  SCENE I.—Rural scenery in the neighborhood of CHARLES VON MOOR'S castle. CHARLES VON MOOR, KOSINSKY, at a distance. CHARLES. Go forward, and announce me. You remember what you have to say? KOSINSKY. You are Count Brand, you come from Mecklenburg. I am your groom. Do not fear, I shall take care to play my part. Farewell! [Exit.] CHARLES. Hail to thee, Earth of my Fatherland (kisses the earth.) Heaven of my Fatherland! Sun of my Fatherland! Ye meadows and hills, ye streams and woods! Hail, hail to ye all! How deliciously the breezes are wafted from my native hills? What streams of balmy perfume greet the poor fugitive! Elysium! Realms of poetry! Stay, Moor, thy foot has strayed into a holy temple. (Comes nearer.) See there! the old swallow-nests in the castle yard!—-and the little garden-gate!—and this corner of the fence where I so often watched in ambuscade to teaze old Towzer!—and down there in the green valley, where, as the great Alexander, I led my Macedonians to the battle of Arbela; and the grassy hillock yonder, from which I hurled the Persian satrap—and then waved on high my victorious banner! (He smiles.) The golden age of boyhood lives again in the soul of the outcast. I was then so happy, so wholly, so cloudlessly happy—and now—behold all my prospects a wreck! Here should I have presided, a great, a noble, an honored man—here have—lived over again the years of boyhood in the blooming—children of my Amelia—here!—here have been the idol of my people—but the foul fiend opposed it (Starting.) Why am I here? To feel like the captive when the clanking of his chains awakes him from his dream of liberty. No, let me return to my wretchedness! The captive had forgotten the light of day, but the dream of liberty flashes past his eyes like a blaze of lightning in the night, which leaves it darker than before. Farewell, ye native vales! once ye saw Charles as a boy, and then Charles was happy. Now ye have seen the man his happiness turned to despair! (He moves rapidly towards the most distant point of the landscape, where he suddenly stops and casts a melancholy look across to the castle.) Not to behold her! not even one look?—and only a wall between me and Amelia! No! see her I must!—and him too!—though it crush me! (He turns back.) Father! father! thy son approaches. Away with thee, black, reeking gore! Away with that grim, ghastly look of death! Oh, give me but this one hour free! Amelia! Father! thy Charles approaches! (He goes quickly towards the castle.) Torment me when the morning dawns—give me no rest with the coming night—beset me in frightful dreams! But, oh! poison not this my only hour of bliss! (He is standing at the gate.) What is it I feel? What means this, Moor? Be a man! These death-like shudders—foreboding terrors. [Enters.] |
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