Part 10
Strato? The brave Strato, who defeated my father on the Lycus?
STRATO.
Do not recall that doubtful victory! And how bloodily did your father revenge himself in the plain of Methymna! Such a father must needs have such a son.
PHILOTAS.
To you, the worthiest of my father's enemies, I may bewail my fate! You only can fully understand me; you too, you too have been consumed in your youth by the ambition of the glory--the glory of bleeding for your native land. Would you otherwise be what you are? How have I not begged, implored, conjured him--my father these seven days--for only seven days has the manly toga covered me--conjured him seven times on each of these seven days upon my knees to grant me that I should not in vain have outgrown my childhood,--to let me go with his warriors who had long cost me many a tear of jealousy. Yesterday I prevailed on him, the best of fathers, for Aristodem assisted my entreaties. You know Aristodem; he is my father's Strato.--"Give me this youth, my king, to go with me to-morrow," spoke Aristodem, "I am going to scour the mountains, in order to keep open the way to Caesena." "Would I could accompany you!" sighed my father. He still lies sick from his wounds. "But be it so!" and with these words he embraced me. Ah, what did his happy son feel in that embrace! And the night which followed! I did not close my eyes; and yet dreams of glory and victory kept me on my couch until the second watch. Then I sprang up, threw on my new armour, pushed the uncurled hair beneath the helmet, chose from amongst my father's swords the one which matched my strength, mounted my horse and had tired out one already before the silver trumpet awakened the chosen band. They came, and I spoke with each of my companions, and many a brave warrior there pressed me to his scarred breast. Only with my father I did not speak; for I feared he might retract his word, if he should see me again. Then we marched. By the side of the immortal gods one cannot feel happier than did I by the side of Aristodem. At every encouraging glance from him I would have attacked a host alone, and thrown myself on the certain death of the enemy's swords. In quiet determination I rejoiced at every hill, from which I hoped to discern the enemy in the plain below, at every bend of the valley behind which I flattered myself that we should come upon them. And when at last I saw them rushing down upon us from the woody height,--showed them to my companions with the point of my sword,--flew up the mountain towards them, recall, O renowned warrior, the happiest of your youthful ecstasies, you could never have been happier. But now, now behold me, Strato; behold me ignominiously fallen from the summit of my lofty expectations! O how I shudder to repeat this fall again in thought! I had rushed too far in advance; I was wounded, and--imprisoned! Poor youth, thou hadst prepared thyself only for wounds, only for death,--and thou art made a prisoner! Thus always do the gods, in their severity, send only unforeseen evils to stultify our self-complacency. I weep--I must weep, although I fear to be despised for it by you. But despise me not! You turn away?
STRATO.
I am vexed: you should not move me thus. I become a child with you.
PHILOTAS.
No; hear why I weep! It is no childish weeping which you deign to accompany with your manly tears. What I thought my greatest happiness, the tender love with which my father loves me, will now become my greatest misery. I fear, I fear he loves me more than he loves his empire! What will he not sacrifice, what will not your king exact from him, to rescue me from prison! Through me, wretched youth, will he lose in one day more than he has gained in three long toilsome years with the blood of his noble warriors, with his own blood. With what face shall I appear again before him? I, his worst enemy! And my father's subjects--mine at some future day, if I had made myself worthy to rule them. How will they be able to endure the ransomed prince amongst them without contemptuous scorn. And when I die for shame, and creep unmourned to the shades below, how gloomy and proud will pass by the souls of those heroes who for their king had to purchase with their lives those gains, which, as a father, he renounces for an unworthy son! Oh, that is more than a feeling heart can endure!
STRATO.
Be comforted, dear prince! It is the fault of youth always to think itself more happy or less than it really is. Your fate is not so cruel yet;--the king approaches, you will hear more consolation from his lips.
Scene III.
King Aridaeus, Philotas, Strato.
ARIDAeUS.
