SCHNETZEN.
This I have told him.
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Father, believe him not.
I swear by heaven 't is no unseemly love
Leads me to Susskind's house.
LANDGRAVE.
With what high title
Please you to qualify it?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
True, I love
Liebhaid von Orb, but 't is the honest passion
Wherewith a knight leads home his equal wife.
LANDGRAVE.
Great God! and thou wilt brag thy shame! Thou speakest
Of wife and Jewess in one breath! Wilt make
Thy princely name a stench in German nostrils?
PRINCE WILLIAM.
Hold, father, hold! You know her—yes, a Jewess
In her domestic piety, her soul
Large, simple, splendid like a star, her heart
Suffused with Syrian sunshine—but no more—
The aspect of a Princess of Thuringia,
Swan-necked, gold-haired, Madonna-eyed. I love her!
If you will quench this passion, take my life!
[He falls at his father's feet.
FREDERICK, in a paroxysm of rage,
seizes his sword.]
SCHNETZEN.
He is your son!
LANDGRAVE.
Oh that he ne'er were born!
Hola! Halberdiers! Yeomen of the Guard!
Enter Guardsmen.
Bear off this prisoner! Let him sigh out
His blasphemous folly in the castle tower,
Until his hair be snow, his fingers claws.
[They seize and bear away PRINCE WILLIAM.]
Well, what's your counsel?
SCHNETZEN.
Briefly this, my lord.
The Jews of Nordhausen have brewed the Prince
A love-elixir—let them perish all!
[Tumult without. Singing of Hymns and Ringing of Church-bells.
The LANDGRAVE and SCHNETZEN go to the window.]
SONG* (without).
The cruel pestilence arrives,
Cuts off a myriad human lives.
See the Flagellants' naked skin!
They scourge themselves for grievous sin.
Trembles the earth beneath God's breath,
The Jews shall all be burned to death.
*A rhyme of the times. See Graetz's "History of the Jews,"
page 374, vol. vii.