A VOICE.He flouts the Lord's anointed! Cast him forth!
SUSSKIND VON ORB.Peace, brethren, peace! If I have ever servedIsrael with purse, arm, brain, or heart—now hear me!May God instruct my speech! This wise old man,Whose brow flames with the majesty of truth,May be part-blinded through excess of light,As one who eyes too long the naked sun,Setting in rayless glory, turns and findsOutlines confused, familiar colors changed,All objects branded with one blood-bright spot.Nor chafe at Baruch's homely sense; truth floatsMidway between the stars and the abyss.We, by God's grace, have found a special nestI' the dangerous rock, screened against wind and hawk;Free burghers of a free town, blessed moreoverWith the peculiar favor of the Prince,Frederick the Grave, our patron and protector.What shall we fear? Rather, where shall we seekSecure asylum, if here be not one?Fly? Our forefathers had the wilderness,The sea their gateway, and the fire-cored cloudTheir divine guide. Us, hedged by ambushed foes,No frank, free, kindly desert shall receive.Death crouches on all sides, prepared to leapTiger-like on our throats, when first we stepFrom this safe covert. Everywhere the Plague!As nigh as Erfurt it has crawled—the townsReek with miasma, the rank fields of spring,Rain-saturated, are one beautiful—lie,Smiling profuse life, and secreting death.Strange how, unbidden, a trivial memoryThrusts itself on my mind in this grave hour.I saw a large white bull urged through the townTo slaughter by a stripling with a goad,Whom but one sure stamp of that solid heel,One toss of those mooned horns, one battering blowOf that square marble forehead, would have crushed,As we might crush a worm, yet on he trudged,Patient, in powerful health to death. At once,As though o' the sudden stung, he roared aloud,Beat with fierce hoofs the air, shook desperatelyHis formidable head, and heifer-swift,Raced through scared, screaming streets. Well, and the end?He was the promptlier bound and killed and quartered.The world belongs to man; dreams the poor bruteSome nook has been apportioned for brute life?Where shall a man escape men's cruelty?Where shall God's servant cower from his doom?Let us bide, brethren—we are in His hand.
RABBI CRESSELIN (uttering a piercing shriek).Ah!Woe unto Israel! Lo, I see again,As the Ineffable foretold. I seeA flood of fire that streams towards the town.Look, the destroying Angel with the sword,Wherefrom the drops of gall are raining down,Broad-winged, comes flying towards you. Now he drawsHis lightning-glittering blade! With the keen edgeHe smiteth Israel—ah![He falls back dead. Confusion in the Synagogue.]
CLAIRE (from the gallery).Father! My father!Let me go down to him!
LIEBHAID.Sweet girl, be patient.This is the House of God, and He hath entered.Bow we and pray.[Meanwhile, some of the men surround and raise from the ground thebody of RABBI CRESSELIN. Several voices speaking at once.]
1ST VOICE.He's doomed.
2D VOICE.Dead! Dead!
3D VOICE.A judgment!
4TH VOICE.Make way there! Air! Carry him forth! He's warm!3D VOICE.Nay, his heart's stopped—his breath has ceased—quite dead.
5TH VOICE.Didst mark a diamond lance flash from the roof,And strike him 'twixt the eyes?
1ST VOICE.Our days are numbered.This is the token.
RABBI JACOB.Lift the corpse and pray.Shall we neglect God's due observances,While He is manifest in miracle?I saw a blaze seven times more bright than fire,Crest, halo-wise, the patriarch's white head.The dazzle stung my burning lids—they closed,One instant—when they oped, the great blank cloudHad settled on his countenance forever.*Departed brother, mayest thou find the gatesOf heaven open, see the city of peace,And meet the ministering angels, glad,Hastening towards thee! May the High Priest standTo greet and bless thee! Go thou to the end!Repose in peace and rise again to life.No more thy sun sets, neither wanes thy moon.The Lord shall be thy everlasting light,Thy days of mourning shall be at an end.For you, my flock, fear nothing; it is writAs one his mother comforteth, so IWill comfort you and in JerusalemYe shall be comforted. [Scene closes.]*From this point to the end of the scene is a literaltranslation of the Hebrew burial service.
