ew'st
What black and mischief-bringing thoughts have found
Their way into my sad and trembling heart!

KING. Perhaps of vengeance? Why, so much the better!
Thou feel'st the human duty to forgive,
And know'st that e'en the best of us may err.
We will not punish, nor avenge ourselves;
For _she_, believe me, _she_ is guiltless quite,
As common grossness or vain weakness is,
Which merely struggles not, but limply yields.
I only bear the guilt, myself alone.

QUEEN. Let me believe what keeps and comforts me
The Moorish folk, and all that like them are,
Do practise secret and nefarious arts,
With pictures, signs and sayings, evil draughts,
Which turn a mortal's heart within his breast,
And make his will obedient to their own.

KING. Magic devices round about us are,
But we are the magicians, we ourselves.
That which is far removed, a thought brings near;
What we have scorned, another time seems fair;
And in this world so full of miracles,
We are the greatest miracle ourselves!

QUEEN. She has thy picture!

KING. And she shall return 't,
In full view I shall nail it to the wall,
And for my children's children write beneath:
A King, who, not so evil in himself,
Hath once forgot his office and his duty.
Thank God that he did find himself again.

QUEEN. But thou, thyself, dost wear about thy neck--

KING. Oh yes! Her picture? So you knew that, too?

[_He takes the picture with the chain from his neck, and lays it on the
table in the foreground to the right._]

So then I lay it down, and may it lie--
A bolt not harmful, now the thunder's past.
The girl herself--let her be ta'en away!
She then may have a man from out her race--

[_Walking fitfully back and forth from the rear to the front of the
stage, and stopping short now and then._]

But no, not that!--The women of this race
Are passable, good even, but the men
With dirty hands and narrow greed of gain--
This girl shall not be touched by such a one.
Indeed, she has to better on