it is a
judgment
upon me.
Friedrich Schiller
MAXIMILIAN, COUNT VON MOOR.
CHARLES,|
FRANCIS,| his Sons.
AMELIA VON EDELREICH, his Niece.
SPIEGELBERG,|
SCHWEITZER, |
GRIMM, |
RAZMANN, | Libertines, afterwards Banditti
SCHUFTERLE, |
ROLLER, |
KOSINSKY, |
SCHWARTZ, |
HERMANN, the natural son of a Nobleman.
DANIEL, an old Servant of Count von Moor.
PASTOR MOSER.
FATHER DOMINIC, a Monk.
BAND OF ROBBERS, SERVANTS, ETC.
The scene is laid in Germany. Period of action about two years.
THE ROBBERS
ACT I.
SCENE I. --Franconia.
Apartment in the Castle of COUNT MOOR.
FRANCIS, OLD MOOR.
FRANCIS. But are you really well, father? You look so pale.
OLD MOOR. Quite well, my son--what have you to tell me?
FRANCIS. The post is arrived--a letter from our correspondent at
Leipsic.
OLD M. (eagerly). Any tidings of my son Charles?
FRANCIS. Hem! Hem! --Why, yes. But I fear--I know not--whether I dare
--your health. --Are you really quite well, father?
OLD M. As a fish in water. * Does he write of my son? What means this
anxiety about my health? You have asked me that question twice.
[*This is equivalent to our English saying "As sound as a roach. "]
FRANCIS. If you are unwell--or are the least apprehensive of being so--
permit me to defer--I will speak to you at a fitter season. --(Half
aside. ) These are no tidings for a feeble frame.
OLD M. Gracious Heavens? what am I doomed to hear?
FRANCIS. First let me retire and shed a tear of compassion for my lost
brother. Would that my lips might be forever sealed--for he is your
son! Would that I could throw an eternal veil over his shame--for he is
my brother! But to obey you is my first, though painful, duty--forgive
me, therefore.
OLD M. Oh, Charles! Charles! Didst thou but know what thorns thou
plantest in thy father's bosom! That one gladdening report of thee would
add ten years to my life! yes, bring back my youth! whilst now, alas,
each fresh intelligence but hurries me a step nearer to the grave!
FRANCIS. Is it so, old man, then farewell! for even this very day we
might all have to tear our hair over your coffin. *
[* This idiom is very common in Germany, and is used to express
affliction. ]
OLD M. Stay! There remains but one short step more--let him have his
will! (He sits down. ) The sins of the father shall be visited unto the
third and fourth generation--let him fulfil the decree.
FRANCIS (takes the letter out of his pocket). You know our
correspondent! See! I would give a finger of my right hand might I
pronounce him a liar--a base and slanderous liar! Compose yourself!
Forgive me if I do not let you read the letter yourself. You cannot,
must not, yet know all.
OLD M. All, all, my son. You will but spare me crutches. *
[* _Du ersparst mir die Krucke_; meaning that the contents of the
letter can but shorten his declining years, and so spare him the
necessity of crutches. ]
FRANCIS (reads). "Leipsic, May 1. Were I not bound by an inviolable
promise to conceal nothing from you, not even the smallest particular,
that I am able to collect, respecting your brother's career, never, my
dearest friend, should my guiltless pen become an instrument of torture
to you. I can gather from a hundred of your letters how tidings such as
these must pierce your fraternal heart. It seems to me as though I saw
thee, for the sake of this worthless, this detestable"--(OLD M. covers
his face). Oh! my father, I am only reading you the mildest passages--
"this detestable man, shedding a thousand tears. " Alas! mine flowed--ay,
gushed in torrents over these pitying cheeks. "I already picture to
myself your aged pious father, pale as death. " Good Heavens! and so you
are, before you have heard anything.
OLD M. Go on! Go on!
FRANCIS. "Pale as death, sinking down on his chair, and cursing the day
when his ear was first greeted with the lisping cry of 'Father! ' I have
not yet been able to discover all, and of the little I do know I dare
tell you only a part. Your brother now seems to have filled up the
measure of his infamy. I, at least, can imagine nothing beyond what he
has already accomplished; but possibly his genius may soar above my
conceptions. After having contracted debts to the amount of forty
thousand ducats,"--a good round sum for pocket-money, father" and having
dishonored the daughter of a rich banker, whose affianced lover, a
gallant youth of rank, he mortally wounded in a duel, he yesterday, in
the dead of night, took the desperate resolution of absconding from the
arm of justice, with seven companions whom he had corrupted to his own
vicious courses. " Father? for heaven's sake, father! How do you feel?
