Forgive me for venturing to subject your love to so severe a trial! How nobly you have realized my wishes! By those tears, those sighs, that divine indignation-and for me too, for me-our souls did so truly harmonize.
AMELIA. Oh, no! that they never did!
FRANCIS. Alas! they harmonized so truly that I always thought we must be twins. And were it not for that unfortunate difference in person, to be twin-like, which, it must be admitted, would be to the disadvantage of Charles, we should again and again be mistaken for each other. Thou art, I often said to myself, thou art the very Charles, his echo, his counterpart.
AMELIA (shakes her head). No, no! by that chaste light of heaven! not an atom of him, not the least spark of his soul.
FRANCIS. So entirely the same in our dispositions; the rose was his favorite flower, and what flower do I esteem above the rose? He loved music beyond expression; and ye are witnesses, ye stars! how often you have listened to me playing on the harpsichord in the dead silence of night, when all around lay buried in darkness and slumber; and how is it possible for you, Amelia, still to doubt? if our love meets in one perfection, and if it is the self-same love, how can its fruits degenerate? (AMELIA looks at him with astonishment.) It was a calm, serene evening, the last before his departure for Leipzic, when he took me with him to the bower where you so often sat together in dreams of love,-we were long speechless; at last he seized my hand, and said, in a low voice, and with tears in his eyes, "I am leaving Amelia; I know not, but I have a sad presentiment that it is forever; forsake her not, brother; be her friend, her Charles-if Charles-should never-never return." (He throws himself down before her, and kisses her hand with fervor.) Never, never, never will he return; and I stand pledged by a sacred oath to fulfil his behest!
AMELIA (starting back). Traitor! Now thou art unmasked! In that very bower he conjured me, if he died, to admit no other love. Dost thou see how impious, how execrable--. Quit my sight!
FRANCIS. You know me not, Amelia; you do not know me in the least!
AMELIA. Oh, yes, I know you; from henceforth I know you; and you pretend to be like him? You mean to say that he wept for me in your presence? Yours? He would sooner have inscribed my name on the pillory? Begone-this instant!
FRANCIS. You insult me.
AMELIA. Go-I say. You have robbed me of a precious hour; may it be deducted from your life.
FRANCIS. You hate me then!
AMELIA. I despise you-away!
FRANCIS (stamping with fury). Only wait! you shall learn to tremble before me!-To sacrifice me for a beggar!
[Exit in anger.]
AMELIA. Go, thou base villain! Now, Charles, am I again thine own. Beggar, did he say! then is the world turned upside down, beggars are kings, and kings are beggars! I would not change the rags he wears for the imperial purple. The look with which he begs must, indeed, be a noble, a royal look, a look that withers into naught the glory, the pomp, the triumphs of the rich and great! Into the dust with thee, glittering baubles! (She tears her pearls from her neck.) Let the rich and the proud be condemned to bear the burden of gold, and silver, and jewels! Be they condemned to carouse at the tables of the voluptuous! To pamper their limbs on the downy couch of luxury! Charles! Charles! Thus am I worthy of thee!
[Exit.]
ACT II.
SCENE I.-FRANCIS VON MOOR in his chamber-in meditation.
FRANCIS. It lasts too long-and the doctor even says is recovering-an old man's life is a very eternity! The course would be free and plain before me, but for this troublesome, tough lump of flesh, which, like the infernal demon-hound in ghost stories, bars the way to my treasures.
Must, then, my projects bend to the iron yoke of a mechanical system? Is my soaring spirit to be chained down to the snail's pace of matter? To blow out a wick which is already flickering upon its last drop of oil-'tis nothing more. And yet I would rather not do it myself, on account of what the world would say. I should not wish him to be killed, but merely disposed of. I should like to do what your clever physician does, only the reverse way-not stop Nature's course by running a bar across her path, but only help her to speed a little faster. Are we not able to prolong the conditions of life? Why, then, should we not also be able to shorten them? Philosophers and physiologists teach us how close is the sympathy between the emotions of the mind and the movements of the bodily machine. Convulsive sensations are always accompanied by a disturbance of the mechanical vibrations- passions injure the vital powers-an overburdened spirit bursts its shell. Well, then-what if one knew how to smooth this unbeaten path, for the easier entrance of death into the citadel of life?-to work the body's destruction through the mind-ha! an original device!-who can accomplish this?-a device without a parallel! Think upon it, Moor! That were an art worthy of thee for its inventor. Has not poisoning been raised almost to the rank of a regular science, and Nature compelled, by the force of experiments, to define her limits, so that one may now calculate the heart's throbbings for years in advance, and say to the beating pulse, "So far, and no farther"? Why should not one try one's skill in this line?*
*[A woman in Paris, by means of a regularly performed series of
experiments, carried the art of poisoning to such perfection that
she could predict almost to a certainty the day of death, however
remote. Fie upon our physicians, who should blush to be outdone by
a woman in their own province. Beckmann, in his article on secret
poisoning, has given a particular account of this woman, the
Marchioness de Brinvilliers.-See "History of Inventions," Standard
Library Edition, vol. i, pp. 47-63.]
And how, then, must I, too, go to work to dissever that sweet and peaceful union of soul and body? What species of sensations should I seek to produce? Which would most fiercely assail the condition of life? Anger?-that ravenous wolf is too quickly satiated. Care? that worm gnaws far too slowly. Grief?-that viper creeps too lazily for me. Fear?-hope destroys its power. What! and are these the only executioners of man? is the armory of death so soon exhausted? (In deep thought.) How now! what! ho! I have it! (Starting up.) Terror! What is proof against terror? What powers have religion and reason under that giant's icy grasp! And yet-if he should withstand even this assault? If he should! Oh, then, come Anguish to my aid! and thou, gnawing Repentance!-furies of hell, burrowing snakes who regorge your food, and feed upon your own excrements; ye that are forever destroying, and forever reproducing your poison! And thou, howling Remorse, that desolatest thine own habitation, and feedest upon thy mother. And come ye, too, gentle Graces, to my aid; even you, sweet smiling Memory, goddess of the past-and thou, with thy overflowing horn of plenty, blooming Futurity; show him in your mirror the joys of Paradise, while with fleeting foot you elude his eager grasp. Thus will I work my battery of death, stroke after stroke, upon his fragile body, until the troop of furies close upon him with Despair! Triumph! triumph!-the plan is complete-difficult and masterly beyond compare-sure-safe; for then (with a sneer) the dissecting knife can find no trace of wound or of corrosive poison.