The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing
by Gotthold Ephraim Lessing · English · Gutenberg #33435 · 730,484 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing
Author: Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
Contributor: Helen Zimmern
Translator: Ernest Bell
Release date: August 15, 2010 [eBook #33435]
Language: English
Other information and formats: www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/33435
Credits: Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE DRAMATIC WORKS OF G. E. LESSING ***
Produced by Charles Bowen, from page scans provided by Google Books
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[Illustration: Lessing.]
THE DRAMATIC WORKS
OF
G. E. LESSING.
Translated from the German.
EDITED BY
ERNEST BELL, M.A.,
TRINITY COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE.
WITH A SHORT MEMOIR BY HELEN ZIMMERN.
_MISS SARA SAMPSON_, _PHILOTAS_, _EMILIA GALOTTI_,
_NATHAN THE WISE_.
LONDON:
GEORGE BELL AND SONS, YORK STREET,
COVENT GARDEN.
1878.
LONDON:
PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES ANB SONS,
STAMFORD STREET AND CHARING CROSS.
PREFACE.
A Translation of some of Lessing's works has long been contemplated for
'Bonn's Standard Library,' and the publishers are glad to be able to
bring it out at a time when an increased appreciation of this writer
has become manifest in this country.
The publication of Mr. Sime's work on Lessing, and the almost
simultaneous appearance of Miss Helen Zimmern's shorter but probably
more popular biographical study, will, without doubt, tend to spread
amongst English-speaking people a knowledge of a writer who is held in
peculiar reverence by his own countrymen; and there is little, if
anything, of what he wrote that does not appeal in some way or other to
the sympathies of Englishmen.
In this translation it is purposed to include the most popular of his
works--the first two volumes comprising all the finished dramatic
pieces, whilst the third will contain the famous 'Laokoon,' and a large
portion of the 'Hamburg Dramaturgy' (here called 'Dramatic Notes'), and
some other smaller pieces.
The arrangement of the plays is as follows:--The first volume contains
the three tragedies and the "dramatic poem," 'Nathan the Wise.' This
last piece and 'Emilia Galotti' are translated by Mr. R. Dillon Boylan,
whose English versions of Schiller's 'Don Carlos,' Goethe's 'Wilhelm
Meister,' &c., had previously distinguished him in this path of
literature.
The second volume will be found to consist entirely of comedies,
arranged according to the date of composition; and as it happens that
all these comedies, with the exception of the last and best, 'Minna von
Barnhelm,' were written before he published any more serious dramatic
composition, we have, by reversing the order of the first two volumes,
an almost exactly chronological view of Lessing's dramatic work. The
later section of it has been placed at the commencement of the series,
simply because it was more convenient to include in it the introductory
notice which Miss Zimmern kindly consented to write.
York Street, Covent Garden.
_June_ 1878.
CONTENTS.
Memoir
Miss Sara Sampson
Philotas
Emilia Galotti
Nathan The Wise
LESSING.
Since Luther, Germany has produced no greater or better man than
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing; these two are Germany's pride and joy.
This is the witness of Heine, and with Goethe in memory, none would
pronounce the statement too bold. Luther and Lessing are Germany's
representative men; each inaugurates an epoch the very existence of
which would not have been possible without him. Nor is this the only
point of analogy. Lessing was the Luther of the eighteenth century.
Like Luther, Lessing is distinguished by earnestness, ardour, true
manliness, fierce hatred of dissimulation, largeness of mind, breadth,
and profundity of thought. Like Luther, he stands in history a massive
presence whereon the weak may lean. Like Luther, he led the vanguard of
reform in every department of human learning into which he penetrated.
Like Luther, he was true to every conviction, and did not shrink from
its expression. Like Luther, he could have said, "I was born to fight
with devils and storms, and hence it is that my writings are so
boisterous and stormy." Like Luther, he became the founder of a new
religion and of a new German literature. And again, like Luther, his
life labours were not for Germany alone, but spread over all Europe;
and few of us know how much of our present culture we owe directly or
indirectly to Lessing's influence.
In this country he has not been sufficiently known. Up to the present,
his name has been familiar to Englishmen only as the author of the
'Laokoon,' 'Nathan the Wise,' and, possibly also, of 'Minna von
Barnhelm.' In knowing these, we certainly know the names of some of his
masterpieces, but we cannot thence deduce the entire cause of the man's
far-spreading influence.
Fully to understand Lessing's influence, and fully to understand the
bearing of his works, some slight previous acquaintance with German
literature is absolutely requisite. For unless we comprehend the source
whence an author's inspirations have sprung, we may often misconceive
his views. And Lessing's writings, above all, essentially sprang from
the needs of his time. The subject is a large one, and can only be
briefly indicated here; but we venture to remark, for those whose
interest may be aroused in the subject of this volume, that the fuller
their knowledge of the man and the motive force that evoked his works,
the keener will be their enjoyment of these works themselves.
In naming Lessing, Goethe, and Schiller, we utter the three greatest
names that German literature can boast. And between the three runs a
connecting link of endeavour; the efforts of none can be conceived
without the efforts of the others; but Lessing was the leader. He was
the mental pathfinder who smoothed the way for Goethe's genius, and
prepared the popular understanding for Schiller, the poetical
interpreter of Kant.
Lessing was born in the early years of the eighteenth century, at a
time therefore when Germany may be said practically to have had no
literature. For the revival of learning, the interest in letters that
arose with the Reformation, and had been fostered by the emancipating
spirit of Protestantism, had been blighted and extinguished by the
terrible wars that ravaged the country for thirty years, impoverishing
the people, destroying the homesteads and farms, and utterly
annihilating the mental repose needful to the growth and to the just
appreciation of literature. Books were destroyed as relentlessly in
those sad times as flourishing cornfields were down-trodden by the iron
heel of the invader. It was a fearful period of anarchy and
retrogression, under the baneful effects of which Germany still
labours. Peace was at last restored in 1648 by the Treaty of
Westphalia, but it found the nation broken in spirit and vigour, and
where material needs entirely absorb the mental energies of a people
the Muses cannot flourish. And not only was the spirit of the people
broken by the war, their national feeling seemed totally extinct. The
bold fine language wherewith Luther had endowed them was neglected and
despised by the better classes, who deemed servile imitation of the
foreigner the true and only criterion of good taste. It grew, at last,
to be held quite a distinction for a German to be unable to speak his
own language correctly, and it seems probable that but for the
religious utterances of the hymn-writers, who thus provided the poor
oppressed people with ideal consolations, the very essence of the
language, in all its purity, might have perished. It is among these
hymn-writers that we must seek and shall find the finest, truest, and
most national expressions of that time. Shortly before Lessing's birth
there had awakened a sense of this national degradation, and some
princes and nobles formed themselves into a society to suppress the
fashionable Gallicisms and reinstate the people's language. Their
efforts met with some little success, but their powers were too
limited, and their attempts too artificial and jejune to exert any
considerable influence either in the direction of conservation or of
reform. It needed something stronger, bolder, to dispel the apathy of a
century. Still these associations, known as the two Silesian schools,
bore their part in sowing the good seed, and though most of it fell on
stony ground, because there was little other ground for it whereon to
fall, still some fell on fruitful earth, and brought forth in due
season. An excessive interest in French literature was opposed by an
equal interest in English literature. The adherents of these two
factions formed what was known as the Swiss and Leipzig schools. They
waged a fierce paper warfare, that had the good effect of once more
attracting popular attention to the claims of letters, as well as
showing the people that in French manners, French language, and French
literature, the Alpha and Omega of culture need not of necessity be
sought. The leader of the Leipzig faction, who stood by the French, was
Gottsched, a German professor of high pretensions and small merits, who
put his opponents on their mettle by his pedantic and arrogant attacks.
He had instituted himself a national dictator of good taste, and for a
long time it seemed probable that he and his party would triumph. His
ultimate defeat was accomplished by Lessing, whose early boyhood was
contemporaneous with the fiercest encounters of these antagonists. It
was he who gave the death-blow to their factious disputes, and referred
the nation back to itself and its own national glory and power. He
found Germany without original literature, and, before his short life
was ended, the splendid genius of Goethe shed its light over the land.
Who and what was the man who effected so much?
Gotthold Ephraim Lessing was born on the twenty-second of January,
1729, at Camentz, a small town in Saxony, of which his father was head
pastor. For several generations Lessing's ancestors had been
distinguished for their learning, and with few exceptions they had all
held ecclesiastical preferment. The father of Gotthold Ephraim was a
man of no inconsiderable talents and acquirements. His upright
principles, breadth of vision and scholarly attainments, made him a
venerated example to his son, with whom he maintained through life the
most cordial relationship, though the son's yet more enlightened
standpoint came to transcend the comprehension of the father. Their
first divergence occurred on the choice of a profession. It had been
traditional among the Lessings that the eldest son should take orders,
and accordingly Gotthold Ephraim was silently assumed to be training
for the ministry. He was sent for this end, first to the Grammar-school
of his native town, then to a public school at Meissen, and finally to
the University of Leipzig. At Meissen he distinguished himself in
classical studies, and attempted some original German verses. He
outstripped his compeers, and before he had accomplished his
curriculum, the rector recommended his removal, inasmuch as he had
exhausted the resources of the school. At Leipzig he appeared to turn
his back on study. He deserted the class-rooms of the theologians and
was the more constant attendant instead at the theatre, at that time
the _bete noire_ of all who affected respectability, and decried loudly
by the clergy as a very hotbed of vice. News of their son's haunts
reached the dismayed parents. They urged him to abandon his courses,
that could only end in mental and moral destruction. In vain the son
represented to them that he had lived in retirement too long, that he
now wished to become acquainted with the world and men, and that he
held the theatre to be a popular educator. In vain he represented that
he did attend the philosophical courses of Professors Kaestner,
Ernesti, and Christ. He was a playgoer, and what was still worse, he
was a play-writer, for the directress of the Leipzig Theatre, Frau
Neuber, a woman, of great taste and intelligence, had put on the stage
Lessing's juvenile effort, 'The Young Scholar.' Nay more, he associated
with a notorious freethinker, Mylius, and in concert with him had
contributed to various journals and periodicals. And meanwhile the
magistracy of Camentz was allowing Lessing a stipend on condition of
studying theology. It was too much. His son was neglecting the _dic cur
hic_, and to obviate this the father recalled him home by a stratagem,
informing him that his mother was dying and desired once more to see
her son. The _ruse_, intended also as a test of Lessing's filial
obedience, succeeded in so far as to prove that this was at least
unshaken; but his parents urged in vain that he should abandon his evil
ways. He once more expressed with great decision his disinclination
towards a theological career. But he was also firmly resolved to be no
longer a burden to his parents, whose large family was a great drain on
their resources. He determined to follow Mylius, who had gone to Berlin
in the capacity of editor, convinced that a good brain and steadfast
will would force their own way in the world.
Accordingly Lessing settled in Berlin in 1748, a youth of barely twenty
years, prepared to fight a hand-to-hand struggle for existence.
Frederick the Great at that time ruled in Prussia, and his capital was
in ill repute as a hotbed of frivolity and atheism. If anything could
be worse in the parents' eyes than their son's attendance at the
theatre, it was his presence at Berlin. They urged his return home. He
refused respectfully but decidedly. He had found employment that
remunerated him. Voss's _Gazette_ had appointed him literary editor, he
wrote its critical feuilletons, and here he had the first opportunity
of attacking the Swiss and Leipzig factions, and of exposing the
absurdities of both schools. He was able to teach himself Spanish and
Italian, he translated for the booksellers, he catalogued a library;
and while thus earning his livelihood _tant bien que mal_, he
indirectly prosecuted his studies and enlarged his knowledge of
literature and life. For at Berlin he was not forced to associate only
with books, he also came in contact with intellectual men, his views
expanded, his judgment became sure. A volume of minor poems that he
published in 1751 excited attention.
The essays he contributed to Voss's _Gazette_ gave him notoriety on
account of their independent spirit, their pregnant flashes of
originality and truth. This unknown youth ventured alone and
unsupported to attack Gottsched's meretricious writings, and so
successfully that even the vain dictator trembled, and the rival
schools asked each other who was this Daniel that had come to judgment?
With pitiless subtlety he exposed the crudity, the inflation of
Klopstock's 'Messiah,' which at that time one half the world extolled,
the other half abused, while he alone could truly distinguish in what
respects the poem fell short of its pretensions to be a national epic,
and where its national importance and merit really lay.
For two years Lessing remained at Berlin; busy years, in which he
scattered these treatises teeming with discernment and genius. Then at
the end of that time he felt himself exhausted, he craved seclusion, in
which he could once more live for himself and garner up fresh stores of
knowledge. The city and his numerous friends were too distracting. So
one day he stole away without previous warning and installed himself in
the quiet university town of Wittenberg. At Wittenberg he spent a year
of quiet study. The University library was freely opened to him, and he
could boast that it did not contain a book he had not held in his
hands. Wittenberg: being chiefly a theological university, Lessing's
attention was principally attracted to that subject, and he here laid
the foundations of the accurate knowledge that was in after years to
stand him in great stead. When he had exhausted all that Wittenberg
could offer, he one day (1752) reappeared at Berlin as unexpectedly as
he had quitted it, and quickly resumed his old relations there, which
proved as busy and significant as before. Lessing again maintained
himself by authorship, but this time his productions were riper. He
published several volumes of his writings. They contained treatises
composed at Wittenberg, Rehabilitations (_Rettungen_) of distinguished
men, whom he held the world had maligned, as well as several plays,
among which were the 'Jews,' 'The Woman-hater,' 'The Freethinker,' 'The
Treasure,' as well as the fragmentary play 'Samuel Henzi,' a novel
attempt to treat of modern historical incidents on the stage. A
somewhat savage attack, entitled 'Vade mecum,' in which he criticised
unsparingly a certain Pastor Lange's rendering of 'Horace,' drew upon
Lessing the attention of the learned world, and since he was in the
right in his strictures, they regarded him with mingled fear and
admiration. His renewed criticisms in Voss's _Gazette_ further
maintained his reputation as a redoubtable critic.
These were happy, hopeful years in Lessing's life; he enjoyed his work,
and it brought him success. He had, moreover, formed some of the
warmest friendships of his life with the bookseller Nicolai and the
philosopher Moses Mendelssohn. With the former he discoursed on English
literature, with the latter, on aesthetic and metaphysical themes. Their
frequent reunions were sources of mental refreshment and invigoration
to all three. What cared Lessing that his resources were meagre, he
could live, and his father was growing more reconciled now that men of
established repute lauded his son's works. Together with Mendelssohn,
Lessing wrote an essay on a theme propounded by the Berlin Academy,
'Pope a Metaphysician!' that did not obtain the prize, as it ridiculed
the learned body which had proposed a ridiculous theme, but it
attracted notice.
In the year 1755 Lessing wrote 'Miss Sara Sampson,' a play that marks
an epoch in his life and in German literature. It was the first German
attempt at domestic drama, and was, moreover, written in prose instead
of in the fashionable Alexandrines. The play was acted that same year
at Frankfurt-on-the-Oder, and Lessing went to superintend in person.
Its success was immense, and revived Lessing's love for the stage,
which had rather flagged at Berlin from want of a theatre there. He
accordingly resolved on this account to remove to Leipzig again, and
disappeared from Berlin without announcing his intention to his
friends.
At Leipzig he once more lived among the comedians, and carried on a
lively correspondence with Mendelssohn on the philosophical theories of
the drama in general, with especial reference to Aristotle. A proposal
to act as travelling companion to a rich Leipzig merchant interrupted
this life. The pair started early in the year 1756, intending a long
absence that should include a visit to England. The trip, however, did
not extend beyond Holland, as the Seven Years' War broke out. Prussian
troops were stationed at Leipzig, and this caused Lessing's companion
to desire return. Return they accordingly did, Lessing waiting all the
winter for the resumption of their interrupted project. But as the
prospects of peace grew more distant, their contract was annulled, much
to Lessing's regret, and also to his severe pecuniary loss. He found
himself at Leipzig penniless, the theatre closed by the war, and
interest in letters deadened from the same cause. He contrived,
however, to maintain himself by hack-work for the booksellers; but it
was a dismal time, not devoid, however, of some redeeming lights. The
poet Von Kleist was then stationed at Leipzig, and with him Lessing
formed a friendship that proved one of his warmest and tenderest. On
the removal of Kleist to active service, Lessing determined to quit
Leipzig, which had grown distasteful to him in its military hubbub. In
May 1758 he once more appeared at Berlin, and fell into his former
niche. He worked at his 'Fables,' wrote a play on the Greek models,
'Philotas,' began a life of Sophocles, and edited and translated
several works of minor importance. But the chief labour of the period
was the establishment of a journal dealing with contemporary
literature. It was to be written tersely, as was suited to a time of
war and general excitement; and to connect it with the war, it was
couched in the form of letters purporting to be addressed to an officer
in the field, who wished to be kept acquainted with current literature.
Kleist was certainly in Lessing's mind when he began. The letters were
to be written by Mendelssohn, Nicolai, and Lessing, but nearly all the
earlier ones are from Lessing's pen. The papers made a great mark, from
their bold strictures and independence. They did not belong to either
of the recognised coteries, plainly placing themselves on a footing
outside and above them. Though they were issued anonymously, Lessing
was now sufficiently known, and it was not long before they were
universally attributed to him. Their peculiar merit was that they did
not merely condemn the contemporary productions, but showed the way to
their improvement. They are throughout written with dialectic
brilliancy, vigour, and lively wit, so that they are classics to this
day, although their immediate themes are long removed from our
interests From these 'Letters Concerning Contemporary Literature' our
modern science of criticism may be said to date. After this, works were
no longer merely judged by ancient standards, but by their application
to the demands of the age in which they were written.
The news of Kleist's death affected Lessing severely, and so broke down
his energies that he felt the imperative need of a change of scene. He
therefore accepted an offer to act as secretary to General Tauentzien,
who had been appointed Governor of Breslau. He followed him to that
city in 1760, hoping to find renewed energies in a fixed employment
that gave him good emolument and left him free time for self-culture.
Lessing remained at this post for nearly five years, until the
conclusion of the Seven Years' War, and though his letters of that
period are very scanty, and though he gained evil repute at Breslau as
a gambler and a tavern haunter, they were really the busiest and most
studious years of his life. Here he read Spinoza and the Church
Fathers, studied aesthetics and Winckelmann's newly issued 'History of
Art,' wrote his 'Minna von Barnhelm,' and the 'Laokoon.' Their
publication did not occur till his return to Berlin after the peace of
Hubertsburg, when Lessing threw up his appointment, greatly to the
dismay of his family, who had reckoned on it as a permanent resource.
But Lessing had had enough of soldiers and military life, he had
exhausted all they could teach him, and he craved to resume his
studious and independent existence. He did not like it on resumption so
well as he had thought he should at a distance. Restlessness seized
him. He wanted to travel; to see Italy. His friends desired an
appointment for him as royal librarian. He applied for the post, and
was kept for some time in uncertainty. He failed, however, owing to
Frederick's dislike to German learned men, and it was in vain that
Lessing's friends pleaded that he was anything but the typical German
pedant, uncouth, unkempt, who was Frederick's _bete noire_. To prove
his efficiency for the post, Lessing had published his 'Laokoon.' He
published it as a fragment, and, like too many of Lessing's works, it
never grew beyond that stage.
