Page:Wallenstein, a drama in 2 parts - Schiller (tr. Coleridge) (1800).djvu/31

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FIRST PART OF WALLENSTEIN.

9

It was the urgent business of that time
To snatch Bavaria from her enemy's hand;
And my commission of to-day instructs me
To free her from her good friends and protectors.

ILLO.

A worthy office! After with our blood

We have wrested this Bohemia from the Saxon,
To be swept out of it is all our thanks,
The sole reward of all our hard-won victories.

QUESTENBERG.

Unless that wretched land be doom'd to suffer

Only a change of evils, it must be
Freed from the scourge alike of friend or foe.

ILLO.

What? 'Twas a favorable year; the Boors

Can answer fresh demands already.

QUESTENBERG.

⁠Nay,

If you discourse of herds and meadow-grounds—

ISOLANI.

The war maintains the war. Are the Boors ruin'd

The Emperor gains so many more new soldiers.

QUESTENBERG.

And is the poorer by even so many subjects.

ISOLANI.

Poh! we are all his subjects.

QUESTENBERG.

Yet with a difference, General! The one fill

With profitable industry the purse,
The others are well skill'd to empty it.

The