THE 
 
 PASSION OF ANGELS, 
 
 OR 
 
 i 
 
 
 SINTRAM, SON OF THE BURNING EYES. 
 A WEIRD, MEDIAEVAL TALE 
 
 OF 
 
 BLOODSHED AND CONSUMING PASSION 
 
 IN THE FORM OF 
 
 A PROSE DRAMA IN FIVE SCENES, 
 
 BY 
 
 LION. MARGRAVE 
 
 § 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 I^ESTER BOOK & STATIONERY CO., Atlanta, Ga. 
 
THE 
 
 PASSION OF ANGELS, 
 
 OR 
 
 SINTRAM, SON OF THE BURNING EYES. 
 A WEIRD, MEDIAEVAL TALE 
 
 OF 
 
 BLOODSHED AND CONSUMING PASSION 
 
 IN THE FORM OF 
 
 A PROSE DRAMA IN FIVE SCENES, 
 
 BY 
 
 LION. MARGRAVE 
 
 PRINTED BY 
 1,ESTER BOOK & STATIONERY CO., Atlanta, Ga. 
 
 t \^- ^ 
 
P5d5ZS 
 
 DRAMATIS PERSONS. 
 
 SiNTRAM Son of Biorn of the Fiery Eyes 
 
 Haakon Jarl 
 
 Thorgrim, Father of lyovisa 
 
 -p ^ r Brothers of Lovisa 
 
 HUGI.EIK, A Hermit, Ex- Wrestler 
 
 Kack, The Black Master, a Magician, not necessarily black or a dwarf, 
 
 though Fouque calls him the Little Master, i. e., Satan. 
 
 LoviSA, Beloved of Sintram 
 
 Mei^korka Wife of Haakon 
 
 Aasta, A Northern Sibyl 
 
 The Mother Superior 
 
 Sister Orny 
 
 lyADY Verena, The— ^-r^ — *— a mute apparition, Mother of Sintram 
 
 ^ •a. 
 
 Retainers^, Nuns, and Perhaps Angels. 
 
FOREWORD. 
 
 ^ Baron de la Motte Fouque, author of ''Undine", tells 
 - in his story of "Sintram and His Companions", how 
 ^ Sintram overcame his passion for the innocent wife of 
 another. In this play of action and weird effect, in a 
 tale that is entirely original, it is shown how Sintram 
 afterwards met his real affinity, how he — the lady un- 
 witting — grievously sinned, according to the common 
 notion of the world, but afterwards when infuriated by 
 the same potionp^ that caused his first downfall, how 
 he with his likewise maddened lover triumphed forever 
 and a day, for good and all. 
 
 Note. 
 
 The only elaborate setting in this 5-scene play can be 
 greatly simplified by acting the first scene with only 
 two long tables, meeting at an angle with a small table 
 seemingly presided over by a single occupant, the 
 armor that represents Biorn of the Fiery Eyes. 
 
 The supers thus can be reduced to a dozen, or 
 a score. 
 
"THE PASSION OF ANGELS" 
 
 Or Son of the Burning Eyes; or Death and the Devil. 
 
 A 5-Scene Play in Prose. 
 
 By Lion Margrave. 
 
 ACT I— Scene I. 
 
 A weird banquet-hall in Sintram's castle by the sea. 
 A hideous storm without. The wind howls and 
 shrieks in unearthly fury. A row of knights appear to 
 sit at the back, on a raised platform wuth tables in front. 
 The recess being in shadow, the lamp-flames within 
 their eyes are plainly discernible, for the hall is but 
 dimly lighted, even at the opening of the scene. Biorn 
 of the Fiery Eyes, really his empty armor, is enthroned 
 at this elevated table, crowded with festive vessels. 
 
 The head of a large golden boar lies in front of him. 
 A mask, with a face of wild and powerful expression, 
 may be inserted into the front of the helmet, worn by 
 Sintram's father. In that case, the beaver will be up. 
 The casque bears two formidable wings, one on each 
 side. The head may be thrown back a little, while the 
 mailed hands rest upon the table. The other dead 
 knights, by way of contrast, should have high black 
 plumes that overhang at the top. Enormous tilting 
 spears may stand attached to the back of each chair, 
 and be draped with streamers. 
 
 It is now midnight. A number of retainers sit round 
 the lower board, or boards. Haakon Jarl is quarrel- 
 some drunk. He occupies the seat of honour. The 
 
Little Master, roughly bearded and elf-locked, sits with 
 a peculiar broad-brimmed hat low over his brow, and 
 askew. His eyes are piercing and magnetic. His taps 
 on Haakon's arm, as he tells a ghostly secret, though 
 with ironic humour, are designed to drive him into 
 frenzy. The Lady Melkorka has retired for the night. 
 (The laughing of ghosts and demons, throughout the 
 play, may be made more uncanny by cachinnating with 
 the hollowed palm against the mouth, in the cr.se of 
 smothered sounds, or through megaphones, for loud 
 jeering and hateful jubilations.) 
 
 Haak. Where is our miserable host? Have we gone 
 round for a bed, and dropped at last among the 
 bones of a cur and his kennel? Is he out now 
 growling and snapping, and drowning his fleas in 
 rain? Or, is it lice? I doubtlDut his pell lacks hair 
 for scratching. How is it he thus slights our pres- 
 ence? Have we grown to him stale and flat as the 
 mead-horn's bottom, which, like manna, is unclean 
 and without spirit after a night's exposing? 
 
 L. M. This is the time of the curse I told thee of. He 
 dares not sit among his kind, when the devils peer 
 through his own and his fellows' eyes — madness in 
 one soul setting fire to fury in another. 
 
 Over-dabbling with maniac elements, under my 
 guidance and my control, has brought back the 
 ancient efficacy of an old-time spell. I would not, 
 an if I were thou and desired an easy couch, even 
 suffer a gleam of the lamp of mirth to light but the 
 lid of a window of mine, if chance sent him ere the 
 morrow's sun, ghosting across my path. 
 
 Haak. Why this night more than others? Are there 
 none left dare finger a nose at Satan? He has 
 
mooned about in a deepening, sullen fit, since first 
 we broke his bread. An Arab thief out-manners 
 him in this. 
 L. M. We now carouse against that Festival, at which, 
 half a life-time back, he whose armour sits in the 
 center there, his father, enraged against a foreign 
 guild, swore a vow upon the fetish of his cursed 
 home. Laying his hand upon the Golden Boar, he 
 bound himself by the deep things in hell, to spend 
 the blood of whomsoever of German Hong, a 
 Christian and a leaguer of that loathed sodality, 
 hove in sight. 
 
 Even as the oath expired upon his lips, a father 
 and son of that same order threw themselves, noth- 
 ing doubting, upon those bowels of his, courtesy 
 called compassion. Yet because of his oath, and 
 the hate that winked upon its cry for justice, he 
 carved them up with flourishes, daily and nightly 
 practiced in the East, that is, as the Book of Good 
 Wives puts it, he smote them hip and thigh. 
 j [Now, these poor lambs, despite their bleatings, 
 were mighty men of God. And to make matters 
 worse, the Angel of Death, in a rusty mood, was 
 jshaken up in the depth of night, to search in the 
 idust, forsooth, for two small leaves plucked, un- 
 billeted, from the Tree of Life. After the manner 
 of those who work in shambles, and themselves 
 get rapped, he let off such a string of blankety- 
 blanks, that I dare not, so potent is their magic, 
 utter them, even in whisper, just as they came, 
 word for word. 
 
 The devils, thereabout, who heard them, pitched 
 themselves in where they could for shelter. A 
 lake stood by. They tumbled in. Though but a 
 pool of vapours, it served. Mirage in physic fact, 
 
 V 
 
 Q 
 
 
 y> 
 
 6 
 
jjTl£_steaiji/of a] child just born — Sin- 
 tram, the poor brat's name.^ And ever since, on 
 the self-same night, the son of the Eyes of Fire, 
 whether he will or no, takes in to himself, in bed 
 or on the floor, the unclean host. 
 Haak. Why does the fool pander to his phrenzy, by 
 keeping around him this beetling wall of iron spec- 
 tres — whose heads the damn'd idiot fills with 
 flame? If the lights went down, as they are like 
 to do in such a howling storm, if but a door 
 swings to, it would make even the spine of a hale 
 man, with easy nerve, shiver with the ice of mad- 
 ness. 
 
 Crack their sconces, the creatures that here in- 
 habit, who eat no food but the burning sop of 
 Tartarus, which they jerk as their Snap-Dragon 
 out of the River of Fire, Phlegethon. Pull them 
 over the tables, these heathen ancestors, and let 
 them kow-tow to their juggernauts. 
 
 (The Jarl's retainers rise.) 
 L. M. If he come now and find them so, woe to those 
 who fail to give the no, when he asks singly, has 
 each man questioned, profaned the sacred dead? 
 
 (The Jarl's retainers sit again, after looking at 
 those of Sintram.) 
 
 (Haakon remains standing.) 
 Haak. My wife has' grown to me of late, more inso- 
 lent and repelling. He is the cause. Her eyes are 
 ever circling back to Sintram, as a lonely woman's, 
 who sees herself a martyr, and finds a thousand 
 times a thousand beauties in her god, the mirror. 
 Lured by the rumours of the bears and wolves 
 that swarm about, I housed myself with her be- 
 neath a roof, that where'er I turn, gives open cover 
 to a multitude of ghosts. These snakes of the 
 
dark, and here tis always gloaming, glide through 
 the walls at every moment. The jealous distilla- 
 tions that drip from off their tongues, have made 
 of my naturally dormant malice, a welling passion 
 that is verily more than gusher to a mere lust for 
 simple murder. 
 
 L. M. Plum-pudding, friend, thou hast mistook for 
 pan-cake ! This be the sinners' day for brandy and 
 other wicked license, merry mad-cap Christmas, 
 not that miserable fast of sack-cloth — saving the 
 cakes — sad, lenten shrove-tide. Put thy noisy 
 clock back, man, till Boxing-day. Thou, and the 
 time, will then be more fit for fighting, and he 
 dispirited, and but a common man, whom thou 
 beatest. Now, sit, and with a night-cap, drown 
 thy sorrows, and have done with the wind, and the 
 open door of thy mouth. Else we shall presently 
 have such a flooding, as thy poor crazy shell can 
 never meet, and after go with thy stern the right 
 end up. 
 
 'Ware Sintram when the giant rides him ! Thou 
 hadst better, I tell thee, meet Gunther with Sieg- 
 fried on his back! 
 
 Haak. I would as lief drag off his skin and hers be- 
 sides, as those of a pair of seals, that raw and 
 bleeding-naked, beg with piteous eyes for the 
 Christian charity, that sleeps above with Christ. 
 
 By Heaven and by Hell, and by the Golden Boar 
 and the Shade of the Burning Eyes, I will smite 
 the devil he calls himself, a whip's cut or a sword's 
 lash, right across his red and pulpy teeth, and with 
 the agony and the shame, set his fiend howling 
 mad against my own ! 
 
 (He walks quickly up to the platform in the rear, 
 and drags what represents the body of Sintram's 
 
father over the table, by the ears first, and then by 
 whatever part he pleases. This he does with a 
 great clatter of dishes and goblets, as the head of 
 the large Golden Boar bounds to the floor below. 
 Haakon quickly dons the body armour and the 
 head piece.) 
 L. M. I see a road they call the bier-balk, and a 
 corpse supinely moving with stiff feet, pointing 
 upwards to the Heaven, its soul is far too foul to 
 reach. At the end of the path, a column stands 
 which is snapt across. A wraith, which sembles 
 thee, hovers about like troubled smoke. I hear its 
 sad, sad cry whistling through the mournful, dead- 
 green leaves of a long line of wailing spruce. Pre- 
 pare to meet thy nether God, the skeleton of thy 
 cupboard ! He blows that withering blast, which 
 eats into the very rocks, and destroys more of 
 those that sing, in a single instant of time, than 
 even Roland's fearful trump. 
 
 • Thou shalt smell soon without a nose. For 
 why ?— Others, with their upturned nozzles in their 
 hands, will do thy smelling through their mouths. 
 Haak. Thou rank and loathsome frog, that goest 
 a-waddle with thy children's eggs, in the form of 
 warts and black-heads, stuck upon thy legs, I will 
 give thee, red-hot, the iron spit and cook thy 
 further croaking. 
 
 (Haakon moves as if to come down, with his 
 sword lifted in the air. L. M. slips off to one side 
 of the room.) 
 
