God! God!
Nathan
And now, O Saladin, if thou
Art confident that thou indeed art he,
The wise, the promised Judge....
Saladin
I? dust! I? nothing!
O God!
Nathan
Saladin
Nathan, Nathan,
The thousand thousand years are not yet done!
Not mine that judgment-seat! Enough—farewell!
But henceforth be my friend.
[6] The concluding twenty lines of this translation have appeared in the writer’s “Life of Lessing” (Walter Scott).