But _torso_ as it is, its influence has been far spreading. The science
of aesthetics was in its infancy when Lessing wrote. Pedantic and
conventional rules were laid down regarding beauty, and the greatest
confusion of ideas existed concerning the provinces and limits of the
respective arts. Poetry and painting were treated as arts identical in
purpose and scope; indeed each was advised to borrow aid from the
resources of the other. Simonides' dictum that "Painting is silent
poetry, and poetry eloquent painting," was regarded as an
incontrovertible axiom. Winckelmann's lately published 'History of Art'
had supported this view of the matter; a point of view that encouraged
allegorical painting and didactic poetry. The 'Laokoon' strove to
expose the radical error of this idea, as its second title, 'or the
boundaries of Poetry and Painting,' proves. The conclusions established
by the 'Laokoon' have become to-day the very groundwork of cultured art
criticism, and though the somewhat narrow scope of its aesthetic theory
has been extended, the basis remains untouched and unshaken. The book
is of as much value now as upon its first appearance. Its luminous
distinctions, its suggestive utterances, point the way to exact truth,
even where they do not define it. Like the celebrated Torso of the
Vatican, it can be made an object of constant study, and every fresh
investigation will reveal new beauties, new subtle traits of artistic
comprehension hitherto overlooked.
This work, so grand and ultimately fruitful, fell, nevertheless, very
flat on its first issue, and only gradually assumed the position that
was its due. It had indeed to educate its public, so new were the
principles it enunciated. Three years after its publication, Lessing
told a friend that hardly any one seemed to know at what goal he had
aimed in his 'Laokoon.' Critics arose in plenty, but their criticism
was of such a character that Lessing, usually so combative, did not
hold them worthy of a reply. Little wonder, therefore, that even the
discerning Frederick did not recognise the value of its author, and
finally decided against Lessing's appointment as royal librarian.
In November 1766 Lessing describes himself as standing idly in the
market-place waiting for hire. He was discontented with his
surroundings, eager to find himself in a wider and more congenial
mental atmosphere than that of Berlin, uncertain whither to turn, and
hampered by money difficulties, private debts and family demands. At
this juncture an invitation from Hamburg reached him, which at the
first aspect seemed to open out a future peculiarly suited to Lessing's
tastes and idiosyncrasies. An association of rich burghers had
conceived the idea of founding a national theatre, which, liberally
endowed, and thus removed from the region of pecuniary speculation,
could devote itself exclusively to the cultivation of high art, and
thus raise the national standard of taste. A dramatic critic and
adviser was to belong to the establishment, and this post was offered
to Lessing with a salary of 800 thalers. He accepted with alacrity, and
repaired to Hamburg in the confidence of having at last found a niche
well suited to his capacity. At the worst, he had nothing to lose and
everything to gain by this step, and he gladly turned his back on
Berlin, now distasteful to him. He hoped to throw himself once more
into dramatic labours, and to find himself in contact with the living
stage. Only too speedily his hopes were destined to disappointment. He
had not been long at Hamburg before, notwithstanding all his power of
illusion, he could not disguise from himself the fact that the project
that sounded so noble and disinterested really rested on no higher
basis than that of miserable stage cabals.
Before issuing the first number of his paper, the 'Hamburger
Dramaturgie,' a critical journal, which was to accompany the art of the
author and actor throughout the representations, he already knew that
the project begun with such high hopes must end in a miserable
_fiasco_. Still he set to work upon his journal undauntedly, determined
that it should, as far as it lay in his power, serve the purposes of
the drama and instruct the populace as to the full import and aim of
this noble art. The paper was a weekly one, the criticisms, therefore,
had the merit of being thoroughly thought out and digested, not written
like our modern theatrical criticisms under the very glare of the
foot-lights. Lessing analysed the plays and their performance; he
pointed out not only where, but why actors had erred; his sure
perception and accurate knowledge of stage routine made him an
invaluable guide to the performers. His criticisms, had they been
continued, would have laid the basis of a science of histrionics, but
unhappily for the world, the wretched vanity of the _artistes_, some of
whom he had ventured gently to condemn, caused him to desist from this
portion of his criticism. He confined himself solely to the play
performed. After a while, however, even this did not suffice; bad
management, stage cabals, private jealousy, and clerical intrigues, had
undermined the slender popularity of the theatre. Before the end of its
first year, the house saw itself forced to close its doors, thanks to
creditors and to the rival and superior attractions of a company of
French comedians. It is true the German troupe returned in the spring
to make a final effort, but this also proved a failure; the debts were
only increased, and the throng of creditors who besieged the box-office
was so great that the public could not have entered if it had tried. In
November (1768) the theatre finally closed its doors.
_Transeat cum caeteris erroribus_, was Lessing's comment on the event.
He was the poorer by another hope, and not only poorer in spirit but in
fact. The promised salary had not been paid, the sale of his rich
library would not suffice for his debts and needs, and he had moreover
hampered himself with a printing-press that only helped yet more to
cripple his means. His position was a sorry one. Literary work was once
more his only resource. It happened that he had from the first been in
arrears with his journal, first advisedly, then from a tendency to
procrastination that befell him whenever the first white heat of
interest had been expended. He now determined to continue it, employing
it as a vehicle for his own opinions under the cover of criticisms of
the national theatre, which he still hoped against hope might not be
utterly defunct.
The 'Dramaturgy' is the permanent result of this shipwrecked
undertaking, itself a fragment--for after a while Lessing wearied of
it, and piratical reprints robbed him of the slender profit--but a
fragment like the 'Laokoon,' full of suggestive truths and flashes of
elucidation. As an entire work it is not as homogeneous in design as
the 'Laokoon'; no connected or definite thread of reasoning pervades
it, its perusal requires more independent thought from the reader, who
must form his own conclusions, they are not worked out before him as in
the 'Laokoon.' But in its ultimate results it is no less valuable, and
has been no less effective. It freed the German stage from bondage to
French pseudo-classicisms by its scornful exposure of the perversions
practised by the Gallic authors under the cloak of Aristotelian laws.
Lessing showed the divergence between real and absolute, and fanciful
and perverted rules. He pointed out how the three unities insisted on
by the French had been often violated by them in the spirit if not in
the letter. He demonstrated the real meaning of Aristotle; and enabled,
by his exact classical knowledge, to place himself on the actual
stand-point of the ancients, he exposed the meretricious imitations of
the French, that had been too long passed off as genuine. He referred
the Germans to Shakespeare as a far truer follower of Sophocles than
Voltaire or Corneille, and he illustrated his conclusions by excerpts
and digressions remote from the subject presumed to be under treatment,
and which had first started this train of thought. Until now the French
had prescribed the sole standard of good taste. Lessing wished to
destroy this unthinking veneration, and lead his nation back to the
true sources of inspiration, and he fought with an iconoclastic zeal
against all distortions, and all confusions of aesthetic boundaries. In
a measure, indeed, the 'Dramaturgy' supplements the 'Laokoon', for in
the latter work Lessing had distinctly referred to the drama as the
highest expression of poetry, and he had placed poetry above the arts
of design in its results and capacities. Once more he displays his
subtlety in discriminating between the various constituents of the
complex feelings produced by art, and his rare faculty of combining
aesthetic sensibility with logical criticism constitutes one of his
grand claims to originality. The 'Dramaturgy' must be regarded rather
as a collection of [Greek: epea pteroenta], than a systematic book.
This remark applies, indeed, to all Lessing's prose writings.
The 'Dramaturgy' was not the only work that occupied Lessing at
Hamburg. A certain Professor Klotz had been for some time past
attacking Lessing's writings, and had done this in a spirit of arrogant
superiority that roused his ire. A remark that Lessing had been guilty
of "an unpardonable fault," in an archaeological matter, wherein Klotz
himself was plainly in error, brought matters to a crisis, and drew
down on Klotz a series of 'Letters treating of Antiquarian Subjects,'
that utterly demolished both the man and his conclusions. A private
feud gave occasion to this publication, but, like all that Lessing
wrote, it is full of matter of permanent worth. Cameos and engraved
gems form the ground-work of the controversy that was waged fast and
furiously for some months, until at last Lessing silenced his
adversary. The archaeological studies that it necessitated had awakened
afresh Lessing's artistic interests and provoked the charming little
essay, 'How the Ancients represented Death,' that starting as a polemic
against Klotz, ended in becoming a finished and exquisite whole.
About this time (1772) Lessing received encouragement from Vienna to
settle in the Austrian dominions, but as the offers concerned the
theatre he declined compliance, still feeling sore from his late
experiences. The old desire to visit Italy was once more uppermost, his
restless activity had exhausted the slender intellectual resources of
Hamburg. But he was once more hampered by money difficulties. He
vacillated for a while between remaining and leaving, and finally
accepted an appointment at the Brunswick Court as librarian of the
Wolfenbuettel Library, with the proviso that this appointment should not
permanently interfere with his projected Italian journey. His salary
was to be 600 thalers, with an official residence; his duties were
undefined. The Duke, who recognised Lessing's eminence, wished to
attach him to his Court, and desired that Lessing should use the
library for his personal convenience rather than as its custodian. The
post promised well, though Lessing entered on it with reluctance; his
love of freedom causing him at any time to shrink from any definite
appointment. He loved, as he himself expressed it, to be like the
sparrow on the housetops, but considerations hitherto unknown
contributed to induce him to seek a settled post and establish his
affairs on a more permanent basis than heretofore. The wish to marry
had become awakened in him at the mature age of forty; he had made the
acquaintance in Hamburg of a Madame Koenig, a widow, the first woman
who had seriously roused his interest. Business complications of her
late husband's and the charge of a family made union impossible for
some little time, but Lessing had not been long at Wolfenbuettel before
a formal engagement was entered upon whose ultimate fulfilment it was
confidently expected would not be too long deferred. It was deferred,
however, for the space of six years--years that were the weariest and
saddest in Lessing's life, and mark the only time when his healthful
optimism, his sanguine cheerfulness broke into complaint and yielded to
depression of mind. Physical causes were at work as well as mental.
Wolfenbuettel was an old deserted capital, devoid of society, and
Lessing, who loved to mingle with his fellow-creatures, saw himself
banished from any intelligent human intercourse, unless he undertook
the somewhat expensive journey to Brunswick. At Hamburg he had lived in
an active and intellectual circle; here he found himself thrown back
upon himself and books. His heart and thoughts were with Madame Koenig,
her business affairs went badly; their rare meetings only further
strengthened his desire to claim as his own this the only woman who
understood him and felt with him. The promised leave of absence, too,
for Italy, was constantly deferred under futile pretexts, and thus
depressed, dispirited, Lessing could not feel within himself the
capability of original production. At the same time he did not feel it
right or wise to neglect the resources placed within his reach by the
excellent library of which he was custodian; he ransacked its
manuscript treasures, and published some of them. He also in a brief
period of renewed happiness and mental vigour, that followed a visit to
Hamburg and a meeting with Madame Koenig, wrote his famous tragedy
'Emilia Galotti.'
This drama is an illustration of the principles enunciated by Lessing
in his 'Dramaturgy;' its condensation is a protest against the
verbosity of the French, its form an approach to Shakespeare; while its
tendency is a stricture on the abuses practised at petty Courts. The
latter was a bold innovation, considering that at the time Lessing
wrote and produced this play he was himself the servant of a Court,
enlightened and liberal it is true, but libertine and despotic; and
that parallels could not fail to be drawn by the malevolent between
Brunswick and Guastalla. The story is a modernised version of that of
Virginia, but the catastrophe is not equally harmonious, because not so
absolutely necessitated by the conditions of modern society as by those
of the ancient world. Still the play is in many respects inimitable;
the manner in which the story is developed and unravelled renders it a
model to young dramatists; nothing superfluous, nothing obscure, no
needless retrogressions, no violent transitions. Lessing's
contemporaries were not slow to recognise that he had presented them
with a master-piece. He himself after its completion had sunk back into
his former mood of irritated depression, and he would not even be
present at the first representation. This mood was in great part
physical, but was also the result of circumstances. He was anxious and
uneasy. The hereditary prince had held out hopes to him, but their
fulfilment was too long deferred; Madame Koenig's affairs grew more and
more involved, the solitude of Wolfenbuettel more and more arid.
At last his restless spirit could brook this position no longer.
Heedless of Madame Koenig's warning prayers not to bring matters to an
abrupt crisis, to have patience with the Court whose financial position
at the time was truly a sorry one, Lessing one day broke away from
Wolfenbuettel and appeared at Berlin, whence he applied for an extended
leave of absence to Vienna, where Madame Koenig's business had lately
required her presence. He reassures her that he has not burnt his ships
behind him, and this was true, but he wished to ascertain for himself
how matters stood with her, and also if there was, any opening for him
in that capital. He arrived at Vienna in March 1775, and found Madame
Koenig's affairs so far advanced towards settlement as to justify him
in entertaining hopes of a speedy union.
But the evil fortune that seemed to run like a fatal thread through
Lessing's life whenever he found himself near the fulfilment of an
ardent desire again asserted itself. He had not been ten days in Vienna
before one of the younger princes of the house of Brunswick arrived
there also on his way to Italy. He wished to have Lessing as his
travelling companion. Thus a long cherished desire was to be realised
at the moment when a far stronger one had usurped its place. Lessing
debated for some time what he should do, but on consideration with
Madame Koenig, it was decided to be unwise to offend the prince whose
earnest wish for Lessing's companionship was supported by the Empress
Maria Theresa, and moreover the projected journey was only to extend
over eight weeks; consequently the parting and delay would be brief,
while the ultimate consequences of having obliged the ducal house at
personal inconvenience might be incalculable. The journey extended to
nine months, and was a period of misery to Lessing. He never received a
line from Madame Koenig all this time, her letters having all
miscarried, thanks to the officious zeal of her Vienna acquaintances,
and he tortured himself with fears lest she were ill or dead. Neither
did he write to her, nor keep a diary, beyond the very briefest records
of some discoveries in libraries. Not a word about the art, the scenery
of the land he had so craved to see. He perceived quickly enough that
it could offer all, and more than he had anticipated, but, added to his
private anxieties, this travelling in the suite of a prince was not
propitious to the proper enjoyment of Italy. Receptions, formal
dinners, deputations, at all of which Lessing had to be present,
engrossed the precious time that should have been devoted to more
intellectual pursuits.
_Transeat cum caeteris erroribus_, Lessing might again have written when
he returned to Germany in December. He hastened to Vienna to learn news
of his beloved, and there a whole packet of her letters were put into
his hands--those letters the want of which had preyed upon his heart.
He was now more fully determined than ever to bring matters to a
crisis; if the Brunswick Court would not improve his position he would
seek employment elsewhere; at the very worst he could not fare worse
than he was at present faring. His resolution triumphed, his salary was
raised, his position improved, and on the 8th of October, 1776, he was
at last united to the woman of his choice.
Then followed a very heyday of happiness to Lessing; he was at last
content, at peace; his wife understood him and felt with him; she was
his stay, his pride, his joy. But once more the evil fate was at work,
and could not permit of ease to this poor victim she pursued so
relentlessly. Early in January (1778) Lessing saw his wife and baby boy
laid in the grave. The brief sunshine which had illumined his path had
vanished for ever.
The letters written by him at the time are more pathetic in their stoic
brevity than folios of lamentations. There were no further hopes of
happiness for him on earth; he must just resign himself and work on at
his appointed labour until he too should be laid to rest. He turned
with an ardour that was almost furious to encounter the assailants of
his last literary publication. Since his appointment as Wolfenbuettel
librarian Lessing had from time to time published some of its
manuscript treasures, and among these he had inserted portions of a
work that had been intrusted to him, and which he deemed ought not to
be withheld from the light of day. These were the famous Wolfenbuettel
Fragments issued anonymously by Lessing, but really the work of a
deceased Hamburger, Professor Reimarus. Their publication drew down
upon Lessing a fury of rancorous abuse, and involved him in a vortex of
controversy that lasted till his death. The chief and most vehement of
his opponents was Pastor J. M. Goeze, whose insulting polemic reached
him by the bedside of his dying wife. Its malignant and unjustified
attacks roused Lessing's energy. He assailed Goeze with all the
strength of his grief, for which he was thankful to find a safety-valve
in controversy. The work of Reimarus had advocated rationalism; Lessing
had distinctly placed himself in position of editor, and pronounced
that he did not of necessity subscribe to the opinions therein
enunciated, but he found in their reasoning much food for thought, and
with his almost romantic passion for truth he deemed that such matter
should not be withheld from the world. Goeze chose to consider that
Lessing was sailing under false colours, that the fragments were his
own composition, and that he was undermining the national faith.
Lessing replied to Goeze's insults by a series of fourteen letters,
entitled 'Anti-Goeze,' which actually silenced his opponent, who had
never been known before to allow an adversary the last word. They are
written in a serio-comic tone, and for sparkling wit, trenchant
sarcasm, and dramatic dialectics surpass anything ever penned by
Lessing. No less admirable is his accurate theological knowledge and
his large-minded comprehension of the purposes of religion.
The same noble spirit pervades his 'Nathan the Wise,' which he wrote
about this time as a relief to his controversial discussions, and as
another protest against the narrow-minded assumptions of the
professional theologians. Lessing had ever contended that the stage
might prove as useful a pulpit as the church, and in 'Nathan' he strove
to preach the universal brotherhood of mankind; its hero is a Jew of
ideal and pure morality. The whole purpose of the drama was a stricture
on class prejudices and an enunciation of the innate truth that
underlies all forms of creeds. The play is too well known even in this
country to require much comment; it is a noble monument of toleration
and large-mindedness, and the fact that he could produce it under the
load of a crushing sorrow speaks volumes for the true earnest religious
faith that dwelt in Lessing's nature. At the time its pure tendencies
were not understood. Lessing had progressed beyond the comprehension of
his age, and the inevitable consequences ensued,--misconstruction and
mental loneliness. He began to be regarded with suspicion as a
dangerous innovator; even old friends held aloof in doubt. Meanwhile
his only comfort remained in his home, in the step-children, whom his
wife had brought thither. His step-daughter was his tender and
attentive companion, for since his wife's death Lessing's health had
declined, and he required care. Though no trace of impaired vigour
appears in his writings of the period, which indeed are animated by an
exhilarating vitality, yet too evident traces of impaired vigour
appeared in himself. He grew languid, an excessive inclination to sleep
overpowered him; he suffered from attacks of vertigo. Yet as long as he
could hold a pen he should write, he told his brother,--write in the
cause of what he firmly held to be the truth.
A small pamphlet, consisting of a hundred propositions, entitled 'The
Education of the Human Race,' was his next production, a work pregnant
with thought that opens out wide vistas of knowledge and progress to
mankind. Lessing indeed was the first man of his century to formulate
the modern doctrine of progress; he preached a true millennium of
toleration, love, and knowledge; he distinctly proclaimed his faith in
the immortality of the soul. 'The Education of the Human Race' is a
splendid disavowal of his enemies' calumnious assertions. It was a
glorious swan-song, wherewith he lulled himself into eternal peace.
