University of Virginia Library

ACT II

Scene I:

—A tea-shop on the Marine Parade, near the harbour of Christianstadt. Several companies, discussing in whispers the event of the day, are seated at marble-top tables. Vibbe, Tommerup, Bisserup, Jelke, and Crawford are near the centre. Crawford writes in a notebook, while the others take tea and bread and butter. Through the open door the parade is seen thronged with passengers, and in the distance the grey hulls of the battleships and the opposite shore, as in Scene I.
Tommerup.
Mammon's our man.

Bisserup.
An anarch on the throne?
The worst that could befall!

Jelke.
We want the worst.

Bisserup.
Yes, for society; but not for us.
The ship of state, a wandering derelict,
Side-slipped upon the ocean as it were,
With shifted cargo, flapping rudder, deck
Aslope, might right itself upon the swell
Of such a wave as anarchy enthroned;
Receive a salvage crew; be harboured, docked;
Refitted for a hundred voyages.

Tommerup.
Ay, but an anarch on the throne invites
A thousand might-bes; and among them just
The Revolution: underdogs on top;
Strait-jackets for the individualists;
Procrustean beds for all.

Jelke.
But why that first?

Tommerup.
Because it's ripest, and our mouths agape
To catch the harvest.

Vibbe.
These indecent jests
Provoke me: we desire the common good.
You bring discredit on our cause and us.

Tommerup.
I wear no blinkers, Vibbe. Good for a few,
Evil for all the rest, is what we have:
Good for the many and evil for the few
Is what we want, and what we mean to make:
There's no best way, only the choice of ills.
Prepare procrustean peace for normal men,
And bloody heads and toes for special folk.

Jelke.
Some needful surgery there will always be.
But to the question:—Mammon on Thule's throne:
What would that mean to us? I say, an end
In our day of our hopes: the moneyed might
Of Thule, recognized for what it is—
The only power efficient in the state—
Released from every semblance of control,
Condensed and centred in a lawless mind,
Will set a foot so heavy on the world
That all reformers must be squelched like slugs.

Vibbe.
Why use these brutal figures? Men are men:
The revolution means a final end
Of such opprobrium.—But our thoughts outrun
Events: Mammon's a prisoner.

Jelke.
That means nothing:
The fond old King will pardon his first-born.

Bisserup.
The plot against him in his presence snaps
Like misty gossamer.

Tommerup.
What plot? These things
Have simply happened.

Bisserup.
No; there is a plot!
The home and foreign press are full of it.

Tommerup.
Invention—every word! Oh, here we catch
The lying muse of history at her trade.
Deed follows deeds, issue from issue springs,
As naive and natural as life and death:
There's no more plot in these affairs of Mammon
Than in the periods of plants or stars.
You might as well denounce that beautiful,
Mechanical occurrence, our solar system,
Calling it treacherous and a nebular
Conspiracy, as seek to find a plot
In modern mysteries of the court of Thule.

Bisserup.
But I know better. Magnus schemed it out,
Young as he is: love gave him craft: the whole
Intrigue in the great daily of the Isles
Appeared with leaded type a week ago.

Tommerup.
Mere history in the making, as close to truth
As ivy to the tree it kills and shrouds.

Bisserup.
Your simile demonstrates nothing: images
Are feverish maladies of speech. I say,
Prince Mammon was betrayed.

Tommerup.
And I say, no!

Crawford.
What? Bisserup and Tommerup again!
How often must I check your nauseous wrangling!

Bisserup.
But he began! He contradicted me!

Tommerup.
He babbled nonsense from the purple press,
And set the news against my insight, damn him!

Crawford.
Hush! both of you! I've drawn this document.
We'll have it placed in Mammon's hands to-night.
Now, comrades, have you finished with your slops?

Tommerup, Bisserup, etc., rise from the table.
Crawford.
Come out of this, then; I want to smoke and drink.

Vibbe.
But, comrade, don't we hear the document?

Crawford.
I'll read it out: Jelke shall copy it;
And every man subscribe it dauntlessly.

Crawford, Tommerup, etc., go out.
A Customer.
Who are these fellows?

A Waitress.
Don't know. Socialists—
Or something else low-down and high-and-mighty:
Not worth a halfpenny in the shilling, sir.

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.

