WERNER.

'Tis chill; the tapestry lets through

The wind to which it waves: my blood is frozen.

Until 't is spilt or check'd-how soon, I care not.

JOSEPHINE.

And am I nothing in thy heart?

WERNER.

All-all.

JOSEPHINE.

Then canst thou wish for that which must break mine?

WERNER (Approaching her slowly.)

But for thee I had been-no matter what,

But much of good and evil; what I am,

Thou knowest; what I might or should have been,

Thou knowest not: but still I love thee, nor

Shall aught divide us.

(WERNER walks on abruptly, and then approaches JOSEPHINE. The storm of the night,

Perhaps, affects me; I'm a thing of feelings,

And have of late been sickly, as, alas!

Thou know'st by sufferings more than mine, my love! In watching me.

How many in this hour of tempest shiver
Beneath the biting wind and heavy rain,

Whose every drop bows them down nearer earth,
Which hath no chamber for them save beneath
Her surface.

WERNER.

And that's not the worst: who cares For chambers? rest is all. The wretches whom the wind howls round them, and

Thou namest-ay,

The dull and dropping rain saps in their bones
The creeping marrow. I have been a soldier,

A hunter, and a traveller, and am

A beggar, and should know the thing thou talk'st of.

JOSEPHINE.

And art thou not now shelter'd from them all?

JOSEPHINE.

Should the nobly born

Be thankless for that refuge which their habits

Of early delicacy render more

Needful than to the peasant, when the ebb
Of fortune leaves them on the shoals of life?
WERNER.

It is not that, thou know'st it is not; we
Have borne all this, I'll not say patiently,
Except in thee-but we have borne it.

JOSEPHINE.

Well?

WERNER.

Something beyond our outward sufferings (though
These were enough to gnaw into our souls)
Hath stung me oft, and, more than ever, now,
When, but for this untoward sickness, which
Seized me upon this desolate frontier, and
Hath wasted, not alone my strength, but means,
And leaves us―no! this is beyond me!—but
For this I had been happy-thou been happy-
The splendour of my rank sustain'd—my name—
My father's name-been still upheld; and, more
Than those-

JOSEPHINE (Abruptly.)

My son our son our Ulric, Been clasp'd again in these long empty arms,

And all a mother's hunger satisfied.

Twelve years! he was but eight then :-beautiful He was, and beautiful he must be now.

My Ulric!

my adored!

WERNER.

I have been full oft

The chase of fortune; now she hath o'ertaken

My spirit where it cannot turn at bay,—

Sick, poor, and lonely.

JOSEPHINE.

Lonely! my dear husband?

WERNER.

Or worse-involving all I love, in this

Far worse than solitude. Alone, I had died,
And all been over in a nameless grave.

JOSEPHINE.

And I had not outlived thee; but pray take
Comfort! We have struggled long; and they who strive
With fortune win or weary her at last,

So that they find the goal, or cease to feel

Further.

Take comfort,-we shall find our boy.

WERNER.

We were in sight of him, of every thing

Which could bring compensation for past sorrow-
And to be baffled thus!

But I was born to wealth, and rank, and power;
Enjoy'd them, loved them, and, alas! abused them,
And forfeited them by my father's wrath,

In my o'er-fervent youth; but for the abuse
Long sufferings have atoned. My father's death
Left the path open, yet not without snares.

This cold and creeping kinsman, who so long
Kept his eye on me, as the snake upon

The fluttering bird, hath ere this time outstept me,
Become the master of my rights, and lord

Of that which lifts him up to princes in

Dominion and domain.

JOSEPHINE.

Who knows? our son

May have return'd back to his grandsire, and

Even now uphold thy rights for thee?

WERNER.

'T is hopeless,

Since his strange disappearance from my father's,

Entailing, as it were, my sins upon

Himself, no tidings have reveal'd his course.
I parted with him to his grandsire, on
The promise that his anger would stop short
Of the third generation; but Heaven seems
To claim her stern prerogative, and visit
Upon my boy his father's faults and follies.

JOSEPHINE.

I must hope better still,—at least we have yet
Baffled the long pursuit of Stralenheim.

WERNER.

We should have done, but for this fatal sickness,
More fatal than a mortal malady,

Because it takes not life, but life's sole solace:

Even now I feel my spirit girt about

By the snares of this avaricious fiend;

How do I know he hath not track'd us here?

JOSEPHINE.

He does not know thy person; and his spies,