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

Год написания книги
2018
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WRANGEL.

But still the Chancellor thinks

It might yet be an easier thing from nothing

To call forth sixty thousand men of battle,

Than to persuade one sixtieth part of them—

WALLENST.

What now? Out with it, friend!

WRANGEL.

To break their oaths.

WALLENST.

And he thinks so? He judges like a Swede,

And like a Protestant. You Lutherans

Fight for your Bible. You are interested

About the cause; and with your hearts you follow

Your banners. Among you, whoe'er deserts

To the enemy hath broken covenant

With two Lords at one time. We've no such fancies.

WRANGEL.

Great God in Heaven! Have then the people here

No house and home, no fireside, no altar?

WALLENST.

I will explain that to you, how it stands:—

The Austrian has a country, ay, and loves it,

And has good cause to love it—but this army,

That calls itself the Imperial, this that houses

Here in Bohemia, this has none—no country;

This is an outcast of all foreign lands,

Unclaim'd by town or tribe, to whom belongs

Nothing except the universal sun.

And this Bohemian land for which we fight—

[Loves not the master whom the chance of war,

Not its own choice or will, hath given to it.

Men murmur at the oppression of their conscience,

And power hath only awed but not appeased them;

A glowing and avenging mem'ry lives

Of cruel deeds committed on these plains;

How can the son forget that here his father

Was hunted by the blood-hound to the mass?

A people thus oppress'd must still be feared,

Whether they suffer or avenge their wrongs.]

WRANGEL.

But then the Nobles and the Officers?

Such a desertion, such a felony,

It is without example, my Lord Duke,

In the world's history.

WALLENSTEIN.

They are all mine—

Mine unconditionally—mine on all terms.

Not me, your own eyes you must trust.

[He gives him the paper containing the written oath. WRANGEL reads it through, and, having read it, lays it on the table, remaining silent.]
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