Scene III:

—The Throne-room of the Royal Palace at Christianstadt. When the scene begins the room is concealed by curtains. Lower than the left curtain is an arched doorway, the entrance to the chapel.
Enter through the curtains King Christian with Florimond. The King goes quickly to the arched doorway; but pauses on the threshold.
Christian.
Baresark and haltered in the chapel royal!
Is this a true conversion, Florimond?
My withered body burns to clasp my son—
A parching fire the salt green wood of youth
With vapour moist and bitter suffocates.
Spirits in travail labour forth to God;
Repentant sons should seek their fathers out.
Why has this prodigal withheld himself?
Had he endured the invincible assault
Of grace divine, the overthrow of pride,
The awful agony of self annulled,
And the immediate miracle of peace
That passeth understanding, would he not then
Through every barrier rush to these old arms,
As sure of welcome as of Heaven itself?
Speak, Florimond.

Florimond.
Prince—Christian (as I hope;
Would fain believe) approached your judgment-seat
By no inferior mediator.

Christian.
My son,
Prince Magnus, strangely moved, gave me but now
The news of Mammon's coming. What of that?

Florimond.
Might this not be a symbol? Through the heir
Of God men must approach the throne of God.

Christian.
He comes to me through Magnus to signify
Return to God through Christ? Too finical;
His mind in masses moves: too ladylike;
My son is male: too sweet and fine; my son,
Even in a righteous cause with righteous means,
Would drive as if he sinned.

Florimond.
But his offence—
So stark, so heinous! Well his stormy soul
May falter on repentance!

Christian.
His father's son!
His mind once set, the only stay is death.
How shall I work? If he be insincere—
And I shall note it, Florimond, at sight:
If hither as a hypocrite he comes,
'Twill madden me; 'twill kill me, Florimond.

Florimond.
What motives for hypocrisy?

Christian.
Homesickness!—
And sceptresickness, and lovesickness. Thrones
Are worth dissimulation legend tells.—
What is your counsel? Shall I visit him?
Or have him brought before me?

Florimond.
Whether he lags
Sincerely undetermined, or regrets
A violated conscience, receive him now,
Lest in retreat a longer hesitance
Exhaust compunction, or enjoin a gloss
On crude hypocrisy. The court is met:
Be throned, and when he enters welcome him
With triumph; for I hold that insincere
Avowals heartily embraced, compel
Sincerity in what was feigned.

Christian.
Great counsellor!
Draw back the curtains that he may behold
The majesty of Thule unveiled at once.

Florimond.
Be by the throne, King Christian.

[The curtains are drawn, discovering the assembled court, ambassadors, ministers, etc. Magnus and Guendolen, on chairs of state, are seated near the throne, which stands upon a dais under a canopy. Gottlieb and Anselm are together conversing. All rise when King Christian ascends the dais. Florimond at the door of the chapel awaits the King's instruction.
Christian.
Rejoice with me!
Three years of anguish end: my exiled son,
Whose soul in jeopardy about the world
Unceasing roamed, contrite returns at last,
Baresark and haltered as I bade him come.
Over one sinner that repents the loud
Acclaim of Heaven shakes with exultant roar
Celestial battlements, and all their banners
Beat in the wind of it like hearts set free.
But, gentle friends and noble, who is this
That comes in sackcloth, haltered and ashamed?
No mean offender: the heir of Thule comes,
A penitent forgiven. This rich event
(And if I sin in thinking it, I shall
Myself do penance) seems to me as great
For us below, as it might be in Heaven
If God's belovëd Son Himself had sinned—
Supremely tempted, not by open gifts
Of Lucifer contending for the world,
But by some swift and subtle accident
That happens with the music and the stars,
Such as well all confess: if so the Heir
Of paradise had sinned in tender sport,
And stood in tears before the mercy-seat
Divinely penitent, how would Jehovah,
From His throne uprisen, command the trumpeters
With crashing noise of victory to rend
The lofty air of Heaven, until the peal,
Reverberant throughout the galaxies,
Enshrined the universe in joyful sound!
Wherefore, when at my throne my first-begotten
Repentant stands, it must become us well
To join with Heaven in acclamation high.
Let cannon fling their deafening voices forth,
Their films of thunder that break from iron wombs
And even in being burst; and let the drum
Utter its thick-tongued rumour; trumpets sing
With brazen lungs of morning; cymbals, bells,
And all your throats of joy resound to God
In welcoming my son.—Now, Florimond.

