NORDMANN.
May the Lord grant thee thine own prayer fourfold!
PRIOR.
What is thine errand?
NORDMANN.
Look at me, my father.
Long since you called me friend.
[The PRIOR looks at him attentively, while an expression of wonder
and terror gradually overspreads his face.]
PRIOR.
Almighty God!
The grave gives up her dead. Thou canst not be—
NORDMANN.
Nordmann of Nordmannstein, the Knight of Treffurt.
PRIOR.
He was beheaded years agone.
NORDMANN.
His death
Had been decreed, but in his stead a squire
Clad in his garb and masked, paid bloody forfeit.
A loyal wretch on whom the Prince wreaked vengeance,
Rather than publish the true bird had flown.
PRIOR.
Does Frederick know thou art in Eisenach?
NORDMANN.
Who would divine the Knight of Nordmannstein
In the Flagellants' weeds? From land to land,
From town to town, we cry, "Death to the Jews!
Hep! hep! "Hierosolyma est perdita!"
They die like rats; in Gotha they are burned;
Two of the devil brutes in Chatelard,
Child-murderers, wizards, breeders of the Plague,
Had the truth squeezed from them with screws and racks,
All with explicit date, place, circumstance,
And written as it fell from dying lips
By scriveners of the law. On their confession
The Jews of Savoy were destroyed. To-morrow noon
The holy flames shall dance in Nordhausen.
PRIOR.
Your zeal bespeaks you fair. In your deep eyes
A mystic fervor shines; yet your scarred flesh
And shrunken limbs denote exhausted nature,
Collapsing under discipline.