Con. As I live I meant it not; yet had I bribed them to it, Those words were no less G.o.d's.

Eliz. I know it, I know it; And I'll obey them: come, the victim's ready.

[Lays her hand on the altar. Gerard, Abbess, and Monks descend and advance.]

All worldly goods and wealth, which once I loved, I do now count but dross: and my beloved, The children of my womb, I now regard As if they were another's. G.o.d is witness My pride is to despise myself; my joy All insults, sneers, and slanders of mankind; No creature now I love, but G.o.d alone.

Oh, to be clear, clear, clear, of all but Him!

Lo, here I strip me of all earthly helps--

[Tearing off her clothes.]

Naked and barefoot through the world to follow My naked Lord--And for my filthy pelf--

Con. Stop, Madam--

Eliz. Why so, sir?

Con. Upon thine oath!

Thy wealth is G.o.d's, not thine--How darest renounce The trust He lays on thee? I do command thee, Being, as Aaron, in G.o.d's stead, to keep it Inviolate, for the Church and thine own needs.

Eliz. Be it so--I have no part nor lot in't-- There--I have spoken.

Abbess. O n.o.ble soul! which neither gold, nor love, Nor scorn can bend!

Gerard. And think what pure devotions, What holy prayers must they have been, whose guerdon Is such a flood of grace!

Nuns. What love again!

What flame of charity, which thus prevails In virtue's guest!

Eliz. Is self-contempt learnt thus?

I'll home.

Abbess. And yet how blest, in these cool shades To rest with us, as in a land-locked pool, Touched last and lightest by the ruffling breeze.

Eliz. No! no! no! no! I will not die in the dark: I'll breathe the free fresh air until the last, Were it but a month--I have such things to do-- Great schemes--brave schemes--and such a little time!

Though now I am harnessed light as any foot-page.

Come, come, my ladies. [Exeunt Elizabeth, etc.]

Ger. Alas, poor lady!

Con. Why alas, my son?

She longs to die a saint, and here's the way to it.

Ger. Yet why so harsh? why with remorseless knife Home to the stem prune back each bough and bud?

I thought the task of education was To strengthen, not to crush; to train and feed Each subject toward fulfilment of its nature, According to the mind of G.o.d, revealed In laws, congenital with every kind And character of man.

Con. A heathen dream!

Young souls but see the gay and warm outside, And work but in the shallow upper soil.

Mine deeper, and the sour and barren rock Will stop you soon enough. Who trains G.o.d's Saints, He must transform, not pet--Nature's corrupt throughout-- A gaudy snake, which must be crushed, not tamed, A cage of unclean birds, deceitful ever; Born in the likeness of the fiend, which Adam Did at the Fall, the Scripture saith, put on.

Canst thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, To make him sport for thy maidens? Scripture saith Who is the prince of this world--so forget not.

Ger. Forgive, if my more weak and carnal judgment Be startled by your doctrines, and doubt trembling The path whereon you force yourself and her.

Con. Startled? Belike--belike--let doctrines be; Thou shalt be judged by thy works; so see to them, And let divines split hairs: dare all thou canst; Be all thou darest;--that will keep thy brains full.

Have thy tools ready, G.o.d will find thee work-- Then up, and play the man. Fix well thy purpose-- Let one idea, like an orbed sun, Rise radiant in thine heaven; and then round it All doctrines, forms, and disciplines will range As dim parhelia, or as needful clouds, Needful, but mist-begotten, to be dashed Aside, when fresh shall serve thy purpose better.

Ger. How? dashed aside?

Con. Yea, dashed aside--why not?

The truths, my son, are safe in G.o.d's abysses-- While we patch up the doctrines to look like them.

The best are tarnished mirrors--clumsy bridges, Whereon, as on firm soil, the mob may walk Across the gulf of doubt, and know no danger.

We, who see heaven, may see the h.e.l.l which girds it.

Blind trust for them. When I came here from Rome, Among the Alps, all through one frost-bound dawn, Waiting with sealed lips the noisy day, I walked upon a marble mead of snow-- An angel's spotless plume, laid there for me: Then from the hillside, in the melting noon, Looked down the gorge, and lo! no bridge, no snow-- But seas of writhing glacier, gashed and scored With splintered gulfs, and fathomless creva.s.ses, Blue lips of h.e.l.l, which sucked down roaring rivers The fiends who fled the sun. The path of Saints Is such; so shall she look from heaven, and see The road which led her thither. Now we'll go, And find some lonely cottage for her lodging; Her shelter now is but a crumbling ruin Roofed in with pine boughs--discipline more healthy For soul, than body: She's not ripe for death.

[Exeunt.]

SCENE II

Open s.p.a.ce in a suburb of Marpurg, near Elizabeth's Hut. Count Walter and Count Pama of Hungary entering.

C. Pama. I have prepared my nerves for a shock.

C. Wal. You are wise, for the world's upside down here. The last gateway brought us out of Christendom into the New Jerusalem, the fifth Monarchy, where the Saints possess the earth. Not a beggar here but has his pockets full of fair ladies' tokens: not a barefooted friar but rules a princess.

C. Pama. Creeping, I opine, into widows' houses, and for a pretence making long prayers.

C. Wal. Don't quote Scripture here, sir, especially in that gross literal way! The new lights here have taught us that Scripture's saying one thing, is a certain proof that it means another. Except, by the bye, in one text.

C. Pama. What's that?

C. Wal. 'Ask, and it shall be given you.'

C. Pama. Ah! So we are to take nothing literally, that they may take literally everything themselves?

C. Wal. Humph! As for your text, see if they do not saddle it on us before the day is out, as glibly as ever you laid it on them.

Here comes the lady's tyrant, of whom I told you.

[Conrad advances from the Hut.]

Con. And what may Count Walter's valour want here?

[Count Walter turns his back.]

C. Pama. I come, Sir Priest, from Andreas, king renowned Of Hungary, amba.s.sador unworthy Unto the Landgravine, his saintly daughter; And fain would be directed to her presence.

Con. That is as I shall choose. But I'll not stop you.