Mammon enters, sobbing and in tears, from the chapel. He is pinioned, in sackcloth, and with a rope about his neck. Cries of “Long live Prince Christian” are heard above the sound of trumpet and drum and the noise of cannon.
Oswald and a guard attend Mammon.
Mammon.
No word! There is no word! No language! Nothing!

Christian
[comes down from the dais and embraces Mammon].
Oh, hush, my son! Contrition, thorough, deep,
And terrible. Again, I say, be glad!
These my son's tears are each a pearl of price.
Cannon and trumpets, cymbals, drums, and oh,
Your golden human voices! Shout, my people,
And let God know of it! For this my son
Was dead and is alive again; was lost,
And found—and found!

[The acclamation is repeated.
Mammon.
Undo my bonds!

Christian.
Your bonds?
Why are you bound? ... Into your heart I see!
A noble penitence! I bade you come,
Baresark and haltered: you in infinite
Contrition add the deep disgrace of bonds.
I shall myself undo them. A knife, a knife,
To cut the knot that ties my Christian's soul!
The fantasy was deep.—Surely my lot
Is happier than God's; He has but one
Belovëd: I have two—Christian and Magnus.

[Receives a knife from Oswald and is about to cut Mammon's bonds.
Mammon.
No Christian; Mammon, I.

Christian.
My son—

Mammon.
These ropes!

Christian.
They tell—what tale? Have I not read aright
Their gracious meaning?

Mammon.
Minds by doctrine warped
Read everything awry.

Christian.
It was my heart
That read. Oh, son, you dare not! Christian—look
Unholily on me!

Gottlieb.
Almighty God
Forbid!

Mammon.
It palsies you, abused old men,
The outrage done us, the obscene device
Of pious brains! Oh, for one word to hold
A document of scorn! For we must speak;
And that's the hell of it! Why cannot thought
Erase the actions, dry the marrow up,
And comminute the bones of hateful folk?
Let Magnus talk: come, brother, untie your tongue:
Expound your purposes, expose your mind,
Elucidate the virtue of a lie,
And like a subtle exegete propound
Indisputably; argue quite away
The loathsome horror of the thing you did.

Florimond.
If humbly I may speak I beg the King
To tarry till this turbid water clears:
Then let consideration filter out
The crystal essence.

Gottlieb.
Faithfully advised!
I also add my voice. Intemperate zeal
Begets its punishment; here works, indeed,
Its ultimate effect—catastrophe
In the great world of spirit. Time perhaps
May fill the rents, the interstices, clothe
The ruins, gulfs, ravines, and hardly save
Defaced memorials, habitation, tilth
From wilderness and stony avalanche,
Detestable oblivion, desert, death.

Christian.
I'll know the truth of this although I wring
My heart out with it. Counsel helps us not;
Nothing can help again. I feel a fate
Descend like mist, like smoke, a stifling snare
Wherein we stumble and are all undone.
I have—I had two sons. I want to know? ...
Come, who can tell me what I want to know!

Mammon.
Will you not speak? That brother Jacob, there,
That stole my birthright, juggled for my bride,
And tried to pick my pocket of my soul!

Christian.
He seems to doubt you, Magnus; to impute
A many kinds of wickedness.

Magnus.
I wrought
This wrong to save him.

Guendolen.
It was my device.

Christian.
Yet I know nothing! Who nods the head behind
Me, undertakes with muffled step to steal
The sceptre, digs my private ground and sows
Disease, sterility? Old, am I? King
In Thule still! Unveil the secret fount
Of this dark flood of woe! Who knows it, speak.

Magnus.
The blame is mine. Pondering my brother's moods,
I thought to work a miracle by sleight
Of costume, as sometimes the Highest wrought
With kneaded clay, and, in the earlier age,
By brazen images, ablutions, rods,
Incentives, symbols, urgencies, constraints.

Christian.
Well? Must I ask again? Unfold the truth
Of this unparalleled, unhappiest chance.
First let us know how—God!—how this Prince Mammon
Appears in Christianstadt.

Magnus.
That he must tell.

Christian.
Prince Mammon—(Jealous and eternal God
Inure my heart and make my tongue a fire!)—
Forbidden, unrepentant, Thule's coasts,
What dire necessity, what lure, what wild
Prediction, hope, bravado, sickness, dream
Provokes your presence here?

