The Man. Have you already explored all the paths in the dark and unknown country of the Future? Did Destiny, withdrawing at midnight the curtains of your tent, stand visibly before you, and, placing her giant hand upon your scheming brain, impress upon it the mystic seal of victory? or in the heat of midday, when the world slept, and you alone were watching, did she glide pale, pitiless, and stern before you, and promise conquest, that you thus threaten me with defeat and ruin? You are but a man of clay as fragile as my own, and may be the victim of the first well-aimed ball, the first sharp thrust of the sword! Your life, like mine, hangs on a single thread, and you have no immunity from death!
Pancratius. Dreams! idle dreams! Oh do not deceive yourself with hopes so vain, for no bullet aimed by man will reach me, no sword will pierce me, while a single member of your haughty caste remains capable of resisting the task which it is my destiny to fulfil. And what doom soever may befall me, after its completion, count, will be too late to offer you the least advantage. (The clock strikes.) Hark! time flies—and scorns us both!
If you are weary of your own life, save at least your unfortunate son!
The Man. His pure soul is already saved in heaven: on earth he must share the fate of his father.
His head sinks heavily, and remains for some time buried in his hands.
Pancratius. You reject too all hope for him?... (Pauses.) Nay—you are silent—you reflect—it is well: reflection becomes him who stands upon the brink of the grave!
The Man. Away! away! Back from the passionate mysteries now surging through the depths of my soul! Profane them not with a word; they lie beyond your sphere!
The rough, wide world belongs to you; feed it with meat; flood it with wine; but press not into the holy secrets of my heart! Away! away from me, framer of material bliss!
Pancratius. Shame upon you, warrior, scholar, poet, and yet the slave of one idea and its dying forms! Thought and form are wax beneath my plastic fingers!
The Man. In vain would you seek to follow my thoughts; you will never understand me, for all your forefathers were buried in a common ditch, as dead things, not as men of individual character and bold distinctive spirit. (He points to the portraits of his ancestors.) Look upon these pictures! Love of country, of family, of the home hearth, feelings at war with all your ideas, are written in every line of their firm brows—their spirit lives entire in me, their last heir and representative. Tell me, O man without ancestors, where is your natal soil? You spread your wandering tent each coming eve Upon the ruins of another's home, every morning roll it up again that it may be unrolled anew at night to blight and spoil! Yon have not yet found a home, a hearth, and you will never find one as long as a hundred men live to cry with me: 'Glory to our fathers!'