SCENE IV
The Nave of Bamberg Cathedral. A procession entering the West Door, headed by Elizabeth and the Bishop, Nobles, etc. Religious bearing the coffin which encloses Lewis’s bones.
1st Lady. See! the procession comes—the mob streams in
At every door. Hark! how the steeples thunder
Their solemn bass above the wailing choir.
2d Lady. They will stop at the screen.
Knight. And there, as I hear, open the coffin. Push forward, ladies, to that pillar: thence you will see all.
1st Peas. Oh dear! oh dear! If any man had told me that I should ride forty miles on this errand, to see him that went out flesh come home grass, like the flower of the field!
2d Peas. We have changed him, but not mended him, say I, friend.
1st Peas. Never we. He knew where a yeoman’s heart lay! One that would clap a man on the back when his cow died, and behave like a gentleman to him—that never met you after a hailstorm without lightening himself of a few pocket-burners.
2d Peas. Ay, that’s your poor-man’s plaster: that’s your right grease for this world’s creaking wheels.
1st Peas. Nay, that’s your rich man’s plaster too, and covers the multitude of sins. That’s your big pike’s swimming-bladder, that keeps him atop and feeding: that’s his calling and election, his oil of anointing, his salvum fac regem, his yeoman of the wardrobe, who keeps the velvet-piled side of this world uppermost, lest his delicate eyes should see the warp that holds it.
2d Peas. Who’s the warp, then?
1st Peas. We, man, the friezes and fustians, that rub on till we get frayed through with overwork, and then all’s abroad, and the nakedness of Babylon is discovered, and catch who catch can.
Old Woman. Pity they only brought his bones home! He would have made a lovely corpse, surely. He was a proper man!
1st Lady. Oh the mincing step he had with him! and the delicate hand on a horse, fingering the reins as St. Cicely does the organ-keys!
2d Lady. And for hunting, another Siegfried.
Knight. If he was Siegfried the gay, she was Chriemhild the grim; and as likely to prove a firebrand as the girl in the ballad.
1st Lady. Gay, indeed! His smiles were like plumcake, the sweeter the deeper iced. I never saw him speak civil word to woman, but to her.
2d Lady. O ye Saints! There was honey spilt on the ground! If I had such a knight, I’d never freeze alone on the chamber-floor, like some that never knew when they were well off. I’d never elbow him off to crusades with my pruderies.
‘Pluck your apples while they’re ripe,
And pull your flowers in May, O!’
Eh! Mother?
Old Woman. ‘Till when she grew wizened, and he grew cold,
The balance lay even ’twixt young and old.’
Monk. Thus Satan bears witness perforce against the vanities of Venus! But what’s this babbling? Carolationes in the holy place? Tace, vetula! taceas, taceto also, and that forthwith.
Old Woman. Tace in your teeth, and taceas also, begging-box! Who put the halter round his waist to keep it off his neck,—who? Get behind your screen, sirrah! Am I not a burgher’s wife? Am I not in the nave? Am I not on my own ground? Have I brought up eleven children, without nurse wet or dry, to be taced nowadays by friars in the nave? Help! good folks! Where be these rooks a going?
Knight. The monk has vanished.
1st Peas. It’s ill letting out waters, he finds. Who is that old gentleman, sir, holds the Princess so tight by the hand?
Knight. Her uncle, knave, the Bishop.
1st Peas. Very right, he: for she’s almost a born natural, poor soul. It was a temptation to deal with her.
2d Peas. Thou didst cheat her shockingly, Frank, time o’ the famine, on those nine sacks of maslin meal.
Knight. Go tell her of it, rascal, and she’ll thank you for it, and give you a shilling for helping her to a ‘cross.’
Old Woman. Taceing free women in the nave! This comes of your princesses, that turn the world upside down, and demean themselves to hob and nob with these black baldicoots!
Eliz. [in a low voice]. I saw all Israel scattered on the hills
As sheep that have no shepherd! O my people!
