Page:Wallenstein, a drama in 2 parts - Schiller (tr. Coleridge) (1800).djvu/246

DUCHESS.
Alas! then all is lost! I see it coming,
The worst that can come! Yes, they will depose him;
The accursed business of the Regenspurg diet
Will all be acted o'er again!

COUNTESS.
No! never!
Make your heart easy, sister, as to that.
(Thekla, in extreme agitation, throws herself upon
 her mother, and enfolds her in her arms, weeping.)

DUCHESS.
Yes, my poor child!
Thou too hast lost a most affectionate godmother
In th' empress. O that stern unbending man!
In this unhappy marriage what have I
Not suffer'd, not endur'd? For ev'n as if
I had been link'd on to some wheel of fire
That restless, ceaseless, whirls impetuous onward,
I have past a life of frights and horrors with him,
And ever to the brink of some Abyss
With dizzy headlong violence he whirls me.
Nay, do not weep, my child! Let not my suff'rings
Presignify unhappiness to thee,
Nor blacken with their shade, the fate that waits thee.
There lives no second Friedland: thou, my child,
Hast not to fear thy mother's destiny.

THEKLA.
O let us supplicate him, dearest mother!
Quick! quick! here's no abiding-place for us.

Here