OLD M. Enough. No more, my son, no more!
FRANCIS. I will spare your feelings. "The injured cry aloud for
satisfaction. Warrants have been issued for his apprehension--a price
is set on his head--the name of Moor"--No, these unhappy lips shall not
be guilty of a father's murder (he tears the letter). Believe it not,
my father, believe not a syllable.
OLD M. (weeps bitterly). My name--my unsullied name!
FRANCIS (throws himself on his neck). Infamous! most infamous Charles!
Oh, had I not my forebodings, when, even as a boy, he would scamper
after the girls, and ramble about over hill and common with ragamuffin
boys and all the vilest rabble; when he shunned the very sight of a
church as a malefactor shuns a gaol, and would throw the pence he had
wrung from your bounty into the hat of the first beggar he met, whilst
we at home were edifying ourselves with devout prayers and pious
homilies? Had I not my misgivings when he gave himself up to reading
the adventures of Julius Caesar, Alexander the Great, and other
benighted heathens, in preference to the history of the penitent Tobias?
A hundred times over have I warned you--for my brotherly affection was
ever kept in subjection to filial duty--that this forward youth would
one day bring sorrow and disgrace on us all. Oh that he bore not the
name of Moor! that my heart beat less warmly for him! This sinful
affection, which I can not overcome, will one day rise up against me
before the judgment-seat of heaven.
OLD M. Oh! my prospects! my golden dreams!
FRANCIS. Ay, well I knew it. Exactly what I always feared. That fiery
spirit, you used to say, which is kindling in the boy, and renders him
so susceptible to impressions of the beautiful and grand--the
ingenuousness which reveals his whole soul in his eyes--the tenderness
of feeling which melts him into weeping sympathy at every tale of
sorrow--the manly courage which impels him to the summit of giant oaks,
and urges him over fosse and palisade and foaming torrents--that
youthful thirst of honor--that unconquerable resolution--all those
resplendent virtues which in the father's darling gave such promise--
would ripen into the warm and sincere friend--the excellent citizen--the
hero--the great, the very great man! Now, mark the result, father; the
fiery spirit has developed itself--expanded--and behold its precious
fruits. Observe this ingenuousness--how nicely it has changed into
effrontery;--this tenderness of soul--how it displays itself in
dalliance with coquettes, in susceptibility to the blandishments of a
courtesan! See this fiery genius, how in six short years it hath burnt
out the oil of life, and reduced his body to a living skeleton; so that
passing scoffers point at him with a sneer and exclaim--"_C'est l'amour
qui a fait cela_. " Behold this bold, enterprising spirit--how it
conceives and executes plans, compared to which the deeds of a Cartouche
or a Howard sink into insignificance. And presently, when these
precious germs of excellence shall ripen into full maturity, what may
not be expected from the full development of such a boyhood? Perhaps,
father, you may yet live to see him at the head of some gallant band,
which assembles in the silent sanctuary of the forest, and kindly
relieves the weary traveller of his superfluous burden. Perhaps you may
yet have the opportunity, before you go to your own tomb, of making a
pilgrimage to the monument which he may erect for himself, somewhere
between earth and heaven! Perhaps,--oh, father--father, look out for
some other name, or the very peddlers and street boys who have seen the
effigy of your worthy son exhibited in the market-place at Leipsic will
point at you with the finger of scorn!
OLD M. And thou, too, my Francis, thou too? Oh, my children, how
unerringly your shafts are levelled at my heart.
FRANCIS. You see that I too have a spirit; but my spirit bears the
sting of a scorpion. And then it was "the dry commonplace, the cold,
the wooden Francis," and all the pretty little epithets which the
contrast between us suggested to your fatherly affection, when he was
sitting on your knee, or playfully patting your cheeks? "He would die,
forsooth, within the boundaries of his own domain, moulder away, and
soon be forgotten;" while the fame of this universal genius would spread
from pole to pole! Ah! the cold, dull, wooden Francis thanks thee,
heaven, with uplifted hands, that he bears no resemblance to his
brother.