Who crowd with greedy eyes round this my jewel,
Poor ivory, token of his outward beauty—
Oh! had ye known his spirit!—Let his wisdom
Inform your light hearts with that Saviour’s likeness
For whom he died! So had you kept him with you;
And from the coming evils gentle Heaven
Had not withdrawn the righteous: ’tis too late!
1st Lady. There, now, she smiles; do you think she ever loved him?
Knight. Never creature, but mealy-mouthed inquisitors, and shaven singing birds. She looks now as glad to be rid of him as any colt broke loose.
1st Lady. What will she do now, when this farce is over?
2d Lady. Found an abbey, that’s the fashion, and elect herself abbess—tyrannise over hysterical girls, who are forced to thank her for making them miserable, and so die a saint.
Knight. Will you pray to her, my fair queen?
2d Lady. Not I, sir; the old Saints send me lovers enough, and to spare—yourself for one.
1st Lady. There is the giant-killer slain. But see—they have stopped: who is that raising the coffin lid?
2d Lady. Her familiar spirit, Conrad the heretic-catcher.
Knight. I do defy him! Thou art my only goddess;
My saint, my idol, my—ahem!
1st Lady. That well’s run dry.
Look, how she trembles—Now she sinks, all shivering,
Upon the pavement—Why, you’ll see nought there
Flirting behind the pillar—Now she rises—
And choking down that proud heart, turns to the altar—
Her hand upon the coffin.
Eliz. I thank thee, gracious Lord, who hast fulfilled
Thine handmaid’s mighty longings with the sight
Of my beloved’s bones, and dost vouchsafe
This consolation to the desolate.
I grudge not, Lord, the victim which we gave Thee,
Both he and I, of his most precious life,
To aid Thine holy city: though Thou knowest
His sweetest presence was to this world’s joy
As sunlight to the taper—Oh! hadst Thou spared—
Had Thy great mercy let us, hand in hand,
Have toiled through houseless shame, on beggar’s dole,
I had been blest: Thou hast him, Lord, Thou hast him—
Do with us what Thou wilt! If at the price
Of this one silly hair, in spite of Thee,
I could reclothe these wan bones with his manhood,
And clasp to my shrunk heart my hero’s self—
I would not give it!
I will weep no more—
Lead on, most holy; on the sepulchre
Which stands beside the choir, lay down your burden.
[To the people.]
Now, gentle hosts, within the close hard by,
Will we our court, as queen of sorrows, hold—
The green graves underneath us, and above
The all-seeing vault, which is the eye of God,
Judge of the widow and the fatherless.
There will I plead my children’s wrongs, and there,
If, as I think, there boil within your veins
The deep sure currents of your race’s manhood,
Ye’ll nail the orphans’ badge upon your shields,
And own their cause for God’s. We name our champions—
Rudolf, the Cupbearer, Leutolf of Erlstetten,
Hartwig of Erba, and our loved Count Walter,
Our knights and vassals, sojourners among you.
Follow us.
[Exit Elizabeth, etc.; the crowd following.]
ACT IV
SCENE I
Night. The church of a convent. Elizabeth, Conrad, Gerard, Monks, an Abbess, Nuns, etc., in the distance.
Conrad. What’s this new weakness? At your own request
We come to hear your self-imposed vows—
And now you shrink: where are the high-flown fancies
Which but last week, beside your husband’s bier,
You vapoured forth? Will you become a jest?
You might have counted this tower’s cost, before
You blazoned thus your plans abroad.
Eliz. Oh! spare me!
Con. Spare? Spare yourself; and spare big easy words,
Which prove your knowledge greater than your grace.
Eliz. Is there no middle path? No way to keep
My love for them, and God, at once unstained?
Con. If this were God’s world, Madam, and not the devil’s,
It might be done.
Eliz. God’s world, man! Why, God made it—
The faith asserts it God’s.
