[Exeunt all but QUESTENBERG and OCTAVIO.
SCENE III.
QUESTENBERG and OCTAVIO.
QUESTENBERG (with signs of aversion and astonishment).
What have I not been forced to hear, Octavio!
What sentiments! what fierce, uncurbed defiance!
And were this spirit universal--
OCTAVIO.
Hm!
You're now acquainted with three-fourths of the army.
QUESTENBERG.
Where must we seek, then, for a second host
To have the custody of this? That Illo
Thinks worse, I fear me, than he speaks. And then
This Butler, too-he cannot even conceal
The passionate workings of his ill intentions.
OCTAVIO.
Quickness of temper-irritated pride;
'Twas nothing more. I cannot give up Butler.
I know a spell that will soon dispossess
The evil spirit in him.
QUESTENBERG (walking up and down in evident disquiet).
Friend, friend!
O! this is worse, far worse, than we had suffered
Ourselves to dream of at Vienna. There
We saw it only with a courtier's eyes,
Eyes dazzled by the splendor of the throne.
We had not seen the war-chief, the commander,
The man all-powerful in his camp. Here, here,
'Tis quite another thing.
Here is no emperor more-the duke is emperor.
Alas, my friend! alas, my noble friend!
This walk which you have ta'en me through the camp
Strikes my hopes prostrate.
OCTAVIO.
Now you see yourself
Of what a perilous kind the office is,
Which you deliver to me from the court.
The least suspicion of the general
Costs me my freedom and my life, and would
But hasten his most desperate enterprise.
QUESTENBERG.
Where was our reason sleeping when we trusted
This madman with the sword, and placed such power
In such a hand? I tell you, he'll refuse,
Flatly refuse to obey the imperial orders.
Friend, he can do it, and what he can, he will.
And then the impunity of his defiance-
Oh! what a proclamation of our weakness!
OCTAVIO.
D'ye think, too, he has brought his wife and daughter
Without a purpose hither? Here in camp!
And at the very point of time in which
We're arming for the war? That he has taken
These, the last pledges of his loyalty,
Away from out the emperor's dominions-
This is no doubtful token of the nearness
Of some eruption.
QUESTENBERG.
How shall we hold footing
Beneath this tempest, which collects itself
And threats us from all quarters? The enemy
Of the empire on our borders, now already
The master of the Danube, and still farther,
And farther still, extending every hour!
In our interior the alarum-bells
Of insurrection-peasantry in arms-
All orders discontented-and the army,
Just in the moment of our expectation
Of aidance from it-lo! this very army
Seduced, run wild, lost to all discipline,
Loosened, and rent asunder from the state
And from their sovereign, the blind instrument
Of the most daring of mankind, a weapon
Of fearful power, which at his will he wields.
OCTAVIO.
Nay, nay, friend! let us not despair too soon
Men's words are even bolder than their deeds;
And many a resolute, who now appears
Made up to all extremes, will, on a sudden,
Find in his breast a heart he wot not of,
Let but a single honest man speak out
The true name of his crime! Remember, too,
