you come next.

[Exeunt Mother and DAUGHTER.

Brackenburg (alone). I had resolved to go away again at once; and yet,
when she takes me at my word, and lets me leave her, I feel as if I
could go mad,--Wretched man! Does the fate of thy fatherland, does the
growing disturbance fail to move thee?--Are countryman and Spaniard the
same to thee? and carest thou not who rules, and who is in the right? I
wad a different sort of fellow as a schoolboy!--Then, when an exercise
in oratory was given; "Brutus' Speech for Liberty," for instance, Fritz
was ever the first, and the rector would say: "If it were only spoken
more deliberately, the words not all huddled together."--Then my blood
boiled, and longed for action.--Now I drag along, bound by the eyes of
a maiden. I cannot leave her! yet she, alas, cannot love
me!--ah--no---she--she cannot have entirely rejected me--not
entirely--yet half love is no love!--I will endure it no longer!--Can
it be true what a friend lately whispered in my ear, that she secretly
admits a man into the house by night, when she always sends me away
modestly before evening? No, it cannot be true! It is a lie! A base,
slanderous lie! Clara is as innocent as I am wretched.--She has rejected
me, has thrust me from her heart--and shall I live on thus? I cannot,
I will not endure it. Already my native land is convulsed by internal
strife, and do I perish abjectly amid the tumult? I will not endure it!
When the trumpet sounds, when a shot falls, it thrills through my bone
and marrow! But, alas, it does not rouse me! It does not summon me to
join the onslaught, to rescue, to dare.--Wretched, degrading position!
Better end it at once! Not long ago, I threw myself into the water; I
sank--but nature in her agony was too strong for me; I felt that I could
swim, and saved myself against my will. Could I but forget the time when
she loved me, seemed to love me!--Why has this happiness penetrated my
very bone and marrow? Why have these hopes, while disclosing to me a
distant paradise, consumed all the enjoyment of life?--And that first,
that only kiss!--Here (laying his hand upon the table), here we were
alone,--she had always been kind and friendly towards me,--then she
seemed to soften,--she looked at me,--my brain reeled,--I felt her lips
on mine,--and--and now?--Die, wretch! Why dost thou hesitate? (He draws
a phial from his pocket.) Thou healing poison, it shall not have been
in vain that I stole thee from my br