Mammon.
Have I free leave
To speak my mind? Else will I hold my tongue.

Christian.
Leave, without licence. What may be disclosed
Unblasphemously, speak; and speak at large.

Mammon.
But blasphemy incarnate since my name
Was changed am I.

Christian.
You dare to jest!

Mammon.
No jest—
By me and by my love!—if greater things
I knew, my oath should stand thereon. My thought
Is blasphemy in every teeming cell,
In every swift electron of my mind;
I blame the past, I blame two thousand years—

Christian.
Now take this step by step.

Gottlieb.
In private, sir,
I beg you.

Christian.
Better so: my triumph end
Unborn, a dead thing in my mind.—Good night;
And sweeter dreams to all than mine shall prove.
[The court is dismissed, and Christian, Magnus, Guendolen, Florimond, Gottlieb, Anselm, Oswald and the guard are left with Mammon.
Unhappy son, you lay your sins on us,
Having become, you say, since we, since God
Unchristened you, incarnate blasphemy—
For God inspired us, when we called you Mammon:
We put it rather that your blasphemy
Procured your style and title.

Mammon.
Understand:
Three years ago my mind was in the rough;
The name you called me carved it.

Christian.
Is the mind
A thing so exigent? Yet names are powerful—
And the word: in the beginning was the word.
Some share of your iniquity devolves
Perhaps upon our haste.

Mammon.
That which I am
I am, and would be under any name,
Immanuel, or Siddartha, or Herakles,
A new force in the world. My title, Mammon,
Delights me: I shall make this name renowned
For things unprecedented through the earth.

Christian.
What things?

Mammon.
Things sifted from the stars in nights
Of travail,—exiled moons; things that shall change
The thoughts of men and renovate the time.
This name you gave de pitefully began
Illustrious and divine: Mammon, the god
Of riches and the world; inspirer of desire
That makes the night one blush, one sigh, one deed
Devout of love; the stirrer-up of war,
Enamelling earth with carmine—fields of blood,
The shock of battle, trances, mighty strokes,
And victory pendent on a single arm,
Or coiled in one deep brain; adventure's lord—
Discovery, knowledge, honour, wealth, renown,
Estate, dominion, principality,
The attributes of Mammon! This splendid God,
With every living beauty, every truth
Of fact and power, your sullen creed depraved,
Debased, debauched and turned to noisome trash.

Gottlieb.
Why need we listen, King?

Christian.
Hush! Let him speak.
This time he shall be heard, although we quake
With terror for his soul. Proceed, Prince Mammon.

Mammon.
You made of Mammon's godhead skulking guile,
Inferior devilry; and all his glory
Tarnished with fumes of Hell; his ancient virtue
Transmuted shamefully to modern vice.
You Christians did it! It has been your trade
For twenty centuries to sicken men
With life and with themselves that you may rule:
You humble pride; you smirch the flower of love,
Dilute the blood, restrain with iron hand
Presumptuous thought—

Gottlieb.
We do, by Heaven! A gag
To gag him!

Christian.
Hush!

Mammon.
—and tie imagination,
Whereby alone the Universe is ours,
In strangled impotence. Lo, at your tricks
I find you! No man—my brother knows it!—
Is in his person privater than I:
Such worship have I for myself that not
The body-service attendant from their birth
On princes, and as needful to their state
As nurses are for nurselings, can I bear
About me:—Off! hands off!—And what was done?
These nerves of mine, the lute-strings of my soul,
Were jarred and jangled in the careless hands
Of soldiers: two I choked, but twenty held me.
Then was I stripped ... impotent tears of rage
Like molten metal blinded me, and blind
Me now!

Christian.
Was this done, Magnus?

Magnus.
For the best:
To show, as by a symbol, the power of God.

Mammon.
In sackcloth, girt with rope, haltered and pinioned!—
I who can scarce endure the softest silk
About my shuddering loins!

Christian.
'Twas crudely done.

Mammon.
Left in a chapel, face to face with Christ!

Christian.
'Twas harsh, 'twas bitter; but the hand of God—
Seemed it not so?

Mammon.
It seemed so: the very hand
Of God—the precious God that made the world
And found it good! My God, the treason of it!
Malignity! The rancour, envy—sin
Of Christendom against mankind!

Christian.
Oh, devil!
Devil! No son of mine! Inhuman beast!
One question ere I speak your punishment:
I asked you once already:—Why have you come
Impenitent to me? Answer, in brief.

