Will your father be less so to press you to his heart again? But let me enjoy your company, dearest prince! The time will speed more quickly in it, and perhaps in other respects it may also have good results, if we become more intimately acquainted with each other. Often already have loving children been the mediators of their angry fathers. Follow me therefore to my tent, where the greatest of my generals await you! They burn with the desire to see you, and offer you their admiration. PHILOTAS. Men must not admire a child, king! Leave me here, therefore, I pray! Shame and vexation would make me play a very foolish part. And as to your conversation with me, I do not see at all what good could come of it. I know nothing else, but that you and my father are involved in war; and the right--the right, I think, is on my father's side. This I believe, king! and will believe, even though you could prove the reverse indisputably. I am a son and a soldier, and have no other opinion than that of my father and my general. ARIDÄUS. Prince! it shows a great intelligence thus to deny one's intelligence. Yet I am sorry that I shall not ever be able to justify myself before you. Accursed war! PHILOTAS. Yes, truly, an accursed war! And woe to him who caused it. ARIDÄUS. Prince! prince! remember that it was your father who first drew the sword. I do not wish to join in your curses. He was rash, he was too suspicious. PHILOTAS. Well, my father drew the first sword. But does the conflagration only take its rise when the bright flame already breaks through the roof? Where is the patient, quiet creature, devoid of all feeling, which cannot be embittered through incessant irritations? Consider--for you compel me to speak of things of which I have no right to speak--consider what a proud and scornful answer you sent him when he--but you shall not compel me; I will not speak of it! Our guilt and our innocence are liable to endless misinterpretations, endless excuses. Only to the undeceived eye of the gods do we appear as we are; they alone can judge us. But the gods, you know it, king, speak their verdict through the sword of the bravest. Let us therefore wait to hear their bloody sentence. Why shall we turn in cowardice from this highest of judgments to a lower? Are our arms already so weary that the pliant tongue must take their place? ARIDÄUS. I hear with astonishment---- PHILOTAS. Ah! a woman, too, may be listened to with astonishment. ARIDÄUS.