than yours who greeted him so loudly. Now it again
beats higher! In the hour of peril you conceal yourselves, deny him, and
feel not, that if he perish, you are lost.

Brackenburg. Come home.

Clara. Home?

Brackenburg. Recollect thyself! Look around thee! These are the streets
in which thou weft wont to appear only on the Sabbath-day, when thou
didst walk modestly to church; where, over-decorous perhaps, thou wert
displeased if I but joined thee with a kindly greeting. And now thou
dost stand, speak, and act before the eyes of the whole world. Recollect
thyself, love! How can this avail us?

Clara. Home! Yes, I remember. Come, Brackenburg, let us go home! Knowest
thou where my home lies?

[Exeunt.

SCENE II.--A Prison

Lighted by a lamp, a couch in the background

Egmont (alone). Old friend! Ever faithful sleep, dost thou too forsake
me, like my other friends? How wert thou wont of yore to descend
unsought upon my free brow, cooling my temples as with a myrtle wreath
of love! Amidst the din of battle, on the waves of life, I rested in
thine arms, breathing lightly as a growing boy. When tempests whistled
through the leaves and boughs, when the summits of the lofty trees swung
creaking in the blast, the inmost core of my heart remained unmoved.
What agitates thee now? What shakes thy firm and steadfast mind? I feel
it, 'tis the sound of the murderous axe, gnawing at thy root. Yet
I stand erect, but an inward shudder runs through my frame. Yes, it
prevails, this treacherous power; it undermines the firm, the lofty
stem, and ere the bark withers, thy verdant crown falls crashing to the
earth.

Yet wherefore now, thou who hast so often chased the weightiest cares
like bubbles from thy brow, wherefore canst thou not dissipate this dire
foreboding which incessantly haunts thee in a thousand different shapes?
Since when hast thou trembled at the approach of death, amid whose
varying forms, thou weft wont calmly to dwell, as with the other shapes
of this familiar earth. But 'tis not he, the sudden foe, to encounter
whom the sound bosom emulously pants;---'tis the dungeon, emblem of the
grave, revolting alike to the hero and the coward. How intolerable I
used to feel it, in the stately hall, girt round by gloomy walls, when,
seated on my cushioned chair, in the solemn assembly of the princes,
questions, which scarcely required deliberation, were overlaid with
endless discussions, while the rafters of the ceiling