Buch lesen: «Demetrius»

ACT I

SCENE I

THE DIET AT CRACOW.

On the rising of the curtain the Polish Diet is discovered, seated in the great senate hall. On a raised platform, elevated by three steps, and surmounted by a canopy, is the imperial throne, the escutcheons of Poland and Lithuania suspended on each side. The KING seated upon the throne; on his right and left hand his ten royal officers standing on the platform. Below the platform the BISHOPS, PALATINES, and CASTELLANS seated on each side of the stage.

Opposite to these stand the Provincial DEPUTIES, in a double line, uncovered. All armed. The ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN, as the primate of the kingdom, is seated next the proscenium; his chaplain behind him, bearing a golden cross.

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
Thus then hath this tempestuous Diet been
   Conducted safely to a prosperous close;
   And king and commons part as cordial friends.
   The nobles have consented to disarm,
   And straight disband the dangerous Rocoss¹;
   Whilst our good king his sacred word has pledged,
   That every just complaint shall have redress.
   And now that all is peace at home, we may
   Look to the things that claim our care abroad.
   Is it the will of the most high Estates
   That Prince Demetrius, who hath advanced
   A claim to Russia's crown, as Ivan's son,
   Should at their bar appear, and in the face
   Of this august assembly prove his right?
 

CASTELLAN OF CRACOW

 
   Honor and justice both demand he should;
   It were unseemly to refuse his prayer.
 

BISHOP OF WERMELAND

 
   The documents on which he rests have been
   Examined, and are found authentic. We
   May give him audience.
 

SEVERAL DEPUTIES

 
               Nay! We must, we must!
 

LEO SAPIEHA

 
   To hear is to admit his right.
 

ODOWALSKY

 
                   And not
   To hear is to reject his claims unheard.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   Is it your will that he have audience?
   I ask it for the second time – and third.
 

IMPERIAL CHANCELLOR

 
   Let him stand forth before our throne!
 

SENATORS

 
                       And speak!
 

DEPUTIES

 
   Yes, yes! Let him be heard!
 

[The Imperial GRAND MARSHAL beckons with his baton to the doorkeeper, who goes out.

LEO SAPIEHA (to the CHANCELLOR)

 
                  Write down, my lord,
   That here I do protest against this step,
   And all that may ensue therefrom, to mar
   The peace of Poland's state and Moscow's crown.
 

[Enters DEMETRIUS. Advances some steps towards the throne, and makes three bows with his head uncovered, first to the KING, next to the SENATORS, and then to the DEPUTIES, who all severally answer with an inclination of the head. He then takes up his position so as to keep within his eye a great portion of the assemblage, and yet not to turn his back upon the throne.

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   Prince Dmitri, son of Ivan! if the pomp
   Of this great Diet scare thee, or a sight
   So noble and majestic chain thy tongue,
   Thou may'st – for this the senate have allowed —
   Choose thee a proxy, wheresoe'er thou list,
   And do thy mission by another's lips.
 

DEMETRIUS

 
   My lord archbishop, I stand here to claim
   A kingdom, and the state of royalty.
   'Twould ill beseem me should I quake before
   A noble people, and its king and senate.
   I ne'er have viewed a circle so august,
   But the sight swells my heart within my breast
   And not appals me. The more worthy ye,
   To me ye are more welcome; I can ne'er
   Address my claim to nobler auditory.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   ..         The august republic
   Is favorably bent.    ..
 

DEMETRIUS

 
   Most puissant king! Most worthy and most potent
   Bishops and palatines, and my good lords,
   The deputies of the august republic!
   It gives me pause and wonder to behold
   Myself, Czar Ivan's son, now stand before
   The Polish people in their Diet here.
   Both realms were sundered by a bloody hate,
   And, whilst my father lived, no peace might be.
   Yet now hath Heaven so ordered these events,
   That I, his blood, who with my nurse's milk
   Imbibed the ancestral hate, appear before you
   A fugitive, compelled to seek my rights
   Even here in Poland's heart. Then, ere I speak,
   Forget magnanimously all rancors past,
   And that the Czar, whose son I own myself,
   Rolled war's red billows to your very homes.
   I stand before you, sirs, a prince despoiled.
   I ask protection. The oppressed may urge
   A sacred claim on every noble breast.
   And who in all earth's circuit shall be just,
   If not a people great and valiant, – one
   In plenitude of power so free, it needs
   To render 'count but to itself alone,
   And may, unchallenged, lend an open ear
   And aiding hand to fair humanity.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   You do allege you are Czar Ivan's son;
   And truly, nor your bearing nor your speech
   Gainsays the lofty title that you urge,
   But shows us that you are indeed his son.
   And you shall find that the republic bears
   A generous spirit. She has never quailed
   To Russia in the field! She loves, alike,
   To be a noble foe – a cordial friend.
 

