Think ye that I will tremble, spirits of my slaughtered victims? No, I will not tremble. (Trembling violently.) The shrieks of your dying agonies--your black, convulsive features--your ghastly bleeding wounds-- what are they all but links of one indissoluble chain of destiny, which hung upon the temperament of my father, the life's blood of my mother, the humors of my nurses and tutors, and even upon the holiday pastimes of my childhood! (Shaking with horror.) Why has my Perillus made of me a brazen bull, whose burning entrails yearn after human flesh? (He lifts the pistol again to his head.) Time and Eternity!--linked together by a single instant! Fearful key, which locks behind me the prisonhouse of life, and opens before me the habitations of eternal night--tell me--oh, tell me--whither--whither wilt thou lead me? Strange, unexplored land! Humanity is unnerved at the fearful thought, the elasticity of our finite nature is paralyzed, and fancy, that wanton ape of the senses, juggles our credulity with appalling phantoms. No! no! a man must be firm. Be what thou wilt, thou undefined futurity, so I remain but true to myself. Be what thou wilt, so I but take this inward self hence with me. External forms are but the trappings of the man. My heaven and my hell is within. What if Thou shouldst doom me to be sole inhabitant of some burnt-out world which thou hast banished from thy sight, where darkness and never-ending desolation were all my prospect; then would my creative brain people the silent waste with its own images, and I should have eternity for leisure to unravel the complicated picture of universal wretchedness. Or wilt thou make me pass through ever-repeated births and ever-changing scenes of misery, stage by stage*--to annihilation? [This and other passages will remind the reader of Cato's soliloquy "It must be so, Plato; thou reasonest well." But the whole bears a strong resemblance to Hamlet's "To be or not to be;" and some passages in Measure for Measure, Act iii, Sc. 1.] Can I not burst asunder the life-threads woven for me in another world as easily as I do these? Thou mayest reduce me into nothing; but Thou canst not take from me this power. (He loads the pistol, and then suddenly pauses.) And shall I then rush into death from a coward fear of the ills of life? Shall I yield to misery the palm of victory over myself? No! I will endure it! (He flings the pistol away.) Misery shall blunt its edge against my pride! Be my destiny fulfilled! (It grows darker and darker.) HERMANN (coming through the forest). Hark! hark! the owl screeches horribly--the village clock strikes twelve. Well, well--villainy is asleep--no listeners in these wilds. (He goes to the castle and knocks.) Come forth, thou man of sorrow! tenant of the miserable dungeon! thy meal awaits thee. CHARLES (stepping gently back, unperceived). What means this? VOICE (from within the castle). Who knocks? Is it you, Hermann, my raven?