(starting up).
What! You are crazy! Gone?
His cell is empty?
Monk.
'Tis true as death, my lord. Witness, these eyes!
Abbot.
Heaven and hell! It shall not be, I swear!
There is a plot in this! You, sir, have lied!
Some one is in his confidence!—who is it?
Go rouse the convent.
[Monk goes.]
He must be followed, found.
Hunt's up, friend Julian! First your heels, old stag!
But by and by your horns, and then your side!
'Tis venison much too good for the world's eating.
I'll go and sift this business to the bran.
Robert and him I have sometimes seen together!—God's
curse! it shall fare ill with any man
That has connived at this, if I detect him.
SCENE VII.—Afternoon. The mountains. JULIAN
Julian.
Once more I tread thy courts, O God of heaven!
I lay my hand upon a rock, whose peak
Is miles away, and high amid the clouds.
Perchance I touch the mountain whose blue summit,
With the fantastic rock upon its side,
Stops the eye's flight from that high chamber-window
Where, when a boy, I used to sit and gaze
With wondering awe upon the mighty thing,
Terribly calm, alone, self-satisfied,
The hitherto of my child-thoughts. Beyond,
A sea might roar around its base. Beyond,
Might be the depths of the unfathomed space,
This the earth's bulwark over the abyss.
Upon its very point I have watched a star
For a few moments crown it with a fire,
As of an incense-offering that blazed
Upon this mighty altar high uplift,
And then float up the pathless waste of heaven.
From the next window I could look abroad
Over a plain unrolled, which God had painted
With trees, and meadow-grass, and a large river,
Where boats went to and fro like water-flies,
In white and green; but still I turned to look
At that one mount, aspiring o'er its fellows:
All here I saw—I knew not what was there.
O love of knowledge and of mystery,
Striving together in the heart of man!
"Tell me, and let me know; explain the thing."—
Then when the courier-thoughts have circled round:
"Alas! I know it all; its charm is gone!"
But I must hasten; else the sun will set
Before I reach the smoother valley-road.
I wonder if my old nurse lives; or has
Eyes left to know me with. Surely, I think,
Four years of wandering since I left my home,
In sunshine and in snow, in ship and cell,
Must have worn changes in this face of mine
Sufficient to conceal me, if I will.
SCENE VIII.—A dungeon in the monastery. A ray of the moon on the floor. ROBERT
Robert.
One comfort is, he's far away by this.
Perhaps this comfort is my deepest sin.
Where shall I find a daysman in this strife
Between my heart and holy Church's words?
Is not the law of kindness from God's finger,
Yea, from his heart, on mine? But then we must
Deny ourselves; and impulses must yield,
Be subject to the written law of words;
Impulses made, made strong, that we might have
Within the temple's court live things to bring
And slay upon his altar; that we may,
By this hard penance of the heart and soul,
Become the slaves of Christ.—I have done wrong;
I ought not to have let poor Julian go.
And yet that light upon the floor says, yes—
Christ would have let him go. It seemed a good,
Yes, self-denying deed, to risk my life
That he might be in peace. Still up and down
The balance goes, a good in either scale;
Two angels giving each to each the lie,
And none to part them or decide the question.
But still the words come down the heaviest
Upon my conscience as that scale descends;
But that may be because they hurt me more,
Being rough strangers in the feelings' home.
Would God forbid us to do what is right,
Even for his sake? But then Julian's life
Belonged to God, to do with as he pleases!
I am bewildered. 'Tis as God and