On one of his official visits to Brunswick, Lessing was overtaken by a
paralytic stroke. On the 15th of February, 1781, he passed away. He
died as he lived, nobly, in a reverent assurance that he had fought a
good fight on earth in the cause of truth and enlightenment, progress
and humanity.
Time, the true criterion of human fame, has not only left his glory
undiminished, but has augmented it, as popular intelligence has
gradually arisen to the comprehension of its many-sided significance.
It will be long before we have outgrown Lessing, if indeed that time
can ever come. And even if some things in his writings may seem narrow
or antiquated to our vision, we may readily pass them over to arrive at
matters eternally true, exalted, sublime. Truth was the main purpose of
all he wrote, and truth is for all ages and all time. Lessing was one
of the truly great ones of this earth, and petty cavillers should lay
to heart the words of another wise man, the author of 'The Imitation:'
"All perfection in this world has some imperfection coupled with it,
and none of our investigations are without some obscurity."
Helen Zimmern.
MISS SARA SAMPSON.
A TRAGEDY IN FIVE ACTS.
Miss Sara Sampson, the first of Lessing's tragedies, was completed in
the year 1755, while Lessing was at Potsdam. In the same year it was
represented at Frankfort-on-the-Oder, and was very well received. It
was afterwards translated and acted in France, where it also met with
success.
The present is the first English translation which has appeared.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE.
Sir William Sampson.
Miss Sara Sampson, _his daughter_.
Mellefont.
Marwood, _formerly_ Mellefont's _mistress_.
Arabella, _a child, daughter of_ Marwood.
Waitwell, _an old servant of_ Sir William.
Norton, _servant of_ Mellefont.
Betty, Sara's _maid_.
Hannah, Marwood's _maid_.
_The_ Innkeeper _and others_.
MISS SARA SAMPSON.
ACT I.
Scene I.--_A room in an inn_.
Sir William Sampson, Waitwell.
SIR WILLIAM.
My daughter, here? Here in this wretched inn?
WAITWELL.
No doubt, Mellefont has purposely selected the most wretched one in the
town. The wicked always seek the darkness, because they are wicked. But
what would it help them, could they even hide themselves from the whole
world? Conscience after all is more powerful than the accusations of a
world. Ah, you are weeping again, again, Sir!--Sir!
SIR WILLIAM.
Let me weep, my honest old servant! Or does she not, do you think,
deserve my tears?
WAITWELL.
Alas! She deserves them, were they tears of blood.
SIR WILLIAM.
Well, let me weep!
WAITWELL.
The best, the loveliest, the most innocent child that ever lived
beneath the sun, must thus be led astray! Oh, my Sara, my little Sara!
I have watched thee grow; a hundred times have I carried thee as a
child in these arms, have I admired thy smiles, thy lispings. From
every childish look beamed forth the dawn of an intelligence, a
kindliness, a----
SIR WILLIAM.
Oh, be silent! Does not the present rend my heart enough? Will you make
my tortures more infernal still by recalling past happiness? Change
your tone, if you will do me a service. Reproach me, make of my
tenderness a crime, magnify my daughter's fault; fill me with
abhorrence of her, if you can; stir up anew my revenge against her
cursed seducer; say, that Sara never was virtuous, since she so lightly
ceased to be so; say that she never loved me, since she clandestinely
forsook me!
WAITWELL.
If I said that, I should utter a lie, a shameless, wicked lie. It might
come to me again on my death-bed, and I, old wretch, would die in
despair. No, little Sara has loved her father; and doubtless, doubtless
she loves him yet. If you will only be convinced of this, I shall see
her again in your arms this very day.
SIR WILLIAM.
Yes, Waitwell, of this alone I ask to be convinced. I cannot any longer
live without her; she is the support of my age, and if she does not
help to sweeten the sad remaining days of my life, who shall do it? If
she loves me still, her error is forgotten. It was the error of a
tender-hearted maiden, and her flight was the result of her remorse.
Such errors are better than forced virtues. Yet I feel, Waitwell, I
feel it, even were these errors real crimes, premeditated vices--even
then I should forgive her. I would rather be loved by a wicked
daughter, than by none at all.
WAITWELL.
Dry your tears, dear sir! I hear some one. It will be the landlord
coming to welcome us.
Scene II.
_The_ Landlord, Sir William Sampson, Waitwell.
LANDLORD.
So early, gentlemen, so early? You are welcome; welcome, Waitwell! You
have doubtless been travelling all night! Is that the gentleman, of
whom you spoke to me yesterday?
WAITWELL.
Yes, it is he, and I hope that in accordance with what we settled----
LANDLORD.
I am entirely at your service, my lord. What is it to me, whether I
know or not, what cause has brought you hither, and why you wish to
live in seclusion in my house? A landlord takes his money and lets his
guests do as they think best. Waitwell, it is true, has told me that
you wish to observe the stranger a little, who has been staying here
for a few weeks with his young wife, but I hope that you will not cause
him any annoyance. You would bring my house into ill repute and certain
people would fear to stop here. Men like us must live on people of all
kinds.
SIR WILLIAM.
Do not fear; only conduct me to the room which Waitwell has ordered for
me; I come here for an honourable purpose.
LANDLORD.
I have no wish to know your secrets, my lord! Curiosity is by no means
a fault of mine. I might for instance have known long ago, who the
stranger is, on whom you want to keep a watch, but I have no wish to
know. This much however I have discovered, that he must have eloped
with the young lady. The poor little wife--or whatever she may
be!--remains the whole day long locked up in her room, and cries.
SIR WILLIAM.
And cries?
LANDLORD.
Yes, and cries; but, my lord, why do your tears fall? The young lady
must interest you deeply. Surely you are not----
WAITWELL.
Do not detain him any longer!
LANDLORD.
Come, come! One wall only will separate you from the lady in whom you
are so much interested, and who may be----
WAITWELL.
You mean then at any cost to know, who----
LANDLORD.
No, Waitwell! I have no wish to know anything.
WAITWELL.
Make haste, then, and take us to our rooms, before the whole house
begins to stir.
LANDLORD.
Will you please follow me, then, my lord? (_Exeunt_.)
Scene III.--Mellefont's _room_.
Mellefont, Norton.
MELLEFONT (_in dressing-gown, sitting in an easy chair_).
Another night, which I could not have spent more cruelly on the
rack!--(_calls_) Norton!--I must make haste to get sight of a face or
two. If I remained alone with my thoughts any longer, they might carry
me too far. Hey, Norton! He is still asleep. But is not it cruel of me,
not to let the poor devil sleep? How happy he is! However, I do not
wish any one about me to be happy! Norton!
NORTON (coming).
Sir!
MELLEFONT.
Dress me!--Oh, no sour looks please! When I shall be able to sleep
longer myself I will let you do the same. If you wish to do your duty,
at least have pity on me.
NORTON.
Pity, sir! Pity on you? I know better where pity is due.
MELLEFONT.
And where then?
NORTON.
Ah, let me dress you and don't ask.
MELLEFONT.
Confound it! Are _your_ reproofs then to awaken together with my
conscience? I understand you; I know on whom you expend your pity. But
I will do justice to her and to myself. Quite right, do not have any
pity on me! Curse me in your heart; but--curse yourself also!
NORTON.
Myself also?
MELLEFONT.
Yes, because you serve a miserable wretch, whom earth ought not to
bear, and because you have made yourself a partaker in his crimes.
NORTON.
I made myself a partaker in your crimes? In what way?
MELLEFONT.
By keeping silent about them.
NORTON.
Well, that is good! A word would have cost me my neck in the heat of
your passions. And, besides, did I not find you already so bad, when I
made your acquaintance, that all hope of amendment was vain? What a
life I have seen you leading from the first moment! In the lowest
society of gamblers and vagrants--I call them what they were without
regard to their knightly titles and such like--in this society you
squandered a fortune which might have made a way for you to an
honourable position. And your culpable intercourse with all sorts of
women, especially with the wicked Marwood----
MELLEFONT.
Restore me--restore me to that life. It was virtue compared with the
present one. I spent my fortune; well! The punishment follows, and I
shall soon enough feel all the severity and humiliation of want. I
associated with vicious women; that may be. I was myself seduced more
often than I seduced others; and those whom I did seduce wished it.
But--I still had no ruined virtue upon my conscience. I had carried off
no Sara from the house of a beloved father and forced her to follow a
scoundrel, who was no longer free. I had----who comes so early to me?
Scene IV.
Betty, Mellefont, Norton.
NORTON.
It is Betty.
MELLEFONT.
Up already, Betty? How is your mistress?
BETTY.
How is she? (_sobbing_.) It was long after midnight before I could
persuade her to go to bed. She slept a few moments; but God, what a
sleep that must have been! She started suddenly, sprang up and fell
into my arms, like one pursued by a murderer. She trembled, and a cold
perspiration started on her pale face. I did all I could to calm her,
but up to this morning she has only answered me with silent tears. At
length she sent me several times to your door to listen whether you
were up. She wishes to speak to you. You alone can comfort her. O do
so, dearest sir, do so! My heart will break, if she continues to fret
like this.
MELLEFONT.
Go, Betty! Tell her, I shall be with her in a moment,
BETTY.
No, she wishes to come to you herself.
MELLEFONT.
Well, tell her, then, that I am awaiting her----
(_Exit_ Betty.)
Scene V.
Mellefont, Norton.
NORTON.
O God, the poor young lady!
MELLEFONT.
Whose feelings is this exclamation of yours meant to rouse? See, the
first tear which I have shed since my childhood is running down my
cheek. A bad preparation for receiving one who seeks comfort. But why
does she seek it from me? Yet where else shall she seek it? I must
collect myself (_drying his eyes_). Where is the old firmness with
which I could see a beautiful eye in tears? Where is the gift of
dissimulation gone by which I could be and could say whatsoever I
wished? She will come now and weep tears that brook no resistance.
Confused and ashamed I shall stand before her; like a convicted
criminal I shall stand before her. Counsel me, what shall I do? What
shall I say?
NORTON.
You shall do what she asks of you!
MELLEFONT.
I shall then perpetrate a fresh act of cruelty against her. She is
wrong to blame me for delaying a ceremony which cannot be performed in
this country without the greatest injury to us.
NORTON.
Well, leave it, then. Why do we delay? Why do you let one day after the
other pass, and one week after the other? Just give me the order, and
you will be safe on board to-morrow! Perhaps her grief will not follow
her over the ocean; she may leave part of it behind, and in another
land may----
MELLEFONT.
I hope that myself. Silence! She is coming! How my heart throbs!
Scene VI.
Sara, Mellefont, Norton.
MELLEFONT (_advancing towards her_).
You have had a restless night, dearest Sara.
SARA.
Alas, Mellefont, if it were nothing but a restless night.
MELLEFONT (_to his servant_).
Leave us!
NORTON (_aside, in going_).
I would not stay if I was paid in gold for every moment.
Scene VII.
Sara, Mellefont.
MELLEFONT.
You are faint, dearest Sara! You must sit down!
SARA (_sits down_).
I trouble you very early! Will you forgive me that with the morning I
again begin my complaints?
MELLEFONT.
Dearest Sara, you mean to say that you cannot forgive me, because
another morning has dawned, and I have not yet put an end to your
complaints?
SARA.
What is there that I would not forgive you? You know what I have
already forgiven you. But the ninth week, Mellefont! the ninth week
begins to-day, and this miserable house still sees me in just the same
position as on the first day.
MELLEFONT.
You doubt my love?
SARA.
I doubt your love? No, I feel my misery too much, too much to wish to
deprive myself of this last and only solace.
MELLEFONT.
How, then, can you be uneasy about the delay of a ceremony?
SARA.
Ah, Mellefont! Why is it that we think so differently about this
ceremony! Yield a little to the woman's way of thinking! I imagine in
it a more direct consent from Heaven. In vain did I try again, only
yesterday, in the long tedious evening, to adopt your ideas, and to
banish from my breast the doubt which just now--not for the first time,
you have deemed the result of my distrust. I struggled with myself; I
was clever enough to deafen my understanding; but my heart and my
feeling quickly overthrew this toilsome structure of reason.
Reproachful voices roused me from my sleep, and my imagination united
with them to torment me. What pictures, what dreadful pictures hovered
about me! I would willingly believe them to be dreams----
MELLEFONT.
What? Could my sensible Sara believe them to be anything else? Dreams,
my dearest, dreams!--How unhappy is man!--Did not his Creator find
tortures enough for him in the realm of reality? Had he also to create
in him the still more spacious realm of imagination in order to
increase them?
SARA.
Do not accuse Heaven! It has left the imagination in our power. She is
guided by our acts; and when these are in accordance with our duties
and with virtue the imagination serves only to increase our peace and
happiness. A single act, Mellefont, a single blessing bestowed upon us
by a messenger of peace, in the name of the Eternal One, can restore my
shattered imagination again. Do you still hesitate to do a few days
sooner for love of me, what in any case you mean to do at some future
time? Have pity on me, and consider that, although by this you may be
freeing me only from torments of the imagination, yet these imagined
torments are torments, and are real torments for her who feels them.
Ah! could I but tell you the terrors of the last night half as vividly
as I have felt them. Wearied with crying and grieving--my only
occupations--I sank down on my bed with half-closed eyes. Sly nature
wished to recover itself a moment, to collect new tears. But hardly
asleep yet, I suddenly saw myself on the steepest peak of a terrible
rock. You went on before, and I followed with tottering, anxious steps,
strengthened now and then by a glance which you threw back upon me.
Suddenly I heard behind me a gentle call, which bade me stop. It was my
father's voice--I unhappy one, can I forget nothing which is his? Alas
if his memory renders him equally cruel service; if he too cannot
forget me!--But he has forgotten me. Comfort! cruel comfort for his
Sara!--But, listen, Mellefont! In turning round to this well-known
voice, my foot slipped; I reeled, and was on the point of falling down
the precipice, when just in time, I felt myself held back by one who
resembled myself. I was just returning her my passionate thanks, when
she drew a dagger from her bosom. "I saved you," she cried, "to ruin
you!" She lifted her armed hand--and--! I awoke with the blow. Awake, I
still felt all the pain which a mortal stab must give, without the
pleasure which it brings--the hope for the end of grief in the end of
life.
MELLEFONT.
Ah! dearest Sara, I promise you the end of your grief, without the end
of your life, which would certainly be the end of mine also. Forget the
terrible tissue of a meaningless dream!
SARA.
I look to you for the strength to be able to forget it. Be it love or
seduction, happiness or unhappiness which threw me into your arms, I am
yours in my heart and will remain so for ever. But I am not yet yours
in the eyes of that Judge, who has threatened to punish the smallest
transgressions of His law----
MELLEFONT.
Then may all the punishment fall upon me alone!
SARA.
What can fall upon you, without touching me too? But do not
misinterpret my urgent request! Another woman, after having forfeited
her honour by an error like mine, might perhaps only seek to regain a
part of it by a legal union. I do not think of that, Mellefont, because
I do not wish to know of any other honour in this world than that of
loving you. I do not wish to be united to you for the world's sake but
for my own. And I will willingly bear the shame of not appearing to be
so, when I am united to you. You need not then, if you do not wish,
acknowledge me to be your wife, you may call me what you will! I will
not bear your name; you shall keep our union as secret as you think
good, and may I always be unworthy of it, if I ever harbour the thought
of drawing any other advantage from it than the appeasing of my
conscience.
MELLEFONT.
Stop, Sara, or I shall die before your eyes. How wretched I am, that I
have not the courage to make you more wretched still! Consider that you
have given yourself up to my guidance; consider that it is my duty to
look to our future, and that I must at present be deaf to your
complaints, if I will not hear you utter more grievous complaints
throughout the rest of your life. Have you then forgotten what I have
so often represented to you in justification of my conduct?
SARA.
I have not forgotten it, Mellefont! You wish first to secure a certain
bequest. You wish first to secure temporal goods, and you let me
forfeit eternal ones, perhaps, through it.
MELLEFONT.
Ah, Sara! If you were as certain of all temporal goods as your virtue
is of the eternal ones----
SARA.
My virtue? Do not say that word! Once it sounded sweet to me, but now a
terrible thunder rolls in it!
MELLEFONT.
What? Must he who is to be virtuous, never have committed a trespass?
Has a single error such fatal effect that it can annihilate a whole
course of blameless years? If so, no one is virtuous; virtue is then a
chimera, which disperses in the air, when one thinks that one grasps it
most firmly; if so, there is no Wise Being who suits our duties to
our strength; if so, there is----I am frightened at the terrible
conclusions in which your despondency must involve you. No, Sara, you
are still the virtuous Sara that you were before your unfortunate
acquaintance with me. If you look upon yourself with such cruel eyes,
with what eyes must you regard me!
SARA.
With the eyes of love, Mellefont!
MELLEFONT.
I implore you, then, on my knees I implore you for the sake of this
love, this generous love which overlooks all my unworthiness, to calm
yourself! Have patience for a few days longer!
SARA.
A few days! How long even a single day is!
MELLEFONT.
Cursed bequest! Cursed nonsense of a dying cousin, who would only leave
me his fortune on the condition that I should give my hand to a
relation who hates me as much as I hate her! To you, inhuman tyrants of
our freedom, be imputed all the misfortune, all the sin, into which
your compulsion forces us. Could I but dispense with this degrading
inheritance. As long as my father's fortune sufficed for my
maintenance, I always scorned it, and did not even think it worthy of
mentioning. But now, now, when I should like to possess all the
treasures of the world only to lay them at the feet of my Sara, now,
when I must contrive at least to let her appear in the world as befits
her station, now I must have recourse to it.
SARA.
Which probably will not be successful after all.
MELLEFONT.
You always forbode the worst. No, the lady whom this also concerns is
not disinclined to enter into a sort of agreement with me. The fortune
is to be divided, and as she cannot enjoy the whole with me, she is
willing to let me buy my liberty with half of it. I am every hour
expecting the final intelligence, the delay of which alone has so
prolonged our sojourn here. As soon as I receive it, we shall not
remain here one moment longer. We will immediately cross to France,
dearest Sara, where you shall find new friends, who already look
forward to the pleasure of seeing and loving you. And these new friends
shall be the witnesses of our union----
SARA.
They shall be the witnesses of our union? Cruel man, our union, then,
is not to be in my native land? I shall leave my country as a criminal?
And as such, you think, I should have the courage to trust myself to
the ocean. The heart of him must be calmer or more impious than mine,
who, only for a moment, can see with indifference between himself and
destruction, nothing but a quivering plank. Death would roar at me in
every wave that struck against the vessel, every wind would howl its
curses after me from my native shore, and the slightest storm would
seem a sentence of death pronounced upon me. No, Mellefont, you cannot
be so cruel to me! If I live to see the completion of this agreement,
you must not grudge another day, to be spent here. This must be the
day, on which you shall teach me to forget the tortures of all these
tearful days. This must be the sacred day--alas! which day will it be?
MELLEFONT.
But do you consider, Sara, that our marriage here would lack those
ceremonies which are due to it?
SARA.
A sacred act does not acquire more force through ceremonies.
MELLEFONT.
But----
SARA.
I am astonished. You surely will not insist on such a trivial pretext?
