to suffer
Only a change of evils, it must be
Freed from the scourge alike of friend or foe.

ILLO.
What? 'Twas a favorable year; the boors
Can answer fresh demands already.

QUESTENBERG.
Nay,
If you discourse of herds and meadow-grounds----

ISOLANI.
The war maintains the war. Are the boors ruined
The emperor gains so many more new soldiers.

QUESTENBERG.
And is the poorer by even so many subjects.

ISOLANI.
Poh! we are all his subjects.

QUESTENBERG.
Yet with a difference, general! The one fill
With profitable industry the purse,
The others are well skilled to empty it.
The sword has made the emperor poor; the plough
Must reinvigorate his resources.

ISOLANI.
Sure!
Times are not yet so bad. Methinks I see
[Examining with his eye the dress and ornaments of QUESTENBERG.
Good store of gold that still remains uncoined.

QUESTENBERG.
Thank Heaven! that means have been found out to hide
Some little from the fingers of the Croats.

ILLO.
There! The Stawata and the Martinitz,
On whom the emperor heaps his gifts and graces,
To the heart-burning of all good Bohemians--
Those minions of court favor, those court harpies,
Who fatten on the wrecks of citizens
Driven from their house and home--who reap no harvests
Save in the general calamity--
Who now, with kingly pomp, insult and mock
The desolation of their country--these,
Let these, and such as these, support the war,
The fatal war, which they alone enkindled!

BUTLER.
And those state-parasites, who have their feet
So constantly beneath the emperor's table,
Who cannot let a benefice fall, but they
Snap at it with dogs' hunger--they, forsooth,
Would pare the soldiers bread and cross his reckoning!

ISOLANI.
My life long will it anger me to think,
How when I went to court seven years ago,
To see about new horses for our regiment,
How from one antechamber to another
They dragged me on and left me by the hour
To kick my heels among a crowd of simpering
Feast-fattened slaves, as if I had come thither
A mendicant suitor for the crumbs of favor
That fell beneath their tables. And, at last,
Whom should they send me but a Capuchin!
Straight I began to muster up my sins
For absolution--but no such luck for me!
This was the man, this Capuchin, with whom
I was to treat concerning the army horses!
And I was forced at last to quit the field,
The business unaccomplished. Afterwards
The duke procured me in three days w