Mammon.
Because I love the Princess of the Isles.

Christian.
You love the Princess of the Isles? How deeply?
What would you do to prove your love? The Princess,
Sweetest Christian of the world, could never marry
Belial.

Mammon.
There I catch you, Christian, in the act
Of Christianizing at its meanest, foulest,
Deadliest. It leapt into your mind, “For love
Of Guendolen he might at least profess
Belief, and shortly come to be the thing
He mimicked.” Answer me, King Christian: that
Was your thought?

Christian.
That was my sudden hope:
The Holy Spirit works in divers ways;
Scoffers and infidels and heathen kings
Of old were brought to Christ by Christian wives.
Oh, son—my son, I would that you were mine!
And while I live my soul shall be in travail
With the new birth of yours. You love the Princess?
I know the force of love in the blood royal
Of Thule; to prove their love—the might of it,
The passion, and the utter overthrow
Of self which love is, princes of our house
Have undertaken and performed exploits
Of dazzling hardihood, have sacrificed
Inheritance, yea, things endeared and priceless.
Could you ... I stumble on injustice; on—
I know not what! Why did you come? What for?
What reason? what excuse? what mad design?

Mammon.
I told you: for the love of Guendolen.
My presence here is proof of love unknown
To-day, unmatched for centuries. What prince,
What man, cast out like me, accursed, forbid,
With red fire in his veins, and every nerve
Dynamic, can aver as I aver,
“I live a virgin for the love of her
Whose beauty not the soul of sound can tell;
Without whom life is death, and Heaven Hell.”

Guendolen.
Oh Heaven! oh me!

Magnus.
Must this go on?

Christian.
It must:
I'll know the very marrow of his mind.

Mammon.
Word of betrothal with my brother brought
My fate about me like an army wanting
A leader. Hither I came, commanded
And commanding; and alone I came,
Assured of this—that in the evolution
Of the world I am to play a part, to wield
Dominion, to elaborate a change
No rival can forestall, no foe o'erturn,
No chance prevent. Friendless, unarmed, condemned,
The enemy of Christendom, I dare
Your worst; I in the swept and garnished house
Of that old faith the moulting world is sick of,
The proudest, rashest, sinfullest of men,
Declare that Guendolen shall be by me
A mother, and I, unholy monster, King
In Thule.

Guendolen.
Christ Jesus save me!

[Goes out.
Christian.
Evil heart,
Base tongue! That tenderest lady clasped by you!

Magnus.
She shuns the hateful thought. Father and King,
I have no brother, you one only son.
This miscreant—name predicting him!—to us
Is nothing.

Christian.
From my heart I pluck him out!

Mammon.
Oh, vain old heart and tottering mind that mount
On draggled plumes of wrath, to sink again
In maudlin tenderness! Get him a nurse,
And advertise for kings! Do something, some one!

Christian.
Is that a son? Is that a mankind thing?

Magnus.
No; not to be a Christian in Christendom
Is to be nothing in the world! His doom
Is death.

Christian.
Is death? Ay, dead already, Magnus.

Magnus.
But he must die the death.

Christian.
Unsaved? My son,
You would not kill his soul!

Magnus.
His soul is lost!
Were he to live ten lives of penitence
In daily prayer and nightly discipline,
He could not save one atom of a soul
So deeply damned, so utterly undone.

Christian.
No; but the puissant blood of Christ can save
To the uttermost: I hold there is no sin
Unpardonable—none; and dare affirm
That God and His Belov'd delight in sin,
The soil, the manure and the deep-struck root
Of all Heaven's joy. Let men go on to sin
That grace may more abound. Tie him again
Before the crucifix—a thought of power!
There can he brim the abominable cup
Of his iniquities until the spilth
Engulfs him, or until the blood of Christ
Shall stem that tide, and, like an ocean stream
With summer saturate that cleaves the main,
Undo the latitude and clime of death.

Mammon.
Chain me again to Calvary! Not that!

Christian.
He fears it? Then there's hope! Behold he shakes!

Mammon.
An outrage on my flesh, my nerves, my blood
Worse than the rack! These tears that scald my cheek
Are tears of mine—again a torrent, salt
As Sodom's sea!—the tears of one who holds
Himself in awe and three times sacrosanct.
For every drop I shed trussed up and shamed
Shall I not work a separate ruin? Scathe
Upon the world, vengeance on vengeance, woe
On this intolerable Christendom!