SCENE III.Evening. A crooked byway in the Judengasse. Enter PRINCEWILLIAM.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Cursed be these twisted lanes! I have missed the clueOf the close labyrinth. Nowhere in sight,Just when I lack it, a stray gaberdineTo pick me up my thread. Yet when I hasteThrough these blind streets, unwishful to be spied,Some dozen hawk-eyes peering o'er crook'd beaksLeer recognition, and obsequious capsDo kiss the stones to greet my princeship. Bah!Strange, 'midst such refuse sleeps so white a pearl.At last, here shuffles one.Enter a Jew.Give you good even!Sir, can you help me to the nighest wayUnto the merchant's house, Susskind von Orb?
JEW.Whence come you knowing not the high brick wall,Without, blank as my palm, o' the inner side,Muring a palace? But—do you wish him well?He is my friend—we must be wary, wary,We all have warning—Oh, the terror of it!I have not yet my wits!
PRINCE WILLIAM.I am his friend.Is he in peril? What's the matter, man?
JEW.Peril? His peril is no worse than mine,But the rich win compassion. God is just,And every man of us is doomed. Alack!HE said it—oh those wild, white eyes!
PRINCE WILLIAM.I pray you,Tell me the way to Susskind's home.
JEW.Sweet master,You look the perfect knight, what can you craveOf us starved, wretched Jews? Leave us in peace.The Judengasse gates will shut anon,Nor ope till morn again for Jew or Gentile.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Here's gold. I am the Prince of Meissen—speak!
JEW.Oh pardon! Let me kiss your mantle's edge.This way, great sir, I lead you there myself,If you deign follow one so poor, so humble.You must show mercy in the name of God,For verily are we afflicted. Come.Hard by is Susskind's dwelling—as we walkBy your good leave I'll tell what I have seen.[Exeunt.]
SCENE IV.A luxuriously-furnished apartment in SUSSKIND VON ORB'S house.Upon a richly-spread supper-table stands the seven-branchedsilver candlestick of the Sabbath eve. At the table are seatedSUSSKIND VON ORB, LIEBHAID, and REUBEN.
SUSSKIND.Drink, children, drink! and lift your hearts to HimWho gives us the vine's fruit.[They drink.]How clear it glows;Like gold within the golden bowl, like fireAlong our veins, after the work-day weekRekindling Sabbath-fervor, Sabbath-strength.Verily God prepares for me a tableIn presence of mine enemies! He anointsMy head with oil, my cup is overflowing.Praise we His name! Hast thou, my daughter, servedThe needs o' the poor, suddenly-orphaned child?Naught must she lack beneath my roof.
LIEBHAID.Yea, father.She prays and weeps within: she had no heartFor Sabbath meal, but charged me with her thanks—
SUSSKIND.Thou shalt be mother and sister in one to her.Speak to her comfortably.
REUBEN.She has beggedA grace of me I happily can grant.After our evening-prayer, to lead her backUnto the Synagogue, where sleeps her father,A light at head and foot, o'erwatched by strangers;She would hold vigil.
SUSSKIND.'T is a pious wish,Not to be crossed, befitting Israel's daughter.Go, Reuben; heavily the moments hang,While her heart yearns to break beside his corpse.Receive my blessing.[He places his hands upon his son's head in benediction. ExitReuben.]Henceforth her home is here.In the event to-night, God's finger pointsVisibly out of heaven. A thick cloudBefogs the future. But just here is light.Enter a servant ushering in PRINCE WILLIAM.
SERVANT.His highness Prince of Meissen.[Exit.]
SUSSKIND.Welcome, Prince!God bless thy going forth and coming in!Sit at our table and accept the cupOf welcome which my daughter fills.[LIEBHAID offers him wine.]
PRINCE WILLIAM (drinking).To thee![All take their seats at the table.]I heard disquieting news as I came hither.The apparition in the Synagogue,The miracle of the message and the death.Susskind von Orb, what think'st thou of these things?
SUSSKIND.I think, sir, we are in the hand of God,I trust the Prince—your father and my friend.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Trust no man! flee! I have not come to-nightTo little purpose. Your arch enemy,The Governor of Salza, Henry Schnetzen,Has won my father's ear. Since yester eveHe stops at Eisenach, begging of the PrinceThe Jews' destruction.