Con. Potentially—
As every christened rogue’s a child of God,
Or those old hags, Christ’s brides—Think of your horn-book—
The world, the flesh, and the devil—a goodly leash!
And yet God made all three. I know the fiend;
And you should know the world: be sure, be sure.
The flesh is not a stork among the cranes.
Our nature, even in Eden gross and vile,
And by miraculous grace alone upheld,
Is now itself, and foul, and damned, must die
Ere we can live; let halting worldlings, madam,
Maunder against earth’s ties, yet clutch them still.
Eliz. And yet God gave them to me—
Con. In the world;
Your babes are yours according to the flesh;
How can you hate the flesh, and love its fruit?
Eliz. The Scripture bids me love them.
Con. Truly so,
While you are forced to keep them; when God’s mercy
Doth from the flesh and world deliverance offer,
Letting you bestow them elsewhere, then your love
May cease with its own usefulness, and the spirit
Range in free battle lists; I’ll not waste reasons—
We’ll leave you, Madam, to the Spirit’s voice.
[Conrad and Gerard withdraw.]
Eliz. [alone]. Give up his children! Why, I’d not give up
A lock of hair, a glove his hand had hallowed:
And they are his gift; his pledge; his flesh and blood
Tossed off for my ambition! Ah! my husband!
His ghost’s sad eyes upbraid me! Spare me, spare me!
I’d love thee still, if I dared; but I fear God.
And shall I never more see loving eyes
Look into mine, until my dying day?
That’s this world’s bondage: Christ would have me free,
And ’twere a pious deed to cut myself
The last, last strand, and fly: but whither? whither?
What if I cast away the bird i’ the hand
And found none in the bush? ’Tis possible—
What right have I to arrogate Christ’s bride-bed?
Crushed, widowed, sold to traitors? I, o’er whom
His billows and His storms are sweeping? God’s not angry:
No, not so much as we with buzzing fly;
Or in the moment of His wrath’s awakening
We should be—nothing. No—there’s worse than that—
What if He but sat still, and let be be?
And these deep sorrows, which my vain conceit
Calls chastenings—meant for me—my ailments’ cure—
Were lessons for some angels far away,
And I the corpus vile for the experiment?
The grinding of the sharp and pitiless wheels
Of some high Providence, which had its mainspring
Ages ago, and ages hence its end?
That were too horrible!—
To have torn up all the roses from my garden,
And planted thorns instead; to have forged my griefs,
And hugged the griefs I dared not forge; made earth
A hell, for hope of heaven; and after all,
These homeless moors of life toiled through, to wake,
And find blank nothing! Is that angel-world
A gaudy window, which we paint ourselves
To hide the dead void night beyond? The present?
Why here’s the present—like this arched gloom,
It hems our blind souls in, and roofs them over
With adamantine vault, whose only voice
Is our own wild prayers’ echo: and our future?—
It rambles out in endless aisles of mist,
The farther still the darker—O my Saviour!
My God! where art Thou? That’s but a tale about Thee,
That crucifix above—it does but show Thee
As Thou wast once, but not as Thou art now—
Thy grief, but not Thy glory: where’s that gone?
I see it not without me, and within me
Hell reigns, not Thou!
[Dashes herself down on the altar steps.]
[Monks in the distance chanting.]
‘Kings’ daughters were among thine honourable women’—
Eliz. Kings’ daughters! I am one!
Monks. ‘Hearken, O daughter, and consider; incline thine ear:
Forget also thine own people, and thy father’s house,
So shall the King have pleasure in thy beauty:
For He is thy Lord God, and worship thou Him.’
Eliz. [springing up]. I will forget them!
They stand between my soul and its allegiance.
Thou art my God: what matter if Thou love me?
I am Thy bond-slave, purchased with Thy life-blood;
I will remember nothing, save that debt.
Do with me what Thou wilt. Alas, my babies!
He loves them—they’ll not need me.
[Conrad advancing.]
Con. How now, Madam!
Have these your prayers unto a nobler will
Won back that wandering heart?
