University of Virginia Library

ACT V

Scene I:

—A room in the Volsung House, Watling Street. Inga Volsung in the doorway, attended by a footman; Oswald in the passage.
Inga.
Must see me! Oswald! Tell him I am tired.—
No; stay a moment.

[Enters the room.
Oswald
[enters the room].
Close the door quietly.

The Footman goes out closing the door.
Inga.
Ask if he brings a message from the King.—
No; not that either.—Ask ... Find out for me—
[Sees Oswald.
How mean of you! How mean!

Oswald.
If that were all!
One thing is left me—one; my love for you.

Inga.
I cannot listen, Oswald.

Oswald.
Not for myself!
Your body and your soul—your sanity
On earth, your sanctity hereafter, stand
In utter peril.

Inga.
I am sorry, Oswald.
I suffer more than you; your hurt will heal;
But it will pain me all my life to think
How I mistook my heart and wounded yours.

Oswald.
How shall I make you understand!

Inga.
I do.
Your words mean nothing; but the sounds express
The frenzy of a lover undeceived,
Whom love had led astray. I feel your need
To see me; and I think 'twas not so mean
To bribe my servant: Love and war are one—
Above all honour and integrity.—
Now you must leave me.

Oswald.
Look at me.

Inga.
I look,
And see a young man terribly perplexed;
A strong man, too, but simple; one that does
A woman's bidding always:—therefore, go.

Oswald.
That was I, to the life; but now you see
Pity and horror come to warn you.

Inga.
Heavens!
What can have happened in this casual world?
Again a man in earnest.—Tell me all.

Oswald.
When in the morning you resumed your troth,
And left me loveless, I perceived the King
In ambush of your fancy hidden close.
O you may flame with anger; but I know:
When souls are all one wound they understand
Astoundingly. The bruit of Mammon brought
You back to Christianstadt; the thought of him
Expelled the thought of me—

Inga.
I spoke of Mammon,—
Certainly; and who wouldn't?—Salient whims
Of love forlorn to strange conclusions leap!—
Go on: the rest of this pathology.

Oswald.
The rest of this pathology is hell
A hundredfold.—You must not see the king:
His thought has whipped about you like a snake
That coils to kill.

Inga.
How can you speak, how think
Such common things of me!

Oswald.
Why, when I came
You hoped I brought a message from the King!
O, you must gird yourself and fly far hence,
Beyond the rumour of him; out of sight!
To think of him at all is to be his—
I mean with any fanciful concern
About his person and his dazzling looks,
Or captivated notion of his power,
His purpose and the terror of his deeds;
For terror fascinates, with beauty blent,
Above all witchcraft. Aptly you would fall
Into his liking; and then?—the night comes down:
He must have everything; the heart, the mind,
The soul—from those he loves he drains them all;
And breaks and brays to powder those he hates.
His very touch is fatal; the legate died
To-day when Mammon laid his hand upon him.
For me, whom he has made his creature—God
In Heaven! O God! O God!—I daily die,
And nightly; kept awake (like prisoners jabbed
With lances lest they sleep) by red-hot blades
My other self, remorse, drives hissing home.
And cannot leave him! Cannot go away,
And be the man I was! He has me fast,—
Enframed in deeds like Gottlieb in the rack?

Inga.
What do you say? Like Gottlieb in the rack?

Oswald.
I said it: in the rack. I've come from that;
And from the abbey, which we've set on fire
To make the church of Christ the hearth of hell.

Inga.
You tell me Mammon racked the abbot?

Oswald.
Racked
The abbot; and I hear his dismal song;—
And more of it I'll hear.—O Inga, fly
From Christianstadt!

Inga.
King Mammon racked a man!
The twentieth century;—and he racked a man!
What a gigantic being!

Oswald.
Already caught!

Inga.
And then to burn the abbey!—But that's not true?

Oswald.
It's true. And this is true,—that you and Mammon
Ripen to be each other's victims. He,
Soon as he heard your name, recalled our worship,
Our boyhood's joy in you, and hotly wrote,
Commanding you to come.

Inga.
I had no letter!

Oswald.
He tore it; for I lied to him, and said
You meant to visit him.