 (Enter Sintram with long wild hair, and gro- 
 tesque get-up, with perhaps huge horns that stick 
 out horizontally from a guard-mounted bassinet. 
 He wears a great cloak, and comes in swinging an 
 immense two-handed sword. He moves the weap- 
 
on somewhat slowly al if merely menacing the 
 beings he imagines are attempting to come too 
 near. On reaching the centre, he lowers the point, 
 and with his back to the company, gazes with the 
 set stare of an hysteric seizure.) 
 
 L. M. (Whispers loud to those about him.) 
 
 The devils have got beyond the countermure. 
 They have shattered the door even of the keep 
 itself. If there be no diversion in his favour, no 
 rescue before daylight, Bedlam will make its music 
 shortly in the living house, that though it bears 
 his name, shall never see its lord again. 
 
 (Sintram turns suddenly, and looks around.) 
 
 Sint. Where is Haakon Jarl? 
 
 (Haakon, clothed in iron from head to waist, or 
 to the middle of his thighs, speaks heavily and 
 weirdly, with his left hand up against his mouth, 
 or through such a speaking trumpet, as was said 
 to have been used at sea, shortly before the end 
 of Vanderdecken.) 
 
 Haak. Hail, Sintram. Ghost, that stalks tomorrow's 
 moon, and brings no babies in his bag, more mad 
 and damned than I — How wouldst thou relish a 
 whipping-post now in Hell? — A cloud comes rush- 
 ing up. It shall be thy hearse, whose ink-black 
 steeds, though proud and scornful, shift and leap 
 affrighted. These fiery snorters shriek upon the 
 ghost they see, which glides up droopingly to bury 
 itself an^d its tears behind. Pitch thyself quick 
 upon the mouldering casket, for the instant they 
 catch th}^ rotten odors, they will hit the nearest 
 Heavens in a bound, swift as that Vulcanian bolt, 
 that in a moment, rips a forest and opens up the 
 sky ! 
 
 Sint. Who dares, with his unwashed "flesh, to make a 
 
 10 
 
pole-cat's hide of my father's holy shroud? Come 
 out and crave for pardon, or I will prick thee where 
 thou art, and tear thee forth, as a rotten crab from 
 its grave and borrowed shell ! 
 Haak. Whip thy own dun carcase, thou cord-tailed, 
 flicking, bastard ass ! — a Neddy thy father, thy 
 mother a night-mare ! — Thou pumpkin-headed bug 
 to whiten a sucker's heart ! — a thing of stinks to 
 spit on, and not know from its buzzing, but 'tis a 
 draughty pit of filth, alive with maggots and the 
 gorge and fuss of blow-flies. 
 Sint. Oh, this comes to me as a fanfare to him, who 
 fumes against the morrow's peace — who fears the 
 madness lurking in the night behind his thoughts. 
 Have at me, and let us, if we have both to die, 
 drink to each other, standing, from an upright 
 stoup in each of spouting, life-hot wine ! 
 
 (Haakon jumps down, and dragging or pushing 
 aside one who sits or stands in his way, he 
 mounts the lower table. As he leaps again, Sin- 
 tram runs to meet him. A whirling and noisy 
 fight ensues. The long two-hander, wielded with 
 savage fury, keeps Haakon chiefly on the defen- 
 sive. The iron plates are repeatedly struck with 
 resounding blows, ere a quick thrust through the 
 neck sends the Jarl reeling to the floor.) 
 
 (Terrific thunder and wind.) 
 
 (Laughing of demons heard through the hel- 
 mets on the upper platform, the beavers moving 
 slightly.) 
 
 (Sintram throws ofif his upper garments.) 
 Sint. I am Berserk now ! 
 
 Are there any others here, whose bellies crave 
 the drink of heroes — a brandy in Valhalla, they call 
 the wine of life? 
 
 11 
 
(Interval of silence.) , 
 
 Strip from this defiler of my dearest dead, the 
 wrappings that were meant only for kings — and 
 not a Stamboul bitch-master, who shames the 
 name of dog — a skip-kennel, whose prowess de- 
 spite his noise, goes no farther than the murder of 
 a rat, he finds a rival scavenger cleaning a pig of 
 putrid guts. 
 
 Give the birds that scream without this scarab 
 dung-beetle, who has cased himself in for safety, 
 and yet lost his life, in a mummy's sheathings ! — 
 
 Come, all ! 
 
 I am still, as Christ might have been, had he 
 refused to die upon the cross, an army in myself. 
 Who is this has robbed my father's eyes of fire? 
 
 Jarl Haakon ! 
 
 Well, give him a lych-gate in the nearest chapel- 
 of-ease, that lacks a pew for dreaming! He shall 
 have his chrisom on the morrow. His wife's my 
 cousin, though a cozening one, I fear. Take him 
 tO' the nearest bed of straw ! 
 
 The table of the host, on this most holy day, 
 should not be wet-shod monstrance, elevated in the 
 blood of one that, though unbidden guest, came to 
 eat his eucharist in Christian peace. 
 
 Bub has made him babe again. 
 
 Set this armour in its place — The throne of my 
 father's burning ghost. 
 
 (L. M. takes it, as he wants an excuse to stay 
 alone, and foresees that the room will presently be 
 empty.) 
 
 (Perhaps bearing on his arm the garments he 
 had lately flung aside, Sintram exits with all the 
 banqueters, R, not counting Kack. Sintram may 
 leave the picking up of the clothes, till he prepares 
 
 12 
 
himself to ride out into the storm, at the end of 
 the scene.) 
 
 (Enter Melkorka from L.) 
 
 Mel. Why art thou here alone? Like a haunted 
 tigress, or one scared with the convulsions of 
 Nature in upheaval, I creep for shelter with heated 
 men, I usually seek to flee. My room, and the 
 passages that wind about, are full of ghosts that, 
 full-sheeted, go and come in flashes, when even the 
 lightning leaves a black gap between one fork and 
 the next. The air is sibilant with -hateful whis- 
 pers. Rustlings, that are not of this world's mov- 
 ing, fright me beyond the trusting of myself as 
 comforter and guardian of myself. But even here, 
 'tis dim and strange, and thou lookest as if thou 
 belongest tO' the mines below, or even — well ! 
 another sphere. 
 
 Who is hurt? Where is my husband? 
 
 L. M. He is safe and well, if the question thou pro- 
 poundest be one that elliptically has reference to 
 bodily pain, and nothing else. He now suffers 
 more by way of peace than ever he has since that 
 happy night, when his mother first began his 
 swathing, and sang with him as constant genius 
 of her many unmentionable, odd and scientific 
 musings. 
 
 Mel. What dost thou mean? 
 
 L. M. The Valkyrs, or is it the Harpies? — Bear him 
 with slack head and limp of hand and foot, through 
 the black mountains, that are but moving bags of 
 easy bursting cloud. 
 
 Mel. I must go see him. — Where lies he? 
 
 L. M. In blood and sticky straw — a gory, ugly sight. 
 None will know, whether or not, thou hast given 
 him kiss, or not. Close his eyes tomorrow. Such 
 
 13 
 
as the night is, 'twill set thee spasming like St. 
 Vitus. It might become a fixture. Rather stay 
 and hear good news. Thy ship now bumps the 
 jetty — 'tis full of pearls. Thou shalt now be, 
 shortly, if thou darest, the wife of one whose very 
 shadow, thou desirest to fall upon thy breast. 
 
 Mel. Of whom dost thou speak? 
 
 L. M. I have eyes, and they have followed thine. I 
 see thou lookest oft, within thy spirit, upon a home 
 and garden, that thou hast grieved till now are 
 ever locked against thyself. If thou givest me 
 some of the leavings of the feasts, say, a snack or 
 tiffin, now and then, I shall keep open for thee the 
 magic house, which so warm within, is yet to the 
 scaler of its dark and icy walls, nought but an 
 ending on a top stair of cutting glass. 
 
 Mel. In what shalt thou find a sesame to open this 
 precious cave, thou speakest of? 
 
 L. M. By the distilling of certain drops, that have no 
 honourable standing in the pharmacopia, or the 
 Courts of Justice. 
 
 If thou cheat him of self-respect, and make him 
 seem, when weighed upon his own balances, a 
 base, ungallant ravisher, if he leave his sin un- 
 crowned with bridal wreath, he will when worried 
 by his nobler reason, make thee in compensation, 
 even if he love thee not unaided, his undetachable 
 and lawful spouse. If he grow cold after, why the 
 mad venereal philtres will clear him again of that 
 muddy and muddled stuff, which in him rebels 
 against thyself. 
 
 Mel. Hast thou ever proved the power of the drops? 
 
 L. M. I have, and often — never on myself, being a 
 centaur, as one might say, that ever too hot and 
 ready, wants no spur. 
 
 14 
 
Mel. Does it not throw the body after into a sptmkless 
 and long-weary sickness? 
 
 L. M. No. 
 
 Mel. Hast thoii any by thee? 
 
 L. M. I have. I was just about to start this pleas- 
 ant topic on the next meet occasion, when the Jarl 
 drowned himself in his own malmsey, entering 
 the womb again of his mother, Night. 
 
 Why even that Simple Simon, Nicodemus, would 
 have found in such parturience, twice repeated, no 
 longer a puzzle from which to breed his foolish 
 questions. 
 
 Mel. What dost thou expect of me? 
 
 L. M. Well, if thou but endure me rolled in the cur- 
 tain of darkness, thou shalt suffer me to roll thee 
 after as I may. There is none else throughout this 
 land, from whom thou canst steal or buy this 
 amorous and compelling liquor. 
 Wilt thou ratify? 
 
 Mel. (Nods.) Give it me! 
 
 (L. M. gives her a phial.) 
 
 L. M. Empty the whole of this. 'Tis but a single 
 dose. Remember, thou dependest on me for the 
 equally convincing fellow. No book of mine has 
 been allow^ed to keep such part of itself, as before 
 the tearing, prescribed the composition, in Latin 
 or in Norse. For otherwise, if thou knewest the 
 substances and proportions, thou wouldst of a 
 surety, for such is the nature of the woman thou 
 art, rob me of all further satisfaction, not only in 
 thee, but in myself. 
 
 Mel. How dost thou advise me to lead him up to the 
 cup, that uplifts a man as the mad Sakti, which 
 energizes a husband god, whose end in pagan life 
 is a pleasure that never wearies? 
 
 15 
 
 _5•/^ f u ^ss 
 
L. M. Refer in thy first -speech to his wild looks and 
 shaking nerve. Then get thy hands upon his brow. 
 Use them gently. He who, in hysteria, has all but 
 lost control, finds a saving and a soothing balm in 
 a lady's tender clasp. Say thou hast that stickfast 
 they call Nepenthe of Iberia, which when thou 
 couldst not rest for shaking, thou hast used to glue 
 thy shutters down. I trow, he has not slept for 
 two whole nights. The caress thou givest his 
 leaping brow, and the pitiful offering of thy liquor^ 
 will seem as the palm-hung Father of Waters to 
 him who staggering from a desert of sand, lies 
 down with his head ever and anon beneath the 
 stream, till not only his flesh, but his very soul, is 
 cooled from end to end and steeped in liquid balm. 
 (When L. M.^ has made his exit, quickly and 
 stealthily, Sintram enters slow and sadly.) 
 
 Mel. Thou lookest not well, my lord. What troubles 
 thee? 
 
 Sint. Ah! The worser half of me, which- is not really 
 I, has played the mad dog's murderous part, killing 
 frenzy and its victim, both in the self-same worry. 
 
 Mel. I understand thee not. — Thy face is worn and 
 over-pale, as with that wax of Adipocere, which 
 burgling thieves draw for their candles from rifled 
 graves. Wilt thou not suffer me to brew thee such 
 metheglin, as yeasted first in the nectaries of 
 Lethean lotuses, I often take myself when the 
 night is hateful, and still keeps an open face in 
 mine. I find that after, with the rising sun, such 
 rhapsodies well unbidden from my bosom, as if I 
 saw like Theban Memnon when I gazed on sand, 
 a sea of rainbow-flashing opals, and echoed out my 
 joy upon a pile or two of rocks, that to me, as to 
 him, typified the mysteries of the God-head, which 
 
 16 
 
in their musical depths are known only to Himself. 
 
