Illo. What? 'Twas a favourable year; the Boors
Can answer fresh demands already.

Questenberg. Nay,
If you discourse of herds and meadow-grounds—

Isolani. The war maintains the war. Are the Boors ruined,
The Emperor gains so many more new soldiers. 60

Questenberg. And is the poorer by even so many subjects.

Isolani. Poh! We are all his subjects.

Questenberg. Yet with a difference, General! The one fill
With profitable industry the purse,
The others are well skilled to empty it. 65
The sword has made the Emperor poor; the plough
Must reinvigorate his resources.

Isolani. Sure!
Times are not yet so bad. Methinks I see [Examining with his eye the dress and ornaments of Questenberg.
Good store of gold that still remains uncoined.

Questenberg. Thank Heaven! that means have been found out to hide 70
Some little from the fingers of the Croats.

Illo. There! The Stawata and the Martinitz,
On whom the Emperor heaps his gifts and graces,
To the heart-burning of all good Bohemians—
Those minions of court favour, those court harpies, 75
Who fatten on the wrecks of citizens
Driven from their house and home—who reap no harvests
[[606]] Save in the general calamity—
Who now, with kingly pomp, insult and mock
The desolation of their country—these, [80]
Let these, and such as these, support the war,
The fatal war, which they alone enkindled!

Butler. And those state-parasites, who have their feet
So constantly beneath the Emperor's table,
Who cannot let a benefice fall, but they [85]
Snap at it with dog's hunger—they, forsooth,
Would pare the soldier's bread, and cross his reckoning!