University of Virginia Library

SCENE VII.

Mustapha, Zanger.
Zanger.
Nature and friendship!—how they tear my bosom?
How wound my inmost soul?

Mustapha.
What means my brother?

Zanger.
I know not what has wrought this fatal change:
Some moments past, the Sultan cross'd my walk;
His brow was knit in frowns, his eye look'd ruin—
This villain-statesman too has talk'd such things!—
Thy ruin is resolv'd on.

Mustapha.
Be it so.
Life is beneath my care; nor can I wish
To wear it longer, if a father deems me
Unworthy to partake the common blessing,
All creatures share in.

Zanger.
Mustapha, no more.
Self-preservation is heaven's eldest law,
Imprest upon our nature with our life
In characters indelible. Who shrinks
From this great cause is wanting to his reason:
But when our honor is traduc'd and stab'd at,
'Tis virtue, 'tis heroic fortitude,
Then to encounter violence with force.

Mustapha.
What force, my Zanger, shall a son employ
Against the sacred life that gave him being?
In me, resistance would be parricide:
That guilt I dread; I cannot fear to die.

Zanger.
Fly then: prevent th' enormous guilt of others
By timely flight.

Mustapha.
And so avow the crime
My foes would fix, in all its blackness, on me?
Such cowardice were treason to my self.
Think, Zanger, for us both.

Zanger.
What can I think,
But that you charm th' unhappy breast you wound?
O Mustapha!—yet can your virtue bear
To see our father stain himself with blood?
The blood that Nature, Honor, bid him spare?
He is no more the Monarch, Europe, Asia,
Have trembled at. His amorous weakness grows
To dotage: and has robb'd him of himself.
Slave to a woman's will—I would forget
She gave me birth—and to a minister,
Familiar with all guilt; behold his sword,
That should be drawn for justice, turn'd to murder!
To perpetrate th' offence it should revenge!
And will not you by honest flight prevent
His sin and shame? prevent the sure reproach
That must descend for ever on his name?
The brand of murderer?

Mustapha.
Zanger, should I fly—
No other choice is mine—I must unsheathe
The all-devouring sword. Then what ensues?
Revolt, intestine broils, the baneful train
Of crimes and miseries that wait on war.
Shall I, good heaven! to breathe this idle air
A few years longer, load me with the sins
And blood of thousands? shake an empire's peace,
Unhinge its frame, and rend it with convulsions?
Is life worth saving at such mighty cost?
Compar'd with this, can death be terrible?

Zanger.
The crime is theirs who force you into arms.
On them alone, the rapines that shall waste,
The flames that shall devour, our fields, our towns,
The blood that shall be spilt, for ever rests.
Yet more; a Prince's life is not his own:
Not for himself, he lives for human race.
This universal duty to your kind
Cancels all private bonds. The future bliss,
Or woe of millions, you were born to rule,
Hangs on your great resolve.

Mustapha.
I hear with wonder
The glorious counsel which I must not take.
No end is noble where the means are base.
What? violate allegiance, duty, nature?
Wade on thro' cruelty, rebellion, ruin?
Thro' all the varied guiltiness of war?
And rise to empire by ten thousand horrors,
That subjects may, at last, have cause to bless
A sovereign, thus exalted?—No, my friend;
Heaven means not me its instrument of good,
If but by ways like these I must effect it.
Brother—farewel: I leave the world with joy,
Leaving it thee!

Zanger.
O cruel—godlike friend!
Canst thou resolve on death, and bid me live?

Mustapha.
Yes, live, my brother, live to bless mankind.
Shew wondering nations what a Monarch should be;
Heaven's true Vicegerent, whose superior soul,
Rais'd high above the tyrant's selfish poorness,
Pants but for power of doing good, rejects
All power of doing ill; who makes no war
But to revenge his people's wrongs, no peace
But what secures their safety; courts no fame
But from their happiness: a parent he,
The public parent; they not slaves, but sons.

Zanger.
Thou shalt not go. This moment yet remains;
Perhaps the last—Does friendship plead in vain?
Yet if thine ear is deaf to Zanger's call—
Think of Emira! think of her, my brother,
To whom thy soul has wedded all its wishes!
Canst thou abandon her? be deaf to love?
The pleading voice of love, and youth, and beauty,
Despairing, dying in thy death?

Mustapha.
Ah friend,
What hast thou done? Why dost thou sound my heart,
To shew me I am man? frail, fearful man?
Why, Zanger, hast thou brought to light a weakness,
I would have kept in darkness from all eyes?
Even from my self? or wept in silence o'er it,
My last unconquerable fondness?

Zanger.
See!—
She comes. What grace, what noble sweetness shines,
Victorious, in her opening spring of charms!

Mustapha.
O go, my brother; leave me to my self:
My heart runs o'er with passion, nor can bear
Even a friend's eye should read its tender follies.