Guta. But your poor children? What becomes of them?
Eliz. Oh! she who was not worthy of a husband
Does not deserve his children. What are they, darlings,
But snares to keep me from my heavenly spouse
By picturing the spouse I must forget?
Well—’tis blank horror. Yet if grief’s good for me,
Let me down into grief’s blackest pit,
And follow out God’s cure by mine own deed.
Guta. What will your kinsfolk think?
Eliz. What will they think!
What pleases them. That argument’s a staff
Which breaks whene’er you lean on’t. Trust me, girl,
That fear of man sucks out love’s soaring ether,
Baffles faith’s heavenward eyes, and drops us down,
To float, like plumeless birds, on any stream.
Have I not proved it?
There was a time with me, when every eye
Did scorch like flame: if one looked cold on me,
I straight accused myself of mortal sins:
Each fopling was my master: I have lied
From very fear of mine own serving-maids.—
That’s past, thank God’s good grace!
Guta. And now you leap
To the other end of the line.
Eliz. In self-defence.
I am too weak to live by half my conscience;
I have no wit to weigh and choose the mean;
Life is too short for logic; what I do
I must do simply; God alone must judge—
For God alone shall guide, and God’s elect—
I shrink from earth’s chill frosts too much to crawl—
I have snapped opinion’s chains, and now I’ll soar
Up to the blazing sunlight, and be free.
[The bishop of Bamberg enters. Conrad following.]
Bishop. The Devil plagued St. Antony in the likeness of a lean friar! Between mad monks and mad women, bedlam’s broke loose, I think.
Con. When the Spirit first descended on the elect, seculars then, too, said mocking, ‘These men are full of new wine.’
Bishop. Seculars, truly! If I had not in my secularity picked up a spice of chivalry to the ladies, I should long ago have turned out you and your regulars, to cant elsewhere. Plague on this gout—I must sit.