RACHEL:--Why, that's what he was saying--his very words, I think--Arouse the conscience of the people! After all these thousands of years that we have been subject to the influence of the family and of religion, can it be possible that we are unable to arouse the people's conscience except by--O ye silent and exalted witnesses, who hear without answering and see without reflecting what you see, why don't you show me how to reach the upward road? For in the midst of all this misery there is no road that leads upward--nothing but an endless circling around the same spot, by which I perish! HALDEN:--Upward means forward. RACHEL:--But there is no forward in this! We have been thrown back into sheer barbarism! Once more all faith in a happy future has been wiped out. Just ask a few questions around here!... And then the sun, the spring--ever since that dreadful night--nothing but fine weather, night and day--a stretch of it the like of which I cannot recall. Is it not as if nature itself were crying out to us: "Shame! shame! You sprinkle my leaves with blood, and mingle death-cries with my song. You darken the air for me with your gruesome complaints." That's what it is saying to us. "You are soiling the spring for me. Your diseases and your evil thoughts are crouching in the woods and on the greenswards. Everywhere a stink of misery is following you like that of rotting waters." That's what it is telling us. "Your greed and your envy are a pair of sisters who have fought each other since they were born"--that's what it says. "Only my highest mountain peaks, only my sandy wastes and icy deserts, have not seen those sisters; every other part of the earth has been filled by them with blood and brutal bawling. In the midst of eternal glory mankind has invented Hell and manages to keep it filled. And men, who should stand for perfection, harbor among them what is worthless and foul." Chillon BY LORD BYRON (Bonnivard, a patriot of Switzerland, was imprisoned with his sons in Chillon Castle. The story is told in Byron's longer poem, "The Prisoner of Chillon") Eternal Spirit of the chainless Mind! Brightest in dungeons, Liberty, thou art-- For there thy habitation is the heart-- The heart which love of thee alone can bind; And when thy sons to fetters are consign'd-- To fetters, and the damp vault's dayless gloom-- Their country conquers with their martyrdom, And Freedom's fame finds wings on every wind. Chillon! thy prison is a holy place, And thy sad floor an altar; for 'twas trod Until his very steps have left a trace Worn, as if thy cold pavement were a sod, By Bonnivard! May none those marks efface! For they appeal from tyranny to God. BOOK VII _Jesus_