OLD M. Forgive me, my child! Reproach not thy unhappy father, whose
fondest hopes have proved visionary. The merciful God who, through
Charles, has sent these tears, will, through thee, my Francis, wipe them
from my eyes!
FRANCIS. Yes, father, we will wipe them from your eyes. Your Francis
will devote--his life to prolong yours. (Taking his hand with affected
tenderness. ) Your life is the oracle which I will especially consult on
every undertaking--the mirror in which I will contemplate everything.
No duty so sacred but I am ready to violate it for the preservation of
your precious days. You believe me?
OLD M. Great are the duties which devolve on thee, my son--Heaven bless
thee for what thou has been, and wilt be to me.
FRANCIS. Now tell me frankly, father. Should you not be a happy man,
were you not obliged to call this son your own?
OLD M. In mercy, spare me! When the nurse first placed him in my arms,
I held him up to Heaven and exclaimed, "Am I not truly blest? "
FRANCIS. So you said then. Now, have you found it so? You may envy
the meanest peasant on your estate in this, that he is not the father of
such a son. So long as you call him yours you are wretched. Your
misery will grow with his years--it will lay you in your grave.
OLD M. Oh! he has already reduced me to the decrepitude of fourscore.
FRANCIS. Well, then--suppose you were to disown this son.
OLD M. (startled). Francis! Francis! what hast thou said!
FRANCIS. Is not your love for him the source of all your grief? Root
out this love, and he concerns you no longer. But for this weak and
reprehensible affection he would be dead to you;--as though he had never
been born. It is not flesh and blood, it is the heart that makes us
sons and fathers! Love him no more, and this monster ceases to be your
son, though he were cut out of your flesh. He has till now been the
apple of your eye; but if thine eye offend you, says Scripture, pluck it
out. It is better to enter heaven with one eye than hell with two! "It
is profitable for thee that one of thy members should perish, and not
that thy whole body should be cast into hell. " These are the words of
the Bible!
OLD M. Wouldst thou have me curse my son?
FRANCIS. By no means, father. God forbid! But whom do you call your
son? Him to whom you have given life, and who in return does his utmost
to shorten yours.
OLD M. Oh, it is all too true!
it is a judgment upon me. The Lord has
chosen him as his instrument.
FRANCIS. See how filially your bosom child behaves. He destroys you by
your own excess of paternal sympathy; murders you by means of the very
love you bear him--has coiled round a father's heart to crush it. When
you are laid beneath the turf he becomes lord of your possessions, and
master of his own will. That barrier removed, and the torrent of his
profligacy will rush on without control. Imagine yourself in his place.
How often he must wish his father under ground--and how often, too, his
brother--who so unmercifully impede the free course of his excesses.
But call you this a requital of love? Is this filial gratitude for a
father's tenderness? to sacrifice ten years of your life to the lewd
pleasures of an hour? in one voluptuous moment to stake the honor of an
ancestry which has stood unspotted through seven centuries? Do you call
this a son? Answer? Do you call this your son?
OLD M. An undutiful son! Alas! but still my child! my child!
FRANCIS. A most amiable and precious child-whose constant study is to
get rid of his father. Oh, that you could learn to see clearly! that
the film might be removed from your eyes! But your indulgence must
confirm him in his vices! your assistance tend to justify them.
Doubtless you will avert the curse of Heaven from his head, but on your
own, father--on yours--will it fall with twofold vengeance.
OLD M. Just! most just! Mine, mine be all the guilt!
FRANCIS. How many thousands who have drained the voluptuous bowl of
pleasure to the dregs have been reclaimed by suffering! And is not the
bodily pain which follows every excess a manifest declaration of the
divine will! And shall man dare to thwart this by an impious exercise
of affection? Shall a father ruin forever the pledge committed to his
charge? Consider, father, if you abandon him for a time to the pressure
of want will not he be obliged to turn from his wickedness and repent?
Otherwise, untaught even in the great school of adversity, he must
remain a confirmed reprobate? And then--woe to the father who by a
culpable tenderness bath frustrated the ordinances of a higher wisdom!
Well, father?
OLD M. I will write to him that I withdraw my protection.
