University of Virginia Library

Scene II:

—The drawing-room in the house of Ole Larum, the Mayor of Christianstadt. Folding-doors, which are closed when the act begins, open into the dining-room. A hastily summoned meeting of the Inceptors of the Teutonic Religion. Present: Ole Larum, Tamberskelver, Jan Rykke, Ulf Stromer and others.
Larum.
If I can gauge the mood and trend of time,
The period of our patience closes now:
Fate plants to-day a germinal event,
The all-desired return of Thule's heir.

Tamberskelver.
Prince Christian?

Larum.
No! Prince Mammon, the Unchristened.
Where were you, not to know?

Tamberskelver.
In bed: I crossed
From Jutland late last night and slept all day,
A slumber of tempestuous dreams (the sea
Ran riot in the straits) until your wire
Hurried me hither scarce awake.—Great news!
The hope of the Thule and the world returned!

Stromer.
Authentic, unexpected, pregnant news!

Rykke.
Why, what may it determine!

Larum.
This, I think:—
At last the proclamation of our aim,
Our great inception of a new religion,
Uncatholic and Teutonic.

Rykke.
Wherefore now?
Mammon's return, by every likelihood,
Means his submission.

Stromer.
That we cannot tell.
Certain it is, he goes before the King
A prisoner. I was present: I saw him land;
I saw the princes quarrel; I saw the arrest.

Tamberskelver.
The brothers quarrelled?

Stromer.
In presence of the crowd!
The city with the rumour of it rings.
Men wait on wonder, and their quickened minds
Invite events and sniff the gust of change.

Tamberskelver.
The time has come then and the leader—fixed
By fate, the overlord of men and gods.

Rykke.
What should this Mammon know of us? How care
For our, or any, reformation—placed
Above mankind, a prince and proud as sin?

Tamberskelver.
I have prepared his mind. At every port
The Surtur entered on her wayward course,
Iconoclastic, adumbrative stuff,
Preliminary to our great inception,
Papers and pamphlets, disquisitions, books
Awaited him, with letters from myself
Unsigned and ominous, that like a leaven
Would work his thought and fancy.

Rykke.
If he read
Your public and your private documents,
Perhaps; but I take leave to doubt: think this:—
Had Matthew, Mark, Luke, John or other scribe
Bombarded Nero or Caligula,
Tiberius or Commodus with tracts—
There would have been a feast of literature
For one reformer, set to eat his words
With his own blood for sauce!

Tamberskelver.
Mere sensualists;
Above the prurient cruelty, the lust
Cæsarian and the madness, Mammon soars
On immaterial wings of clearest thought:
I know his lofty spirit by my own.

Larum.
There I am with you: I have felt my soul
At sight of Mammon blessed and purified,
So rare he seems.

Tamberskelver.
Profoundly I believe
His sudden advent has no other cause
Than my prolonged importunate assault;
And I expect his summons to reveal
The purport of our published prophecies.

[A gong is heard.
Larum.
He may inquire us out to learn our meaning;
But to depend on that were to await
The chance of courts, of policy, of pleasure.

[The folding-doors are opened and Larum's Guests pass into the dining-room, where a table is set for dinner.
Larum.
I asked you here to give this matter thought:
How to approach Prince Mammon; to formulate
The definite expression of our aims ...

[The folding-doors close as Larum, still speaking, enters the dining-room.