Inga.
You did!—A light!
No wonder he displayed no wonder!

Oswald.
Who
Displayed no wonder?

Inga.
Some one dear to me.—
What were we talking of? My mind went off
Upon a pleasant errand.—You said you lied;—
And then?

Oswald.
I saved you so for that one time;
And now again I save you. O, you see
The peril! Rather drop into your grave,
Oblivion and eternal nothingness,
Than be renowned in Mammon's legend, thick
With sin like night with darkness—turbulent night
In storm-tossed Thule when the piebald moon
Slinks down behind a swarthy, plunging tide,
And writhen waves break blindly on the cliffs—
As I am broken on the world's wild shore.

Inga.
That kind of pathos irks me. Foolish fellow!
Fly hence yourself, lacking the strength to be
Âme damnée of such greatness as your King's.—
When did you rack the abbot?

Oswald.
Deep in the toils!

Inga.
But tell me, Oswald.

Oswald.
Scarcely an hour ago.

Inga.
An hour ago! He left my arms straightway
To rack a man! How great!

Oswald.
What have you said?
Did that escape you, Inga? Is it true?
You will not answer? “Left your arms,” you said.
The slippery truth slipped out against your will?
He sent for you?

Inga.
He did not send.

Oswald.
You ... went!
The vortex of him sucked you to himself!
And he seduced you! I read it in your eyes.
Now—now I understand the abandonment
With which he racked the abbot!—And you smile,—
A subtle smile.—Your thoughts he first debauched
With hurrying words, tremendous images,
And most divulsive message; then your body
Melted like wax.—And still you stand and smile;
For though your body melted your heated mind
Was steeled in Mammon's lust. Women are hard;
Mammon will make them his;—all women, once
They seize his meaning.

Inga moving backwards and holding Oswald's glance with her smiling eyes goes slowly out.
Oswald.
Gone—out of my life!
And into what?—I still forget myself.
My share in this? A more appalling woe
Than any suffered yet! I feel my tattered heart
In anguish drift like seaweed on the surf.—
If I could state it calmly to myself:—
He sent me to prepare the rack. While I
Awaited him, in labour to believe
He meant my trial only, she my love
Had canonized, dissolving in his arms,
Forgot me;—or remembered:—both of them
Triumphant in contemptuous betrayal?
The utter inhumanity of that
Might yet have been the fabled irony
And poignant sauce of fate; but Mammon knew;
Had offered gallantly—so gallantly!—
To plead my cause with her whose virgin soul
He tore to bits without a thought of me.—
There's something here I want; something unhoped
I fear to tell myself.—Have done with fear!
There's freedom in it; and the tenderest nerve
My conscience quivers with is strung and taut
To break the personal power that bound me damned
In scrupulous fidelity. My soul
Recovers hardihood to disavow
Mammon and all his works, and to repent!

[Goes out.

Scene II:

—The Watling Street. Enter Ole Larum, Jan Rykke and Ulf Stromer, walking quickly. They halt near an electric standard.
Larum.
Is that the Duke leaving the Volsung House?

Rykke.
I think it is. He looks about; he comes
This way.

Stromer.
That's not the Duke; he never walked
With such a reckless gait.

Rykke.
I'm sure it is.
I saw his face and figure clear as day
By the great arc-light opposite.

Larum.
He waves
His hand to us.

Stromer.
Ought we to meet him?

Larum.
Him,
Or any man.—With what a haste he comes!

Oswald
[before he enters].
I stand for God. Are you for God or Mammon?—
[As he enters].
Well met, Lord Mayor! Hear me denounce myself
Before my resolution fails.—Look up:—
You see that light? You know it?

Larum.
The abbey burns.

Oswald.
'Twas I that lit it; and for that alone
My life is forfeit.

Larum.
That's as it may be.—
Will you combine with us to save the abbey?

Oswald.
The abbey's doomed, guarded from all approach.

Larum.
But you command the army: dismiss the guard.

Oswald.
King Mammon, doubting me, discerned my mind
As I would read a clerkly letter, plain
With ebon ink and careful penmanship.
Wolfhart commands the troops that hold the square,
And takes instructions from the King alone.
But I believe we can destroy to-night
The power of Mammon at a single blow.—
You heard of Anselm's death?