SUSSKIND (calmly).Schnetzen is my foe,I know it, but I know a talisman,Which at a word transmutes his hate to love.Liebhaid, my child, look cheerly. What is this?Harm dare not touch thee; the oppressor's curse,Melts into blessing at thy sight.
LIEBHAID.Not fearPlucks at my heart-strings, father, though the airThickens with portents; 't is the thought of flight,But no—I follow thee.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Thou shalt not missThe value of a hair from thy home treasures.All that thou lovest, Liebhaid, goes with thee.Knowest thou, Susskind, Schnetzen's cause of hate?
SUSSKIND.'T is rooted in an ancient error, bornDuring his feud with Landgrave Fritz the Bitten,Your Highness' grandsire—ten years—twenty—back.Misled to think I had betrayed his castle,Who knew the secret tunnel to its courts,He has nursed a baseless grudge, whereat I smile,Sure to disarm him by the simple truth.God grant me strength to utter it.
PRINCE WILLIAM.You fancyThe rancor of a bad heart slow distilledThrough venomed years, so at a breath, dissolves.O good old man, i' the world, not of the world!Belike, himself forgets the doubtful coreOf this still-curdling, petrifying ooze.Truth? why truth glances from the callous mass,A spear against a rock. He hugs his hate,His bed-fellow, his daily, life-long comrade;Think you he has slept, ate, drank with it this while,Now to forego revenge on such slight causeAs the revealed truth?
SUSSKIND.You mistake my thought,Great-hearted Prince, and justly—for I speakIn riddles, till God's time to make all clear.When His day dawns, the blind shall see.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Forgive me,If I, in wit and virtue your disciple,Seem to instruct my master. AccidentLifts me where I survey a broader fieldThan wise men stationed lower. I spy peril,Fierce flame invisible from the lesser peaks.God's time is now. Delayed truth leaves a lieTriumphant. If you harbor any secret,Potent to force an ear that's locked to mercy,In God's name, now disbosom it.
SUSSKIND.Kind Heaven!Would that my people's safety were assuredSo is my child's! Where shall we turn? Where flee?For all around us the Black Angel broods.We step into the open jaws of deathIf we go hence.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Better to fall beneathThe hand of God, than be cut off by man.
SUSSKIND.We are trapped, the springe is set. Not ignorantlyI offered counsel in the Synagogue,Quelled panic with authoritative calm,But knowing, having weighed the opposing risks.Our friends in Strasburg have been overmastered,The imperial voice is drowned, the papal armDrops paralyzed—both, lifted for the truth;We can but front with brave eyes, brow erect,As is our wont, the fullness of our doom.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Then Meissen's sword champions your desperate cause.I take my stand here where my heart is fixed.I love your daughter—if her love consent,I pray you, give me her to wife.
LIEBHAID.Ah!
SUSSKIND.Prince,Let not this Saxon skin, this hair's gold fleece,These Rhine-blue eyes mislead thee—she is alien.To the heart's core a Jewess—prop of my house,Soul of my soul—and I? a despised Jew.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Thy propped house crumbles; let my arm sustainIts tottering base—thy light is on the wane,Let me relume it. Give thy star to me,Or ever pitch-black night engulf us all—Lend me your voice, Liebhaid, entreat for me.Shall this prayer be your first that he denies?
LIEBHAID.Father, my heart's desire is one with his.
SUSSKIND.Is this the will of God? Amen! My children,Be patient with me, I am full of trouble.For you, heroic Prince, could aught enhanceYour love's incomparable nobility,'T were the foreboding horror of this hour,Wherein you dare flash forth its lightning-sword.You reckon not, in the hot, splendid momentOf great resolve, the cold insidious breathWherewith the outer world shall blast and freeze—But hark! I own a mystic amulet,Which you delivering to your gracious father,Shall calm his rage withal, and change his scornOf the Jew's daughter into pure affection.I will go fetch it—though I drain my heartOf its red blood, to yield this sacrifice.[Exit SUSSKIND.]