Eliz. God’s will is spoken!
The flesh is weak; the spirit’s fixed, and dares,—
Stay! confess, sir,
Did not yourself set on your brothers here
To sing me to your purpose?
Con. As I live
I meant it not; yet had I bribed them to it,
Those words were no less God’s.
Eliz. I know it, I know it;
And I’ll obey them: come, the victim’s ready.
[Lays her hand on the altar. Gerard, Abbess, and Monks descend and advance.]
All worldly goods and wealth, which once I loved,
I do now count but dross: and my beloved,
The children of my womb, I now regard
As if they were another’s. God is witness
My pride is to despise myself; my joy
All insults, sneers, and slanders of mankind;
No creature now I love, but God alone.
Oh, to be clear, clear, clear, of all but Him!
Lo, here I strip me of all earthly helps—
[Tearing off her clothes.]
Naked and barefoot through the world to follow
My naked Lord—And for my filthy pelf—
Con. Stop, Madam—
Eliz. Why so, sir?
Con. Upon thine oath!
Thy wealth is God’s, not thine—How darest renounce
The trust He lays on thee? I do command thee,
Being, as Aaron, in God’s stead, to keep it
Inviolate, for the Church and thine own needs.
Eliz. Be it so—I have no part nor lot in’t—
There—I have spoken.
Abbess. O noble soul! which neither gold, nor love,
Nor scorn can bend!
Gerard. And think what pure devotions,
What holy prayers must they have been, whose guerdon
Is such a flood of grace!
Nuns. What love again!
What flame of charity, which thus prevails
In virtue’s guest!
Eliz. Is self-contempt learnt thus?
I’ll home.
Abbess. And yet how blest, in these cool shades
To rest with us, as in a land-locked pool,
Touched last and lightest by the ruffling breeze.
Eliz. No! no! no! no! I will not die in the dark:
I’ll breathe the free fresh air until the last,
Were it but a month—I have such things to do—
Great schemes—brave schemes—and such a little time!
Though now I am harnessed light as any foot-page.
Come, come, my ladies. [Exeunt Elizabeth, etc.]
Ger. Alas, poor lady!
Con. Why alas, my son?
She longs to die a saint, and here’s the way to it.
Ger. Yet why so harsh? why with remorseless knife
Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud?
I thought the task of education was
To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed
Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature,
According to the mind of God, revealed
In laws, congenital with every kind
And character of man.
Con. A heathen dream!
Young souls but see the gay and warm outside,
And work but in the shallow upper soil.
Mine deeper, and the sour and barren rock
Will stop you soon enough. Who trains God’s Saints,
He must transform, not pet—Nature’s corrupt throughout—
A gaudy snake, which must be crushed, not tamed,
A cage of unclean birds, deceitful ever;
Born in the likeness of the fiend, which Adam
Did at the Fall, the Scripture saith, put on.
Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook,
To make him sport for thy maidens? Scripture saith
Who is the prince of this world—so forget not.
Ger. Forgive, if my more weak and carnal judgment
Be startled by your doctrines, and doubt trembling
The path whereon you force yourself and her.
Con. Startled? Belike—belike—let doctrines be;
Thou shalt be judged by thy works; so see to them,
And let divines split hairs: dare all thou canst;
Be all thou darest;—that will keep thy brains full.
Have thy tools ready, God will find thee work—
Then up, and play the man. Fix well thy purpose—
Let one idea, like an orbed sun,
Rise radiant in thine heaven; and then round it
All doctrines, forms, and disciplines will range
As dim parhelia, or as needful clouds,
Needful, but mist-begotten, to be dashed
Aside, when fresh shall serve thy purpose better.
Ger. How? dashed aside?
Con. Yea, dashed aside—why not?
The truths, my son, are safe in God’s abysses—
While we patch up the doctrines to look like them.
The best are tarnished mirrors—clumsy bridges,
Whereon, as on firm soil, the mob may walk
Across the gulf of doubt, and know no danger.