Magnus.
Should this man live?

Christian.
Oh, God, direct me! Son—
My sons; I must have my two sons! And there!—
You see it?—there the mind of God comes out:
God will have both your souls for Heaven, as I
Your living presences on earth.

Magnus.
But I
Will have him dead!

Christian.
Magnus!

Magnus.
I speak for Thule,
And for myself, my son and my son's son,
Great kings to be in Thule; for God I speak,
And for the welfare of the City of God.
Such danger breathed not in the world before;
So strange a soul, so powerful, new, uncouth,
So capable of unimagined things,
Comes only once in time. Always for evil
Unusual natures work, however high
Their aim: unchristian in itself it is
To be abnormal; criminal, insane
Is all excess of genius, potence, blood.
The slow elaboration of the years,
Mellowing the growth and fibrous sap of things,
Ferments and sours when special men exert
Ungauged, untrammelled influence: the time
Is wounded, and the pleasant tree of life
Broached, drained, disfigured with unsightly galls,
Warts, tumours, morbid shoots which are indeed
The very types of all extravagance.

Mammon.
Never did mediocrity disclose
Its inner sense more aptly!

Magnus.
Of himself
A twofold brag he thrusts at us:—to be
In Thule king, and to impregnate her
Whom I shall marry.

Florimond.
The vainest insolence!
If I may speak, I make the Prince unwell:
Diet, repose, regimenal restraint
Would quickly bring his mind about again.

Mammon.
Old, suave conniver! I've a use for you.

Magnus.
Poseur or maniac, charlatan or dupe,
While Mammon lives, so wonderful is he,
So fertile in contrivance, so belov'd
By broken men and thinkers, rebels, knaves,
And all the swelter of resentment, big
To burst the quaking bounds of civic life,
That this insufferable arrogance
Of prophecy may suddenly become
Accomplished horror to our bitter loss.

Christian.
Your brother, Magnus; think.

Magnus.
I think and think.
Me it concerns the most: I flung the crown,
My happiness, my all upon the balance,
Labouring for his salvation: he rejects
The cross, and in my own behalf and Thule's
I give my voice for instant death. His soul
Shall haunt us, well I know; the heinous mind
Of him imbue fierce faction in the state;
A sequel of imposture from his grave
May also issue; but he himself away,
The world is manageable here: his death
Is needful more than any other fact
That can befall in Thule.

Gottlieb.
Our counsels clash:
The King to save the soul would save the life
Of one most dear; the Prince, and justly, leaves
For Thule's sake to deep perdition both
The spirit and the flesh of one accursed,
No longer son or brother. Now, hear a word
Of compromise, the Church's modern rôle.
Two things are to be stopped beyond resumption
Even in Prince Mammon's fancy:—usurpature
Of Thule and the rape of Guendolen.

Magnus.
And only death can sign the period
Of Mammon's lustful will and power to do.

Gottlieb.
Death only: but his actual presence here
May still solace his father's yearning heart.
No gelding can commit a rape—

Mammon.
No what!

Gottlieb.
Or wear a crown; the one is nature's rule,
The other in our constitution stands.
There is besides a statute unrepealed,
Archaic, barbarous, harsh and horrible,
Which substitutes for death castration. Cut
His sex away, then abrogate a law
In whose survival I perceive a craft
Of prescience and the providence of God
Forecasting our dilemma: its duty done—
I marvel as the perfect purpose falls
At last mature: its savage duty done
Uniquely, let—

Mammon.
By your Jehovah, priest,
You have a perfect courage of your creed!
Unsex us all, the final blessed state
Of Christendom: geld, spay them, men and women,
And start on earth your pallid Heaven of neuters
Where marriage is not!

Gottlieb.
He makes a mock of Heaven!

Magnus.
Ought he to overhear?

Christian.
His presence frets
Our counsel. To the chapel! to the cross!
Prone at the mercy-seat we'll have him yet!

Mammon.
Most Christian judges, Christian punishment!

Oswald and the guard lead Mammon into the chapel.
Christian.
We must have mercy, father.

Gottlieb.
Christ has none:
Believe and live; reject the cross and die.

