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!
MOSER. So says the philosophy of your despair. But your own heart, which knocks against your ribs with terror even while you thus argue, gives your tongue the lie. These cobwebs of systems are swept away by the single word—"Thou must die!" I challenge you, and be this the test: If you maintain your firmness in the hour of death; if your principles do not then miserably desert you, you shall be admitted to have the best of the argument. But if, in that dread hour, the least shudder creeps over you, then woe be to you! you have deceived yourself.
FRANCIS (disturbed). If in the hour of death a shudder creeps over me?
MOSER. I have seen many such wretches before now, who set truth at defiance up to that point; but at the approach of death the illusion vanished. I will stand at your bedside when you are dying—I should much like to see a tyrant die. I will stand by, and look you steadfastly in the face when the physician takes your cold, clammy hand, and is scarcely able to detect your expiring pulse; and when he looks up, and, with a fearful shake of the head, says to you, "All human aid is in vain!" Beware, at that moment, beware, lest you look like Richard and Nero!
FRANCIS. No! no!