Profound silence. CHARLES VON MOOR takes up his guitar, and plays. BRUTUS. Oh, be ye welcome, realms of peace and rest! Receive the last of all the sons of Rome! From dread Philippi's field, where all the best Fell bleeding in her cause, I wearied come. Cassius, no more! And Rome now prostrate laid! My brethren all lie weltering in their gore! No refuge left but Hades' gloomy shade; No hope remains!--No world for Brutus more! CAESAR. Who's he that, with a hero's lofty bearing, Comes striding o'er yon mountain's rocky bed? Unless my eyes deceive, that noble daring Bespeaks the Roman warrior's fearless tread. Whence, son of Tiber, do thy footsteps bend! Say, stands the seven-hilled city firmly yet? No Caesar there, to be the soldiers friend! Full oft has he that orphaned city wept. BRUTUS. Ha! thou of three-and-twenty wounds! Avaunt! Thou unblest shade, what calls thee back to light? Down with thee, down, to Pluto's deepest haunt, And shroud thy form in black, eternal night, Proud mourner! triumph not to learn our fall! Phillippi's altars reek with freedom's blood? The bier of Brutus is Rome's funeral pall; He Minos seeks. Hence to thy Stygian flood! CAESAR. That death-stroke, Brutus, which thy weapon hurled! Thou, too, Brutus?--that thou shouldst be my foe! Oh, son! It was thy father! Son! The world Was thine by heritage! Now proudly go, Well mayst thou claim to be the chief in glory, 'Twas thy fell sword that pierced thy father's heart! Now go--and at yon gates relate thy story-- Say Brutus claims to be the chief in glory, 'Twas his fell sword that pierced his father's heart! Go--Now thou'rt told what staid me on this shore, Grim ferryman, push off, and swiftly ply thine oar. BRUTUS. Stay, father, stay! Within the whole bright round Of Sol's diurnal course I knew but one Who to compare with Caesar could be found; And that one, Caesar, thou didst call thy son! 'Twas only Caesar could destroy a Rome; Brutus alone that Caesar could withstand-- Where Brutus lives, must Caesar die! Thy home Be far from mine. I'll seek another land. [He lays down his guitar, and walks to and fro in deep meditation.] Who will give me certainty! All is so dark--a confused labyrinth--no outlet--no guiding star. Were but all to end with this last gasp of breath. To end, like an empty puppet-show. But why then this burning thirst after happiness? Wherefore this ideal of unattained perfection? This looking to an hereafter for the fulfilment of our hopes? If the paltry pressure of this paltry thing (putting a pistol to his head) makes the wise man and the fool--the coward and the brave--the noble and the villain equal?--the harmony which pervades the inanimate world is so divinely perfect--why, then, should there be such discord in the intellectual? No! no! there must be something beyond, for I have not yet attained to happiness.