Strato; behold me ignominiously fallen from the summit of my lofty expectations! O how I shudder to repeat this fall again in thought! I had rushed too far in advance; I was wounded, and--imprisoned! Poor youth, thou hadst prepared thyself only for wounds, only for death,--and thou art made a prisoner! Thus always do the gods, in their severity, send only unforeseen evils to stultify our self-complacency. I weep--I must weep, although I fear to be despised for it by you. But despise me not! You turn away? STRATO. I am vexed: you should not move me thus. I become a child with you. PHILOTAS. No; hear why I weep! It is no childish weeping which you deign to accompany with your manly tears. What I thought my greatest happiness, the tender love with which my father loves me, will now become my greatest misery. I fear, I fear he loves me more than he loves his empire! What will he not sacrifice, what will not your king exact from him, to rescue me from prison! Through me, wretched youth, will he lose in one day more than he has gained in three long toilsome years with the blood of his noble warriors, with his own blood. With what face shall I appear again before him? I, his worst enemy! And my father's subjects--mine at some future day, if I had made myself worthy to rule them. How will they be able to endure the ransomed prince amongst them without contemptuous scorn. And when I die for shame, and creep unmourned to the shades below, how gloomy and proud will pass by the souls of those heroes who for their king had to purchase with their lives those gains, which, as a father, he renounces for an unworthy son! Oh, that is more than a feeling heart can endure! STRATO. Be comforted, dear prince! It is the fault of youth always to think itself more happy or less than it really is. Your fate is not so cruel yet;--the king approaches, you will hear more consolation from his lips. Scene III. King Aridäus, Philotas, Strato. ARIDÄUS. The wars which kings are forced to wage together are no personal quarrels. Let me embrace you, prince! Ah what happy days your blooming youth recalls to me! Thus bloomed your father's youth! This was his open, speaking eye; these his earnest, honest features; this his noble bearing! Let me embrace you again; in you I embrace your younger father. Have you never heard from him, prince, what good friends we were at your age? That was the blessed age, when we could still abandon ourselves to our feelings without restraint. But soon we were both called to the throne, and the anxious king, the jealous neighbour, stifled, alas, the willing friend. PHILOTAS.