PRINCE WILLIAM.Have you no smile to welcome love with, Liebhaid?Why should you tremble?
LIEBHAID.Prince, I am afraid!Afraid of my own heart, my unfathomed joy,A blasphemy against my father's grief,My people's agony. I dare be happy—So happy! in the instant's lull betwixtThe dazzle and the crash of doom.
PRINCE WILLIAM.You readThe omen falsely; rather is your joyThe thrilling harbinger of general dawn.Did you not tell me scarce a month agone,When I chanced in on you at feast and prayer,The holy time's bright legend? of the queen,Strong, beautiful, resolute, who denied her raceTo save her race, who cast upon the dieOf her divine and simple loveliness,Her life, her soul,—and so redeemed her tribe.You are my Esther—but I, no second tyrant,Worship whom you adore, love whom you love!
LIEBHAID.If I must die with morn, I thank my God,And thee, my king, that I have lived this night.Enter SUSSKIND, carrying a jewelled casket.
SUSSKIND.Here is the chest, sealed with my signet-ring,A mystery and a treasure lies within,Whose worth is faintly symboled by these gems,Starring the case. Deliver it unopened,Unto the Landgrave. Now, sweet Prince, good night.Else will the Judengasse gates be closed.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Thanks, father, thanks. Liebhaid, my bride, good-night.[He kisses her brow.SUSSKIND places his hands on the heads ofLIEBHAID and PRINCE WILLIAM.]
SUSSKIND.Blessed, O Lord, art thou, who bringest joyTo bride and bridegroom. Let us thank the Lord.[Curtain falls.]
SCENE I.A Room in the LANDGRAVE'S Palace.FREDERICK THE GRAVE andHENRY SCHNETZEN.
LANDGRAVE.Who tells thee of my son's love for the Jewess?
SCHNETZEN.Who tells me? Ask the Judengasse walls,The garrulous stones publish Prince William's visitsTo his fair mistress.
LANDGRAVE.Mistress? Ah, such sinsThe Provost of St. George's will remitFor half a pound of coppers.
SCHNETZEN.Think it not!No light amour this, leaving shield unflecked;He wooes the Jewish damsel as a knightThe lady of his heart.
LANDGRAVE.Impossible!SCHNETZEN.Things more impossible have chanced. RememberCount Gleichen, doubly wived, who pined in Egypt,There wed the Pasha's daughter Malachsala,Nor blushed to bring his heathen paramourHome to his noble wife Angelica,Countess of Orlamund. Yea, and the PopeSanctioned the filthy sin.
LANDGRAVE.Himself shall say it.Ho, Gunther! (Enter a Lackey.)Bid the Prince of Meissen here.[Exit Lackey. The LANDGRAVE paces the stage in agitation.]Enter PRINCE WILLIAM.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Father, you called me?
LANDGRAVE.Ay, when were you lastIn Nordhausen?
PRINCE WILLIAM.This morning I rode hence.
LANDGRAVE.Were you at Susskind's house?
PRINCE WILLIAM.I was, my liege.
LANDGRAVE.I hear you entertain unseemly loveFor the Jew's daughter.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Who has told thee this?
SCHNETZEN.This I have told him.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Father, believe him not.I swear by heaven 't is no unseemly loveLeads me to Susskind's house.
LANDGRAVE.With what high titlePlease you to qualify it?
PRINCE WILLIAM.True, I loveLiebhaid von Orb, but 't is the honest passionWherewith a knight leads home his equal wife.
LANDGRAVE.Great God! and thou wilt brag thy shame! Thou speakestOf wife and Jewess in one breath! Wilt makeThy princely name a stench in German nostrils?
PRINCE WILLIAM.Hold, father, hold! You know her—yes, a JewessIn her domestic piety, her soulLarge, simple, splendid like a star, her heartSuffused with Syrian sunshine—but no more—The aspect of a Princess of Thuringia,Swan-necked, gold-haired, Madonna-eyed. I love her!If you will quench this passion, take my life![He falls at his father's feet.FREDERICK, in a paroxysm of rage,seizes his sword.]
SCHNETZEN.He is your son!
