The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 03. Коллектив авторов

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СКАЧАТЬ miserable mother! what a death-stroke

      Awaits thee!—No! she never will survive it.

      COUNTESS.

      She will accommodate her soul to that

      Which is and must be. I do know your mother;

      The far-off future weighs upon her heart

      With torture of anxiety; but is it

      Unalterably, actually present,

      She soon resigns herself, and bears it calmly.

      THEKLA.

      O my foreboding bosom! Even now,

      E'en now 'tis here, that icy hand of horror!

      And my young hope lies shuddering in its grasp;

      I knew it well—no sooner had I enter'd,

      An heavy ominous presentiment

      Reveal'd to me that spirits of death were hovering

      Over my happy fortune. But why think I

      First of myself? My mother! O my mother!

      COUNTESS.

      Calm yourself! Break not out in vain lamenting!

      Preserve you for your father the firm friend,

      And for yourself the lover, all will yet

      Prove good and fortunate.

      THEKLA.

                        Prove good! What good?

      Must we not part?—part ne'er to meet again?

      COUNTESS.

      He parts not from you! He cannot part from you.

      THEKLA.

      Alas for his sore anguish! It will rend

      His heart asunder.

      COUNTESS.

                    If indeed he loves you,

      His resolution will be speedily taken.

      THEKLA.

      His resolution will be speedily taken—

      O do not doubt of that! A resolution!

      Does there remain one to be taken?

      COUNTESS.

                                   Hush,

      Collect yourself! I hear your mother coming.

      THEKLA.

      How shall I bear to see her?

      COUNTESS.

      Collect yourself.

      SCENE III

      To them enter the DUCHESS

      DUCHESS (to the COUNTESS).

      Who was here, sister? I heard someone talking,

      And passionately too.

      COUNTESS.

      Nay! there was no one.

      DUCHESS.

      I am grown so timorous, every trifling noise

      Scatters my spirits, and announces to me

      The footstep of some messenger of evil.

      And you can tell me, sister, what the event is?

      Will he agree to do the Emperor's pleasure,

      And send the horse-regiments to the Cardinal?

      Tell me, has he dismiss'd Von Questenberg

      With a favorable answer?

      COUNTESS.

      No, he has not.

      DUCHESS.

      Alas! then all is lost! I see it coming,

      The worst that can come! Yes, they will depose him;

      The accursed business of the Regensburg diet

      Will all be acted o'er again!

      COUNTESS.

                                   No! never!

      Make your heart easy, sister, as to that.

      [THEKLA, in extreme agitation, throws herself upon her mother, and enfolds her in her arms, weeping.]

      DUCHESS

      Yes, my poor child!

      Thou too hast lost a most affectionate godmother

      In the Empress. O that stern unbending man!

      In this unhappy marriage what have I

      Not suffer'd, not endured? For even as if

      I had been link'd on to some wheel of fire

      That restless, ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward,

      I have pass'd a life of frights and horrors with him,

      And ever to the brink of some abyss

      With dizzy headlong violence he bears me.

      Nay, do not weep, my child. Let not my sufferings

      Presignify unhappiness to thee,

      Nor blacken with their shade the fate that waits thee.

      There lives no second Friedland: thou, my child,

      Hast not to fear thy mother's destiny.

      THEKLA.

      O let us supplicate him, dearest mother!

      Quick! quick! here's no abiding place for us.

      Here every coming hour broods into life

      Some new affrightful monster.

      DUCHESS.

                              Thou СКАЧАТЬ