Chapter 6

A Room in the Wartburg Monastery. PRINCESS MATHILDIS and

PRIOR PEPPERCORN.

PRIOR. Be comforted, my daughter. Your lord's wisdom Goes hand in hand with his known piety Thus dealing with your son. To love a Jewess Is flat contempt of Heaven--to ask in marriage, Sheer spiritual suicide. Let be; Justice must take its course.

PRINCESS. Justice is murdered; Oh slander not her corpse. For my son's fault, A thousand innocents are doomed. Is that God's justice?

PRIOR. Yea, our liege is but his servant. Did not He purge with fiery hail those twain Blotches of festering sin, Gomorrah, Sodom? The Jews are never innocent,--when Christ Agonized on the Cross, they cried--"His blood Be on our children's heads and ours!" I mark A dangerous growing evil of these days, Pity, misnamed--say, criminal indulgence Of reprobates brow-branded by the Lord. Shall we excel the Christ in charity? Because his law is love, we tutor him In mercy and reward his murderers? Justice is blind and virtue is austere. If the true passion brimmed our yearning hearts The vision of the agony would loom Fixed vividly between the day and us:-- Nailed on the gaunt black Cross the divine form, Wax-white and dripping blood from ankles, wrists, The sacred ichor that redeems the world, And crowded in strange shadow of eclipse, Reviling Jews, wagging their heads accursed, Sputtering blasphemy--who then would shrink From holy vengeance? who would offer less Heroic wrath and filial zeal to God Than to a murdered father?

PRINCESS. But my son Will die with her he loves.

PRIOR. Better to perish In time than in eternity. No question Pends here of individual life; our sight Must broaden to embrace the scope sublime Of this trans-earthly theme. The Jew survives Sword, plague, fire, cataclysm--and must, since Christ Cursed him to live till doomsday, still to be A scarecrow to the nations. None the less Are we beholden in Christ's name at whiles, When maggot-wise Jews breed, infest, infect Communities of Christians, to wash clean The Church's vesture, shaking off the filth That gathers round her skirts. A perilous germ! Know you not, all the wells, the very air The Jews have poisoned?--Through their arts alone The Black Death scourges Christendom.

PRINCESS. I know All heinousness imputed by their foes. Father, mistake me not: I urge no plea To shield this hell-spawn, loathed by all who love The lamb and kiss the Cross. I had not guessed Such obscure creatures crawled upon my path, Had not my son--I know not how misled-- Deigned to ennoble with his great regard, A sparkle midst the dust motes. SHE is sacred. What is her tribe to me? Her kith and kin May rot or roast--the Jews of Nordhausen May hang, drown, perish like the Jews of France, But she shall live--Liebhaid von Orb, the Jewess, The Prince, my son, elects to love.

PRIOR. Amen! Washed in baptismal waters she shall be Led like the clean-fleeced yeanling to the fold. Trust me, my daughter--for through me the Church Which is the truth, which is the life, doth speak. Yet first 't were best essay to cure the Prince Of this moon-fostered madness, bred, no doubt, By baneful potions which these cunning knaves Are skilled to mix.

PRINCESS. Go visit him, dear father, Where in the high tower mewed, a wing-clipped eagle, His spirit breaks in cage. You are his master, He is wont from childhood to hear wisdom fall From your instructed lips. Tell him his mother Rises not from her knees, till he is freed.

PRIOR. Madam, I go. Our holy Church has healed Far deadlier heart-wounds than a love-sick boy's. Be of good cheer, the Prince shall live to bless The father's rigor who kept pure of blot A 'scutcheon more unsullied than the sun.

PRINCESS. Thanks and farewell.

PRIOR. Farewell. God send thee peace! [Exeunt.]