Enter SCHWEITZER, GRIMM, ROLLER, SCHUFTERLE, and RAZMAN.
ROLLER. Are you aware that they are on our track!
GRIMM. That we are not for a moment safe from being taken?
CHARLES VON M. I don't wonder at it. It must be as it will! Have none of you seen Schwarz? Did he say anything about having a letter for me?
ROLLER. He has been long in search of you on some such errand, I suspect.
CHARLES VON M. Where is he? where, where? (is about to rush of in haste).
ROLLER. Stay! we have appointed him to come here. You tremble?
CHARLES VON M. I do not tremble. Why should I tremble? Comrades, this letter-rejoice with me! I am the happiest man under the sun; why should I tremble?
Enter SCHWARZ.
CHARLES VON M. (rushes towards him). Brother, brother! the letter, the letter!
SCHW. (gives him a letter, which he opens hastily). What's the matter? You have grown as pale as a whitewashed wall!
CHARLES VON M. My brother's hand!
SCHW. What the deuce is Spiegelberg about there?
GRIMM. The fellow's mad. He jumps about as if he had St. Vitus' dance.
SCHUF. His wits are gone a wool gathering! He's making verses, I'll be sworn!
RAZ. Spiegelberg! Ho! Spiegelberg! The brute does not hear.
GRIMM. (shakes him). Hallo! fellow! are you dreaming? or-
SPIEGEL. (who has all this time been making gestures in a corner of the room, as if working out some great project, jumps up wildly). Your money or your life! (He catches SCHWEITZER by the throat, who very coolly flings him against the wall; Moor drops the letter and rushes out. A general sensation.)
ROLLER. (calling after him). Moor! where are you going? What's the matter?
GRIMM. What ails him? What has he been doing? He is as pale as death.
SCHW. He must have got strange news. Just let us see!
ROLLER. (picks up the letter from the ground, and reads). "Unfortunate brother!"-a pleasant beginning-"I have only briefly to inform you that you have nothing more to hope for. You may go, your father directs me to tell you, wherever your own vicious propensities lead. Nor are you to entertain, he says, any hope of ever gaining pardon by weeping at his feet, unless you are prepared to fare upon bread and water in the lowest dungeon of his castle until your hair shall outgrow eagles' feathers, and your nails the talons of a vulture. These are his very words. He commands me to close the letter. Farewell forever! I pity you.
"FRANCIS VON MOOR"
SCHW. A most amiable and loving brother, in good truth! And the scoundrel's name is Francis.
SPIEGEL. (slinking forward). Bread and water! Is that it? A temperate diet! But I have made a better provision for you. Did I not say that I should have to think for you all at last?
SCHWEIT. What does the blockhead say! The jackass is going to think for us all!
SPIEGEL. Cowards, cripples, lame dogs are ye all if you have not courage enough to venture upon something great.
ROLLER. Well, of course, so we should be, you are right; but will your proposed scheme get us out of this devil of a scrape? eh?
SPIEGEL. (with a proud laugh). Poor thing! Get us out of this scrape? Ha, ha, ha! Get us out of the scrape!-and is that all your thimbleful of brain can reach? And with that you trot your mare back to the stable? Spiegelberg would have been a miserable bungler indeed if that were the extent of his aim. Heroes, I tell you, barons, princes, gods, it will make of you.
RAZ. That's pretty well for one bout, truly! But no doubt it is some neck-breaking piece of business; it will cost a head or so at the least.
SPIEGEL. It wants nothing but courage; as to the headwork, I take that entirely upon myself. Courage, I say, Schweitzer! Courage, Roller! Grimm! Razman! Schufterle! Courage!
SCHW. Courage! If that is all, I have courage enough to walk through hell barefoot.
SCHUFT. And I courage enough to fight the very devil himself under the open gallows for the rescue of any poor sinner.
SPIEGEL. That's just what it should be! If ye have courage, let any one of you step forward and say he has still something to lose, and not everything to gain?
SCHW. Verily, I should have a good deal to lose, if I were to lose all that I have yet to win!
PAZ. Yes, by Jove! and I much to win, if I could win all that I have not got to lose.
SCHUFT. Were I to lose what I carry on my back on trust I should at any rate have nothing to lose on the morrow.
SPIEGEL. Very well then! (He takes his place in the middle of them, and says in solemn adjuration)-if but a drop of the heroic blood of the ancient Germans still flow in your veins-come! We will fix our abode in the Bohemian forests, draw together a band of robbers, and-What are you gaping at? Has your slender stock of courage oozed out already?
ROLLER. You are not the first rogue by many that has defied the gallows;-and yet what other choice have we?
SPIEGEL. Choice? You have no choice. Do you want to lie rotting in the debtor's jail and beat hemp till you are bailed by the last trumpet? Would you toil with pick-axe and spade for a morsel of dry bread? or earn a pitiful alms by singing doleful ditties under people's windows? Or will you be sworn at the drumhead-and then comes the question, whether anybody would trust your hang-dog visages-and so under the splenetic humor of some despotic sergeant serve your time of purgatory in advance? Would you like to run the gauntlet to the beat of the drum? or be doomed to drag after you, like a galley-slave, the whole iron store of Vulcan? Behold your choice. You have before you the complete catalogue of all that you may choose from!
ROLLER. Spiegelberg is not altogether wrong! I, too, have been concocting plans, but they come much to the same thing. How would it be, thought I, were we to club our wits together, and dish up a pocketbook, or an almanac, or something of that sort, and write reviews at a penny a line, as is now the fashion?
SCHUFT. The devil's in you! you are pretty nearly hitting on my own schemes. I have been thinking to myself how would it answer were I to turn Methodist, and hold weekly prayer-meetings?
GRIMM. Capital! and, if that fails, turn atheist! We might fall foul of the four Gospels, get our book burned by the hangman, and then it would sell at a prodigious rate.
RAZ. Or we might take the field to cure a fashionable ailment. I know a quack doctor who has built himself a house with nothing but mercury, as the motto over his door implies.
SCHWEIT. (rises and holds out his hand to Spiegelberg). Spiegelberg, thou art a great man! or else a blind hog has by chance found an acorn.
SCHW. Excellent schemes! Honorable professions! How great minds sympathize! All that seems wanting to complete the list is that we should turn pimps and bawds.
SPIEGEL. Pooh! Pooh! Nonsense. And what is to prevent our combining most of these occupations in one person? My plan will exalt you the most, and it holds out glory and immortality into the bargain. Remember, too, ye sorry varlets, and it is a matter worthy of consideration: one's fame hereafter-the sweet thought of immortality-
ROLLER. And that at the very head of the muster-roll of honorable names! You are a master of eloquence, Spiegelberg, when the question is how to convert an honest man into a scoundrel. But does any one know what has become of Moor?