"Not for my sake alone, for thy own too, I beg of thee to come. I feel the intolerable pains thou art suffering, whilst thou fleest from me. Come, that our separation may be less cruel! Perhaps I was never worthy of thee till this moment, when thou art repelling me to boundless woe."
"By all that is holy, by all that can touch a human heart, I call upon thee! It involves the safety of a soul, it involves a life, two lives, one of which must ever be dear to thee. This, too, thy suspicion will discredit: yet I will speak it in the hour of death; the child which I carry under my heart is thine. Since I began to love thee, no other man has even pressed my hand. Oh that thy love, that thy uprightness, had been the companions of my youth!"
"Thou wilt not hear me? I must even be silent. But these letters will not die: perhaps they will speak to thee, when the shroud is covering my lips, and the voice of thy repentance cannot reach my ear. Through my weary life, to the last moment, this will be my only comfort, that, though I cannot call myself blameless, towards thee I am free from blame."
Wilhelm could proceed no farther: he resigned himself entirely to his sorrow, which became still more afflicting; when, Laertes entering, he was obliged to hide his feelings. Laertes showed a purse of ducats, and began to count and reckon them, assuring Wilhelm that there could be nothing finer in the world than for a man to feel himself on the way to wealth; that nothing then could trouble or detain him. Wilhelm bethought him of his dream, and smiled; but at the same time, he remembered with a shudder, that in his vision Mariana had forsaken him, to follow his departed father, and that both of them at last had moved about the garden, hovering in the air like spirits.
Laertes forced him from his meditations: he brought him to a coffee-house, where, immediately on Wilhelm's entrance, several persons gathered round him. They were men who had applauded his performance on the stage: they expressed their joy at meeting him; lamenting that, as they had heard, he meant to leave the theatre. They spoke so reasonably and kindly of himself and his acting, of his talent, and their hopes from it, that Wilhelm, not without emotion, cried at last, "Oh, how infinitely precious would such sympathy have been to me some months ago! How instructive, how encouraging! Never had I turned my mind so totally from the concerns of the stage, never had I gone so far as to despair of the public."
"So far as this," said an elderly man who now stepped forward, "we should never go. The public is large: true judgment, true feeling, are not quite so rare as one believes; only the artist ought not to demand an unconditional approval of his work. Unconditional approval is always the least valuable: conditional you gentlemen are not content with. In life, as in art, I know well, a person must take counsel with himself when he purposes to do or to produce any thing: but, when it is produced or done, he must listen with attention to the voices of a number; and, with a little practice, out of these many votes he will be able to collect a perfect judgment. The few who could well have saved us this trouble for the most part hold their peace."
"This they should not do," said Wilhelm. "I have often heard people, who themselves kept silence in regard to works of merit, complain and lament that silence was kept."
"To-day, then, we will speak aloud," cried a young man. "You must dine with us; and we will try to pay off a little of the debt which we have owed to you, and sometimes also to our good Aurelia."