QUESTENBERG.

Why not, Count Isolan?

No contradiction sure exists between them.
It was the urgent business of that time

To snatch Bavaria from her enemy's hand;
And my commission of to-day instructs me
To free her from her good friends and protectors.
ILLO.

A worthy office! After with our blood

We have wrested this Bohemia from the Saxon,
To be swept out of it is all our thanks,

The sole reward of all our hard-won victories.

QUESTENBERG.

Unless that wretched land be doomed to suffer

Only a change of evils, it must be

Freed from the scourge alike of friend and foe.

ILLO.

What? 'Twas a favourable year; the Boors
Can answer fresh demands already.

QUESTENBERG.

Nay,

If you discourse of herds and meadow-grounds

ISOLANI.

The war maintains the war. Are the Boors ruined,

The Emperor gains so many more new soldiers.

QUESTENBERG.

And is the poorer by even so many subjects.

ISOLANI.

Poh! We are all his subjects.

QUESTENBERG.

Yet with a difference, General! The one fill

With profitable industry the purse,

The others are well skilled to empty it.

The sword has made the Emperor poor; the

plough

Must reinvigorate his resources.

ISOLANI.

Sure!

Times are not yet so bad. Methinks I see

[Examining with his eye the dress and ornaments of Questenberg.

Good store of gold that still remains uncoined.

QUESTENBERG.

Thank Heaven! that means have been found out to hide

Some little from the fingers of the Croats.

ILLO.

There! The Stawata and the Martinitz,

On whom the Emperor heaps his gifts and graces, To the heart-burning of all good BohemiansThose minions of court favour, those court harpies,

Who fatten on the wrecks of citizens

Driven from their house and home-who reap no harvests

Save in the general calamity

Who now, with kingly pomp, insult and mock

The desolation of their country-these,

Let these, and such as these, support the war,
The fatal war, which they alone enkindled !

BUTLER.

And those state-parasites, who have their feet
So constantly beneath the Emperor's table,
Who cannot let a benefice fall, but they

Snap at it with dog's hunger-they, forsooth,
Would pare the soldier's bread, and cross his reckon-
ing!

ISOLANI.

My life long will it anger me to think,

How when I went to court seven years ago,
To see about new horses for our regiment,
How from one antichamber to another
They dragged me on, and left me by the hour
To kick my heels among a crowd of simpering
Feast-fattened slaves, as if I had come thither
A mendicant suitor for the crumbs of favour
That fall beneath their tables. And, at last,
Whom should they send me but a Capuchin!

sins

Straight I began to muster up my
For absolution-but no such luck for me!
This was the man, this Capuchin, with whom
I was to treat concerning the army horses:
And I was forced at last to quit the field,
The business unaccomplished. Afterwards
The Duke procured me in three days, what I
Could not obtain in thirty at Vienna.

QUESTENBERG.

Yes, yes! your travelling bills soon found their way

to us:

Too well I know we have still accounts to settle.

ILLO.

War is a violent trade; one cannot always
Finish one's work by soft means; every trifle
Must not be blackened into sacrilege.
If we should wait till you, in solemn council,
With due deliberation had selected

The smallest out of four-and-twenty evils,

I'faith we should wait long.

"Dash! and through with it!"-That's the better

watch-word.

Then after come what may come.

'Tis man's nature

To make the best of a bad thing once past.

A bitter and perplexed" what shall I do?"
Is worse to man then worst necessity.

VOL. III.

C

QUESTENBERG.

Ay, doubtless, it is true: the Duke does spare us
The troublesome task of chusing.

-BUTLER.

Yes, the Duke

Cares with a father's feelings for his troops;
But how the Emperor feels for us, we see.
QUESTENBERG.

His cares and feelings all ranks share alike,
Nor will he offer one up to another.

ISOLANI.

And therefore thrusts he us into the deserts
As beasts of prey, that so he may preserve
His dear sheep fattening in his fields at home.
QUESTENBERG (with a sneer).
Count, this comparison you make, not I.

BUTLER.

Why, were we all the Court supposes us,
'Twere dangerous, sure, to give us liberty.

QUESTENBERG.

You have taken liberty-it was not given you.
And therefore it becomes an urgent duty

To rein it in with curbs.

OCTAVIO (interposing and addressing Questenberg).

My noble friend,

This is no more than a remembrancing