Scene 4
The Same. Joseph.
[Enter a Servant.
Servant.
The Viceroy comes!
Alex.
Weaponed for certain, as he always is
When he comes our way, since he had no luck
In cozening our wits with glozing phrases
After the manner of his first attempt.
Do you not know Salome at the time
Perished for jealousy?
Mar.
She does so now:
For with an intimate smile I say to him
Most shameless things whenever she is near,
And since herself she never tires of spying
I never tire of soundly whipping her
For fatuous folly.
[Enter Joseph.
Alex.
(pointing to Joseph’s weapon). See you?
Mar.
Let him then!
His wife demands it so that she may dream
She has a husband who’s a man of war.
Alex.
(to Joseph). I am still here!
Joseph.
A very strange reception!
Alex.
My son too is still here. As once before
He’s hid him in the dead man’s Wooden House.
Harry him out and I will pardon you
Because you did it once before unbidden.
But this time you must hunt your coffin not
Upon a vessel sailing Egypt-bound,
No, you must seek it in the graveyard’s belly!
Joseph.
I’m not the man to wake the dead to life.
Alex. (with scorn directed at Mariamne).
Ay true! or you had companied your Lord
So that when all his kneeling and his pleading
Were fruitless to frustrate the lictor’s axe——
Mar.
He kneels and pleads?
Joseph (to Mariamne).
I’ll let you know his way!
“I am impeached for this crime! I confess it!
But not for this! Well, for your information,
I’ll fill the gap up soon!” Yes, that’s his way.
Alex.
His cock crows for him?
Joseph.
He has done’t ere now,
As I stood by, the time the Pharisees
Would have arraigned him under Antony.
He filed his own indictment in their stead,
Hurried to camp before them, as he was,
And, when they came, revised and supplemented
The reckoning point for point and said to them—
“Speak, if I’ve left an item out or not!”
The event you know; a many of the accusers
Were shorn of their thick heads since they’d not budge;
He carried off the Roman’s fullest favour.
Alex.
In those days both were younger than they now are.
The one’s superb presumption pleased the other,
And all the more because at other’s costs,
Not at his own, ’twas flaunted. Can the Roman
Value the Pharisee at aught, whose tongue
Preaches continual mutiny ’gainst Rome?
“Who plucks his beard curtails his standing!” thought
Mark Antony in sport: and yet I doubt
If he’ll allow the joke against himself.
Joseph.
You speak as though you wished——
Alex.
Whether our wishes
Are paired or not, is that affair of yours?
You hold fast to your own! For you it’s weighty
That he returns.
Joseph.
You think so? If for me
For you, then.
Alex.
I have not a notion why
There was in olden days an Alexandra
Whose temples bore a crown in Israel,
Who fell on it when it became free prey
And would not leave it lying for a thief.
By God, we’ll have no dearth here of a second
If it is true (to Mariamne) that there are Maccabeans
Who keep their childish oaths!
Joseph (sounding Alexandra).
’Tis true indeed!
There was in olden days this Alexandra,
But whosoe’er will reach her goal, he must
Tread her whole journey with no half-way lapse.
Soon as she climbed the throne she reconciled
Herself with all her foes, and not a soul
Had need to fear her, only cause to hope.
No wonder that she sat fast till her death!
Mar.
I think that paltry! What end serves a sceptre
If not to gratify our hate and love?
A twig’s enough to frighten off the flies.
Joseph.
Quite true. (To Alexandra.) And you?
Alex.
She never saw in dream
Her House’s earliest sire, the mighty Judas,
’Tis certain else she had no foeman shunned;
For from his grave he still protects his children
Because he cannot die in any heart.
How could he so? There’s never a man can pray
Who must not say—“To him I owe my thanks
That I may yet kneel down before my God
And not to bronze and wood and stone.”
Joseph (aside).
The King
Was in the right! The deed I must accomplish,
And that on both, or else endure them both.
I must emplant the crown upon my brow
If I’d ensure it from the headsman’s axe.
For here a world of hate stares in against me.
Then good! Their sentence they’ve pronounced themselves.
For the last time I’ve put the test on them.
Were but his courier here, this very moment
I’d bring it to a pitiless consummation.
Each several preparation has been made.