O Mellefont, Mellefont! had I not made for myself an inviolable
law, never to doubt the sincerity of your love, this circumstance
might----But too much of this already, it might seem as if I had been
doubting it even now.
MELLEFONT.
The first moment of your doubt would be the last moment of my life!
Alas, Sara, what have I done, that you should remind me even of the
possibility of it? It is true the confessions, which I have made to you
without fear, of my early excesses cannot do me honour, but they should
at least awaken confidence. A coquettish Marwood held me in her meshes,
because I felt for her that which is so often taken for love which it
so rarely is. I should still bear her shameful fetters, had not Heaven,
which perhaps did not think my heart quite unworthy to bum with better
flames, taken pity on me. To see you, dearest Sara, was to forget all
Marwoods! But how dearly have you paid for taking me out of such hands!
I had grown too familiar with vice, and you know it too little----
SARA.
Let us think no more of it.
Scene VIII.
Norton, Mellefont, Sara.
MELLEFONT.
What do you want?
NORTON.
While I was standing before the house, a servant gave me this letter.
It is directed to you, sir!
MELLEFONT.
To me? Who knows my name here? (_looking at the letter_). Good heavens!
SARA.
You are startled.
MELLEFONT.
But without cause, Sara, as I now perceive. I was mistaken in the
handwriting.
SARA.
May the contents be as agreeable to you as you can wish.
MELLEFONT.
I suspect that they will be of very little importance.
SARA.
One is less constrained when one is alone, so allow me to retire to my
room again.
MELLEFONT.
You entertain suspicions, then, about it?
SARA.
Not at all, Mellefont.
MELLEFONT (_going with her to the back of the stage_).
I shall be with you in a moment, dearest Sara.
Scene IX.
Mellefont, Norton.
MELLEFONT (_still looking at the letter_).
Just Heaven!
NORTON.
Woe to you, if it is only just!
MELLEFONT.
Is it possible? I see this cursed handwriting again and am not chilled
with terror? Is it she? Is it not she? Why do I still doubt? It is she!
Alas, friend, a letter from Marwood! What fury, what demon has betrayed
my abode to her? What does she still want from me? Go, make
preparations immediately that we may get away from here. Yet stop!
Perhaps it is unnecessary; perhaps the contempt of my farewell letters
has only caused Marwood to reply with equal contempt. There, open the
letter; read it! I am afraid to do it myself.
NORTON (_reads_).
"If you will deign, Mellefont, to glance at the name which you will
find at the bottom of the page, it will be to me as though I had
written you the longest of letters."
MELLEFONT.
Curse the name! Would I had never heard it! Would it could be erased
from the book of the living!
NORTON (_reads on_).
"The labour of finding you out has been sweetened by the love which
helped me in my search."
MELLEFONT.
Love? Wanton creature! You profane the words which belong to virtue
alone.
NORTON (_continues_).
"Love has done more still"----
MELLEFONT.
I tremble----
NORTON.
"It has brought me to you"----
MELLEFONT.
Traitor, what are you reading? (_snatches the letter from his hand and
reads himself_). "I am here; and it rests with you, whether you will
await a visit from me, or whether you will anticipate mine by one from
you. Marwood." What a thunderbolt! She is here! Where is she? She
shall atone for this audacity with her life!
NORTON.
With her life? One glance from her and you will be again at her feet.
Take care what you do! You must not speak with her, or the misfortunes
of your poor young lady will be complete.
MELLEFONT.
O, wretched man that I am! No, I must speak with her! She would go even
into Sara's room in search of me, and would vent all her rage on the
innocent girl.
NORTON.
But, sir----
MELLEFONT.
Not a word! Let me see (_looking at the letter_) whether she has given
the address. Here it is! Come, show me the way! (_Exeunt_).
ACT II.
Scene I.--Marwood's _room in another inn_.
Marwood (_in negligee_), Hannah.
MARWOOD.
I hope Belfort has delivered the letter at the right address, Hannah?
HANNAH.
He has.
MARWOOD.
To him himself?
HANNAH.
To his servant.
MARWOOD.
I am all impatience to see what effect it will have. Do I not seem a
little uneasy to you, Hannah? And I am so. The traitor! But gently! I
must not on any account give way to anger. Forbearance, love, entreaty
are the only weapons which I can use against him, if I rightly
understand his weak side.
HANNAH.
But if he should harden himself against them?
MARWOOD.
If he should harden himself against them? Then I shall not be angry. I
shall rave! I feel it, Hannah, and I would rather do so to begin with.
HANNAH.
Calm yourself! He may come at any moment.
MARWOOD.
I only hope he may come; I only hope he has not decided to await me on
his own ground. But do you know, Hannah, on what I chiefly found my
hopes of drawing away the faithless man from this new object of his
love? On our Bella!
HANNAH.
It is true, she is a little idol to him; and there could not have been
a happier idea than that of bringing her with you.
MARWOOD.
Even if his heart should be deaf to an old love, the language of blood
will at least be audible to him. He tore the child from my arms a short
time ago under the pretext of wishing to give her an education such as
she could not have with me. It is only by an artifice that I have been
able to get her again from the lady who had charge of her. He had paid
more than a year in advance, and had given strict orders the very day
before his flight that they should by no means give admission to a
certain Marwood, who would perhaps come and give herself out as mother
of the child. From this order I see the distinction which he draws
between us. He regards Arabella as a precious portion of himself, and
me as an unfortunate creature, of whose charms he has grown weary.
HANNAH.
What ingratitude!
MARWOOD.
Ah, Hannah! Nothing more infallibly draws down ingratitude, than
favours for which no gratitude would be too great. Why have I shown him
these fatal favours? Ought I not to have foreseen that they could not
always retain their value with him; that their value rested on the
difficulty in the way of their enjoyment, and that the latter must
disappear with the charm of our looks which the hand of time
imperceptibly but surely effaces?
HANNAH.
You, Madam, have not anything to fear for a long time from this
dangerous hand! To my mind your beauty is so far from having passed the
point of its brightest bloom, that it is rather advancing towards it,
and would enchain fresh hearts for you every day if you only would give
it the permission.
MARWOOD.
Be silent, Hannah! You flatter me on an occasion which makes me
suspicious of any flattery. It is nonsense to speak of new conquests,
if one has not even sufficient power to retain possession of those
which one has already made.
Scene II.
A Servant, Marwood, Hannah.
SERVANT.
Some one wishes to have the honour of speaking with you.
MARWOOD.
Who is it?
SERVANT.
I suppose it is the gentleman to whom the letter was addressed. At
least the servant to whom I delivered it is with him.
MARWOOD.
Mellefont!--Quick, bring him up! (_Exit_ Servant.) Ah, Hannah! He is
here now! How shall I receive him? What shall I say? What look shall I
put on? Is this calm enough? Just see!
HANNAH.
Anything but calm.
MARWOOD.
This, then?
HANNAH.
Throw a little sweetness into it.
MARWOOD.
So, perhaps?
HANNAH.
Too sad.
MARWOOD.
Would this smile do?
HANNAH.
Perfectly--only less constrained--He is coming.
Scene III.
Mellefont, Marwood, Hannah.
MELLEFONT (_entering with wild gestures_).
Ha! Marwood----
MARWOOD (_running to meet him smiling, and with open arms_).
Ah, Mellefont!
MELLEFONT (_aside_).
The murderess! What a look!
MARWOOD.
I must embrace you, faithless, dear fugitive! Share my joy with me! Why
do you tear yourself from my caresses!
MELLEFONT.
I expected, Marwood, that you would receive me differently.
MARWOOD.
Why differently? With more love, perhaps? With more delight? Alas, how
unhappy I am, that I cannot express all that I feel! Do you not see,
Mellefont, do you not see that joy, too, has its tears? Here they fall,
the offspring of sweetest delight! But alas, vain tears! His hand does
not dry you!
MELLEFONT.
Marwood, the time is gone, when such words would have charmed me. You
must speak now with me in another tone. I come to hear your last
reproaches and to answer them.
MARWOOD.
Reproaches? What reproaches should I have for you, Mellefont? None!
MELLEFONT.
Then you might have spared yourself the journey, I should think.
MARWOOD.
Dearest, capricious heart. Why will you forcibly compel me to recall a
trifle which I forgave you the same moment I heard of it? Does a
passing infidelity which your gallantry, but not your heart, has
caused, deserve these reproaches? Come, let us laugh at it!
MELLEFONT.
You are mistaken; my heart is more concerned in it, than it ever was in
all our love affairs, upon which I cannot now look back but with
disgust.
MARWOOD.
Your heart, Mellefont, is a good little fool. It lets your imagination
persuade it to whatever it will. Believe me, I know it better than you
do yourself! Were it not the best, the most faithful of hearts, should
I take such pains to keep it?
MELLEFONT.
To keep it? You have never possessed it, I tell you.
MARWOOD.
And I tell you, that in reality I possess it still!
MELLEFONT.
Marwood! if I knew that you still possessed one single fibre of it, I
would tear it out of my breast here before your eyes.
MARWOOD.
You would see that you were tearing mine out at the same time. And
then, then these hearts would at last attain that union which they have
sought so often upon our lips.
MELLEFONT (_aside_).
What a serpent! Flight will be the best thing here.--Just tell me
briefly, Marwood, why you have followed me, and what you still desire
of me! But tell it me without this smile, without this look, in which a
whole' hell of seduction lurks and terrifies me.
MARWOOD (_insinuatingly_).
Just listen, my dear Mellefont! I see your position now. Your desires
and your taste are at present your tyrants. Never mind, one must let
them wear themselves out. It is folly to resist them. They are most
safely lulled to sleep, and at last even conquered, by giving them free
scope. They wear themselves away. Can you accuse me, my fickle friend,
of ever having been jealous, when more powerful charms than mine
estranged you from me for a time? I never grudged you the change, by
which I always won more than I lost. You returned with new ardour, with
new passion to my arms, in which with light bonds, and never with heavy
fetters I encompassed you. Have I not often even been your confidante
though you had nothing to confide but the favours which you stole from
me, in order to lavish them on others. Why should you believe then,
that I would now begin to display a capriciousness just when I am
ceasing, or, perhaps have already ceased, to be justified in it. If
your ardour for the pretty country girl has not yet cooled down, if you
are still in the first fever of your love for her; if you cannot yet do
without the enjoyment she gives you; who hinders you from devoting
yourself to her, as long as you think good? But must you on that
account make such rash projects, and purpose to fly from the country
with her?
MELLEFONT.
Marwood! You speak in perfect keeping with your character, the
wickedness of which I never understood so well as I do now, since, in
the society of a virtuous woman, I have learned to distinguish love
from licentiousness.
MARWOOD.
Indeed! Your new mistress is then a girl of fine moral sentiments, I
suppose? You men surely cannot know yourselves what you want. At one
time you are pleased with the most wanton talk and the most unchaste
jests from us, at another time we charm you, when we talk nothing but
virtue, and seem to have all the seven sages on our lips. But the worst
is, that you get tired of one as much as the other. We may be foolish
or reasonable, worldly or spiritual; our efforts to make you constant
are lost either way. The turn will come to your beautiful saint soon
enough. Shall I give you a little sketch? Just at present you are in
the most passionate paroxysm over her. I allow this two or at the most
three days more. To this will succeed a tolerably calm love; for this I
allow a week. The next week you will only think occasionally of this
love. In the third week, you will have to be reminded of it; and when
you have got tired of being thus reminded, you will so quickly see
yourself reduced to the most utter indifference, that I can hardly
allow the fourth week for this final change. This would be about a
month altogether. And this month, Mellefont, I will overlook with the
greatest pleasure; but you will allow that I must not lose sight of
you.
MELLEFONT.
You try all the weapons in vain which you remember to have used
successfully with me in bygone days. A virtuous resolution secures me
against both your tenderness and your wit. However, I will not expose
myself longer to either. I go, and have nothing more to tell you but
that in a few days you shall know that I am bound in such a manner as
will utterly destroy all your hope of my ever returning into your
sinful slavery. You will have learned my justification sufficiently
from the letter which I sent to you before my departure.
MARWOOD.
It is well that you mention this letter. Tell me, who did you get to
write it?
MELLEFONT.
Did not I write it myself?
MARWOOD.
Impossible! The beginning of it, in which you reckoned up--I do not
know what sums--which you say you have wasted with me, must have been
written by an innkeeper, and the theological part at the end by a
Quaker. I will now give you a serious reply to it. As to the principal
point, you well know that all the presents which you have made are
still in existence. I have never considered your cheques or your jewels
as my property, and I have brought them all with me to return them into
the hands which entrusted them to me.
MELLEFONT.
Keep them all, Marwood!
MARWOOD.
I will not keep any of them. What right have I to them without you
yourself? Although you do not love me any more, you must at least do me
justice and not take me for one of those venal females, to whom it is a
matter of indifference by whose booty they enrich themselves. Come,
Mellefont, you shall this moment be as rich again as you perhaps might
still be if you had not known me; and perhaps, too, might _not_ be.
MELLEFONT.
What demon intent upon my destruction speaks through you now!
Voluptuous Marwood does not think so nobly.
MARWOOD.
Do you call that noble? I call it only just. No, Sir, no, I do not ask
that you shall account the return of your gifts as anything remarkable.
It costs me nothing, and I should even consider the slightest
expression of thanks on your part as an insult, which could have no
other meaning than this: "Marwood, I thought you a base deceiver; I am
thankful that you have not wished to be so towards me at least."
MELLEFONT.
Enough, Madam, enough! I fly, since my unlucky destiny threatens to
involve me in a contest of generosity, in which I should be most
unwilling to succumb.
MARWOOD.
Fly, then! But take everything with you that could remind me of you.
Poor, despised, without honour, and without friends, I will then
venture again to awaken your pity. I will show you in the unfortunate
Marwood only a miserable woman, who has sacrificed to you her person,
her honour, her virtue, and her conscience. I will remind you of the
first day, when you saw and loved me; of the first, stammering, bashful
confession of your love, which you made me at my feet; of the first
assurance of my return of your love, which you forced from me; of the
tender looks, of the passionate embraces, which followed, of the
eloquent silence, when each with busy mind divined the other's most
secret feelings, and read the most hidden thoughts of the soul in the
languishing eye; of the trembling expectation of approaching
gratification; of the intoxication of its joys; of the sweet relaxation
after the fulness of enjoyment, in which the exhausted spirits regained
strength for fresh delights. I shall remind you of all this, and then
embrace your knees, and entreat without ceasing for the only gift,
which you cannot deny me, and which I can accept without blushing--for
death from your hand.
MELLEFONT.
Cruel one! I would still give even my life for you. Ask it, ask it,
only do not any longer claim my love. I must leave you, Marwood, or
make myself an object of loathing to the whole world. I am culpable
already in that I only stand here and listen to you. Farewell,
farewell!
MARWOOD (_holding him back_).
You must leave me? And what, then, do you wish, shall become of me? As
I am now, I am your creature; do, then, what becomes a creator; he may
not withdraw his hand from the work until he wishes to destroy it
utterly. Alas, Hannah, I see now, my entreaties alone are too feeble.
Go, bring my intercessor, who will now, perhaps, return to me more than
she ever received from me. (_Exit_ Hannah).
MELLEFONT.
What intercessor, Marwood?
MARWOOD.
Ah, an intercessor of whom you would only too willingly have deprived
me. Nature will take a shorter road to your heart with her grievances.
MELLEFONT.
You alarm me. Surely you have not----
Scene IV.
Arabella, Hannah, Mellefont, Marwood.
MELLEFONT.
What do I see? It is she! Marwood, how could you dare to----
MARWOOD.
Am I not her mother? Come, my Bella, see, here is your protector again,
your friend, your .... Ah! his heart may tell him what more he can be
to you than a protector and a friend.
MELLEFONT (_turning away his face_).
God, what shall I have to suffer here?
ARABELLA (_advancing timidly towards him_).
Ah, Sir! Is it you? Are you our Mellefont? No, Madam, surely, surely it
is not he! Would he not look at me, if it were? Would he not hold me in
his arms? He used to do so. What an unhappy child I am! How have I
grieved him, this dear, dear man, who let me call him my father?
MARWOOD.
You are silent, Mellefont? You grudge the innocent child a single look?
MELLEFONT.
Ah!
ARABELLA.
Why, he sighs, Madam! What is the matter with him? Cannot we help him?
Cannot I? Nor you? Then let us sigh with him! Ah, now he looks at me!
No, he looks away again! He looks up to Heaven! What does he want? What
does he ask from Heaven? Would that Heaven would grant him everything,
even if it refused me everything for it!
MARWOOD.
Go, my child, go, fall at his feet! He wants to leave us, to leave us
for ever.
ARABELLA (_falling on her knees before him_).
Here I am already. You will leave us? You will leave us for ever? Have
not we already been without you for a little "for ever." Shall we have
to lose you again? You have said so often that you loved us. Does one
leave the people whom one loves? I cannot love you then, I suppose, for
I should wish never to leave you. Never, and I never will leave you
either.
MARWOOD.
I will help you in your entreaties, my child! And you must help me too!
Now, Mellefont, you see me too at your feet....
MELLEFONT (_stopping her, as she throws herself at his feet_).
Marwood, dangerous Marwood! And you, too, my dearest Bella (_raising
her up_), you too are the enemy of your Mellefont?
ARABELLA.
I your enemy?
MARWOOD.
What is your resolve?
MELLEFONT.
What it ought not to be, Marwood; what it ought not to be.
MARWOOD (_embracing him_).
Ah, I know that the honesty of your heart has always overcome the
obstinacy of your desires.
MELLEFONT.
Do not importune me any longer! I am already what you wish to make me;
a perjurer, a seducer, a robber, a murderer!
MARWOOD.
You will be so in imagination for a few days, and after that you will
see that I have prevented you from becoming so in reality. You will
return with us, won't you?
ARABELLA (_insinuatingly_).
Oh yes, do!
MELLEFONT.
Return with you! How can I?
MARWOOD.
Nothing is easier, if you only wish it.
MELLEFONT.
And my Sara----
MARWOOD.
And your Sara may look to herself.
MELLEFONT.
Ha! cruel Marwood, these words reveal the very bottom of your heart to
me. And yet I, wretch, do not repent?
MARWOOD.
If you had seen the bottom of my heart, you would have discovered that
it has more true pity for your Sara than you yourself have. I say true
pity; for your pity is egotistic and weak. You have carried this
love-affair much too far. We might let it pass, that you as a man, who
by long intercourse with our sex has become master in the art of seducing,
used your superiority in dissimulation and experience against such a
young maiden, and did not rest until you had gained your end. You can
plead the impetuosity of your passion as your excuse. But, Mellefont,
you cannot justify yourself for having robbed an old father of his only
child, for having rendered to an honourable old man his few remaining
steps to the grave harder and more bitter, for having broken the
strongest ties of nature for the sake of your desires. Repair your
error, then, as far as it is possible to repair it. Give the old man
his support again, and send a credulous daughter back to her home,
which you need not render desolate also, because you have dishonoured
it.
MELLEFONT.
This only was still wanting--that you should call in my conscience
against me also. But even supposing what you say were just, must I not
be brazenfaced if I should propose it myself to the unhappy girl?
