The King. God is the only "most gracious King"! Do not speak blasphemy!
The Priest. It was not my duty to—
The General. Our friend is not a court chaplain. He has merely a parish in the town here—
The Mayor. And his work lies chiefly among the factory hands.
The King. And so it is not your duty to speak the truth to me—but to attack my dear dead friends by prating about heaven's judgment and repeating vile lies? Is that your duty?
The Mayor. I only had the honour to know one of the—the deceased. Your Majesty honoured him with your friendship; the greatest honour a subject can enjoy. I should like to say that one would rarely find a nobler heart, a loftier mind, or more modest fidelity, than his.
The General. I should like, if I may make so bold, to make use of the opportunity chance has afforded me of associating myself with my sovereign's sorrow, a sorrow for which his whole people must feel the deepest respect, but especially those who, in consequence of their high position, are more particularly called upon to be the pillars of the monarchy; to use this opportunity, I say—and to do so, I know, as the representative of many thousands of your Majesty's subjects—to voice the sympathy, the unfeigned grief, that will be poured forth at the news of this new loss which has wrung your Majesty's heart—a loss which will reawaken consternation in the country and make it more than ever necessary to take the severest possible measures against a party to which nothing is sacred, neither the King's person nor the highest dignities of office nor the inviolability of the home—a party whose very existence depends on sedition and ought no longer to be tolerated, but ought, as the enemy of the throne and of society, to be visited with all the terrors of the law, until—
The King. What about compassion, my friend?
The General. Compassion?
The King. Not for the republicans—but for me!