One who looks closely at the famous scene will not fail to see that it is very cleverly constructed and that every objection which has been urged against it is really met in the text. In the first place, Tell is not, and was never meant for, a hero of the conventional sort. There is no element of Quixotry about him. He is a plain man, of limited horizon and small gift of speech. Public affairs do not particularly interest him. He is a hardy mountaineer, with a strong trust in his own strength and resourcefulness; a good oarsman and a great shot with the crossbow; but he makes no fuss about these things. Let it be repeated that he is not foolhardy. The dangers of the mountain, which bulk so large in the imagination of his wife, are simply the familiar element of the life that he loves. He treats her timorous apprehensions with the good-natured coolness of a man who knows how to take care of himself. He is affectionate, but not a bit sentimental. All this makes an eminently natural and consistent character. Now what must such a character do when required, under penalty of death, by a brutal tyrant whose power is absolute, to hit an apple on his son's head? Naturally his first thought is of the child, and he tries to escape by offering his own life. The reply is that he must shoot or die _with_ his child. Thus there is no recourse; to refuse to shoot at all is worse than to shoot and miss. If he kill Gessler on the spot,--and we must suppose that the thought occurs to him,--he will expose not only himself but his child and his wife and children at home to the fury of the troopers. The only safety lies in making a successful shot. And after all Tell knows that he _can_ make it; it is only a question of nerve, and he has the nerve if he can only find it. And here comes in an important touch which is not in Tschudi--the fearless confidence of Walther Tell in his father's marksmanship. The effect of this is to touch the pride of the bowman, to clear his eye, and to steady his hand. It is also a familiar fact that, with strong natures, a terrible danger, with just one chance of escape, may produce a moment of perfect self-control while the chance is taken. The whole scene, in addition to its effectiveness on the stage, is psychologically true to life. With all deference to the great qualities of the first Chancellor of the German Empire, one must insist that Schiller was a better playwright than he and found precisely the best solution to his dramatic problem.