We, who see heaven, may see the hell which girds it.
Blind trust for them. When I came here from Rome,
Among the Alps, all through one frost-bound dawn,
Waiting with sealed lips the noisy day,
I walked upon a marble mead of snow—
An angel’s spotless plume, laid there for me:
Then from the hillside, in the melting noon,
Looked down the gorge, and lo! no bridge, no snow—
But seas of writhing glacier, gashed and scored
With splintered gulfs, and fathomless crevasses,
Blue lips of hell, which sucked down roaring rivers
The fiends who fled the sun. The path of Saints
Is such; so shall she look from heaven, and see
The road which led her thither. Now we’ll go,
And find some lonely cottage for her lodging;
Her shelter now is but a crumbling ruin
Roofed in with pine boughs—discipline more healthy
For soul, than body: She’s not ripe for death.
[Exeunt.]
SCENE II
Open space in a suburb of Marpurg, near Elizabeth’s Hut. Count Walter and Count Pama of Hungary entering.
C. Pama. I have prepared my nerves for a shock.
C. Wal. You are wise, for the world’s upside down here. The last gateway brought us out of Christendom into the New Jerusalem, the fifth Monarchy, where the Saints possess the earth. Not a beggar here but has his pockets full of fair ladies’ tokens: not a barefooted friar but rules a princess.
C. Pama. Creeping, I opine, into widows’ houses, and for a pretence making long prayers.
C. Wal. Don’t quote Scripture here, sir, especially in that gross literal way! The new lights here have taught us that Scripture’s saying one thing, is a certain proof that it means another. Except, by the bye, in one text.
C. Pama. What’s that?
C. Wal. ‘Ask, and it shall be given you.’
C. Pama. Ah! So we are to take nothing literally, that they may take literally everything themselves?
C. Wal. Humph! As for your text, see if they do not saddle it on us before the day is out, as glibly as ever you laid it on them. Here comes the lady’s tyrant, of whom I told you.
[
Conrad advances from the Hut.]
Con. And what may Count Walter’s valour want here?
[Count Walter turns his back.]
C. Pama. I come, Sir Priest, from Andreas, king renowned
Of Hungary, ambassador unworthy
Unto the Landgravine, his saintly daughter;
And fain would be directed to her presence.
Con. That is as I shall choose. But I’ll not stop you.
I do not build with straw. I’ll trust my pupils
To worldlings’ honeyed tongues, who make long prayers,
And enter widows’ houses for pretence.
There dwells the lady, who has chosen too long
The better part, to have it taken from her.
Besides that with strange dreams and revelations
She has of late been edified.
C. Wal. Bah! but they will serve your turn—and hers.
Con. What do you mean?
C. Wal. When you have cut her off from child and friend, and even Isentrudis and Guta, as I hear, are thrust out by you to starve, and she sits there, shut up like a bear in a hole, to feed on her own substance; if she has not some of these visions to look at, how is she, or any other of your poor self-gorged prisoners, to help fancying herself the only creature on earth?
Con. How now? Who more than she, in faith and practice, a living member of the Communion of Saints? Did she not lately publicly dispense in charity in a single day five hundred marks and more? Is it not my continual labour to keep her from utter penury through her extravagance in almsgiving? For whom does she take thought but for the poor, on whom, day and night, she spends her strength? Does she not tend them from the cradle, nurse them, kiss their sores, feed them, bathe them, with her own hands, clothe them, living and dead, with garments, the produce of her own labour? Did she not of late take into her own house a paralytic boy, whose loathsomeness had driven away every one else? And now that we have removed that charge, has she not with her a leprous boy, to whose necessities she ministers hourly, by day and night? What valley but blesses her for some school, some chapel, some convent, built by her munificence? Are not the hospices, which she has founded in divers towns, the wonder of Germany?—wherein she daily feeds and houses a multitude of the infirm poor of Christ? Is she not followed at every step by the blessings of the poor? Are not her hourly intercessions for the souls and bodies of all around incessant, world-famous, mighty to save? While she lives only for the Church of Christ, will you accuse her of selfish isolation?