 Now, dost thou not own, thou art mad for want 
 of sleep? 
 Sint. I feel strained in my soul, I must confess, be- 
 yond the power of endurance more. I hang by the 
 weary hands to the cliff-top, which cracking omi- 
 nous, tells me that unless I find new hold, and 
 quickly too, the insane gloom below shall see in 
 me, as it were, the flying shadow of my former 
 self. Could I but sleep this night away, then a 
 whole year of peace will follow after. 
 
 (Melkorka empties the phial into a cup.) 
 Mel. Then, take thee this, poor soul, and hurry thee 
 off* to thy Morphean cave, where by its spell no 
 evil eye — even if compoimded of all the ocular pin- 
 points that float in space — can paralyze the man- 
 hood in such as thee, unaided by a God. I shall 
 foist myself upon thee as thy body-page, and hold 
 thy head upon my lap for pillow, until thou sleep- 
 est. I am thy cousin, and a woman who wraps 
 herself in heavenly mantles, is the devil's most dis- 
 tasteful foe. If thou shouldst lose thyself first in 
 ecstacy, fear not; thou shalt also have thy pleasant 
 dreams in slumber. 'Tis but the nature of the 
 drug, to raise and then lay low^ 
 
 (Melkorka gives him the cup.) 
 
 (After a searching look, and being assured no 
 mischief is intended by w^ay of vengeance, he 
 drains the goblet slowly. He appears to be dis- 
 cussing a new taste, and drawing into himself with 
 all his soul, the promised essence of, first, elation, 
 and then oblivion till the morrow.) 
 
 (A great crash, as he sets down the cup.) 
 
 (The armoured knights, at the back, laugh in the 
 midst of thunder.) 
 
 17 
 
Mel. Let me hold thy brow aWhile ! Cool hands, I am 
 told, soothe the frenzied. 
 
 Come with me, where no man, by his tedious 
 and boisterous talk, shall make my medicine 
 nought but a cause of more distraction. 
 
 (Warders and other retainers suddenly enter, 
 and with them Thorgrim, and the brothers, Gud- 
 brand and'Tuta. All the lights go out, excepting 
 two.) 
 
 Warder. My lord! These men have just dragged 
 themselves out of the sea, from a foundering bark. 
 They now crave the shelter of thy roof. 
 
 Sint. Give them to drink and eat, and bring them 
 change of raiment. (Exit one or two men.) Let 
 them lie here before the fire. I am not well myself, 
 and must retire. I have taken that physic, I am 
 assured, requires sleep at once, or its purpose is 
 foregone. — (to the strangers) Are there others 
 that hang upon the wreck? 
 
 Gud. I cannot say. We swam ashore. A sister was 
 carried off upon a spar. But we are sure, she could 
 not have lived through that tumult, which has all 
 but killed my father. The rocks have cracked his 
 dislocated arm, and my brother here lay long in 
 stupor, with his head torn by a piece of wreckage, 
 which of an elder storm, stood up as a gaff, rooted 
 deep in sand, where the breakers made an end of 
 themselves and their booming. 
 
 Though/ bound upon a broken piece of mast, my 
 sister, even with such assistance, could not swim. 
 She must have smothered finally half way between 
 the vessel and the shore. 
 
 Sint. A lady on the waters still, asleep, and no doubt 
 
 ^ fair and sweet of soul, and I, a rude and husky 
 
 brute — though well nigh/ mad, yet in the prime of 
 
 18 
 
health — I dry, and afoot beneath a roof? Not I! 
 Where did ye strike the beach? 
 
 Gud. Hard by an opening, which looked as the nar- 
 row end of a long, square-sided moat, floored full 
 with bracken. The blufifs here were crossed and 
 re-crossed by intersecting pine and cedar, that 
 leaned in places so as to form a roof, shut in by 
 vines. 'Twas on the other side of the second clifif, 
 and on the left of the castle, facing the sea, a mile 
 from here. Great rocks made a long, high scarp 
 against the entrance. From the top, I could see a 
 light above thy battlements. 
 
 Sint. I know the place. 'Tis an old mid-day dreaming 
 bed of mine. There, a big-boned hermit, Hugleik, 
 once a great champion as a wrestler, has near, in 
 another cove, out of sight, a beacon and a low- 
 browed hut. 
 
 I and my clattering horse shall drag the snoring 
 eremite from his couch of ferns. Together, we 
 shall search for the floating brothers, that breath- 
 ing breathless like corpses, yet need no Tishbite 
 to lie on top, and pump the gas of life from mouth 
 to mouth, or nose to nose. 
 
 Mel. O stay, my Lord ! Thy sickness now is too far 
 gone, for thee to riot abroad as a common, brave 
 man may. 
 
 Sint. Sickness for pulers and pullers, and sheets for 
 midwives. 
 
 Wars to me, with blasts blown from the breasts 
 of hell, are ecstacies, uncompeered by such de- 
 lights, as over-mellow saints unbosom in their 
 Venus-smitten cells. 
 (Great crash.) 
 
 Enough ! Pandemonium, in its king, flings me 
 on the burning iron of his floor, one of his bursting, 
 
 19 
 
meteoric gauntlets down. 1 answer in as bold a 
 mood, his clanging wrath with counter-lightings, 
 shot from the volcanic nadir of the God within 
 myself. 
 
 I shout in the teeth of the genies of the storm, 
 who blaze at me, astounded, through the thunder 
 and the riven clouds : "I come ! I come !" — To 
 horse ! To horse ! 
 
 (Sintram exits swiftly through the door, that 
 opens on the court-yard.) 
 
 (All lights blow out.) 
 
 (A sobbing of wind is heard, as if the demons, 
 in and about the empty knights, were disappointed 
 that Melkorka's potion had not been given a 
 chance to shame and abase the pride of Sintram.) 
 
 Scene 2. 
 
 A wild coast facing a storm at sea. The hut of a 
 hermit stands in the corner, L. Night. Frequent 
 thunder and lightning. A rude beacon overhead, per- 
 haps unseen. 
 
 (Enter Sintram with Lovisa, unconscious, in 
 his arms.) 
 Sint. What is it so maddens me in the kiss and con- 
 tact of this particular flesh? 
 
 I am the ocean breaker, she my jutting mole, up 
 which I run, and ever and anon overwhelm. 
 
 (He takes her to the bank behind the hut, and 
 there leaves her. Coming to the front again, he 
 stands awhile meditating, before he gives the door 
 a knock.) 
 Sint. I mind me, how the Sibyl i\asta shone, as if she 
 herself grew luminous with heavenly kisses, as she 
 
 20 
 
told me with smiling lips, a wife would come to 
 me, as an Aphrodite foaming from the frothy sea. 
 This must be she ! 
 
 Who shall damn it as a sin, that I feast at once 
 upon the food which is my own, here and here- 
 after? r^.^ 
 
 She must, if her Jiie'^d she are to keep good 
 company, be at once disrobed and chafed. 
 
 Shall I pass such work on to another man, who 
 would think it an ill office sent to him from Hell, 
 so he should suffer tortures for his. penance after. 
 If I failed of my giddy drink, with the sweet de- 
 lirious bottle to my lips, would not the sportive 
 maids between this and Heaven cry: ''Thou fool! 
 Thou fool r 
 
 The cordials here at hand, I shall of purpose use 
 to blind her to my own condition. It will seem to 
 her after, that she but dreamed a dream, for which 
 she has never been accountant. 
 
 (Sintram knocks.) 
 
 (Hugleik opens the door.) 
 Sint. Thou art badly wanted at the castle. Quick, 
 take my horse! 
 
 An old man's bones rend his gaping flesh. He 
 and his bruised sons have swum, and after trudged 
 to my home from a wreck hard by. — All else are 
 dead, they say, and I find myself, none but they 
 have reached the shore. 
 Hug. Come in at once ! Thou needest to change thy 
 garments. They hang with icy bugles. A fire 
 within will give thee the warmth, thou shalt soon 
 die without. Thou art wet from head to foot. 
 Hast thou had a fall? 
 Sint. Ay, more than one. 
 
 But get thee ofif in haste. Send the horse hack 
 
 21 
 
in the morning. I am well content, to rest here 
 undisturbed all through the night. The change 
 will give me sleep, and a dream that is not fitful. 
 Do not stop for me ! I know where thy drink and 
 physic stand, and what each thing is. My steed, 
 thou wilt find on the other side of Blodoexe's 
 
 barrow. 
 
 Hug. But why hast thou come so far afoot? Thou 
 seemest to me in very dangerous case. What ails 
 thee? Thou lookest as one that glares in fever. 
 
 Sint. 'Tis the night of the curse. Dost thou forget it? 
 
 Hug. Ah, ah ! 
 
 Sint. A living form afloat, as I tore along, begged me, 
 or its spirit did, to leave my horse and seek a drag 
 or rake of pine. Hasting down the rocks, I slipt 
 and sank. When I gained a foothold on the 
 sliding sand, the body had vanished in a trough 
 that, though it turned itself inside out, had like its 
 fellows, nothing left but sticks and broken weeds. 
 This, the night of my father's damning, has 
 lighted on me whilst still under the ban of Holy 
 Church, for studying magic of various kinds, with 
 sorcerers good and evil. Therefore, thou mayst 
 shrewdly guess, the devils have me at more ad- 
 vantage, than in the last years of good old Rolf. 
 
 But off, and let me to the fire, to cease the chat- 
 ter of my teeth and lips. Run, run, run ! — I will 
 not listen to thee more. 
 
 (Sintram goes inside to the fire.) 
 
 Hug. (Speaking through the door) Well, when I see 
 thee next, it will be as Doctor I shall come, for thy 
 mind is now as that of a beast of prey, which, 
 striving to burst its bonds, threatens death to itself, 
 if it keep within, but death to itself and others, if it 
 go for a space, free without. — Let me commend 
 
 ^2 
 
to thee an overpowering draught which, putting an 
 end to thought, will save thy reason. And it may 
 be, as with an ape gone crazy, thou shalt not then 
 give to the winds, the kiting of my rended goods. 
 (Exit Hugleik.) 
 
 INTERVAL. 
 
 (Sintram comes to the door.) 
 Sint. A little more, and I had bound thee backwards 
 to the naked roots of some removed tree. The 
 ears of my conscience are now blocked to sound 
 by Fever's fugile stuff. No logic gets a hearing 
 in my mind, but the indisputable axiom which 
 declares, flotsam is the lawful goods of him who 
 finds— the more especially, if but in cypher, it 
 bears his very name. 
 
 (Sintram goes to the back, and presently re- 
 turns with Lovisa, who is still unconscious. He 
 takes her into Hugleik's hovel, and then bolts the 
 door.) 
 
 (Laughing of imps and devils heard off.) 
 
 (Thunder.) 
 
 PAUSE. 
 
 (Louder thunder. Louder laughing.) 
 (Hugleik re-enters, and after feeling at the door, 
 and finding it bolted, he gives a number of loud 
 knocks. He speaks through the opening at first 
 when Sintram, with his foot against the door, 
 opens it but an inch or two.) 
 
 Hug. I suspected something strange. I watched, and 
 saw thee carry in a woman. 
 
 Sint. Go back a pace, and let me out ! Thou shalt not 
 enter. 
 
 23 
 
(Sintram comes out, and closes the door.) 
 Hug. O, Sintram, I fear thou meanest not well. Thou 
 art all in a quiver. 'Tis she and thou, I need to 
 doctor first. Better the old man should wait and 
 suffer, and even die, rather than that thou shouldst 
 have that fracture unset within thy soul, which if 
 not done at once, will never close. 
 
 I appeal to that which I have ever found within 
 thee noble, put down thy foot upon the adder's 
 egg of sin, which yet is only hatched in thought! 
 Thou temptest thyself, intent on yielding, strug- 
 gling not a whit against the damned thing, but 
 rolling with it as mongrels do, when in mock fight, 
 they give but tender bites to other dogs, and drop 
 no blood but only slime. 
 Sint. Go, and let me be ! The Book of Destiny, on 
 Hymen's shelf, has within it penned in fiery gold, 
 that a wife, who is verily mine in Heaven, comes 
 to me as a dream in a drunken sea. 
 
 The bridal counterpart who thus, as thou seest, 
 so shakes me, as one trembling spring inshot 
 within another, cleaves to me in very sleep. 'Tis 
 even, as if she sensed herself already — before her 
 birth as my especial Venus — the waking glory of 
 my life. 
 
 Who but He that formed creation as it is, shall 
 question how a man makes music of the only harp, 
 that flies to his bosom of its own accord, in palpi- 
 tating zest? — and keeps there ever after, snuggling, 
 close well-nigh as God Himself? It comes but 
 once in each man's life, the real affinity's rush of 
 soul to soul. 
 