LANDGRAVE.Oh that he ne'er were born!Hola! Halberdiers! Yeomen of the Guard!Enter Guardsmen.Bear off this prisoner! Let him sigh outHis blasphemous folly in the castle tower,Until his hair be snow, his fingers claws.[They seize and bear away PRINCE WILLIAM.]Well, what's your counsel?
SCHNETZEN.Briefly this, my lord.The Jews of Nordhausen have brewed the PrinceA love-elixir—let them perish all![Tumult without. Singing of Hymns and Ringing of Church-bells.The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN go to the window.]
SONG* (without).The cruel pestilence arrives,Cuts off a myriad human lives.See the Flagellants' naked skin!They scourge themselves for grievous sin.Trembles the earth beneath God's breath,The Jews shall all be burned to death.*A rhyme of the times. See Graetz's "History of the Jews,"page 374, vol. vii.
LANDGRAVE.Look, foreign pilgrims! What an endless file!Naked waist-upward. Blood is trickling downTheir lacerated flesh. What do they carry?
SCHNETZEN.Their scourges—iron-pointed, leathern thongs,Mark how they lash themselves—the strict Flagellants.The Brothers of the Cross—hark to their cries!
VOICE FROM BELOW.Atone, ye mighty! God is wroth! ExpelThe enemies of heaven—raze their homes![Confused cries from below, which gradually die away in thedistance.]Woe to God's enemies! Death to the Jews!They poison all our wells—they bring the plague.Kill them who killed our Lord! Their homes shall beA wilderness—drown them in their own blood![The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN withdraw from the window.]
SCHNETZEN.Do not the people ask the same as I?Is not the people's voice the voice of God?
LANDGRAVE.I will consider.
SCHNETZEN.Not too long, my liege.The moment favors. Later 't were hard to showDue cause to his Imperial Majesty,For slaughtering the vassals of the Crown.Two mighty friends are theirs. His holinessClement the Sixth and Kaiser Karl.
LANDGRAVE.'T were rashContending with such odds.
SCHNETZEN.Courage, my lord.These battle singly against death and fate.Your allies are the sense and heart o' the world.Priests warring for their Christ, nobles for gold,And peoples for the very breath of lifeSpoiled by the poison-mixers. Kaiser KarlLifts his lone voice unheard, athwart the roarOf such a flood; the papal bull is whirledAn unconsidered rag amidst the eddies.
LANDGRAVE.What credence lend you to the general rumorOf the river poison?
SCHNETZEN.Such as mine eyes avouch.I have seen, yea touched the leathern wallet foundOn the body of one from whom the truth was wrenchedBy salutary torture. He confessed,Though but a famulus of the master-wizard,The horrible old Moses of Mayence,He had flung such pouches in the Rhine, the Elbe,The Oder, Danube—in a hundred brooks,Until the wholesome air reeked pestilence;'T was an ell long, filled with a dry, fine dustOf rusty black and red, deftly compoundedOf powdered flesh of basilisks, spiders, frogs,And lizards, baked with sacramental doughIn Christian blood.
LANDGRAVE.Such goblin-tales may curdleThe veins of priest-rid women, fools, and children.They are not for the ears of sober men.
SCHNETZEN.Pardon me, Sire. I am a simple soldier.My God, my conscience, and my suzerain,These are my guides—blindfold I follow them.If your keen royal wit pierce the gross webOf common superstition—be not wrothAt your poor vassal's loyal ignorance.Remember, too, Susskind retains your bonds.The old fox will not press you; he would bleedAgainst the native instinct of the Jew,Rather his last gold doit and so possessYour ease of mind, nag, chafe, and toy with it;Abide his natural death, and other JewsLess devilish-cunning, franklier Hebrew-viced,Will claim redemption of your pledge.
LANDGRAVE.How know youThat Susskind holds my bonds?
SCHNETZEN.You think the JewsKeep such things secret? Not a Jew but knowsYour debt exact—the sum and date of interest,And that you visit Susskind, not for love,But for his shekels.
LANDGRAVE.Well, the Jews shall die.This is the will of God. Whom shall I sendTo bear my message to the council?
SCHNETZEN.IAm ever at your 'hest. To-morrow mornSees me in Nordhausen.