The wars which kings are forced to wage together are no personal quarrels. Let me embrace you, prince! Ah what happy days your blooming youth recalls to me! Thus bloomed your father's youth! This was his open, speaking eye; these his earnest, honest features; this his noble bearing! Let me embrace you again; in you I embrace your younger father. Have you never heard from him, prince, what good friends we were at your age? That was the blessed age, when we could still abandon ourselves to our feelings without restraint. But soon we were both called to the throne, and the anxious king, the jealous neighbour, stifled, alas, the willing friend.
PHILOTAS.
Pardon me, O king, if you find me too cold in my reply to such sweet words. My youth has been taught to think, but not to speak. What can it now aid me, that you and my father once were friends? Were! so you say yourself. The hatred which one grafts on an extinguished friendship bears the most deadly fruit of all; or I still know the human heart too little. Do not, therefore, O king, do not prolong my despair. You have spoken as the polished statesman: speak now as the monarch, who has the rival of his greatness completely in: his power.
STRATO.
O king, do not let him be tormented longer by the uncertainty of his fate!
PHILOTAS.
I thank you, Strato! Yes, let me hear at once, I beg you, how despicable you will render an unfortunate son in his father's eyes. With what disgraceful peace, with how many lands shall he redeem him? How small and contemptible shall he become, in order to regain his child? O my father!
ARIDAeUS.
This early, manly language too, prince, was your father's! I like to hear you speak thus. And would that my son, no less worthy of me, spoke thus before your father now.
PHILOTAS.
What mean you by that?
ARIDAeUS.
The gods--I am convinced of it--watch over our virtue, as they watch over our lives. To preserve both as long as possible is their secret and eternal work. Where is the mortal who knows how wicked he is at heart,--how viciously he would act, if they allowed free scope to each treacherous inducement to disgrace himself by little deeds! Yes, prince! Perhaps I might be he, whom you think me; perhaps I might not have sufficient nobleness of thought to use with modesty the strange fortune of war, which delivered you into my hands; perhaps I might have tried through you to exact that for which I would no longer venture to contend by arms; perhaps--but fear nothing; a higher power has forestalled this. Perhaps. I cannot let your father redeem his son more dearly than by--mine.
PHILOTAS.
I am astounded! You give me to understand that----
ARIDAeUS.
That my son is your father's prisoner, as you are mine.
PHILOTAS.
Your son my father's prisoner? Your Polytimet? Since when? How? Where?
ARIDAeUS.
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 assailed 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 assault 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.
ARIDAeUS.
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--
ARIDAeUS.
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 embarrassment!
ARIDAeUS.
But----
PHILOTAS.
Parmenio must be among the prisoners. Send him to me! I will despatch him.
ARIDAeUS.
Well, be it so! Come, Strato! Prince, we shall see each other soon again!
Scene IV.
PHILOTAS.
O God! the lightning could not have struck nearer without destroying me entirely. Wondrous gods! The flash returns! The vapour passes 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 gods 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, pronounces 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 god 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!
What did the king say? Why did he wish that I myself should send a trustworthy messenger to my father? In order that my father should not suspect--yes, thus ran his own words--that I had already died, perchance, from my wounds. He thinks, then, that the affair would take a different aspect, if I had died already from my wound. Would it do so? A thousand thanks for this intelligence. A thousand thanks! Of course it is so. For my father would then have a prince as his prisoner, for whom he could make any claim; and the king, his enemy, would have the body of a captured prince, for which he could demand nothing; which he must have buried or burned, if it should not become an object of disgust to him.
Good! I see that! Consequently, if I, I the wretched prisoner, will still turn the victory into my father's hands--on what does it depend? on death? On nothing more? O truly--the man is mightier than he thinks, the man who knows how to die!
But I? I, the germ, the bud of a man, do I know how to die? Not the man, the grown man alone, knows how to die; the youth also, the boy also; or he knows nothing at all. He who has lived ten years has had ten years time to learn to die; and what one does not learn in ten years, one neither learns in twenty, in thirty, nor in more. All that which I might have been, I must show by what I already am. And what could I, what would I be? A hero! Who is a hero? O my excellent, my absent father, be now wholly present in my soul! Have you not taught me that a hero is a man who knows higher goods than life? A man who has devoted his life to the welfare of the state; himself, the single one, to the welfare of the many? A hero is a man--a man? Then not a youth, my father? Curious question! It is good that my father did not hear it. He would have to think that I should be pleased, if he answered "No" to it. How old must the pine-tree be which has to serve as a mast? How old?--It must be tall enough, and must be strong enough.