MARWOOD.
Well, I will confess to you, that I have anticipated this difficulty,
and considered how to spare you it. As soon as I learned your address,
I informed her old father privately of it. He was beside himself with
joy, and wanted to start directly. I wonder he has not yet arrived.
MELLEFONT.
What do you say?
MARWOOD.
Just await his arrival quietly, and do not let the girl notice
anything. I myself will not detain you any longer. Go to her again; she
might grow suspicious. But I trust that I shall see you again to-day.
MELLEFONT.
Oh, Marwood! With what feelings did I come to you, and with what must I
leave you! A kiss, my dear Bella.
ARABELLA.
That was for you, now one for me! But come back again soon, do!
(_Exit_ Mellefont).
Scene V.
Marwood, Arabella, Hannah.
MARWOOD (_drawing a deep breath_).
Victory, Hannah! but a hard victory! Give me a chair, I feel quite
exhausted (_sitting down_). He surrendered only just in time, if he had
hesitated another moment, I should have shown him quite a different
Marwood.
HANNAH.
Ah, Madam, what a woman you are! I should like to Bee the man who could
resist you.
MARWOOD.
He has resisted me already too long. And assuredly, assuredly, I will
not forgive him that he almost let me go down on my knees to him.
ARABELLA.
No, no! You must forgive him everything. He is so good, so good----
MARWOOD.
Be silent, little silly!
HANNAH.
I do not know on what side you did not attack him! But nothing, I
think, touched him more, than the disinterestedness with which you
offered to return all his presents to him.
MARWOOD.
I believe so too. Ha! ha! ha! (_contemptuously_).
HANNAH.
Why do you laugh, Madam? You really risked a great deal, if you were
not in earnest about it. Suppose he had taken you at your word?
MARWOOD.
Oh, nonsense, one knows with whom one has to deal.
HANNAH.
I quite admit that! But you too, my pretty Bella, did your part
excellently, excellently!
ARABELLA.
How so? Could I do it, then, any other way? I had not seen him for such
a long time. I hope you are not angry, Madam, that I love him so? I
love you as much as him, just as much.
MARWOOD.
Very well, I will pardon you this time that you do not love me better
than him.
ARABELLA (_sobbing_).
This time?
MARWOOD.
Why, you are crying actually? What is it about?
ARABELLA.
Ah, no! I am not crying. Do not get angry! I will love you both so
much, so much, that it will be impossible to love either of you more.
MARWOOD.
Very well.
ARABELLA.
I am so unhappy.
MARWOOD.
Now be quiet----but what is that?
Scene VI.
Mellefont, Marwood, Arabella, Hannah.
MARWOOD.
Why do you come back again so soon, Mellefont? (_rising_).
MELLEFONT (_passionately_).
Because I needed but a few moments to recover my senses.
MARWOOD.
Well?
MELLEFONT.
I was stunned, Marwood, but not moved! You have had all your trouble in
vain. Another atmosphere than this infectious one of your room has
given me back my courage and my strength, to withdraw my foot in time
from this dangerous snare. Were the tricks of a Marwood not
sufficiently familiar to me, unworthy wretch that I am?
MARWOOD (_impatiently_).
What language is that?
MELLEFONT.
The language of truth and anger.
MARWOOD.
Gently, Mellefont! or I too shall speak in the same language.
MELLEFONT.
I return only in order not to leave you one moment longer under a
delusion with regard to me, which must make me despicable even in your
eyes.
ARABELLA (_timidly_).
Oh, Hannah!
MELLEFONT.
Look at me as madly as you like. The more madly the better! Was it
possible that I could hesitate only for one moment between a Marwood
and a Sara, and that I had well nigh decided for the former?
ARABELLA.
Oh, Mellefont!
MELLEFONT.
Do not tremble, Bella! For your sake too I came back. Give me your
hand, and follow me without fear!
MARWOOD (_stopping them_).
Whom shall she follow, traitor?
MELLEFONT.
Her father!
MARWOOD.
Go, pitiable wretch, and learn first to know her mother.
MELLEFONT.
I know her. She is a disgrace to her sex.
MARWOOD.
Take her away, Hannah!
MELLEFONT.
Remain here, Bella (_attempting to stop her_).
MARWOOD.
No force, Mellefont, or----
(_Exeunt_ Hannah _and_ Arabella).
Scene VII.
Mellefont, Marwood.
MARWOOD.
Now we are alone! Say now once more, whether you are determined to
sacrifice me for a foolish girl?
MELLEFONT (_bitterly_).
Sacrifice you? You recall to my mind that impure animals were also
sacrificed to the ancient gods.
MARWOOD (_mockingly_).
Express yourself without these learned allusions.
MELLEFONT.
I tell you, then, that I am firmly resolved never to think of you
again, but with the most fearful of curses. Who are you? And who is
Sara? You are a voluptuous, egoistic, shameful strumpet, who certainly
can scarcely remember any longer that she ever was innocent. I have
nothing to reproach myself with but that I have enjoyed with you that
which otherwise you would perhaps have let the whole world enjoy. You
have sought me, not I you, and if I now know who Marwood is, I have
paid for this knowledge dearly enough. It has cost me my fortune, my
honour, my happiness----
MARWOOD.
And I would that it might also cost you your eternal happiness.
Monster! Is the devil worse than you, when he lures feeble mortals into
crimes and himself accuses them afterwards for these crimes which are
his own work! What is my innocence to you? What does it matter to you
when and how I lost it. If I could not sacrifice my virtue, I have at
least staked my good name for you. The former is no more valuable than
the latter. What do I say? More valuable? Without it the former is a
silly fancy, which brings one neither happiness nor guilt. The good
name alone gives it some value, and can exist quite well without it.
What did it matter what I was before I knew you, you wretch! It is
enough that in the eyes of the world I was a woman without reproach.
Through you only it has learned that I am not so; solely through my
readiness to accept your heart, as I then thought, without your hand.
MELLEFONT.
This very readiness condemns you, vile woman!
MARWOOD.
But do you remember to what base tricks you owed it? Was I not
persuaded by you, that you could not be publicly united to me without
forfeiting an inheritance which you wished to share with me only? Is it
time now to renounce it? And to renounce it, not for me but for
another!
MELLEFONT.
It is a real delight to me to be able to tell you that this difficulty
will soon be removed. Content yourself therefore with having deprived
me of my father's inheritance, and let me enjoy a far smaller one with
a more worthy wife.
MARWOOD.
Ha! Now I see what it is that makes you so perverse. Well, I will lose
no more words. Be it so! Be assured I shall do everything to forget
you. And the first thing that I will do to this end, shall be this. You
will understand me! Tremble for your Bella! Her life shall not carry
the memory of my despised love down to posterity; my cruelty shall do
it. Behold in me a new Medea!
MELLEFONT (_frightened_).
Marwood!----
MARWOOD.
Or, if you know a more cruel mother still, behold her cruelty doubled
in me! Poison and dagger shall avenge me. But no, poison and dagger are
tools too merciful for me! They would kill your child and mine too
soon. I will not see it dead. I will see it dying! I will see each
feature of the face which she has from you disfigured, distorted, and
obliterated by slow torture. With eager hand will I part limb from
limb, vein from vein, nerve from nerve, and will not cease to cut and
burn the very smallest of them, even when there is nothing remaining
but a senseless carcass! I--I shall at least feel in it--how sweet is
revenge!
MELLEFONT.
You are raving, Marwood----
MARWOOD.
You remind me that my ravings are not directed against the right
person. The father must go first! He must already be in yonder world,
when, through a thousand woes the spirit of his daughter follows him
(_she advances towards him with a dagger which she draws from her
bosom_). So die, traitor!
MELLEFONT (_seizing her arm, and snatching the dagger from her_).
Insane woman! What hinders me now from turning the steel against you?
But live, and your punishment shall be left for a hand void of honour.
MARWOOD (_wringing her hands_).
Heaven, what have I done? Mellefont----
MELLEFONT.
Your grief shall not deceive me. I know well why you are sorry--not
that you wished to stab me, but that you failed to do so.
MARWOOD.
Give me back the erring steel! Give it me back, and you shall see for
whom it was sharpened! For this breast alone, which for long has been
too narrow for a heart which will rather renounce life than your love.
MELLEFONT.
Hannah!
MARWOOD.
What are you doing, Mellefont?
Scene VIII.
Hannah (_in terror_), Marwood, Mellefont.
MELLEFONT.
Did you hear, Hannah, how madly your mistress was behaving? Remember
that I shall hold you responsible for Arabella!
HANNAH.
Madam, how agitated you are!
MELLEFONT.
I will place the innocent child in safety immediately. Justice will
doubtless be able to bind the murderous hands of her cruel mother
(_going_).
MARWOOD.
Whither, Mellefont? Is it astonishing that the violence of my grief
deprived me of my reason? Who forces me to such unnatural excess? Is it
not you yourself? Where can Bella be safer than with me? My lips may
rave, but my heart still remains the heart of a mother. Oh, Mellefont,
forget my madness, and to excuse it think only of its cause.
MELLEFONT.
There is only one thing which can induce me to forget it.
MARWOOD.
And that is?
MELLEFONT.
That you return immediately to London! I will send Arabella there under
another escort. You must by no means have anything further to do with
her.
MARWOOD.
Very well! I submit to everything; but grant me one single request
more. Let me see your Sara once.
MELLEFONT.
And what for?
MARWOOD.
To read in her eyes my future fate. I will judge for myself whether she
is worthy of such a breach of faith as you commit against me; and
whether I may cherish the hope of receiving again, some day at any
rate, a portion of your love.
MELLEFONT.
Vain hope!
MARWOOD.
Who is so cruel as to grudge even hope to the unhappy? I will not show
myself to her as Marwood, but as a relation of yours. Announce me to
her as such; you shall be present when I call upon her, and I promise
you, by all that is sacred, to say nothing that is in any way
displeasing to her. Do not refuse my request, for otherwise I might
perhaps do all that is in my power to show myself to her in my true
character.
MELLEFONT.
Marwood! This request----(_after a moment's reflection_) might be
granted.--But will you then be sure to quit this spot?
MARWOOD.
Certainly; yes I promise you. Even more, I will spare you the visit
from her father, if that is still possible.
MELLEFONT.
There is no need of that! I hope that he will include me too in the
pardon which he grants to his daughter. But if he will not pardon her,
I too shall know how to deal with him. I will go and announce you to my
Sara. Only keep your promise, Marwood. (_Exit_.)
MARWOOD.
Alas, Hannah, that our powers are not as great as our courage. Come,
help me to dress. I do not despair of my scheme. If I could only make
sure of him first. Come!
ACT III.
Scene I. (_A room in the first inn_.)
Sir William Sampson, Waitwell.
SIR WILLIAM SAMPSON.
There, Waitwell, take this letter to her! It is the letter of an
affectionate father, who complains of nothing but her absence. Tell her
that I have sent you on before with it, and that I only await her
answer, to come myself and fold her again in my arms.
WAITWELL.
I think you do well to prepare them for your arrival in this way.
SIR WILLIAM SAMPSON.
I make sure of her intentions by this means, and give her the
opportunity of freeing herself from any shame or sorrow which
repentance might cause her, before she speaks verbally with me. In a
letter it will cost her less embarrassment, and me, perhaps, fewer
tears.
WAITWELL.
But may I ask, Sir, what you have resolved upon with regard to
Mellefont?
SIR WILLIAM SAMPSON.
Ah, Waitwell, if I could separate him from my daughter's lover, I
should make some very harsh resolve. But as this cannot be, you see, he
is saved from my anger. I myself am most to blame in this misfortune.
But for me Sara would never have made the acquaintance of this
dangerous man. I admitted him freely into my house on account of an
obligation under which I believed myself to be to him. It was natural
that the attention which in gratitude I paid him, should win for him
the esteem of my daughter. And it was just as natural, that a man of
his disposition should suffer himself to be tempted by this esteem to
something more. He had been clever enough to transform it into love
before I noticed anything at all, and before I had time to inquire into
his former life. The evil was done, and I should have done well, if I
had forgiven them everything immediately. I wished to be inexorable
towards him, and did not consider that I could not be so towards him
alone. If I had spared my severity, which came too late, I would at
least have prevented their flight. But here I am now, Waitwell! I must
fetch them back myself and consider myself happy if only I can make a
son of a seducer. For who knows whether he will give up his Marwoods
and his other creatures for the sake of a girl who has left nothing for
his desires to wish for and who understands so little the bewitching
arts of a coquette?
WAITWELL.
Well, Sir, it cannot be possible, that a man could be so wicked----
SIR WILLIAM SAMPSON.
This doubt, good Waitwell, does honour to your virtue. But why, at the
same time, is it true that the limits of human wickedness extend much
further still? Go now, and do as I told you! Notice every look as she
reads my letter. In this short deviation from virtue she cannot yet
have learned the art of dissimulation, to the masks of which only
deep-rooted vice can have recourse. You will read her whole soul in her
face. Do not let a look escape you which might perhaps indicate
indifference to me--disregard of her father. For if you should
unhappily discover this, and if she loves me no more, I hope that I
shall be able to conquer myself and abandon her to her fate. I hope so,
Waitwell. Alas! would that there were no heart here, to contradict this
hope. (_Exeunt on different sides_.)
Scene II.
Miss Sara, Mellefont.
(Sara's _room_.)
MELLEFONT.
I have done wrong, dearest Sara, to leave you in uneasiness about the
letter which came just now.
SARA.
Oh dear, no, Mellefont! I have not been in the least uneasy about it.
Could you not love me even though you still had secrets from me?
MELLEFONT.
You think, then, that it was a secret?
SARA.
But not one which concerns me. And that must suffice for me.
MELLEFONT.
You are only too good. Let me nevertheless reveal my secret to you. The
letter contained a few lines from a relative of mine, who has heard of
my being here. She passes through here on her way to London, and would
like to see me. She has begged at the same time to be allowed the
honour of paying you a visit.
SARA.
It will always be a pleasure to me to make the acquaintance of the
respected members of your family. But consider for yourself, whether I
can yet appear before one of them without blushing.
MELLEFONT.
Without blushing? And for what? For your love to me? It is true, Sara,
you could have given your love to a nobler or a richer man. You must be
ashamed that you were content to give your heart for another heart
only, and that in this exchange you lost sight of your happiness.
SARA.
You must know yourself how wrongly you interpret my words.
MELLEFONT.
Pardon me, Sara; if my interpretation is wrong, they can have no
meaning at all.
SARA.
What is the name of your relation?
MELLEFONT.
She is--Lady Solmes. You will have heard me mention the name before.
SARA.
I don't remember.
MELLEFONT.
May I beg you to see her?
SARA.
Beg me? You can command me to do so.
MELLEFONT.
What a word! No, Sara, she shall not have the happiness of seeing you.
She will regret it, but she must submit to it. Sara has her reasons,
which I respect without knowing them.
SARA.
How hasty you are, Mellefont! I shall expect Lady Solmes, and do my
best to show myself worthy of the honour of her visit. Are you content?
MELLEFONT.
Ah, Sara! let me confess my ambition. I should like to show you to the
whole world! And were I not proud of the possession of such a being, I
should reproach myself with not being able to appreciate her value. I
will go and bring her to you at once. (_Exit_.)
SARA (_alone_).
I hope she will not be one of those proud women, who are so full of
their own virtue that they believe themselves above all failings. With
one single look of contempt they condemn us, and an equivocal shrug of
the shoulders is all the pity we seem to deserve in their eyes.
Scene III.
Waitwell, Sara.
BETTY (_behind the scenes_).
Just come in here, if you must speak to her yourself!
SARA (_looking round_).
Who must speak to me? Whom do I see? Is it possible? You, Waitwell?
WAITWELL.
How happy I am to see our young lady again!
SARA.
Good God, what do you bring me? I hear already, I hear already; you
bring me the news of my father's death! He is gone, the excellent man,
the best of fathers! He is gone, and I--I am the miserable creature who
has hastened his death.
WAITWELL.
Ah, Miss----
SARA.
Tell me, quick! tell me, that his last moments were not embittered by
the thought of me; that he had forgotten me; that he died as peacefully
as he used to hope to die in my arms; that he did not remember me even
in his last prayer----
WAITWELL.
Pray do not torment yourself with such false notions! Your father is
still alive! He is still alive, honest Sir William!
SARA.
Is he still alive? Is it true? Is he still alive? May he live a long
while yet, and live happily! Oh, would that God would add the half of
my years to his life! Half! How ungrateful should I be, if I were not
willing to buy even a few moments for him with all the years, that may
yet be mine! But tell me at least, Waitwell, that it is not hard for
him to live without me; that it was easy to him to renounce a daughter
who could so easily renounce her virtue, that he is angry with me for
my flight, but not grieved; that he curses me, but does not mourn for
me.
WAITWELL.
Ah! Sir William is still the same fond father, as his Sara is still the
same fond daughter that she was.
SARA.
What do you say? You are a messenger of evil, of the most dreadful of
all the evils which my imagination has ever pictured to me! He is still
the same fond father? Then he loves me still? And he must mourn for me,
then! No no, he does not do so; he cannot do so? Do you not see how
infinitely each sigh which he wasted on me would magnify my crime?
Would not the justice of heaven have to charge me with every tear which
I forced from him, as if with each one I repeated my vice and my
ingratitude? I grow chill at the thought. I cause him tears? Tears? And
they are other tears than tears of joy? Contradict me, Waitwell! At
most he has felt some slight stirring of the blood on my account; some
transitory emotion, calmed by a slight effort of reason. He did not go
so far as to shed tears, surely not to shed tears, Waitwell?
WAITWELL (_wiping his eyes_).
No, Miss, he did not go so far as that.
SARA.
Alas! your lips say no, and your eyes say yes.
WAITWELL.
Take this letter Miss, it is from him himself----
SARA.
From whom? From my father? To me?
WAITWELL.
Yes, take it! You can learn more from it, than I am able to say. He
ought to have given this to another to do, not to me. I promised myself
pleasure from it; but you turn my joy into sadness.
SARA.
Give it me, honest Waitwell! But no! I will not take it before you tell
me what it contains.
WAITWELL.
What can it contain? Love and forgiveness.
SARA.
Love? Forgiveness?
WAITWELL.
And perhaps a real regret, that he used the rights of a father's power
against a child, who should only have the privileges of a father's
kindness.
SARA.
Then keep your cruel letter.
WAITWELL.
Cruel? Have no fear. Full liberty is granted you over your heart and
hand.
SARA.
And it is just this which I fear. To grieve a father such as he, this I
have had the courage to do. But to see him forced by this very grief-by
his love which I have forfeited, to look with leniency on all the wrong
into which an unfortunate passion has led me; this, Waitwell, I could
not bear. If his letter contained all the hard and angry words which an
exasperated father can utter in such a case, I should read it--with a
shudder it is true--but still I should be able to read it. I should be
able to produce a shadow of defence against his wrath, to make him by
this defence if possible more angry still. My consolation then would be
this-that melancholy grief could have no place with violent wrath and
that the latter would transform itself finally into bitter contempt.
And we grieve no more for one whom we despise. My father would have
grown calm again, and I would not have to reproach myself with having
made him unhappy for ever.
