Continental Monthly The , page 59 by Various Authors
<< Return to Title Details & Download60
ise in your former might, aid the down-trodden and oppressed people, help to emancipate and enlighten your fellow men, work for the common good, forsake your false ideas of a personal glory, quit these tottering ruins which all your pride and power cannot prevent from crumbling o'er you, desert your falling house, and follow me!
THE MAN. O youngest born of Satan's brood!--(He paces up and down the hall, speaking to himself:) Dreams, dreams, beautiful dreams--but their realization is impossible! Who could achieve them? Adam died in the desert--the flaming sword still guards the gates--we are never more to enter Paradise! In vain we dream!
PANCRATIUS (aside). I have driven the probe to the core of his heart; I have struck the electric nerve of Poetry, which quivers through the very base of his complicated being!
THE MAN. Progress of humanity; universal happiness; I once believed them possible! There--there--take my head--my life--if that were possi--.... (He sighs, and is silent for a moment.) It is past! two centuries ago it might have been--but now.... But now I have seen and know there will be nothing but assassination and murder--murder on either side--nothing can satisfy now but an unceasing war of mutual extermination!
PANCRATIUS. Woe then to the vanquished! Falter not, seeker of universal happiness! Cry but once with us: 'Woe to the oppressors of the people!' and stand preëminent o'er all, the First among the Victors!
THE MAN. Have you already explored all the paths in the dark and unknown country of the Future? Did Destiny, withdrawing at midnight the curtains of your tent, stand visibly before you, and, placing her giant hand upon your scheming brain, impress upon it the mystic seal of victory? or in the heat of midday, when the world slept, and you alone were watching, did she glide pale, pitiless, and stern before you, and promise conquest, that you thus threaten me with defeat and ruin? You are but a man of clay as fra