housand thanks for this intelligence. A thousand thanks! Of
course it is so. For my father would then have a prince as his
prisoner, for whom he could make any claim; and the king, his enemy,
would have the body of a captured prince, for which he could demand
nothing; which he must have buried or burned, if it should not become
an object of disgust to him.

Good! I see that! Consequently, if I, I the wretched prisoner, will
still turn the victory into my father's hands--on what does it depend?
on death? On nothing more? O truly--the man is mightier than he thinks,
the man who knows how to die!

But I? I, the germ, the bud of a man, do I know how to die? Not the
man, the grown man alone, knows how to die; the youth also, the boy
also; or he knows nothing at all. He who has lived ten years has had
ten years time to learn to die; and what one does not learn in ten
years, one neither learns in twenty, in thirty, nor in more. All that
which I might have been, I must show by what I already am. And what
could I, what would I be? A hero! Who is a hero? O my excellent, my
absent father, be now wholly present in my soul! Have you not taught me
that a hero is a man who knows higher goods than life? A man who has
devoted his life to the welfare of the state; himself, the single one,
to the welfare of the many? A hero is a man--a man? Then not a youth,
my father? Curious question! It is good that my father did not hear it.
He would have to think that I should be pleased, if he answered "No" to
it. How old must the pine-tree be which has to serve as a mast? How
old?--It must be tall enough, and must be strong enough.

Each thing, said the sage who taught me, is perfect if it can fulfil
its end. I can fulfil my end, I can die for the welfare of the state; I
am therefore perfect, I am a man. A man! although but a few days ago I
was still a boy.

What fire rages in my veins? What inspiration falls on me? The breast
becomes too narrow for the heart! Patience, my heart! Soon will I give
thee space! Soon will I release thee from thy monotonous and tedious
task! Soon shalt thou rest, and rest for long!

Who comes? It is Parmenio! Quick! I must decide! What must I say to
him? What message must I send my father through him?--Right! that I
must say, that message I must send.

Scene V.

Parmenio. Philotas.

PHILOTAS.

Approach, Parmenio! Well?