DEMETRIUS

 
   Ivan Wasilowitch, the mighty Czar
   Of Moscow, took five spouses to his bed,
   In the long years that spared him to the throne.
   The first, a lady of the heroic line
   Of Romanoff, bare him Feodor, who reigned
   After his father's death. One only son,
   Dmitri, the last blossom of his strength,
   And a mere infant when his father died,
   Was born of Marfa, of Nagori's line.
   Czar Feodor, a youth, alike effeminate
   In mind and body, left the reins of power
   To his chief equerry, Boris Godunow,
   Who ruled his master with most crafty skill.
   Feodor was childless, and his barren bride
   Denied all prospect of an heir. Thus, when
   The wily Boiar, by his fawning arts,
   Had coiled himself into the people's favor,
   His wishes soared as high as to the throne.
   Between him and his haughty hopes there stood
   A youthful prince, the young Demetrius
   Iwanowitsch, who with his mother lived
   At Uglitsch, where her widowhood was passed.
   Now, when his fatal purpose was matured,
   He sent to Uglitsch ruffians, charged to put
   The Czarowitsch to death.
   One night, when all was hushed, the castle's wing,
   Where the young prince, apart from all the rest,
   With his attendants lay, was found on fire.
   The raging flames ingulfed the pile; the prince
   Unseen, unheard, was spirited away,
   And all the world lamented him as dead.
   All Moscow knows these things to be the truth.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   Yes, these are facts familiar to us all.
   The rumor ran abroad, both far and near,
   That Prince Demetrius perished in the flames
   When Uglitsch was destroyed. And, as his death
   Raised to the throne the Czar who fills it now,
   Fame did not hesitate to charge on him
   This murder foul and pitiless. But yet,
   His death is not the business now in hand!
   This prince is living still! He lives in you!
   So runs your plea. Now bring us to the proofs!
   Whereby do you attest that you are he?
   What are the signs by which you shall be known?
   How 'scaped you those were sent to hunt you down
   And now, when sixteen years are passed, and you
   Well nigh forgot, emerge to light once more?
 

DEMETRIUS

 
   'Tis scarce a year since I have known myself;
   I lived a secret to myself till then,
   Surmising naught of my imperial birth.
   I was a monk with monks, close pent within
   The cloister's precincts, when I first began
   To waken to a consciousness of self.
   My impetuous spirit chafed against the bars,
   And the high blood of princes began to course
   In strange unbidden moods along my veins.
   At length I flung the monkish cowl aside,
   And fled to Poland, where the noble Prince
   Of Sendomir, the generous, the good,
   Took me as guest into his princely house,
   And trained me up to noble deeds of arms.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   How? You still ignorant of what you were?
   Yet ran the rumor then on every side,
   That Prince Demetrius was still alive.
   Czar Boris trembled on his throne, and sent
   His sassafs to the frontiers, to keep
   Sharp watch on every traveller that stirred.
   Had not the tale its origin with you?
   Did you not give the rumor birth yourself?
   Had you not named to any that you were
   Demetrius?
 

DEMETRIUS

 
         I relate that which I know.
   If a report went forth I was alive,
   Then had some god been busy with the fame.
   Myself I knew not. In the prince's house,
   And in the throng of his retainers lost,
   I spent the pleasant springtime of my youth.
                In silent homage
   My heart was vowed to his most lovely daughter.
   Yet in those days it never dreamed to raise
   Its wildest thoughts to happiness so high.
   My passion gave offence to her betrothed,
   The Castellan of Lemberg. He with taunts
   Chafed me, and in the blindness of his rage
   Forgot himself so wholly as to strike me.
   Thus savagely provoked, I drew my sword;
   He, blind with fury, rushed upon the blade,
   And perished there by my unwitting hand.
 

MEISCHEK

 
   Yes, it was even so.
 

