And is this all?
It seems, indeed, most strange! And has your highness
No further orders, then, to send to Flanders?

CARLOS.
What should I have?

ALVA.
Not long ago, it seemed,
The country's fate required your presence.

CARLOS.
How?
But yes, you're right,--it was so formerly;
But now this change is better as it is.

ALVA.
I am amazed----

CARLOS.
You are an able general,
No one doubts that--envy herself must own it.
For me, I'm but a youth--so thought the king.

CARLOS.
The king was right, quite right. I see it now
Myself, and am content--and so no more.
God speed your journey, as you see, just now
My hands are full, and weighty business presses.
The rest to-morrow, or whene'er you will,
Or when you come from Brussels.

ALVA.
What is this?

CARLOS.
The season favors, and your route will lie
Through Milan, Lorraine, Burgundy, and on
To Germany! What, Germany? Ay, true,
In Germany it was--they know you there.
'Tis April now, May, June,--in July, then,
Just so! or, at the latest, soon in August,--
You will arrive in Brussels, and no doubt
We soon shall hear of your victorious deeds.
You know the way to win our high esteem,
And earn the crown of fame.

ALVA (significantly).
Indeed! condemned
By my own conscious insignificance!

CARLOS.
You're sensitive, my lord, and with some cause,
I own it was not fair to use a weapon
Against your grace you were unskilled to wield.

ALVA.
Unskilled!

CARLOS.
'Tis pity I've no leisure now
To fight this worthy battle fairly out
But at some other time, we----

ALVA.
Prince, we both
Miscalculate--but still in opposite ways.
You, for example, overrate your age
By twenty years, whilst on the other band,
I, by as many, underrate it----

CARLOS.
Well

ALVA.
And this suggests the thought, how many nights
Beside this lovely Lusitanian bride--
Your mother--would the king right gladly give
To buy an arm like this, to aid his crown.
Full well he knows, far easier is the task
To make a monarch than a monarchy;
Far easier too, to stock the world with kings
Than frame an empire for a king to rule.

CARLOS.
Most true, Duke Alva, yet----

ALVA.
And how much blood,
Your subjects' dearest blood, must flow in streams
Before two drops could make a king of you.

CARLOS.
Most true, by heaven! and in two words comprised,
All that