WAITWELL.
Alas, Miss! You will have to reproach yourself still less for this if
you now accept his love again, which wishes only to forget everything.
SARA.
You are mistaken, Waitwell! His yearning for me misleads him, perhaps,
to give his consent to everything. But no sooner would this desire be
appeased a little, than he would feel ashamed before himself of his
weakness. Sullen anger would take possession of him, and he would never
be able to look at me without silently accusing me of all that I had
dared to exact from him. Yes, if it were in my power to spare him his
bitterest grief, when on my account he is laying the greatest restraint
upon himself; if at a moment when he would grant me everything I could
sacrifice all to him; then it would be quite a different matter. I
would take the letter from your hands with pleasure, would admire in it
the strength of the fatherly love, and, not to abuse this love, I would
throw myself at his feet a repentant and obedient daughter. But can I
do that? I shall be obliged to make use of his permission, regardless
of the price this permission has cost him. And then, when I feel most
happy, it will suddenly occur to me that he only outwardly appears to
share my happiness and that inwardly he is sighing--in short, that he
has made me happy by the renunciation of his own happiness. And to wish
to be happy in this way,--do you expect that of me, Waitwell?
WAITWELL.
I truly do not know what answer to give to that.
SARA.
There is no answer to it. So take your letter back! If my father must
be unhappy through me, I will myself remain unhappy also. To be quite
alone in unhappiness is that for which I now pray Heaven every hour,
but to be quite alone in my happiness--of that I will not hear.
WAITWELL (_aside_).
I really think I shall have to employ deception with this good child to
get her to read the letter.
SARA.
What are you saying to yourself?
WAITWELL.
I was saying to myself that the idea I had hit on to get you to read
this letter all the quicker was a very clumsy one.
SARA.
How so?
WAITWELL.
I could not look far enough. Of course you see more deeply into things
than such as I. I did not wish to frighten you; the letter is perhaps
only too hard; and when I said that it contained nothing but love and
forgiveness, I ought to have said that I wished it might not contain
anything else.
SARA.
Is that true? Give it me then! I will read it. If one has been
unfortunate enough to deserve the anger of one's father, one should at
least have enough respect for it to submit to the expression of it on
his part. To try to frustrate it means to heap contempt on insult. I
shall feel his anger in all its strength. You see I tremble already.
But I must tremble; and I will rather tremble than weep (_opens the
letter_). Now it is opened! I sink! But what do I see? (_she reads_)
"My only, dearest daughter"--ah, you old deceiver, is that the language
of an angry father? Go, I shall read no more----
WAITWELL.
Ah, Miss! You will pardon an old servant! Yes, truly, I believe it is
the first time in my life that I have intentionally deceived any one.
He who deceives once, Miss, and deceives for so good a purpose, is
surely no old deceiver on that account. That touches me deeply, Miss! I
know well that the good intention does not always excuse one; but what
else could I do? To return his letter unread to such a good father?
That certainly I cannot do! Sooner will I walk as far as my old legs
will carry me, and never again come into his presence.
SARA.
What? You too will leave him?
WAITWELL.
Shall I not be obliged to do so if you do not read the letter? Read it,
pray! Do not grudge a good result to the first deceit with which I have
to reproach myself. You will forget it the sooner, and I shall the
sooner be able to forgive myself. I am a common, simple man, who must
not question the reasons why you cannot and will not read the letter.
Whether they are true, I know not, but at any rate they do not appear
to me to be natural. I should think thus, Miss: a father, I should
think, is after all a father; and a child may err for once, and remain
a good child in spite of it. If the father pardons the error, the child
may behave again in such a manner that the father may not even think of
it any more. For who likes to remember what he would rather had never
happened? It seems, Miss, as if you thought only of your error, and
believed you atoned sufficiently in exaggerating it in your imagination
and tormenting yourself with these exaggerated ideas. But, I should
think, you ought also to consider how you could make up for what has
happened. And how will you make up for it, if you deprive yourself of
every opportunity of doing so. Can it be hard for you to take the
second step, when such a good father has already taken the first?
SARA.
What daggers pierce my heart in your simple words! That he has to take
the first step is just what I cannot bear. And, besides, is it only the
first step which he takes? He must do all! I cannot take a single one
to meet him. As far as I have gone from him, so far must he descend to
me. If he pardons me, he must pardon the whole crime, and in addition
must bear the consequences of it continually before his eyes. Can one
demand that from a father?
WAITWELL.
I do not know, Miss, whether I understand this quite right. But it
seems to me, you mean to say that he would have to forgive you too
much, and as this could not but be very difficult to him, you make a
scruple of accepting his forgiveness. If you mean that, tell me, pray,
is not forgiving a great happiness to a kind heart? I have not been so
fortunate in my life as to have felt this happiness often. But I still
remember with pleasure the few instances when I have felt it. I felt
something so sweet, something so tranquillising, something so divine,
that I could not help thinking of the great insurpassable blessedness
of God, whose preservation of miserable mankind is a perpetual
forgiveness. I wished that I could be forgiving continually, and was
ashamed that I had only such trifles to pardon. To forgive real painful
insults, deadly offences, I said to myself, must be a bliss in which
the whole soul melts. And now, Miss, will you grudge your father such
bliss?
SARA.
Ah! Go on, Waitwell, go on!
WAITWELL.
I know well there are people who accept nothing less willingly than
forgiveness, and that because they have never learned to grant it. They
are proud, unbending people, who will on no account confess that they
have done wrong. But you do not belong to this kind, Miss! You have the
most loving and tender of hearts that the best of your sex can have.
You confess your fault too. Where then is the difficulty? But pardon
me, Miss! I am an old chatterer, and ought to have seen at once that
your refusal is only a praiseworthy solicitude, only a virtuous
timidity. People who can accept a great benefit immediately without any
hesitation are seldom worthy of it. Those who deserve it most have
always the greatest mistrust of themselves. Yet mistrust must not be
pushed beyond limits!
SARA.
Dear old father! I believe you have persuaded me.
WAITWELL.
If I have been so fortunate as that it must have been a good spirit
that has helped me to plead. But no, Miss, my words have done no more
than given you time to reflect and to recover from the bewilderment of
joy. You will read the letter now, will you not? Oh, read it at once!
SARA.
I will do so, Waitwell! What regrets, what pain shall I feel!
WAITWELL.
Pain, Miss! but pleasant pain.
SARA.
Be silent! (_begins reading to herself_).
WAITWELL (_aside_).
Oh! If he could see her himself!
SARA (_after reading a few moments_).
Ah, Waitwell, what a father! He calls my flight "an absence." How much
more culpable it becomes through this gentle word! (_continues reading
and interrupts herself again_). Listen! he flatters himself I shall
love him still. He flatters himself! He begs me--he begs me? A father
begs his daughter? his culpable daughter? And what does he beg then? He
begs me to forget his over-hasty severity, and not to punish him any
longer with my absence. Over-hasty severity! To punish! More still! Now
he thanks me even, and thanks me that I have given him an opportunity
of learning the whole extent of paternal love. Unhappy opportunity!
Would that he also said it had shown him at the same time the extent of
filial disobedience. No, he does not say it! He does not mention my
crime with one single word. (_Continues reading_.) He will come himself
and fetch his children. His children, Waitwell! that surpasses
everything! Have I read it rightly? (_reads again to herself_) I am
overcome! He says, that he without whom he could not possess a daughter
deserves but too well to be his son. Oh that he had never had this
unfortunate daughter! Go, Waitwell, leave me alone! He wants an answer,
and I will write it at once. Come again in an hour! I thank you
meanwhile for your trouble. You are an honest man. Few servants are the
friends of their masters!
WAITWELL.
Do not make me blush, Miss! If all masters were like Sir William,
servants would be monsters, if they would not give their lives for
them. (_Exit_.)
Scene IV.
SARA (_sits down to write_).
If they had told me a year ago that I should have to answer such a
letter! And under such circumstances! Yes, I have the pen in my hand.
But do I know yet what I shall write? What I think; what I feel. And
what then does one think when a thousand thoughts cross each other in
one moment? And what does one feel, when the heart is in a stupor from
a thousand feelings. But I must write! I do not guide the pen for the
first time. After assisting me in so many a little act of politeness
and friendship, should its help fail me at the most important office?
(_She pauses, and then writes a few lines_.) It shall commence so? A
very cold beginning! And shall I then begin with his love? I must begin
with my crime. (_She scratches it out and writes again_.) I must be on
my guard not to express myself too leniently. Shame may be in its place
anywhere else, but not in the confession of our faults. I need not fear
falling into exaggeration, even though I employ the most dreadful
terms. Ah, am I to be interrupted now?
Scene V.
Marwood, Mellefont, Sara.
MELLEFONT.
Dearest Sara, I have the honour of introducing Lady Solmes to you; she
is one of the members of my family to whom I feel myself most indebted.
MARWOOD.
I must beg your pardon, Madam, for taking the liberty of convincing
myself with my own eyes of the happiness of a cousin, for whom I should
wish the most perfect of women if the first moment had not at once
convinced me, that he has found her already in you.
SARA.
Your ladyship does me too much honour! Such a compliment would have
made me blush at any time, but now I would almost take it as concealed
reproach, if I did not think that Lady Solmes is much too generous to
let her superiority in virtue and wisdom be felt by an unhappy girl.
MARWOOD (_coldly_).
I should be inconsolable if you attributed to me any but the most
friendly feelings towards you. (_Aside_.) She is good-looking.
MELLEFONT.
Would it be possible Madam, to remain indifferent to such beauty, such
modesty? People say, it is true, that one charming woman rarely does
another one justice, but this is to be taken only of those who are
over-vain of their superiority, and on the other hand of those who are
not conscious of possessing any superiority. How far are you both
removed from this. (_To_ Marwood, _who stands in deep thought_.) Is it
not true, Madam, that my love has been anything but partial? Is it not
true, that though I have said much to you in praise of my Sara, I have
not said nearly so much as you yourself see? But why so thoughtful.
(_Aside to her_.) You forget whom you represent.
MARWOOD.
May I say it? The admiration of your dear young lady led me to the
contemplation of her fate. It touched me, that she should not enjoy the
fruits of her love in her native land. I recollected that she had to
leave a father, and a very affectionate father as I have been told, in
order to become yours; and I could not but wish for her reconciliation
with him.
SARA.
Ah, Madam! how much am I indebted to you for this wish. It encourages
me to tell you the whole of my happiness. You cannot yet know,
Mellefont, that this wish was granted before Lady Solmes had the
kindness to wish it.
MELLEFONT.
How do you mean, Sara?
MARWOOD (_aside_).
How am I to interpret that?
SARA.
I have just received a letter from my father. Waitwell brought it to
me. Ah, Mellefont, such a letter!
MELLEFONT.
Quick, relieve me from my uncertainty. What have I to fear? What have I
to hope? Is he still the father from whom we fled? And if he is, will
Sara be the daughter who loves me so tenderly as to fly again? Alas,
had I but done as you wished, dearest Sara, we should now be united by
a bond which no caprice could dissolve. I feel now all the misfortune
which the discovery of our abode may bring upon me.--He will come and
tear you out of my arms. How I hate the contemptible being who has
betrayed us to him (_with an angry glance at_ Marwood).
SARA.
Dearest Mellefont, how flattering to me is this uneasiness I And how
happy are we both in that it is unnecessary. Read his letter! (_To_
Marwood, _whilst_ Mellefont _reads the letter_.) He will be astonished
at the love of my father. Of my father? Ah, he is _his_ now too.
MARWOOD (_perplexed_).
Is it possible?
SARA.
Yes, Madam, you have good cause to be surprised at this change. He
forgives us everything; we shall now love each other before his eyes;
he allows it, he commands it. How has this kindness gone to my very
soul! Well, Mellefont? (_who returns the letter to her_). You are
silent? Oh no, this tear which steals from your eye says far more than
your lips could say.
MARWOOD (_aside_).
How I have injured my own cause. Imprudent woman that I was!
SARA.
Oh, let me kiss this tear from your cheek.
MELLEFONT.
Ah, Sara, why was it our fate to grieve such a godlike man? Yes, a
godlike man, for what is more godlike than to forgive? Could we only
have imagined such a happy issue possible, we should not now owe it to
such violent means, we should owe it to our entreaties alone. What
happiness is in store for me! But how painful also will be the
conviction, that I am so unworthy of this happiness!
MARWOOD (_aside_).
And I must be present to hear this.
SARA.
How perfectly you justify my love by such thoughts.
MARWOOD (_aside_.)
What restraint must I put on myself!
SARA.
You too, Madam, must read my father's letter. You seem to take too
great an interest in our fate to be indifferent to its contents.
MARWOOD.
Indifferent? (_takes the letter_).
SARA.
But, Madam, you still seem very thoughtful, very sad----
MARWOOD.
Thoughtful, but not sad!
MELLEFONT (_aside_).
Heavens! If she should betray herself!
SARA.
And why then thoughtful?
MARWOOD.
I tremble for you both. Could not this unforeseen kindness of your
father be a dissimulation? An artifice?
SARA.
Assuredly not, Madam, assuredly not. Only read and you will admit it
yourself. Dissimulation is always cold, it is not capable of such
tender words. (Marwood _reads_.) Do not grow suspicious, Mellefont, I
beg. I pledge myself that my father cannot condescend to an artifice.
He says nothing which he does not think, falseness is a vice unknown to
him.
MELLEFONT.
Oh, of that I am thoroughly convinced, dearest Sara! You must pardon
Lady Solmes for this suspicion, since she does not know the man whom it
concerns.
SARA (_whilst_ Marwood _returns the letter to her_).
What do I see, my lady? You are pale! You tremble! What is the matter
with you?
MELLEFONT (_aside_).
What anxiety I suffer? Why did I bring her here?
MARWOOD.
It is nothing but a slight dizziness, which will pass over. The night
air on my journey must have disagreed with me.
MELLEFONT.
You frighten me! Would you not like to go into the air? You will
recover sooner than in a close room.
MARWOOD.
If you think so, give me your arm!
SARA.
I will accompany your ladyship!
MARWOOD.
I beg you will not trouble to do so! My faintness will pass over
immediately.
SARA.
I hope then, to see you again soon.
MARWOOD.
If you permit me (Mellefont _conducts her out_).
SARA (_alone_).
Poor thing! She does not seem exactly the most friendly of people; but
yet she does not appear to be either proud or ill-tempered. I am alone
again. Can I employ the few moments, while I remain so, better than by
finishing my answer? (_Is about to sit down to write_.)
Scene VI.
Betty, Sara.
BETTY.
That was indeed a very short visit.
SARA.
Yes, Betty! It was Lady Solmes, a relation of my Mellefont. She was
suddenly taken faint. Where is she now?
BETTY.
Mellefont has accompanied her to the door.
SARA.
She is gone again, then?
BETTY.
I suppose so. But the more I look at you--you must forgive my freedom,
Miss--the more you seem to me to be altered. There is something calm,
something contented in your looks. Either Lady Solmes must have been a
very pleasant visitor, or the old man a very pleasant messenger.
SARA.
The latter, Betty, the latter! He came from my father. What a tender
letter I have for you to read! Your kind heart has often wept with me,
now it shall rejoice with me, too. I shall be happy again, and be able
to reward you for your good services.
BETTY.
What services could I render you in nine short weeks?
SARA.
You could not have done more for me in all the rest of my life, than in
these nine weeks. They are over! But come now with me, Betty. As
Mellefont is probably alone again, I must speak to him. It just occurs
to me that it would be well if he wrote at the same time to my father,
to whom an expression of gratitude from him could hardly come
unexpectedly. Come! (_Exeunt_.)
Scene VII.
Sir William Sampson, Waitwell.
(_The drawing-room_.)
SIR WILLIAM.
What balm you have poured on my wounded heart with your words,
Waitwell! I live again, and the prospect of her return seems to carry
me as far back to my youth as her flight had brought me nearer to my
grave. She loves me still? What more do I wish! Go back to her soon,
Waitwell? I am impatient for the moment when I shall fold her again in
these arms, which I had stretched out so longingly to death! How
welcome would it have been to me in the moments of my grief! And how
terrible will it be to me in my new happiness! An old man, no doubt, is
to be blamed for drawing the bonds so tight again which still unite him
to the world. The final separation becomes the more painful. But God
who shows Himself so merciful to me now, will also help me to go
through this. Would He, I ask, grant me a mercy in order to let it
become ray ruin in the end? Would He give me back a daughter, that I
should have to murmur when He calls me from life? No, no! He gives her
back to me that in my last hour I may be anxious about myself alone.
Thanks to Thee, Eternal Father! How feeble is the gratitude of mortal
lips? But soon, soon I shall be able to thank Him more worthily in an
eternity devoted to Him alone!
WAITWELL.
How it delights me, Sir, to know you happy again before my death!
Believe me, I have suffered almost as much in your grief as you
yourself. Almost as much, for the grief of a father in such a case must
be inexpressible.
SIR WILLIAM.
Do not regard yourself as my servant any longer, my good Waitwell. You
have long deserved to enjoy a more seemly old age. I will give it you,
and you shall not be worse off than I am while I am still in this world.
I will abolish all difference between us; in yonder world, you well know,
it will be done. For this once be the old servant still, on whom I never
relied in vain. Go, and be sure to bring me her answer, as soon as it
is ready.
WAITWELL.
I go, Sir! But such an errand is not a service. It is a reward which
you grant me for my services. Yes, truly it is so! (_Exeunt on
different sides of the stage_.)
ACT IV.
Scene I.--Mellefont's _room_.
Mellefont, Sara.
MELLEFONT.
Yes, dearest Sara, yes! That I will do! That I must do.
SARA.
How happy you make me!
MELLEFONT.
It is I who must take the whole crime upon myself. I alone am guilty; I
alone must ask for forgiveness.
SARA.
No, Mellefont, do not take from me the greater share which I have in
our error! It is dear to me, however wrong it is, for it must have
convinced you that I love my Mellefont above everything in this world.
But is it, then, really true, that I may henceforth combine this love
with the love of my father? Or am I in a pleasant dream? How I fear it
will pass and I shall awaken in my old misery! But no! I am not merely
dreaming, I am really happier than I ever dared hope to become; happier
than this short life may perhaps allow. But perhaps this beam of
happiness appears in the distance, and delusively seems to approach
only in order to melt away again into thick darkness, and to leave me
suddenly in a night whose whole terror has only become perceptible to
me through this short illumination. What forebodings torment me! Are
they really forebodings, Mellefont, or are they common feelings, which
are inseparable from the expectation of an undeserved happiness, and
the fear of losing it? How fast my heart beats, and how wildly it
beats. How loud now, how quick! And now how weak, how anxious, how
quivering! Now it hurries again, as if these were its last throbbings,
which it would fain beat out rapidly. Poor heart!
MELLEFONT.
The tumult of your blood, which a sudden surprise cannot fail to cause,
will abate, Sara, and your heart will continue its work more calmly.
None of its throbs point to aught that is in the future, and we are to
blame--forgive me, dearest Sara!--if we make the mechanic pressure of
our blood into a prophet of evil. But I will not leave anything undone
which you yourself think good to appease this little storm within your
breast. I will write at once, and I hope that Sir William will be
satisfied with the assurances of my repentance, with the expressions of
my stricken heart, and my vows of affectionate obedience.