Larum.
A rumour runs
That Mammon shook his life out.

Oswald.
So he did.—
What do they tell of Gottlieb?

Larum.
Nothing yet.
Is he dead also?

Oswald.
Worse a deal than dead.
Gottlieb was racked by Mammon. I saw it done.

Larum.
What do you mean by racked?

Oswald.
Stripped, tied and stretched
With levers.

Larum.
In the antique frame that's shown
In the torture-chamber?

Oswald.
As men were racked of old.

Rykke.
That ends it: Mammon's day is done!

Stromer.
I care not for my life—but to be racked!
It's monstrous, barbarous, out of date, and mad.

Larum.
Your sudden penitence and this strange tale
Require some proof, my lord of Christianstadt.
If we could see the abbot.

Oswald.
Come with me now,
And see him. He lies in prison underground,
Alone, disjointed, a forgotten foe.

Larum.
In God's name and in man's deliver him,
And show the people Mammon's handiwork!

Oswald.
My very purpose!—and it gathers shape.
You know my house stands opposite the palace:
We'll set the abbot in a window there;
I shall address the soldiers; tell the whole
Enormity of Mammon's parricide,
Confessed to me to-day—

Larum.
I knew it!

Oswald.
All
Believed it save myself:—the treacherous death
He dealt his brother—

Larum.
Known to you?

Oswald.
To me
And others:—Anselm's sudden end; and last,
The plight of Gottlieb set before their eyes.

Larum.
The King will speak.

Oswald.
And so will I! A cause,
So private to myself it must remain
Untold, will point, will edge, will barb my words,
And so envenom them that Mammon's heart
Will shrivel in his breast.

Larum.
Whatever course
We follow we must see the abbot first.

Oswald.
Come quickly, then. The abbot's broken body
Will rouse a fury in the hearts of men
That only Mammon's overthrow can quench.

Scene III:

—St. Olaf's Square. At the back is the abbey in flames. On the left a dining-room, on the second floor of the Royal Palace, occupies about a quarter of the stage. On the right rises a block of tall houses, including Oswald's.

The square is held by troops under the command of Wolfhart: both horse and foot with several guns and the band of the King's guard.—In the streets entering the square, which are densely packed with the mob, a number of fire-engines and fire-escapes are standing. With the exception of those in the third story of Oswald's house, the windows on the right are lit up and filled with onlookers.

The windows of the dining-room are closed, but the curtains are drawn aside, and a ruddy hue from the burning abbey mingles with the electric light. A deep murmur rises constantly from the mob, breaking into outcries when the flames leap higher, when a stained window bursts, or a turret falls.

Dessert is served and the servants have gone. Mammon and Guendolen are standing near each other at one end of the table, and Florimond at the other with a dispatch-box and documents.

The Mob.
The King! The King!

Mammon.
I dare not show myself.—
No money, Florimond. A course begun
With dazzling onset and terrific speed
Can never pick the pace up if a pause
Undoes the spell of action.

Florimond.
In two months, King—

Mammon.
Maturity of fiscal monies means
A stagnant time of waiting unendured
By sudden wills like mine.—What have you there?

Florimond.
Two hundred pounds: a little more.

Mammon.
Or less!
The horror of it cannot be proclaimed
Articulately: sighs and groans might serve.
My liberty, my mastery of the world
Restrained and subjugated! Where's my money?

Florimond.
You have spent, King Mammon; you have lavished gold.

Guendolen is about to go out.
Mammon.
What is it, Guendolen?

Guendolen.
When I return:—
Something of moment I remember, Mammon.

[Goes out.
Mammon.
No money:—and I claim omnipotence.
There's laughter in my heart among the hells
Where judgment sits in torture crowned with flame,
A ruddy grill the cushion of its throne.

The Mob.
The King! The King!

Mammon.
How has my money gone?
I cannot speak to Thule without my money.