 Avaunt, with thy foul and middened feet ! This, 
 tonight, is private and most holy ground, more 
 sacred, far, than where the Stone of Kaaba lies be- 
 
 24 
 
neath its Meccan carpet; or even the slab, on 
 which the toes of Peter likewise blacken beneath 
 
 the pilgrims' million kisses. 
 
 Hug. But it were a crime to take her in her present 
 state, unhouseled, unconsenting, and if aroused to 
 use her vision, most probably without a recog- 
 nizing mind. 
 
 Sint. How dost thou know, she shall not pass out as 
 virgin as she passed in? 
 
 Hug. I see it in thy -shifting eyes, and hear it in thy 
 quivering voice. Thou shakest with the passion of 
 desire, as a tree that with weak foundation, ceases 
 
 ^'or to rock till the gusty tempests have laid it low. 
 My duty keeps me here ! 
 
 Sint. She will rouse with the heat of the fire, and if 
 so, thou'lt have spoilt my sport. Now, get thee 
 off ! Seeing that the church has already stript me 
 of my honour, for mere fanciful orgies in the dark, 
 it will not deign, if I bare my secret soul, to cloak 
 my own sins. It will but give my brow a mantling. 
 If then, I wear a blush only for a wedding gar- 
 ment, when I meet my lady, now spread out to 
 dry, let the blame light on the kirk, that sent me 
 to her so red and stark. 
 
 But get thee gone, or I will show thee, how a 
 blush rose even may fight with the hand, that 
 strives to pluck it from its fellow ! 
 
 Hug. I will not go. 
 
 Better it befits me to crawl on mangled jelly, 
 with the wedge between my legs and a pair of iron 
 boots, than to suffer such nursing as thou designest 
 now. If I leave thee, thou wilt linger ages after, 
 ith an empty spectre ever escaping thee in 
 
 wn 
 
 25 
 
Limbo, while the soul in Heaven, it represents, 
 shivers in memory of thyself as of a devil. 
 
 Sint. I care not. 
 
 Must I take thee for a mule that, after kicking 
 his heels up in his master's boudoir, sets to and 
 pulls to pieces, the fine things for which he has no 
 taste? If so, I must trip thee up with a slip-knot, 
 and drag thee out to the open, to dig for the grass, 
 and a bed, with a pair of hobbles on thy feet. 
 
 Hug. That, thou canst not do. « 
 
 'Tis not in thee, old as I am, to beat me in a 
 tussle. I am fresh enough for a brief spell yet; and 
 though lithe and strong, thou couldst not throw 
 me, even when breathless between the first and 
 the second wind. The knacks of wrestling were 
 never thine, as once they were deftly and daily 
 mine. 
 
 I fear I must do thy pride an outrage, and fetter 
 thee as a maniac for the sake of his own health 
 and peace. 
 
 I tell thee I will so use thee, if thou do not at 
 once make for thy horse, and leave the lady to the 
 care of one, who knows how to make her charms 
 of no avail as temptress. 
 
 I will go backwards, reverent, to the shameful 
 Noah, not thou. Thou wouldst play the merry 
 Ham with burning eyes, and fill the world with 
 soot. 
 
 Now, back to thy horse ! 
 
 Sint. Thou hast no weapon ! 
 
 Do not force me to rip thee up ! 
 My hand, I tell thee, is neither steady nor pa- 
 tient. 'Tis more than like, I will kill thee. 
 
 Hug. What! Art thou in such a fury? 
 
 Sint. I even am. It astounds mvself. Ere I saw the 
 
 16 
 
woman, as I came to thee, I felt myself assailed by 
 frenzied yearnings. 
 
 I could well believe it, if it were told me so, that 
 a pimp or medicaster, with designs against a lady's 
 holy calm, yet fearing for both her reason and her 
 health, had practiced on me first with such fan- 
 tastic brew as lifts the passion of a man beyond all 
 human limits. 
 
 Hug. Didst thou drink aught before thou left the 
 castle — a potion not of thy own serving? 
 
 Sint. Ay! The Lady Melkorka, my cousin, gave me 
 a cup she called a sleeping draught, which she told 
 me, elated strangely both before and after. 
 
 Hug. Ha, ha ! She has given thee an Aphrodisiac, 
 and meant its desire should turn upon herself. 
 
 Boy, let me rope thee as Ulysses against the 
 Syrens ! Let me enter, and with thee pray against 
 the Sorceress Kundry, and the burning beetles ! 
 Suffer me to blind thine eyes, so thou shalt not see 
 the naked Lorelei, whose charms, as they now are, 
 I dare not gaze upon myself! 
 
 Sint. No, I cannot forego the coming joy, whose 
 barest picture so frantically shakes my every con- 
 vulsible part of me — my body, my soul — my spirit ! 
 If I stay upon the earth like the Porter of Pilate, 
 who shall tarry, as the legend says, till the coming 
 of Christ, I shall never have such a revel as waits 
 me now. Let me know what pleasure is in its 
 wildest, most delicious reelings upon the verge of 
 swoon, ere I turn to and seek to find a greater 
 bliss in the passionless nothingness, called Nir- 
 vana ! 
 
 Hug. I must debase thee in another way. [He leaps 
 suddenly in Sintram's direction. The latter jumps 
 aside, but is caught with the second, backward 
 
 27 
 
bound. But his hand, however, for some time, has 
 been ready to seize his dagger. It is now jerked 
 savagely below the hermit's ribs. Hugleik sinks 
 down at once. Sintram bends over, and gazes at 
 his face.] 
 Sint. I cannot nurse thee, nor take thee as a para- 
 nymph behind my purdah. Nor can I leave thee 
 in the cold, to agonize an hour or two before the 
 freezing kills thee. Heaven is ready for thee, and 
 thou for Heaven, and the life thou stranglest here 
 between thy beads, is but the rotten mortifying of 
 thy heart and soul. 
 
 So die at once, and be a natural man henceforth, 
 with a counterpart in thine arms ! 
 
 Sintram prepares to strike. He holds his hand 
 awhile, as if half in hesitation. 
 Sint. Thou wert ever kind to the fallen. No ! We 
 cannot have sighs and groans to mar the music at 
 Pomona's feast. I must have, tonight, my fill of 
 the peace and ecstacy, which till this very time, I 
 have never even tasted. If thou linger, we shall 
 lose it both. Thy paradise is above, but mine, just 
 now, here below. Short pain is a gift to those that 
 without it, would suffer long. 
 
 (Sintram bares Hugleik's heart, and stabs him.) 
 Sint. Here, lie out of sight — till morning ! 
 
 (He drags Hugleik's body behind the hut, and 
 then hurriedly closes the door. An iron bolt is 
 shot with noise.) 
 
 (Wild laughing of devils.) 
 
 Scene 3. 
 
 A secret bed-chamber in Sintram's castle by the sea. 
 Night. A lamp swings overhead from the roof, or 
 
 28 
 
depends from the crook of a standard. Magical instru- 
 ments, strange books, etc., lumber the tables and 
 shelves about the walls. Odd weapons and bugles hang 
 aloft. 
 
 (Lovisa wakes for the first time since the wreck, 
 in the full possession of her mind. Sintram is dis- 
 covered standing.) 
 Lov. Have I been ill? How came I here? 
 Sint. I found thee adrift upon the sea. Unknown to 
 any, I brought thee in through a postern gate. A 
 sibyl, who houses with me here in my Donjon 
 Tower, has helped me to nurse thee back to life. 
 Lov. Where is my father, and my brothers? Were 
 
 they lost too? 
 Sint. No. They are in the same castle as thyself, but 
 do not know thy bed is even above their heads, 
 deeming thee long departed, and disparted, among 
 the pickers of scraps below — the pike and cuttle- 
 fish, the crabs and other pantophagi, that haunt 
 the rocks and search the deep. 
 Lov. Are any of them hurt, or sick? 
 Sint. Thy father's arm is still tight swathed, and 
 pendent on a sling, but otherwise he, like his sons, 
 is well and strong again. 
 Lov. Why didst thou not let them know? 
 Sint. One ever enjoys with the greatest zest, the hu- 
 man fruit with which he steals away, and with 
 eyes that linger soft and lovingly, sucks its mar- 
 row out in lonely shades. 
 Lov. Didst thou so use me? 
 
 Sint. In spirit, I did. Who can put up bounds, in 
 sand or an iron coast, and say to the great ocean of 
 the soul: "Thus far, and no farther?" I should 
 have lost the little there was left of thee, which 
 
 29 
 
hung upon a thread, and thou of thyself the better 
 part, myself, had they known I robbed them of 
 what — belonging to Him who makes and pairs all 
 Comforters — was not truly theirs to give. 
 
 Lov. But how wilt thou now break the secret? lean- 
 not, having regained the power to choose, connive 
 at more concealment. 
 
 Sint. When the time comes to cry oyez to the public 
 ear, I will promulge it frankly, shortly, and with- 
 out stammer, the stray that in my pound, had its 
 head eaten ofif before I pushed it in, bore no brand 
 or birthmark for me to read its owner, or its father. 
 
 Lov. O, thou rogue ! 
 
 Sint. I will say, moreover, I picked thee from a whirl- 
 pool that span, when I found thee, around a swan 
 of wood, that had no eyes, whose prow and coun- 
 ter, both, were sunk. Our beach, for miles along, 
 is strewn with the wrecks of many ages. Who 
 knows a boat without a pennon, a marked figure- 
 head, or its name? 
 
 Lov. Thou art a shuffling ram, that with brains 
 a-stagger, moves with crooked feet.- — But I weary. 
 Why not call them up? Dost thou think I have 
 no hunger to set eyes on my nearest kin once 
 again? 'Tis like a peep at home to one long ban- 
 ished, even to hear the voices which there with the 
 wind, whurried and murmured in the smoke, over 
 and against the cracking of a pine-log fire. 
 
 Sint. A wrong appetite for a nun, methinks ! Thy 
 future cell, I ween, shall likewise know its pine 
 and worry — and shortly end with the cracking of 
 thyself, thy mind .on fire. 
 
 Lov. I cannot, weak as I am, make out the real cause 
 of thy hiding yet. 
 
 Sint. Wouldst thou have the bird invite to its nest a 
 
 30 
 
coil of snakes, to tell with hisses if they choose, 
 but without their usual guile, whether or not the 
 egg, it cherishes, was first theirs truly? — hatched 
 by them, and after dropped by them, or not? 
 
 I looked on the yolk, or meat, as anyhow mine, 
 for possession, they say, is nine-tenths of the law. 
 The shell they are free to take back and stufif their 
 l)ellies withal, to wit : thy wimple and kirtle, the 
 aglet babies and all the pins. 
 . Thy brother sheep, decoying thee to a death, 
 they themselves had no intent to die, lost thee in a 
 ditch, and left thee without searching. Shall I re- 
 store for burial, the life they threw away, that I 
 myself found and vivified? 
 
 Lov. But I went, knowing where I went, and of my 
 own accord. I looked to the stillness and the 
 sanctity of solid walls of stone, to develop in me 
 the vision that sees the other world. I looked be- 
 yond still further. I saw myself in union with 
 those celestial nobles", whose fusing with a mortal 
 soul makes that music, which plays not upon hu- 
 man ears, but upon the chords within — those 
 Euterpian strings, Cupid plucked, when he toyed 
 with Psyche's harp. 
 
 Sint. These weddings with the spirits of Paradise may 
 still be thine, and that without the chilling of thy- 
 self in the prison of a starving church. I will give 
 thee a turret, sanctified to thy use entire. — 
 
 But I see, 'tis trying thee beyond thy strength, 
 to speak and think so much, so soon. Sip this 
 cordial, left me by the Sibyl as a fend-ofif 'gainst 
 the dangers, circling round thee in the first 
 awaking from thy trance. Open the eyes once 
 more, after yet another dreamless sleep, and thou 
 shalt verily have used old Lethe for thy juvenizing 
 
 31 
 
bath, and not as a sea of ink to drown in. 
 Thou canst then take back the dead man's penny, 
 and give old Charon sauce, for snatching so hastily 
 at an obolus, not yet his for fifty years and more. — 
 No, I will not listen! — Drink! 
 (She drinks.) 
 Sint. I must leave thee now — else thou wilt keep com- 
 ing and going, up and down Avernus, neither dead 
 nor alive, with Hermes ever at thy heel. 
 (Exit Sintram.) 
 
 t 
 INTERVAL. 
 