Each thing, said the sage who taught me, is perfect if it can fulfil its end. I can fulfil my end, I can die for the welfare of the state; I am therefore perfect, I am a man. A man! although but a few days ago I was still a boy.
What fire rages in my veins? What inspiration falls on me? The breast becomes too narrow for the heart! Patience, my heart! Soon will I give thee space! Soon will I release thee from thy monotonous and tedious task! Soon shalt thou rest, and rest for long!
Who comes? It is Parmenio! Quick! I must decide! What must I say to him? What message must I send my father through him?--Right! that I must say, that message I must send.
Scene V.
Parmenio. Philotas.
PHILOTAS.
Approach, Parmenio! Well? Why so shy--so full of shame? Of whom are you ashamed? Of yourself or of me?
PARMENIO.
Of both of us, prince!
PHILOTAS.
Speak always as you think! Truly, Parmenio, neither of us can be good for much, since we are here. Have you already heard my story?
PARMENIO.
Alas!
PHILOTAS.
And when you heard it?
PARMENIO.
I pitied you, I admired you, I cursed you; I do not know myself what I did.
PHILOTAS.
Yes, yes! But now that you have also learned, as I suppose, that the misfortune is not so great since Polytimet immediately afterwards was----
PARMENIO.
Yes, now; now I could almost laugh! I find that Fate often stretches its arm to terrible length to deal a trifling blow. One might think it wished to crush us, and it has after all done nothing but killed a fly upon our forehead.
PHILOTAS.
To the point. I am to send you to my father with the king's herald.
PARMENIO.
Good! Your imprisonment will then plead for mine. Without the good news which I shall bring him from you, and which is well worth a friendly look, I should have had to promise myself rather a frosty one from him.
PHILOTAS.
No, honest Parmenio; in earnest now! My father knows that the enemy carried you from the battle-field bleeding and half dead. Let him boast who will. He whom approaching death has already disarmed is easily taken captive. How many wounds have you now, old warrior?
PARMENIO.
O, I could cite a long list of them once. But now I have shortened it a good deal.
PHILOTAS.
How so?
PARMENIO.
Ha! I do not any more count the limbs on which I am wounded; to save time and breath I count those which still are whole. Trifles after all! For what else has one bones, but that the enemy's iron should notch itself upon them?
PHILOTAS.
That is bold! But now--what will you say to my father?
PARMENIO.
What I see: that you are well. For your wound, if I have heard the truth----
PHILOTAS.
Is as good as none.
PARMENIO.
A sweet little keepsake. Such as an ardent maid nips in our cheek. Is it not, prince?
PHILOTAS.
What do I know of that?
PARMENIO.
Well, well, time brings experience! Further I will tell your father what I believe you wish----
PHILOTAS.
And what is that?
PARMENIO.
To be with him again as soon as possible. Your childlike longing, your anxious impatience----
PHILOTAS.
Why not home-sickness at once! Knave! Wait and I will teach you to think differently.
PARMENIO.
By Heavens you must not! My dear youthful hero, let me tell you, you are still a child! Do not let the rough soldier so soon stifle in you the loving child! Or else one might not put the best construction on your heart; one might take your valour for inborn ferocity. I also am a father, father of an only son, who is but a little older than you, who with equal ardour--But you know him!
PHILOTAS.
I know him. He promises everything that his father has accomplished.
PARMENIO.
But if I knew that the young rogue did not long for his father at every moment when service leaves him free, and did not long for him as the lamb longs for its dam, I should wish--you see--that I had not begotten him. At present he must love more than respect me. I shall soon enough have to content myself with the respect, when nature guides the stream of his affection in another channel; when he himself becomes a father. Do not grow angry, prince!
PHILOTAS.
Who can grow angry with you? You are right! Tell my father everything which you think a loving son should say to him at such a time. Excuse my youthful rashness, which has almost brought him and his empire to destruction. Beg him to forgive my fault. Assure him that I shall never again remind him of it by a similar fault; that I will do everything that he too may be able to forget it. Entreat him----
PARMENIO.
