tay
An hour, thus treated like a slave--an idiot.

Isen. Well, 'twas past bearing: so we are thrust forth
To starve again. Are all your jewels gone?

Guta. All pawned and eaten--and for her, you know,
She never bore the worth of one day's meal
About her dress. We can but die--No foe
Can ban us from that rest.

Isen. Ay, but these children!--Well--if it must be,
Here, Guta, pull off this old withered hand
My wedding-ring; the man who gave it me
Should be in heaven--and there he'll know my heart.
Take it, girl, take it. Where's the Princess now?
She stopped before a crucifix to pray;
But why so long?

Guta. Oh! prayer, to her rapt soul,
Is like the drunkenness of the autumn bee,
Who, scent-enchanted, on the latest flower,
Heedless of cold, will linger listless on,
And freeze in odorous dreams.

Isen. Ah! here she comes.

Guta. Dripping from head to foot with wet and mire!
How's this?

[Elizabeth entering.]

Eliz. How? Oh, my fortune rises to full flood:
I met a friend just now, who told me truths
Wholesome and stern, of my deceitful heart--
Would God I had known them earlier!--and enforced
Her lesson so, as I shall ne'er forget it
In body or in mind.

Isen. What means all this?

Eliz. You know the stepping-stones across the ford.
There as I passed, a certain aged crone,
Whom I had fed, and nursed, year after year,
Met me mid-stream--thrust past me stoutly on--
And rolled me headlong in the freezing mire.
There as I lay and weltered,--'Take that, Madam,
For all your selfish hypocritic pride
Which thought it such a vast humility
To wash us poor folk's feet, and use our bodies
For staves to build withal your Jacob's-ladder.
What! you would mount to heaven upon our backs?
The ass has thrown his rider.' She crept on--
I washed my garments in the brook hard by--
And came here, all the wiser.

Guta. Miscreant hag!

Isen. Alas, you'll freeze.

Guta. Who could have dreamt the witch
Could harbour such a spite?

Eliz. Nay, who could dream
She would have guessed my heart so well? Dull boors
See deeper than we think, and hide within
Those leathern hulls unfathomable truths,
Which we amid thought's glittering mazes lose.
They grind among the iron facts of life,
And have no time for self-deception.

Isen. Come--
Put on my cloak--stand here, behind the wall.
Oh! is it come to this? She'll die of cold.

Guta. Ungrateful fiend!

Eliz. Let be--we must not think on't.
The scoff