--he is in a certain
mood--the result is a human being, the last thing that was thought of in
the affair. Well, I, too, am in a certain mood,--and the result is that
a human being perishes; and surely there is more of reason and purpose
in this than there was in his production. If the birth of a man is the
result of an animal paroxysm, who should take it into his head to attach
any importance to the negation of his birth? A curse upon the folly of
our nurses and teachers, who fill our imaginations with frightful tales,
and impress fearful images of punishment upon the plastic brain of
childhood, so that involuntary shudders shake the limbs of the man with
icy fear, arrest his boldest resolutions, and chain his awakening reason
in the fetters of superstitious darkness. Murder! What a hell full of
furies hovers around that word. Yet 'tis no more than if nature forgets
to bring forth one man more or the doctor makes a mistake--and thus the
whole phantasmagoria vanishes. It was something, and it is nothing.
Does not this amount to exactly the same thing as though it had been
nothing, and came to nothing; and about nothing it is hardly worth while
to waste a word. Man is made of filth, and for a time wades in filth,
and produces filth, and sinks back into filth, till at last he fouls the
boots of his own posterity.*

*["To what base uses we may return, Horatio! why, may not
imagination trace the noble dust of Alexander, till we find it
stopping a bunghole?"--HAMLET, Act v, Sc. 1.]

That is the burden of the song--the filthy cycle of human fate; and with
that--a pleasant journey to you, sir brother! Conscience, that
splenetic, gouty moralist, may drive shrivelled old drones out of
brothels, and torture usurers on their deathbeds--with me it shall never
more have audience.
[Exit.]

SCENE III.--Another Room in the Castle.

CHARLES VON MOOR enters from one side, DANIEL from the other.

CHARLES (hastily). Where is Lady Amelia?

DANIEL. Honored sir! permit an old man to ask you a favor.

CHARLES. It is granted. What is it you ask?

DANIEL. Not much, and yet all--but little, and yet a great deal.
Suffer me to kiss your hand!

CHARLES. That I cannot permit, good old man (embraces him), from one
whom I should like to call my father.

DANIEL. Your hand, your hand! I beseech you.

CHARLES. That must not be.

DANIEL. It must! (He takes hold of it, surveys it quickly,