Good. Each of you is worthy of the other. You have proved to me that you love me and that you love each other better than life.... Now that the proof is established and your sacrifice fulfilled as much as though death had come to you, we have nothing more to fear and we can speak freely. In all this nightmare there is only one death which is necessary and inevitable; and that is mine. Your own deaths depend only upon ourselves, that is to say, they must not take place.... Isabelle, my darling, if I were lying on my death-bed at this moment, you would not refuse to hear and carry out my last wishes. I am before you now, standing on my feet, but as near to my end as though I were stretched upon a bed of sickness. (_The clock strikes six._) Hark! Six o’clock! You see how close it is. Besides, I have what dying men, whose minds are often dulled, do not always have, the full possession of my mental faculties. The wish which I am about to express, the request which I am about to make of both of you, must therefore be all the more sacred. Do you promise me, Isabelle, as you would promise a dying man, to perform piously what I am going to ask of you? ISABELLE I know beforehand what you are going to ask; and I cannot promise you to order the man I married to become the murderer of his father and mine. THE BURGOMASTER Isabelle, at a moment like this we must not juggle with words which do not express what they say and which distort the truth most dreadfully. Otto has revealed to us the only truth that counts, by proving that he is ready to sacrifice his life not only to save mine, if that were possible, but even to spare you the pain of seeing him become the instrument—to some extent the accidental, involuntary, irresponsible instrument—of my death. It is for you and me to show ourselves worthy of that sacrifice by not accepting it. ISABELLE If I did not accept it, I should not be worthy of being your daughter. THE BURGOMASTER