 (Enter stealthily Gudbrand, Tuta and Thorgrim, 
 all with their swords drawn. The last has his arm 
 still in a sling. One of the men carries a large bag, 
 filled with a long rope-ladder, with steps of cord.) 
 (Melkorka follows, but immediately takes her 
 station by the door. This she keeps ajar, so as to 
 hear as soon as possible, when anyone is likely to 
 disturb the brothers, before the latter can get away 
 with their sister. She has her mantle pinned about 
 her face. She intends, if anyone approaches, to 
 slip across the passage into the room, in which her 
 party had lately lain concealed. She might have 
 taken her stand outside the door, but is curious to 
 see what is in this secret chamber. 
 
 Gud. Lovisa ! 
 
 Lov. Ah, thou here? And father, and Tuta? 
 
 Thor. What, child, brings thee to this strange and se- 
 cret bed? — Didst thou not know we were below? 
 (She is partly dazed with the potion, Sintram 
 has just given her, and does not answer. She is 
 pondering on the word "secret.") 
 
 32 
 
Thou didst! Ah, child! Hast thou slipt? 
 
 Lov. What dost thou mean? 
 
 I have been in fever — , a long time — and have 
 but waked. 'Twas only a few minutes back, I 
 knew I lived, and lay in a castle, whose owner I 
 have only just seen, whose name I have not yet 
 discovered. — Who is he? 
 
 Mel. I hear a swift footstep stealing hither. Quick, 
 help me ! Hold the door ! 
 
 (Gudbrand begins to lift his sister up. Tuta and 
 the father run to help Melkorka. Before they 
 reach her, a sword is thrust through sideways. 
 She staggers and falls.) 
 
 (Sintram bursts in, savage and towering to his 
 fullest height. He is about to give Melkorka, 
 whom he does not recognize in the darkness, an- 
 other thrust, wdien she cries out:) 
 
 Mel. Don't ! I am thy cousin ! [At the same time, 
 she tears open the mantle, which hitherto has con- 
 cealed her face. Sintram leaves her, and begins a 
 fight, fast and furious, with Tuta and Thorgrim, 
 who both give back before an onslaught, which is 
 like that of one possessed, for his constant habit is 
 to excite and enormously elate himself, when he 
 seeks to kill. W^ith a sudden leap, Sintram has the 
 tw^o in line,, and with his right arm slashed, Tuta 
 drops his sword. 
 
 Gudbrand replaces his sister on the bed, and 
 joins in the fight. He first pulls his father back by 
 the arm, and points to the door. Thorgrim retires 
 out of the fight, and steps across and bolts it.] 
 
 Sint. How dare ye mount to this, the private end of 
 my castle? 
 
 Gud. How darest thou keep our sister thus unknown ? 
 
 Sint. Be thankful, I have nursed her back to life. 
 
 33 
 
How should I know hef sister of yours? And if I 
 had, 'twere no great crime, to transplant and grow 
 in secret, that beauteous tree, you had in mind to 
 make a lopped and sterile pollard of. How dare 
 ye look to the great gardener of Heaven for grace, 
 when its fruit and branches, you despoil of breed- 
 ing and cast aside? Keep to your own Penates! 
 Having flung the God away, she is now and hence- 
 forth, whether you will or no, whether she will or 
 not, the Genius of my home. 
 Take her, an if you can ! 
 
 (The fighting has continued throughout this 
 conversation.) 
 
 (Suddenly Sintram springs upon the father, who 
 has worked round to the former's back. He in- 
 tends merely to disable him by a thrust through 
 the sword-arm, but nevertheless gives him a mor- 
 tal stab. Thorgrim turns Sintram 's weapon in 
 upon himself. One of the brothers runs to the 
 father, to see how it has fared with him. The 
 other stands, a while inactive, trying to recover his 
 breath again.) 
 Sint. My God, I meant to maim, I did not aim to kill 
 him. — (To himself) She cannot wed her father's 
 butcher. So the devils watch upon the great 
 mountain of my life, to unloose the sand and rocks 
 beneath my ever-slipping feet ! — (To them) 
 'Twas but an accident. Truly, I had no wish to 
 kill. 
 Gud. Well, we shall match this unhappy chance with 
 yet another! 
 
 (The brothers attack Sintram with great deter- 
 mination. During the fight that immediately en- 
 sues, the latter works up close to the fallen father, 
 who raising himself on one arm, suddenly gives 
 
 34 
 
him a stab with a dagger, either in his back or 
 side.) 
 
 (As the brothers cease for the time, the father 
 receives a savage thrust through the heart.) 
 
 (Sintram, who thereafter acts mainly on the de- 
 fensive, is at last about to be run through by 
 Gudbrand, when Lovisa coming up behind, springs 
 and grasps the latter's sword-arm with both her 
 hands.) 
 
 (The man she holds cannot shake her off, though 
 he tosses and pushes her with force.) 
 Lov. Why should you seek his murder? He cannot 
 keep me against my will. If I desire it — he is 
 great and knightly — he will let me go. 
 
 (Gudbrand even fails to get free, at first, after 
 the dropping of his sword. He does not do so, till 
 Tuta runs for the bag of rope. Then it is, that 
 Lovisa shows signs of fainting, and Gudbrand gets 
 completiJjy out of her grasp. He stoops for the 
 fallen weapon, sheathes it, and then springs to the 
 side of his sister, and hoists her upon his shoulder.) 
 
 (Sintram has made his way swiftly to the side 
 of the room, and torn down a huge, odd-fashioned 
 bugle ; or it may be a trumpet, such as the old 
 Romans used, that made frightful sounds — that is, 
 a tuba, which is described as ''harsh and fear- 
 inspiring." While fighting ofif the unencumbered 
 brother, he blows a number of loud and furious 
 blasts in rapid succession. 
 
 (With his left hand now and again upon the 
 wall, or with his back or knee occasionally resting 
 against it, and still grasping the horn, he fights his 
 way to the door. After beating his opponent a 
 few paces back, he suddenly runs tottering to the 
 bolt and slides it back. He repeats the same tac- 
 
 35 
 
tics, before he is able to swing the door wide open. 
 The frequent blasts are continued, until Sintram 
 hears the murmurs and cries of his rescuers down 
 below. He then blows just sufficient to give them 
 direction as to the room he occupies.) 
 
 (When the brothers hear the voices distinctly of 
 those who ascend, Tuta runs to the bag of rope, 
 the other turns upon his sister and lifts her up.) 
 
 (Sintram attempts to cross the room, so as to 
 keep the brothers engaged with himself, till his 
 followers can come and cut them ofif, but after a 
 few steps, he sinks down in the centre. 
 Tuta. Here is the room she told us of. 
 
 (The brothers hurry ofif into a room communi- 
 cating. Tuta has unhooked the only lamp, and 
 taken it in with him alight. He leaves the stand- 
 ard lying on the floor. The sound of a bar is heard, 
 being shot into iron loops.) 
 
 (As the curtain slowly falls, with the rays of the 
 moon on Sintram's face, a number of his men 
 rush in.) 
 Sint. Down to the gates ! They have bolted the door. 
 We have no ram to force it. Seach the wall be- 
 neath the nearest bartizan. If they have no horse, 
 ye shall catch them, if ye make circles round about. 
 
 Anyhow, see ye mount yourselves ! Away ! 
 
 Let two or three guard me, and help staunch my 
 wound. — I faint ! 
 
 ACT II. 
 
 Scene. — The garden of a convent, standing in a 
 Fiord. Sun-down. A large tree hides the top of the 
 wall, R. C. 
 
(Enter R, Orny and Lovisa, both dressed as 
 nuns. Lovisa's hood is on her shoulders.) 
 LfOV. You weary me with this sacred, sapless talk. 
 Has the life which is highest no zest, no ocean 
 spray? — no hasty wind, that jumps the pleasant 
 rack along in sportful mood? Must one there 
 above ever breathe but nostril deep? Does not 
 ecstacy in Heaven suck in to the very depths of 
 breast and limb? 
 Orny. We must purge our souls of delight in all that 
 
 appeals to sense. 
 Lov. But does the spirit, then, lack strong feeling? 
 Are the angels only a lot of wishy-washy sisters — 
 who for their lives dare not show to God the bliss 
 that God's creation here below, when health is 
 good, finds in vim and speed and even shouting? 
 According to such as thou, we must allow our- 
 selves admiration only of the flowers, and that, if 
 we would stay in Paradise, must lack all sign of 
 sparkle, and of warmth. If thy teachings be true, 
 th£ eye must give no flash of joy — else the soul itself 
 
 would catch on fire. 
 Orny. But the flowers speak to the spirit only. 
 Lov. Not to the nerves, thou thinkest? Is it not with- 
 palpably moving lips, they appeal to the sense of 
 vision? As if the kisses, that hung upon those 
 lips, were inspired by an essence which, distilled 
 in cups and bugles, set the feet tripping, not only 
 of bees, but the best of men. These fruitful chil- 
 dren of the grass prove, in my esteem, that the 
 riotous use of sense is not of itself a sin. 
 Orny. But we are suffered to enjoy them, only be- 
 cause such things grow in Heaven— reflecting 
 virtues, we know not what, in God. 
 Lov. Does not the manly man, then, grow in Heaven? 
 
 37 
 
(Orny is startled.) 
 
 Does he not too reflect, and more thoroughly 
 "^j^P^-^^ the e^e-TTTOst give no flajife-^TToy^ 
 >r^Ei~j>Sy its^Tf would ca'hr^i-ett-fife. T^E Leinr r/n^ n^ ,s sa'J 
 \H Holy Writ, made him— impossible to believe, ac- 
 cording to your tenets — actually an exact copy, a 
 living one, that is, of his most potent, beautiful 
 and most holy person ? 
 
 Why in his most masculine presentment, does 
 man so move our womanhood, the more he and we 
 are seekers in the largest sense after the God, 
 whom I have heard called, God beyond God. 
 Orny. Ah, thou hast listened to the unchaste devils. 
 Poor child ! Such thoughts, so dwelt upon, let 
 alone the speaking of them with heat, will shut 
 thee out a hundred, hundred years from Paradise. 
 Lov. Paradise, without a lover, is but a silent harp 
 without the player's hand to ravish the air, the 
 harp itself, and all its hearers, with the voice of 
 the Orphean Christ within. 
 Orny. (), this means for thee. I fear, wasting long 
 away, and crying in Limbo, like Ixion, age after 
 age, in the cold midway deserts between the stars. 
 Lov. Did He not make them male and female? — say- 
 ing, Tis not good for man, and therefore woman, 
 to be alone? 
 
 Who gave such as thou license to disjoin that 
 blessed twain of whom the Father said: "Let no 
 one sunder?" 
 Orny. \\'e of the true church cut off the limbs that do 
 
 offend. 
 Lov. How is it then you bear your thigh-bones? You 
 should have no use for seats. 
 (Orny is sore amazed.) 
 
 38 
 
Art thou pleased with thy naughty, and knotty 
 legs? 
 
 (Orny is horrified.) 
 
 Ah, I understand, you are limbs of Satan ; you 
 have cut yourselves off entire. — Thou shouldst 
 not look on Heaven with horror. Look down upon 
 thy feet ! They are three sizes too large. If thou 
 hadst true delicacy, thou shouldst have cut off thy 
 toes. 
 
 Orny. Thou art past redeeming. 
 
 Lov. Then, my pawn is lost. But what of that? I 
 have a knight, my own, who though mated, still 
 sweeps the board and goes unchecked. — 
 
 But to return to the muttons, and leave the 
 gigots, offending you if another's, but pleasing if 
 your own : — Who, in Heaven, finds offence with 
 those that, in whom all beauteous colours harmo- 
 nizing, produce the Perfect White? The Saint of 
 Patmos, and the best of prophets, described be- 
 tween them the Lord of Paradise as of snowy hue 
 Himself, sitting in the midst of gems, and circled 
 round with rainbows. — I ever loved the jewels. 
 I will deck myself, and fill my caskets, there in 
 Heaven, with opals and all rich, flamboyant stones. 
 
 Orny. Thou art grown sensuous, and luxurious, in 
 thy fancy. This is not well. We must scourge 
 ourselves from all enjoyment traceable, directly or 
 indirectly, to carnal appetites. 
 
 Lov. What else proves the spirit has sensuous fibres 
 too, but the rapture the mother feels in contact 
 with her babes? What greater luxury in the kiss 
 of nerves, canst thou find than this? 
 
