The Death of Wallenstein (play)

SCENE XII.

To these enter the COUNTESS TERZKY, pale and disordered.

Her utterance is slow and feeble, and unimpassioned.

OCTAVIO (meeting her).

Oh, Countess Terzky! These are the results

Of luckless, unblest deeds.

COUNTESS.

They are the fruits

Of your contrivances. The duke is dead,

My husband too is dead, the duchess struggles

In the pangs of death, my niece has disappeared;

This house of splendor, and of princely glory,

Doth now stand desolated: the affrighted servants

Rush forth through all its doors. I am the last

Therein; I shut it up, and here deliver

The keys.

OCTAVIO (with a deep anguish).

Oh, countess! my house, too, is desolate.

COUNTESS.

Who next is to be murdered? Who is next

To be maltreated? Lo! the duke is dead.

The emperor's vengeance may be pacified!

Spare the old servants; let not their fidelity

Be imputed to the faithful as a crime-

The evil destiny surprised my brother

Too suddenly: he could not think on them.

OCTAVIO.

Speak not of vengeance! Speak not of maltreatment!

The emperor is appeased; the heavy fault

Hath heavily been expiated-nothing

Descended from the father to the daughter,

Except his glory and his services.

The empress honors your adversity,

Takes part in your afflictions, opens to you

Her motherly arms. Therefore no further fears.

Yield yourself up in hope and confidence

To the imperial grace!

COUNTESS (with her eye raised to heaven)

To the grace and mercy of a greater master

Do I yield up myself. Where shall the body

Of the duke have its place of final rest?

In the Chartreuse, which he himself did found

At Gitschin, rests the Countess Wallenstein;

And by her side, to whom he was indebted

For his first fortunes, gratefully he wished

He might sometime repose in death! Oh, let him

Be buried there. And likewise, for my husband's

Remains I ask the like grace. The emperor

Is now the proprietor of all our castles;

This sure may well be granted us-one sepulchre

Beside the sepulchres of our forefathers!

OCTAVIO.

Countess, you tremble, you turn pale!

COUNTESS (reassembles all her powers, and speaks with energy and

dignity).

You think

More worthily of me than to believe

I would survive the downfall of my house.

We did not hold ourselves too mean to grasp

After a monarch's crown-the crown did fate

Deny, but not the feeling and the spirit

That to the crown belong! We deem a

Courageous death more worthy of our free station

Than a dishonored life. I have taken poison.

OCTAVIO.

Help! Help! Support her!

COUNTESS.

Nay, it is too late.

In a few moments is my fate accomplished.

[Exit COUNTESS.

GORDON.

Oh, house of death and horrors!

[An OFFICER enters, and brings a letter with the great seal.

GORDON steps forward and meets him.

What is this

It is the imperial seal.

[He reads the address, and delivers the letter to OCTAVIO with

a look of reproach, and with an emphasis on the word.

To the Prince Piccolomini.

[OCTAVIO, with his whole frame expressive of sudden anguish,

raises his eyes to heaven.

The Curtain drops.

FOOTNOTES.

[1] A great stone near Luetzen, since called the Swede's Stone, the body

of their great king having been found at the foot of it, after the

battle in which he lost his life.

[2] Could I have hazarded such a Germanism as the use of the word

afterworld for posterity,-"Es spreche Welt und Nachwelt meinen

Namen"-might have been rendered with more literal fidelity: Let

world and afterworld speak out my name, etc.

[3] I have not ventured to affront the fastidious delicacy of our age

with a literal translation of this line,

werth

Die Eingeweide schaudernd aufzuregen.

[4] Anspessade, in German, Gefreiter, a soldier inferior to a corporal,

but above the sentinels. The German name implies that he is exempt

from mounting guard.

[5] I have here ventured to omit a considerable number of lines. I fear

that I should not have done amiss had I taken this liberty more

frequently. It is, however, incumbent on me to give the original,

with a literal translation.

"Weh denen, die auf Dich vertraun, an Dich

Die sichre Huette ihres Glueckes lehnen,

Gelockt von deiner geistlichen Gestalt.