Florimond.
To-day you paid away a hundred thousand—
Five thousand harlots at twenty pounds apiece.
Oswald and those who wrought your coup-d'état
Have had as much again. You gave the Queen
Three thousand for her private purse; and gifts—
A golden casket of a thousand pounds
With jewels worth some thirty thousand:—truly
A most untenable extravagance:
The royal jewellery is handsomer,
Antique and precious—

Mammon.
Second, hundredth hand!
Your heirloom reeks of Christendom. My wife
Must wear a virginal parure, for stones
Inherit qualities, and bosom-thoughts
Burn in them of the wearers.—My father's hoard
Expended in a week! I want two millions:
A largess for my army:—for every man
Ten pounds:—to-morrow. Get it, Florimond.

Florimond.
It can be borrowed; but not to-morrow, King
Finance is not so simple.

The Mob.
King Mammon, speak!

Mammon.
To borrow money? To be without it? Now
I understand the thief: the guiltless thief.
Men should have money; else they cannot do
The things they would: they cannot eat or drink;
They cannot live or love without it. He
Who steals directly is the honestest;
But all are robbers; money makes us so.

The Mob.
The King! The King!

Florimond.
I wait the King's command.

Mammon.
I think.

Florimond.
But here—

Mammon.
I wrestle with a thing
That's in my mind.

Florimond.
May I sit down? Old age
Encounters ceremony handicapped
A little.

Mammon.
Sit;—and think.—This never trod
My brain before! It blazes out a path.
Money is Christendom!—the spinal cord,
The body and the limbs of Christendom.
Now, now I know! Now, now the world is mine!

Guendolen re-enters, accompanied by Prounice. They bring with them the casket of jewels, and a cash-box containing notes and a large sum in gold. They place these on the table.
Mammon.
You come like priestesses with measured steps.

Guendolen
[takes off the collar and tiara she wears, and places them in the casket]
The splendid jewellery you gave me, Mammon.
I love it for itself: and for the things
You told me of it; and because you gave it.
It hurts to lose it; but it hurts me more
To see you powerless. Sell it for the power
Its value represents.—This is the money:
[Opens the cash-box.
Throw it among the mob, and speak your will.

Mammon.
O bold! O beautiful! But these are yours:
I undo nothing done. Come, wear them all.

[He replaces the collar on Guendolen's neck.
Guendolen.
You make so light of me?

Mammon.
A constellation!
We'll load her with them, Prounice: overhang
Her loveliness with stars and galaxies.

Prounice and Mammon deck Guendolen with the jewels.
Guendolen.
I'm child enough to like this; but I wonder.

Mammon.
Jewels are wonderful—most wonderful:
So hard, so pure, of such enduring beauty;
Foundation stones of heaven. The exiled seer
In Patmos built the New Jerusalem
Upon the glittering fragments of his fancy—
Matter, all warped and scaled by tribulation,
Age and ecstasy: like jewels fancy lasts;
For mind is matter; and so material heaven
On precious stones, fantastic in the skies,
The creature of a senile rapture, stands
Eternal.—For the money—hear me now:—

A Voice.
Come out, King Mammon!

Mammon.
So surly!—Look—
[Lifts a handful of money and lets it fall again into the cash-box]
Guendolen, Florimond; look, Prounice:—Money,
The viscera, the flesh of Christendom.
Though every word of holy writ were lost,
And all the churches, all the crosses down;
Though sanctity and sacrament were sunk
In savage interdict and senseless use,
While money lasts, the accident of Christ
Controls the world: his birth, his miracles,
His sermons, silences, his deeds, his death
Escaped oblivion on the wing of one
Unhappy jest:—one fretful repartee
Alone made Christendom. When Jesus cried,
Pestered by wiseacres, “Show me a penny:—
Whose image and whose epigraph is this?”
The world hung in the balances of chance.
Had those discordant Pharisees replied,
“The image of the enemy of God
And God's elected folk,” the pat rebuff
Had been impossible; but they blurted “Cæsar's.”
“Render to Cæsar therefore Cæsar's things,”
The answer flashed; “and things of God to God.”
The wanton, treacherous wit of it!

A Voice.
Come out,
Incendiary!