 How comes it that you, and all your church, ex- 
 press no horror in that delight the parent sucks — 
 mind thee, sucks from the child, she herself dan- 
 
 39 
 
dies naked on her bosom? In what does the sin 
 lie, when lover thrills with the arm of lover round 
 his neck? In what does the latter's ecstacy differ 
 from the parent's, wdien both look to Heaven for 
 the source and increase of their bliss? 
 
 Orny. Where hast thou learned all this about lovers? 
 If such were thy feelings, what brought thee here? 
 
 Lov. I have learned the Science of the Heart by pon- 
 dering, night and day, in solitude, on the nature 
 and the desires of the Spirit who, Himself the 
 Spring of Love, wooes the lover into His own 
 great arms, by letting him feel the affinity is but a 
 gift, and part of His own sweet essence. God, man 
 and woman are a blessed trinity, and Heaven is 
 full of triads, that are even so, Deity and dual 
 angel. 
 
 The highest and only needful priest, when affini- 
 ties truly meet, is the Being who, participator in 
 all pure delights, is Himself the First of Bride- 
 grooms. 
 
 Orny. O, horror of horrors ! 
 
 Lov. Run, run, thou poor, silly virgin, that with a 
 sorry rush-light, thinks she has the lamp, shall 
 carry her to the Inmost Chamber ! Now, I will 
 shock thee with a secret truth — and thou canst 
 after tell it, if thou wilt, in Gath ! The flash pre- 
 cedes the greater light. — 
 
 My lover's spirit, and he is still a man alive, oft 
 walks with me (I feel his presence) even where 
 the nuns stand thickest. I know then why the 
 saying is so precious : "I in you and you in me." 
 
 Orny. This is the rankest blasphemy ! That means 
 only of Him, who Himself had no mate. 
 
 Lov. An angel mate is food and stimulant, and He 
 told His disciples. He had meat they knew not of. 
 
 40 
 
Orny. Barest thou match thyself with Him? — a man 
 and thou and He, all in the self-same breath? 
 
 Lov. Did He not teach, "greater works shall ye do?" 
 Therefore, 'tis nothing hopeless, to aspire to be 
 as He. 
 
 Orny. But when He uttered "I in you", it was plainly 
 signified between the lines, that He, and He only, 
 should remain the Master Spirit. The servant, he 
 declared, is ever beneath his Lord. 
 
 Orny. Thou hoodest up thy reason, as those do who, 
 on trestles in pagan woods, dedicate their lusts to 
 Bel and Moloch. We are not suffered to let our 
 fancy go where it w^ill. 
 
 Lov. But whether we will or not, it being itself the 
 Spirit, it goeth where it listeth. When thought is 
 tense in motion, and not vapour-light and formless 
 as the bovine reverie, 'tis no idle roaming. Con- 
 ception does. Her progeny then is live and solid. 
 
 Orny. I must bring to thee one who knows how to 
 teach thee the only bookish arguments, that have 
 countenance here. Else thy flesh shall be flicked 
 aw^ay, till thou hast nothing left of silk or satin, 
 that still adheres. The Mother Superior, as it is 
 right she should be, is hard to those who are too 
 free. — What dost thou mean by a lover rustling 
 ever among us, when we eat or sleep? Is it not a 
 devil, thou feelest, of passion — Priapus or Fawm — 
 
 in angel's shape 
 
 Lov. No, indeed! It is the Lord Sintram, at whose 
 castle I lay awhile in fever. My brothers told me, 
 ere I first became a nun, that he had lingered long, 
 and after died. But suspecting, as time went on, 
 they had a purpose in speaking as they did, I put 
 some crafty questions suddenly to those, who 
 served without the gates. The answers, I got, 
 
 41 
 
were shame-faced and evasive. I know for posi- 
 tive, he lives and rides around these walls. 
 
 Orny. I fear, thou hadst no business to enter here. 
 What moved thee to come here at all? 
 
 Lov. I was taken in half a dream, overcome in part, 
 by a sleeping draught. I was sapped of indepen- 
 dent will, and careless too from the long tossing 
 of a fever, in which the maniac ghosts made merry 
 with my brains, and told, I fear, my virgin secrets. 
 Then, my brothers forced me here, inspiring me 
 with a passing horror of him who, they said, killed 
 my wounded and defenceless father. Ere I met 
 him, men had not seemed to me so desirable, that 
 I should forego the Heaven I thought a nunnery, 
 and make of one of these drunken animals, a life- 
 long brutish mate. I yearned to live in Fairy 
 Land. I craved to bathe myself entirely in the 
 presence of those, whose very touch and breath — 
 though invisible, palpable — makes even the psychi- 
 cal hair upon the head, when the acme comes, run 
 and jump with thrills. 
 
 Orny. But a convent is not meant to pander to soft, 
 luxurious thoughts of such a sexual kind. We 
 must mortify the nerves, starve and cut the flesh, 
 deny ourselves all taste of pleasure. 
 
 Didst thou not find restful freedom in thy pray- 
 ers, and in contemplation over the lives of saints? 
 
 Lov. Ay — but I ever found, my holiest and highest 
 efforts drew into myself more strongly than at 
 other times, the soul that assuredly no woman's, 
 caused throughout my flesh such a rush of joy, 
 which grew the more delicious, as it closed and 
 spread more intimate, and filled my being. My 
 God, at once, became more darling and more 
 precious, for the gift. It seemed, in part, a mani- 
 
 42 
 
festation of the Divine Himself. I take it that 
 such unseeable union, unless one has the second 
 sight, is marriage in its best and purest sense. So, 
 though in a convent, myself a full-fledged nun, I 
 cry to thy very teeth : "Hail, Hymen ! Hail !" 
 Omy. The maniac ghosts, thou spokest of, still keep 
 house w^ithin thy brains. Thou shouldst go back 
 to a bed of sickness, and there have around thee 
 surgeons to cut out thy cancers, such as he who 
 plied his steel on the robber Procrustes' over- 
 growths. — I must report all this thou hast here 
 imparted, for so we are enjoined. 
 Lov. Well, report ! Explode thy bomb ! Bring down 
 the cobwebs, which find in the free air nought 
 but dirt. 
 
 I glory in this my wedded state, and I see myself 
 before the judgment throne of Heaven, a clean, 
 white lamb, gently used by other lambs — and not 
 as thou, a goat that cannot contain itself, but butts 
 and messes where'er it be. 
 
 (Orny whispers in Lena's ear. The latter nods.) 
 
 (Orny stands back, silent a space.) 
 
 Orny. Dost thou know, they bury alive such as thou? 
 
 Thou art indeed wedded, and yet in such wise as 
 
 animals, that know not priests for what they are. 
 
 Lov. If they did, 'tis like they would seek, as I do, my 
 
 sacraments only at the hands of angels. 
 Orny. This would be a terrible scandal, should it get 
 beyond the walls. 
 
 (A bell rings for vespers.) 
 
 I dare not stay with thee more. Our ?^Iother 
 must be told at once. 
 (Orny exits, L.) 
 (Two nuns enter from R, and cross to L.) 
 
 43 
 
INTER.VAL. 
 
 (Lovisa at length moves slowly, as if most re- 
 luctant to go. When she has nearly reached the L. 
 exit, the Sybil Aasta suddenly appears R, and calls 
 her back. The former is in the costume of a lady 
 of means, which she has assumed to get entrance 
 into the convent. This she has done by pretend- 
 ing to fall sick, while passing the gate, when trav- 
 elling by. The Sybil speaks quickly. 
 Sybil. Stay and listen ! Thy life depends upon thy 
 stay. I have been watching for this chance. Thou 
 dost not know me, child. I come from Sintram. 
 None here must know it but thyself. I came as a 
 traveller, seized with sudden sickness, when pass- 
 ing by the gate. I am versed in sciences, not 
 known to thee. They showed me, the unseen mas- 
 ters, thy life is now in danger. 'Tis she they call 
 the Mother here, who will deem it expedient, to 
 remove thee. Otherwise, she is full aware, the 
 world outside will say, as they said of Roman 
 Christians in the Catacombs, the convent is a 
 bagnio, a hot-bath for the monks. 
 
 (The Sybil throws a cord over the wall.) 
 (It may be sooner, it may be later.) 
 Syb. There is no time to lose. They will send out to 
 find, why we two, of all others, dare stay away 
 from prayers. Thou must, on no account, enter 
 that house again alone. If thou dost, thou wilt 
 never again gaze, in this world, on the broad sweep 
 of Day. This cord will save thee. Sintram waits 
 near at hand. His signal is that vesper bell. — He 
 even now pulls the rope. 
 
 (The sybil draws back a ladder made of cord.) 
 They will send for me at any moment, and the 
 
 44 
 
purpose of that sending will be a locking-up, and 
 a murder, done in the secret name of Holy Church. 
 Lov. But why? What have I done?— beyond a little 
 talk? 
 
 Syb. I see thou hast not learned, being brought up 
 alone with men, those generative physic details, 
 most women, schooled by women, know. 
 
 Thou wilt soon be a mother, but evidently lack- 
 est suspicion of something real, thou must have 
 gone through in a trance, or stupor. 
 
 Lov. But why should there be a penalty for that — and 
 one, besides, meted out in death? Is it not hon- 
 ourable, sacred even, to be a parent? 
 
 [The sybil has now secured the ends of the 
 ladder.] 
 
 Syb. There is no time, now, to speak of that. Quick, 
 mount the ladder! 
 
 Lov. Why should I not boldly tell them, I wish to 
 leave the convent? How dare they keep me? 
 Have I no brothers left, to sack and burn the nun- 
 nery, they have made either a dungeon or a 
 slaughter house? 
 
 Syb. Quick, for thy life, and mine ! I tell thee, I know 
 by my secret art, they would put thee to sleep 
 before thy time — bury thee probably after, with a 
 stone chained round they neck, in the sea or in the 
 lynn-pit below the fall — or, more safely, burn thy 
 poisoned body, and let the wind feed on thy ashes. 
 'Twould be an easy, truthful thing to tell thy 
 brothers, thou hadst passed away in sudden sick- 
 ness. 
 
 The Mother Superior feels herself a natural foe 
 of mine. She has already observed I do not speak 
 and act, as one that moves by canon, and that un- 
 
 45 
 
written law, which rules* the papist. As she herself 
 is crafty, she now doubtless links me with thee, as 
 both have failed the present vesper. — 
 They come ! Quick ! mount ! 
 (As they are looking off L, two nuns swiftly 
 glide in from the right, and push the sybil aside. 
 One of these, the Mother Superior, rushes by and 
 seizes hold of some part of Lovisa's dress. The 
 latter had already begun to climb. 
 
 Lov. Sintram ! Sintram ! 
 
 (Other nuns run up from the L.) 
 (Sintram, who ere this had reached the top of 
 the wall, drops down inside. After unlocking the 
 fingers of the Mother Superior, and thus freeing 
 Lovisa, who mounts higher and disappears, fol- 
 lowed by the sybil, he pushes their savage enemy- 
 in-chief back several paces. He then walks quickly 
 to the foot of the "tackled stair." The Mother 
 runs in, and bending to the ground, clasps him by 
 the legs. He whips out a dagger, and gives her a 
 stab, and then sweeps the point round in the faces 
 of several nuns, who have gathered close. When 
 the Mother lets go, she staggers back till sup- 
 ported.) 
 
 Sint. That was but a single prick among the many 
 thousands, thou shouldst, if not a hypocrite, have 
 ripped thy flesh withal. 
 
 M. Sup. For laying- thy murderous hand upon a holy 
 sister, thou shalt sip fire forever in the Burning 
 Lake. Even before thou sinkest into the pitiless 
 flames, I will set those on, who shall see no further 
 spiritual harm is done thy paramour. She shall sin 
 no more, and after a long fast in such oubliette as 
 I shall give her, she shall lie upon the rack in Pur- 
 gatory, till such time as the angels suffer her to 
 
 46 
 
crawl, with broken joints, into that Paradise, 
 which thou shalt never reach. She and thou shall 
 never, never meet again. 
 Sint. Well, thou damned, and thou damning Norn, 
 thy prophecies give no earnest of their truth. We 
 shall presently ride side by side, steed by palfrey, 
 lord and mistress, knocking their ribs, the one 
 against the other, as in the old days before the 
 Fall, when the bones and flesh of Adam and Eve 
 heaved and clove together, all in the self-same 
 shoes, all in the self-same hat — for right-down 
 savages, ye know, wear nothing else. 
 
