And what further now?

ILLO.
Tiefenbach's soldiers, when I gave the orders.
To go off guard--mutinous villains!

TERZKY.
Well!

WALLENSTEIN.
What followed?

ILLO.
They refused obedience to them.

TERZKY.
Fire on them instantly! Give out the order.

WALLENSTEIN.
Gently! what cause did they assign?

ILLO.
No other,
They said, had right to issue orders but
Lieutenant-General Piccolomini.

WALLENSTEIN (in a convulsion of agony).
What? How is that?

ILLO.
He takes that office on him by commission,
Under sign-manual from the emperor.

TERZKY.
From the emperor--hearest thou, duke?

ILLO.
At his incitement
The generals made that stealthy flight----

TERZKY.
Duke, hearest thou?

ILLO.
Caraffa too, and Montecuculi,
Are missing, with six other generals,
All whom he had induced to follow him.
This plot he has long had in writing by him
From the emperor; but 'twas finally concluded,
With all the detail of the operation,
Some days ago with the Envoy Questenberg.

[WALLENSTEIN sinks down into a chair and covers his face.

TERZKY.
Oh, hadst thou but believed me!

SCENE IX.

To them enter the COUNTESS.

COUNTESS.
This suspense,
This horrid fear--I can no longer bear it.
For heaven's sake tell me what has taken place?

ILLO.
The regiments are falling off from us.

TERZKY.
Octavio Piccolomini is a traitor.

COUNTESS.
O my foreboding!

[Rushes out of the room.

TERZKY.
Hadst thou but believed me!
Now seest thou how the stars have lied to thee.

WALLENSTEIN.
The stars lie not; but we have here a work
Wrought counter to the stars and destiny.
The science is still honest: this false heart
Forces a lie on the truth-telling heaven,
On a divine law divination rests;
Where nature deviates from that law, and stumbles
Out of her limits, there all science errs.
True I did not suspect! Were it superstition
Never by such suspicion to have affronted
The human form, oh, may the time ne'er come
In which I shame me of the infirmity.
The wildest savage drinks not with the victim,
Into whose breast he means to plunge the sword.
This, this, Octavio, was no hero's deed
'Twas not thy prudence that did conquer mine;
A bad heart triumphed o'er an honest one.
No shield received the assassin stroke; thou plungest
Thy weapon on an unprotected breast--
Against such weapons I am but a child.