TELL.
My blood runs cold even while I talk with thee.
Away! Pursue thine awful course! Nor longer
Pollute the cot where innocence abides!
[DUKE JOHN turns to depart.
DUKE JOHN.
I cannot live, and will no longer thus!
TELL.
And yet my soul bleeds for thee—gracious heaven!
So young, of such a noble line, the grandson
Of Rudolph, once my lord and emperor,
An outcast—murderer—standing at my door,
The poor man's door—a suppliant, in despair!
[Covers his face.
DUKE JOHN.
If thou hast power to weep, oh let my fate
Move your compassion—it is horrible.
I am—say, rather was—a prince. I might
Have been most happy had I only curbed
The impatience of my passionate desires;
But envy gnawed my heart—I saw the youth
Of mine own cousin Leopold endowed
With honor, and enriched with broad domains,
The while myself, that was in years his equal,
Was kept in abject and disgraceful nonage.
TELL.
Unhappy man, thy uncle knew thee well,
When he withheld both land and subjects from thee;
Thou, by thy mad and desperate act hast set
A fearful seal upon his sage resolve.
Where are the bloody partners of thy crime?
DUKE JOHN.
Where'er the demon of revenge has borne them;
I have not seen them since the luckless deed.
TELL.
Know'st thou the empire's ban is out,—that thou
Art interdicted to thy friends, and given
An outlawed victim to thine enemies!
DUKE JOHN.
Therefore I shun all public thoroughfares,
And venture not to knock at any door—
I turn my footsteps to the wilds, and through
The mountains roam, a terror to myself.
From mine own self I shrink with horror back,
Should a chance brook reflect my ill-starred form.
If thou hast pity for a fellow-mortal——