SARA.
Sir William? Ah, Mellefont, you must begin now to accustom yourself to
a far more tender name. My father, your father, Mellefont----
MELLEFONT.
Very well, Sara, our kind, our dear father! I was very young when I
last used this sweet name; very young, when I had to unlearn the
equally sweet name of mother.
SARA.
You had to unlearn it, and I--I was never so happy, as to be able to
pronounce it at all. My life was her death! O God, I was a guiltless
matricide! And how much was wanting--how little, how almost nothing was
wanting to my becoming a parricide too! Not a guiltless, but a
voluntary parricide. And who knows, whether I am not so already? The
years, the days, the moments by which he is nearer to his end than he
would have been without the grief I have caused him--of those I have
robbed him. However old and weary he may be when Fate shall permit him
to depart, my conscience will yet be unable to escape the reproach that
but for me he might have lived yet longer. A sad reproach with which I
doubtless should not need to charge myself, if a loving mother had
guided me in my youth. Through her teaching and her example my heart
would--you look tenderly on me, Mellefont? You are right; a mother
would perhaps have been a tyrant for very love, and I should not now
belong to Mellefont. Why do I wish then for that, which a wiser Fate
denied me out of kindness? Its dispensations are always best. Let us
only make proper use of that which it gives us; a father who never yet
let me sigh for a mother; a father who will also teach you to forget
the parents you lost so soon. What a flattering thought. I fall in love
with it, and forget almost, that in my innermost heart there is still
something which refuses to put faith in it. What is this rebellious
something?
MELLEFONT.
This something, dearest Sara, as you have already said yourself, is the
natural, timid incapability to realize a great happiness. Ah, your
heart hesitated less to believe itself unhappy than now, to its own
torment, it hesitates to believe in its own happiness! But as to one
who has become dizzy with quick movement, the external objects still
appear to move round when again he is sitting still, so the heart which
has been violently agitated cannot suddenly become calm again; there
remains often for a long time, a quivering palpitation which we must
suffer to exhaust itself.
SARA.
I believe it, Mellefont, I believe it, because you say it, because I
wish it. But do not let us detain each other any longer! I will go and
finish my letter. And you will let me read yours, will you not, after I
have shown you mine?
MELLEFONT.
Each word shall be submitted to your judgment; except what I must say
in your defence, for I know you do not think yourself so innocent as
you are. (_Accompanies Sara to the back of the stage_.)
Scene II.
MELLEFONT (_after walking up and down several times in thought_).
What a riddle I am to myself! What shall I think myself? A fool? Or a
knave? Heart, what a villain thou art! I love the angel, however much
of a devil I may be. I love her! Yes, certainly! certainly I love her.
I feel I would sacrifice a thousand lives for her, for her who
sacrificed her virtue for me; I would do so,--this very moment without
hesitation would I do so. And yet, yet--I am afraid to say it to
myself--and yet--how shall I explain it? And yet I fear the moment
which will make her mine for ever before the world. It cannot be
avoided now, for her father is reconciled. Nor shall I be able to put
it off for long. The delay has already drawn down painful reproaches
enough upon me. But painful as they were, they were still more
supportable to me than the melancholy thought of being fettered for
life. But am I not so already? Certainly,--and with pleasure! Certainly
I am already her prisoner. What is it I want, then? At present I am a
prisoner, who is allowed to go about on parole; that is flattering! Why
cannot the matter rest there? Why must I be put in chains and thus lack
even the pitiable shadow of freedom? In chains? Quite so! Sara Sampson,
my beloved! What bliss lies in these words! Sara Sampson, my wife! The
half of the bliss is gone! and the other half--will go! Monster that I
am! And with such thoughts shall I write to her father? Yet these are
not my real thoughts, they are fancies! Cursed fancies, which have
become natural to me through my dissolute life! I will free myself from
them, or live no more.
Scene III.
Norton, Mellefont.
MELLEFONT.
You disturb me, Norton!
NORTON.
I beg your pardon, Sir (_withdrawing again_).
MELLEFONT.
No, no! Stay! It is just as well that you should disturb me. What do
you want?
NORTON.
I have heard some very good news from Betty, and have come to wish you
happiness.
MELLEFONT.
On the reconciliation with her father, I suppose you mean? I thank you.
NORTON.
So Heaven still means to make you happy.
MELLEFONT.
If it means to do so,--you see, Norton, I am just towards myself--it
certainly does not mean it for my sake.
NORTON.
No, no; if you feel that, then it will be for your sake also.
MELLEFONT.
For my Sara's sake alone. If its vengeance, already armed, could spare
the whole of a sinful city for the sake of a few just men, surely it
can also bear with a sinner, when a soul in which it finds delight, is
the sharer of his fate.
NORTON.
You speak with earnestness and feeling. But does not joy express itself
differently from this?
MELLEFONT.
Joy, Norton? (_Looking sharply at him_.) For me it is gone now for
ever.
NORTON.
May I speak candidly?
MELLEFONT.
You may.
NORTON.
The reproach which I had to hear this morning of having made myself a
participator in your crimes, because I had been silent about them, may
excuse me, if I am less silent henceforth.
MELLEFONT.
Only do not forget who you are!
NORTON.
I will not forget that I am a servant, and a servant, alas, who might
be something better, if he had lived for it. I am your servant, it is
true, but not so far as to wish to be damned along with you.
MELLEFONT.
With me? And why do you say that now?
NORTON.
Because I am not a little astonished to find you different from what I
expected.
MELLEFONT.
Will you not inform me what you expected?
NORTON.
To find you all delight.
MELLEFONT.
It is only the common herd who are beside themselves immediately when
luck smiles on them for once.
NORTON.
Perhaps, because the common herd still have the feelings which among
greater people are corrupted and weakened by a thousand unnatural
notions. But there is something besides moderation to be read in your
face--coldness, irresolution, disinclination.
MELLEFONT.
And if so? Have you forgotten who is here besides Sara? The presence of
Marwood----
NORTON.
Could make you anxious, I daresay, but not despondent. Something else
troubles you. And I shall be glad to be mistaken in thinking you would
rather that the father were not yet reconciled. The prospect of a
position which so little suits your way of thinking----
MELLEFONT.
Norton, Norton! Either you must have been, or still must be, a dreadful
villain, that you can thus guess my thoughts. Since you have hit the
nail upon the head, I will not deny it. It is true--so certain as it is
that I shall love my Sara for ever so little does it please me, that I
_must_--_must_ love her for ever! But do not fear; I shall conquer this
foolish fancy. Or do you think that it is no fancy? Who bids me look at
marriage as compulsion? I certainly do not wish to be freer than she
will permit me to be.
NORTON.
These reflections are all very well. But Marwood will come to the aid
of your old prejudices, and I fear, I fear----
MELLEFONT.
That which will never happen! You shall see her go back this very
evening to London. And as I have confessed my most secret--folly we
will call it for the present--I must not conceal from you either, that
I have put Marwood into such a fright that she will obey the slightest
hint from me.
NORTON.
That sounds incredible to me.
MELLEFONT.
Look! I snatched this murderous steel from her hand (_showing the
dagger which he had taken from_ Marwood) when in a fearful rage she was
on the point of stabbing me to the heart with it. Will you believe now,
that I offered her a stout resistance? At first she well nigh succeeded
in throwing her noose around my neck again. The traitoress!--She has
Arabella with her.
NORTON.
Arabella?
MELLEFONT.
I have not yet been able to fathom by what cunning she got the child
back into her hands again. Enough, the result did not fall out as she
no doubt had expected.
NORTON.
Allow me to rejoice at your firmness, and to consider your reformation
half assured. Yet,--as you wish me to know all--what business had she
here under the name of Lady Solmes?
MELLEFONT.
She wanted of all things to see her rival. I granted her wish partly
from kindness, partly from rashness, partly from the desire to
humiliate her by the sight of the best of her sex. You shake your head,
Norton?
NORTON.
I should not have risked that.
MELLEFONT.
Risked? I did not risk anything more, after all, than what I should
have had to risk if I had refused her. She would have tried to obtain
admittance as Marwood; and the worst that can be expected from her
incognito visit is not worse than that.
NORTON.
Thank Heaven that it went off so quietly.
MELLEFONT.
It is not quite over yet, Norton. A slight indisposition came over her
and compelled her to go away without taking leave. She wants to come
again. Let her do so! The wasp which has lost its sting (_pointing to
the dagger_) can do nothing worse than buzz. But buzzing too shall cost
her dear, if she grows too troublesome with it. Do I not hear somebody
coming? Leave me if it should be she. It is she. Go! (_Exit_ Norton.)
Scene IV.
Mellefont, Marwood.
MARWOOD.
No doubt you are little pleased to see me again.
MELLEFONT.
I am very pleased, Marwood, to see that your indisposition has had no
further consequences. You are better, I hope?
MARWOOD.
So, so.
MELLEFONT.
You have not done well, then, to trouble to come here again.
MARWOOD.
I thank you, Mellefont, if you say this out of kindness to me; and I do
not take it amiss, if you have another meaning in it.
MELLEFONT.
I am pleased to see you so calm.
MARWOOD.
The storm is over. Forget it, I beg you once more.
MELLEFONT.
Only remember your promise, Marwood, and I will forget everything with
pleasure. But if I knew that you would not consider it an offence, I
should like to ask----
MARWOOD.
Ask on, Mellefont! You cannot offend me any more. What were you going
to ask?
MELLEFONT.
How you liked my Sara?
MARWOOD.
The question is natural. My answer will not seem so natural, but it is
none the less true for that. I liked her very much.
MELLEFONT.
Such impartiality delights me. But would it be possible for him who
knew how to appreciate the charms of a Marwood to make a bad choice?
MARWOOD.
You ought to have spared me this flattery, Mellefont, if it is
flattery. It is not in accordance with our intention to forget each
other.
MELLEFONT.
You surely do not wish me to facilitate this intention by rudeness? Do
not let our separation be of an ordinary nature. Let us break with each
other as people of reason who yield to necessity; without bitterness,
without anger, and with the preservation of a certain degree of
respect, as behoves our former intimacy.
MARWOOD.
Former intimacy! I do not wish to be reminded of it. No more of it.
What must be, must, and it matters little how. But one word more about
Arabella. You will not let me have her?
MELLEFONT.
No, Marwood!
MARWOOD.
It is cruel, since you can no longer be her father, to take her mother
also from her.
MELLEFONT.
I can still be her father, and will be so.
MARWOOD.
Prove it, then, now!
MELLEFONT.
How?
MARWOOD.
Permit Arabella to have the riches which I have in keeping for you, as
her father's inheritance. As to her mother's inheritance I wish I could
leave her a better one than the shame of having been borne by me.
MELLEFONT.
Do not speak so! I shall provide for Arabella without embarrassing her
mother's property. If she wishes to forget me, she must begin by
forgetting that she possesses anything from me. I have obligations
towards her, and I shall never forget that really--though against her
will--she has promoted my happiness. Yes, Marwood, in all seriousness I
thank you for betraying our retreat to a father whose ignorance of it
alone prevented him from receiving us again.
MARWOOD.
Do not torture me with gratitude which I never wished to deserve. Sir
William is too good an old fool; he must think differently from what I
should have thought in his place. I should have forgiven my daughter,
but as to her seducer I should have----
MELLEFONT.
Marwood!
MARWOOD.
True; you yourself are the seducer! I am silent. Shall I be presently
allowed to pay my farewell visit to Miss Sampson?
MELLEFONT.
Sara could not be offended, even if you left without seeing her again.
MARWOOD.
Mellefont, I do not like playing my part by halves, and I have no wish
to be taken, even under an assumed name, for a woman without breeding.
MELLEFONT.
If you care for your own peace of mind you ought to avoid seeing a
person again who must awaken certain thoughts in you which----
MARWOOD (_smiling disdainfully_).
You have a better opinion of yourself than of me. But even if you
believed that I should be inconsolable on your account, you ought at
least to believe it in silence.--Miss Sampson would awaken certain
thoughts in me? Certain thoughts! Oh yes; but none more certain than
this--that the best girl can often love the most worthless man.
MELLEFONT.
Charming, Marwood, perfectly charming. Now you are as I have long
wished to see you; although I could almost have wished, as I told you
before, that we could have retained some respect for each other. But
this may perhaps come still when once your fermenting heart has cooled
down. Excuse me for a moment. I will fetch Miss Sampson to see you.
Scene V.
MARWOOD (_looking round_).
Am I alone? Can I take breath again unobserved, and let the muscles of
my face relax into their natural position? I must just for a moment be
the true Marwood in all my features to be able again to bear the
restraint of dissimulation! How I hate thee, base dissimulation! Not
because I love sincerity, but because thou art the most pitiable refuge
of powerless revenge. I certainly would not condescend to thee, if a
tyrant would lend me his power or Heaven its thunderbolt.--Yet, if thou
only servest my end! The beginning is promising, and Mellefont seems
disposed to grow more confident. If my device succeeds and I can speak
alone with his Sara; then-yes, then, it is still very uncertain whether
it will be of any use to me. The truths about Mellefont will perhaps be
no novelty to her; the calumnies she will perhaps not believe, and the
threats, perhaps, despise. But yet she shall hear truths, calumnies and
threats. It would be bad, if they did not leave any sting at all in her
mind. Silence; they are coming. I am no longer Marwood, I am a
worthless outcast, who tries by little artful tricks to turn aside her
shame,--a bruised worm, which turns and fain would wound at least the
heel of him who trod upon it.
Scene VI.
Sara, Mellefont, Marwood.
SARA.
I am happy, Madam, that my uneasiness on your account has been
unnecessary.
MARWOOD.
I thank you! The attack was so insignificant that it need not have made
you uneasy.
MELLEFONT.
Lady Solmes wishes to take leave of you, dearest Sara!
SARA.
So soon, Madam?
MARWOOD.
I cannot go soon enough for those who desire my presence in London.
MELLEFONT.
You surely are not going to leave to-day?
MARWOOD.
To-morrow morning, first thing.
MELLEFONT.
To-morrow morning, first thing? I thought to-day.
SARA.
Our acquaintance, Madam, commences hurriedly. I hope to be honoured
with a more intimate intercourse with you at some future time.
MARWOOD.
I solicit your friendship, Miss Sampson.
MELLEFONT.
I pledge myself, dearest Sara, that this desire of Lady Solmes is
sincere, although I must tell you beforehand that you will certainly
not see each other again for a long time. Lady Solmes will very rarely
be able to live where we are.
MARWOOD (_aside_).
How subtle!
SARA.
That is to deprive me of a very pleasant anticipation, Mellefont!
MARWOOD.
I shall be the greatest loser!
MELLEFONT.
But in reality, Madam, do you not start before tomorrow morning?
MARWOOD.
It may be sooner! (_Aside_.) No one comes.
MELLEFONT.
We do not wish to remain much longer here either. It will be well, will
it not, Sara, to follow our answer without delay? Sir William cannot be
displeased with our haste.
Scene VII.
Betty, Mellefont, Sara, Marwood.
MELLEFONT.
What is it, Betty?
BETTY.
Somebody wishes to speak with you immediately.
MARWOOD (_aside_).
Ha! now all depends on whether----
MELLEFONT.
Me? Immediately? I will come at once. Madam, is it agreeable to you to
shorten your visit?
SARA.
Why so, Mellefont? Lady Solmes will be so kind as to wait for your
return.
MARWOOD.
Pardon me; I know my cousin Mellefont, and prefer to depart with him.
BETTY.
The stranger, sir--he wishes only to say a word to you. He says, that
he has not a moment to lose.
MELLEFONT.
Go, please! I will be with him directly. I expect it will be some news
at last about the agreement which I mentioned to you. (_Exit_ Betty.)
MARWOOD (_aside_).
A good conjecture!
MELLEFONT.
But still, Madam----
MARWOOD.
If you order it, then, I must bid you----
SARA.
Oh no, Mellefont; I am sure you will not grudge me the pleasure of
entertaining Lady Solmes during your absence?
MELLEFONT.
You wish it, Sara?
SARA.
Do not stay now, dearest Mellefont, but come back again soon! And come
with a more joyful face, I will wish! You doubtless expect an
unpleasant answer. Don't let this disturb you. I am more desirous to
see whether after all you can gracefully prefer me to an inheritance,
than I am to know that you are in the possession of one.
MELLEFONT.
I obey. (_In a warning tone_.) I shall be sure to come back in a
moment, Madam.
MARWOOD (_aside_).
Lucky so far. (_Exit_ Mellefont.)
Scene VIII.
Sara, Marwood.
SARA.
My good Mellefont sometimes gives his polite phrases quite a wrong
accent. Do not you think so too, Madam?
MARWOOD.
I am no doubt too much accustomed to his way already to notice anything
of that sort.
SARA.
Will you not take a seat, Madam?
MARWOOD.
If you desire it. (_Aside, whilst they are seating themselves_.) I must
not let this moment slip by unused.
SARA.
Tell me! Shall I not be the most enviable of women with my Mellefont?
MARWOOD.
If Mellefont knows how to appreciate his happiness, Miss Sampson will
make him the most enviable of men. But----
SARA.
A "but," and then a pause, Madam----
MARWOOD.
I am frank, Miss Sampson.
SARA.
And for this reason infinitely more to be esteemed.
MARWOOD.
Frank--not seldom imprudently so. My "but" is a proof of it. A very
imprudent "but."
SARA.
I do not think that my Lady Solmes can wish through this evasion to
make me more uneasy. It must be a cruel mercy that only rouses
suspicions of an evil which it might disclose.
MARWOOD.
Not at all, Miss Sampson! You attach far too much importance to my
"but." Mellefont is a relation of mine----
SARA.
Then all the more important is the slightest charge which you have to
make against him.
MARWOOD.
But even were Mellefont my brother, I must tell you, that I should
unhesitatingly side with one of my own sex against him, if I perceived
that he did not act quite honestly towards her. We women ought properly
to consider every insult shown to one of us as an insult to the whole
sex, and to make it a common affair, in which even the sister and
mother of the guilty one ought not to hesitate to share.
SARA.
This remark----
MARWOOD.
Has already been my guide now and then in doubtful cases.
SARA.
And promises me--I tremble.
MARWOOD.
No, Miss Sampson, if you mean to tremble, let us speak of something
else----
SARA.
Cruel woman!
MARWOOD.
I am sorry to be misunderstood. I at least, if I place myself in
imagination in Miss Sampson's position, would regard as a favour any
more exact information which one might give me about the man with whose
fate I was about to unite my own for ever.
SARA.
What do you wish, Madam? Do I not know my Mellefont already? Believe me
I know him, as I do my own soul. I know that he loves me----
MARWOOD.
And others----
SARA.
_Has_ loved others. That I know also. Was he to love me, before he knew
anything about me? Can I ask to be the only one who has had charm
enough to attract him? Must I not confess it to myself, that I have
striven to please him? Is he not so lovable, that he must have awakened
this endeavour in many a breast? And isn't it but natural, if several
have been successful in their endeavour?
MARWOOD.
You defend him with just the same ardour and almost the same words with
which I have often defended him already. It is no crime to have loved;
much less still is it a crime to have been loved. But fickleness is a
crime.