Mammon.
They guess that too.—Besides
The gulf that made the dual world, dug deep
By that antithesis, Christ's apophthegm
Of God and Cæsar, tolerating cash,
Transmuted money into blood and brain,
Seed, soul of Christendom. The seed? The soul?
The spirit, the Holy Ghost, the very God:
For look you, Prounice, my most Christian Prounice,
Not only did your Church of Christ become
An instrument of plunder; trade itself,
The necessary merchandise of men,
Ingrafted on religion, zealously
Degenerated into business—fraud
Reduced to system, socialised, condoned:
By heaven and hell and every Christian oath,
A homologue of the Athanasian creed!
The banks, the trusts, the companies are Christ:
His mustard seedling into Christendom,
With foliage of money, flower and fruit
Of money, bourgeoned broadly; and therewithal
A weakness, meanness, littleness in men
Was fostered and tormented. To think of it!
Money and business, in material truth,
The chains and oubliette of the Universe!
Not to be told!—the substance of the stars;
The wandering ether; beauty, glory, power;
Product of sevenfold light and sevenfold sound;
Eternity and space, the universe,
In us set free to know, to think, to do,
To love and to imagine, tamely left
Beneath the harrow of a usurer,—
A hirer; in the clutch of business-men!
And all because two thousand years ago
An agitator passed a petulant jest!
I'll put an end to business and to money;
I'll turn them to their own annihilation!

[A volley of stones crashes through the windows. Commands are heard; expostulations, shrieks, shrill laughter; then silence, except for the sound of the burning of the abbey, which is now audible through the broken panes.]
Oswald and Larum appear at the windows of the third story of Oswald's house with Rykke and Stromer behind supporting Gottlieb.
Islan enters the dining-room with several soldiers of the King's guard.
Mammon.
No harm; no danger; but I want you, Islan:—
A moment.—Guendolen?

Guendolen.
No; I shall stay.
Now most I love you, Mammon; in your eyes
Such deep etheral meaning wells and shines.

Mammon.
Where's Christianstadt? He sent you, Islan?

Islan.
No;
The noise instructed me.

Mammon.
Are you in charge?

Islan.
In the Duke's absence.

Mammon.
He should not be absent.
When did you see him last?

Islan.
Not since the morning.

Mammon.
Send for him to his house. [Looks across the square].
His rooms are lit!
And people in the windows! Can you see?

Islan.
Not plainly.

Mammon.
Nor can I.—I think he's there:—
Which means an end of Oswald.—Do not send.—
[To Florimond].
What money is there in the bank of Thule?
O, quickly!—Gold and silver; say how much.

Florimond.
Ten million pounds in all: six millions coined;
The rest in bullion.

Mammon
[to Islan].
Take two hundred men;
Enter the bank and hold it in my name.

Islan.
Who fills my place, King Mammon?

Mammon.
Let Siegfried wait.

Islan.
Where shall I find the keys?

Mammon.
Break down the door!
Churches and banks together stand and fall:
No more salvation, Islan, and no more safes!

[Goes out with the guardsmen.
Oswald.
Soldiers of Thule—

Mammon.
Inga has told; and now,
Inspired with rage, he thinks to talk me down!

Oswald.
I who address you—

[Mammon, having opened the window, steps on the balcony and raises his hand.
The Mob.
Ah! The King! The King!
Incendiary! Murderer! Devil! Devil!

Mammon.
Incendiary, murderer and devil—
[A fierce roar breaks from the mob.
So am I called; but I am here to stop
The meaningless employment of the breath
In faded syllables that from the first
Were unrelated to the Universe.
[The crowd again cries against Mammon.
My voice can reach across the square. Be still,
If you would hear what ne'er was said before,
Nor thought until I thought it.

Oswald.
Liar! Fool!

Mammon.
You in the windows, you against the walls,
You in the mouths of streets, regard yourselves
As unparticipating audience come
To hear a trial, or critics at a play,
While I address my soldiers.

Oswald.
Parricide!

Stromer.
Assassin!

Rykke.
Abbey-burner!

Larum.
Torturer!

Oswald.
Listen to me! The monster's deeds are known
To God and man; he is, beyond all doubt,
The one and only villain of the world.

