Chapter 46

And I, too, am a good citizen. Do I not fulfil the extremity of the law? Do I not honor the law? Do I not uphold and defend it? I remember speaking to a poor officer on my way hither, who was toiling as a day-laborer, and has eleven living children. A thousand ducats have been offered to whoever shall deliver up the great robber alive. That man shall be served. [Exit.]

CHARLES. Oh! fool that I was, to fancy that I could amend the world by misdeeds and maintain law by lawlessness! I called it vengeance and equity. I presumed, O Providence! upon whetting out the notches of thy sword and repairing thy partialities. But, oh, vain trifling! here I stand on the brink of a fearful life, and learn, with wailing and gnashing of teeth, that two men like myself could ruin the whole edifice of the moral world. Pardon--pardon the boy who thought to forestall Thee; to Thee alone belongeth vengeance; Thou needest not the hand of man! But it is not in my power to recall the past; that which is ruined remains ruined; what I have thrown down will never more rise up again. Yet one thing is left me whereby I may atone to the offended majesty of the law and restore the order which I have violated. A victim is required--a victim to declare before all mankind how inviolable that majesty is--that victim shall be myself. I will be the death-offering!

ROBBERS. Take his sword from him--he will kill himself.

CHARLES. Fools that ye are! doomed to eternal blindness! Think ye that one mortal sin will expiate other mortal sins? Do you suppose that the harmony of the world would be promoted by such an impious discord? (Throwing his arms at their feet.) He shall have me alive. I go to deliver myself into the hands of justice.

ROBBERS. Put him in chains! he has lost his senses!

CHARLES. Not that I have any doubt but that justice would find me speedily enough if the powers above so ordained it. But she might surprise me in sleep, or overtake me in flight, or seize me with violence and the sword, and then I should have lost the only merit left me, that of making my death a free-will atonement. Why should I, like a thief, any longer conceal a life, which in the counsels of the heavenly ministry has long been forfeited?

ROBBERS. Let him go. He is infected with the great-man-mania; he means to offer up his life for empty admiration.

CHARLES. I might, 'tis true, be admired for it. (After a moment's reflection.) I remember, on my way hither, talking to a poor creature, a day-laborer, with eleven living children. A reward has been offered of a thousand louis-d'ors to any one who shall deliver up the great robber alive. That man shall be served. [Exit.]

FIESCO, OR THE GENOESE CONSPIRACY.

A TRAGEDY.

By Frederich Schiller

AUTHOR'S PREFACE.

The chief sources from which I have drawn the history of this conspiracy are Cardinal de Retz's Conjuration du Comte Jean Louis de Fiesque, the Histoire des Genes, and the third volume of Robertson's History of Charles the Fifth.

The liberties which I have taken with the historical facts will be excused, if I have succeeded in my attempt; and, if not, it is better that my failure should appear in the effusions of fancy, than in the delineation of truth. Some deviation from the real catastrophe of the conspiracy (according to which the count actually perished [A] when his schemes were nearly ripe for execution) was rendered necessary by the nature of the drama, which does not allow the interposition either of chance or of a particular Providence. It would be matter of surprise to me that this subject has never been adopted by any tragic writer, did not the circumstances of its conclusion, so unfit for dramatic representation, afford a sufficient reason for such neglect. Beings of a superior nature may discriminate the finest links of that chain which connects an individual action with the system of the universe, and may, perhaps, behold them extended to the utmost limits of time, past and future; but man seldom sees more than the simple facts, divested of their various relations of cause and effect. The writer, therefore, must adapt his performance to the short-sightedness of human nature, which he would enlighten; and not to the penetration of Omniscience, from which all intelligence is derived.

In my Tragedy of the Robbers it was my object to delineate the victim of an extravagant sensibility; here I endeavor to paint the reverse; a victim of art and intrigue. But, however strongly marked in the page of history the unfortunate project of Fiesco may appear, on the stage it may prove less interesting. If it be true that sensibility alone awakens sensibility, we may conclude that the political hero is the less calculated for dramatic representation, in proportion as it becomes necessary to lay aside the feelings of a man in order to become a political hero.

It was, therefore, impossible for me to breathe into my fable that glowing life which animates the pure productions of poetical inspiration; but, in order to render the cold and sterile actions of the politician capable of affecting the human heart, I was obliged to seek a clue to those actions in the human heart itself. I was obliged to blend together the man and the politician, and to draw from the refined intrigues of state situations interesting to humanity. The relations which I bear to society are such as unfold to me more of the heart than of the cabinet; and, perhaps, this very political defect may have become a poetical excellence.

[A] Fiesco, after having succeeded in the chief objects of his undertaking, happened to fall into the sea whilst hastening to quell some disturbances on board of a vessel in the harbor; the weight of his armor rendered his struggles ineffectual, and he perished. The deviation from history in the tragedy might have been carried farther, and would perhaps have rendered it more suitable to dramatic representation.--Translation.

FIESCO; OR, THE GENOESE CONSPIRACY.

A TRAGEDY.

DRAMATIS PERSONAE.

ANDREAS DORIA, Duke of Genoa, a venerable old man, eighty years of age, retaining the traces of a high spirit: the chief features in this character are dignity and a rigid brevity in command.

GIANETTINO DORIA, nephew of the former, and pretender to the ducal power, twenty-six years of age, rough and forbidding in his address, deportment, and manners, with a vulgar pride and disgusting features.

FIESCO, Count of Lavagna, chief of the conspiracy, a tall, handsome young man, twenty-three years of age; his character is that of dignified pride and majestic affability, with courtly complaisance and deceitfulness.

VERRINA, a determined republican, sixty years of age; grave, austere, and inflexible: a marked character.

BOURGOGNINO, a conspirator, a youth of twenty; frank and high-spirited, proud, hasty, and undisguised.

CALCAGNO, a conspirator, a worn-out debauchee of thirty; insinuating and enterprising.

SACCO, a conspirator, forty-five years of age, with no distinguishing trait of character.

LOMELLINO, in the confidence of the pretender, a haggard courtier.

ZENTURIONE, | ZIBO, | Malcontents. ASSERATO, |

ROMANO, a painter, frank and simple, with the pride of genius.

MULEY HASSAN, a Moor of Tunis, an abandoned character, with a physiognomy displaying an original mixture of rascality and humor.

A GERMAN of the ducal body-guard, of an honest simplicity, and steady bravery.

THREE SEDITIOUS CITIZENS.

LEONORA, the wife of Fiesco, eighteen years of age, of great sensibility; her appearance pale and slender, engaging, but not dazzling; her countenance marked with melancholy; her dress black.

JULIA, Countess dowager Imperiali, sister of the younger Doria, aged twenty-five; a proud coquette, in person tall and full, her beauty spoiled by affectation, with a sarcastic maliciousness in her countenance; her dress black.

BERTHA, daughter of Verrina, an innocent girl.

ROSA, | Maids of Leonora. ARABELLA, |

Several Nobles, Citizens, Germans, Soldiers, Thieves.

(SCENE--Genoa. TIME--the year 1547.)