DEMETRIUS

 
   Mine was the worst mischance! A nameless youth,
   A Russian and a stranger, I had slain
   A grandee of the empire – in the house
   Of my kind patron done a deed of blood,
   And sent to death his son-in-law and friend.
   My innocence availed not; not the pity
   Of all his household, nor his kindness – his,
   The noble Palatine's, – could save my life;
   For it was forfeit to the law, that is,
   Though lenient to the Poles, to strangers stern.
   Judgment was passed on me – that judgment death.
   I knelt upon the scaffold, by the block;
   To the fell headsman's sword I bared my throat,
   And in the act disclosed a cross of gold,
   Studded with precious gems, which had been hung
   About my neck at the baptismal font.
   This sacred pledge of Christian redemption
   I had, as is the custom of my people,
   Worn on my neck concealed, where'er I went,
   From my first hours of infancy; and now,
   When from sweet life I was compelled to part,
   I grasped it as my only stay, and pressed it
   With passionate devotion to my lips.
 

[The Poles intimate their sympathy by dumb show.

 
   The jewel was observed; its sheen and worth
   Awakened curiosity and wonder.
   They set me free, and questioned me; yet still
   I could not call to memory a time
   I had not worn the jewel on my person.
   Now it so happened that three Boiars who
   Had fled from the resentment of their Czar
   Were on a visit to my lord at Sambor.
   They saw the trinket, – recognized it by
   Nine emeralds alternately inlaid
   With amethysts, to be the very cross
   Which Ivan Westislowsky at the font
   Hung on the neck of the Czar's youngest son.
   They scrutinized me closer, and were struck
   To find me marked with one of nature's freaks,
   For my right arm is shorter than my left.
   Now, being closely plied with questions, I
   Bethought me of a little psalter which
   I carried from the cloister when I fled.
   Within this book were certain words in Greek
   Inscribed there by the Igumen himself.
   What they imported was unknown to me,
   Being ignorant of the language. Well, the psalter
   Was sent for, brought, and the inscription read.
   It bore that Brother Wasili Philaret
   (Such was my cloister-name), who owned the book,
   Was Prince Demetrius, Ivan's youngest son,
   By Andrei, an honest Diak, saved
   By stealth in that red night of massacre.
   Proofs of the fact lay carefully preserved
   Within two convents, which were pointed out.
   On this the Boiars at my feet fell down,
   Won by the force of these resistless proofs,
   And hailed me as the offspring of their Czar.
   So from the yawning gulfs of black despair
   Fate raised me up to fortune's topmost heights.
   And now the mists cleared off, and all at once
   Memories on memories started into life
   In the remotest background of the past.
   And like some city's spires that gleam afar
   In golden sunshine when naught else is seen,
   So in my soul two images grew bright,
   The loftiest sun-peaks in the shadowy past.
   I saw myself escaping one dark night,
   And a red lurid flame light up the gloom
   Of midnight darkness as I looked behind me
   A memory 'twas of very earliest youth,
   For what preceded or came after it
   In the long distance utterly was lost.
   In solitary brightness there it stood
   A ghastly beacon-light on memory's waste.
   Yet I remembered how, in later years,
   One of my comrades called me, in his wrath
   Son of the Czar. I took it as a jest,
   And with a blow avenged it at the time.
   All this now flashed like lightning on my soul,
   And told with dazzling certainty that I
   Was the Czar's son, so long reputed dead.
   With this one word the clouds that had perplexed
   My strange and troubled life were cleared away.
   Nor merely by these signs, for such deceive;
   But in my soul, in my proud, throbbing heart
   I felt within me coursed the blood of kings;
   And sooner will I drain it drop by drop
   Than bate one jot my title to the crown.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   And shall we trust a scroll which might have found
   Its way by merest chance into your hands
   Backed by the tale of some poor renegades?
   Forgive me, noble youth! Your tone, I grant,
   And bearing, are not those of one who lies;
   Still you in this may be yourself deceived.
   Well may the heart be pardoned that beguiles
   Itself in playing for so high a stake.
   What hostage do you tender for your word?
 

DEMETRIUS

 
   I tender fifty, who will give their oaths, —
   All Piasts to a man, and free-born Poles
   Of spotless reputation, – each of whom
   Is ready to enforce what I have urged.
   There sits the noble Prince of Sendomir,
   And at his side the Castellan of Lublin;
   Let them declare if I have spoke the truth.
 

ARCHBISHOP OF GNESEN

 
   How seem these things to the august Estates?
   To the enforcement of such numerous proofs
   Doubt and mistrust, methinks, must needs give way.
   Long has a creeping rumor filled the world
   That Dmitri, Ivan's son, is still alive.
   The Czar himself confirms it by his fears.
   – Before us stands a youth, in age and mien
   Even to the very freak that nature played,
   The lost heir's counterpart, and of a soul
   Whose noble stamp keeps rank with his high claims.
   He left a cloister's precincts, urged by strange,
   Mysterious promptings; and this monk-trained boy