C. Wal. I tell you, monk, if she were not healthier by God’s making than ever she will be by yours, her charity would be by this time double-distilled selfishness; the mouths she fed, cupboards to store good works in; the backs she warmed, clothes-horses to hang out her wares before God; her alms not given, but fairly paid, a halfpenny for every halfpenny-worth of eternal life; earth her chess-board, and the men and women on it merely pawns for her to play a winning game—puppets and horn-books to teach her unit holiness—a private workshop in which to work out her own salvation. Out upon such charity!
Con. God hath appointed that our virtuous deeds
Each merit their rewards.
C. Wal. Go to—go to. I have watched you and your crew, how you preach up selfish ambition for divine charity and call prurient longings celestial love, while you blaspheme that very marriage from whose mysteries you borrow all your cant. The day will come when every husband and father will hunt you down like vermin; and may I live to see it.
Con. Out on thee, heretic!
C. Wal. [drawing]. Liar! At last?
C. Pama. In God’s name, sir, what if the Princess find us?
C. Wal. Ay—for her sake. But put that name on me again, as you do on every good Catholic who will not be your slave and puppet, and if thou goest home with ears and nose, there is no hot blood in Germany.
[They move towards the cottage.]
Con. [alone]. Were I as once I was, I could revenge:
But now all private grudges wane like mist
In the keen sunlight of my full intent;
And this man counts but for some sullen bull
Who paws and mutters at unheeding pilgrims
His empty wrath: yet let him bar my path,
Or stay me but one hour in my life-purpose,
And I will fell him as a savage beast,
God’s foe, not mine. Beware thyself, Sir Count!
[Exit. The Counts return from the Cottage.]
C. Pama. Shortly she will return; here to expect her
Is duty both, and honour. Pardon me—
Her humours are well known here? Passers by
Will guess who ’tis we visit?
C. Wal. Very likely.
C. Pama. Well, travellers see strange things—and do them too.
Hem! this turf-smoke affects my breath: we might
Draw back a space.
C. Wal. Certie, we were in luck,
Or both our noses would have been snapped off
By those two she-dragons; how their sainthoods squealed
To see a brace of beards peep in! Poor child!
Two sweet companions for her loneliness!
C. Pama. But ah! what lodging! ’Tis at that my heart bleeds!
That hut, whose rough and smoke-embrowned spars
Dip to the cold clay floor on either side!
Her seats bare deal!—her only furniture
Some earthen crock or two! Why, sir, a dungeon
Were scarce more frightful: such a choice must argue
Aberrant senses, or degenerate blood!
C. Wal. What? Were things foul?
C. Pama. I marked not, sir.
C. Wal. I did.
You might have eat your dinner off the floor.
C. Pama. Off any spot, sir, which a princess’ foot
Had hallowed by its touch.
C. Wal. Most courtierly.
Keep, keep those sweet saws for the lady’s self.
[Aside] Unless that shock of the nerves shall send them flying.
C. Pama. Yet whence this depth of poverty? I thought
You and her champions had recovered for her
Her lands and titles.
C. Wal. Ay; that coward Henry
Gave them all back as lightly as he took them:
Certie, we were four gentle applicants—
And Rudolph told him some unwelcome truths—
Would God that all of us might hear our sins,
As Henry heard that day!
C. Pama. Then she refused them?
C. Wal. ‘It ill befits,’ quoth she, ‘my royal blood,
To take extorted gifts; I tender back
By you to him, for this his mortal life,
That which he thinks by treason cheaply bought;
To which my son shall, in his father’s right,
By God’s good will, succeed. For that dread height
May Christ by many woes prepare his youth!’
C. Pama. Humph!
C. Wal. Why here—no, ’t cannot be—
C. Pama. What hither comes
Forth from the hospital, where, as they told us,
The Princess labours in her holy duties?