SARA.
Not always; for often, I believe, it is rendered excusable by the
objects of one's love, which seldom deserve to be loved for ever.
MARWOOD.
Miss Sampson's doctrine of morals does not seem to be of the strictest.
SARA.
It is true; the one by which I judge those who themselves confess that
they have taken to bad ways is not of the strictest. Nor should it be
so. For here it is not a question of fixing the limits which virtue
marks out for love, but merely of excusing the human weakness that has
not remained within those limits and of judging the consequences
arising therefrom by the rules of wisdom. If, for example, a Mellefont
loves a Marwood and eventually abandons her; this abandonment is very
praiseworthy in comparison with the love itself. It would be a
misfortune if he had to love a vicious person for ever because he once
had loved her.
MARWOOD.
But do you know this Marwood, whom you so confidently call a vicious
person?
SARA.
I know her from Mellefont's description.
MARWOOD.
Mellefont's? Has it never occurred to you then that Mellefont must be a
very invalid witness in his own affairs?
SARA.
I see now, Madam, that you wish to put me to the test. Mellefont will
smile, when you repeat to him how earnestly I have defended him.
MARWOOD.
I beg your pardon, Miss Sampson, Mellefont must not hear anything about
this conversation. You are of too noble a mind to wish out of gratitude
for a well-meant warning to estrange from him a relation, who speaks
against him only because she looks upon his unworthy behaviour towards
more than one of the most amiable of her sex as if she herself had
suffered from it.
SARA.
I do not wish to estrange anyone, and would that others wished it as
little as I do.
MARWOOD.
Shall I tell you the story of Marwood in a few words?
SARA.
I do not know. But still--yes, Madam! but under the condition that you
stop as soon as Mellefont returns. He might think that I had inquired
about it myself; and I should not like him to think me capable of a
curiosity so prejudicial to him.
MARWOOD.
I should have asked the same caution of Miss Sampson, if she had not
anticipated me. He must not even be able to suspect that Marwood has
been our topic; and you will be so cautious as to act in accordance
with this. Hear now! Marwood is of good family. She was a young widow,
when Mellefont made her acquaintance at the house of one of her
friends. They say, that she lacked neither beauty, nor the grace
without which beauty would be nothing. Her good name was spotless.
One single thing was wanting. Money. Everything that she had
possessed,--and she is said to have had considerable wealth,--she had
sacrificed for the deliverance of a husband from whom she thought it
right to withhold nothing, after she had willed to give him heart and
hand.
SARA.
Truly a noble trait of character, which I wish could sparkle in a
better setting!
MARWOOD.
In spite of her want of fortune she was sought by persons, who wished
nothing more than to make her happy. Mellefont appeared amongst her
rich and distinguished admirers. His offer was serious, and the
abundance in which he promised to place Marwood was the least on which
he relied. He knew, in their earliest intimacy, that he had not to deal
with an egoist, but with a woman of refined feelings, who would have
preferred to live in a hut with one she loved, than in a palace with
one for whom she did not care.
SARA.
Another trait which I grudge Miss Marwood. Do not flatter her any more,
pray, Madam, or I might be led to pity her at last.
MARWOOD.
Mellefont was just about to unite himself with her with due solemnity,
when he received the news of the death of a cousin who left him his
entire fortune on the condition that he should marry a distant
relation. As Marwood had refused richer unions for his sake, he would
not now yield to her in generosity. He intended to tell her nothing of
this inheritance, until he had forfeited it through her. That was
generously planned, was it not?
SARA.
Oh, Madam, who knows better than I, that Mellefont possesses the most
generous of hearts?
MARWOOD.
But what did Marwood do? She heard late one evening, through some
friends, of Mellefont's resolution. Mellefont came in the morning to
see her, and Marwood was gone.
SARA.
Whereto? Why?
MARWOOD.
He found nothing but a letter from her, in which she told him that he
must not expect ever to see her again. She did not deny, though, that
she loved him; but for this very reason she could not bring herself to
be the cause of an act, of which he must necessarily repent some day.
She released him from his promise, and begged him by the consummation
of the union, demanded by the will, to enter without further delay into
the possession of a fortune, which an honourable man could employ for a
better purpose than the thoughtless flattery of a woman.
SARA.
But, Madam, why do you attribute such noble sentiments to Marwood? Lady
Solmes may be capable of such, I daresay, but not Marwood. Certainly
not Marwood.
MARWOOD.
It is not surprising, that you are prejudiced against her. Mellefont
was almost distracted at Marwood's resolution. He sent people in all
directions to search for her, and at last found her.
SARA.
No doubly because she wished to be found!
MARWOOD.
No bitter jests! They do not become a woman of such gentle disposition.
I say, he found her; and found her inexorable. She would not accept his
hand on any account; and the promise to return to London was all that
he could get from her. They agreed to postpone their marriage until his
relative, tired of the long delay, should be compelled to propose an
arrangement. In the meantime Marwood could not well renounce the daily
visits from Mellefont, which for a long time were nothing but the
respectful visits of a suitor, who has been ordered back within the
bounds of friendship. But how impossible is it for a passionate temper
not to transgress these bounds. Mellefont possesses everything which
can make a man dangerous to us. Nobody can be more convinced of this
than you yourself, Miss Sampson.
SARA.
Alas!
MARWOOD.
You sigh! Marwood too has sighed more than once over her weakness, and
sighs yet.
SARA.
Enough, Madam, enough! These words I should think, are worse than the
bitter jest which you were pleased to forbid me.
MARWOOD.
Its intention was not to offend you, but only to show you the unhappy
Marwood in a light, in which you could most correctly judge her. To be
brief--love gave Mellefont the rights of a husband; and Mellefont did
not any longer consider it necessary to have them made valid by the
law. How happy would Marwood be, if she, Mellefont, and Heaven alone
knew of her shame! How happy if a pitiable daughter did not reveal to
the whole world that which she would fain be able to hide from herself.
SARA.
What do you say? A daughter----
MARWOOD.
Yes, through the intervention of Sara Sampson, an unhappy daughter
loses all hope of ever being able to name her parents without
abhorrence.
SARA.
Terrible words! And Mellefont has concealed this from me? Am I to
believe it, Madam?
MARWOOD.
You may assuredly believe that Mellefont has perhaps concealed still
more from you.
SARA.
Still more? What more could he have concealed from me?
MARWOOD.
This,--that he still loves Marwood.
SARA.
You will kill me!
MARWOOD.
It is incredible that a love which has lasted more than ten years can
die away so quickly. It may certainly suffer a short eclipse, but
nothing but a short one, from which it breaks forth again with renewed
brightness. I could name to you a Miss Oclaff, a Miss Dorcas, a Miss
Moore, and several others, who one after another threatened to alienate
from Marwood the man by whom they eventually saw themselves most
cruelly deceived. There is a certain point beyond which he cannot go,
and as soon as he gets face to face with it he draws suddenly back. But
suppose, Miss Sampson, you were the one fortunate woman in whose case
all circumstances declared themselves against him; suppose you
succeeded in compelling him to conquer the disgust of a formal yoke
which has now become innate to him; do you then expect to make sure of
his heart in this way?
SARA.
Miserable girl that I am! What must I hear?
MARWOOD.
Nothing less than that! He would then hurry back all the more into the
arms of her who had not been so jealous of his liberty. You would be
called his wife and she would be it.
SARA.
Do not torment me longer with such dreadful pictures! Advise me rather,
Madam, I pray you, advise me what to do. You must know him! You must
know by what means it may still be possible to reconcile him with a
bond without which even the most sincere love remains an unholy
passion.
MARWOOD.
That one can catch a bird, I well know; but that one can render its
cage more pleasant than the open field, I do not know. My advice,
therefore, would be that one should rather not catch it, and should
spare oneself the vexation of the profitless trouble. Content yourself,
young lady, with the pleasure of having seen him very near your net;
and as you can foresee, that he would certainly tear it if you tempted
him in altogether, spare your net and do not tempt him in.
SARA.
I do not know whether I rightly understand your playful parable----
MARWOOD.
If you are vexed with it, you have understood it. In one word. Your own
interest as well as that of another--wisdom as well as justice, can,
and must induce Miss Sampson to renounce her claims to a man to whom
Marwood has the first and strongest claim. You are still in such a
position with regard to him that you can withdraw, I will not say with
much honour, but still without public disgrace. A short disappearance
with a lover is a stain, it is true; but still a stain which time
effaces. In some years all will be forgotten, and for a rich heiress
there are always men to be found, who are not so scrupulous. If Marwood
were in such a position, and she needed no husband for her fading
charms nor father for her helpless daughter, I am sure she would act
more generously towards Miss Sampson than Miss Sampson acts towards her
when raising these dishonourable difficulties.
SARA (_rising angrily_).
This is too much! Is that the language of a relative of Mellefont's?
How shamefully you are betrayed, Mellefont! Now I perceive, Madam, why
he was so unwilling to leave you alone with me. He knows already, I
daresay, how much one has to fear from your tongue. A poisoned tongue!
I speak boldly--for your unseemly talk has continued long enough. How
has Marwood been able to enlist such a mediator; a mediator who summons
all her ingenuity to force upon me a dazzling romance about her; und
employs every art to rouse my suspicion against the loyalty of a man,
who is a man but not a monster? Was it only for this that I was told
that Marwood boasted of a daughter from him; only for this that I was
told of this and that forsaken girl--in order that you might be enabled
to hint to me in cruel fashion that I should do well if I gave place to
a hardened strumpet!
MARWOOD.
Not so passionate, if you please, young lady! A hardened strumpet? You
are surely using words whose full meaning you have not considered.
SARA.
Does she not appear such, even from Lady Solmes's description? Well,
Madam, you are her friend, perhaps her intimate friend. I do not say
this as a reproach, for it may well be that it is hardly possible in
this world to have virtuous friends only. Yet why should I be so
humiliated for the sake of this friendship of yours? If I had had
Marwood's experience, I should certainly not have committed the error
which places me on such a humiliating level with her. But if I had
committed it, I should certainly not have continued in it for ten
years. It is one thing to fall into vice from ignorance; and another to
grow intimate with it when you know it. Alas, Madam, if you knew what
regret, what remorse, what anxiety my error has cost me! My error, I
say, for why shall I be so cruel to myself any longer, and look upon it
as a crime? Heaven itself ceases to consider it such; it withdraws my
punishment, and gives me back my father.--But I am frightened, Madam;
how your features are suddenly transformed! They glow-rage speaks from
the fixed eye, and the quivering movement of the mouth. Ah, if I have
vexed you, Madam, I beg for pardon! I am a foolish, sensitive creature;
what you have said was doubtless not meant so badly. Forget my
rashness! How can I pacify you? How can I also gain a friend in you as
Marwood has done? Let me, let me entreat you on my knees (_falling down
upon her knees_) for your friendship, and if I cannot have this, at
least for the justice not to place me and Marwood in one and the same
rank.
MARWOOD (_proudly stepping back and leaving Sara on her knees_).
This position of Sara Sampson is too charming for Marwood to triumph in
it unrecognised. In me, Miss Sampson, behold the Marwood with whom on
your knees you beg--Marwood herself--not to compare you.
SARA (_springing up and drawing back in terror_).
You Marwood? Ha! Now I recognise her--now I recognise the murderous
deliverer, to whose dagger a warning dream exposed me. It is she! Away,
unhappy Sara! Save me, Mellefont; save your beloved! And thou, sweet
voice of my beloved father, call! Where does it call? Whither shall I
hasten to it?--here?--there?--Help, Mellefont! Help, Betty! Now she
approaches me with murderous hand! Help! (_Exit_.)
Scene IX.
MARWOOD.
What does the excitable girl mean? Would that she spake the truth, and
that I approached her with murderous hand! I ought to have spared the
dagger until now, fool that I was! What delight to be able to stab a
rival at one's feet in her voluntary humiliation! What now? I am
detected. Mellefont may be here this minute. Shall I fly from him?
Shall I await him? I will wait, but not in idleness. Perhaps the
cunning of my servant will detain him long enough? I see I am feared.
Why do I not follow her then? Why do I not try the last expedient which
I can use against her? Threats are pitiable weapons; but despair
despises no weapons, however pitiable they may be. A timid girl, who
flies stupid and terror-stricken from my mere name, can easily take
dreadful words for dreadful deeds. But Mellefont! Mellefont will give
her fresh courage, and teach her to scorn my threats. He will! Perhaps
he will not! Few things would have been undertaken in this world, if
men had always looked to the end. And am I not prepared for the most
fatal end? The dagger was for others, the drug is for me! The drug
for me! Long carried by me near my heart, it here awaits its sad
service; here, where in better times I hid the written flatteries of my
lovers,--poison for us equally sure if slower. Would it were not
destined to rage in my veins only! Would that a faithless one--why do I
waste my time in wishing? Away! I must not recover my reason nor she
hers. He will dare nothing, who wishes to dare in cold blood!
ACT V.
Scene I.
Sara's _room_.
Sara (_reclining in an armchair_), Betty.
BETTY.
Do you feel a little better, Miss?
SARA.
Better--I wish only that Mellefont would return! You have sent for him,
have you not?
BETTY.
Norton and the landlord have gone for him.
SARA.
Norton is a good fellow, but he is rash. I do not want him by any means
to be rude to his master on my account. According to his story,
Mellefont is innocent of all this. She follows him; what can he do? She
storms, she raves, she tries to murder him. Do you see, Betty, I have
exposed him to this danger? Who else but me? And the wicked Marwood at
last insisted on seeing me or she would not return to London. Could he
refuse her this trifling request? Have not I too often been curious to
see Marwood. Mellefont knows well that we are curious creatures. And if
I had not insisted myself that she should remain with me until his
return, he would have taken her away with him. I should have seen her
under a false name, without knowing that I had seen her. And I should
perhaps have been pleased with this little deception at some future
time. In short, it is all my fault. Well, well, I was frightened;
nothing more! The swoon was nothing. You know, Betty, I am subject to
such fits.
BETTY.
But I had never seen you in so deep a swoon before.
SARA.
Do not tell me so, please! I must have caused you a great deal of
trouble, my good girl.
BETTY.
Marwood herself seemed moved by your danger. In spite of all I could do
she would not leave the room, until you had opened your eyes a little
and I could give you the medicine.
SARA.
After all I must consider it fortunate that I swooned. For who knows
what more I should have had to hear from her! She certainly can hardly
have followed me into my room without a purpose! You cannot imagine how
terrified I was. The dreadful dream I had last night recurred to me
suddenly, and I fled, like an insane woman who does not know why and
whither she flies. But Mellefont does not come. Ah!
BETTY.
What a sigh, Miss! What convulsions!
SARA.
God! what sensation was this----
BETTY.
What was that?
SARA.
Nothing, Betty! A pain! Not one pain, a thousand burning pains in one!
But do not be uneasy; it is over now!
Scene II.
Norton, Sara, Betty.
NORTON.
Mellefont will be here in a moment.
SARA.
That is well, Norton! But where did you find him?
NORTON.
A stranger had enticed him beyond the town gate, where he said a
gentleman waited for him, to speak with him about matters of the
greatest importance. After taking him from place to place for a long
time, the swindler slunk away from him. It will be bad for him if he
lets himself be caught; Mellefont is furious.
SARA.
Did you tell him what has happened?
NORTON.
All.
SARA.
But in such a way!----
NORTON.
I could not think about the way. Enough! He knows what anxiety his
imprudence has again caused you.
SARA.
Not so, Norton; I have caused it myself.
NORTON.
Why may Mellefont never be in the wrong? Come in, sir; love has already
excused you.
Scene III.
Mellefont, Norton, Sara, Betty.
MELLEFONT.
Ah, Sara! If this love of yours were not----
SARA.
Then I should certainly be the unhappier of the two. If nothing more
vexatious has happened to you in your absence than to me, I am happy.
MELLEFONT.
I have not deserved to be so kindly received.
SARA.
Let my weakness be my excuse, that I do not receive you more tenderly.
If only for your sake, I would that I was well again.
MELLEFONT.
Ha! Marwood! this treachery too! The scoundrel who led me with a
mysterious air from one street to another can assuredly have been a
messenger of her only! See, dearest Sara, she employed this artifice to
get me away from you. A clumsy artifice certainly, but just from its
very clumsiness, I was far from taking it for one. She shall have her
reward for this treachery! Quick, Norton, go to her lodgings; do not
lose sight of her, and detain her until I come!
SARA.
What for, Mellefont? I intercede for Marwood.
MELLEFONT.
Go! (_Exit_ Norton.)
Scene IV.
Sara, Mellefont, Betty.
SARA.
Pray let the wearied enemy who has ventured the last fruitless assault
retire in peace! Without Marwood I should be ignorant of much----
MELLEFONT.
Much? What is the "much?"
SARA.
What you would not have told me, Mellefont! You start! Well, I will
forget it again, since you do not wish me to know it.
MELLEFONT.
I hope that you will not believe any ill of me which has no better
foundation than the jealousy of an angry slanderer.
SARA.
More of this another time! But why do you not tell me first of all
about the danger in which your precious life was placed? I, Mellefont,
I should have been the one who had sharpened the sword, with which
Marwood had stabbed you.
MELLEFONT.
The danger was not so great. Marwood was driven by blind passion, and I
was cool, so her attack could not but fail. I only wish that she may
not have been more successful with another attack--upon Sara's good
opinion of her Mellefont! I must almost fear it. No, dearest Sara, do
not conceal from me any longer what you have learned from her.
SARA.
Well! If I had still had the least doubt of your love, Mellefont,
Marwood in her anger would have removed it. She surely must feel that
through me she has lost that which is of the greatest value to her; for
an uncertain loss would have let her act more cautiously.
MELLEFONT.
I shall soon learn to set some store by her bloodthirsty jealousy, her
impetuous insolence, her treacherous cunning! But Sara! You wish again
to evade my question and not to reveal to me----
SARA.
I will; and what I said was indeed a step towards it. That Mellefont
loves me, then, is undeniably certain. If only I had not discovered
that his love lacked a certain confidence, which would be as flattering
to me as his love itself. In short, dearest Mellefont--Why does a
sudden anxiety make it so difficult for me to speak?--Well, I suppose I
shall have to tell it without seeking for the most prudent form in
which to say it. Marwood mentioned a pledge of love; and the talkative
Norton--forgive him, pray--told me a name--a name, Mellefont, which
must rouse in you another tenderness than that which you feel for me.
MELLEFONT.
Is it possible? Has the shameless woman confessed her own disgrace?
Alas, Sara, have pity on my confusion! Since you already know all, why
do you wish to hear it again from my lips? She shall never come into
your sight,--the unhappy child, who has no other fault than that of
having such a mother.
SARA.
You love her, then, in spite of all?
MELLEFONT.
Too much, Sara, too much for me to deny it.
SARA.
Ah, Mellefont! How I too love you, for this very love's sake! You would
have offended me deeply, if you had denied the sympathy of your blood
for any scruples on my account. You have hurt me already in that you
have threatened me never to let her come into my sight. No, Mellefont!
That you will never forsake Arabella must be one of the promises which
you vow to me in presence of the Almighty! In the ha
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