 She is like now to find more Heaven with me on 
 Earth than after this life, thou shalt for many a 
 day, discover in the ditch outside of Paradise. No 
 soul ever entered there, that had it in her, when 
 the back of Deity was turned, to look so like a 
 sacred devil as now thou dost. 
 M. Sup. O, thou accursed! ! — 
 
 I will have thee, herself, and her babe unborn, 
 blasted and excommunicate, this life and the next, 
 by all the powers that wither from the seat of 
 Christ in Rome. 
 Sint. There be Holy Satans still, who jealous of peace 
 and pleasure, walk and pray for suffering, even 
 among the sons of God, as in the days of Job. 
 Yet, though thou givest me the boil from sole to 
 crown, it shall be thou, not I, will now "sit down 
 among the ashes, and go to pot." 
 
 (He turns and begins to mount.) 
 
 (An old nun, not Orny, who has sidled up, 
 plucks the dagger from Sintram's belt, as his back 
 is turned, and stabs him with all her force.) 
 
 (Sintram flinches badly, and clasps one of his 
 hands to the wound. He kicks out occasionally, 
 
 47 
 
as he ascends, to keep off the nun, who mounts the 
 lowest rung, and attempts to cut his feet. 
 Old Nun. No— Thou shalt be the first! 
 Sint. The Devil take thee and thy sherd ! — thyself, for 
 spanks without thy shirt ! 
 (Exits hurriedly over wall.) 
 (Quick curtain.) 
 
 ACT III. 
 
 Scene. — ^he platform of Sintram's inland castle. 
 Wild mountain scarps around. Water-fall seen back, 
 centre, up the heights. Pines and other Norwegian 
 trees on slope and level. Full moon-light, no moon in 
 sight. It grows suddenly very dark, near the end of 
 the play, and before the final vision. 
 
 (Sintram is discovered sitting at a table, on 
 which are the remains of a supper for two.) 
 
 (Lovisa appears just at the wings, R, and after 
 speaking a single line, turns slowly round and 
 exits.) 
 Lov. The barby sleeps ! Come down to the garden. 
 
 (She exits, R.) 
 
 (Sintram follows her.) 
 
 INTERVAL. 
 
 (L. M. peeps over the parapet, between thick 
 masses of ivy. Then he climbs over, and goes to 
 the table. He looks first at the flagon, and then 
 into each of the cups.) 
 L. M. Ha. ha ! ha ! 
 
 Now, my pretties, so clean, so dainty, before ye 
 
 48 
 
die with unexpected pang, ye shall sin with your 
 tongues shooting, as witches do, when the hoary 
 Goat-Legs sits and blows their bestial appetites 
 into raging flame. And she, the unwitting trollop 
 of the past, shall know, and love the knowledge, 
 how it all came about that he, the proud master of 
 his passions, leapt upon her agaiiinst his better 
 will. — After the cup of lust, the cup of death! 
 My, my, what screams ! Ha, ha ! Ho, ho ! He, 
 he ! He and she ! She and he ! 
 
 (L. M. dances around with his hands working in 
 frenzy, making barbarous noises.) 
 
 (Low laughing of fiends off — some derisive, 
 some rejoicing.) 
 
 (The Sibyl enters suddenly, R.) 
 
 Sib. 'Tis as I thought, thou devil ! 
 
 How gotst thou here? — My guides have warned 
 me of thy presence and thy poison. 
 
 L. M. Ah ! ! When I once lived here, I fossicked 
 round, I devised, I put in pegs and dug my way. 
 'Tis a secret, though. I tell it thee; the lord and 
 master shall never know. — (The Sibyl moves, as 
 if intending to call over the parapet. He intercepts 
 her.) Where art thou going? 
 
 Sib. To warn those whom it most concerns- for I am 
 sure from thy dancing and my visions, that Death 
 is close upon thy heels. 
 
 L. M. Thou shalt tell them then in spirit — rap thy 
 message on the walls, spell it out with a ghostly 
 finger — for I shall now cut out thy tape-worms, 
 and with them, the glib bloody thing that wags so 
 bold. That tongue it was caused my undoing; 'tis 
 meet in Hell, that by me, it should ifself now be 
 undone. When my lord reaches Heaven, thou 
 mayst then tittle-tattle once again, if but the fat 
 
 49 
 
lolly-walloper can but find its socket true. 
 
 (The sibyl backs to pick up a knife. L. M. 
 bounds upon her, and bends her head over the 
 table, or a chair, his hands meeting around her 
 throat.) 
 L. M. Now I will take thee off below, and set thee 
 peering on thy crop and gizzard, and all the agita- 
 tion that writhes within, just as the Lama does^ 
 who ripping a door to his belly, ponders Buddha- 
 wise, upon the secrets below his navel. — 
 
 We will laugh and scream together, though in 
 different keys. I must even hasten, for I have a 
 couple of nymphomaniacs, troubled with satyria- 
 sis, whom as a physician, I must presently cup and 
 give phlebotomy, ere they go too far. Such hot 
 pleasure as theirs is not fit for aught but Hell. 
 Time and place, I say, for everything! 
 
 (He has been pulling her off, while he 
 speaks, L.) 
 
 (He now exits.) 
 
 (Laughing of demons heard off.) 
 
 PAUSE. 
 
 (Enter Sintram and Lovisa, right.) 
 Sint. What is it in me now stirs so frantic, when I 
 even think of thee? If thou by chance touch me, 
 my whole being is convulsed. Where would be 
 the finish, if the sea within went on without re- 
 straint? I would smother thy precious dust in 
 kisses, and drawing it beneath the bosom of my 
 ocean, I should even sink with it, void and without 
 decent form, down to that pit of dreams where 
 Riot, though reigning, kicks up its heels in lawless 
 sleep. 
 
 50 
 
Lov. I too am frenzy-wild (I never knew the like) — a 
 gurge sucking down a whirlpool, eagre gulfed by 
 maelstrom. 
 
 But does the great God approve of the gallantry 
 of such fierce comminglings? — such madness of 
 delight? Yet, is He not Himself, when rapturous 
 most, a lovely Frenzy? — But my vow? Even if 
 indulgence were given free to those in Heaven, 
 does He not desire that while enmewed in the 
 prison-school of flesh, the soul shall take its dis- 
 cipline as nobly as it can, till the last bell knolls us 
 to everlasting play? 
 
 Sint. But the vow was forced upon thee. It is not 
 really thine own, but another's. 
 
 Lov. But 'twas I that spoke the vow. 'Tis a solemn 
 promise. Honour cannot tear the bond, imposed 
 by itself upon itself. 
 
 Sint. But if rendered to one, who disavows the recog- 
 nition of that bond, it were surely to Him a grate- 
 ful and a gracious act, that thou shouldst likewise 
 ignore the binding quality, both in letter and the 
 spirit, and break in every loving sense, thy hateful 
 word. Unwitting of God's desires, thou settest 
 thyself to do for Him, an evil and repulsive thing. 
 
 Lov. Ah, thou art a sophist ! A promise remains a 
 promise. 
 
 Sint. If thou, uninspired by God, promised to kill thy 
 unborn child, would He not deem it a lesser sin, 
 that thou shouldst slay thy word, and bring forth 
 the babe to dance and sing? — and listen rapt to the 
 Heaven it ponders on, which thou thyself canst 
 neither see nor hear? 
 
 Lov. Yes. There is truth in that. But dedicating 
 one's life to God is not a sin. 
 
 Sint. But dost thou dedicate the best bv the murder 
 
 51 
 
of the spirit, or by giving joy, and growth of finer 
 being, to thyself, and yet another, and still others? 
 What is right and the law with Nature, I take it, 
 is right and the law with God. He has willed in- 
 crease to man^by no other process than by unions. 
 What better fruit canst thou find than the child, 
 who looks on Earth with the clean, glad eyes of 
 those who, in Paradise, see a sweet root and seed 
 in everything, because in all things they see the 
 flowers of God? 
 
 Art thou now afraid to take my hand? 
 
 LfOv. I am. Some amorous, giant Fury has gotten 
 herself within my inmost wall, and shakes the bul- 
 warks of my heart. I never till now have felt such 
 leaps of passion, in my blood, shall I say? — or, in 
 my soul? Or, is it both? I would, if I went by 
 craving only, eat and drink thee both. My whole 
 being writhes around thee. If I dared shut my 
 eyes, and thou daredst circle me fast and hard, my 
 brains would whirl around with that spinning mar- 
 row, which pertains not to me alone, but thee as 
 well, and which doubtless is the married essence 
 of our conjointed spirits. 
 
 Sint. O, foolish one ! Why deny thyself, and me, the 
 Parnassian joy, that otherwise such mortals as our- 
 selves, without the cup that drunken Hebe now 
 drops upon our heads, shall never know again? In 
 any case, death is my portion shortly. My soul 
 tells me so. The Sibyl too denies it not. If thou 
 be delivered to the nuns and monks again, as 'tis 
 most like — thou too art doomed. — Let us squeeze 
 this juice of sweetest frenzy while we may! We 
 shall die, then, with the fullest knowledge, in that 
 content, which he and she cannot enjoy who read 
 in the book of memory, ''ass" and "neglected op- 
 
 52 
 
portunity", in one accusing line against them- 
 selves. 
 
 (He offers to grasp her.) 
 
 Lov. Oh, touch me not ! 
 
 Once thy hand is on me, I shall lose all resist- 
 ance. Yet a little more of this inner tempest, with 
 SL\er)f^/c, niy sjpprfng anchors finding no rocks to catch upon, 
 and I cannot, nor I shall not, keep my barque 
 from oft" thy shore. My inmost rushing is like an 
 earthquake's flood, and I but a willing wisp upon 
 the headlong stream of my desires. 
 
 Oh, that I could say that which I dare not, take 
 me to thy very depths, and let me, as a Naiad, cling 
 to the sweet shell grottoes, I there find in all thy 
 cavities, my fount of life ! — my ever wonder-reveal- 
 ing jet of shivering joy ! 
 
 Sint. The temple of the true God is not like Raider's, 
 or the Groves of Zeus, profaned by those who pas- 
 sion with a love which, not barring the Highest, is 
 extended to the very uttermost. 
 
 Lov. But I am sure, this tumult is not of the soul 
 merely. Is this the spell that under the Mount of 
 Venus, beguiled Tannhauser's spirit into the lap- 
 ping of those living cups, whose bubbles drove him 
 to the dreams that, with open eyes, go with 
 Maenads' madness? I have read of philtres too, 
 ^ that, concocted of the physic elements, enraged the 
 
 veins of saints, so that they, in a sense, rose up 
 against themselves and shot their guardian angels. 
 
 Sint. Thou hast lighted, I have no doubt, upon the 
 cause that troubles so our burning blood. 
 
 I have felt this craving to my cost and shame 
 before. I believe, we are tampered with. A little 
 monster of the name of Kack once used me so. I 
 ordered him the lash. They gave it to him from 
 
 53 
 
head to foot, till he swooiled away, and after, with 
 all his goods beneath him on a jade, he was bidden 
 never to show his face again, unless he wished it 
 targe for lances. It was he that taught me the 
 Black Art. I bargained with him so, though I 
 knew him dangerous to my health and peace. And 
 the cats-paw, with a bandage or two, returned 
 whence she came. 
 
 Now there is none but the Sibyl, who in my cas- 
 tles has the slightest knowledge of drug and magic. 
 But she is of such cast of soul, I would swear by 
 her as by my mother, that unless her mind gave 
 way, she would not use me other than I would 
 myself. Yet someone has got to the drink with 
 the Fly of Spain, or some accursed root, or dust, 
 of which I never heard. 
 
 LrOv. Well, even if it be so, why should we not turn 
 the laugh of Hell against itself? Can we not sat- 
 isfy our hunger with a long and close embrace? 
 What, if we do both swoon together? Where in 
 that is there sin? 
 
 Sint. We cannot but lose our virtue quite, if we press 
 together, and thus open, such bottles as ourselves. 
 
 L,ov. But to speak more plainly, what in Heaven's 
 name, can come of this to be a lasting cause for 
 sorrow? Somethinsf within, I will confess, im- 
 pelled me to resist my yearnings, but I saw no 
 reason beyond a superstitious dread of what was 
 truly nothing. 
 
 Sint. The women, who gave thee spoon-meat, were 
 but cronies of an elder day, and those were really 
 bashful men. They left thee to one bolder, yet 
 more tremulous than they, a scamping husband, to 
 teach thee physiology with his pupil and himself 
 as map and model. 
 
