ndition is too hard,--I cancel it.

_P. Coun._ Heaven bless you!

_Soph._ I will substitute an other in its place, which depends entirely
on yourself.

_P. Coun._ Then it is already accomplished.

_Soph._ Am I your choice even without any inheritance?

_P. Coun._ Without any inheritance whatever!

_Soph._ Your hand and heart are all I crave. To be candid, I expected
nothing less from you. Now for the arduous question; hear me! The
disposition in which I find you to day is charming, but not
meritorious. You have not been moulded to it by virtue, but frightened
into it by vice. You are irritable, you are weak, you are ambitious. A
time may come, when neither your father, nor the woman you love will be
able to influence you, as they luckily do at present.

_P. Coun._ You wrong me.

_Soph._ No, my friend. Give me time to proceed. You are irritable,
weak, and ambitious! Do you think, that, on the summit which you now
stand, you can render yourself useful to your fellow subjects with
these three--I had almost called them vices.

_P. Coun._ Not if I remain as I am.

_Soph._ You have hitherto been the instrument of strangers, and, in
proportion as you rose in extrinsic pomp, you sunk in intrinsic merit.

_P. Coun._ True, it is too true.

_Soph._ You are not possessed of sufficient resolution to stand at the
helm of a government; but you have genius, a good heart, and learning
enough, sufficient to secure a tranquil passage through life. Let my
love supply the whole of my father's considerable fortune; I cannot
muster the requisite resolution. Can your esteem for me induce you to
renounce the gilded splendor of state and office, and to spend the
remainder of your days in the calm retirement of obscurity? (Eagerly.)
Have you the resolution, Clarenbach, to resign the Privy
Counsellorship?--I do not want an immediate answer.

_P. Coun._ Love shakes my resolution! but to resign, would it not lower
me in the public eye?

_Soph._ Would it lower you in your own mind?

_P. Coun._ No. But--

_Soph._ Contentment must dwell here. (Pointing to his heart.) If ever
you have felt content, I need say no more.

_P. Coun._ No! Oh no!

_Soph._ Who can refuse his esteem to the man who has tasted the cup of
luxury, and, in the flower of youth and in the height of his career,
can dash it from his lips, and say, "I will not drink it; I prefer the
charms of a tranquil life to all the noise and well-bred hate of a
court? I am too