FRANCIS. That would be wise and prudent.
OLD M. That he must never come into my sight again
FRANCIS. 'Twill have a most salutary effect.
OLD M. (tenderly). Until he reforms.
FRANCIS. Right, quite right. But suppose that he comes disguised in
the hypocrite's mask, implores your compassion with tears, and wheedles
from you a pardon, then quits you again on the morrow, and jests at your
weakness in the arms of his harlot. No, my father! He will return of
his own accord, when his conscience awakens him to repentance.
OLD M. I will write to him, on the spot, to that effect.
FRANCIS. Stop, father, one word more. Your just indignation might
prompt reproaches too severe, words which might break his heart--and
then--do you not think that your deigning to write with your own hand
might be construed into an act of forgiveness? It would be better, I
think, that you should commit the task to me?
OLD M. Do it, my son. Ah! it would, indeed, have broken my heart!
Write to him that--
FRANCIS (quickly). That's agreed, then?
OLD M. Say that he has caused me a thousand bitter tears--a thousand
sleepless nights--but, oh! do not drive my son to despair!
FRANCIS. Had you not better retire to rest, father? This affects you
too strongly.
OLD M. Write to him that a father's heart--But I charge you, drive him
not to despair. [Exit in sadness. ]
FRANCIS (looking after him with a chuckle). Make thyself easy, old
dotard! thou wilt never more press thy darling to thy bosom--there is a
gulf between thee and him impassable as heaven is from hell. He was
torn from thy arms before even thou couldst have dreamed it possible to
decree the separation. Why, what a sorry bungler should I be had I not
skill enough to pluck a son from a father's heart; ay, though he were
riveted there with hooks of steel! I have drawn around thee a magic
circle of curses which he cannot overleap. Good speed to thee, Master
Francis. Papa's darling is disposed of--the course is clear. I must
carefully pick up all the scraps of paper, for how easily might my
handwriting be recognized. (He gathers the fragments of the letter. )
And grief will soon make an end of the old gentleman. And as for her--
I must tear this Charles from her heart, though half her life come with
him.
No small cause have I for being dissatisfied with Dame Nature, and, by
my honor, I will have amends! Why did I not crawl the first from my
mother's womb? why not the only one? why has she heaped on me this
burden of deformity? on me especially? Just as if she had spawned me
from her refuse. * Why to me in particular this snub of the Laplander?
these negro lips? these Hottentot eyes? On my word, the lady seems to
have collected from all the race of mankind whatever was loathsome into
a heap, and kneaded the mass into my particular person. Death and
destruction! who empowered her to deny to me what she accorded to him?
Could a man pay his court to her before he was born? or offend her
before he existed? Why went she to work in such a partial spirit?
No! no! I do her injustice--she bestowed inventive faculty, and set us
naked and helpless on the shore of this great ocean, the world--let
those swim who can--the heavy** may sink. To me she gave naught else,
and how to make the best use of my endowment is my present business.
Men's natural rights are equal; claim is met by claim, effort by effort,
and force by force--right is with the strongest--the limits of our power
constitute our laws.
It is true there are certain organized conventions, which men have
devised to keep up what is called the social compact. Honor! truly a
very convenient coin, which those who know how to pass it may lay out
with great advantage. *** Conscience! oh yes, a useful scarecrow to
frighten sparrows away from cherry-trees; it is something like a fairly
written bill of exchange with which your bankrupt merchant staves off
the evil day.
* See Richard III. , Act I, Sc. 1, line 17.
**Heavy is used in a double meaning; the German word is plump,
which Means lumpish clumsy awkward.
***So Falstaff, Hen. IV. , Pt. I. , Act V. , Sc. 1, "Honor is a mere
scutcheon. "
Well! these are all most admirable institutions for keeping fools in
awe, and holding the mob underfoot, that the cunning may live the more
at their ease. Rare institutions, doubtless. They are something like
the fences my boors plant so closely to keep out the hares--yes
I' faith, not a hare can trespass on the enclosure, but my lord claps
spurs to his hunter, and away he gallops over the teeming harvest!
Poor hare! thou playest but a sorry part in this world's drama, but your
worshipful lords must needs have hares!