LANDGRAVE.Come two hours hence.I will deliver you the letter signed.Make ready for your ride.
SCHNETZEN (kisses FREDERICK'S hand).Farewell, my master.(Aside.)Ah, vengeance cometh late, Susskind von Orb,But yet it comes! My wife was burned through thee,Thou and thy children are consumed by me![Exit.]
SCENE II.A Room in the Wartburg Monastery.PRINCESS MATHILDIS andPRIOR PEPPERCORN.
PRIOR.Be comforted, my daughter. Your lord's wisdomGoes hand in hand with his known pietyThus dealing with your son. To love a JewessIs flat contempt of Heaven—to ask in marriage,Sheer spiritual suicide. Let be;Justice must take its course.
PRINCESS.Justice is murdered;Oh slander not her corpse. For my son's fault,A thousand innocents are doomed. Is thatGod's justice?
PRIOR.Yea, our liege is but his servant.Did not He purge with fiery hail those twainBlotches of festering sin, Gomorrah, Sodom?The Jews are never innocent,—when ChristAgonized on the Cross, they cried—"His bloodBe on our children's heads and ours!" I markA dangerous growing evil of these days,Pity, misnamed—say, criminal indulgenceOf reprobates brow-branded by the Lord.Shall we excel the Christ in charity?Because his law is love, we tutor himIn mercy and reward his murderers?Justice is blind and virtue is austere.If the true passion brimmed our yearning heartsThe vision of the agony would loomFixed vividly between the day and us:—Nailed on the gaunt black Cross the divine form,Wax-white and dripping blood from ankles, wrists,The sacred ichor that redeems the world,And crowded in strange shadow of eclipse,Reviling Jews, wagging their heads accursed,Sputtering blasphemy—who then would shrinkFrom holy vengeance? who would offer lessHeroic wrath and filial zeal to GodThan to a murdered father?
PRINCESS.But my sonWill die with her he loves.
PRIOR.Better to perishIn time than in eternity. No questionPends here of individual life; our sightMust broaden to embrace the scope sublimeOf this trans-earthly theme. The Jew survivesSword, plague, fire, cataclysm—and must, since ChristCursed him to live till doomsday, still to beA scarecrow to the nations. None the lessAre we beholden in Christ's name at whiles,When maggot-wise Jews breed, infest, infectCommunities of Christians, to wash cleanThe Church's vesture, shaking off the filthThat gathers round her skirts. A perilous germ!Know you not, all the wells, the very airThe Jews have poisoned?—Through their arts aloneThe Black Death scourges Christendom.
PRINCESS.I knowAll heinousness imputed by their foes.Father, mistake me not: I urge no pleaTo shield this hell-spawn, loathed by all who loveThe lamb and kiss the Cross. I had not guessedSuch obscure creatures crawled upon my path,Had not my son—I know not how misled—Deigned to ennoble with his great regard,A sparkle midst the dust motes.SHE is sacred.What is her tribe to me? Her kith and kinMay rot or roast—the Jews of NordhausenMay hang, drown, perish like the Jews of France,But she shall live—Liebhaid von Orb, the Jewess,The Prince, my son, elects to love.
PRIOR.Amen!Washed in baptismal waters she shall beLed like the clean-fleeced yeanling to the fold.Trust me, my daughter—for through me the ChurchWhich is the truth, which is the life, doth speak.Yet first 't were best essay to cure the PrinceOf this moon-fostered madness, bred, no doubt,By baneful potions which these cunning knavesAre skilled to mix.
PRINCESS.Go visit him, dear father,Where in the high tower mewed, a wing-clipped eagle,His spirit breaks in cage. You are his master,He is wont from childhood to hear wisdom fallFrom your instructed lips. Tell him his motherRises not from her knees, till he is freed.
PRIOR.Madam, I go. Our holy Church has healedFar deadlier heart-wounds than a love-sick boy's.Be of good cheer, the Prince shall live to blessThe father's rigor who kept pure of blotA 'scutcheon more unsullied than the sun.
PRINCESS.Thanks and farewell.
PRIOR.Farewell. God send thee peace![Exeunt.]
SCENE III.A mean apartment in one of the Towers of the Landgrave's Palace.PRINCE WILLIAM discovered seated at the window.