 54 
 
Lov. Tell me what this Judas crime verily is, that 
 hiding in sweet ambush, betrays the lovers in their 
 kiss ! 
 
 Sint. That I cannot do, except I push thee over the 
 indescribable precipice. Only by falling so, can I 
 reveal to thee without speech, the harm we do our 
 breaking heads, by coupling them thus together. 
 
 Lov. Thou dost not explain by swinging before my 
 eyes, nothing but a long string of tropes. Show 
 me clearly what thou meanest. 
 
 Sint. Then I must hold thee in my arms — though to 
 take thee by the palms even would be madness. 
 
 Lov. No ! That would be the delight of full-eyed 
 sanity, life in hey-day song ! 
 
 I smell no sin in that, which is perfume to its 
 
 God. 'Tis the error of enchantment, not a fault of 
 
 ours, when Ecstacy gags tell-tale fear with fingers 
 
 • and thoughts, that are rambling-crazy in their 
 
 Corybantic joy. 
 
 Sint. Well, after all, is not a fine feast a gift from 
 Heaven? If eaten seldom, eaten with reason, 'tis 
 meant we should, for our better health, go slow 
 and deep with the sense of our souls into the 
 depths, where the sweetest relish lies. 
 
 Lov. Then, wise one, let me crush thee to myself. 
 What picture, so limning a pair of souls mingling 
 together with fervent clasp, does but inspire those 
 that ponder cleanly, to trace the Genius of that 
 picture to Him who, the Author of Freedom, is 
 Himself the Holy of Holies. 
 
 Sint. If but two spirits make one of themselves, with- 
 out a license, 'tis we believe, ideal and blessed in 
 Heaven. But somehow, when bodies operate as 
 spirits do, most men feel, though the best doubt- 
 ingly, 'tis for them indeed a crime. 
 
 55 
 
LfOV. But on what grounds? 
 
 Sint. Well, child, thou belongest to the free Golden 
 Age — yet I wonder myself at times, whether we 
 are not misruled by misconception. 
 
 'Tis like that thou art right, and men but self- 
 condemned by impure fancy — unclean thoughts, in 
 that connection, but proving they keep their bodies 
 foul. 
 
 Lov. In that case, I challenge thee to a furious bout 
 of arms. 
 
 Sint. Ah, gracious frail one, it will grieve thee for ages 
 after. 
 
 Lov. I do not see it. 
 
 Dost thou refuse to pick up the gage, I thus, 
 threatening to hurl myself upon thee, have thrown 
 against thy burning face? 
 
 Sint. By Heaven, no ! 
 
 Absolution, anyhow, sweeps all crime away. If 
 not mean-hearted priests, we can absolve our- 
 selves — or they can, from whom after this, we shall 
 seek our pardon, the great Masters of Compassion. 
 It may be that for a quicker progress upwards, the 
 guides suffer us to flounder through a stream of 
 sin, so that our struggles shall bring us to the 
 much higher level, which as the base of a moun- 
 tain, stands upon the other shore. — Let us then 
 take our plunge together ! 
 
 (He moves forward as if to take her in his arms. 
 The apparition of the Lady Verena suddenly ap- 
 pears. She holds up a warning hand.) 
 (Sintram backs.) 
 
 Sint. By God, it is not well then ! My sainted mother 
 waves me back. She sees beyond, where we, en- 
 veloped in the coloured mist of passion, cannot 
 see. (The Ghost disappears.) It is madness and 
 
 56 
 
death, in her opinion, seemingly, to give way to 
 the sensuous hunger, unless the cup and dish have 
 been sanctified first by sacrament. 
 
 This, alas, upon the Earth, from those who there 
 officiate, we cannot look to have. 
 
 A Hell of Sorrow shall give us gulps, if we now 
 spring out and down to where Persephone hangs 
 her mortal fruit ; yet a Hell of Regret swallows up 
 ' our lives, and the highest pleasures pertaining to 
 those human lives, if we do not feast forthwith 
 upon that luscious, cooling food which, so full of 
 seed, stands so ready at our hands, so easy to hide 
 with and stow away, and deny all knowledge. 
 
 Lov. If it be truly sin, to mingle without a ceremo- 
 nial murmur, as the angels so, let us kneel and ask 
 for the swift assuagement of the contending fires, 
 that run so fierce to roll and join flame in flame. 
 We may get guidance, after, how far we may pro- 
 ceed, and sin no more even in desire. Ah me ! 
 Shall we but kiss the air, and wave cold saluta- 
 tions from afar? — Well, let us now ask in the 
 silent depths, where Po.wer answers prayer, for an 
 angel's counter-charm to the mad magic of our too 
 seductive passions. 
 
 Sint. That were a more truly knightly act than to 
 overbear thee, as a minute back, I had despite a 
 certain something's prompting, unleashed my soul 
 to do. 
 
 The apple of the full lovers' tree of knowledge is 
 harmless in itself, but the good God, whose very 
 urging is often, ''Fructify", perceives that for man, 
 it is not well, at times, to pluck elation from hyme- 
 neal trees. Though surpassing all in tense desire. 
 Himself, the law of Him who inspires the divine 
 fairy-land, is that the fruit shall be taken in such a 
 
way, so as not to brutalize the spirit of him, who 
 from it sucks delight. It shall be regarded a ten- 
 der minister, in touch with the Most High, not the 
 raking and the wrecking master. 
 Lov. Then kneel, and let the true Olympian Father 
 impregn His children here with the yearnings that, 
 so bold and free, are yet so sweet and clean. 
 
 (Both kneel.) J^ s/'z/^fr ^^^ Laj>h V^a^v^^ 
 
 Both T^'^'^ NeAj>S, 
 MUSIC. 
 
 (L. M. looks leering over the parapet, between 
 the leaves. Suddenly his face becomes very seri- 
 ous, and then as he sinks below, it assumes an 
 angry scowl.) Th^ sfn^i-r J^t^^ff^^^s. 
 
 Lov. The spell is broken ! 
 
 I love thee still with sweet delirium in my soul, 
 but my fingers no longer itch to drag thee into the 
 outer bosom of my heart. 
 Sint. I too am cooled — no longer a raging tool for the 
 jinns and genii, that in leaguered cities, gorge 
 through drunken victors — so ravenous for the gush 
 of vital streams, they spill the life at every end of 
 those they rape. 
 XrOv. O, 'that we could so enter a nuptial home in 
 Heaven's most giddy fairly-land, even now, in the 
 self-same moment, and straightway out-revel, in 
 riotry, the angels who have been long denied. 
 
 Of what use now is this bleak and fasting, this 
 soul-revolting world ! 
 
 (Looking ofif, R.) 
 
 Quick ! Thy sword ! 
 
 Thou art betrayed ! 
 
 (Men with drawn swords rush in. Sintram hurls 
 
 58 
 
himself upon the nearest. The fighting gradually 
 works off the stage, L.) 
 
 (L. M. slips in from the right, and goes to the 
 back of Lovisa, who is gazing off. He carries a 
 quiver of poisoned arrows upon his back. A small 
 bow is in his hand. After watching for some time, 
 in great anxiety, Lovisa's hands go up to Heaven 
 with thanks and exultation.) 
 Lov. Aly lord has beaten them all ! 
 L. M. But, nevertheless, he shall drop the red tears of 
 
 misericordia, himself, this very night. 
 Lov. Ah! (Shiver of dread.) 
 
 She is spell-bound by his gleaming eyes. 
 L. M. A\'ouldst thou love to see a holy tongue in the 
 mouth of thy darling child? 
 Look yonder ! 
 
 Canst see from here, how it proclaims the truth 
 of what I speak? It makes no sound, though. Nor 
 does the child. And why? Why — oh why? What 
 wouldst thou have from those that cannot die. 
 Both are cold — the tongue is dead — the child is 
 dead ! 
 Lov. My God ! 
 
 (She strives to go to the child.) 
 (L. M. clutches her by the throat with one hand, 
 his arm around her neck. He takes out a long 
 blood-stained dagger, and holds it up in the air.) 
 (It now grows comparatively dark.) 
 L. M. Dost thou know this colour? 
 
 The blood that ran from thee into this bastard, 
 shall flow back to the very fountain of its being, 
 the heart of that vile mother, who broke the Holy 
 Script by papping before the eyes of the world 
 such a smeared baboon — a cloutless, unclean, clot- 
 
 59 
 
ty, red-skinned sucker of spiders' bags, begot of 
 Scorpio ! — 
 
 After thee, I will rasp thy raping lord with pois- 
 oned arrows. 
 
 Die, thou gut-wallower, thou sow, the pig's 
 death! A squeal and a stick! — stuck (sabbing) — 
 stuck! (stabbing.) 
 
 (He lifts her upon the table, and drags the dag- 
 ger's edge slowly across her throat. This lying on 
 the table allows Sintram to sit and stand during his 
 last speech.) 
 L. M. Sob and suck! suck! suck! 
 
 (Then he cries aloud, holding her dead body still, 
 and flourishing high his long knife.) 
 L. M. Thou beast beyond, get up with thy broken 
 wind ! — Sintram, thou dupe and fool of fiends ! 
 Leer-headed Leo! Ha — ha! Dost thou see? 
 
 Lo — the blood of the darling thou ravished, and 
 spots besides of the child that came from out her 
 most beauteous breasts ! — ah, now how cold, how 
 repulsive now to thy sweetest toss ! — 
 
 All three a dying — all three ! 
 
 Ha — ha! Thou comest — dost thou? 
 
 (L. M. puts an arrow quickly to his bow, and 
 shoots. 
 L. M. A good shot — through the bull's pap ! But the 
 feather shows ! 
 
 (Running ofif to the parapet swiftly.) 
 
 O, shame of Hell — to cleave so in painful slips 
 the tender bridal bed ! 
 
 Wife, lord and brat — sucker, each, of each and 
 all! 
 
 Cold — cold — pap and pappers ! — 
 
 And the lust of life still boiling and a-bubbling 
 on the floor ! 
 
 60 
 
(L. M. disappears over the battlemento ) 
 
 Ha ! ha ! ha ! 
 
 (Laugh of intense hate and triumph from be- 
 low—not only from L. M., but a lot of devils.) 
 
 (Sintram staggers in with one hand upon his 
 breast. He picks up a great rock, or other heavy 
 article, and after slowly lifting it up over his head, 
 while' leaning against the parapet, he lets it drop 
 after the dwarf. He may hurl his sword mstead.) 
 
 (Hideous screams of L. M., and cries of angry 
 devils, followed by a strange, hollow, boomtng 
 sound, like that used at the crossing of a chasm, in 
 the play of "She", as performed at the London 
 Gaiety by Sophie Eyre.) 
 
 (It becomes completely dark, typifying Sin- 
 tram's blindness, as he totters to the body of Lo- 
 visa. He sinks slowly by its side.) 
 
 INTERVAL. 
 
 (A vision opens of a beautiful landscape, in 
 golden or otherwise coloured light. A glade 
 ascends in the centre. Far off, a lovely castle 
 stands high perched, with the trees of a"^ garden 
 showing at its base.) 
 
 (This may be imagined only, through coloured 
 mist.) 
 
 (If the landscape be shown to the audience, 
 wingless angels may close in about the dying Sin- 
 tram. Sintram, during the darkness, has got Lo- 
 visa's head upon his breast.) 
 Sint. See, beloved ! 
 
 Tis even as I dreamed, as the Sibyl taught me, 
 we have a home already roofed, and filled through- 
 out, and close at hand ! 
 
 61 
 
It stands prepared to send forth, as the nucleus 
 of a new controlling star, that radiant and blissful 
 light, which is but ours. It shall presently spray 
 on every hand, a stream of ecstacy which, like each 
 of the rivers that run from the Throne of God, shall 
 inspire poets and prophets, and such lovers as are 
 in evil case, who yet have not achieved that most 
 familiar, most music-full union, which not a cere- 
 monial wedding, and though mad with joy, is well- 
 beloved and even instigated by the Highest 
 Heaven. 
 
 Art thou gone? 
 
 Then I speak no more, till I greet thee in yonder 
 home and pleasaunce, which indeed is the outcome 
 and the working of two souls, that blend as one. 
 
 Maybe, I shall catch thee on the way. 
 
 O God be praised ! — this world of pain and 
 malice is no more, for us, the hateful master of 
 desire. 
 
 Like the angels, we are suns, henceforth, in 
 Paradise ! ! 
 
 END OF PLAY. 
 
 62 
 
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