*[This may help to illustrate a passage in Shakespeare which
puzzles the commentators--"Cupid is a good hare-finder. "--Much ADO,
Act I. , Sc. 1.
The hare, in Germany, is considered an emblem of abject submission
and cowardice. The word may also be rendered "Simpleton,"
"Sawney," or any other of the numerous epithets which imply a soft
condition. ]
Then courage, and onward, Francis. The man who fears nothing is as
powerful as he who is feared by everybody. It is now the mode to wear
buckles on your smallclothes, that you may loosen or tighten them at
pleasure. I will be measured for a conscience after the newest fashion,
one that will stretch handsomely as occasion may require. Am I to
blame? It is the tailor's affair? I have heard a great deal of twaddle
about the so-called ties of blood--enough to make a sober man beside
himself. He is your brother, they say; which interpreted, means that he
was manufactured in the same mould, and for that reason he must needs be
sacred in your eyes! To what absurd conclusions must this notion of a
sympathy of souls, derived from the propinquity of bodies, inevitably
tend? A common source of being is to produce community of sentiment;
identity of matter, identity of impulse! Then again,--he is thy father!
He gave thee life, thou art his flesh and blood--and therefore he must
be sacred to thee! Again a most inconsequential deduction! I should
like to know why he begot me;** certainly not out of love for me--for I
must first have existed!
**[The reader of Sterne will remember a very similar passage in the
first chapter of Tristram Shandy. ]
Could he know me before I had being, or did he think of me during my
begetting? or did he wish for me at the moment? Did he know what I
should be? If so I would not advise him to acknowledge it or I should
pay him off for his feat. Am I to be thankful to him that I am a man?
As little as I should have had a right to blame him if he had made me a
woman. Can I acknowledge an affection which is not based on any
personal regard? Could personal regard be present before the existence
of its object? In what, then, consists the sacredness of paternity?
Is it in the act itself out of which existence arose? as though this
were aught else than an animal process to appease animal desires. Or
does it lie, perhaps, in the result of this act, which is nothing more
after all than one of iron necessity, and which men would gladly
dispense with, were it not at the cost of flesh and blood? Do I then
owe him thanks for his affection? Why, what is it but a piece of
vanity, the besetting sin of the artist who admires his own works,
however hideous they may be? Look you, this is the whole juggle,
wrapped up in a mystic veil to work on our fears. And shall I, too, be
fooled like an infant? Up then! and to thy work manfully. I will root
up from my path whatever obstructs my progress towards becoming the
master. Master I must be, that I may extort by force what I cannot win
by affection. *
*[This soliloquy in some parts resembles that of Richard, Duke of
Gloster, in Shakespeare's Henry VI. , Act V. Sc. 6. ]
[Exit. ]
SCENE II. --A Tavern on the Frontier of Saxony.
CHARLES VON MOOR intent on a book; SPIEGELBERG drinking at the table.
CHARLES VON M. (lays the book aside). I am disgusted with this age of
puny scribblers when I read of great men in my Plutarch.
SPIEGEL. (places a glass before him, and drinks). Josephus is the book
you should read.
CHARLES VON M. The glowing spark of Prometheus is burnt out, and now
they substitute for it the flash of lycopodium,* a stage-fire which will
not so much as light a pipe. The present generation may be compared to
rats crawling about the club of Hercules. **
*[Lycopodium (in German Barlappen-mehl), vulgarly known as the
Devil's Puff-ball or Witchmeal, is used on the stage, as well in
England as on the continent, to produce flashes of fire. It is
made of the pollen of common club moss, or wolf's claw (Lycopodium
clavatum), the capsules of which contain a highly inflammable
powder. Translators have uniformly failed in rendering this
passage. ]
**[This simile brings to mind Shakespeare's:
"We petty men
Walk under his huge legs, and peep about. "
JULIUS CAESAR, Act I. , Sc. 2. ]
A French abbe lays it down that Alexander was a poltroon; a phthisicky
professor, holding at every word a bottle of sal volatile to his nose,
lectures on strength. Fellows who faint at the veriest trifle criticise
the tactics of Hannibal; whimpering boys store themselves with phrases
out of the slaughter at Canna; and blubber over the victories of Scipio,
because they are obliged to construe them.
SPIEGEL. Spouted in true Alexandrian style.
CHARLES VON M.
