FRANCIS. Vulgar prejudice! mere superstition! It has not yet been proved that the past is not past and forgotten, or that there is an eye above this earth to take account of what passes on it. Humph! Humph! But whence, then, this fearful whisper to my soul? Is there really an avenging judge above the stars? No, no! Yes, yes! A fearful monitor within bears witness that there is One above the stars who judgeth! What! meet the avenger above the stars this very night? No, no! I say. All is empty, lonely, desolate, beyond the stars. Miserable subterfuge, beneath which thy cowardice seeks to hide itself. And if there should be something in it after all? No! no! it cannot be. I insist that it cannot be! But yet, if there should be! Woe to thee if thy sins should all have been registered above!—if they should be counted over to thee this very night! Why creeps this shudder through my frame? To die! Why does that word frighten me thus? To give an account to the Avenger, there, above the stars! and if he should be just—the wails of orphans and widows, of the oppressed, the tormented, ascending to his ears, and he be just? Why have they been afflicted? And why have I been permitted to trample upon them?
Enter PASTOR MOSER.
MOSER. Your lordship sent for me! I am surprised! The first time in my life! Is it to scoff at religion, or does it begin to make you tremble?
FRANCIS. I may scoff or I may tremble, according as you shall answer me. Listen to me, Moser, I will prove that you are a fool, or wish to make fools of others, and you shall answer me. Do you hear? At the peril of your life you shall answer me.
MOSER. 'Tis a higher Being whom you summon before your tribunal. He will answer you hereafter.
FRANCIS. I will be answered now, this instant, that I may not commit the contemptible folly of calling upon the idol of the vulgar under the pressure of suffering. I have often, in bumpers of Burgundy, tauntingly pledged you in the toast, "There is no God!" Now I address myself to you in earnest, and I tell you there is none? You shall oppose me with all the weapons in your power; but with the breath of my lips I will blow them away.
MOSER. 'Twere well that you could also blow away the thunder which will alight upon your proud soul with ten thousand times ten thousand tons' weight! That omniscient God, whom you—fool and miscreant—are denying in the midst of his creation, needeth not to justify himself by the mouth of dust. He is as great in your tyrannies as in the sweetest smile of triumphant virtue.
FRANCIS. Uncommonly well said, parson. Thus I like you.
MOSER. I stand here as steward of a greater Master, and am addressing one who, like myself, is a sinner—one whom I care not to please. I must indeed be able to work miracles, to extort the acknowledgment from your obdurate wickedness—but if your conviction is so firm, why have you sent for me in the middle of the night?
FRANCIS. Because time hangs heavy on my hands, and the chess-board has ceased to have any attraction. I wish to amuse myself in a tilt with the parson. Your empty terrors will not unman my courage. I am well aware that those who have come off short in this world look forward to eternity; but they will be sadly disappointed. I have always read that our whole body is nothing more than a blood-spring, and that, with its last drop, mind and thought dissolve into nothing. They share all the infirmities of the body; why, then, should they not cease with its dissolution? Why not evaporate in its decomposition? Let a drop of water stray into your brain, and life makes a sudden pause, which borders on non-existence, and this pause continued is death. Sensation is the vibration of a few chords, which, when the instrument is broken, cease to sound. If I raze my seven castles—if I dash this Venus to pieces—there is an end of their symmetry and beauty. Behold! thus is it with your immortal soul!