Page:Czecho-Slovak Student Life, Volume 18.djvu/430

a lamb as strike a lion. Place me face to face with Richard, in a fair and open field, and I shall bate not an eyelash at his charge.

AMAU.: Well spoken, Sir Marquis of Montserrat. I spoke thus only to put thee on thy mettle.—And yet, Conrad, thou art a willing archer, but thy bow is everslack to carry an arrow to its mark direct.

CON: Pray, what meanest thou? I relish not riddles.

AMAU.: The Lion stands rampant in thy path—strike him down!

CON.: What? Strike down, in foul murder, Richard of England, Coeur de Lion, the champion of Christendom?

AMAU.: Knowest what thou look’st like, Conrad, at this moment? Not like a politic and valiant Marquis of Montserrat, not like him who would direct the council of princes and determine the fate of empires, but like a school-boy who, stumbling upon the conjuration of his master’s book of grammar, has raised the devil when he least thought of it, and now stands terrified at the apparition.

CON.: We shall become the curse of all Europe, the malediction of every man, from the Pope on his throne to the very beggar at the churchgate, who ragged and leprous, in the last extremity of human wretchedness, shall bless himself that he is not Giles Amaury or Conrad of Montserrat!

AMAU.: If thou takest it thus, let us hold there has nothing passed between us—that we have spoken in our dreams—have wakened, and the vision is gone.

CON.: It can never depart!

AMAU.: Aye, visions of golden crowns and royal thrones have a sticking quality—like gossamer, as flimsy, yet as pernicious. (Enter Theodoric, waving the scourge about his head.)

THEO.: I am Theodoric of Engaddi! I am the walker of the desert! Avoid ye, avoid ye! I am the enemy of infidels, traitors, and renegades! Down with the prince of darkness and the fiends of hell! I see, I see! (Gazes upwards and athwart the stage.)

AMAU.: Ha! What meanest, thou sneaking knave?—Speak, or I’ll plunge my sword into thy raving heart!

CON.: Hold, my Lord; wouldst thou strike at an old head gone crazy?

AMAU: Nay, but I suspect villainy in his madness.—Speak! What seest thou?

THEO.: I see a spider aweaving his web—for to catch a fly. Ho, ho! The web is weak, it tears, and the spider’s falling, falling, falling—dead!

AMAU.: I swear thee, Conrad, this is more a shrewd caitiff than a blind madman.

CON: ’Tis thy imagination, Sir Giles. I know the doting old fanatic; ’tis the Hermit of Engaddi, called by the Moslems: Hamako. He is often thus. I perceive nothing but the ravings of a diseased mind.

THEO.: (Now peering off into distance.) I see! I see! A hound lies in waiting for the lion’s cub! Ho, ho!—The hound springs—the lion strikes—and tears, and tears, and tears,—and the hound lies dead!—I am Theodoric of Engaddi! I am the walker of the desert!—Remember the Holy Sepulchre! The Cross! The Cross!—Beware ye, beware ye! (Exit.)

AMAU.: (Makes as if to follow.) I tell thee, Conrad, it likes me not. Those ravings of his carry an odor of suspicion. ’Twere wiser and prudent to put the silence of death on them.

CON.: (Restraining him.) Aye, forsooth, and bring every lance and sword in the camp upon us ere his soul had reached the skies. I tell thee, he is held in great veneration not only by the Christians, but even by the misbelieving Moslems, who hold him to be a prophet.

AMAU.: Well, let him be. We were a fine parcel of knights and men did we allow a raving weakling get the best of our schemes.—So, back to our purpose. Thou dost dream of a golden crown; so doth Richard. Now, dead men dream not; take away, then, from Richard his dreams which interfere with thine. Then thine will come