A parti-coloured ghost that stalks for penance?
Ah! a good head of hair, if she had kept it
A thought less lank; a handsome face too, trust me,
But worn to fiddle-strings; well, we’ll be knightly—
[As Elizabeth meets him.]
Stop, my fair queen of rags and patches, turn
Those solemn eyes a moment from your distaff,
And say, what tidings your magnificence
Can bring us of the Princess?
Eliz. I am she.
[Count Pama crosses himself and falls on his knees.]
C. Pama. O blessed saints and martyrs! Open, earth!
And hide my recreant knighthood in thy gulf!
Yet, mercy, Madam! for till this strange day
Who e’er saw spinning wool, like village-maid,
A royal scion?
C. Wal. [kneeling]. My beloved mistress!
Eliz. Ah! faithful friend! Rise, gentles, rise, for shame;
Nay, blush not, gallant sir. You have seen, ere now,
Kings’ daughters do worse things than spinning wool,
Yet never reddened. Speak your errand out.
C. Pama. I from your father, Madam—
Eliz. Oh! I divine;
And grieve that you so far have journeyed, sir,
Upon a bootless quest.
C. Pama. But hear me, Madam—
If you return with me (o’erwhelming honour!
For such mean bodyguard too precious treasure)
Your father offers to you half his wealth;
And countless hosts, whose swift and loyal blades
From traitorous grasp shall vindicate your crown.
Eliz. Wealth? I have proved it, and have tossed it from me:
I will not stoop again to load with clay.
War? I have proved that too: should I turn loose
On these poor sheep the wolf whose fangs have gored me,
God’s bolt would smite me dead.
C. Pama. Madam, by his gray hairs he doth entreat you.
Eliz. Alas! small comfort would they find in me!
I am a stricken and most luckless deer,
Whose bleeding track but draws the hounds of wrath
Where’er I pause a moment. He has children
Bred at his side, to nurse him in his age—
While I am but an alien and a changeling,
Whom, ere my plastic sense could impress take
Either of his feature or his voice, he lost.
C. Pama. Is it so? Then pardon, Madam, but your father
Must by a father’s right command—
Eliz. Command! Ay, that’s the phrase of the world: well—tell him,
But tell him gently too—that child and father
Are names, whose earthly sense I have forsworn,
And know no more: I have a heavenly spouse,
Whose service doth all other claims annul.
C. Wal. Ah, lady, dearest lady, be but ruled!
Your Saviour will be there as near as here.
Eliz. What? Thou too, friend? Dost thou not know me better?
Wouldst have me leave undone what I begin?
[To Count Pama] My father took the cross, sir: so did I:
As he would die at his post, so will I die:
He is a warrior: ask him, should I leave
This my safe fort, and well-proved vantage-ground,
To roam on this world’s flat and fenceless steppes?
C. Pama. Pardon me, Madam, if my grosser wit
Fail to conceive your sense.
Eliz. It is not needed.
Be but the mouthpiece to my father, sir;
And tell him—for I would not anger him—
Tell him, I am content—say, happy—tell him
I prove my kin by prayers for him, and masses
For her who bore me. We shall meet on high.
And say, his daughter is a mighty tree,
From whose wide roots a thousand sapling suckers,
Drink half their life; she dare not snap the threads,
And let her offshoots wither. So farewell.
Within the convent there, as mine own guests,
You shall be fitly lodged. Come here no more.
C. Wal. C. Pama. Farewell, sweet Saint! [Exeunt.]
Eliz. May God go with you both.
No! I will win for him a nobler name,
Than captive crescents, piles of turbaned heads,
Or towns retaken from the Tartar, give.
In me he shall be greatest; my report
Shall through the ages win the quires of heaven
To love and honour him; and hinds, who bless
The poor man’s patron saint, shall not forget
How she was fathered with a worthy sire. [Exit.]