The Dramatic Works of G. E. Lessing Part 34

ARIDaUS.

Fate willed it thus! From equal scales it took equal weights at the same time, and the scales are balanced still.

STRATO.

You wish to know more details. Polytimet led the very squadron, towards which you rushed too rashly; and when your soldiers saw that you were lost, rage and despair gave them superhuman strength. They broke through the lines and all a.s.sailed the one in whom they saw the compensation for their loss. The end you know! Now accept a word of advice from an old soldier: The a.s.sault is not a race; not he who first, but he who most surely meets the enemy, approaches victory. Note this, too ardent prince! otherwise the future hero may be stifled in his earliest bud.

ARIDaUS.

Strato, you vex the prince with your warning, though it be friendly.

How gloomily he stands there!

PHILOTAS.

Not so. But do not mind me. In deep adoration of Providence--

ARIDaUS.

The best adoration, prince, is grateful joy! Cheer up! We fathers will not long withhold our sons from one another. My herald is now ready; he shall go and hasten the exchange. But you know that joyful tidings, heard from the enemy alone, have the appearance of snares. They might suspect that you, perchance, had died from your wound. It will be necessary, therefore, for you to send a trustworthy messenger to your father with the herald. Come with me! Choose among the prisoners one whom you hold worthy of your confidence.

PHILOTAS.

You wish, then, that I shall detest myself a hundredfold? In each of the prisoners I shall behold myself! Spare me this embarra.s.sment!

ARIDaUS.

But----

PHILOTAS.

Parmenio must be among the prisoners. Send him to me! I will despatch him.

ARIDaUS.

Well, be it so! Come, Strato! Prince, we shall see each other soon again!

Scene IV.

PHILOTAS.

O G.o.d! the lightning could not have struck nearer without destroying me entirely. Wondrous G.o.ds! The flash returns! The vapour pa.s.ses off, and I was only stunned. My whole misery then was seeing how miserable I might have become--how miserable my father through me!--Now I may appear again before you, my father! But still with eyes cast down; though shame alone will cast them down, and not the burning consciousness of having drawn you down with me to destruction. Now I need fear nothing from you but a smiling reprimand; no silent grief; no curses stifled by the stronger power of paternal love----

But--yes, by Heavens! I am too indulgent towards myself. May I forgive myself all the errors which Providence seems to pardon me? Shall I not judge myself more severely than Providence and my father judge me? All too indulgent judges! All other sad results of my imprisonment the G.o.ds could annihilate; one only they could not--the disgrace! It is true they could wipe out that fleeting shame, which falls from the lips of the vulgar crowd: but not the true and lasting disgrace, which the inner judge, my impartial self, p.r.o.nounces over me!

And how easily I delude myself! Does my father then lose nothing through me?

The weight which the capture of Polytimet must throw into the scale if I were not a prisoner--is that nothing? Only through me does it become nothing! Fortune would have declared for him for whom it should declare;--the right of my father would triumph, if Polytimet was prisoner and not Philotas and Polytimet!

And now--but what was that which I thought just now? Nay, which a G.o.d thought within me--I must follow it up! Let me chain thee, fleeting thought! Now I have it again! How it spreads, farther and farther; and now it beams throughout my soul!

What did the king say? Why did he wish that I myself should send a trustworthy messenger to my father? In order that my father should not suspect--yes, thus ran his own words--that I had already died, perchance, from my wounds. He thinks, then, that the affair would take a different aspect, if I had died already from my wound. Would it do so? A thousand thanks for this intelligence. A thousand thanks! Of course it is so. For my father would then have a prince as his prisoner, for whom he could make any claim; and the king, his enemy, would have the body of a captured prince, for which he could demand nothing; which he must have buried or burned, if it should not become an object of disgust to him.

Good! I see that! Consequently, if I, I the wretched prisoner, will still turn the victory into my father's hands--on what does it depend?

on death? On nothing more? O truly--the man is mightier than he thinks, the man who knows how to die!

But I? I, the germ, the bud of a man, do I know how to die? Not the man, the grown man alone, knows how to die; the youth also, the boy also; or he knows nothing at all. He who has lived ten years has had ten years time to learn to die; and what one does not learn in ten years, one neither learns in twenty, in thirty, nor in more. All that which I might have been, I must show by what I already am. And what could I, what would I be? A hero! Who is a hero? O my excellent, my absent father, be now wholly present in my soul! Have you not taught me that a hero is a man who knows higher goods than life? A man who has devoted his life to the welfare of the state; himself, the single one, to the welfare of the many? A hero is a man--a man? Then not a youth, my father? Curious question! It is good that my father did not hear it.

He would have to think that I should be pleased, if he answered "No" to it. How old must the pine-tree be which has to serve as a mast? How old?--It must be tall enough, and must be strong enough.

Each thing, said the sage who taught me, is perfect if it can fulfil its end. I can fulfil my end, I can die for the welfare of the state; I am therefore perfect, I am a man. A man! although but a few days ago I was still a boy.

What fire rages in my veins? What inspiration falls on me? The breast becomes too narrow for the heart! Patience, my heart! Soon will I give thee s.p.a.ce! Soon will I release thee from thy monotonous and tedious task! Soon shalt thou rest, and rest for long!

Who comes? It is Parmenio! Quick! I must decide! What must I say to him? What message must I send my father through him?--Right! that I must say, that message I must send.

Scene V.

Parmenio. Philotas.

PHILOTAS.

Approach, Parmenio! Well? Why so shy--so full of shame? Of whom are you ashamed? Of yourself or of me?

PARMENIO.

Of both of us, prince!

PHILOTAS.

Speak always as you think! Truly, Parmenio, neither of us can be good for much, since we are here. Have you already heard my story?

PARMENIO.

Alas!

PHILOTAS.

And when you heard it?

PARMENIO.

I pitied you, I admired you, I cursed you; I do not know myself what I did.

PHILOTAS.

Yes, yes! But now that you have also learned, as I suppose, that the misfortune is not so great since Polytimet immediately afterwards was----