Leave it to me! Such things we soldiers can say well. And better than a learned orator, for we say it more sincerely. Leave it to me! I know it all already. Farewell, prince! I hasten----
PHILOTAS.
Stop!
PARMENIO.
Well? What means this serious air which you suddenly assume?
PHILOTAS.
The son has done with you, but not yet the prince. The one had to feel; the other has to think! How willingly would the son be again with his father,--his beloved father--this very moment--sooner than were possible; but the prince, the prince cannot.--Listen!
PARMENIO.
The prince cannot?
PHILOTAS.
And will not!
PARMENIO.
Will not?
PHILOTAS.
Listen!
PARMENIO.
I am surprised!
PHILOTAS.
I say, you shall listen and not be surprised. Listen!
PARMENIO.
I am surprised, because I listen. It has lightened, and I expect the thunderbolt. Speak!--But, young prince, no second rashness!
PHILOTAS.
But, soldier, no subtilising! Listen! I have my reasons for wishing not to be redeemed before to-morrow. Not before to-morrow! Do you hear? Therefore tell our king that he shall not heed the haste of our enemy's herald! Tell him that a certain doubt, a certain plan compelled Philotas to this delay. Have you understood me?
PARMENIO.
No!
PHILOTAS.
Not? Traitor!
PARMENIO.
Softly, prince! A parrot does not understand, but he yet recollects what one says to him. Fear not! I will repeat everything to your father that I hear from you.
PHILOTAS.
Ha! I forbade you to subtilise; and that puts you out of humour. But how is it that you are so spoiled? Do all your generals inform you of their reasons?
PARMENIO.
All, prince!--Except the young ones.
PHILOTAS.
Excellent! Parmenio, if I were so sensitive as you----
PARMENIO.
And yet he only to whom experience has given twofold sight can command my blind obedience.
PHILOTAS.
Then I shall soon have to ask your pardon. Well, I ask your pardon, Parmenio! Do not grumble, old man! Be kind again, old father! You are indeed wiser than I am. But not the wisest only have the best ideas. Good ideas are gifts of fortune, and good fortune, as you well know, often gives to the youth rather than to the old man. For Fortune is blind. Blind, Parmenio! Stone blind to all merit. If it were not so, would you not have been a general long ago?
PARMENIO.
How you know how to flatter, prince! But in confidence, beloved prince, do you not wish to bribe me--to bribe me with flatteries?
PHILOTAS.
I flatter? And bribe you? You are the man indeed whom one could bribe!
PARMENIO.
If you continue thus, I may become so. Already I no longer thoroughly trust myself.
PHILOTAS.
What was it I was saying? One of those good ideas, which fortune often throws into the silliest brain, I too have seized--merely seized, not the slightest portion of it is my own. For if my reason,--my invention had some part in it, should I not wish to consult with you about it? But this I cannot do; it vanishes, if I impart it; so tender, so delicate is it, that I do not venture to clothe it in words. I conceive it only, as the philosopher has taught me to conceive God, and at the most I could only tell you what it is not. It is possible enough that it is in reality a childish thought; a thought which I consider happy, because I have not yet had a happier. But let that be; if it can do no good, it can at least do no harm. That I know for certain; it is the most harmless idea in the world; as harmless as--as a prayer! Would you cease to pray because you are not quite certain whether the prayer will be of use to you? Do not then spoil my pleasure, Parmenio, honest Parmenio! I beg you, I embrace you. If you love me but a very little--will you? Can I rely on you? Will you manage that I am not exchanged before to-morrow? Will you?
PARMENIO.
Will? Must I not? Must I not? Listen, prince; when you shall one day be king, do not give commands. To command is an unsure means of being obeyed. If you have a heavy duty to impose on anyone, do with him as you have just now done with me; and if he then refuses his obedience--Impossible! He cannot refuse it to you. I too must know what a man can refuse.
PHILOTAS.
What obedience? What has the kindness which you show me to do with obedience? Will you, my friend----
PARMENIO.