ISABELLE I can’t do it, I can’t do it, I shall never be able to do it! THE BURGOMASTER But you must. Time presses; and you are making the last few minutes of my life seem even more cruel than death. ISABELLE There are chances still. There is flight. THE BURGOMASTER Flight?... Whither?... How?... The house is guarded. ISABELLE The men who guard it are under Otto’s orders. He has only to give a command. THE BURGOMASTER Otto is answerable for my safe custody. If I run away, he will take my place against the wall. ISABELLE He can run away too. THE BURGOMASTER And both of us be caught before we have gone two hundred yards? The tragedy would be the same; only it would be less seemly. And, if I did succeed in escaping, too many others would pay the penalty. Of all the chances of safety, this obviously is the only one that must on no account be attempted. No, I am driven into a corner, I am marked down; it is all over; and you must look upon me as dead. I have come to the end of my days; those which were worth living are past. I am not dying too soon; I had nothing more to wait for. Instead of a lingering, troublesome death, a painful, miserable death on a bed, I am offered a quick and sudden end, an honourable end, free from thought or suffering, and one which perhaps will save half the town. I should be mad to hesitate or to regret not dying in my bed. I too have been afraid of death. If any one had ever told me that one evening I should have to face it as I am doing now, I should not have dared to go on living. Whereas now I hardly give it a thought; I have to make an effort, to force myself, to concentrate my mind upon it in order to realize that, after all, perhaps it is somewhat serious and not what we had expected. Looked at from a distance, death seems like some horrible mountain, which shuts out the horizon; but, as we draw near, it dwindles and sinks away; and, when we are face to face with it, it is nothing. ISABELLE Well, if it is nothing, let us die with you. THE BURGOMASTER It is nothing to me, because I was nearing my end; and, above all, it is nothing because it is necessary. But to you two it is everything, because it is purposeless and because your life is beginning. ISABELLE Our life is beginning. Ah, a beautiful life, a life that begins like this! THE BURGOMASTER