Stromer and Rykke support Gottlieb in view of the soldiers.
Mammon.
The abbot!

Oswald.
Do you know—

Mammon.
Wolfhart, your guns
Against these babbling windows and against
The bawlers in the streets.
[Pause. Commands are heard; the movement of troops and shifting of artillery].
If once again
A voice is raised while I address you, fire.

Mammon
[to Guendolen].
Oswald's no coward; but he cannot lead.—
[Leaning over the balcony.
To men I know; who love me and whom I love:—
Of Zenghis, of Tamerlane, of Attila,
A casual echo haunts the cloistered mind;
But Mahomet, triumphant still, usurps
The hearts and souls of many millions, folk
Profound in thought and dutiful in deed:
Those other conquerors only scourged the world;
The Arab prophet with the future fed
The minds of men, and fledged the wings of hope
With heaven and hell, the only destiny
Within his ken; he gave them all he had,
And therefore lives to-day devoutly cherished,
Although the whole he gave was but a sign.
For time I offer you eternity,
Presenting to the world the Universe;
And having wiped it clean of Christendom
Intend a new beginning. Many starts
The world has had, but always old beginnings
Derived and eked and patched from hackneyed creeds.
I start as if before me never a thought
Had crossed the brain of man. If Tamerlane
Began with sixty followers, Mahomet
With two or three, I, with the might of Thule
And such a passion of belief, so rapt
A vision of the Universe, so great
A consciousness of power as now imbue
My being and empanoply my will,
May heedfully attempt a purpose vast
As change itself, and more momentous, more
Achievable than any ever yet
Accomplished by crusader, outlaw, king,
Warrior or world-compeller; for the age
Awaits me and the ancient systems, dead
And empty, from my path like winnowed husks
Will vanish. Everywhere in high revolt
Against an order fallen to chaos, men
Must welcome us and swell our avalanche,
That from the Arctic to the Middle sea
Between the gulf of storms and Volga's tide
Will utterly abolish Christendom.

[The belfry bursts asunder and comes down with a heavy noise; the bells in a stream of molten metal splash among the falling stones; a broad sheet of flame soars up; and a prolonged indrawn sigh fills the square].
Florimond, much dismayed, goes out.
Mammon.
The beauty and the cleanliness of flame,
The justice and the purity of war:
With these to purge the world of Christendom
And clear a space profane, that men at last
May be themselves, the conscious Universe!
Who asks a higher task, a nobler game,
A more heroic agony? Behold
Our beacon blazing—

A soldier speaks indistinctly.
Mammon.
What?

The Soldier.
The fiery cross!

Mammon.
The fiery cross? The image pleases me:—
City to city, land to land shall speed
The message of deliverance, nightly flung
In brindled flame against the firmament,
As burning belfries topple into heaps
Resoldered by their molten chimes, and all
Cathedrals, churches, abbeys, purified
By fire, to dust and ashes crumble down,
Till not a consecrated stone shall stand
Upon another, and the smelted earth
Return to unadulterate matter free
From immaterial dreams that rot the air!

Gottlieb.
The word of God! The word of God remains.

Wolfhart.
The middle window; in the third story; there.—
Now, gunner—

Mammon.
Do not fire! I pardon that.—
The word of God became a feeble lie
When men perceived how systems, suns and stars,
The earth and flowers and beasts and folk evolved
From the one staple of the Universe.
Bibles and liturgies are impotent;
In Baalbec who worships now the sun,
Or who in Zion to Jehovah pours
The first-born blood? The fanes are ruined; spent
The adoration that was only fond
Expedient, frantic makeshift for delayed
Self-consciousness in men; the truest creed
Dies like a mollusc when you crack the shell.
Instead of temples I bring the universe;
Instead of creeds I offer you yourselves,
The greatness of the universe become
Self-conscious; and I bid you welcome war—
My soldiers, trained to fight!—welcome a war
The noblest ever waged! Scope shall be yours
Such as ensanguined paladins enjoyed
Before our congresses decided not
To kill too many or to hurt too much.
The wealth of Christendom is there to seize,
And beauty waits on rapture and the sword.
We mean by war all that war ever meant.
Destruction's ministers, death's freemen, lust's
Exponents, daily like a blood-red dawn
In flames and crimson seas we shall advance
Against the ancient immaterial reign
Of spirit, and our watchword shall be still,
“Get thee behind me, God; I follow Mammon.”
And last, my comrades in this holiest war,
That you may know you are no common soldiers,
To-morrow as a largess and free gift
From me, and as a token of your high
Vocation, each of you shall in gold receive
Ten sovereigns, earnest of the wealth and power,
The greatness that the lowliest may attain
On Mammon's battlefields.

