instincts, act forever
With undivided heart. It can remain
No longer thus. Like enemies, the roads
Start from each other. Duties strive with duties.
Thou must needs choose thy party in the war
Which is now kindling 'twixt thy friend and him
Who is thy Emperor.

MAX.

War! is that the name?
War is as frightful as heaven's pestilence,
Yet it is good. Is it heaven's will as that is?
Is that a good war, which against the Emperor
Thou wagest with the Emperor's own army?
O God of heaven! what a change is this!
Beseems it me to offer such persuasion
To thee, who like the fix'd star of the pole
Wert all I gazed at on life's trackless ocean?
O! what a rent thou makest in my heart!
The ingrain'd instinct of old reverence,
The holy habit of obediency,
Must I pluck live asunder from thy name?
Nay, do not turn thy countenance upon me--
It always was as a god looking upon me!
Duke Wallenstein, its power has not departed.
The senses still are in thy bonds, although,
Bleeding, the soul hath freed itself.

WALLENSTEIN.

Max, hear me.

MAX.

O! do it not, I pray thee, do it not!
There is a pure and noble soul within thee
Knows not of this unblest, unlucky doing.
Thy will is chaste, it is thy fancy only
Which hath polluted thee; and innocence--
It will not let itself be driven away
From that world-awing aspect. Thou wilt not,
Thou canst not, end in this. It would reduce
All human creatures to disloyalty
Against the nobleness of their own nature.
'Twill justify the vulgar misbelief
Which holdeth nothing noble in free will
And trusts itself to impotence alone
Made powerful only in an unknown power.

WALLENST.

The world will judge me sternly, I expect it.
Already have I said to my own self
All thou canst say to me. Who but avoids
The extreme, can he by going round avoid it?
But here there is no choice. Yes--I must use
Or suffer violence--so stands the case;
There remains nothing possible but that.

MAX.

O that is never possible for thee!
'Tis the last desperate resource of those
Cheap souls to whom their honor, their good name
Is their poor _saving_, their last worthless _keep_,
Which, having staked and lost, they stake themselves
In the mad rage of gaming. Thou art rich
And glorious; with an unpolluted heart
Thou canst make conquest of whate'er seems highest!
But he, who once hath acted infamy,
Does nothing more in this world.

WALLENSTEIN (_grasps his hand_).