PRINCE WILLIAM.
Madness! Yea, as the sane world goes, I am mad.
What else to help the helpless, to uplift
The low, to adore the good, the beautiful,
To live, battle, suffer, die for truth, for love!
But that is wide of the question. Let me hear
What you are charged to impart--my father's will.

PRIOR.
Heart-cleft by his dear offspring's shame, he prays
Your reason be restored, your wayward sense
Renew its due allegiance. For his son
He, the good parent, weeps--hot drops of gall,
Wrung from a spirit seldom eased by tears.
But for his honor pricked, the Landgrave takes
More just and general vengeance.

PRINCE WILLIAM.
In the name of God,
What has he done to HER?

PRIOR.
Naught, naught,--as yet.
Sweet Prince, be calm; you leap like flax to flame.
You nest within your heart a cockatrice,
Pluck it from out your bosom and breathe pure
Of the filthy egg. The Landgrave brooks no more
The abomination that infects his town.
The Jews of Nordhausen are doomed.

PRINCE WILLIAM.
Alack!
Who and how many of that harmless tribe,
Those meek and pious men, have been elected
To glut with innocent blood the oppressor's wrath?

PRIOR.
Who should go free where equal guilt is shared?
Frederick is just--they perish all at once,
Generous moreover--for in their mode of death
He grants them choice.

PRINCE WILLIAM.
My father had not lost
The human semblance when I saw him last.
Nor can he be divorced in this short space
From his shrewd wit. How shall he make provision
For the vast widowed, orphaned host this deed
Burdens the state withal?

PRIOR.
Oh excellent!
This is the crown of folly, topping all!
Forgive me, Prince, when I gain breath to point
Your comic blunder, you will laugh with me.
Patience--I'll draw my chin as long as yours.
Well, 't was my fault--one should be accurate--
Jews, said I? when I meant Jews, Jewesses,
And Jewlings! all betwixt the age
Of twenty-four hours, and of five score years.
Of either sex, of every known degree,
All the contaminating vermin purged
With one clean, searching blast of wholesome fire.

PRINCE WILLIAM.
O Christ, disgraced, insulte