Part 34 (1/2)

ARIDaUS.

Fate willed it thus! From equal scales it took equal weights at the same time, and the scales are balanced still.

STRATO.

You wish to know more details. Polytimet led the very squadron, towards which you rushed too rashly; and when your soldiers saw that you were lost, rage and despair gave them superhuman strength. They broke through the lines and all a.s.sailed the one in whom they saw the compensation for their loss. The end you know! Now accept a word of advice from an old soldier: The a.s.sault is not a race; not he who first, but he who most surely meets the enemy, approaches victory. Note this, too ardent prince! otherwise the future hero may be stifled in his earliest bud.

ARIDaUS.

Strato, you vex the prince with your warning, though it be friendly.

How gloomily he stands there!

PHILOTAS.

Not so. But do not mind me. In deep adoration of Providence--

ARIDaUS.

The best adoration, prince, is grateful joy! Cheer up! We fathers will not long withhold our sons from one another. My herald is now ready; he shall go and hasten the exchange. But you know that joyful tidings, heard from the enemy alone, have the appearance of snares. They might suspect that you, perchance, had died from your wound. It will be necessary, therefore, for you to send a trustworthy messenger to your father with the herald. Come with me! Choose among the prisoners one whom you hold worthy of your confidence.

PHILOTAS.

You wish, then, that I shall detest myself a hundredfold? In each of the prisoners I shall behold myself! Spare me this embarra.s.sment!

ARIDaUS.

But----

PHILOTAS.

Parmenio must be among the prisoners. Send him to me! I will despatch him.

ARIDaUS.

Well, be it so! Come, Strato! Prince, we shall see each other soon again!

Scene IV.

PHILOTAS.

O G.o.d! the lightning could not have struck nearer without destroying me entirely. Wondrous G.o.ds! The flash returns! The vapour pa.s.ses off, and I was only stunned. My whole misery then was seeing how miserable I might have become--how miserable my father through me!--Now I may appear again before you, my father! But still with eyes cast down; though shame alone will cast them down, and not the burning consciousness of having drawn you down with me to destruction. Now I need fear nothing from you but a smiling reprimand; no silent grief; no curses stifled by the stronger power of paternal love----

But--yes, by Heavens! I am too indulgent towards myself. May I forgive myself all the errors which Providence seems to pardon me? Shall I not judge myself more severely than Providence and my father judge me? All too indulgent judges! All other sad results of my imprisonment the G.o.ds could annihilate; one only they could not--the disgrace! It is true they could wipe out that fleeting shame, which falls from the lips of the vulgar crowd: but not the true and lasting disgrace, which the inner judge, my impartial self, p.r.o.nounces over me!

And how easily I delude myself! Does my father then lose nothing through me?

The weight which the capture of Polytimet must throw into the scale if I were not a prisoner--is that nothing? Only through me does it become nothing! Fortune would have declared for him for whom it should declare;--the right of my father would triumph, if Polytimet was prisoner and not Philotas and Polytimet!

And now--but what was that which I thought just now? Nay, which a G.o.d thought within me--I must follow it up! Let me chain thee, fleeting thought! Now I have it again! How it spreads, farther and farther; and now it beams throughout my soul!