The Soldiers.
God save the King!

Mammon.
God—save—the—King!

The Mob laughs loud, long and discordantly.
Mammon.
Soldiers, that old inane
Accustomed cry must cease. God never saved
A king:—which king of all the catalogue
Who came to violent ends was saved by God,
From poison, from assassins, from the scaffold?
They died the death their enemies decreed.
God never yet did anything at all.
And why? Because there is none; never was.
Yet must our battle-cry be as I said,
“Get thee behind me, God; I follow Mammon.”
By God you understand the modern world,
A sink and overflow of decadence
With slimy rags and greasy fragments stopped:—
I mean that old fatigued philosophemes,
Deflowered religions, gelded poetries
Frequent the markets, haunt the minds of men;
That rancid odds and ends of broken thought
Still gag conceit and stifle fantasy
To dupe the ambitious hunger of the age.
By Mammon you must understand a world
Purged of the fæcal past; a clean-run world;
A world begun again and wholly cured
Of God and sin, the immaterial wound
That pierces through and through, the open sore
That is not, though its grisly hue of death
Can frustrate vision, and its putrid stench
Evenom all the spaces of the air.
By Mammon you must understand a world
Where men are great and conscious of their greatness—
The very meanest intimately sure
That he himself is the whole universe
Become intelligent and capable.
Therefore our watchword and our battle-cry
Shall be henceforth—and let me hear it now—
“Get thee behind me, God; I follow Mammon.”
[Before the soldiers can respond a deafening explosion in a street near by shakes the square. With much clamour and terrified outcry the crowd disperses. Oswald, Larum, and Rykke and Stromer with Gottlieb, disappear from their window.]
Siegfried! Siegfried!

Siegfried enters.
Mammon.
Run to the bank of Thule,
And bring me instant word how Islan does.
Is Dietrich there?

Siegfried.
He takes my place, King Mammon.

[Goes out.
Mammon
[to Guendolen].
There may be death dealt now, and corpses strewn
About the streets.

Guendolen.
I will make music, Mammon:
A fiery drum is pounding in my ear,
And discords, wed against their wishes, ache
To be divorced that they may melt and flow
In sweet progressions and alliances.—
Prounice, come with me. You and your sewing, I
And my counterpoint, in stormy Christianstadt
Will forge to-night a rhythmic heart of peace
From the dynamic ether in ourselves.

[Goes out followed by Prounice.
Mammon.
A wonder of the world! She doubts, she fears,
Her pallor like the moonlight whitens things;
Yet with my thought she makes familiar play,
And on the desolation of the earth
Divinely looks lest she should trouble me.—
Dietrich! Here, Dietrich!

Dietrich enters.
Mammon.
Have you seen Florimond?

Dietrich.
He left the palace when the belfry fell.
I hailed him, but he would not answer me.

Mammon.
A man of use to kings.—He seemed distressed?

Dietrich.
He stole along the corridor like a thief
Escaping openly who dares not run
Lest he should seem, or feel, or grow afraid.

Mammon.
I knew he would forsake me. He is a Christian.—
Will you be Chancellor, Dietrich?

Dietrich.
I, King Mammon!

Mammon.
You did my sums at school;—remember?
You have a head for figures; you are young;
And youth is my palladium. Yes or no:—
Will you be Chancellor?

Dietrich.
I will, King Mammon.

Mammon.
Take charge of these. Your virgin work will be
To wind up all the business of the State.
I'll put an end to money; it can be done.

Dietrich goes out, taking with him the dispatch-box and documents left by Florimond.
Mammon
[on the balcony].
Is it known yet? What building? And whose folly?