Schnell unverhofft, bei naechtlich stiller Weile,

Gaehrts in dem tueckschen Feuerschlunde, ladet,

Sich aus mit tobender Gewalt, und weg

Treibt ueber alle Pflanzungen der Menschen

Der wilde Strom in grausender Zerstoerung."

WALLENSTEIN.

"Du schilderst deines Vaters Herz. Wie Du's

Beschreibst, so ist's in seinem Eingeweide,

In dieser schwarzen Heuchlers Brust gestaltet.

Oh, mich hat Hoellenkunst getaeuscht! Mir sandte

Der Abgrund den verflecktesten der Geister,

Den Luegenkundigsten herauf, und stellt' ihn

Als Freund an meiner Seite. Wer vermag

Der Hoelle Macht zu widersthn! Ich zog

Den Basilisken auf an meinem Busen,

Mit meinem Herzblut naehrt' ich ihn, er sog

Sich schwelgend voll an meiner Liebe Bruesten,

Ich hatte nimmer Arges gegen ihn,

Weit offen liess ich des Gedankens Thore,

Und warf die Schluessel weiser Vorsicht weg,

Am Sternenhimmel," etc.

LITERAL TRANSLATION.

"Alas! for those who place their confidence on thee, against thee

lean their secure hut of their fortune, allured by thy hospitable

form. Suddenly, unexpectedly, in a moment still as night, there is

a fermentation in the treacherous gulf of fire; it discharges

itself with raging force, and away over all the plantations of men

drives the wild stream in frightful devastation."

WALLENSTEIN.-"Thou art portraying thy father's heart; as thou

describest, even so is it shaped in its entrails, in this black

hypocrite's breast. Oh, the art of hell has deceived me! The abyss

sent up to me the most the most spotted of the spirits, the most

skilful in lies, and placed him as a friend by my side. Who may

withstand the power of hell? I took the basilisk to my bosom, with

my heart's blood I nourished him; he sucked himself glutfull at the

breasts of my love. I never harbored evil towards him; wide open

did I leave the door of my thoughts; I threw away the key of wise

foresight. In the starry heaven, etc." We find a difficulty in

believing this to have been written by Schiller.

[6] This is a poor and inadequate translation of the affectionate

simplicity of the original-

Sie alle waren Fremdlinge, Du warst

Das Kind des Hauses.

Indeed the whole speech is in the best style of Massinger.

O si sic omnia!

[7] It appears that the account of his conversion being caused by

such a fall, and other stories of his juvenile character, are not

well authenticated.

[8] We doubt the propriety of putting so blasphemous a statement in the

mouth of any character.-T.

[9] [This soliloquy, which, according to the former arrangement,

constituted the whole of scene ix., and concluded the fourth act,

is omitted in all the printed German editions. It seems probable

that it existed in the original manuscript from which Mr. Coleridge

translated.-ED.]

[10] The soliloquy of Thekla consists in the original of six-and-twenty

lines twenty of which are in rhymes of irregular recurrence. I

thought it prudent to abridge it. Indeed the whole scene between

Thekla and Lady Neubrunn might, perhaps, have been omitted without

injury to the play.-C.

[11] These four lines are expressed in the original with exquisite

felicity:-

Am Himmel ist geschaeftige Bewegung.

Des Thurmes Fahne jagt der Wind, schnell geht

Der Wolken Zug, die Mondessichel wankt

Und durch die Nacht zuckt ungewisse Helle.

The word "moon-sickle" reminds me of a passage in Harris, as quoted

by Johnson, under the word "falcated." "The enlightened part of the

moon appears in the form of a sickle or reaping-hook, which is while

she is moving from the conjunction to the opposition, or from the

new moon to the full: but from full to a new again the enlightened

part appears gibbous, and the dark falcated."

The words "wanken" and "schweben" are not easily translated. The

English words, by which we attempt to render them, are either vulgar

or antic, or not of sufficiently general application. So "der

Wolken Zug"-The Draft, the Procession of Clouds. The Masses of the

Clouds sweep onward in swift stream.

[12] A very inadequate translation of the original:-

Verschmerzen werd' ich diesen Schlag, das weiss ich,

Denn was verschmerzte nicht der Mensch!

LITERALLY.

I shall grieve down this blow, of that I'm conscious:

What does not man grieve down?