I knew but one
Who to compare with Caesar could be found;
And that one, Caesar, thou didst call thy son!
'Twas only Caesar could destroy a Rome;
Brutus alone that Caesar could withstand--
Where Brutus lives, must Caesar die! Thy home
Be far from mine. I'll seek another land.

[He lays down his guitar, and walks to and
fro in deep meditation.]

Who will give me certainty! All is so dark--a confused labyrinth--no
outlet--no guiding star. Were but all to end with this last gasp of
breath. To end, like an empty puppet-show. But why then this burning
thirst after happiness? Wherefore this ideal of unattained perfection?
This looking to an hereafter for the fulfilment of our hopes? If the
paltry pressure of this paltry thing (putting a pistol to his head)
makes the wise man and the fool--the coward and the brave--the noble and
the villain equal?--the harmony which pervades the inanimate world is so
divinely perfect--why, then, should there be such discord in the
intellectual? No! no! there must be something beyond, for I have not
yet attained to happiness.

Think ye that I will tremble, spirits of my slaughtered victims? No,
I will not tremble. (Trembling violently.) The shrieks of your dying
agonies--your black, convulsive features--your ghastly bleeding wounds--
what are they all but links of one indissoluble chain of destiny, which
hung upon the temperament of my father, the life's blood of my mother,
the humors of my nurses and tutors, and even upon the holiday pastimes
of my childhood! (Shaking with horror.) Why has my Perillus made of me
a brazen bull, whose burning entrails yearn after human flesh? (He
lifts the pistol again to his head.)

Time and Eternity!--linked together by a single instant! Fearful key,
which locks behind me the prisonhouse of life, and opens before me the
habitations of eternal night--tell me--oh, tell me--whither--whither
wilt thou lead me? Strange, unexplored land! Humanity is unnerved at
the fearful thought, the elasticity of our finite nature is paralyzed,
and fancy, that wanton ape of the senses, juggles our credulity with
appalling phantoms. No! no! a man must be firm. Be what thou wilt,
thou undefined futurity, so I remain but true to myself. Be what thou
wilt, so I but take this inward self hence with me. External forms are
but the trappings of the man. My heaven and my hell is within.

What if Thou shouldst doom me to be sole inhabitant of some burnt-out
world wh