Magnus.
He dared our worst, remember. Hardihood
So blasphemous, reliance impudent
Upon his power and personality
Without the help of God, or any call
Solicitous on what is not himself,
Invite our wrath and terrible rebuke.

Christian.
He dared our worst.

Magnus.
And fears us not at all.

Gottlieb.
My motion to unsex him passed him by:
He laughed; he thought it bluff.

Christian.
Was it not bluff?

Gottlieb.
I meant it, mean it; for he dared our worst.

Magnus.
'Twould be our worst!

Anselm.
The earthly worst might prove
Divinely best for him. Our holiest father
Undid his sex to set his spirit free;
The wanton mind of Abelard became
Divinely pure when vengeance struck away
The witness of his manhood; Cybele,
The lofty mother of the gods, enforced
Castration, did enchanted males take up
The trumpet and the tambourine to join
Her rapturous women—symbol of the church,
The bride of Christ, and of the word of God,
Dividing bone and marrow, and spirit and flesh.

Christian.
To enter Heaven unsexed already!

Gottlieb.
Prepared
For Paradise!

Magnus.
A pregnant punishment!
A penalty? The only true reward!

Anselm.
A deprivation that becomes a dowry!

Christian.
If all else fails I swear it shall be done.
Better to enter Heaven wanting an eye—

Gottlieb.
Christ's euphemism for sex.

Christian.
—than go to Hell
With every member perfect.

Guendolen re-enters quickly.
Magnus.
Guendolen!

Guendolen.
Let me be married now, King Christian! Now!

Christian.
To-morrow is your wedding-day, my child.

Guendolen.
Marry me now, or terrible distress
Will overtake us all.

Christian.
What moves you so?

Guendolen.
Fear in my bosom, in my bones consumes
My life. Prince Mammon's power of old was great
Upon my senses: devils invade my soul—
It must be so!—when Mammon's glances burst
In fire about me. Let me be the wife
Of Magnus now, at once!

Christian.
Nothing can stay
Your marriage, Guendolen. I greatly lean
On ceremonial and appointed times:
To-morrow, Guendolen, as the world expects.

Guendolen.
No! No! This hour or never! Even now
May be too late: the souls of women guess
The awful silent presence forward there,
Unthought and unimagined, but felt in front,
As high as Heaven, as deep as Hell, the fate
That breathes upon us waiting to devour.

Christian.
My daughter! Over-wrought and haunted, sleep
Will bring your nerves in tune.

Magnus.
Sleep? In my arms!
Her terror like a treble shrill accords
With my deep-toned foreboding. Marry us;
Then by no miracle can Mammon's boast
Mature in Guendolen.

Florimond.
This is God's choice.

Guendolen.
Lord Abbot, you will marry us?

Gottlieb.
I will:
The quickened sense of women apprehends
Like instinct: if the King consents, I will.

Guendolen.
Oh, King, consent! King Christian?

Christian.
I consent,
Not knowing why. Time from my trembling hands
Snatches the reins it seems. The public rite
To-morrow; a private marriage—oh, divine
Conclusion! In the chapel Mammon writhes
And sins: he shall behold this wedding; know
His vaunt is idle; learn how Heaven can blast
Satanic hopes before they bloom; be thrown
In his unhallowed confidence, and fall
Contrite and humbled, sobbing at my feet.

Guendolen.
King Christian, I implore you by the cross,
By things immaculate, by God, by love,
By marriage and by every Christian tie,
Bring me no more where Mammon is: no more!

Christian.
It passes me: a rude and rebel boy
Subverts our purpose and affronts us all:
I cannot dredge the undercurrent here.
But have your way; for in your eyes your soul
Dances as if in torment. Take her, Magnus,
Her and her beauty and her strangeness: keep
Them well: you—and 'tis excellent—possess
A tested faith and shine in guiltless youth.
Proceed, Lord Abbot, with the sacrament.

Magnus.
Most royal father, should you visit Mammon
And once again do battle for his soul,
Acquaint him with our marriage, and Heaven's joy
May crown your travail. Finally, the threat
Of what we had determined might so move
His busy fancy that the deed itself
Would be redundant.

Christian.
I begin to feel
The grandeur and the duty of the deed.
To trim him up for Heaven! The sacrifice
Would please the triune God.

Guendolen.
Now, grave Lord Abbot—
Oh, proud Lord Abbot, bless and marry us!

Magnus and Guendolen kneel before the Abbot as the scene closes.