Wolfhart
[unseen].
The bank of Thule, King: the anarchists.

Mammon.
This is the rash reformer from the Isles.
I hope they have him; I must make him mine.

Siegfried re-enters.
Mammon.
Is Islan safe?

Siegfried.
He holds the bank, King Mammon.

Mammon.
The matter, brief and plain.

Siegfried.
Two factious sorts,
Pagan and socialist, with mutineers
From divers regiments—

Mammon.
What! soldiers, Siegfried?

Siegfried.
Unhappily.—These rebels in the stir
To-night, anticipating unopposed
Success, attacked the bank—

Mammon.
But Islan's troops
Had seized it?

Siegfried.
Yes; Islan had picked the lock.

Mammon.
They placed their bomb against an unlatched door!
It moves the muscles pleasantly to think
A finger could have pushed the gate they burst
With such expense of violence and such noise.

Siegfried.
Their bomb was as it were a thundering knock
To rouse their own forestallers.

Mammon.
Were many killed?
None of my friends, I hope.

Siegfried.
None in the street.
Two sentinels that kept the door within
Have ceased to be.

Mammon.
Two of my worshipped soldiers!

Siegfried.
A rabble joined the rebels and furiously
Assailed the bank. Duke Oswald, with the Mayor
And some strange customers—

Mammon.
The inceptors! Well?

Siegfried.
These then, and reputable citizens
Besides, recruited the assailants. Death
In Gottlieb's person, propped against a door,
Invoking shrill destruction on your arms,
Begat a savage enmity in all
Who saw him hideously flaunted there.
But Islan beat them back, wounding the Duke
Who fled in terror, crying, “The rack! the rack!
“Christ save me from the rack!”—gone mad, they say.

Mammon.
And Gottlieb?

Siegfried.
Boldly rescued by the Mayor
And his associates. Islan took no prisoners.

Mammon.
It goes as I would have it.—Wolfhart, bid
Your music sound our triumph.

Florimond re-enters.
Mammon.
Florimond!
Our prodigal returned!

Florimond.
I wandered out;
I wander back again;—I know not why.

[The opening bars of a heroic march are heard, and at the same time the walls of the abbey fall in].
Mammon.
So all the bastions of Christendom
Shall crumble into dust.—Begin again:
Your clangorous trumpets—let them peal it out;
Your cymbals, and the thunder of your drums!

[The heroic march is resumed and continues to the end.
Florimond.
Now I remember why I came.—O King,
You rush on frightful ruin! Be advised:
Delay, discuss, mature your purposes.

Mammon.
Impossible! A cataclysm begun
Cannot be stayed, cannot withhold itself.
Makers of motions, constitutional kings,
Powerless as God without his Heaven and Hell,
Your party governments that lick the hands
Of voters—to be kicked politely in
And out of office: let them, since they must,
Extol debate and dignify delay,
Attend in fortune's antechambers, wear
The order of the apron-strings of hope,
Feed on their hearts, resourceful epicures,
And be the unpaid pensioners of chance!
In Thule kings are free—free as despair,
A conflagration or an avalanche
That knows no lull, no halt, but flames and falls,
Consuming, overwhelming.

Florimond.
Is not a star
More to be envied than an avalanche?
Unhasting like a star, and like a star
Unresting, said a famous counsellor once.

Mammon.
What star is that? I never heard of it.
The firmament is filled with vehement orbs
Excelling in sidereal despatch.

Florimond.
Nay, King, the sun at least stands still.

Mammon.
The sun?
The sun his planetary offspring bears
Towards Hercules in Lyra, momently
Advancing through the ether at a speed
That leaves the tortoise thought further behind
Than wireless news the plodding carrier's wain.
Suns cannot wait: in your own orbits you
And all men move containëdly; your years
Are measured by the gamut of the seasons
And ebon-ivory scale of day and night;
But my adventurous path no orbital
Appointment knows: onward I move; my year,
Eternity; my high arena, space
With stars like sands bestrewn: my journey's end
Still unattained and unattainable.
Yet all the while you glide along with me,
Planets and asteroids and meteorites,
Clear depths of crystal dust and wandering fires.