University of Virginia Library

Scene IX

To them enter the Countess.
Countess.
This suspense,
This horrid fear—I can no longer bear it.
For heaven's sake, tell me, what has taken place.

Illo.
The regiments are all falling off from us.

Tertsky.
Octavio Piccolomini is a traitor.

Countess.
O my foreboding!

[Rushes out of the room.
Tertsky.
Hadst thou but believed me!
Now seest thou how the stars have lied to thee.

Wallenstein.
The stars lie not; but we have here a work
Wrought counter to the stars and destiny.
The science is still honest: this false heart
Forces a lie on the truth-telling heaven.
On a divine law divination rests;
Where nature deviates from that law, and stumbles
Out of her limits, there all science errs.
True, I did not suspect! Were it superstition
Never by such suspicion t'have affronted
The human form, O may that time ne'er come
In which I shame me of the infirmity.
The wildest savage drinks not with the victim
Into whose breast he means to plunge the sword.
This, this, Octavio, was no hero's deed:
'Twas not thy prudence that did conquer mine;
A bad heart triumphed o'er an honest one.
No shield received the assassin stroke; thou plungest
Thy weapon on an unprotected breast—
Against such weapons I am but a child.