PRINCE WILLIAM.The slow sun sets; with lingering, large embraceHe folds the enchanted hill; then like a godStrides into heaven behind the purple peak.Oh beautiful! In the clear, rayless air,I see the chequered vale mapped far below,The sky-paved streams, the velvet pasture-slopes,The grim, gray cloister whose deep vesper bellBlends at this height with tinkling, homebound herds!I see—but oh, how far!—the blessed townWhere Liebhaid dwells. Oh that I were yon starThat pricks the West's unbroken foil of gold,Bright as an eye, only to gaze on her!How keen it sparkles o'er the Venusburg!When brown night falls and mists begin to live,Then will the phantom hunting-train emerge,Hounds straining, black fire-eyeballed, breathless steeds,Spurred by wild huntsmen, and unhallowed nymphs,And at their head the foam-begotten witch,Of soul-destroying beauty. Saints of heaven!Preserve mine eyes from such unholy sight!How all unlike the base desire which leadsMisguided men to that infernal cave,Is the pure passion that exalts my soulLike a religion! Yet Christ pardon meIf this be sin to thee![He takes his lute, and begins to sing. Enter with a lamp Stewardof the Castle, followed by PRIOR PEPPERCORN. Steward lays down thelamp and exit.]Good even, father!
PRIOR.Benedicite!Our bird makes merry his dull bars with song,Yet would not penitential psalms accordMore fitly with your sin than minstrels' lays?
PRINCE WILLIAM.I know no blot upon my life's fair record.
PRIOR.What is it to wanton with a Christ-cursed Jewess,Defy thy father and pollute thy name,And fling to the ordures thine immortal soul?
PRINCE WILLIAM.Forbear! thy cowl's a helmet, thy serge frockInvulnerable as brass—yet I am human,Thou, priest, art still a man.
PRIOR.Pity him, Heaven!To what a pass their draughts have brought the mildest,Noblest of princes! Softly, my son; be ruledBy me, thy spiritual friend and father.Thou hast been drugged with sense-deranging potions,Thy blood set boiling and thy brain askew;When these thick fumes subside, thou shalt awakeTo bless the friend who gave thy madness bounds.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Madness! Yea, as the sane world goes, I am mad.What else to help the helpless, to upliftThe low, to adore the good, the beautiful,To live, battle, suffer, die for truth, for love!But that is wide of the question. Let me hearWhat you are charged to impart—my father's will.PRIOR.Heart-cleft by his dear offspring's shame, he praysYour reason be restored, your wayward senseRenew its due allegiance. For his sonHe, the good parent, weeps—hot drops of gall,Wrung from a spirit seldom eased by tears.But for his honor pricked, the Landgrave takesMore just and general vengeance.
PRINCE WILLIAM.In the name of God,What has he done to HER?
PRIOR.Naught, naught,—as yet.Sweet Prince, be calm; you leap like flax to flame.You nest within your heart a cockatrice,Pluck it from out your bosom and breathe pureOf the filthy egg. The Landgrave brooks no moreThe abomination that infects his town.The Jews of Nordhausen are doomed.
PRINCE WILLIAM.Alack!Who and how many of that harmless tribe,Those meek and pious men, have been electedTo glut with innocent blood the oppressor's wrath?
PRIOR.Who should go free where equal guilt is shared?Frederick is just—they perish all at once,Generous moreover—for in their mode of deathHe grants them choice.
PRINCE WILLIAM.My father had not lostThe human semblance when I saw him last.Nor can he be divorced in this short spaceFrom his shrewd wit. How shall he make provisionFor the vast widowed, orphaned host this deedBurdens the state withal?
PRIOR.Oh excellent!This is the crown of folly, topping all!Forgive me, Prince, when I gain breath to pointYour comic blunder, you will laugh with me.Patience—I'll draw my chin as long as yours.Well, 't was my fault—one should be accurate—Jews, said I? when I meant Jews, Jewesses,And Jewlings! all betwixt the ageOf twenty-four hours, and of five score years.Of either sex, of every known degree,All the contaminating vermin purgedWith one clean, searching blast of wholesome fire.